Durkheim begins by saying that in order to be happy their needs must be met. If they needs more than they are able to obtain then they will feel “friction and can only function painfully.” He says that animals needs are only on “material conditions.” They needs something, they get it, they are satisfied and they don’t want anything else but men are not the same way. What I believe he is saying is that even though we can meet our physical needs like animals that really doesn’t do it for us. There are other things that we want too like “well-being, comfort or luxury.” Over time it seems that we need more and more of these things to be satisfied because there is no psychological limit or point where we won’t want anything else. Durkheim says that our “capacity for feeling is in itself an insatiable and bottomless abyss.”
Unlimited desires can torture us because it’s something that we will never reach or be happy with. He says that we will never make any progress if we don’t have any goals and if our goals are unending or unreachable then you might as well say that you aren’t making any progress because you will never get there. To try and do this would create “perpetual unhappiness.”
Durkheim argues that our passions needs to be limited but we aren’t able to do that ourselves so we need some outside force to do that for us. He says that force needs to be a moral force. He says that society can be this force and play this role because it is authority that the individual will accept. In other words, we will accept what limits society puts on us. He says that there are kind of certain places that each person should be at depending on where they are in society. For instance if you are a rich person you shouldn’t live like a poor person, that would be below your limit but you also shouldn’t live so luxuriously that you live above your limit either. He also says that these ideas can change as society changes their morals or things change economically. If this type of structure is in place then people have goals that they can meet and not exceed and I feel what he is trying to say here is that they will be happy when they meet their goals versus striving infinitely to achieve something that you’re not even sure of. He thinks people should work on making what they have better instead of longing for other things and the only way to make people do that is to kind of define limits for them.
All this is seems really good but if there are major problems or transitions going on in society at the time, society can’t regulate people in that way and suicide rates go up. Sometimes people are moved to a “lower state” than the one they were at and they just can’t adjust to it so they commit suicide. Durkheim is saying that people need regulation and when they don’t have it they don’t know what to do with themselves. He calls this state of deregulation “anomy.”
I find it interesting that Durkheim points out that poverty protects against suicide because the less someone has the less they will want. He say that lack of power pretty much does the same thing too. Another things that he stated could prevent it and worked for a while was religion but now he feels government has taken over the power that religion once held.
Durkheim says that if these crisis that society goes through where there is no control happened only once in a great while then suicide rates and crazy reactions to it wouldn’t really happen that often either, but he says that in some places anomy is constant and normal. He says in societies where people are used to discipline they can handle these hard economic and social blows better.
The highest rates of suicide fall into the industrial and commercial occupations. They are higher than agriculture because that occupation is still fairly regulated. He says that suicide is most common among people at the top of social ladder because there is nothing above them. Those at the middle and lower levels at least have someone above them to place a cap on what they can achieve so they are not expecting the world and then getting disappointed when they never get it. This type of condition in which people commit suicide is called anomic suicide.
A second kind of suicide is called egotistic suicide is when a person cannot find a foundation or reason for their existence so they kill themselves.
A third kind of suicide is called altruistic suicide where a person sees that this reason for existing goes beyond life itself, in this situation a person would give their life up so someone else could live.
When society isn’t present (or the individual feels that way) the first two types of suicide are present (anomic and egotistic).
I hope that my interpretation of this is accurate and easy to follow! I’ve studied suicide by Durkheim a little before and I think I’m on the right track but if not please let me know what which parts you think are off.
Friday, January 30, 2009
Durkheim Chapter 14 Suicide
Thursday, January 29, 2009
Chapter 13: The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life
What is religion? Durkheim addresses this question explaining that this is the most important question when talking about religion. Most people tend to ask about certain religions, how religions came to be, or what makes a religion a religion. But what needs explanation is not what is A religion but what IS religion.
At first this question didn’t confuse me however trying to put it into words is the hard part. We know what religious activities look like on the outside. Or do we?
“Since all religions can be compared to each other, and since all are species of the same class, there are necessarily many elements which are common to all”
These are the rest of the points I want to make.
I think what Durkheim is saying here is that, yes religion encompasses ceremonies, and yes there is some sort of leader, congregation, rules, a book. But Durkheim prods further than that.
“Neither the thought nor the activity of the religion is evenly distributed among believers; according to the men, the environment and the circumstances, the beliefs as well as the rites are thought of in different ways.”
To me this was sort of an explanation on why we have more than one type of religion (using religion here to represent an idea not the definition of what a religion is). Religion has been a main source of many different movements in history. People start to question what they are being taught and start to make their own rules therefore creating their own religious beliefs and new denominations. Also believers of one religion have different beliefs. Let’s look at Christianity because that is what I am most familiar with, how many versions of the Bible are there? Does anyone know? What one do you read? Does the person sitting in the pew next to you read the same version? Are you both getting the exact same definitions from the words? I assume not. Translating the Bible can result in many different views.
Durkheim goes on to explain that the smaller a society the closer the beliefs they hold.
“Things are quite different in lower societies. The slighter development of individuality, the small extension of the group, the homogeneity of external circumstances all contribute to reducing the differences and variations to a minimum…..Everything is common to all.”
A perfect example of this, the town where I grew up. I don’t know if anyone is familiar with Pinconning MI but if you are you know that it is predominantly Catholic and everyone knows the norm. I’m not Catholic however I have been to Catholic services at the local church. The ritualistic way of it all is disturbing. No one questions, everyone kneels when they’re suppose to kneel, sing when they should sing, and by God don’t forget to do the curtsey before you enter the pew. Now I’m not attacking Catholicism it’s the same with all religions. There is a status quo to follow that’s part of what makes it a defined religion. Religion starts off as a set of rules or maybe a better way to put it is a set of beliefs that someone thinks are better than what they already know. Strict or otherwise members follow these rules but over time and with population growth and dispersion people take their own spin on the rules that dictated their beliefs.
Durkheim goes on to explain that religion is the basis of our knowledge or could be a major base of our knowledge. I didn’t really understand what he meant by this. I can see how religion can dominate how you feel and think about things and definitely if you have a religious background it might be the basis for all of your knowledge but this part confused me a little bit.
