Predispositions for the building structure of the modern world were formed not so long ago – when European colonist countries began spreading their influence into other parts of the globe. This expansion, in the end, determined the direction of social development, setting the course toward a new order of things, although continuing old traditions as well. Marx and Engels, in their Manifesto of the Communist Party, state that the bourgeois society takes its roots in feudal society, following its order of class antagonism of oppressors and oppressed. As Marx also claims in The German Ideology, “the division of labor – one of the chief forces of history – manifests itself also in the ruling class as the division of mental and material labor” (p. 1). This is an incredibly important note: labor has always been one of the most important pillars of society, and its division into two very rigid categories directly supported class inequality.
In a functional analysis of society, each of its interconnected parts – the economy, the family, and the government – interacted on the basis of a system of shared norms and values. Per these norms, the socialization of individual members of society took place. This collective consciousness provided the moral basis for society’s control over the aspirations and desires of individuals and protected them from conflict. With labor division, relations between people were built on the basis of the specialization of their labor functions. According to Marx and Engels, “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” (p. 15). This approach set the direction for industrial society and, in the future, served as one of the pillars of the socialist movement.
Marx and Engels substantiated dialectical materialist approaches to the study of society. In the general context of their views, the industrial city acted as a sign of the historical process and was a step towards economic development and the construction of socialism. This city destroyed the “idiosyncrasy of rural life” and formed ‘class consciousness,” the unification of the proletariat, and, subsequently, the social revolution. In the communities created in cities, the working class appeared and reached enormous numbers, coming face to face with its exploiters. Here, the elements of the class struggle” begin to develop, but also they reach their highest manifestation, and the transformation of the proletariat “from a class in itself, into a class for itself” takes place.
Marx raised the question of the movement of society into the “realm of freedom,” which is why his forecasts are often considered utopian. However, he always turned to the analysis of the essence of phenomena, and tried to delve into the fundamental laws of social development. It was important for Marx to explore the deep contradictions of social processes: birth and death, progress and regression of social systems. For Marx and Engels, the industrial city – a product of feudal history and the pinnacle of modern society – is a reflection of the essential features of the capitalist mode of production. The city becomes the center of a new division of labor, new technologies, and the organization of production, represented by the division into two dominant classes: the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. Cities become the scene of class conflicts and reflect the monopolization of capital, the collapse of small firms, and their absorption by large ones. Thus, the city, in their concept, is not the cause but only one of the features of capitalism.
Both Marx and Weber paid attention to conflict as the driving force behind any world changes. However, they had very different opinions on how a conflict should be resolved. For Weberian sociology, the main question was how different social groups fight for control in big communities, as well as how different groups maintain their power. In Science as Volition, Weber discusses how the scientific approach changed throughout history and how political, economic, social, and other world shifts influenced these changes. According to Weber, “Science today is a ‘vocation’ organized in special disciplines in the service of self-clarification and knowledge of interrelated facts” (p. 143). Meanwhile, Marx and Engels explained that the proletariat had to fight against the existing state system. In the course of the proletarian revolution, it was necessary to create a qualitatively different state structure capable of replacing the old forms of power. Marx and Engels believed that this new structure could determine the general prospect for the further socio-economic development of society.
Marx, Engels, Weber – all deemed it unacceptable to reduce the complex and diverse features of a community to one determinant. One needs to look for similarities in pre-industrial and modern societies but avoid reducing them to some kind of generalization and ultimately to simplification. Thus, one cannot make serious studies of the modern world without relying on history to determine how the ambitions of certain status groups or economic institutions have shaped the face of society. Each of the authors provided a convincing view on the development of modern society, which direction it is headed in, and what humanity could await in the future.
References
Marx, K., & Engels, F. (1964). The German ideology. Moscow: Progress Publishers.
Marx, K., & Engels, F. (1966). Manifesto of the Communist Party. Moscow: Progress Publishers.
Weber, M. (1946). Science as a Vocation. In H. H. Gerth & C. Wright Mills (Eds.), From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology (pp. 129–156). essay, New York: Oxford University Press.