Systems Theory in Anthropology - Tracing "Systems Theory" in Anthropology - Marx-Weber Debates

Marx-Weber Debates

Although the term 'system theory' is never mentioned in the work of Karl Marx and Max Weber, the fundamental idea behind systems theory does penetrate deeply in to their understanding of social reality. One can easily see the challenges that both Marx and Weber faced in their work. Breaking away from Hegelian speculative philosophy, Marx developed a social theory based on historical materialism, arguing that is not consciousness that determines being, but in fact, it is social being that determines consciousness. More specifically, it is human beings’ social activity, labor, that causes, shapes, and informs human thinking. Based on labor, Marx develops his entire social theory that specifically questions reified, bourgeois capitalism. Labor, class conflict, commodity, value, surplus-value, bourgeoisie, and proletariat are thus central concepts in Marxian social theory. In contrast to the Cartesian "pure and rational subjectivity," Marx introduced social activity as the force that produces rationality. He was interested in finding sophisticated, scientific universal laws of society, though contrary to positivist mechanistic approach which take facts as given, and then develop causal relationship out of them.

Max Weber found Marxist ideas useful, however, limited in explaining complex societal practices and activities. Drawing on hermeneutic tradition, Weber introduced multiple rationalities in the modern schema of thinking and used interpretive approach in understanding the meaning of a phenomenon placed in the webs of significance. Contrary to Marx, who was searching for the universal laws of the society, Weber attempts an interpretive understanding of social action in order to arrive at a “causal explanation of its course and effects.” Here the word course signifies Weber’s non-deterministic approach to a phenomenon. The social actions have subjective meanings that should be understood in its given context. Weber’s interpretive approach in understanding the meaning of an action in relation to its environment delineated a contextualized social framework for cultural relativism.

Since we exist in webs of significance and the objective analysis would detach us from a concrete reality which we are all part of it, Weber suggested ideal-types; an analytical and conceptual construct “formed by the accentuation of one or more points of view and by the synthesis of a great many diffuse, discrete, more or less present, and occasionally absent concrete individual phenomena, which are arranged according to those one-sidedly emphasized viewpoints into a unified analytical construct.” Although they are analytical concepts, they serve as reference points in interpreting the meaning of society’s heterogeneous and polymorphous activities. In other words, ideal-types are simplified and typified empirical reality, but they are not reality in themselves. Bureaucracy, authority, religion, etc. are all ideal-types, according to Weber, and do not exist in the real world. They assist social scientists in selecting culturally significant elements of a larger whole which can be contrasted with each other to demonstrate their interrelationship, patterns of formation, and similar societal functions. Weber’s selected ideal-types - bureaucracy, religion, and capitalism - are culturally significant variables through which he demonstrated show multiple functionalities of social behavior.

Similarly, Weber emphasizes that Marxist laws are also ideal-types. The concept of class, economy, capitalism, proletariat and bourgeoisie, revolution and state, along with other Marxian models are heuristic tools for understanding a society in its context. Thus, according to Weber, Marxist ideal-types could prove fruitful only if used to access a given society. However, Weber warns of dangerousness or perniciousness in relation to Marxist ideal-types when seen as empirical reality. The reason is that Marxist practitioners have imposed analytical concepts as ahistorical and universal categories to reduce concrete-process and activities from the polymorphous actions into a simplified phenomenon. This renders social phenomena not only ahistorical but also devoid of spatio-temporal rigour, decontextualized, and categorizes chaos and ruptures under the general label of bourgeoisie exploitation. In fact, history emerged as a metanarrative of a class struggle, moving in a chronological order, and future anticipated as a revolutionary overthrow of state apparatuses by the workers. For instance, the state as an ideal-type imported to the physical world has deceived and diverted political activism away from the real sites of power such as corporations and discourses.

Similarly class as an ideal-type, projected to a society, which is an ensemble of population, becomes dangerous because it marginalizes and undermines organic linkages of kinship, language, race, and ethnicity. This is a significant point because society is not composed of two conflicting classes, bourgeoisie and proletariat, and does not just have vicissitudes along economic lines. It does not exist in binaries, as Marxist ideal-types would suppose. In fact, it is a reality in which people of various denominations - class backgrounds, religious affiliations, kinship and family ties, gender, and ethnic and linguistic differences - do not only experience conflict, but also practice cooperation in everyday life. Thus when one inserts ideal-types into this concrete dynamic process one does categorical violence to multifariousness of the population and similarly reduces feeling, emotions, non-economic social standing such as honor, and status, as Weber describes, to economism. Moreover, the ideal-types should also be treated relevant to a context that defines and delimits the former's parameters.

Weber’s intervention came at the right moment when Marxism - particularly vulgar Marxism - reduced "non-economic" practices and beliefs, the superstructure, to a determined base, the mode of production. Similarly, speculative philosophy imposed its own metaphysical categories on diverse concrete realities thus making a particular instance ahistorical. Weber approaches both the methods, materialist and purely idealist, as “equally possible, but each, of it does not serve as the preparation, but as the conclusion of an investigation.” To prove this point, Weber demonstrated how ethics and morality played a significant role in the rise of modern capitalism. The Protestant work ethic, for instance, functioned as sophisticated mechanism that encouraged population to “care for the self,” which served as an underpinning social activity for bourgeois capitalism. Of course, work ethics was not the only element, utilitarian philosophy equally contributed in forming a bureaucratic work culture whose side-effects are all too well known to the modern world.

In response to the reductive approach of economism or vulgar Marxism, as it is also known, Louis Althusser and Raymond Williams introduced new understanding to Marxist thought. Althusser and Williams introduced politics and culture as new entry points alongside the mode of production in Marxist methodology. However, there is a sharp contrast between the scholars’ arguments. Taking Williams as our point of discussion, he criticizes the mechanistic approach to Marxism that encourages a close reading of Marxian concepts. Concepts such as being, consciousness, class, capital, labor, labor power, commodity, economy, politics, etc. are not closed categories but rather interactive, engaging, and open practices or praxis. Althusser, on the other hand, proposes ‘overdetermination’ as multiple forces rather than isolated single force or modes of production. However, he argues that the economy is “determinant in the last instance.”