The next point I want to address is this
“At the roots of all our judgments there are a certain number of essential ideas which dominate all our intellectual life, they are what philosophers since Aristotle have called the categories of the understanding: ideas of time, space, class, number, cause, substance, personality, etc. They correspond to the most universal properties of things. They are like the solid frame which encloses all thought; this does not seem to be able to liberate itself from them without destroying itself, for it seems that we cannot think of objects that are not in time and space, which have no number, etc. other ideas are contingent and unsteady; we can conceive of their being unknown to a man, a society, or an epoch;…….Now when primitive religious beliefs are systematically analyzed, the principle categories are naturally found. They are born in religion and of religion; they are a product of religious thought.”
Now this is a lot to take in but here’s the main point that I got from this and I thought it made quite a bit of sense. First off let me ask why do a lot of people have problems believing in religion (again let’s take Christianity because I am familiar)? It’s because there is nothing solid. The biggest criticisms I get when I tell people about God is how do you know he exist have you ever seen him and of course the answer is no not physically. I think that what Durkheim is saying here is that religion is something we can’t place in our physical thought and so most people can’t grasp the idea of it. It all lies in faith and believing and yes it’s true this might be something that most people can’t do but that doesn’t take away the fact that some people can and that’s religion. Believing there is something better out there.
Durkheim also explains religion as the thought of something better when he writes about
“..real society…In it, evil goes beside the good, injustice often reigns supreme, and truth is often obscured by error. How could anything so crudely organized inspire the sentiments of love, the ardent enthusiasm and the spirit of abnegation which all religions claim of their followers? These perfect beings which are gods could not have taken their traits from so mediocre, and sometimes even so base as reality. But, on the other hand, does someone think of a perfect society, where justice and truth would be sovereign, and from which evil in all its forms would be banished forever?”
So I think this is a great explanation of what religion is and what Durkheim was trying to explain causes a religion. Religion is the means in which to obtain the idea of a perfect society. It’s the idea that people could be without fault and that they could live together without fighting and competition for the better goods. I know that I’ve dreamt of a perfect world. Who hasn’t wanted to live where there is, cliché as it may be, “world peace”? To me this sounds a lot like Heaven and what is a lot of religions final place if you obey the religion then a place of peace. Religion is a thought on the way to reach this place of peace.
“A society can neither create itself nor recreate itself without at the same time creating an ideal.”
This might be a small passage but I thought this was kind of the essence to what I think Durkheim was saying. Being a functioning “real” society only leads you to thoughts about what is wrong with your society and how you would change it if you could. Religion I think is the thought of these imperfections being perfected. It’s the world you place above your real world as Durkheim kind of said.
“Thus the collective ideal which religion expresses is far from being due to a vague innate power of the individual, but it is rather at the school of collective life that the individual has learned to idealize.”
So what religion is, is a way to express the ideal? I think so. I think we turn to religion because we need something to hope for, we need something to believe in or we would want to kill ourselves on the spot once in a while.
I don’t think religion should ever be thought of only as church, ministers, a book, traditions. Religion is anything you turn to for comfort, for support, for the hope of a better tomorrow. Religion in its essence is an escape from the real world. It’s an out for whoever wants to believe that there is a perfect future somewhere and sometime for them. I think this is a much more fluffed up explanation than Durkheim would care to give yet I think that’s the basis of what he was trying to explain religion as being.
“Thus there is something eternal in religion which is destined to survive all the particular symbols in which religious thought has successfully enveloped itself. There can be no society which does not feel the need of upholding and reaffirming at regular intervals the collective sentiments and the collective ideas which make its unity and its personality. Now this moral remaking cannot be achieved except vy the means of reunions, assemblies, and meetings where the individuals, being closely united to one another, reaffirm in common their common sentiments; hence come ceremonies which do not differ from regular religious ceremonies, either in their object, the results which they produce, or the processes employed to attain these results. What essential difference is there between an assembly of Christians celebrating the principle dates of the life of Christ, or Jews remembering the exodus from Egypt or the promulgation of the Decalogue, and a reunion of citizens commemorating the promulgation of a new moral or legal system or some great even in the national life?”
Hence religion as we know it. Religion as in books, churches, preachers, all of these are tools of religion not religion itself. These are the tools that keep us believing and reinforcing the idea that there is an ideal society. These are the tools that keep our religion (beliefs) alive. I think Durkheim was on the right track, if I understood this correctly, in determining that religion was a belief, what kind of belief, the belief of a better society then what we have made. This is what I got out of this article but as we have seen everyone has their own take on things.
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
Chapter 12: The Divisions of Labor in Society
Durkheim is definitely a wordy person. Throughout most of the chapter on the division of labor in society he repeatedly proposes a problem or question, and answers it with another question. It wasn’t until near the end of the chapter that most of the pieces began to fall into place. By fall into place I mean, make me halfway understand about half of what he said.
The Problem
Durkheim begins the chapter by attempting to explain the origin and general concept of the division of labor. He points out the fact that the concept of division of labor is so widespread in today’s society because of how easily it is to view in the marketplace and economy in general. The actual problem he comes up with however is using the principles of the division of labor to understand how it affects society.
The Function of the Division of Labor
In this section of the chapter, Durkheim explains how division of labor in society cannot actually be viewed directly. Instead, one must look at things that potentially affect society and delineate how much of an affect each of these systems has. This concept is difficult to grasp when he begins to mention that a causal relationship cannot really even be found.
In a sense one could say that social solidarity is what causes people to become closer, or people becoming closer makes social solidarity exist. Durkheim also uses the idea of public versus private law, in which case he says that all law is private because individuals are involved and at the same time all law is public because it is a social function. These are the points that get confusing when he begins to claim that sociological research can be done, but provides no real explanation of how, because some aspects of society cannot be seen or measured.
Durkheim says that customs are often the foundation for law, and both customs and laws can be physically seen and measured but internal group types of measures vary by the type of society (for example a family group differs from a political group). Almost anything that is in an internal consciousness would be extremely hard to measure accurately. That being said, basically social solidarity cannot be fully measured, but can be measured to some extent by the societal effects.
