Читать книгу Sociology - Anthony Giddens - Страница 152

Are the key ideas of Marx and Weber really incompatible? Using the table above, see if you can put together an argument that says they have more in common than that which divides them.

According to Weber, capitalism is just one aspect of social development, and in some ways the impact of science and bureaucracy has been more important. Science has shaped modern technology and would continue to do so in any future socialist society, while bureaucracy remains the most efficient way of organizing large numbers of people effectively. Bureaucracies inevitably expand with modern life, becoming a key source of rationalization – the organization of social and economic life according to principles of efficiency on the basis of technical knowledge (see ‘Global society’ 3.1 below). Weber also suggests, against Marx, that capitalism actually provides a counterbalancing source of creativity to the stultifying ‘dead hand’ of bureaucratic domination.

Which interpretation of social change is correct? Perhaps today this is not the most pressing question. The classical theories of Marx, Durkheim and Weber and their later incarnations may not be the best guides to contemporary issues of shifting gender relations, multicultural societies, globalization, technological development and accelerating climate change. Do we now need new theories that move beyond the classics, perhaps taking sociology in different directions?