Please enable JavaScript.
Coggle requires JavaScript to display documents.
Marxist and Neo-Marxist explanation on inequality - Coggle Diagram
Marxist and Neo-Marxist explanation on inequality
Marxism - Conflict theory
Marxism believes there are 2 social classes – polarised into 2 groups - bourgeoisie and proletariat
Society is organised to benefit the wealthy at the expense of the workers. There are 2 features of society, substructure and superstructure
For Marx, inequality is caused by the bourgeoisie who exploit proletariats by keeping wages low in order to increase surplus value.
Believes inequality happens because a minority owns the important resources and it is this minority that also controls our ideas, encouraging us to think massive differences in wealth and poverty are perfectly acceptable.
Power is maintained as lower class is kept under false class consciousness. Through socialisation, ideology and social control the ideas of the ruling class are internalised and accepted by ordinary people denying them awareness of their true class consciousness as an exploited group.
Neo-Marxist
Contradicting views, they believe Marxism misses out middle class - Wright believes small employers may be viewed as small capitalists and exploit the workers they employ.
Social inequality is the result of the operation of two forms of state oppression, ideological and repressive.
Ralph Miliband suggests that the government – made up of powerful groups of people from a few families - controls people’s lives
Althusser - These are the institutions that impose order, such as the justice system, the police, the law and the army. Inequality exists because the state trains people to accept the ideas that make them slaves to the system.
Functionalism - Consensus theory
Functionalists like Davis and Moore (1945) claim that inequality and stratification is functional for society and a source of social order
Marxists are critical of the functionalist perspective on inequality as They believe that their theory provides rich people with an ideology to justify their rich and greed.
Functionalists criticize Marxism as they believe capitalism has proven to be a very resilient economic system and so far there doesn’t seem to be an alternative to capitalism
Criticisms on Marxism
Functionalists would also argue that the class system (stratification) serves a purpose in a meritocratic society.
Feminists have criticised Marxist analysis as 'malestream'. Marxists see class exploitation as the key issue, ignoring other forms of exploitation such as gender and race.
Weberian sociologists would argue there is a crucial status difference between middle-class managerial and professional workers and the manual workers of the working class.