Marxist Perspective
- Created by: theshyone
- Created on: 06-04-18 09:54
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- Marxist Perspective
- Marx's Ideas
- Marx agreed with Durkheim - understanding society scientifically = point to a better society
- EVA for Func - they do not see progress as smooth and gradual evolution.
- saw historical change as a contradictory process.
- Historical materialism
- in meeting the material needs, use forces of production
- As forces of production grow and develop, so too the social relations of production also change. Division of labour develops.
- Instumental and expressive roles. Parsons
- Inequality begins...
- Proletariat and Bourgeois
- Mode of production - now live in society with Capitalist mode of production --- forms economic base --- this shapes and determines all other features of society.
- Class society and Exploitation
- Class society, one class owns means of production and this means they can exploit others for own benefit.
- 3 class societies, each with own form of exploitation.
- Ancient society - exploitation of slaves legally tied to their owners
- Feudal Society - based on exploitation of serfs legally tied to the land
- Capitalist Society - based on exploitation of free wae labourers.
- Capitalism
- based on division between owners and labourers.
- unlike slaves/serfs proletariats free and separated from means of production. Sell labour power for wages so can survive.
- Surplus value - only receive enough money to be able to survive.
- through competition between Capitalists means of production concentrated in fewer hands. Drives small independent producers into ranks of proletariat.
- forces bourgeois to pay the smallest wages possible leading to the poverty of proletariat.
- Capitalism continually expands the forces of production in its pursuit of profit. Production becomes concentrated in ever larger units. Technological advances de skill the work force.
- Class Consciousness
- capitalism creates the conditions under which the working class can develop a consciousness of its own economic and political interests in opposition to those of its exploiters.
- Instead of a class in itself it becomes a clas for itself. Members are class conscious.
- Ideology
- controls mental production too. institutions spread ideas like religion, education and media
- Alienation
- true nature is based on capacity to create things to meet our needs.
- result of our loss of control over our labour and its products and therefore our separation from our true nature.
- The State, Revolution, and communism
- 'armed bodies of men' - the army, police, prisons and courts. State exists to protect the interests of the class of owners who control it. - form the ruling class.
- use to protect their property, suppress opposition and prevent revolution
- the proletarian revolution that overthrows capitalism, will be first revolution by the majority against minority
- It will; abolish the state and create a classless communist society
- Abolish exploitation, replace private ownership and replace production for profit with production to satisfy human needs.
- end alienation as humans regain control over their labour and products.
- Criticisms of Marxs
- has simplistic and one dimensional view of inequality - sees class as only important division
- Feminism - Gender
- Weber - status and power differences can also be important sources of inequality, independently of class.
- Marxist 2 class model is too simplistic.
- Weber sub-divides the proletariat into skilled and unskilled classes and includes a white-collar middle class of office workers and a petty bourgeois
- Class polarisation has not occured.
- Economic determinism
- fails to recognise that humans have free will and can bring about change through their conscious actions.
- has simplistic and one dimensional view of inequality - sees class as only important division
- Gramsci and Hegemony
- hegemony and revolution
- rest of society accepts ruling class hegemony there will not be a revolution.
- never complere for 2 reasons - ruling class a minority. need to create a power bloc by making alliances with other groups like the middle class.
- the proletariat have a dual consciousness - ideas are influenced not only by bourgeois ideology but also by their material conditions of life
- over emphasising the role of ideas and under emphasising the role of both coercion and economic factors.
- Willis describes the working class lads he studies as 'partially penetrating' bourgeois ideology to recognise meritocracy is a myth.
- hegemony and revolution
- Althusser's structuralist Marxism
- not people's actions but social structures that really shape history and these are the proper subject of scientific enquiry.
- Doesn't accept the base-superstructure model instead likes 'structural determinism'
- three structures or levels: the economic level- comprising all those activities that involve producing something in order to satisfy a need.
- the political level - comprising all forms of organisation
- the ideological level - involving the ways that people see themselves and their world.
- the ideological and repressive state apparatus.
- Marx's Ideas
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