A Comparison of Marx and Weber

Karl Marx and Max Weber, as well as their theories, share many similarities. Both were German sociologists whose work spanned decades, and influence spanned even further. Marx and Weber also had much to say about the modern world economy, both delved into religion, and most obviously of all each of these men tried to answer the question of how civilization got to where it is, and where it would go from there.

The central tenet of most of Marx’s more prolific writings is labor, and the power and relations that come from it. Marx believes that all people act for selfish, material reasons. Man acts only in his self-interest. He labors because he needs wages to support himself and his family, not for any larger purpose, capitalists exploit labor because it is the only way to compete in a capitalist marketplace, it is not their fault, but the fault of the system. This is further supported by his ideas of alienation of labor. Marx defines as such:

The alienation of the worker in his product means not only that his labor becomes an object, an external existence, but that it exists outside him, independently, as something alien to him, and that it becomes a power of its own confronting him; it means that the life which he has conferred on the object confronts him as something hostile and alien. (Marx, Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 72)

One of Marx’s ideas is that workers put worth more effort, and are happier; when they are laboring for something they can call their own. In the past one craftsman would work on a good from inception to completion, it would be the product of his labor alone. When the industrial revolution took off that all changed; now workers only completed one small step in the process, they co...

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...wer and Authority 21 November 2011. Lecture.

Marx, Karl. "Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844." The Marx-Engels Reader. Ed. Robert C. Tucker. 2nd. New York: W. W, Norton & Company, 1978. 66-125. Print.

Marx, Karl. "The Coming Upheaval." The Marx-Engels Reader. Ed. Robert C. Tucker. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1978.

Olsen, Eric. "Weber Essay." Essay. 2011. Document.

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—. The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. Trans. Talcott Parsons. New York: Dover Publications, 1958. Print.

Weber, Max. "The Types of Legitimate Domination." Weber, Max. The Theaory if Social and Economic Organization. Ed. Talcott Parsons. Trans. A. M. Henderson and Talcott Parsons. New York: The Free Press, 1947. Print.