Conflict Perspective

The intellectual descendants of the classical liberal view are today’s conflict theorists. They argue that inequality is the product of conflicts and dissensions that originate in people’s desire for power. The possession of scarce resources gives power to the possessor. Groups struggle with one another to obtain power, and the group that emerges victorious tries to impose a stratification system on the society by enrolling some institutions – religion, education, the political system – to legitimize it. Thus, stratification systems are mechanisms of coercion.

Karl Marx, the best-known conflict theorist, in The Manifesto of the Communist Party (1848), stated that ‘the history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles’ – that all of history was a record of class conflicts caused by the unequal distribution of rewards in societies. Classes, according to Marx, are manifestations of economic differentiation. Classes are constituted not by income but by the position that one occupies or the functions one performs in the process of production. For example, if there are two blacksmiths, one the owner, and the other a paid worker, then both belong to two different classes, not one. The relation between the two is not simply a relation of domination and subordination but of exploitation.

Marx was not the first to discover social classes or their plights. Many philosophers did it before it. But Marx came to the centre stage when he succinctly wrote the last thesis on Feuerbach: ‘The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point, however, is to change it.’ Societies, Marx has analysed, have traversed through different stages – the hunting and gathering economy, the slave society, the feudal society and the capitalist society which will inevitably and unstoppably move on to socialism, and thereafter communism. Of these, the slave society, the feudal society and the capitalist society are class societies whereas the first and the last two are not. Classes are established when the surplus generated in the process of production is owned by a few individuals or groups, and will disappear when social ownership over the means of production will be established.

The institution of private ownership of the means of production leads to the further division of societies into social classes. These classes are in conflict with one another because the owners (bourgeoisie) have, and want to keep by any means, a monopoly of power over the nonowners (proletariat). The owners obtain and maintain power both by force and by instilling a value system and ideology in the masses that legitimize their power. Once they are in control and with a system of stratification in operation, the system is perpetuated through various institutions. The family transmits either wealth, opportunity for education and prestige, or poverty and a lack of opportunity, from one generation to another. Schools, too, prepare some individuals for leadership roles and others for mental occupations. Religion helps people accept values that justify the status quo, encourages the poor to seek their reward in an afterlife and directs the faithful toward a spiritual quest or offers solace from pain because religion does not possess any rational explanation.

References

Davis, Kingsley, and Wilbert E. Moore. 1945. Some Principles of Stratification. American Sociological Review 10 (April) 242-247.

Marx, Karl and Friedrich Engels. Manifesto of the Communist Party. In Robert C. Tucker, ed; The Marx-Engels Reader. New York: Norton, 1972; Orig. 1848.