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Structural functionalism
Impacts and effects of stratification in society
Functionalism and structuralism
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Structural-functionalist Kingsley Davis and Wilbert Moore concluded that stratification of society is inevitable because: for society to function its positions must be filled, some positions are more important than others, the more important positions must be filled by the more qualified people, and to motivate the more qualified people to fill these positions they must offer greater rewards. (2012:228) Example of Davis and Moore conclusion is if someone apply for a job as a teacher, they need to be highly qualify in area such as education and experience. For that person to be interest in the job, employer need to offer benefit like retirement plan, vacation time, health insurance, etc… Unlike the position as a teacher, if someone is applying …show more content…
Marx disagree with the functionalist view that people in power are not there because of superior traits; but more of an ideology that the elite use to justify their being at the top and seduce the oppressed into believing that their welfare depends on keeping quiet and following authorities. (2012:230) Marx saw four possible ways to distribute wealth: each person’s needs, what each person wants, what each person earns, and what each person can take. From Marx view there were two economically based social classes: the bourgeoisie are the capitalist class and the proletariats are the working class. The bourgeoisie are the haves, they control the means of production, norms and values of society. They use their social control to maintain their control in society and use their power to make distribution of resources seem fair. The proletariats will remain exploited if they do not develop a class consciousness. If the proletariats are to develop a class consciousness they will be able to overthrow the bourgeoisie. People who has more power will have more resources comparing to people who has no power will have less resources. The elite class has more power and money which allow them to have any resource they need or want like education, job, food, etc… The lower class will not have the same resources like the elite class, some drop out of high school to work to provide for their food, housing, and clothing for their
Marx believes there is a true human nature, that of a free species being, but our social environment can alienate us from it. To describe this nature, he first describes the class conflict between the bourgeois and the proletariats. Coined by Marx, the bourgeois are “the exploiting and ruling class.”, and the proletariats are “the exploited and oppressed class” (Marx, 207). These two classes are separated because of the machine we call capitalism. Capitalism arises from private property, specialization of labor, wage labor, and inevitably causes competition.
Marx’s can be somewhat different from Nietzsche when it comes to classes beliefs. Marx believes that society is overrun by the rich class and that the poor class does not stand a chance to become rich someday. The poor class can be looked upon as the slaves and forth then they will always be the slaves no matter what they do and how they act like. According to Marx’s reading, Marx states that “the Bourgeoisie has stripped of its halo every occupation hitherto honoured and looked up in awe.” What Marx is trying to say is that the bourgeoisie are the capitalists, the ones who creates the companies in order
Both Bastiat and Marx believe that every person has individual rights and that every person should have an equal opportunity to lead a successful life. They believe that people should have the right to lead whatever life they chose to. Class structure and how individuals are placed into these classes is the biggest concept that Marx speaks about in Communist Manifesto. Marx believes that there should not be different social classes of people. During his time, there were two main classes of people; the bourgeois and the proletariat. The bourgeois were the modern Capitalist’s, who owned means of production and would employ wage-workers to operate these machines, generating huge profits for themselves. The proletariats were the wage-workers, who could not afford their own means of production, therefore relied on the bourgeois for work and income. The bourgeois had all the power in society. Marx believed that centralizing the means of production would take away the social power that the bourgeois had over the proletariats. He believed in the abolition of private property ...
The bourgeoisie benefit from the oppression of the proletariat through the means of production. Marx argues that to fix this problem of the proletariat being oppressed would be for the state to own the means of production. “The executive of the modern state is but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie. ”(Marx, 5) Marx argues that the government in place at that moment was not there to ensure the public interest but the interest of a select group.
Marx expressed many views about the over empowerment of the bourgeoisies in The Communists Manifesto. Marx believed that the working class was not getting paid what they deserved for the quality of work that they were producing. Marx thought that the all workers should be paid the same rather than by social position. For instance, Marx thought that a mineworker should be paid as much as a doctor. Marx states, ?The average price of w...
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.
