Karl Marx And Weber's Theory On Social Change

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Karl Marx is generally known as one of the greatest German sociology, economist, and philosopher of 19th century. His theories towards communism and social changes later on, is recognized as Marxism.

Karl Marx’s theories on social change are basically established around class-consciousness and revolution. He believes that social class-consciousness is the foundation of social change. Every mode of society begins with revolution, and each time that the revolution happens, the core cause must be involved with people’s changes toward class-consciousness and self-identification.

Karl Marx published the book German Ideology in 1930s, to criticize the idealistic Germany philosophers and young Hegelians that represented by Feuerbach. He declared in the book that the division of labor must be one of the basis
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Karl Marx and Max Weber’s theories are different in many ways. Marxism is about communism: no boundaries between the proletariats and the bourgeoisies, and the society must have clear separation of labors. Weber’s Capitalism believes that God rules the world and set people’s fates; everyone should follow the God’s plan, no spontaneous in life. They all dig into history when talking about social change and new movement, and they both indicate that social change must be seen inside of one society, for example, you cannot explain the revolution of a third world country based on western countries’ situation.

In the protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism, Weber relates the beginning of modern western capitalism to the religious movement. Webber defined Modern Western Capitalism as: “dependent on the peculiarities of modern science, especially the natural sciences based on mathematics and exact and rational experiment”. The Benjamin Franklin example that Weber uses in the book can be a perfectly fit for Marx’s theory of ruling

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