Question

Discusss karlmarx's perspective on class.

Answer 1

Karl Marx was one of the first social scientists to focus mainly on social class. His main focus on social class was that one's social class dictated one's social life.

Basically, Marx meant that if one is in the upper class, life was one of leisure and abundance, while those in the lower class lived lives of hardship and poverty.

According to Marx, there was one social element that would determine where one fit in the social class hierarchy: that of who controls the means of production, meaning who owned the resources necessary to produce what people needed to survive.

The wealthy would be the individuals who owned the land and factories. The wealthy would then control all elements of society - including the livelihoods of the lower, working class. The lower, working class would work for hourly wages on the land or in the factories.

Marx wanted to better understand how so many people could be in poverty in a world where there was an abundance of wealth. His answer was simple: capitalism.

According to sociologist John Macionis, the wealthy and the working poor ''have opposing interests and are separated by a vast gulf of wealth and power, making class conflict inevitable.''