Marx believed that even though the bourgeoisie played a prominent role in history, it’s impact was predominantly negative. In Marx's’ words, “the bourgeoisie, wherever it has got the upper hand, has put an end to all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations”. Marx said that wherever there is a bourgeoisie, the relationships between the members of that society break down. We see the population split up into classes and nobility, which Marx
Functionalist argue that stratification is "necessary and beneficial" to a society to ensure the highest qualified individuals will fill the best societal positions. Inequality in the distribution of desirables exist as a device for ensuring that the most important positions are filled by the most qualified people. Certain jobs are more important than others, and those jobs require special skill and talent. The cycle of unequal opportunity is intensifying, and the United States beneficiaries often slander those who are the most systemati...
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.
For example, a worker who thought he would benefit from a “proletarian” government would not find it rational to risk his life and resources to start a revolution against the bourgeois government. It would be just as reasonable to suppose that all of the workers in a country would voluntarily restricted their hours of work in order to raise the wages of labor in relation to the rewards for capital. Marx also emphasized the importance of the trade union and the strike to the class action of the proletariat. He emphasized individual selfishness and bourgeois calculation at every opportunity. He defined classes in terms of property relationships, and therefore economic interests. Therefore, the bourgeois class even though they were second class in a country after the government as the administrator, but they tended to act they were the first ruling class, because their power over finance, property, or capital that more valuable than the role of the government itself as the administrator. They also thought by using their financial or property power, the bourgeois class could ask protection from the government, but if they thought the government would reduce and gave disadvantage for their interest, they would just ignore and not follow the government words anymore. As a
In the Communist Manifesto it is very clear that Marx is concerned with the organization of society. He sees that the majority individuals in society, the proletariat, live in sub-standard living conditions while the minority of society, the bourgeoisie, have all that life has to offer. However, his most acute observation was that the bourgeoisie control the means of production that separate the two classes (Marx #11 p. 250). Marx notes that this is not just a recent development rather a historical process between the two classes and the individuals that compose it. “It [the bourgeois] has but established new classes, new conditions of oppression, and new forms of struggle in place of the old ones. Our epoch, the epoch of the bourgeoisie, possesses, however, this distinctive feature: it has simplified the class antagonisms. Society as a whole is more and more splitting up into two great hostile camps, into two great classes directly facing each other: Bourgeoisie ...
The political philosopher believed that communism could only thrive in a society distressed by “the political and economic circumstances created by a fully developed capitalism”. With industry and capitalism growing, a working class develops and begins to be exploited. According to Marx, the exploiting class essentially is at fault for their demise, and the exploited class eventually comes to power through the failure of capitalism.... ... middle of paper ...
Inequalities exist in all types of human society. Even in the simplest cultures where variations in wealth or property are non-existent, there are inequalities between individuals, men and women, the young and the old. A person may have a higher status than others because of a particular prowness at hunting, for instance, or because he or she is believed to have special access to the ancestral spirits. To describe inequalities, sociologists speak of Social Stratification. Social Stratification lies at the core of society and of the discipline of sociology. Social inequality is a fundamental aspect of virtually all-social processes and a person's position in the stratification system is the most consistent predictor of his/her behaviour, attitudes, and life chances. "Social Stratification is a characteristic of society, not simply a reflection of individual differences." Social Stratification persists over generations. Social Stratification is universal but not variable. It involves not only inequality but also beliefs. 'It is useful to think of stratification as rather like the geological layering of rock in the earth's surface,' Societies can be seen as consisting of 'strata' in a hierarchy, with the more favoured at the top and the less privileged at the bottom." If we look back at the year 1912, when the Titanic sank, we can make a connection with social inequality for the way people lived back then. When we watched the blockbuster hit in 1997, we were shown how much of an impact that social inequality had on the lower class passengers. Women and children had the highest survival rate. Those who held a first class ticket, more than 60% of those survived because their cabins were on the upper decks. Only 1/3 of the third cla...
... positions that are most important to society. Incentives (high rewards) are attached to these positions which means everyone will compete in these positions and only the talented will win. Davis and Moore have been criticised for assuming that those who graduate from school will end up with the top jobs. Income is only weakly linked to educational attainment-you don’t always get what jobs.
Haralambos, M., M. Holborn and R. Heald, Social stratification–a Marxist perspective. In Sociology: Themes and Perspectives (6th edn.).London: Harper-Collins. (2004). pp. 9–14.