Materialism

Materialism: As Seen Through Four Different Authors

Hita Vashee

Social Theory

Professor Larry Nutt

October 5, 2006

Materialism: As Seen Through Four Different Authors

As defined materialism refers to the theory that physical matter is the only reality and that everything, including thought, feeling, mind, and will, can be explained in terms of matter and physical phenomena. Although it is far too easy to merely look up the definitions of materialism understanding the concept is rather difficult. To help with the comprehension of materialism we take a look at four renowned authors who are tied to the idea of materialism. These four men are Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Morton Fried, and Marvin Harris.

First we take a look at Karl Marx and Friedrich Engles, who collaborated to produce Feuerbach: Opposition of the Materialist and Idealist Outlook. Both Marx and Engles were idealist in every sense, they grasp on reality was far reaching. Although they were both idealists, Engles believed that ideas where what shaped people, and that if a person where to think like a wealthy land owner they would indeed start feeling like a wealthy land owner. Marx on the other hand had a more sensible approach he felt that means of production were what drove society not ideas. The things in particular that drove society were not only basic needs such as food, clothing, shelter, and protection, but also, money, need for material things, division of labor, exchange, and ownership. Ownership is a concept that ties in with materialism, ownership as presented in the article has various forms. The first form of ownership is tribal ownership which is limited to within the family. This is followed by state ownership which is where there is a collaboration of many tribes which have the power to control the workers only under their state ownership. Finally, there is estate property which gave rise to the concept of princes and peasants. As we can already see these different types of ownership began to form the class system within society. Slowly but surely people began seeing the different between a prince and peasant more prominently then before. Later in society we see the same shift of ownership but here it is seen between factory owners and factory workers which are parallel to landowners and peasants. Alienation is another concept for which Marx was well known. Alienation is were an individual was separated from the production or the actual material products which are necessary for their survival.

Marx and Engels basically say that if a person were to make it through this division and remain active they were to stay there "The fact is, therefore, that definite individuals who are productively active in a definite way enter into these definite social and political relations." (McGee & Warms, 73). Both Marx and Engels were interested in taking the capitalistic society and turning it into a communist one which they believed was inevitably going to happen anyways. They looked at labor and the division of it to be important to their theory and to materialism.

Morton Fried the author of On the Evolution of Social Stratification and the State. In this article Fried starts by saying that evolution has taken place in the form of changing societies and that with changing societies comes changes in materialism. Fried's example is that of the change we see from an egalitarian society to a society that becomes much more complex and has within it many differences. Fried and Marx differ in that Marx believed production and labor were the drives of society where as Fried believes that the way in which we distribute our production is what indeed shapes our society. Throughout Fried's paper he presents different types of societies and their functions. First we start with a non-rank society, which a system in which each society is able to make their own ranks within their society according to certain characteristics which they internally decide. According to Fried the man two deciding factors in most societies are age and gender. Material goods that are produced in each society are mainly based on individual families and not looked at as a whole. Marx and Fried can both agree that in these types of society's specialization is not necessary. The second type of society that Fried writes about is the rank society, in which there are only a certain number of prestigious positions and many people who are capable of handling these very positions (McGee & Warms, 291). In these types of societies inheritance of such positions is prominent. Fried looks that the shift from egalitarian to ranked society as not a shift of social norms but rather a shift of economic proportion. How material needs are met weather they are met through reciprocity which is true of the egalitarian society or weather it is redistributing which is seen