While many sociologists have contributed to research on society, three thinkers are considered fundamental: Émile Durkheim, Karl Marx, and Max Weber. They all developed different useful theoretical approaches to help us understand the way societies function.

The most fascinating thing about these three theorists is that their theories, much like the theory of relativity that Albert Einstein developed at the turn of the twentieth century (1905-1915), still provide useful tools for us to understand the events around us. As you think about your experiences in a post-industrial society, how can the three theoretical paradigms help you make sense of the changing world?

Functionalism and Society

Figure 1. Warren Buffett (an investor and one of the world’s richest men) has controversial ideas about taxation and spending habits of the very wealthy, particularly since they raise questions about America’s embedded system of class structure and social power. Buffet advocates that the wealthy should pay higher taxes than they do, as he refutes the claim that trickle-down economics really benefits the lower and middle classes. The three major sociological paradigms differ in their perspectives on these issues. (Photo courtesy of Medill DC/flickr)

In previous modules, you learned about social solidarity (the social ties that bind a group of people together such as kinship, shared location, and religion) and social facts (the laws, morals, values, religious beliefs, customs, fashions, rituals, and all of the cultural rules that govern social life). Social solidarity and social facts are essential concepts that functionalists use to empirically analyze societies.

Émile Durkheim and Structural-Functionalism

As a functionalist, Émile Durkheim’s (1858–1917) perspective on society stressed the necessary interconnectivity of all of its elements. To him, society was greater than the sum of its parts. He asserted that individual behavior was not the same as collective behavior and that studying collective behavior was quite different from studying an individual’s actions. Durkheim called the communal beliefs, morals, and attitudes of a society the collective conscience.

In his quest to understand what causes individuals to act in similar and predictable ways, he wrote, “If I do not submit to the conventions of society, if in my dress I do not conform to the customs observed in my country and in my class, the ridicule I provoke, the social isolation in which I am kept, produce, although in an attenuated form, the same effects as punishment” (Durkheim, 1895). This is what we know as peer pressure, and is an illustrative example of how something that seems like common sense can be studied empirically. 

Figure 2. Durkheim viewed societies as multicellular organisms like the ones pictured here. The structure of the cell is society and the cells within the organism are individuals.

Following the ideas of Auguste Comte and Herbert Spencer, Durkheim likened society to that of a living organism, in which each organism plays a necessary role in keeping the being alive.

Durkheim asserted that members of societies who violate social norms are necessary to the well-being of society because punishment for deviance affirms the collective conscience. “A crime is a crime because we condemn it,” Durkheim wrote in 1893. “An act offends the common consciousness not because it is criminal, but it is criminal because it offends that consciousness” (Durkheim, 1893). Durkheim’s unique perspective on crime provides one example of societal elements that are social facts, or social forces, that were to be considered real in their effects and which existed beyond the individual.

Watch the following video to learn more about Émile Durkheim and the ideas that led to the development of structural-functional theory in the following video:

As an observer of his social world, Durkheim was not entirely satisfied with the direction of society in his day. His primary concern was that the cultural glue that held society together was failing, and people were becoming more divided. In his book The Division of Labor in Society (1893), Durkheim argued that as society grew more complex, social order made the transition from mechanical solidarity to organic solidarity.

Pre-industrial societies, Durkheim explained, were held together by mechanical solidarity, a type of social order maintained by the collective consciousness of a culture. Societies with mechanical solidarity act in an automatic fashion; things are done mostly because they have always been done that way. This type of thinking was common in pre-industrial societies, where strong bonds of kinship and a low division and differentiation of labor created shared morals and values among people, such as those in hunter-gatherer groups. When people tend to do the same type of work, Durkheim argued, they tend to think and act alike. Here we see that labor and communal self-preservation are fundamental.

In industrial societies, mechanical solidarity is replaced with organic solidarity, which is social order based around an acceptance of economic and social differences. In capitalist societies, Durkheim wrote, division of labor becomes so specialized that everyone is doing different things. Instead of punishing members of a society for failure to assimilate to common values, organic solidarity allows people with differing values to coexist. Laws exist as formalized morals and are based on restitution and justice rather than revenge.

Conflict Theory and Society

Figure 3. Karl Marx asserted that all elements of a society’s structure depend on its economic structure.

Additionally, Marx saw conflict in society as the primary means of change. Economically, he saw conflict existing between the owners of the means of production—the bourgeoisie—and the laborers, called the proletariat.

