This Essay Will Aim to Explain the Main Differences Between Marxian, Durkheimian, and Weberian Approaches to Social Inequality

Durkheim on the other hand recognised how society has become more and more complex as time goes on. Complex societies as he noticed have a much higher division of labour as opposed to primitive societies. Thus members of complex societies must perform more specialised tasks and as a result of these tasks becoming more specialised, rewards in unequal amounts in order of importance must be given out in order to fill these positions where talents may be scarce and to give people the motivation to fill these positions in society. For example, a doctor would not be paid the same as person employed to clean the streets, as a doctors occupation requires years of training. Unlike Marx and Weber, Durkheim did not really take into account economic, life chances or power group factors when explaining social inequality. He believed that the division of labour in society provided motivation for performing certain tasks, and those with which required harder work received a better pay, and therefore, those members in society occupied higher classes, status groups, and parties.…