Class Division And Inequality In The United States

Within the United States operates a class system based on economic standing, though it is rarely spoken of or thought of as an issue. The classes divide the American population into three sections. The elite and wealthy upper class that controls most of the economy and government, the middle class who is made of finically stable and well-educated people, and the staggering lower class who live under poverty line. The United States are not the only or the first to struggle with class division, the separation creates a discrimination between classes and allows the higher and more “qualified” class to exploit and rule. There has been attempts to make the playing field so to say more equal, these come from the views of people like Marx and Lenin. Class division and privilege creates injustice and inequality through the ruling of a higher class, this systems has been in power under

many names and the injustices can only be cured by the demolishment of the systems itself.

Within the United States there is an underlying class system, which controls the privilege of a person through their social and ethnical backgrounds. This system ranges by the following: the upper class being the in control of the majority of the nation’s wealth is the most privileged of the three, then comes the middle class which is diminishing and finally the lower class who is the least privileged and most discriminated against. “The richest twenty percent of Americans hold nearly eighty-five percent of the total household wealth in the country”. (Mantsios, 179) This fact shows that the upper class has domination over the two following classes, but more specifically the lower class. A privileged white man of

middle to high class is bound by social norms to be successful and live comfortably, but a colored woman of the lower class will by social norms struggle to pay rent. She will most likely not get a good education, or be able to afford college studies. She will be lucky to get a job outside a factory that pays enough to scrape by. Culture today gives us false hope that everyone has the chance to raise their class status. The colored woman would have been given hope since she was a girl that she could make it, but reality shows us most people will not make any more than their fathers do and will remain in the social class they are born into. In Mantsios he explains a simulation by playing a game of monopoly and letting the winner keep his winnings for the next game. (Mantsios, 188) This was to show how hard it is for the losers (lower class) to win after the winners (upper class) controls the wealth. The moral of the exercise is to prove the struggle to change class standing.
Marxism offered alternate solutions to the struggle of the class division, his practices lead to communism in many Asian countries. Marxism was founded as a way to control class discrimination in many Asian and European countries. The class was a separated into two parts the equivalence to the upper class being called the “bourgeoisie” and the equivalence to the lower class the “proletariat”. The idea of oppressor and oppressed is another term used for the classes. This ideology became very strict but also very effective. Some of the ideas to control the bourgeoisie are: abolition of all rights of inheritance, equal obligation of all to work. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture, and many more. (Marx, 859). The strict restrictions against the upper class, takes away their power and places it in the hands of the state. Creating the control of the government gives more people equal opportunity and ability to succeed.