A society's law, politics, and culture are shaped by the organisation of its production, though the direction of influence is disputed.
Marx set it out in the 1859 preface. Even sympathetic readers dispute how tightly the determination runs; the weak form — that economic organisation constrains what institutions are viable — is much less contested than the strong.
In practice
- A firm's stated values change within a year of moving from project work to subscription revenue, and nobody connects the two.
- A town's politics shift as the mill closes and the commuters arrive, well before anyone changes their mind about anything.
- Possible explanations
- One explanation is resources: whoever controls production can fund the institutions that interpret the world. Another is fit, since arrangements that work against how a society produces are expensive to maintain.
- In its favour
- The weak form has considerable support: how a society produces constrains which institutions survive, and comparative work on property, law and family forms finds strong associations.
- Against it
- Causation runs both ways, since legal and financial institutions make particular kinds of production possible, and Weber's argument about religion and capitalism is the standing counter-case. The strict version specifies no test.
- Standing
- Even sympathetic readers dispute how strictly the determination runs.
- Further reading
- Wikipedia
- Subject
- Sociology & Culture
- Essay
- How societies hold together, sort people, and change