The Marxist and Weberian Treatise of Global Inequality and Development - Essay Example

?The Marxist and Weberian Treatise of Global Inequality and Development Introduction Capitalism has unquestionably been a primary interest, to a certain extent the major interest, of 19th century social theory. I have decided to review the notion of capitalism, as it relates to the theory of society, through a thorough analysis of the works of the two scholars who were by general agreement are the major social theorists, Max Weber and Karl Marx. Moreover, capitalism is viewed from a specific perspective: the extent to which its study is capable of strengthening a sociology of modernity, interpreted as ‘that which is ‘new’ in ‘modern’ ‘society’’ (Lowith 1993, 46). Marx and Weber provide distinct theories of modernity, or theories of the transition from pre-industrial to industrial society, to which capitalism is somewhat fundamental. Obviously, there have been others such as Simmel and Durkheim. For Marx and Weber, although in quite distinct approaches, it is capitalism which is ‘the most fateful force’ (Pellicani 1994, 25) influencing modernity. For neither of them is this suggestion factual in terms of economic determinism: ‘it is not that capitalism as a form of economy causes modernity to be as it is’ (ibid, p. 25). However, for Marx and Weber the invasion of the global economy by capitalism is a critical agency of modernisation. Instead, each interprets capitalism, as what Marx refers to as a ‘mode of life’ (Sayer 1991, 7). The explicitly mentioned issue of the empirical studies of Marx and Weber is capitalism, but the purpose for its analysis was the issue of humanity’s fate in the modern world, whose challenging characteristic is typified by the concept of ‘capitalism’. This issue regarding the modern world, implied in the issue of capitalism, consequently involves a specific idea of what it is that preserves humanity within the highly capitalistic society, or specifically, what makes up humankind in such a world (Cohen 1982, 59). To embody the purpose of Marx’s and Weber’s analysis from this point of view does not mean that this purpose should have been the dominant objective for them, but presumes it as the fixed context from which they formulated their questions. Hence, for instance, the apparent objective of the ‘Communist Manifesto’ is politics and practicality whilst the objective of Weber’s works in the sociology of religion is history and theory (Apter 1965, 62). However this does not rule out the possibility that the initial and core inspiration for both Marx’s ‘Manifesto’ and Weber’s ‘historical research’ (Turner 1993, 18) may, however, have been the sole and reflective question regarding our modern mode of humanity. Similarities might afterwards be drawn, for instance, between the confrontational analysis of the ‘bourgeois’ in the ‘Manifesto’ and the equally crucial critique in the earliest of Weber’s works in the sociology of religion, where in a similar ‘bourgeois’ humanity is somewhat distinctly assessed. Both analyses engage our own selves in our historical context. If this premise of comparison is objective but fundamental to the content of their theories, in that case, this sole question should surface repeatedly in the thematically distinct theories of Weber and Marx. It is then relevant to discuss Marx’s and Weber’s ideas of global inequality and development. The Development of Underdevelopment The implication of the relationship of development and underdevelopment has two core principles; however, this essay will only discuss the first and most contentious of these principles as it is the one that greatly relates to Marx’s and Weber’s conception of the global economy. This first principle is best summarised in Frank’s idea of the ‘development of underdevelopment’ (Veltmeyer 1980, 213). ... the metropolis expropriates economic surplus from its satellites and appropriates it for its own economic development. The satellites remain underdeveloped for lack of access to their own surplus and as a consequence of the same polarisation and exploitative contradictions which the metropolis introduces and maintains in the satellite’s domestic economic structure... Both (development and underdevelopment) are the necessary result and contemporary manifestation of internal contradictions in the world capitalist system. Economic development and underdevelopment are not just relative and quantitative, in that one represents more economic development than the other... One and the same historical process of the expansion and development of capitalism throughout the world has simultaneously generated--- and continues to generate—both economic development and structural underdevelopment (Frank 1967, 9). This idea of the relationship between development and underdevelopment is founded on a capital drain theory, the transport to the developed countries of surplus produced on underdeveloped countries (Veltmeyer 1980, 213). As stated in this theory, the causes of underdevelopment can be attributed to the metropolis-satellite system of trade and investment, an “exploitative relation [which] in chain-like fashion extends the capitalist link between the capitalist world and national metropolis to the regional centres (part of whose surplus they appropriate), and from these to local centres, and so on to large landowners or merchants who expropriate surplus from small