Marx vs Weber

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When comparing two strong historic personalities such as Karl Marx and Max Weber it is important to look at their overall impact on humanity in order to fully understand their views on ‘modern’ life. Marx on one hand preached a philosophy that is still largely influential around the world today, on the other hand, Weber is considered one of the fathers of modern thought and is still highly influential in the world of intellect today. In the world of sociology there are many different ways of thinking that contrast each other, however, few ideas contrast so much as that of socialism and capitalism. These distinctly different lines of thought are still viewed as one of the most important debates going on in the world today. Politics, religion, social organizations and pretty much every formal group in existence has some set of values that leans towards one of these social ideologies. Both Marx and Weber developed their ideologies whilst living through the industrial revolution, and therefore both witnessed key moments in the dawn of the modern western capitalism. For Marx, he saw the private ownership of manufacturing as ‘an evil that needed correcting’, In his arguments he emphasized that distribution of wealth and aristocracy were severely flawed between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat and built cases for greatly improving the standards for the ‘common’ worker. Whereas Weber had the idea that religion and capitalism are a necessary beginning to any social order. In comparing Marx and Weber there are some fundamental differences that have to be explored. While Marx took a historic approach and considered communism to be next in the line of a shifting of power, Weber saw the necessary social order springing out of traditional scripture and values. In similar contrast, while Marx thought of government springing up from the people, Weber saw it as a separate class

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