Simmel's Metropolis and Mental Life - Surviving the City

Simmel’s analysis of modern society reflects the views on the money economy, division of labor, and ideas of capitalist competition previously discussed by Marx, Durkheim, and Weber. His ideas are closely related to Marx’s in his analysis of the money economy, while he moves away from Marx’s concept of class conflict. In terms of class, Simmel seems to have the same understanding as Durkheim, who views the division of labor as a progressive, widening movement which doesn’t need to endure an uprising of the working class in order for society to work. This leads to an idea of freedom which Marx and Durkheim would seem to disagree on, two ideas which Simmel discusses in The Metropolis. This concept of freedom, as well as uniqueness, is reflected in Weber’s emphasis on the influence of ideas on society. Weber and Simmel share thoughts on actions that are not necessarily caused by economic situations. 

Marx and Simmel provide their distinct definitions of exchange value, with Marx emphasizing the role of production by labor, and Simmel emphasizing the producer’s need to find a way to appeal to the customer. In the metropolis, a place filled with so many unique roles, how does society find importance in each person? Many job opportunities have been taken by others, so the process of exchange necessitates the seller’s creativity in convincing others that their work is worthy of the buyer’s sacrifice of money. In Simmel’s words, “…in the life of a city, struggle with nature for the means of life is transformed into a conflict with human beings and the gain which is fought for is granted, not by nature, but by man.”(Simmel, 271) Marx explains this process primarily in terms of the working class and the process of production. Exchange value in his terms, like Simmel’s, changes with time and place, according to how productive labor is. Capitalism and the industrial revolution wipe out the creativity of the individual, and Marx does not see any possibility for people to endure the continuation of this suppression. The similarity in these definitions of exchange value is the generalization of every day exchanges that have subjective influences. First, the process that Marx describes is established. Then, Simmel’s process is carried out in the metropolis, where the blasé attitude becomes an answer to the problems associated with this generalization of exchange.

As Marx believes there is a dangerous power in money due to its “transformation of all human and natural properties into their contraries, the universal confounding and overturning of things,”(Marx 54) and its objectification of the value of labor, Simmel also speaks the same way about the transformation of human values into quantitative, objective values. However, while claiming that the money economy is so closely attached to the intellectualism of the people of the metropolis, he does not necessarily admonish the use of money. It is an inevitable system of making all exchanged products recognizable by all, and putting all objects on an equal scale without distinctions: “this is why the metropolis is the seat of commerce and it is in it that the purchasability of things appears in quite a different aspect than in simpler economies”(268)..“what appears here directly as dissociation is in reality only one of the elementary forms of socialization”(Simmel 269).

Durkheim fits in between Marx’s and Simmel’s discussions on the role of the division of labor in modern society, with his explanation of the change between pre-industrial society and industrial society. When Simmel defines the metropolis as an expansive entity in which “the personality can, so to speak, scarcely maintain iteslf in the face of it,”(271) there seems to be a relation with Durkheim’s concept of anomie, a mental struggle due to the lack of social ties or regulations, which is more likely to appear with a great division of labor that no longer provides strictly set classes. In these types of societies, Durkheim believes “the struggle grows more violent and painful, both from being less controlled and because competition is greater… How could the desire to live not be weakened under such conditions?”(121) Durkheim explained the changes in social bonds as a difference between mechanical and organic solidarity, and described that anomie is a common reason for suicide in modern life(124). Simmel, however, seems to believe that the city life progresses to a solution for the problem. When we read The Metropolis , we might wonder if money economy was the regulation that was needed in the metropolis because the rationality involved in it leads to a system of social interaction:

Simmel gives us a timeline of the process of individualism: in order for people to experience the freedom and equality that they wished for in an unjust society, society had to endure the process of removing distinctions using an equalizing system. This was the system of money. This quantitative approach to life became a central aspect of those in the metropolis, and it led to a devaluation of personal interests. But this was not the end of the the situation, as Marx would have concluded. This devaluation is similar to his concept of alienation of the worker, except it does not result in an uprising. It results in the process of the individual striving to be unique and irreplaceable. In The Metropolis the great division of labor and its resulting specialization is, as Durkheim believes, a mere change in society. Simmel reduces the dangers of specialization to a headache that people learn to overcome by using calculative processes throughout daily life. One learns not to pay attention to many different stimulations and chooses what is necessary. This is why opposing interests such as sexuality or religion may have mattered to the point of chaos in a small society, but don’t spark as much conflict in a huge city. People just don’t have the time to deal with everyone’s personal interests.

“The eighteenth century found the individual in the grip of powerful bonds which had become meaningless- bonds of a political, agrarian, guild and religious nature” (Simmel 272). This statement by Simmel is also what Weber was writing about in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. Social actions have become habit rather than the ethical beliefs they started as, and what has survived from it is a mere rationality. Weber claims that capitalism would hardly have survived without its connection to strong religious ideas; “A man does not ‘by nature’ wish to earn more and more money, but simply to live as he is accustomed to live and earn as much as is necessary for that purpose. Wherever modern capitalism has begun its work… it has encountered the immensely stubborn resistance of this leading trait of pre-capitalistic labour”(Weber 157). The acceptance of capitalism came about as a response to the changing viewpoints of the Protestant leaders, Calvin and Baxter, who found ethical meanings in capitalist methods.

When speaking of the metropolis, the meanings are also significant to the functioning of society. Simmel’s explanation of the Athenian small towns shows us that the submission of the individual to the ‘general human character’ is actually a process that does not exist in a big city. The “atmosphere of tension in which the weaker were held down and the stronger were impelled to the most passionate type of self protection”(Simmel 270) again seems to be the tension Marx and Durkheim address. In the big city, there is no longer that type of tension. There is a freedom that ignores the differences between people, and in this process, the individual can nurture the specific strengths he or she chooses. The reason why people of the city adhere to individualism could be either this blasé attitude or the economic system. Just as Weber is hesitant to attribute the origin of social conditions to merely material conditions, Simmel also debates whether it is solely the economy: “this psychological intellectualistic attitude and the money economy are in such close integration that no one is able to say whether it was the former that effected the latter or vice versa”(Simmel 267).

The fear for individuality’s future was what Simmel, Marx, Durkheim, and Weber all had in common. Simmel approached this analysis with neutrality, saying that at best we can understand the way people interact in society, while Marx believed there was no way individuality could survive in modern conditions. With increasing specialization, Durkheim believed individuality could come forth instead of diminishing, while Weber believed that at least in our current society, the bureaucratic influences were not as strong as they would be in a socialist society. The modern condition is a struggle that they have understood as our adaptation and to, and our dependence on, the dehumanizing money system, the division of labor, and beliefs in individuality.

Durkheim, E. (1983). The division of labor in society. In Alpern, T.(Ed.) Classical and Contemporary Sociological Theory . (P.104-110). Los Angeles, CA: Pine Forge Press.

Marx, K. (1867). Capital. In Alpern, T.(ed.) Classical and Contemporary Sociological Theory . (P.59-70). Los Angeles, CA: Pine Forge Press.

Simmel, G. (1903) The Metropolis and mental life. In Alpern, T.(ed.) Classical and Contemporary Sociological Theory . (P.265-273). Los Angeles, CA: Pine Forge Press.

Weber, M. (1904). The Protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism. In Alpern, T.(ed.) Classical and Contemporary Sociological Theory . (P.154-165). Los Angeles, CA: Pine Forge Press.