Karl Marx, a ground breaking sociologist, economist, and philosopher, lived from 1818 to 1883. During his lifetime he propounded this epic sociologic perspective, the conflict theory. (McClelland) The conflict theory discusses how the rich and the poor have been fighting ongoing battle for power. The group in control actively defends their advantages.
1) According to the film, the standard metaphor for a corporation is that of an apple within a barrel where most apples are good and just a few bad. Several CEO’s offered alternative metaphors, such as pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, a sports team, family unity, a telephone system, or an eagle. Less flattering metaphors are that of a devouring monster, a whale, or the Frankenstein monster. Are any of these metaphors more appropriate than others?
2. Marx, Durkheim and Weber each have particular ways of handling social cohesion and change in human society or culture. Where does social cohesion and change come from, how does it happen, and what causes it? Does each have an analysis of change or merely a typology of stages? Are the causes of social cohesion and change materialist, idealist or some other approach?
The idea behind this according to Marx is that history is a series of stages, defined by their mode of production and the struggle between classes: "The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles. " According to Marx, the current historical stage is the capitalist historical stage. This is the conflict between the bourgeoisie (middle class) and the proletariat (working class). This theory is supported by the historical stages preceding the capitalist historical stage which can easily be defined by their modes of production and class struggle, or lack thereof.
In this paper, I’ll analyze Marx’s social theory, relations of production, social classes and the structures of capitalist society. Hegelian dialectic approach was the key figure for Marx while he was building the social theory.
For Marx, he considered class in relation to the means to production. He saw a shift from a feudal society on agriculture, where the land owning classes are classified from the peasant class. Scribes, information dealers, intelligencia and civil servants, who did not contribute to the production in the economy, are considered of no use and ar classless. On the other hand, Weber saw class on several layers (Bartle, 2007). Such differences can be understood in a sociological perspective.
Third, Marx demonstrated that, as productive powers of a human society – its ‘productive forces’ - inevitably keep growing, they necessarily come into conflict with the prevalent way of organizing social production and reproduction, which he called ‘the social relations of production’. Fourth, he made the point that as productive forces developed, there would emerge a surplus of production over and above the needs of social reproduction, which would then enable a section of society to live off the labor of the rest of society. In other words, the emergence of a surplus would make logically possible the coming into being of class society, based on a division of society between the majority who work – the exploited - and a minority who live off the labor of the majority – the exploiters. Such a class division would of course be possible only on the basis of the minority of exploiters being in control of social production, primarily through their monopoly of ownership of
The three main ideas from the Communist Manifesto The Communist Manifesto, written by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, had little to no influence when it was first published in 1848 for the Communist League. However, soon after Marx and Engel’s other writings on socialism became published it grew in popularity, and was considered a standard text of the time (Brians, 2006). With Marx’s radical ideas, and Engels’ thorough writing, they were able to convey how they were individual of the other socialists of the time and elaborate on their idea socialism and how it would inevitably be achieved. The three main ideas from The Communist Manifesto are class conflict, ephemeral capitalism, and inevitable revolution.
In his work, Marx focused on two antagonistic classes of capitalists and workers to demonstrate uneven distribution of material resources and exploitation power, also rooted in economic relations, within society. Hence, in the Marxian framework, social position could be treated as a unidimensional construct. Weber extended Marx’s analytical scheme by introducing additional components of social position, “status” and “party”. Status, or prestige,
Capitalism, according to Karl Marx is divided into two major social classes: the Bourgeoisie and the Proletariat. The Bourgeoisie, which is the minority of the class system, own the means of production such as land, machinery, factories and raw materials whereas the Proletariat, which is the majority of the class system, having no means of their own production and have to work to earn wage for a living. Karl Marx has his own theory that history is made up by class struggle which he mentioned in his book – Manifesto of the Communist Party: “The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.” (Marx and Engels, 1848) and had predicted that the Proletariat would lead a revolution to overthrow the Bourgeoisie. Karl Marx believed that there will be intrinsic conflict like exploitation, alienation of labour and commodity fetishism between both of the classes.
Karl Marx and Max Weber both agreed that capitalism generates alienation in modern societies, but the cause for it were both different. For Marx it is due to economic inequality in where the capitalist thinks that the workers worth nothing more than a source of labour, that can be employed and dismissed at will. This causes the workers to be dehumanised by their jobs (in the past, routine factory work and in the present-day, managing demands on a computer), which leads to the workers finding slight satisfaction and feeling incapable of improving their situation. It was noted by Marx four methods on how capitalism alienates workers. The first, is alienation from the function of working.
In the 1840s, Karl Marx developed the theory of scientific socialism. He outlined his ideas in The Communist Manifesto. The driving point of this pamphlet was that Marx predicted a conflict between the social classes that would eventually cause a classless society where everyone in the community would own all the means of production. However, Marx was not justified in developing his theories because his theories erroneously predicted the ultimate outcome of the industrial revolution. Marx did not foresee the reform movement, the rise of the middle class, and that there were no incentives in communism.
The key concepts that I will discuss in this assignment are the theories and ideas of Karl Marx on Alienation, Exploitation, Materialism and Class struggle. The objective of this assignment is to examine the literature written about Karl Marx in order to clearly present his main ideas and theories in relation to work and capital. In the second part of my assignment I will discuss what relevance these theories and ideas have in today’s world. Karl Heinrich Marx the philosopher and revolutionary socialist was born on the 5th of May 1818 and died on the 14th of March 1883. He was born in the city of Trier in Germany and studied law in Bonn University.
Class conflict, Marx believed, was what encouraged the evolution of society. To quote Marx himself, The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles. Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guild-master and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one
Conflict theory states that tensions and conflicts arise when resources, status, and power are unevenly distributed between groups in society and that these conflicts become the engine for social change. In this context, Marx’s conflict approach was developed in 19th century by Karl Marx (1818-83) .Marx argued wealth and power were unequally distributed in society and sought to explain how one minority group (1% ruling-class) in society maintained its dominance over the majority (working-class). Weber formulated a response to Marx’s theory. Weber saw that conflict didn’t overwhelmingly involve the economy, but that the state and economy together set up conditions for conflict. In this essay I will discuss the views of Conflict Theorists on