Near the end of this section he proposes a way to attempt to measure social solidarity. Durkheim feels that by measuring different aspects of law, and understanding which aspects of society each law affects, it could be possibly to measure social solidarity. What any of that actually means in normal words, I could not tell you but it sounds like at least he knew what he was talking about.
Mechanical Solidarity
This section is where Durkheim explains the concept of collect conscious. Which is basically the ideas and belief of a society as a whole, or at least that’s the best I can explain it. He states that it is independent of individual or personal experiences and is more of a fluid and passive idea system. Durkheim mentions how even though individuals die, the ideas and concepts a society has lives on and even transgresses through further generations.
This is where he begins again with law. It appears he views law as a way of keeping societies values and beliefs intact. Criminal acts as Durkheim sees them are nothing more than any act that goes against the moral fabric of the majority society. Having repercussions for an act that the society does not agree with is one way to ensure that just because someone breaks a law, it does not ruin the society.
The next part of the chapter explains what Durkheim means by mechanical solidarity. He explains that there are two distinct consciousnesses for each person. Basically there is an individual consciousness which comprises our personality as an individual, and the other consciousness deals with societal factors. This is where the mechanical part comes into play. The two consciousnesses must move in the same direction basically or the society will have problems. Meaning that is someone is trying to be an individual and do their own thing, they are thinking more of their individual consciousness and not of the society, and vice versa. If the consciousnesses move too far apart it can cause problems for the society as a whole. At least that is the best way I can attempt to explain this very hard to interpret piece of work.
Organic Solidarity
This whole section completely blew my mind to be honest. After a few pages of saying society is mechanical and almost finally grasping that concept, he throws in the idea of organic solidarity. The best I can understand this whole section is that he breaks down and explains the idea that individuals do indeed make decisions. Such as the example he gives of the judge looking over divorce papers, however the individual (in this case the judge) making the decision is not doing it for the personal gain of any party involved, but actually just upholding the law which is the basic fabric of social solidarity.
Closing
The most I could take out of this chapter is that it is confusing. But some parts could be understood if looked at hard enough. In plain English, social solidarity is a big mixing pot of ideas. Society cannot work without individuals, and individuals don’t work well without some form of solidarity to keep everyone from being insane. Although I think all of these ideas would be really hard to test, and he was perhaps ahead of his time in thinking, it is still pretty much over my head.
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
Chapter 12 : The Division of Labor in Society [1893]
After reading Durkheim's theory on the division of labor, I come away a little confused with more questions than answers.
The Problem
On the surface it appears that the division of labor is killing off the agricultural societies, in favor of those which are coming together or condensing. This division isn't unique to the workplace, Durkheim goes on to mention that it can be commonly experienced in the rest of society. Each division brings about a new and greater degree of specialization, which is continuous.
The Function of the Division of Labour
"The more closely knit the members of a society, the more they maintain various relationships either with one another or with the group collectively."
Basically, lol I hope, the more people interact with one another the greater the benefit will be to society and themselves. As long as the relationship does not involve crimes or the such which would hurt the collective consciousness.
I also got the persistent notion that in order for the collective consciousness to expand and prosper, laws which were used back when mechanical solidarity worked must be changed/revamped to keep up with the ever changing social solidarity.
The next part dealing with customs vs laws kind of through me for a loop, so my interpretation on the subject matter may be a little/a lot off. It would seem as though customs are used to tie up the loose ends which laws may leave negated. In any case, they are used mostly as a supplement to the existing law and more often than not, take a backseat to them.
Durkheim then discusses the different forms of solidarity and how the only way to ever knowing why they exist must be found through science, ex: sociology. He argues that full interpretation of the matter at hand cannot be found using psychology, for it is only good at leaving out the details and skimming the surface.
He believed each legal rule depended on the circumstance and degree of the crime. In essence, one being the punishment for the crime and the other being the one who says what part of the collective consciousness the said crime is disrupting, also known as the penal code.
Mechanical Solidarity
In a nutshell, society creates a common consciousness to which all the individuals in it are suppose to adhere to. It allows for generations to be linked together because of the way it is set up. While most lie within this common grouping, there are others, such as the govt. whose job it is to stay outside the box and monitor its happenings.
In regards to this collective consciousness, two points seemed abundantly clear. One, no matter what the crime, the fact that it is considered a crime by the group is what makes it a bad thing. The second point goes back to the old saying that just because we like something does not mean it is good. In other words, if the collective consciousness takes up a habit, there's always the chance it might hurt the cause. So does this mean the individual must rearrange their likes and dislikes to go along with the collective consciousness in order for the whole to progress to its fullest?
If we did not have/share these similar attitudes (to some extent) as the rest of the collective consciousness, then society would end up failing or at the very least suffer significant hardships.
Organic Solidarity/Closing statements
I found this part of the text particularly interesting and was eager to hear others viewpoints/interpretations.
"If we have a strong inclination to think and act for ourselves we cannot be strongly inclined to think and act like other people. If the ideal is to create for ourselves a special, personal image, this cannot mean to be like everyone else."
So the only way to be ourselves is to go against the common collective?
"Moreover, at the very moment when this solidarity exerts its effect, our personality, it may be said by definition, disappears, for we are no longer ourselves, but a collective being."
In giving up ourselves in the name of society we in turn also give up our individual consciousness. After reading this I immediately thought back to the Nazi and how so many of them were dependent to the collective.
The rest of the reading seemed to emphasize the relationship between the division of labor and the advancement of society. From what I gathered, the greater the division the greater the progress of the collective. He made sure to mention that a country which has many people and lots of divisions doesn't always mean advancement. He noted that the industrialized nations were the ones who did away with agriculture based societies the quickest. It would seem the countries which jumped on the collective bandwagon first are also the ones running things today. However, this won't always hold true. As society changes so does the collective for they are one in the same.
Monday, January 26, 2009
Lakosky - Rules of the Sociological Method
When reading The Rules of the Sociological Method, I found most of what was trying to be explained, hard to interpret, and for that matter, explain. In the readings the concepts that were talked about were those of social facts and how they should be treated as ‘things’ rather then known particulars. Furthermore it was emphasized that the experiences or feelings of one individual may not reflect or coincide with those of another. I will try to further my thoughts on these concepts.
