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The Social Conflict Theory

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The Social Conflict Theory
The social conflict theory
Conflict and struggle promote human social existence by ensuring that the strongest of a species survive. Sprey (1969) is credited with introducing a conflict approach to family studies. Sprey (1969) suggested that the family was a "system in conflict." Basic assumptions:
- Conflict is typical. Harmony is a problematic.
- Research should examine the ability of family members to deal with conflict
Feminist scholarship used a conflict approach to analyze general themes of gender relationships as well as the influence of the family. Scholarship examined the role of the family in maintaining inequalities in male-female relationships.
The obstacles were the limited systematic attempt to link family dynamics to social structure. Family dynamics were emphasized as reciprocal or functional. And in addition the intellectual obstacles were that social conflict theory emerged as the field, like others, was moving toward positivism. A conflict approach does not lend itself very well to positivism.

Karl Marx
Karl Marx (1818–1883) is best known not as a philosopher but as a revolutionary communist, whose works inspired the foundation of many communist regimes in the twentieth century. Karl Marx was born in Trier, in the German Rhineland, in 1818. Marx studied law in Bonn and Berlin, and then wrote a PhD thesis in Philosophy, comparing the views of Democritus and Epicurus.
After he gets his doctorate in 1841 Marx hope for an academic job, but he had already fallen in with too radical a group of thinkers and there was no real prospect. Turning to journalism, Marx rapidly became involved in political and social issues, and soon found himself having to consider communist theory. Communism is described by Marx, in the Critique of the Gotha Programme, as a society in which each person should contribute according to their ability and receive according to their need. Marx’s, theory of history is centered on the idea that forms of society

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