Marx maintained that these conflicts appeared consistently throughout history during times of social revolution. These revolutions, or “class antagonisms” as he called them, were a result of one class dominating another. Most recently, with the end of feudalism, a new revolutionary class he called the bourgeoisie dominated the laboring masses that he called the proletariat. The bourgeoisie were revolutionary in the sense that they represented a radical change in the structure of society. In Marx’s words, “Society as a whole is more and more splitting up into two great hostile camps, into two great classes directly facing each other—Bourgeoisie and Proletariat” (Marx and Engels, 1848).

In the mid-nineteenth century, as industrialization was booming, bourgeois industrial employers, the “owners of the means of production” in Marx’s terms, became more and more exploitative toward the working class proletariat. The large manufacturers of steel were particularly ruthless, and their facilities were popularly dubbed “dark satanic mills” based on a poem by William Blake. Marx’s frequent co-author and friend, Friedrich Engels, wrote The Condition of the Working-Class in England (1844), which described the horrid conditions.

Such is the Old Town of Manchester, and on re-reading my description, I am forced to admit that instead of being exaggerated, it is far from black enough to convey a true impression of the filth, ruin, and uninhabitableness, the defiance of all considerations of cleanliness, ventilation, and health which characterise the construction of this single district, containing at least twenty to thirty thousand inhabitants. And such a district exists in the heart of the second city of England, the first manufacturing city of the world.

Add to that the long hours, the use of child labor, and exposure to extreme temperatures and toxic chemicals, and it is no wonder that Marx and Engels referred to capitalism, which is a way of organizing an economy so that the things that are used to make and transport products (such as land, oil, factories, ships, etc.) are owned by profit-seeking individuals and companies rather than by the government, as the “dictatorship of the bourgeoisie.”

Figure 4. Karl Marx (left) and Friedrich Engels (right) analyzed differences in social power between “have” and “have-not” groups. (Photo (a) courtesy of Wikimedia Commons; Photo (b) courtesy of George Lester/Wikimedia Commons)

For Marx, how we labor defines who we are. Historically, and in spite of the persistent efforts of one class to dominate another, Marx argued that some element of common humanity still existed in pre-industrial, smaller-scale modes of productions such as guild communities and workshops. In these workplaces, there was at least some connection between the worker and the product, whose creation was partially governed by seasonal cycles and by the the rise and fall of the sun, just as in earlier agricultural societies. But with the bourgeois revolution and the rise of industrialization and capitalism, the worker now labored for wages alone. His relationship to his labor was no longer of a human nature, but was instead based on artificial, inorganic conditions.

Marx described modern society in terms of alienation. Alienation refers to the condition in which the individual is isolated and divorced from his or her society, work, or sense of self. Marx defined four specific types of alienation.

1. Alienation from the product of one’s labor. An industrial worker does not have the opportunity to relate to the product he labors on. Instead of training for years as a watchmaker, an unskilled worker can get a job at a watch factory pressing buttons to seal watch pieces together. The worker does not care if he is making watches or cars, simply that the job exists. In the same way, a worker may not even know or care what product to which he is contributing. A worker on a Ford assembly line may spend all day installing windows on car doors without ever seeing the rest of the car.
2. Alienation from the process of one’s labor. A worker does not control the conditions of her job because she does not own the means of production (i.e., the factory and its tools and raw materials). If a person is hired to work in a fast food restaurant, she is expected to make the food the way she is taught. All ingredients must be combined in a particular order and in a particular quantity; there is no room for creativity or change. An employee at Burger King cannot decide to change the spices used on the fries in the same way that an employee on a Ford assembly line cannot decide to place a car’s headlights in a different position. Everything is decided by the factory-owning bourgeoisie who then dictate orders to the laborers.
3. Alienation from others. Workers compete, rather than cooperate. Employees vie for time slots, bonuses, and job security. Even when a worker clocks out at night and goes home, the competition does not end. As Marx and Engels described this dynamic in The Communist Manifesto (1848), “No sooner is the exploitation of the laborer by the manufacturer, so far at an end, that he receives his wages in cash, than he is set upon by the other portion of the bourgeoisie, the landlord, the shopkeeper, the pawnbroker.”
4. Alienation from one’s self. A final outcome of industrialization is a loss of connectivity between a worker and her occupation. Because there is nothing that ties a worker to her labor, there is no longer a sense of self. Instead of being able to take pride in an identity such as being a watchmaker, automobile builder, or chef, a person is simply a cog in the machine.

Figure 5. An assembly line worker installs car parts with the aid of complex machinery. Has technology made this type of labor more or less alienating? (Photo courtesy of Carol Highsmith/Wikimedia Commons)

Taken as a whole, then, alienation in modern society means that an individual has no control over his life. But why, then, does the modern working class not rise up and rebel? (Indeed, Marx predicted that this would be the ultimate outcome and would result in the collapse of capitalism.)

