What is the importance of the work of Marx and Durkheim for economic anthropology?IntroductionThe works of Karl Marx and Émile Durkheim have proven that they were indeed the founding fathers of modern economics. social theory from the end of the 19th to the beginning of the 20th century. Along with others (Weber, Simmel, Veblen, etc.), they laid the foundations for our understanding of the relationships that exist between culture and society, on the one hand, and economic activity, on the other. Marx saw economics in terms of conflicts between different interest groups, which he called "classes", over rights to various facets of production processes, and the effect these conflicts had on determining other areas of culture. Durkheim, for his part, was more interested in the division of labor, classifications organized around social distinctions, and how economic activity could be understood in terms of various forms of social solidarity. The Significance of Karl Marx Karl Marx lived from 1818 to 1883, during which time he wrote on history, philosophy, politics and economics. His work is generally recognized through his numerous publications, notably The Communist Manifesto (1848) and Das Kapital (Capital) (1867-1894). Marx's work in economics laid the foundation for recent understandings of labor and its relationship to the capitalist system, and previous economists and scholars (Schumpeter, 1952; Hicks, 1974) believe that his work influenced much of the resulting economic thought, as well as more recent scholars (Unger, 2007). Marx's theories of society, politics, and economics encourage the idea that human societies progress through a conflict between class property that controls production and a dispossessed society...... middle of paper . ..... The rules of sociology Method. NY: The Free Press. Durkheim, E., (1984). The division of labor in society. NY: The Free Press. Hart, K., (2001), The Memory Bank: Money in an Unequal World. WW Norton & Company. Hicks, J., (1974), The Crisis of Keynesian Politics. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Hann, C. and Hart, K., (2011), Economic Anthropology. Polity Press. Marx, K., (1948), The Communist Manifesto. NY: Norton & Co. Marx, K., (1867), Capital: the process of capitalist production. Moscow: Progress Publishers. Schumpeter, JA, (1952), Reviews in Economic Theory. JCB Mohr/Paul Siebeck: Tubingen.Smith, A., (1776), An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. Edinburgh: Thomas NelsonSpencer, H., (1857), Progress: its law and its cause. Westminster Review. pp. 445-485.Unger, RM, (2007), The Self Awakened: Pragmatism Unbound. Harvard College.