First and foremost, the concept of a ‘thing’ is somewhat hard to grasp or understand because it just left me more confused then I already was. It was explained that, “A thing is any object of knowledge which is not naturally penetrable by the understanding. It is all of which we cannot conceptualize adequately as an idea by the simple process of intellectual analysis. It is all of which the mind cannot understand without going outside itself.” Basically what I got from that definition is that we as a society can not expect to imagine thinking about certain aspects in why society acts or processes the way it does due to the limitations of what we don’t know beyond our own knowing.
Moreover the facts that we think we know should be considered as things and therefore be disregarded because those facts are unknown. So in actuality we are ignorant in what we know because of the lack of proof or scientific knowledge in what we do or think. When reading it said that, “we know very inaccurately the relatively simple motives that govern us.” Society and the way it works can be somewhat explained by saying that it is made up of everyone’s ideas and experiences, and not by a methodically correct system of actions. I would say that I have to agree with the concept that social facts should be considered things because there is too much change and diverse processes that take place for us to make sense of what these things are. To come to closure on this idea, Durkheim states that, “It is as if, on certain points, we are only just beginning to perceive a few glimmers of light…And no matter what one does, it is always the same method that one must return.”
Another concept that I pulled from this chapter was that if an idea is already known and practiced all around you and was there before you were it should be considered as the social fact. From here on out through the chapter I started to get more and more confused about social facts and how they relate to our emotions and feeling and how they differ from one person to another. In addition to that I took interest in the concept that the actions that one individual takes may or may not effect the characteristics or situational aspects of a social species. I find that this concept is completely relevant to the idea of social facts being considered as things because who is to say that the actions of a person did or did not change the turn out or outcome of another situation, it is just too big of an idea to grasp.
I know that this chapter was confusing for me to understand, in its concepts and points of view, and I probably only made it worse. These were some of the ‘things’ that I tried to understand or look deeper into, I think that Durkheim speaks in a very professional manner, to some extents where the reader, me, gets lost. The ideas are very deep and profound they just take a lot of intellectual ability and understanding to indulge in these concepts.
Sunday, January 25, 2009
Chapter 11: The Rules of Sociological Method
When reading Durkheim, I am extremely confused and have no idea what he is writing about. The concepts as a whole are extremely hard to put together, but I am going to attempt to try and attempt and explain a few facts that I think I understand.
When he asks what a “thing” is, he gives an extremely lengthy and complicated definition. I think that he really is trying to say is that a “thing” is just something that we really don’t know what it is, we know that we won’t understand it, and because of that, we just try and explain the unexplainable.
When discussing groups and social fact, Durkheim, in my opinion, sees people as fitting into a role within their own consciousness. He gives the examples of being a husband, father, or citizen. These roles are defined by law and custom. This means that some of these roles are kept by enforcing the laws of society. An example of this would be a police officer and a crook. The officer represents justice and order, while the crook represents disobedience and anarchy. The customs aspect of roles is that society needs people to follow (or not follow) the customs so that society can exist.
Durkheim defines a social fact as “… any way of acting, whether fixed or not, capable of exerting over the individual and external constraint; which is general over the whole of a given society whilst having an existence of its own, independent of it individual manifestation.” The words “fixed or not” refer to how a person has to fit into a certain character role. Most of the time, people act within a fixed role, where their decisions are “made for them.” They with their lives as monotonous human beings. Those who do not act in a fixed manner are free to think and express their thoughts and ideals. In the next part of the sentence, Durkheim explores on how a situation may have power not only on the individual, but in other aspects of reality. This means that while some things may happen to an individual, things also happen inside society as a whole and can affect that society; therefore, having an affect on that person. Society exists on its own. There are other people living here and they may live by the same social facts that we do. They carry on their lives as if we were not even there. Granted, we may interact with each other, but we do not interact with all six billion people on their planet. What we may perceive to be social fact may not be true for someone living on the other side of the planet.
I really had a difficult time reading and understanding. I found this piece to be more about our interpretation of reality than social fact. I mean that I felt that it was more about our concept of being rather than our existence among other human beings.
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
Wage Labor and Capital
From what I gather in this chapter was that Marx describe in detail relationship between the capitalists and the wages of the laborer. I notice he constantly refers to the capitalist as almost if they our an entirely different mechanism other then a person. He also stresses the importance of the laborer and implies that because they produce the product that they have the real power or should. I can also tell from his analysis of economics that he knows a great deal of how they function which contradicts the belief that communism failed because Marx doe not know about economics. I happen to believe Marx knew allot about economics but Stalin and Mao didn't.
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
Chapter 9 : Wage Labour and Capital [1847]
“Wages are the sum of money paid by the capitalist for a particular labour time of for a particular output of labour.” Marx explains in chapter nine that to the capitalist, labour is considered something that can be bought and sold. The laborer exchanges his product, in this case, his product is work, for money in order for him to live. Marx also explains that without the laborer the capitalist would perish, and without the capitalist, the laborer would perish.
Now, as competition takes place among commodities, it also places competition with the price of labor. If there is less demand for work, the capitalist will hire those who are willing to take a drop in wages. However, they will also expect these people to work more and harder. Supply and demand, the fluctuations in prices of commodities, the cost of production all determine the price of labor. Along with the wage a laborer is paid comes with how much training a person has had. The more the training, the more they will be paid for the work they do; lesser training means lesser pay. The person with the lowest amount of training is only paid what he would need to keep himself alive and “capable” of working. Marx explains “ The price of his labour will, therefore, be determined by the price of the necessary means of subsistence.”
"What takes place in the exchange between capitalist and wage-worker? The worker receives means of subsistence in exchange for his labour, but the capitalist receives in exchange for his means of subsistence labour, the productive activity of the worker, the creative power whereby the worker not only replaces what he consumes but gives to the accumulated labour a greater value than it previously possessed. The worker receives a part of the available means of subsistence from the capitalist. For what purpose do these means of subsistence serve him? For immediate consumption.”
This passage to me seems to be going in circles and is rather long winded to me. What I derived from this however, would be that each party is given something in return. For the capitalist, he receives labor and for the laborer, he receives an income for him and his family to live on, no matter how meager it is. And if the capitalist begins selling more for a higher price, and the capitalist decides to give the laborer a raise, one can guarantee that the laborer will in fact be losing money in the sense that the pay increase is not nearly the increase that the capitalist receives… if that makes any sense at all. An example would be that a capitalist would be making 20% more, but the laborer would only be making 5% more.
