Sociology 101: Slides 4-6

What is communism? -Marx Engels

"For as soon as the distribution of labor comes into being, each man has a particular, exclusive sphere of activity, which is forced upon him and from which he cannot escape. He is a hunter, a fisherman, a herdsman, or a critical critic, and must remain so if he does not want to lose his means of livelihood; while in communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticize after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, herdsman or critic.

Karl Polanyi: Fictitious Commodities. "The crucial point is this: labor, land, and money are essential elements of industry; they also must be organized in markets; in fact, these markets form an absolutely vital part of the economic system. But labor, land and money are obviously not commodities (...). None of them is produced for sale. The commodity description of labor, land, and money is entirely fictitious" (Polanyi 75-76).

"Labor, land and money are obviously not commodities (...). None of them is produced for sale. The commodity description of labor, land, and money is entirely fictitious" ------they are not produce from the market. free market is not even possible because the idea of a free market is based on fiction Natural Resources : Fixed supply. -market is not able to change that. Money: you can change the currency, Gold: is fixed regulated money. Labor: treated like a commodity, yet not flexible to the degree that they actually are commodities.

What is Sociology? (Weber) "'Sociology' is a word used in many different senses. In the sense adopted here, it means the science whose object is to interpret the meaning of social action and thereby give a causal explanation of the way in which the action proceeds and the effects which it produces."

"Sociology' is a word used in many different senses. In the sense adopted meaning of social action and thereby give a causal explanation of the way in which the action proceeds and the effects which it produces." explains social action and the way they it happens and effects things. According to Weber, the natural sciences usually 'explain' reality by discovering general laws, social sciences 'interpret' the time and space specific meaning of contingent human action. Weber wants to connect the two aspects, that is, explain the world by interpreting why people act the way they do. (understanding ppls objective meaning, to explain how people behave)

"At some point the atmosphere alters: the significance of viewpoints used unreflectively becomes uncertain, the path becomes lost in the twilight. The light cast by the great cultural problems has moved onward. Then even science appears to shift its ground and change its conceptual apparatus so that it might regard the stream of events from the heights of reflective thought. It follows those stars which alone are able to give meaning and direction to its labor." WEBER

-that human being always adjust to the world they live in. -social life is always changing, society is always changing. -Ideal Types are not fixed. They change, a different group may find a different type. -There is no true way in asking questions, different people will have different questions.

Karl Polanyi about free markets &state planning

-thought there was nothing natural about laissez-faire, thought it was the product of deliberate State Action. -free markets don't come by allowing things to naturally happen, -thought the subsequent restrictions on L-F were spontaneous.

Historical Materialism

According to this model changes in the material condition of life, i.e. social structure, are the driving force of history, i.e. social change. Marx and Engels argued that it is possible to study this process scientifically and thus make scientific statements about how the future will look.

Social Action: (weber) "By 'action' in this definition is meant human behavior when and to the extent that the agent or agents see it as subjectively meaningful (...). By 'social' action is meant an action in which the meaning intended by the agent or agents involves a relation to another person's behavior and in which that relation determines the way in which the action proceeds"

Action: human behavior when & to the extent it is seen as meaningful Social (action): action where there is a relation to another person's behavior, that relation determines the way the actions proceed.

Models of History:

Cyclical: Life course of individuals, beings. Babies with little ability, grow , peek, old, declining. Then started again. Full circle. Linear: Moves in a certain directions. Time history, not returning to the time when it started. What we are most used too. More intuitively plausible. Stages:Marx and Engels. Thought that history was linear but in stages. Flat areas where nothing is changing, then progress. Their model of social change. These steps to be taken were ex. of the revolution. Contingent: CURRENT THOUGHTS ABOUT CHANGE. Things could go one way, or they could go the other. The way Marx and Engels think isn't how we tend to think.

Disenchatment: (weber) "We live as did the ancients when their world was not yet disenchanted of its gods and demons, only we live in a different sense. (...) Many old gods ascend from their graves; they are disenchanted and hence take the form of impersonal forces. They strive to gain power over our lives and again they resume their eternal struggle with one another. What is hard for modern man, and especially for the younger generation, is to measure up to everyday existance. "

Disenchantment: thinking the religious thinking of how the world is related, is every different then what science thinks. if you think you can make rules of life you are not thinking about social sciences you are thinking of religion. science and religion are not the same thing.

Marx & Engels Social Structure

Forces of Production: The combination of the means of production (tools, machinery, land etc.) and human labor power "human capital" (including skills, education, etc.). -- starting point of change. + Relations of Production: The sum total of social relationships that people must enter into in order to produce and reproduce their means of life. The relations of production are the relation between social classes. = Modes of Production: The combination of forces and relations of production form a unity, that is, the way people relate to the physical world and the way people relate to each other socially are necessarily bound up together in specific ways.--way of life--model of society.

