Sociology of economic life, the development of social economy, is formed for about three centuries. Its founders – E. Durkheim, M. Weber, T. Veblen, K. Marx, A. Smith sought to explain social changes in Western society in terms of the impact on them: division of labor, the state of the economy, urbanization, transformation of social structure. So was formed the system of sociological perspectives on productive activities, immersed in the context of economic change, gradually turning into an independent and respected discipline.
Classic stage (seredinok - early 20-ies of XX century) the formation of economic sociology is the stage of theoretical preparation, the formation of the original methodology. The characteristic features of the classical phase include:
-the development of fundamental principles of the study of real social processes at the core of the relationship between economy and society;
-development of the system of categories of economic-sociological analysis.
-formulation and theoretical analysis of some of the important issues lying at the intersection of Economics and society;
-wider promotion in theoretical perspectives the sociological view of the nature of economic processes as an alternative to the purely economic perspective on economic development.
A great contribution to the development of economic sociology in this period introduced ideas of E. Durkheim (1858-1917), P. J. Proudhon (1809-1865), John. R. Commons (1862-1945), G. Simmel (1858-1918), W. Sombart (1863-1941), M. Halbwachs (1877-1945). However, according to the lead in this branch of the Belarusian sociologist G. N. Sokolova, the most outstanding representatives of this stage are the German economist and philosopher Karl Marx, German economic historian and sociologist M. Weber, the American sociologist-economist T. Veblen. Their merit is that they have developed a sociological alternative to purely economic view of development of the economy.
Karl Marx (1818-1883) is one of the most influential thinkers of the nineteenth century the Top of the scientific activities of Marx began his most famous work "Capital" (1867), and the main contribution to the development of sociological thought has been the analysis of social structure, based on the belief that the essence of the historical process - the struggle for control over property and wealth. This struggle, according to Marx, determined by the division of labor, resulting in the formation of the classes having opposite interests. The essential nature of the classes varies in different periods of history depending on the dominant mode of economic production.
So, thought Marx, under capitalism there is a conflict between those whose work is used to create wealth, and the owners of the means of production. In "the German ideology" (1846) Marx used the terms "productive forces," "relations of production", "division of labor", in that it was possible to distinguish four different formations, covering all of human history: primitive communism, ancient society, feudalism and capitalism. The origins of the emergence of new formations in the bowels of the old Marx explained the contradictions that develop due to the restrictions imposed on the development of the productive forces by the production relations. These contradictions manifest themselves in the struggle for the appropriation of surplus value between classes created by a certain organization of division of labor. According to the economic theory of Karl Marx, with the development of capitalism, on the one hand, will tend to crystallize social relations between the two, and only two, classes - the capitalists and the proletariat; on the other hand, two and only two classes open to the possibility of creating political and social structure of society. If the proletariat in the struggle against the bourgeoisie combined in a class if by means of revolution, he turns himself into the ruling class and abolishes the old relations of production, these relations he destroys classes in General, and thus their domination as a class. In K. Marx, in place of the old bourgeois society, with its classes and class contradictions have an Association in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all. The contribution of Marx to the development of sociological thought retains its influence to this day.