Sunday, January 21, 2007

Conflict theory and Karl Max

Introduction

Conflict is the process of opposing one another between variables of groups. Conflict theory has its roots in two different places. The first is the criticism of structural functionalism especially by Robert K Merton, which made United States open towards critical theory. However the major root of the critical theory lies on the work of Karl Marx and neo-Marxian’s. Their theories are related to conflict was quite popular in certain European countries.
Karl Marx was the great German theorist and political activist. The Marxist, conflict approach emphasizes a materialist interpretation of history, a dialectical method of analysis, a critical stance toward existing social arrangements, and a political program of revolution or reform.
The dialectical approach was derived from Hegel and shapes all the Marx’s work. Those elements of dialectical are more relevant to Marx’s sociology and sociological theory. The dialectical emphasis that there are no simple cause and effect relationship among elements of the social world; there is no clear dividing line between fact and value; and no hard and fast dividing lines among phenomena in the social world.
Despite the political orientation of communist society he devote towards dialectical and critical analysis of capitalist society. The substance of Marx’s works analyzing the potential of human beings. He said that human nature is greatly affected by social setting. e.g. the setting of capitalism destroyed the humanity and would be allowed to express itself. So the consciousness and creativity is enrolled in actors that express in various types of actions and interactions.
Karl Marx particularly concerned with the structure of capitalism, Here he put his view on cultural aspects of capitalist society especially class consciousness, false consciousness, and ideology.
Marxism economy have concept of use value and exchange value. A “use value” is defined qualitatively either something is or is not useful. An “exchange value” is defined quantitative. It is define by the amount of labor needed appropriate useful qualities. Where as useful values are produce to satisfy the one’s own needs, exchange values are produce to exchange for value for another use.
Contribution of Karl Max (1818-1883)

Marx's ideas have been applied and reinterpreted by scholars for over a hundred years, starting with Marx's close friend and collaborator, Friedrich Engels (1825-95), who supported Marx and his family for many years from the profits of the textile factories founded by Engels' father, while Marx shut himself away in the library of the British Museum. Later, Vladimir I. Lenin (1870-1924), leader of the Russian revolution, made several influential contributions to Marxist theory. In recent years Marxist theory has taken a great variety of forms, notably the world-systems theory proposed by Immanuel Wallerstein (1974, 1980) and the comparative theory of revolutions put forward by Theda Skocpol (1980). Marxist ideas have also served as a starting point for many of the modern feminist theorists. Despite these applications, Marxism of any variety is still a minority position among American sociologists.
Assumption of Conflict Theory.
a) Society is a system of imperfectly coordinated parts.
b) Society and its elements are in the state of constant change.
c) The parts in the society are constantly struggling or competing.
d) Conflict is inherent in any social structure.
e) Conflicts generate social change.
f) Endogenous conflict arise out of malintegration or incompatibility of interest of the group or individuals or unequal distribution of score or desirable resources.
Conflict:
Conflict is admitted to cause or modify interest groups, unifications and organization where interest group is that which share common interest values and beliefs. Same follow for unification and organization.
Conflict theories see the relations between certain structures of the society are conflict or non-harmonious state. This type of conflictual relation between different structures of the society doesn’t help in smooth functioning.
Conflict was analysis on two ways i.e. Political Philosophy (political philosophy involve conflict. Machivelli, Boden, Mosca use political philosophy) and economical philosophy (Economic relationship involve conflict. Adam smith, Karl Marx use economic philosophy)
Types of conflict

Endogenous Conflict: Conflict occurring within the society and the sources of change is also within it.
Conflict of Authority: The authority structure is the primary source of conflict. Authority is the degree of will or power that would be exercised over others, with or without approval of those others.
Conflict between Individual and society: What is good for society is not necessarily good for individual. There could be conflict in the interests.
Conflict of values: The cumulative effects of innovation, technological revolution environmental crises, generation gap, automatic sexual revolution, new value orientations and the break up of normative structure have been series of conflicts which manifested themselves in a variety of social movements and individual identity crises.
Exogenous Conflict: In this type of conflict both the conflict and source of change are outside the society. Conflict is initiated by external factors such as war, cultural, invasion, and ideology.