Karl Polanyi : KNOWN FOR:

KNOWN FOR: his opposition to traditional economic thought. He builds his ideas on Marxist thought while revising some of its central assumptions. -facism

Karl Polanyi: Embeddedness & The Satanic Mill "Undoubtedly, labor, land, and money markets are essential to a market economy. But no society could stand the effects of such a system of crude fictions even for the shortest stretch of time unless its human and natural substance as well as its business organization was protected against the ravages of this satanic mill" (Polanyi: 76-77).

Labor , land and money markets are essential to market economy. Marx & Adam invisible hand ---both wrong according to Polanyi.

French Revolution

Marx and Engel saw the French Revolution as a model of how society worked. Marx & Engel said this is not the end of history. This is how society works, watching it, they will be able to predict history, so they predicted that their were be a working class revolution.

Max Weber: Natural Sciences vs. Social Sciences

Natural Sciences: produce knowledge deductively (based on reason & analysis, theory) "abstract theoretical" (not based on specific examples) ----try to find general laws. All insistences follow that laws. Marx & Engels thought all sciences were like that. Weber disagreed, thought there was no laws for social life. Social Sciences: produce knowledge inductively (inference) "empirical historical" (observations) -you could observe a case, then make "laws" for that specific case, but those "laws" might not be the same in every situation. (maybe you can connect it to other cases, but there are no rules)

Types of Action: (weber)

Rational in the sense of employing appropriate means of a given end (...)... thinking and calculating the best way to reach there goal. (Value)Rational in the sense that it is an attempt to realize some absolute value (...),... moral values, ethics, certain things people would never do just to reach their goal. Affectively (emotionally action ) determined, that is, the result of current emotional impulses and states of feeling, ... we do not always think out and plan everything. But impulse takes over. Rage can take over. Traditional behavior, the expression of a settled custom."----Taken for granted behavior. Doing it because we are used to it. ex. driving on the correct side of the road. So used to doing a certain thing you repetitively do it without thinking.

Max Weber: Methodology

Their analyze of the past was that you can not work with human nature, because it looks different in different points of time, and different cultures. So he didn't buy that thought of Free Market. These kinds of Economics was not in favor of the working class. Marks concern was still w. the working class but going in a different direction.

Marx: Ideology on Religion

Things around such as religions, (ideology) ideas that keep people from realizing how the world really looks. Karl Marx: "Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of the heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people."

Assembly Line

This turned into the alienation of the worker (what Marx and Engel predicted) dehumanizing. -- workers work on one specific part----Ford got workers to do this with great pay, making them actually be able to buy the product they were manufacturing

Fordism

Under Fordism the working class shares the wealth that it produces, which is among the reasons why it does not take resort to revolution. It describes a combination of mass manufacturing and mass consumption

Communist Society Socialism:

While in communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, Marx & Engel couldn't say much about how this would work, were there would be order, they just know that capitalist societies kept us from seeing this an a possibility. - still would have money, and estate, but the working class would be in charge.

Laissez-faire

a policy or attitude of letting things take their own course, without interfering. abstention by governments from interfering in the workings of the free market.

Ideal Types: (weber) "[An ideal type] is formed by a one-sided accentuation of one of several perspectives, and through the synthesis of a variety of diffuse, discrete, individual phenomena, present sometimes more, sometimes less, sometimes not at all; subsumed by such one-sided, emphatic viewpoints so that they form a uniform construction in thought. In this conceptual purity this construction can never be found in reality, it is a utopia."

formed by a one-sided accentuation of one of the several perspectives. -not the type of thing you find in real life, made up by the researcher -doesn't capture real life, you will never find something in real life that is one exact way. Keeping our expectations in line. EX: completely free market , you will never having in real life.

Battle of the Gods-Value pluralism (also known as moral pluralism)

is the idea that there are several values which may be equally correct and fundamental, and yet in conflict with each other Conflict of values: pulling over someone who ends up being your friend, not giving them a ticket , good friend, bad police man.

Subjectively Meaningful:

people have intentions when they act, they do what they do for specific reasons.

Karl Marks thoughts on Ideology : Base and Superstructure: "In the social production of their existence, men inevitably enter into definite relations, which are independent of their will, namely [the] relations of production appropriate to a given stage in the development of their material forces of production. The totality of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation, on which arises a legal and political superstructure, and to which correspond definite forms of consciousness. The mode of production of material life conditions the general process of social, political, and intellectual life. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness."

the workers have to become aware of what is happening. the distinction between class in itself (a group of people in the same class) just bc someone is in the working class does not mean they identify with the working class. Class withIn it self: working class realize their shared position, they the people they are working with each other; are not the competition. when this happens they are turn over capitalism. Forces of productions, super structures ( law, politics that exist) they agree that is follows from peoples positions and views.