Contrast in the approaches of Marx and Weber on ‘modern society alienated people’ and
 

While Marx and Weber apply the concept of specialization in very different ways, the implementation and consequences specialization have much in common.
Weber applies the idea of specialization (although he does not refer to it as such) most explicitly in the work “Bureaucracy”. Here, Weber informs the reader that for bureaucracy to be successful, it must have certain characteristics. First, there must be a commitment to bureaucratic offices, rather than the individuals who hold those offices. In this respect, the individual loses importance. For Weber, this specialization occurs in the political realm, as the bureaucracy is a governing structure.
In Marxist theory, the division of labor has characteristics that are similar to those of specialization as explicated in Weber’s analysis. The first similarity is not particular to the division of labor, but instead generalizable to Marx’s general theory. The individual is not important; instead his labor gives him value. One could say that capitalism, as a system, values the labor of the individual more than it values the individual.
Here, the similarity between Marx and Weber is clear. In neither situation is man valued for his self-worth. Instead, his value is contingent on what his labor. In “Bureaucracy”, this work is the fulfillment of bureaucratic obligations, on the part of a bureaucratic official. For Marx, work is the labor performed by an individual on a daily basis.
In The Critique of Capitalism, Marx discusses how the division of labor in factories, especially in the use of machinery, detaches all intellect from manual labor. In “Bureaucracy”; Weber describes the bureaucratic official as a person who, while having expertise in his field, is required to follow rules and regulations. Additionally, he is educated to be a bureaucrat – taught certain lessons that enable him to be specialized, so that he can carry out his work with the highest level of efficiency. His education is dictated by the mandates of bureaucracy, just as the worker’s education (of how to use that machinery) in Marx’s factory is dictated by the mandates of capitalism, namely surplus value, or profit. In neither instance is the individual permitted to express his creativity, nor is there a synthesis between his intellect and the labor that he perform.
In both situations we can see that the individual becomes alienated from the work that he performs, although to different extents. For a bureaucratic official, awards can be given in the sense of promotions, which is something that Marx does not talk about in his theory. Yet, in the daily operation of bureaucracy in modern society, we see that there are striking resemblances to a capitalist system, which Weber concedes when he states that “Today, it is primarily the capitalist market economy which demands that the official business of public administration be discharged precisely, unambiguously, continuously, and with as much speed as possible. While Weber’s capitalist system is obviously not identical to Marx’s, it is important to note that in both systems the emphasis on efficiency, continuity, and rigidity is sought even at the expense of forsaking the individual.
Weber and Marx both seem to treat individuals as receptors of systems. Back to the old structure-versus-agency issue: Weber regards the psychological phenomena of anxiety and worldly asceticism as a cause of capitalist activity. On the other hand, Marx deems capitalist activity as the cause of alienation.
Weber, who explains capitalism and bureaucracy are causes of our inevitable disenchantment within an "iron cage." Weber seems to reject Marx's submissive treatment of the individual by breaking away from class determinism; Weber considers other factors that could account for behavior, such as status membership. Yet it seems individuals can get trapped within the irrationality of rules in Weber's bureaucracy just as workers are trapped within Marx's abstract capitalism.
Perhaps both Marx and Weber skirt (avoid dealing with) the individual agency issue due to their sociological objectives. Weber wants to use theory as a means to understand how things are and how they came into existence. He examines the origins and nature of capitalism. Marx wants to use theory to change how things are. He examines the nature of capitalism and how it should instead be.
The concept of the “machine” in both Weber and Marx
For Marx, the machine can be used in one of two ways. First, it represents “congealed labor” (rigid or fix) under capitalism. The capitalist invests in a machine as an alternative to human labor, and must adjust upkeep costs accordingly. In this scenario, the machine represents competition and indeed a decrease in the wage for the proletariat. This type of discourse is present in today’s increasingly technological society; workers are often pitted against machine as competitors in a single market.
Alienation and anomie
It is interesting to compare Durkheim and Marx on their ideas about modern consciousness. Durkheim focused on social solidarity as one of the important functions of a social order: individuals had a defined place in the world that was created and reinforced by the social values of morality, religion, and patriotism. He observed that these strands of solidarity are stronger or weaker in different societies, and he also observed that some modern social forces tend to break down these moral strands of social cohesion -- the creation of large cities, for example. In his theory of suicide, he highlights the situation of "anomie" to refer to the circumstance of individuals whose relationship to the social whole is weak, and he explains differences in suicide rates across societies as the result of different levels of solidarity and its opposite, anomie.
Marx's concept of alienation involves a somewhat different kind of separation and breakdown -- separation of the person from his/her nature as a free producer and creator, and separation of the person from his/her natural sociality. Marx thinks of affirming social relations as founded on equality and freedom. So modern capitalist society is destructive of true sociality.
What is interesting in this comparison is that both Durkheim and Marx appear to be diagnosing a similar feature of modernity. In Durkheim's case there is an implicit contrast between a pre-modern world in which individuals have a well-defined social and moral place and the contemporary world in which these strands of solidarity are breaking down. In Marx's case the contrast is forward-looking. Marx compares the present -- the factory -- with the future -- a society of free, equal, social producers. But in each case the theorist is grappling with an absence in modernity -- an absence of a social and moral setting that gives the individual a basis for self-respect and sociable collaboration with others. The social itself is breaking down.


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