Reflecting on more contemporary writers

Reflecting on more contemporary writers

Reflecting on more contemporary writers (e.g. Gillman, Du Bois, Fanon) we could argue that each in their own way builds upon ideas presented by the core theorists (Marx, Durkheim, and Weber).  Discuss how these writers are informed by one of those theorists, and elaborate on how you believe they go beyond that theorist to improve our understanding of contemporary society?

Gilman, Du Bois, and Fanon have all been informed by Marx and have all gone beyond him to improve our understanding of contemporary society. Gilman, on his side, was informed by the conflict theory and went beyond Marx’s demonstration. Fanon as well builds on Marx from the ideas of alienation. To Du Bois, he was informed by the idea of capitalism and the economist and liberal thoughts.

Gilman, in her own way, builds upon ideas presented by Marx. The Marxist conflict theory-informed her. Although Marx informed her, Gilman also partook in the initial wave of feminism, challenging social ideals, that women are subordinate to men. There are similarities in these two theorists and also differences which describe how Gillman went beyond Marx to improve our understanding of contemporary society. Marxist conflict theory sees society as divided along the lines of economic class between the proletarian working class and the bourgeois ruling class. Gillman went beyond Marx to look at other dimensions of conflict between different social, religious, and other types of groups.

Marx noted the difference between the elites and the disadvantaged. He viewed the conflict between the owners of means of production (bourgeoisie) and the workers (proletariat). He talks about modern capitalism and the rise of middle-class owners of capital, the bourgeoisie to economic power. For him, class struggle shows the existing powers the bourgeoisie has. He advocated social reforms for the proletariat class. His focus was that his conflict theory was that removing privilege, the entire welfare of the society could be increased and eventually develops true equality amongst members of society. Gilman builds up from the idea of the conflict between men and women. However, Gillam goes beyond to recognize gender in social change, as she evaluates the enslavement of women by men and their inability to take part in social production. Typically, society generates an adverse view of work due to its relation to women and the working class. In essence, out of gender stratification comes class divisions, where men own and enslave women since they are a different class in society. She advocates for social reform to females, which is the same as what Marx advocated for workers. Gilman recognized the inequality relevant in the social structure of the working world, which excluded females from most jobs, confining women to the world of the home where they worked the whole day with the only compensation being the roof over their heads. She drew the notion of symbolic interactionism grounded on Marx’s emphasis on how the political and economic ground for gender inequality.

Fanon also builds his ideas on Marx and even goes beyond to improve our understanding of contemporary society. Fanon wrote about particular factors of Marx’s concepts of alienation within the context of racist dehumanization colonial oppression, and black liberation. Marx had mainly focused on the economic aspect of alienation. Fanon builds on this idea of alienation from Marx. However, he goes beyond to talk about psychology. Fanon took Marx’s main issue of alienation of workers from the activity of their labor. Marx had focused on how workers were taken as a source of monetized value only. Fanon went beyond and described the idea of alienation of workers and expanded its use to colonialism and racism. To Fanon, racism was the complete description of alienation. The brutality of white minority rule and colonization guided and informed a particular critique on behalf of national liberation. Racism enables oppression and also bolsters profit, as Fanon believed. Marx has also, rightly, pointed to capitalism as the solution to world inequality. Fanon also rightly built on this idea and stated that capitalism is never just about economics but entirely racialized project, and this is the reason the line between people who have and those who don’t have is often a racial line. To him, it is race and not class, which divides the zone of non-being. It is possible for one to be poor and white and remain in the area of being, and one can be black and rich and be in the area of non-being.

Du Bois also built his ideas from Marx. Although people would state that he was not Marxist, he borrowed from Marx. Du Bois mainly builds from ideas of economist and liberal thought. What he did differently is coming up with a different conclusion for which Marx was struggling but never quite achieved. Marx valued the work, for which everything that matters mattered. To Marx, History was the history of the fall of free labor before the varieties of ownership for which the evidence was in the dream of the classes of society as the redemption of History. Du Bois never tried to iron out the history of labor’s exploitation onto the flat plane of purposive history. He viewed History and history in various terms, and to him, there was no History. Unlike Marx, he made race and also the state constitutive of capitalism. He argued on Black Reconstruction, saying “that the upward moving of white labor was betrayed into wars for profit based on color caste.”