Preview

Karl Marx Structural Funcionalism

Satisfactory Essays
Open Document
Open Document
802 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Karl Marx Structural Funcionalism
1. Conflict/Functionalist Theories KARL MARX EMILE DURKHEIM
2. CONFLICT THEORY Begins with Marx and his analysis of historyThesis/antithesis = struggle (conflict)Synthesis = a new order is produced because of the struggle between the classesAll of history can be understood in this wayThree stages of history: feudalism, capitalism & socialism (it was an inevitable destination!) (Many call it communism)
3. Always a struggleThe materialist view of history = the most important determinant of social life is the work people are doing, especially work that results in provision of the basic necessities of life, food, clothing and shelter. Marx thought that the way the work is socially organized and the technology used in production will have a strong impact on every other aspect of society.
4. Power=ownershipHe maintained that everything of value in society results from human labour. Thus, Marx saw working men and women as engaged in making society, in creating the conditions for their own existence.Every part of human history and existence must be understood through the lens of social/economic theoryAll relationships are based on conflict/struggleWho has the power? Who wants it? Who owns the resources?
5. Only 1 institution: private propertyThe central institution of capitalist society is private property, the system by which capital (that is, money, machines, tools, factories, and other material objects used in production) is controlled by a small minority of the population. This leads to two opposed classes, the owners of capital (called the bourgeoisie) and the workers (called the proletariat), whose only property is their own labour time, which they have to sell to the capitalists.
6. Economic exploitation leads directly to political oppression, as owners make use of their economic power to gain control of the state and turn it into a servant of bourgeois economic interests. Police power, for instance, is used to enforce property rights and guarantee unfair

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Better Essays

    First, Marx focused on the economic aspect of societal progress or the material conception of history. He highlighted how one society progressed to another because of the pursuit for the economic means of production. On the other hand, Mill emphasized on the importance of liberty as he pointed out that this is the driving force of societal progress. This is what he called the philosophy of history.…

    • 1335 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    According to him matter determines everything. Alongside this, author claims, means of production and relation between productive forces constitutes economic structure of society, and this is the real foundation on which superstructure rise. Superstructure includes law, morality, philosophy, political theories, forms of government, religion, art and culture. Marx asserts, it is the social being which determines consciousness. He further says legal and political superstructure (and corresponding forms of social consciousness) arises out of the economic structure of society; that mode of production of material life conditions social, political and intellectual life; and the consciousness does not define the way we work together socially, but rather the…

    • 536 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Karl Marx developed the conflict theory and concluded that "the key to human history is class struggle. In every society, some small group controls the means of production and exploits those who are not in control (Henslin,2004 pg.15)". According to Karl Marx "authority that people consider…

    • 897 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    jack

    • 2702 Words
    • 11 Pages

    -Capitalism is an exploitative and alienating social order in which inequality is institutionalized by an elite ruling class…

    • 2702 Words
    • 11 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    The capitalist system caused the alienation of the workers, therefore causing them not to be able to live to the fullest…

    • 381 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Better Essays

    marx and carnegie

    • 1118 Words
    • 4 Pages

    By eliminating the gap between rich and poor, Marx believes Communism should replace the economic system of Capitalism. In his perspective, he claims, “They have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win. Working men of all countries, unite” (Marx 476). Because he sees the Capitalist system exploits workers who are unfairly treated, he asserts that the proletarians should become the ruling class. The principle of Communism is the ideology of collectivism. Marx states, “Communism deprives no man of the power to appropriate the products of society: all that it does is to deprive him of the power to subjugate the labor of others by means of such appropriation” (470). This means that no private property should be allowed, and no one has even a less or more power in a Communist society. Because Marx illustrates the property ownership would enhance greed, and ambition to win in the…

    • 1118 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    In aversion to the issues of capitalism concerning wage labor and abuse of the laborer by the employer, Karl Marx and Frederick Engles saw the ills of society in the convention of private property. In his own words, Marx said that communism could be summed up in one sentence, “abolition of private property” (The Communist Manifesto, 23). Marx saw private property in the industrial age as the “antagonism of capital and wage labor,” (The Communist Manifesto, 23). The positive results of industry only allowed the bourgeois to obtain more capital and hire more labor. Capital, therefore, is for the bourgeois a means to accumulate labor for the individual.…

