A comparison between Karl Marx’s “Class” society and Max Weber’s “Rational” society, and their relevance for contemporary society.
...d to the dustbin of history. Mankind's need for food, shelter, housing, energy are central in understanding the sociocultural system. "The first historical act is," Marx writes, "the production of material life itself." Unless men and women successfully fulfill this act there would be no other. All social life is dependent upon fulfilling this quest for a sufficiency of eating and drinking, for habitation and for clothing. This is as true today as it was it prehistory. Do not be fooled, Marx is telling us, we are as dependent upon nature as ever. The quest to meet basic needs were man's primary goal then and remain central when we attempt to analyze the complexities of modern life. However, men and women are perpetually dissatisfied animals. Our struggle against nature does not cease when we gratify these primary needs. The production of new needs evolve (secondary needs) when means are found to satisfy our primary needs. In order to satisfy these primary and secondary needs, Marx argued, men and women form societies. The first of these societies, communal in nature, were based on a very limited division of labor. These classless societies in which men hunted and women and children gathered vegetables, tubers and grains were egalitarian in nature. With the domestication of plants and animals, the division of labor begins to emerge in human societies. That division leads to the formation of antagonistic classes, the prime actors in human history. From this point on, humans engage in antagonistic cooperation in order to meet their primary and secondary needs. All social institutions are dependent upon the economic base, and a thorough analysis of sociocultural systems will always reveal this underl...