peasants or tenants, and sometimes even from these latter to landless labourers exploited by them in turn” (Frank 1967, 7). Marx himself did not thoroughly identify the circumstances of this surplus distribution system, which, it is claimed, surfaced in the formation of a ‘world commercial network’ (Sun 2005, 71). Outside the discussion of a monopoly system of trade and investment the lesser position given the periphery in a global division of labour was inadequately explained. Max Weber adopted the thesis of Marx but broadened it to the issue of capitalist growth of developed countries. Similar to Marx, Weber argued that the capital accumulation of the metropolis was rooted in the pillage of underdeveloped countries. However, dissimilar from Marx, who created his argument in terms of trade and investment, Weber emphasised the dependent system of trade affairs within the global division of labour. Nevertheless, even though he identified international political and economic features of this dependence, once more like Marx, he did not examine the definite processes of surplus creation, distribution, and transfer. In contrast to the standpoint of Marx and Weber, the notion of ‘dependent development’ (Veltmeyer 1980, 213) claims that the global capitalist system has shifted attention toward the growth conditions of underdeveloped countries rather than underdevelopment. The core components of this emergent dependency, generated by the most recent stage of capitalist growth, are enclosed in the following excerpt (Cardoso 1973): In my view, changes in international capitalist organisation have produced a new international division of labour. The moving force behind these changes is the multinational corporation. Assuming as it does the immersion of industrial capital into peripheral economies, the new international division of labour puts a dynamic element into operation in the internal market. Thus, to some extent, the interests of foreign corporations become compatible with the internal prosperity of the dependent countries. In this sense, they help promote development. Because of this factor, the growth of multinational corporations necessitates a reformulation of the traditional view of economic imperialism which holds that the basic relationship between a developed capitalist country and an underdeveloped country is one of extractive exploitation that perpetuates stagnation (ibid, p. 149). This latest theory of dependence deviates from an obvious modification of the Marx-Weber theory of capitalism which presumed a system wherein the metropolis transfers to its satellites (colonies) its excess resources. However, in opposition to Marx, Weber argues that capitalism in its current stage is an expansion of industrial capital, not of finance capital (Turner 1993, 106). Nevertheless, at present it is declared that the solution to current dependency is the ‘penetration of underdeveloped countries by the most powerful economic agent in the developing countries’ (Veltmeyer 1980, 213) – the transnational organisation. There is general agreement on this assumption. This unrelenting demand to innovate is, according to Marx, a material development of industrial capitalism, enforced in a competitive way by capitals and investment upon one another (Dobb 1947, 53). Marx views the continuous development of steady capital in relation to variable as the grounds for a lasting inclination of the general profit rate to drop, for profit is a ‘function of the ratio of surplus value to total capital invested’ (Baiman, Boushey & Saunders 2000, 61). This worsens the general inclination of the structure to crisis. The social consequences of accumulation through ‘relative surplus value’ (ibid, p. 61) are equally reflective. One apparent one, which was greatly to consume Weber, was the development of scientific rationality, with its associated differentiations of manual and mental labour (Lowith 1993, 47). In Marx’s perspective this was previously foretold in ‘Manufacture’, but achieves its highest point in Modern Industry ‘which makes science a productive force distinct from labour and presses it into the service of capital’ (Antonio & Cohen 2002, 141).The creation of relative surplus value results in a concentration and centralisation process of capital. Escalating capital inputs are needed to create on the basic level and technological centre (ibid, p. 141). Smaller organisations, or those operating with obsolete technologies, are taken over or expelled from the business. In due time the joint-stock organisation replaces the family firm and individual capitalist as the standard production unit, and developed countries become controlled by large corporations (Chilcote 2000, 73). Regardless of the progressing private standing of such assets, the concrete production process becomes more and more socialised. Within the personal venture, this facilitates the expansion of premises of rational estimation and development, on account of that type of division of labour Weber refers to as bureaucratic management (ibid, p. 73). According to Marx this reinforces capitalism’s widespread disagreement between disorder in the social division of labour and repressive rationalisation within organisations (Antonio & Cohen 2002, 139). He sarcastically highlights that capital apologists can find no detrimental denunciation of socialism than that it would ‘turn all society into one immense factory’ (ibid, p. 