Class Struggle and Social Movements †Free Samples to Students

Question: Discuss about the Class Struggle and Social Movements. Answer: Introduction: Karl Marx was a highly authoritative revolutionary thinker, philosopher and a political economist. His ideas were associated with the relationships among the economic and social power, which are influential in the politics, economics as well as sociology. Marx and Engels developed Marxism in between early to mid nineteenth century (Barker 2013). It is a structural theory, which means that we are born in a society which has existing rules of behavior and these behaviors shapes the way we behave and live our lives. Fundamentally, man has to learn how to join in well through the process called socialization. Karl Marx stated that since the industrialization, society has transformed in a state of conflict in between the rich and the poor, as both of these social group have dissimilar or unequal powers and this industrialization alone has created a capitalist society. The process of production has transformed from agricultural to industry or factory based. In a capitalist society, the eco nomy is dependent on trade, business and consumption with a focus on making huge profits. In this process of capitalism, the main problem that has arisen is that the rich are richer and the poor are getting poorer (Facchini and Couvreur 2015). The poor people (Proletariat) have limited access to own the source of production and therefore, are bound to work for the ones who owns those means of production the rich people / Bourgeoisie) (Lenski 2013). Although these workers are receiving wages for their production of goods but these goods are sold making a huge profit, which goes right to the pockets of the richer. Hence, Marx argues that a capitalist society is a distributed or split society and that, capitalism leads to social inequality. References: Barker, C., 2013. Class struggle and social movements.Marxism and social movements, pp.41-62. Facchini, F. and Couvreur, S., 2015. Inequality: The original economic sin of capitalism? An Evaluation of Thomas Piketty's" Capital in the twenty-first century".European Journal of Political Economy,39, pp.281-287. Lenski, G.E., 2013.Power and privilege: A theory of social stratification. UNC Press Books.