Social Stratification in 'Manifesto of the Communist Party' by Karl Marx and Max Weber's 'Class, Status and Party'
Social stratification is the ranking of members of society in a way
that some of its members are regarded as superior and others as inferior.
This theory is certainly debated in present time and was debated as far
back as 1776 when Karl Marx presented his theory in his "Manifesto of
the Communist Party". In the 1880's, Max Weber combatted that document
in his own "Class, Status and Party."
Karl Marx believed that social standing or rank was based solely on
class position. For example, an owner of a business was regarded far above
a worker in that same business. Class position would also influence the
amount of political power one had as well as the prestige that one enjoyed.
Weber, however, argued that there were three parts to social
stratification: class, status and power. He stated that class was relative
to how much money a person had and how much property that person owned.
Status was split into two categories, "h...
The fundamental contradiction of Liberalism is that it produces inequality. In order to guarantee individual rights, in fact, a liberal government cannot force its citizens to promote equality. Furthermore, in a capitalist economy there is an incentive to produce on a mass scale, and the best way to increase productivity is to reduce the cost of labor; by reducing the cost of labor, the owners of the factories become richer, while the actual workers earn less money than they ought to. According to Karl Marx, this is the main problem of Liberalism: it somehow legalized inequality among people. So, in The Communist Manifesto, Marx explains why a total revolution of the society is inevitably going to happen.
The decline of aristocracy in The Communist Manifesto began with Karl Marx’s statement, “The history of all hitherto existing societies is the history of class struggles.”1 Marx recognized the ideals of the social rank, which has influenced every society throughout history. The two social classes described by Marx were the Bourgeoisie, or the upper class, and the Proletariats, or the lower class. Before the Bourgeoisie came to social power, landowners and corporate organizations ran the society. Marx believed that the severe separation of the two classes greatly troubled society and that the two classes must coexist as one with each other.2
America is supposedly where all men are created equally, yet society has created a hierarchy based on socioeconomic standing and political power. Theorists Karl Marx and Max Weber has applied their theories of social class on the model of social stratification; a system in which society ranks categories of people in a hierarchy. According to Karl Marx, the main classes of society are the bourgeoisie and the proletariat; those that are the owners of the means of productions and those who work for it. On the other hand, Max Weber argued that there is a multidimensional ranking rather than a hierarchy of clearly defined class. America has created a social system in which those of middle and lower classes tend to struggle to decrease the gap within
The changes which arose by way of the Industrial Revolution had a significant and long-term impact on the economy, the political arena, and society. Because of all the negative changes caused by industrialization and urbanization the Europeans wanted and needed answers on how to deal with these changes. Society was now divided into different classes the upper-middle class (wealthy) and the lower class (working), “Although reform organizations grew rapidly in the 1830s and 1840s, many Europeans found them insufficient to answer the questions raised by industrialization and urbanization” (Hunt 703). The rich was getting richer at the expense of the workers and with the issues and concerns building “New ideologies such as liberalism and socialism offered competing answers to these questions and provided the platform for new political movements” (Hunt 703). The communist wanted the working class to rise, the division of different classes to go away as well as private property, so they wrote a manifesto, The Communist Manifesto (1848) a collaboration between Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels “laid out many of the central principles that would guide Marxist revolution in the future: they insisted that all history is shaped by class struggle” (Hunt 708).
and the opportunities of income, and (3) the casual component is represented under the condition of the commodity or about market (‘class situations’)” (p.138).
In The Communist Manifesto, Karl Marx and Fredrick Engels attempt to explain the reasons for why there is class struggle and suggest how to prevent class separation. According to Marx there are two different types of social classes: the bourgeoisies and the proletarians. The bourgeoisie are capitalists who own the means of production and the proletarians are the working classes who are employed by the bourgeoisies. Due to their wealth, the bourgeoisies had the power to control pretty much of everything and the proletarians had little or no say in any political issues. According to Marx, the proletarians population would increase and they would eventually rise above the bourgeoisie and hold a revolt against them. The proletarians would base this revolt with the help of 'faith and reason.' With the help from The Communist Manifesto, the proletarians realize the conditions they are in by being overpowered by bourgeoisies. The proletarians now have the reasons to ask questions about origin, order, and their purpose of life. Also, they could raise questions about meaning, truth, and value. Through 'faith and reason' the proletarians will be able to overthrow the empowerment of the bourgeoisies.1
Marx’s analysis of social class is that there will always be a divide between the haves and the have not’s. He separates them into two classes the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. The bourgeoisie signifies the capitalist class, while proletariat signifies the working class. Max Weber’s defines class as “a group of people who have a similar level of economic resources”(p.244). He identifies two main elements of class, material resources, and skill knowledge in the marketplace. In contrast to Marx’s view on class Weber believed that class was not just based solely on ownership of means of production, but could also be based off ownership of other resources and the amount knowledge one has. Pierre Bourdieu’s view on class is that it is based on the concept of cultural capital meaning, “our tastes, knowledge, attitudes, language, and ways of thinking that we exchange in interaction with others”
Karl Marx (1818 - 1883) and Max Weber (1864 - 1920) both recognised that economic categories played a large part in social class structure. Nineteenth Century history plays an important part in understanding how class influenced identities. The Industrial revolution was changing the structure of the communities, the rich or landowners having a far better standard of living with better education, health care, property ownership and power than the poor. The working class would have a daily struggle to survive. The change in Trade Unions meant that the working class had a voice, helping to push their needs forward, looking for better standards of living and working conditions. Marx's concept of class was based around the production of goods. The emerging owners of these goods, or capital, were known as the ruling class. Marxism would define only two classes, the ruling class and the working class. The influence on identity of these two class structures would be very relevant in those days. The working class would earn a wage from the production of the goods but the ruling class would sell these for a profit and exploit the workers. The two classes were on two different levels of wealth, property ownership and social standing and they would struggle to mix, they were dependent on each other but the rewards would be unevenly matched.