    • 297 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    There are the rich and there are the ones who are not rich: the ones who are in control, and the ones who are subjugated. According to Karl Marx, the “history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.” The clashes and conflicts between these people have shaped all of history.…

    • 982 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Next we will take a look into the Conflict theory. After witnessing the Industrial revolution, and how peasants left the city to work and were still barely making enough money to eat, Karl Marx, the…

    • 844 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Karl Marx’s philosophy has been the subject of so much judgement and Scrutiny on if his beliefs will truly save the working man. The bourgeois interlocutor believe Marx’s belief would be more detrimental to the people as a whole. They believe that by wishing to abolish private property, communism will become a danger to freedom and eventual end up destroying the very base of all personal freedom, activity, and independence. Marx responds to these comments by stating that wage labor does not create any property when considering the laborers affairs. It only creates capital, a property which works only to increase the social injustice of the worker. This property called capital, is based on class antagonism. Having linked private property…

    • 449 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    He uses information that has obviously been aware to many. When Marx disagrees with the private ownership of property, such technique is fairly visible. He believes that “Property, in its present form, is based on the antagonism of capital and wage labour.” For the Bourgeois society, “the right of personally acquiring property as the fruit of a man’s own labour, which property is alleged to be the groundwork of all personal freedom, activity and independence.” However, Marx claims that in this Bourgeois society, the workers do not work the sake of themselves but for the sake of the bourgeois and that “All that we want to do away with is the miserable character of this appropriation, under which the labourer lives merely to increase capital, and is allowed to live only in so far as the interest of the ruling class requires it.” According to Marx, it is logic that a labour should work for the purpose of working. Thus, he believes that labours working for the Bourgeois lost their sole purpose of existence-work. He claims that in the Bourgeois society, the Proletarians are used to increase capital and the Bourgeois property only, and become useless after they have done their job. In the Communist society, “accumulated labour is but a means to widen, to enrich, to promote the existence of the labourer.” Through the use of reasoning concepts that were obvious to the readers even before it was ever reasoned in this document, Marx persuades the audience that the function of the Bourgeoisie society is…

    • 1130 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Better Essays

    Marx believed that the poor were working their fingers to the bone to create value for society, while the rich simply siphoned off a portion of that value, which had been created by the poor. The rich do this without putting any effort into creating this value or their own value. In order for society’s productivity to be maximized, rich people’s syphoning off of a share of production must be done away with. Instead, the means of production (factories, stores, natural resources, etc.)—which rich people owned and used in order to siphon off poor people’s productivity—ought to be owned by the people themselves as a collective group. This prevents the rich from using their ownership position to syphon off a portion of society’s productione. Now, the people would continue to do all the producing, but the results of production would benefit only the people. In other words, each member of society must do what he or she can to produce the good and services society…

    • 1471 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    While both the functionalist and the symbolic interactionist perspectives focused on the positive aspects of society that contributes to its stability, the conflict perspective focused on the negative, conflicted, and ever changing nature of society (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2014). The general underlying assumption associated with the conflict theory is that society is made up of groups with competing self-interests. Marx termed these groups as the classes of people where they fell into two distinct categories; The Capitalists/Ruling Class and the Proletariat/Working Class. The Capitalists/Ruling Class were those who consisted of a small group that owned the capital or means of production and also had a position of power. The Proletariat/Working Class were those who consisted of a large group that possessed labour and provided the labour for the means of production, however they lacked power (Giddens, 2008).…

    • 1199 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Apartheid and Capitalism

    • 1719 Words
    • 7 Pages

    During the apartheid era, South African economic development was profoundly structured by racial labour policies, shaped by ideology and a violent racially repressive socio-political environment thus it was inevitable for the state to become capitalist because apartheid and capitalism had similar features that complimented each other such as inequality, oppression, exploitation, a distinction between those regarded as superior and those regarded as inferior whereby in the apartheid system, the inferior were the black people, who would take the role of proletariats (workers) in a capitalist system, and the superior were the white people who would take the role of the bourgeoisie, those who own the means of production, in a capitalist system.. Capitalism can be understood as an economic structure whereby capital resources are privately owned. In order to ensure a sustainable profit in a market economy, goods and services are produced. In a capitalist system, those who own the means of production determine the prices that goods and services are traded. The main features of capitalism…

    • 1719 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Powerful Essays

Related Topics