Marx loves to explain how capitalists exploit their workers. He also explains that as the division of labor grows, the more application of machinery and division of labor expands. The more the competition for jobs, the more the wages shrink. This is the life of almost every man and woman around the world.
If capital grows rapidly, competition among the workers grows incomparably more rapidly, that is, the means of employment, the means of subsistence, of the working class decrease proportionately so much the more, and, nevertheless, the rapid growth of capital is the most favorable condition for wage labor.
Chapter 10 "Classes"
Karl Marx wrote about classes several decades ago, in 1867 in fact. In this brief chapter he discussed classes, capitalism, production, land ownership etc. Marx believed strongly in capitalism and even said he thought capitalism simplified classes today as oppose to classes in the past.
A point that grabbed my attention while reading this chapter is how Marx states “The owner’s merely of labour power, owner’s of capital and land owner’s whose respective sources of income are wages, profit and ground rent, in other words wage labourers, capitalists and land owners, constitute the three big classes of modern society based on the capitalist mode of production.” Modern society has come along way however still seems to be a capitalism society. Everything you do, want to do, want in life, etc. depends on the amount of money you make, how much land you own (although not as much as it did back in the day) or even the assets you own that add up your capital. I agree with Marx when he says these are the three bigger classes. The More you have of each of these factors helps place you in what we now use to define classes; the “social class ladder” or the SES.
Marx stated that that he believed England was a modern society that was highly and classically developed in its economic structure. However, he then goes on to say that no stratification of classes is perfect. Everywhere you go you will have people trying to destroy the boundaries of classes.
Marx asks “What constitutes a class?” I thought he had previously answered that, if not then is there a true answer? Or does it depend on where you live? All cultures and societies are different therefore does that create differences when constituting a class? We talked about the feudal system or the caste system in class today; we can use this as evidence that there are differences in society however, is the caste system the same as class? Do they all communicate and socialize among the different “classes?” According the last paragraph in page 130 it talks about physicians and officials having their own class, why is this? These are just some questions I do not understand about class and social structure.
What I have taken from this chapter is that money basically defines what class you are in. How you make the money and whether or not you own anything also plays a large part in what class you belong to. Money in our society today seems to be the most important quality in our lives basically determining what we will do, who we are, who we socialize with etc.
Monday, January 19, 2009
Chapter 8: The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte (1852)
Marx begins this chapter by adding his own ideas onto the statement that everything important that happened in world history will in fact repeat itself. He believes the first time is tragedy and the second time is simply a mockery.
People create their own histories, but never the way that they intend them to be. Marx considers that society and environment play key roles in shaping one’s own history. The events that occur in life contribute to the past that is created. Those who have past on in life before us have left a trail of customs that present day society has to learn to survive off of.- as well as learn to NOT survive off of (if things turned out badly). Marx is just trying to prove that what happened in the past is bound to repeat itself and turn out foolishly if we do not educate ourselves with past experiences.
This chapter also talks much about the proletarians (workers- usually the poorest class) and the modern bourgeois society (conventional middle class). He continues to remind readers about the importance of class and how it can affect the difference of one’s past history. He focuses on comparing the revolutions of the bourgeois and of the proletarian. The bourgeois (18th century) revolutions consisted often of drunken brief successes which settle down into sober sessions in order to start new again (this sentence could be WAY off, but that is how I understood it from reading and dissecting the sentences on dictionary.com- I apologize in advance for any confusion). The proletarians (19th century), on the other hand, analyze themselves and come back to their already finished work and start again. They wish to rise again bigger and better than they did before.
At this point, Marx begins to discuss how Bonaparte sees himself as chief of the “true Socialists.” He was the representative of the lowest level of the proletarians calling them his army and his government. The chapter goes on to say that Bonaparte would like to represent all classes, but cannot give to one without taking from another.
Chapter 10 "Classes"
In 1867 Karl Marx wrote about class differences and how they relate to capitalism. Marx distinguishes two different classes based on two criteria, ownership of the means of production and control of labor power. As we have learned in an earlier reading these three classes are, capitalists, who own the means of production and purchase labor; and workers who neither have the means of production or purchase labor, but can sell their own labor.
In the chapter Marx wrote in a confusing format of discussing a thought and then going back to the beginning and reassessing his thought another time. As, I read this it was important to remember what capitalism is and how Marx didn’t agree with private or corporately owned businesses. He constantly theorized what made capitalism work and how inefficient it was for society has a whole. This led him to study capitalism and class differences closer.
The capitalist mode of production is based on three major classes in modes of production; wage labors, capitalists, and land owners.
Marx believed that England was a classical economic structure. Yet, even England had problems with the middle class destroying division lines of class. Marx believed that no matter how badly the class division is we have a “continual tendency” to drift toward a capitalist mode of production. By having this “capitalist mode of production” we break everything into smaller pieces; his examples were “labor into wage labor and the means of production into capital”.
Then, Marx refers back to what constitutes as a “class”. He questions all the parts of the three major modes of production.
He continues to find the answers to his questions, thinking maybe revenue is the cause for division. Everything to us is based on money and worth. We are how much we make, property we own, and money stashed away in the bank.
I certainly believe he was on to something there. Isn’t that how we view social class to this day? How much we make, where we live, what we drive, etc. These claims of class seem very real even if some of his ideas are a little out dated.
Saturday, January 17, 2009
Ch 7 Marx and Engels The communist manifesto
The rest of the world has begun to speak of Communism as a power then so too should the people of the communist party itself. From this belief came the communist manifesto.
Each societal shift has been accompanied/resulted from a growth in the market system and this has left us with two huge and hostile distinct classes.
Bourgeoisie- capitalist owners that pay workers, those in control of resources and production
Proletariat- those that work for wagesType your summary here
Type rest of the post here
Section one part one: The bourgeoisie
Our politicians are from and attend to matters of upper class capitalist desires. The executives of the modern state are in fact managing the affairs of the bourgeois class.