139). The ruin of local industry and agriculture’s capitalisation because of automated production are for Marx accomplished merely with the materialisation of Modern Industry, with extensive implications for society (Braverman 1974, 82). Even though Marx does not openly state the argument, this is also the culmination of the recreating of the family unit, stated in the wage relation (ibid, p. 82). Marx argues that ‘the whole economic history of society is summed up in the movement of [the] antithesis’ (Sun 2005, 179) between developed and underdeveloped societies, and elsewhere argues that this is ‘the most important division of material and mental labour’ (ibid, p. 179). At this point once again industrial capitalism embodies a turning point in modes of life. The level of its industrial development, which Marx and Weber, with their disdain for the ‘the idiocy of rural life’ (Sayer 1991, 88), compared to industrial progress, is devoid of historical pattern. Conclusions After discussing the global developmental pattern of the culture of Western societies, Weber stops to analyse: ‘Thus it is also with the most fateful force in modern life: capitalism’ (Lowith 1993, 48). Likewise, Marx formulates the question: ‘How is it that commerce, which in itself is nothing more than the exchange of particular products between various individuals and countries... dominates the entire world—a relation which... like fate in antiquity, hovers over the earth and with its invisible hand... creates and destroys empires and peoples’ (ibid, pp. 48-49). Marx quickly resolves his own question by referring to the manner in which individuals should ‘regain control over the manner of their mutual relations’ (Lowith 1993, 49). Karl Marx suggests a remedy whilst Weber offers a diagnosis. This dissimilarity is articulated in their perspectives of capitalism and the global economy. Weber interprets capitalism, development, and underdevelopment in terms of a worldwide and predestined ‘rationalisation’, which is an innately objective point of view but one which is assessed vaguely. In contrast, Marx grounds his arguments on the clearly negative notion of a global but adaptable ‘self-alienation’ (Sayer 1991, 95). Self-alienation or rationalisation, which is another description of the essential definition of capitalism, also sums up the feature of modern science. Basically, at issue in this comparison between the theory of society of Marx and Weber is the relationship created by dependency assumptions between underdevelopment and trade and investment. If capitalist economic progress is reinforced on the wage labour’s productive relation, specifically an unequal relationship between labourers and the owners of the means of production, in that case, underdevelopment is not brought about by the elimination of a transformable excess production or capital, or a structure of exploitative relationship rooted in entrepreneur’s capital. In contrast, referring to Marx’s and Weber’s treatise on social implications of production, underdevelopment can be attributed to the weakness or lack of particular productive relations, a manifestation of inadequate capitalist growth, and, it has been claimed, the extension of capitalist’s capital. As Marx and Weber argue, capitalism has brought about underdevelopment not merely because it has taken advantage of underdeveloped societies but due to the fact that it has not taken advantage of them enough. References Antonio, R. & Cohen, I.J., 2002. Marx and Modernity: Key Readings and Commentary. Berlin, Germany: Wiley-Blackwell. Apter, D., 1965. The Politics of Modernisation. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Baiman, R., Boushey, H. & Saunders, D., 2000. Political economy and contemporary capitalism: Radical perspectives on economic theory and policy. London: M.E. Sharpe. Braverman, H., 1974. Labour and Monopoly Capital. New York: Monthly Review Press. Cardoso, F., 1973. Associated-Dependent Development: Theoretical and Practical Implications, in A. Stepan (ed.) Authoritarian Brazil. US: New Haven. Chilcote, R.H., 2000. Theories of Comparative Political Economy. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Cohen, J., 1982. Class and Civil Society: The Limits of Marxian Critical Theory. Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press. Dobb, M., 1947. Studies in the Development of Capitalism. New York: International Publishers. Gunder, F.A., 1967. Capitalism and Underdevelopment in Latin America: Historical Studies of Chile and Brazil. New York: Monthly Review Press. Jones, R. & Barry, J., 1995. Globalisation and Interdependence in the International Political Economy. London: Pinter Publishers. Lowith, K., 1993. Max Weber and Karl Marx. London: Routledge. Pellicani, L., 1994. The Genesis of Capitalism and the Origins of Modernity. Germany: Telos Press Ltd. Turner, B.S., 1993. Max Weber: From History to Modernity. London: Routledge. Sayer, D., 1991. Capitalism and Modernity: An Excursus on Max and Weber. New York: Routledge. Steele, D.R., 1992. From Marx to Mises: Post-Capitalist Society and the Challenge of Economic Calculation. La Salle, IL: Open Court. Sun, G., 2005. Readings in the economics of the division of labour: The classical tradition. London: World Scientific Publishing Company. Veltmeyer, H.C., 1980. A Central Issue in Dependency Theory. Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology, 17(3), 213. Read More