The bureaucracy is a major base of power that can be difficult to control. Max Weber believed that bureaucracies shared certain characteristics: chain of command, division of labor, and impersonality. The chain of command is a form of organization characterized by a hierarchical structure of authority. In a military context, for example, the chain of command is the line of authority and responsibility along which orders are passed within a military unit and between different units. The division of labor is when work is divided among specialized workers in order to improve productivity.
[ J. Elster, An Introduction to Karl Marx, (Cambridge, 1986), chapter 5, p.79.] Through history, society has managed to arrange and rearrange itself into complicated class structures. For example, the medieval era presented a feudal system, with feudal lords, guild masters, merchants, apprentices and serfs, which according to Marx’s modern bourgeoisie society is a by-product of the feudal society. The normative concept of exploitation, therefore as Marx speaks of it in the manifesto can be understood by its two distinct
The capitalist system, in its current conception, has fragmented the working conditions in which labour is produced (Wendling, 2009: 81). The de-industrialisation of many parts of the Western world and the rise of a mass of self-employed people have created a further intertwining of the interests of working people with the dominant class (Friedman, 2005: 51). In other words, in order to survive in the technologically-driven environment of the age of globalisation, the workers are impelled to accept the workings of capitalism, instead of opposing them (Marcuse, 2002: 21). In this context, it is possible to argue that Marxian view of alienation is useful in order to explain certain aspects of modern capitalism. However, Marxian theory fails to shed light on why the workers have not revolted against this state of affairs (Wood, 2004: 43).
The study of social science is concerned about how relationships are built and established between man and his material world. This type of relationship that exists in social phenomena is what Marxist termed as “class conflict or struggle”. Right from the historical existence the way the society is formed or structured, only few groups of people have the opportunities ‘to enjoy and owns the “means of production of goods”, while other groups look for a strategic way to survive. Consciously or unconsciously this thought dominates the heart of every human
Moreover, the working class who felt excluded to this modernization saw populism as something that would cater their demands and therefore appealing (Weyland, 2001). Dependency, on the other hand, refers to the condition when peripheral states united against the core. This anger was mainly fueled by the very role of the periphereal states which is to supply raw materials to the core. Populism in this influence is appealing to the multi-class alliances (Weyland,
In terms of political and social structures, manorialism and feudalism were two major ones in Western Europe. Manorialism was a system of reciprocal economic and political obligations between landlords and peasants. Most individuals were serfs living on self-sufficient agricultural estates, also known as manors. In return for protection, they gave lords part of their crops and provided labor services. (p.215) Years later, Western Europe became very prosperous, and this prosperity promoted political change, influenced by structures established in more unstable times.
However, many critics have pointed out to lot of lacunae and inadequacies which surround the theory. Some of the criticisms of the Marxist Class theory are as follows: 1. Marx gives all importance to matter and ignores the role of human beings. Marx said that Men create history but not of their will! According to Marx, man is incapable of taking any decision on his own.
Hall in an article, Literary and Cultural Theory, “...methodologies emphasize issues gender, sexuality, and/or race,” (Hall 73). Hall describes that Marxism is the idea where “...society is stratified into three primary classes.- the Aristocracy, the Bourgeoisie, and the Proletariat…”(Hall 74). Each of these three social classes has a different view of everything and a different set of interests. In the novel, Brave New World, Huxley splits the society into five different groups, the Alphas, Betas, Deltas, Gammas and the Epsilon’s, but are put into three categories. For example, The Aristocracy are the Alphas, the middle class or the Bourgeoisie are Betas, Deltas, Gammas and the poor workers or the are the Proletarians are mainly Epsilons.
This hostility toward capitalism affected the United States significantly. In America’s Cold War, the authors detail the nature of communist hostility toward capitalism - therefore the American system - and the global effects of their hostility: “... radical movements, such as Vladimir Lenin’s rising Bolshevik party in Russia, could seize power throughout the world. Either way, the system of democratic capitalism that [Woodrow] Wilson believed represented the most advanced form of political order faced a bleak future”. Although America, too, wanted to establish a new world order with democratic republic ideologies - ensuring an international check-and-balance system but displacing the existing European model - the Soviet Union wanted a new order at the expense of the existing European structure and the existing American structure under totalitarian rule. The United States became fearful that Lenin and Stalin’s ideologies would spark a revolution against capitalism among Americans.
He gives examples of the classes that have faced and grappled with each other throughout the ages as oppressed and oppressor, and claims that the coming of new ages in the past has simply signified changes in the hierarchy of social classes while the hierarchy itself as a structure of society remains intact, declaring the bourgeoisie as the new ruling class which has simply created new conditions in which to oppress the proletariat. He defines the bourgeoisie as those who own and control the means of production and the proletariat as those “wage laborers” who work under the bourgeois system. He explains how the feudal system collapsed due to the development of modern industry and the inability of the feudal guilds to deal with the new markets, prompting those who are in charge of manufacturing industry to rise in political status and eventually wrest control. He then explains what he sees as the effects of the bourgeoisie becoming the ruling class, namely the replacement of traditional abstract principles with materialism, the conversion of all values into material exchange value and the establishment of a new hierarchy based not on ideals but on economic superiority. The engine behind these changes and the fulcrum of bourgeois rule, in Marx’s view, is the prioritization of Free Trade above all else, which has caused all of those who do