The bourgeois have pretty much trampled the lives of the proletariat peoples. They removed them from any source of work that could be fulfilling and reduced their work to a greedy scramble for wages, the common man is constantly in fear for his livelihood. They reduced jobs of intrinsic merit (like artist and doctor) into just another labor position. They embraced the concept of free trade, which in reality is nothing but the freedom to exploit others and if they couldn’t control it they drowned it in religion and called it sin. This global consumerism is destroying the local market systems and killing local structures.
I can’t help but feel these conditions all hold very true for our own society. I don’t think it’s as total as Marx claims it to be, but people hate going to work half of the time and if they’re lucky enough to be in a job they love they’re probably getting paid jack. People feel like they have no job security.
The global consumerism comment is a huge topic. First off there’s the loss of culture. When a country begins to do business with another country the hosting country will adopt or be forced to accept the guests traditions in order to continue business, for example; when China was up for the Olympics. They had massive public campaigns to make their cities friendlier to Western culture. People were told that it’s rude to cut in line or spit in public and a bunch of other little courtesy things that we think are kind of gross, but were common place in China. But whether or not the loss of culture is a tragedy is debatable, in fact, Marx says it’s for the best as individuality fosters national pride, which in turn fosters hostility against foreigners. Secondly there’s the issue of the loss of local market. This is still very relevant and the consequences of globalization for some regions of the world have been devastating. We ship our subsidized farm grown corn to Mexico and South America and their own agricultural systems collapse. We send old t-shirts to Africa in the name of charity and their textile mills all go under meaning ruin for the employees and the suppliers. When the “less developed” nations cant compete with the big business culture of “developed” nations they’re bound to suffer and then we accuse them of not being able to support themselves. Well duh we just dismantled their livelihood.
Section one part two: the proletariat
The proletariat is her/him self a commodity, bought and sold only as long as (s)he is able to produce a product. The longer the hours, the harder the work, the more abhorrent the job- the lower the wages. We can easily find examples of this in our society. Childcare workers, teachers, auto manufacturers, boat loaders, ect are paid far below the worth of their capital because their jobs are construed as requiring little skill. The methods of this are two fold. It’s important to realize that some jobs have been purposefully specialized to the point where they require little skill. The fact that they require “no training” is construction by the company to justifying paying lower wages. And then with some jobs the image that they require no skills is just an out and out lie like with teacher and child care worker. Have you ever been in a room with a two and a half year old, a 12 year old, or a 17 year old for more than five minutes? Taking care of someone else’s children (cause lets face it 70% of teaching is really babysitting) is exhausting and wrought with moments likely to get you sued or fired.
Marx and Engels briefly touch on one point that I find interesting from a feminist standpoint. On page 101 there is a sentence that reads “Modern industry has converted the little workshop of the patriarch into the great factory of the industrial capitalist.” I’m not positive that they meant for patriarch to be interpreted in the way I have, but it’s intriguing to consider how modern capitalist structure has diverted power away from the male “head of the household” and into the market. This laid the foundation for the disruption of male hierarchy. Because money was now the determining factor in relation to power men maintained control as long as they were the main source of income. In the second half of the 20th century the increase of market greed made it almost impossible to survive on a single income, forcing women into the market whether anyone wanted them their or not. So while anti-feminists for decades (cough* Reagan) were claiming that women were the cause of male unemployment it is much more likely that pro market legislation resulting in increasing employee exploitation was to blame. M&E conclude by saying that age and sex no longer serve to distinguish members of the working class. To the market they are all just laborers of a different price.
At one point M&E discuss the infighting of classes and I get a little lost but what I’ve gleaned is that- when the bourgeois fight among themselves they turn to the proletariat for political support. To gain this support they must educate the public of their cause and through this political education they give the workers the resources to fight the bourgeois themselves. (I guess I thought of it this way- It was much easier for politicians (typically members of the upper class) to control the general public when they were remote farmers (with little access to political news) than it is now when we can easily gain information (albeit often distorted) through our multiple sources of media.)
Then they take a moment to recap- The proletariat man has lost property, his place in the family, his connection to his work, and his sense of nationality. Law and religion have become tools of the oppressor. “When movements have occurred in the passed they have always been by a minority or in the interest of a minority” which is why the changes have been able to take place within the existing social structure. But when the proletariat revolts they are the majority and this revolt will require the restructuring of the way things are.
The defining factor that proves that the bourgeois is unfit to rule is that they cannot keep their workers at a stable station even to their own benefit. The current market system is flawed. The workers keep getting poorer and become unable to support themselves let alone their “masters”. Then the bourgeois end up needing to assist them (thought social programs). It defeats the purpose. It is through their own greed that the bourgeois sets up its demise. The over throw of the system is inevitable. (Notably Marx’s time table foresaw this overthrow some time ago, but theoretically still likely.)
Section two: The proletariat and communism.
Communism is not based on unproven theory but on the events that have been forming throughout history and structures that you can see all around you. The idea of abolishing property law is not new or untried. Marx sites the French revolution as an example but you can find examples of this today in the US. It is possible for the government to obtain private property from individuals against their will if it is determined to be in the best interest of the state for, say, roads or federal buildings, or even in a few cases to be given to large corporations that could bring jobs to the area. Most of the time actions like these result in a monetary settlement, but not always and not every private citizen is content with the barter of their home for money.
Criticisms of communism:
Communism seeks to take away the property that the common man has worked so hard to obtain. M&E argue that the bourgeois already destroyed that, it virtually doesn’t exist. I find this a little hard to grasp but at the same time- You really can’t just go out and work the land until it’s yours. You have to buy it from some bourgeois jerk and in able to be able to buy it from that jerk you have to work for some other jerk that pays you jack.
Doing away with society as it is and making everything communal is to do away with individual freedom. M&E make the case that the market system has already killed the individuality and freedom of the common man so therefore the only person losing anything, the only person whose really pissed off about change, is the bourgeois themselves.
If there’s no personal reward there’s no incentive to work. Those who do not work get everything (earn the capital of someone else’s labor) and those who work have nothing to show for it. If the argument is that lack of reward results in lack of work than the current system would have collapsed long ago.
Bourgeois claim “Communism will establish a community of women!”
