Karl Marx and Marxist Class Struggle Free Essays.
Conflict Theory Conflict theory suggests that deviant behaviors result from social, political or material inequalities within a certain social group (Pawluch, 2016). This theory was first introduced by Karl Marx, who stated that society is in a constant state of conflict due to the competition for control over limited resources (Pawluch, 2016).
Here Karl Marx sees history as a series of class struggles as human evolved through five basic stages of society. For example man changes from the stage of nomads to the stage of settled living, hunting fruits gathering and the rearing of sheep giving way to domestication of plants and animals, then comes the urban culture and its rich diversity of vocations.
Karl Marx’s work was steamed from the motivation and concern for workers. The working people from his era were living in terrible poverty. Marx’s work focused on the revolution for a classless society (). Marx work began in sociology in the 1960’s which focused primarily on functionalism. Marxism is also referred to the conflict of theory.
Introduction In this essay I will discuss Marx’s conception of social class with the reference to the bases for class struggle, social class and class consciousness and try to find if this conception can provide the framework to understand the South African society.
Karl Marx on Class and Class Conflict. According to Karl Marx, society is stratified into classes. The classes comprise the bourgeoisies, land-owners and the proletariat. The propertied-upper-class is the minority, while the proletariats are the majority.
Class conflict, also referred to as class struggle and class warfare, is the political tension and economic antagonism that exists in society consequent to socio-economic competition among the social classes. The forms of class conflict include direct violence, such as wars for resources and cheap labor and assassinations; indirect violence, such as deaths from poverty and starvation, illness.
For Marx, class antagonisms under capitalism, owing in part to its instability and crisis-prone nature, would eventuate the working class' development of class consciousness, leading to their conquest of political power and eventually the establishment of a classless, communist society constituted by a free association of producers.