Social Conflict:
Marx divided history into several stages on the basis of economic structure of society. The most important stages were feudalism, capitalism and socialism. Marx's writing is concerned with materialist model of society to capitalism; the stage of economic and social development was dominant in 19th century Europe. The central institution of capitalist society is private property, the system by which capital (that is, money, machines, tools, factories, and other material objects used in production) is controlled by a small minority of the population. This arrangement leads two opposed classes, the owners of capital (bourgeoisie) and the workers (proletariat), whose only property is their own labor time, which they have to sell to the capitalists.
Owners are seen as making profits by paying workers less than their work is worth and, thus, exploiting them. (In Marxist terminology, material forces of production or means of production include capital, land, and labor, whereas social relations of production refer to the division of labor and implied class relationships.)
Economic exploitation leads directly to political oppression, as owners make use of their economic power to gain control of the state and turn it into a servant of bourgeois economic interests. Police power is used to enforce property rights and guarantee unfair contracts between capitalist and worker. Oppression also takes more subtle forms: religion serves capitalist interests by pacifying the population; intellectuals, paid directly or indirectly by capitalists, spend their careers justifying and rationalizing the existing social and economic arrangements. In sum, the economic structure of society molds the superstructure, including ideas (e.g., morality, ideologies, art, and literature) and the social institutions that support the class structure of society (e.g., the state, the educational system, the family, and religious institutions). Because the dominant or ruling class (bourgeoisie) controls the social relations of production, the dominant ideology in capitalist society is that of the ruling class. Ideology and social institutions serve to reproduce and perpetuate the economic class structure. Marx viewed the exploitative economic arrangements of capitalism as the real foundation upon which the superstructure of social, political, and intellectual consciousness is built. (Figure 1 depicts this model of historical materialism.)Marx's view on history seem completely cynical or pessimistic, were it not for the possibilities of change revealed by his method of dialectical analysis. (The Marxist dialectical method, based on Hegel's earlier idealistic dialectic, focuses attention on how an existing social arrangement, or thesis, generates its social opposite, or antithesis, and on how a qualitatively different social form, or synthesis, emerges from the resulting struggle.). He believed that any stage of history based on exploitative economic arrangements generated within itself the seeds of its own destruction. For instance, feudalism, in which land owners exploited the peasantry, gave rise to a class of town-dwelling merchants, whose dedication to making profits eventually led to the bourgeois revolution and the modern capitalist era. Similarly, the class relations of capitalism will lead inevitably to the next stage, socialism. The class relations of capitalism embody a contradiction: capitalists need workers, and vice versa, but the economic interests of the two groups are fundamentally at odds. Such contradictions mean inherent conflict and instability, the class struggle. Adding to the instability of the capitalist system are the inescapable needs for ever-wider markets and ever-greater investments in capital to maintain the profits of capitalists.
Marx expected that the resulting economic cycles of expansion and contraction, together with tensions that will build as the working class gains greater understanding of its exploited position (and thus attains class consciousness), will eventually culminate in a socialist revolution.
Despite this sense of the unalterable logic of history, Marxists see the need for social criticism and for political activity to speed the arrival of socialism, which, not being based on private property, is not expected to involve as many contradictions and conflicts as capitalism. Marxists believe that social theory and political practice are dialectically intertwined, with theory enhanced by political involvement and with political practice necessarily guided by theory. Intellectuals ought to combine political criticism and political activity. Theory itself is seen as necessarily critical and value-laden, since the prevailing social relations are based upon alienating exploitation of the labor of the working classes.
Process of conflict
Marx developed his theory of class conflict in his analysis and critique if the capitalist society.
a) Importance of property: The most distinguishing characteristic of any society is its form of property, and the crucial determinant if an individual’s behavior is his relation to property. Classes are determined on the basis of individual’s relation to the means of production.
b) Economic determinism: Whole style of society and individual is determined by economic status. Marx identify economic and political is the same. Those people have economic power use the political power for their own purpose. Business man and government is too different part but infact there is nucleus relation.
c) Polarization of classes: The whole society bring more and more into two hostile camps two great directly antagonistic classes, bourgeoisies and proletariats. This process is known by polarization. When the conflict in decisive from that time every man either will be join one contenting class.
d) Theory of surplus value: The value of any commodity is determined by the amount of labor it takes to produce it. The quality of value produced by the workers beyond the necessary labor time. Necessary time means the working time required to produce value equal to the one he has received in the form of wage.
e) Pauperization: poverty of proletarian grows with increasing exploitation. Work is done for the social adaptation. The whole society breaks up more and more into two great hostile camps, two great directly antagonistic classes: bourgeoisie and proletariat.
f) Alienation: As the capital accumulates the lot of the laboral grows worse and worse. Work is no longer and expression of mans him but only a degraded livelihood.
g) Class solidarity and antagonism: With the growth of class consciousness the crystallization of social relation into two group become stream lined and the classes tend to become internally homogeneous and the class struggle more intensified.
h) Revolution: Violent revolution breaks out and it destroys the structure capitalist society. Revolution is likely to take place at the peak of economic crises.
i) Dictatorship of proletariat: Revolution terminates capitalist society and leads to the social dictatorship of proletariat.
j) Inauguration of communist society.: Socialization of means of production social ownership over the means of production, class start disappearing. State gradually either away. It is also known as statelessness.
“ Nobody owns anything but everybody owns everything.”

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