M&E retort “Well you’re sleeping with each others wives anyway…”
Marx and Engels are rather forward at this point and note that there has always been a “community of women”. The bourgeois treat their wives as just another instrument of reproduction and communists would like to recognize them as individuals. Communism seeks to elevate the status of women and children just like everybody else.
Other arguments mentioned are the loss of culture and national pride, loss of private education, and the destruction of the family. M&E note that the market system and the bourgeois have pretty much already destroyed all of these and further destruction might not be a bad thing. National pride creates hostility between countries, private education creates intellectual hierarchy, and the family power structure is messed up anyway and *should* change.
Closing thoughts by M&E
Marx and Engels close with a summary of events that are likely to occur to make the shift to communism possible (pg 110). The basic idea is that the proletariat (in the form of the communist party) will use their political power to (by degrees) confiscate all property. The state will then distribute it to the people and spread them over the land so there are no concentrated towns or cities. Then there will be a nationalization everything, banks, shops, and education alike (which will be free). Eventually the concept of the state will disappear and there will only be the people.
My personal commentary- Marx’s theories are pretty sound and I don’t find his plan abhorrent, but the execution of such a plan seems rather impossible. A whole generation of people doesn’t want to get f*cked over during the transition and several generations following such will feel rather screwed by the changes. Then you have the issue of people running “the state”. Marx often talks about the people as if they’re an abstract concept, but they’re not, they’re individuals. I hesitate to say that Marx’s belief that people are genuinely interested in one another’s well being is naïve. Some people just suck. You cant simply say that the proletariat become the state and it’s all good. When the proletariat become the state they’ve suddenly found themselves in a position of power they’ve never had before and it’s not hard to imagine that this new found power is corruptive. At the end of the day someone is still running the affairs of state and you’re just as likely to be stuck with some jackass as with any other system.
J. corwin
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts
In earlier passages from the Manuscripts, Marx accepted traditional political economic terms and presupposed – rather than explained – “private property; the separation of labour, capital, and land, and likewise of wages, profit, and capital; the division of labour; competition; the conception of exchange value, etc.”
He, furthermore, showed that under these conditions a) “the worker sinks to the level of a commodity, and moreover the most wretched commodity of all;” b) “that the misery of the worker is in inverse proportion to the power and volume of his production;” c) “that the necessary consequence of competition is the accumulation of capital in a few hands and hence the restoration of monopoly in a more terrible form; and that, finally,” d) “the distinction between capitalist and landlord, between agricultural worker and industrial worker, disappears and the whole of society must split into the two classes of property owners and propertyless workers.”
The point he makes is that political economy proceeds as though its presuppositions were facts in need of no explanation at treats the relationships between the unexplained facts as if they were laws. Remember here, for those of you who have taken economics courses, that it is assumed that people are rational, utility maximizing and perfectly informed free individuals and that any situation where these foundational assumptions are not found – which includes each and every market on the planet – are then treated as if they were flush with market imperfections rather than flawed assumptions.
As I said Tuesday, Marx wants to start out not from idealist assumptions that are imperfectly realized in the material world, but from actual historical facts. He lists:
• The worker becomes poorer the more wealth he produces, the more his production increases in power and extent.
• The worker becomes an ever cheaper commodity the more commodities he produces.
• The devaluation of the human world grows in direct proportion to the increase in value of the world of things.
• Labour not only produces commodities; it also produces itself and the workers as a commodity and it does so in the same proportion in which it produces commodities in general.
The argument is “that the object that labour produces, its product, stands opposed to it as something alien, as a power independent of the producer.” Marx writes about the realization and objectification of labour in the product of labor whatever the productive forces and production relations are. Under political economy (capitalism), however, Marx finds that “this realization of labour appears as a loss of reality for the worker, objectification as loss of and bondage to the object, and appropriation as estrangement, as alienation.”
“All these consequences are contained in this characteristic, that the worker is related to the product of labour as to an alien object. For it is clear that, according to this premise, the more the worker exerts himself in his work, the more powerful the alien, objective world becomes which he brings into being over against himself, the poorer he and his inner world become, and the less they belong to him.”
Marx writes: “The estrangement of the worker in his object is expressed according to the laws of political economy in the following way:
1. the more the worker produces, the less he has to consume;
2. the more value he creates, the more worthless he becomes;
3. the more his product is shaped, the more misshapen the worker;
4. the more civilized his object, the more barbarous the worker;
5. the more powerful the work, the more powerless the worker;
6. the more intelligent the work, the duller the worker and the more he becomes a slave of nature.”
The key point being made in these passages is: “Political economy conceals the estrangement in the nature of labour by ignoring the direct relationship between the worker and production.”
The idea is that the central concern of political economic, and sociological, analysis needs to be how people make their own lives – how they produce objects and relationships. Under capitalism, Marx is arguing, workers are alienated from the objects they produce – which are owned by others, and alienated from the process of production – which is controlled by others.
This is a classic passage on “the alienation of labour.”
“Firstly, the fact that labour is external to the worker – i.e., does not belong to his essential being; that he, therefore, does not confirm himself in his work, but denies himself, feels miserable and not happy, does not develop free mental and physical energy, but mortifies his flesh and ruins his mind. Hence, the worker feels himself only when he is not working; when he is working, he does not feel himself. He is at home when he is not working, and not at home when he is working. His labour is, therefore, not voluntary but forced, it is forced labour. It is, therefore, not the satisfaction of a need but a mere means to satisfy needs outside itself. Its alien character is clearly demonstrated by the fact that as soon as no physical or other compulsion exists, it is shunned like the plague…. Finally, the external character of labour for the worker is demonstrated by the fact that it belongs not to him but to another, and that in it he belongs not to himself but to another.”
The things that make us human, that differentiate us from animals, our conscious and intentional capacities to socially produce the objects and relationships we want, are felt most keenly outside of the activities and away from the objects and relationships, of work. For Marx, the “result is that man (the worker) feels that he is acting freely only in his animal functions – eating, drinking, and procreating, or at most in his dwelling and adornment – while in his human functions, he is nothing more than animal.”
What ought to be our life’s activity, the objectification of ourselves in the world, the realization of our intents and relationships – what Marx calls “productive life itself” – appears to us primarily as a means of satisfying other “unproductive” needs. We work to live rather than being fully alive at work.
