M ODERNITY AND G LOBALISATION Gurminder K. Bhambra

I NDUSTRIAL C APITALISM AND A LIENATION Week 6

O VERVIEW Industrial society Marx: capitalism Alienation

I NDUSTRIALIZATION AND M ODERNITY The logic of industrialism came to be seen as an internal phenomenon that expanded outwards, incorporating other societies in its wake This led to the idea of a fundamental division between the pre-industrial (pre-modern) and the industrial (modern) that would, in time, be overcome Modernity, or modern society, is now represented by the transition to industrial capitalist society and the co-existence of forms is no longer considered to be viable

I NDUSTRIAL S OCIETY Technological innovations the mechanization of production: textiles, coal and iron, steam engines The growth of urban centres: towns, ports and cities a rise in population, migration the concentration of factories women and children entered the paid workforce a unified land and water transport network Commercial agriculture the enclosures emergence of the rural proletariat The spread of banking and finance

I NDUSTRIALISATION AND S OCIOLOGY Early sociologists saw industrialization an opportunity for progressive emancipation from the feudal system However, towards the end of the 19 th century, the key issue was the ‘crisis of industrial society’ Industrialization was held responsible for the breakdown of traditional communities and the dissolution of social bonds Private property and free competition, together with the lack of government regulation of economic conditions, were seen as responsible for poverty and general decline of living conditions

I NTERNAL C ONNECTIONS Industry, urbanism and the rise of modern cities all contributed to the idea that a new type of society was being created; one that was based on new principles of social organization the concepts of the ‘division of labour’ and ‘class’ became the defining characteristics of modern society the pre-industrial ‘mob’ became the industrial ‘masses’, and later, ‘proletariat class’ The focus on social structure addressed the organization of social life in terms of national institutions and social relations This established the idea of society as an autonomous, organized whole

I NDUSTRIAL S OCIETY : D URKHEIM The ‘division of labour’ is seen as a source of social solidarity It can also, at times, present pathological forms resulting in a state of anomie As the market extends and industrialization gathers pace, new forms of social organization are required which do not always emerge in time It is not the division of labour that produces the condition of anomie, but the failure to establish the necessary social relations for its regulation (c) Ali B. Sufyan

I NDUSTRIAL C APITALISM : M ARX The development of industrial production leads to the emergence of two basic classes with irreconcilable interests: the bourgeoisie and the proletariat Where labour is divided there is a conflict (contradiction) between the interests of different groups The ‘de-skilling’ integral to the increasing scale of capitalist production renders all workers uniform determining their constitution as the ‘universal class’

I NDUSTRIAL C APITALISM : M ARX Capitalism rests on an ‘exchange market’ – things are produced for exchange not for need ‘Use’ value and ‘exchange’ value value = the amount of socially necessary labour time embodied in goods produced The capitalist buys labour and sells commodities workers are ‘free’ to sell their labour and so their labour itself becomes a commodity -> alienation ‘surplus value’ is the source of profit In earlier societies, production (exchange) is controlled by ‘use’; with capitalism, the regulative tie between demand and supply is broken

I NDUSTRIAL C APITALISM : M ARX The search for profit means that it is an expanding system, controlled only by periodic crises a crisis is the expansion of production beyond what the market can absorb Capitalism is an inherently unstable system and contains within it the seeds of its own destruction asymmetrical relationship between wage labour and capital – inherent contradiction poverty and the existence of an underclass collective organisation of workers from a ‘class in itself’ to a ‘class for itself’ -> revolution!

A LIENATION Workers do not control the products of their labour all labour creates goods which have an ‘exchange’ not a ‘use’ value workers sell their labour power in an open market and have no say in the capitalist process Workers are alienated from work work is a means to an end, it is not valuable or valued in its own right Economic relationships are also social relationships and so alienation is also social money promotes the rationalisation of social relationships Giddens (1971)

Q UESTIONS What is capitalism for Marx? How does this differ from Weber’s analysis? Why is ‘waged labour’ important to capitalism? What are ‘wages’? Why might the worker be considered a commodity? How and why does the worker suffer when the capitalist suffers economically? Is capitalism necessarily exploitative?