Social Order

Society is a broken hierarchy of social order awaiting its impeding destruction. The system in which man has placed itself is nothing more than a waiting game of when the bottom peasants will rise up against the wealthy few and take control of the state. Society is separated into groups such as the mass, the bourgeois, the proletariats, the middle class, and the wealthy upper class. These groups are nothing more than the natural psychodynamic order that man creates within itself. Society is a relentless cycle of class order and revolutions. This cycle is proven through social order theories such as Marx’s Communist Manifesto and Gasset’s Revolt of the Masses.

Society places constraints on itself to create classes. Gasset describes the majority of people as the mass which “come into the world in order to be directed, influenced, represented, organized”; the only purpose of the mass is to be put into a social order and controlled (90). After the mass gains enough momentum they develop the state, which in Gasset’s theory is merely an idea controlled by the mass; however, the state is actually controlled by a wealthy upper class. This idea of a wealthy upper class controlling the state is supported by Marx’s social theory that “the bourgeoisie has at last conquered for itself, the modern representation of the state” (Marx 364). The bourgeoisie has complete control of the nation, the mass, and the state. The state is no longer an idea that is held together by the people of the nation, but it is the force of a wealthy few developing laws and keeping the lower classes below them. The lower classes can be broken down into two different groups, the mass and the proletariats. The mass is a middle class group of people who attem...

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...essed they feel as if they are not. The proletariats work for everyone above them and know that they have no say in what happens in the government. The proletariats eventually realize that they have more power in numbers than the bourgeoisie and revolt against them, creating a new order of social structure. Eventually the original proletariats forget the oppression they strived to change and begin to enforce oppression on the original bourgeoisie. This begins the social cycle again and another revolution occurs. Social order is a relentless cycle of revolutions.

Works Cited

Marx, Karl. The Communiest Manifesto. A World of Ideas. Ed. Lee A. Jacobus. New York: Bedford St. Martin’s, 2010. 362-383. Print.

Ortega Y Gasset, Jose´. “The Greatest Danger, the State.” A World of Ideas. Ed. Lee A. Jacobus. New York: Bedord St. Martin’s, 2010. 90-97. Print.