Marx explores the historical conditions of wage labor in a class-based society in the following manner. Capitalist laborers are estranged/alienated/separated from
1) Nature (they are forced off the land and craftsmen no longer own their own tools/machines);
2) the products of (their) labor (the capitalist disposes of the commodity wage laborers produce and controls the reinvestment or expenditure of any profits);
3) their actions within production (capitalists or managers largely determine the place, pace and relations between productive practices);
4) their own social/universal species-being (this is as much about the realization of social as it is our individual potential, something effectively forestalled by productive specialization at work – among other things); and
5) other men (if you are a free agent on the job market and the market is saturated what impetus to do you have not to seek to undercut those employed when you are unemployed? What impetus, time, or energy do you have to develop quality social relations within the workplace or at home?).
Though he mentions it earlier in what we read, Marx leaves this out of his list, but there is also the estrangement from public space as it is privatized… “He is at home when he is not working and when he is working he is not at home.” (p.74) It is not hard at all to think of the ways that gendered divisions of labor – where women are domestic goddesses and men are public citizens – eventually emerge along these lines… much less the ways that feminism could use Marx’s basic logic to speak of the alienated/alienating experience women have when excluded for “productive activity” at work and bound to “reproductive activities” in the home.
“Every self-estrangement of man from himself and nature is manifested in the relationship he sets up between other men and himself and nature. Thus, religious self-estrangement is necessarily manifested in the relationship between layman and priest, or, since we are dealing here with the spiritual world, between layman and mediator, etc.”
Marx’s argument is that the “private property; the separation of labour, capital, and land, and likewise of wages, profit, and capital; the division of labour; competition; the conception of exchange value, etc.” we started the reading with are the product of an ever-more differentiated process of alienated and alienating labor.
We will see, in Capital (I think) that the five- or six-fold alienation of labor listed above, materially and analytically precedes the development of wage labor as the dominant form of productive relationships. The key is this: “Private property as the material, summarized expression of alienated labour embraces both relations – the relation of the worker to labour and to the product of his labour and the non-workers, and the relation of the non-worker to the worker and to the product of his labour.”
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
Marx - The German Ideology
"Hitherto men have constantly made up for themselves false conceptions about themselves, about what they are and what they ought to be. They have arranged their relationships according to their ideas of God, of normal man, etc…. They, the creators, have bowed down before their creations…. Let us revolt against the rule of thoughts."
Here is the pivotal point that lies at the heart of social scientific thought. The key is that the majority of conventional and received knowledge about the nature and structure of society is empirically untested – at best – or, more simply, empirically wrong - APR
"The premises from which we begin are not arbitrary ones… They are the real individuals, their activity and the material conditions under which they live, both those which they find already existing and those produced by their activity."
Marx’s argument is that the premises of social thought ought to be contemporary or historical empirical information about real people with real material relationships to the world and each other… you can see how this continues the earlier theme. - APR
"Men can be distinguished from animals by consciousness, by religion or anything else you like. They themselves begin to distinguish themselves from animals as soon as they begin to produce their means of subsistence, a step which is conditioned by their physical organisation."
Here, Marx begins to lay the foundation for his wider theoretical agenda. The key is that humans began to be human when we began to produce subsistence goods for ourselves… Rather than have our subsistence (our existence) provided (capriciously) by nature, human beings became human as they started to provide for their existence socially. - APR
"This mode of production… is a definite form of activity of these individuals, a definite form of expressing their life, a definite mode of life on their part. As individuals express their life, so they are. What they are, therefore, coincides with their production, both with what they produce and with how they produce. The nature of individuals thus depends on the material conditions determining their production."
The crux of the matter is, then, that our modes of life, our modes of production, are expressions rooted in the social and material conditions of and for our (re)production of ourselves… and – looking below – the social and material conditions of and for our (re)production of ourselves is part and parcel of the production of ideas, concepts and consciousness. If you change the mode of life you change the production of ideas. Marx is arguing that our ideas are products of the material conditions of social life… not the predicate of those conditions. - APR
"The production of ideas, of conceptions, of consciousness, is at first directly interwoven with the material activity and the material intercourse of men, the language of real life…. Men are the producers of their conceptions, ideas, etc. – real, active men, as they are conditioned by a definite development of their productive forces and of the intercourse corresponding to these, up to its furthest forms."
"The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, i.e. the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force. The class which has the means of material production at its disposal, has control at the same time over the means of mental production, so that thereby, generally speaking, the ideas of those who lack the means of mental production are subject to it. The ruling ideas are nothing more than the ideal expression of the dominant material relationships, the dominant material relationships grasped as ideas; hence of the relationships which make the one class the ruling one, therefore, the ideas of its dominance."
This is easier to think of relative to other societies than our own, but in a class-based society, the ideas of the ruling class are the ruling ideas of the society. As above, if ideas are the product – more than the predicate – of real, material relationships, then those who tend to control those real, material relationships probably control the production, selection and development of ideas. This is true in a number of ways. On the one hand, certain members of ruling elites consciously generate ideas legitimating the dominance of those elites. On the other hand, in a society like ours where the majority of folks are moderately well-educated, our unconscious embrace of dominant ideas means that we tend to produce new ideas that reproduce society as we know it and fit within the range of social legitimacy. - APR
"For each new class which puts itself in the place of one ruling before it, is compelled, merely in order to carry through its aim, to represent its interest as the common interest of all the members of society, that is, expressed in ideal form: it has to give its ideas the form of universality, and represent them as the only rational, universally valid ones."
Here, things get very interesting. Marx argues that the succession of classes necessitates that the emergent class must represent its ideas as associated with a genuine common interest relative to that of the minority elites who dominate existing, or the earlier state of, society. - APR
"This whole semblance, that the rule of a certain class is only the rule of certain ideas, comes to a natural end, of course, as soon as class rule in general ceases to be the form in which society is organized…"
On the one hand, dominant powers treat the ideas that legitimate their rule as if they were transcendent, universal, natural, or godly. as a means of veiling the material, particular, social and worldly roots of their power. This process, Marx argues, will come to an end with the end of class society… - APR