Social stratification is when groups of people are ranked in a society into a hierarchy. It is a universal concept. However, different cultures follows different criteria for this division. Things like wealth, education, gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity and age are all factors in which divides people. For a majority of societies the pattern is that men, those who are rich and the more education a person has, puts them at a higher ranking. Those higher up gets to dictate how the rest of society is divided. There are four systems of stratification that exist or have existed around the world. Class system, estate system, caste system and slavery. A class system is social stratification based on birth and individual achievements. An example is in the United States, there are lower, middle and upper classes. Those in the lower class, …show more content…
Karl Marx is responsible for one of the earliest explanations on the role that social stratification plays in a society. Using the social-conflict approach, Marx attempted to explain, “How in a society so rich, so many could be so poor” (Macionis, 2015). The major component of Marx’s view of social stratification is that there are two class systems within a capitalist society, the few bourgeoisie and the masses of proletarians. The bourgeoisie are those who own and operate businesses and factories in order to make profit. The proletarians are those who work in these businesses and factories to bring in income for living. Both these class systems have opposing realities and interests making conflict inevitable. In wanting to make more profit, the bourgeoisie ends up exploiting the workers causing them to be alienated from the products of their labor. Marx concluded that capitalism will bring its own downfall when the proletarians overthrow this type of system for a more socialist way of life that will meet the needs of
Social Stratification in 'Manifesto of the Communist Party' by Karl Marx and Max Weber's 'Class, Status and Party'
In Marx’s opinion, the cause of poverty has always been due to the struggle between social classes, with one class keeping its power by suppressing the other classes. He claims the opposing forces of the Industrial Age are the bourgeois and the proletarians. Marx describes the bourgeois as a middle class drunk on power. The bourgeois are the controllers of industrialization, the owners of the factories that abuse their workers and strip all human dignity away from them for pennies. Industry, Marx says, has made the proletariat working class only a tool for increasing the wealth of the bourgeoisie. Because the aim of the bourgeoisie is to increase their trade and wealth, it is necessary to exploit the worker to maximize profit. This, according to Marx, is why the labor of the proletariat continued to steadily increase while the wages of the proletariat continued to steadily decrease.
Marx begins explaining the inevitable fall of the bourgeoisie by claiming that once the peasants overthrow the feudalist society and transform into a capitalist society they [the bourgeoisie] will create a ruthless industry in which the proletariat are treated as slaves. Marx describes this industry as one of “the epidemic of overproduction,” (Marx). This overproduction of the proletariat will allow for the success of the capitalist society bourgeoisie. By creating a capitalist industry, the bourgeoisie ultimately brought about their own downfall, “...created their own grave-diggers” (Marx). As the market quickly grows in size and wealth, the bourgeois becomes insensitive and unable to adapt to the increase of wealth they’ve created, “too narrow to comprise the wealth created by them,” (Marx). This will result in a period of disorganization and chaos. This period will be the period in which the proletariat will be able to revolt against the bourgeoisie, overthrow the capitalist system. Once the capitalist system is overthrown. They will eventually transition it to a communist system through socialism. Once a communist system is established, all the social classes will fall and become one equal class. The once troubled industry which brought the fall of the bourgeoisie will become a communist industry which will distribute its profit equally among its workers as long as they work and private property will not be
Stratification systems, categorized people by class, gender, ethnicity, wealth/income. When people are categorized, start looking at different systems within the social system or social mobility. “The four main systems of stratification have been slavery, caste, estate, and class. Each of these systems allows greater or less flexibility in terms of social mobility. Social mobility is the ability to move up or down within a social stratification hierarchy” (Larkin, 2015). Slavery is a social status began with social norms allowing people to own others. The slaves had no wealth or power while under this social status. Caste systems are all aspects of social status are assigned at births and held forever,
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”
According to our text, Conflict Theory explains that in a capitalist system society is fundamentally divided between two classes: the working class, whose only resource is labor, and the powerful bourgeoisie, who own of the means of production and have seemingly unlimited access to resources such as housing, food, money, services, and political representation. (Schaefer 14). Viewing Western society in this way, Marx explained that struggle between these two social classes was inevitable due to the oppression and exploitation of the working class, otherwise known as the proletariat, by the bourgeoisie. Furthermore, Marx maintained that the capitalist system of economic relationships (demonstrated by unequal distribution of resources), social relationships (demonstrated by class stratification among other things), and political relationships (demonstrated by political representation as well as widespread propaganda) maintained the power and dominance of the few elite owners over the many workers and that the solution to this...
Social class is a system of stratification whereby groups of people share a similar social position in terms of occupation, income, ownership and wealth. Social class is also closely related to levels of education, status and lifestyle (including housing, car ownership and leisure activities) as well as power and influence. Class inequalities can arise due to social class. Class inequality is the existence of unequal opportunities and rewards for different social classes, in particular working class disadvantage and upper class privilege. Marxism is a theoretical perspective based on the ideas of Marx (1818 - 1883) who identified two key groups in capitalist society - the Bourgeoisie who own and control the means of production and the Proletariat
Social stratification as defined by Brinkerhoff et al. is “an institutionalized pattern of inequality in which social statuses are ranked on the basis of their access to scarce resources” (Brinkerhoff et al. 152). By scarce resources, many people have to deal with poverty and having a lack of money to buy the things they need in their lives. Social class is defined as “a category of people who share roughly the same class, status, and power and who have a sense of identification with each other” (Brinkerhoff et al. 155). Your social class has to do with your socioeconomic status along with the power and connections you have. Social mobility on the other hand is “the process of changing one’s social class” (Brinkerhoff et al. 153).
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.
The class system places the individual in the social system based on his achieved status. This status is earned or chosen. This includes educational level, careers, and spouses.
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).
Marx’s theory stems from the social conditions existing during his lifetime. This was when the industrial revolution was hitting its stride. Great technological advances were being made to the modes of production, especially in the areas of agriculture and textiles. This was the main factor that drove peasants from the countryside to find work in the cities. In addition, capitalism had emerged as the dominant form of economics. Marx contended that class is based upon the economic conditions of society. He identified class through the history of the changing modes of production. In a capital...
Karl Marx focused on Capitalism and the rise of social conflict as the basis of modernity. Marx felt that capitalism through industrialization had increased the productive capability of the economy. Nevertheless, he also felt that capitalism produced two opposing classes of people. The first class, who owned and controlled the means of production and hired laborers, were known as the Bourgeoisie. The second class, who were com...
Karl Marx emphasized a lot on the importance of socialism in society. In his theory, socialism was the only way to end the huge in socio-economic classes. He condemned the emergence of capitalism and the growth of industries that made disunited employers and employees as captured in his theory of labour. In his view, under capitalist production, a great number of people, more often than not, are confiscated from their rewards after so much hard work, and have utterly no control over the environment in which they work under. Jobs no longer reflect human imagination, but rather an insignificant method of generating more profits to enrich modest elite. Marx 's fixation on class reflects even today 's post-modern, socially dynamic world. Marx ideas
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.