Aayushi BansalAIR 7 · CSE 2024 · 177 wordsTheir whole copy
Opening
Karl Marx was a doyen of conflict approach, giving a contrasting materialist perspective to social stratification from then prevailing functional views.
Body · continuous prose
Social stratification or arrangement of hierarchical strata is based on means of production.
Those who own means of production (MOP) control the entire process & the relations of production, emerging as 'haves'. On the other hand, lies 'have nots' having nothing but labour to sell especially in capitalist society.
This stratification is visible as masters vs slaves, feudal lord vs serfs and burgeoisie vs proletariat.
Close · a summary
This stratification leads to emergence of classes which are set of people having same relations to MOP. Inherent to this, is class struggle. However, this was criticised as economic determinism. Weber further showed other dimensions of status & party in stratification. Further, Marx failed to account for gender, race, ethnicity, caste & so on which are other forms of inequalities giving society a stratified structure. eg → Margaret Benston tells how capitalism breeds women as a reserve army of labour. Marx's contribution was immense to understand stratification from a class perspective.