In short, Marx stated that class represent group of people. Based on collective effervescence, people with shared thoughts and ideas will spontaneously group together and develop collective consciousness, that they are all somewhat related to each other. On the other hand, Weber suggested that class is not a group, it is just people with same characteristics gather together, they don't necessarily have moral solidarity, the connection with each
A social class can be defined as a large group of people sharing similar economic resources. (Giddens, 1997) Communist Marx identifies two social classes: bourgeoisie and proletariat. “Marx held that history was a series of class struggles between owners of capital (capitalists) and workers (the proletariat).”(econlib.org, 2013). Marx states that the bourgeoisie cannot exist without proletariat and the other way round. In The Manifesto Marx and Engels outline the evolution of the bourgeoisie.
Karl Marx, a German philosopher, saw this inequality growing between what he called "the bourgeoisie" and "the proletariat" classes. The bourgeoisie was the middle/upper class which was growing in due to the industrial revolution, and the proletariats were the working class, the poor. These two classes set themselves apart by many different factors. Marx saw five big problems that set the proletariat and the bourgeoisie aside from each other. These five problems were: The dominance of the bourgeoisie over the proletariat, the ownership of private property, the set-up of the family, the level of education, and their influence in government. Marx, in The Communist Manifesto, exposes these five factors which the bourgeoisie had against the communist, and deals with each one fairly. As for the proletariat class, Marx proposes a different economic system where inequality between social classes would not exist.
This review can be seen in the example of someone who owns a small, local business not being seen as belonging to the same class as someone who owns a nationwide corporation, despite both people owning property. They are not seen as belonging to the same class because the large corporation makes a greater impact on society than the small, local business, and generates a larger income. Those who do not own property are differentiated in the same way by Weber, except this time he analyzes them based upon what kinds of services they offer and if they themselves participate in receiving services. In his final piece about class, Weber mentions class struggle. Class struggles are where people in the same class situation react, in large numbers, in ways that are an advantageous way to materialize and achieve their interests. Weber calls the factors that bring about class struggles, and determine class situations, markets. There are three types of markets that he mentions; the labor market, the commodities market, and the capitalistic market. The labor market is where people sell labor for money, the commodities
Karl Marx noted that society was highly stratified in that most of the individuals in society, those who worked the hardest, were also the ones who received the least from the benefits of their labor. In reaction to this observation, Karl Marx wrote The Communist Manifesto where he described a new society, a more perfect society, a communist society. Marx envisioned a society, in which all property is held in common, that is a society in which one individual did not receive more than another, but in which all individuals shared in the benefits of collective labor (Marx #11, p. 262). In order to accomplish such a task Marx needed to find a relationship between the individual and society that accounted for social change. For Marx such relationship was from the historical mode of production, through the exploits of wage labor, and thus the individual’s relationship to the mode of production (Marx #11, p. 256).
During the nineteenth century, Karl Marx and Max Weber were two of the most influential sociologists. Both of them tried to explain social change taking place in a society at that time. On the one hand, their views are very different, but on the other hand, they had many similarities.
According to Marx class is determined by property associations not by revenue or status. It is determined by allocation and utilization, which represent the production and power relations of class. Marx’s differentiate one class from another rooted on two criteria: possession of the means of production and control of the labor power of others. The major class groups are the capitalist also known as bourgeoisie and the workers or proletariat. The capitalist own the means of production and purchase the labor power of others. Proletariat is the laboring lower class. They are the ones who sell their own labor power. Class conflict to possess power over the means of production is the powerful force behind social growth.