Another idea that Marx developed is the concept of false consciousness. False consciousness is a condition in which the beliefs, ideals, or ideology of a person are not in the person’s own best interest. In fact, it is the ideology of the dominant class (here, the bourgeois capitalists) that is imposed upon the proletariat. Ideas such as the emphasis of competition over cooperation, or of hard work being its own reward, clearly benefit the owners of the means of production. Therefore, workers are less likely to question their place in society or to assume individual responsibility for existing conditions.

In order for society to overcome false consciousness, Marx proposed that it be replaced with class consciousness, the awareness of one’s rank in society. He thought it was crucial that workers recognize their real relationship to, and political distance from, the means of production. Instead of existing as a “class in itself,” the proletariat must become a “class for itself” in order to effect social change, meaning that instead of just being an inert stratum of society, the class could advocate for social improvements (Marx and Engels, 1848). Only once society entered this state of political consciousness would it be ready for a social revolution.

Review Marx’s ideas about alienation and the four types of alienation in the following video:

Symbolic Interactionism and the McDonaldization of Society

Max Weber and Symbolic Interactionism

While Karl Marx may be one of the best-known political thinkers of the nineteenth century, Max Weber is certainly one of the greatest influences in the field of sociology. Like the other social thinkers discussed here, he was concerned with the important changes taking place in Western society with the advent of industrialization. And, like Marx and Durkheim, he feared that industrialization would have negative effects on individuals.

Weber’s primary focus on the structure of society lay in the elements of class, status, and power. Similar to Marx, Weber saw class as economically determined. Society, he believed, was split between owners and laborers. Status, on the other hand, was based on non-economic factors such as education, kinship, and religion. Both status and economic class determined an individual’s power, or influence over ideas. Unlike Marx, Weber believed that these ideas, and not just the particular form of the means of production, formed the “base” of society.

Figure 6. Cubicles are used to maximize individual workspace in an office. Such structures may be rational, but they are also isolating. (Photo courtesy of Tim Patterson/flickr)

Weber’s analysis of modern society centered on the concept of rationalization. A rational society is one built around logic and efficiency rather than morality or tradition. To Weber, capitalism is entirely rational. Although this leads to efficiency and merit-based success, it can have adverse effects when taken to the extreme. In some modern societies, this is seen when rigid routines and strict design requirements lead to a mechanized work environment and a focus on producing identical products in every location.

Weber was also unlike his predecessors in that he was more interested in how individuals experienced societal divisions than in the divisions themselves. The symbolic interactionism theory, the third of the three most influential theories of sociology, is based on Weber’s early ideas that emphasize the viewpoint of the individual and how that individual relates to society. For Weber, the culmination of industrialization and rationalization results in what he called the iron cage, in which the individual is trapped by institutions and bureaucracy. This leads to a sense of “disenchantment of the world,” a phrase Weber used to describe the final condition of humanity. Indeed a dark prediction, but one that has, at least to some degree, been borne out (Gerth and Mills, 1918).

The Protestant Work Ethic

In a series of essays in 1904, Max Weber presented the idea of the Protestant work ethic, a new attitude toward work based on the Calvinist principle of predestination. In the early sixteenth century, Europe was shaken by the Protestant Revolution. Religious leaders such as Martin Luther and John Calvin argued against the Catholic Church’s belief in salvation through obedience. While Catholic leaders emphasized the importance of church-sanctioned religious dogma and performing good deeds as a gateway to Heaven, Protestants believed that a more individual inner grace, or faith in God, was enough to achieve salvation.

John Calvin in particular popularized the Christian concept of predestination, the idea that all events—including salvation—have already been decided by God. Because followers were never sure whether they had been chosen to enter Heaven or Hell, they looked for signs in their everyday lives. If a person was hard-working and successful, this prosperity might be a sign that he was one of the chosen. If a person was lazy or simply indifferent, and did not know material success, he was likely to be one of the damned.

Weber argued that this mentality encouraged people to work hard for personal gain; after all, why should one help the unfortunate if they were already damned? Over time, the Protestant work ethic spread and became an important foundation for capitalism.

Watch the video on Max Weber to hear more about Weber’s seminal work The Protestant Work Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism(1904):

In a rationalized, modern society, we have supermarkets instead of family-owned stores. We have chain restaurants instead of local eateries. Superstores that offer a multitude of merchandise have replaced independent businesses that focused on one product line, such as hardware, groceries, automotive repair, or clothing. Shopping malls offer retail stores, restaurants, fitness centers, even condominiums. This change may be rational, but is it universally desirable? George Ritzer utilized many of Weber’s concepts and developed a conceptual framework within which we can examine a variety of changes within society.