Karl Marx's Views Of Social Stratification In Society

Social stratification is when groups of people are ranked in a society into a hierarchy. It is a universal concept. However, different cultures follows different criteria for this division. Things like wealth, education, gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity and age are all factors in which divides people. For a majority of societies the pattern is that men, those who are rich and the more education a person has, puts them at a higher ranking. Those higher up gets to dictate how the rest of society is divided. There are four systems of stratification that exist or have existed around the world. Class system, estate system, caste system and slavery.

A class system is social stratification based on birth and individual achievements. An example is in the United States, there are lower, middle and upper classes. Those in the lower class,

Karl Marx is responsible for one of the earliest explanations on the role that social stratification plays in a society. Using the social-conflict approach, Marx attempted to explain, “How in a society so rich, so many could be so poor” (Macionis, 2015). The major component of Marx’s view of social stratification is that there are two class systems within a capitalist society, the few bourgeoisie and the masses of proletarians. The bourgeoisie are those who own and operate businesses and factories in order to make profit. The proletarians are those who work in these businesses and factories to bring in income for living. Both these class systems have opposing realities and interests making conflict inevitable. In wanting to make more profit, the bourgeoisie ends up exploiting the workers causing them to be alienated from the products of their labor. Marx concluded that capitalism will bring its own downfall when the proletarians overthrow this type of system for a more socialist way of life that will meet the needs of