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Sociological Theory Marxism

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Sociological Theory

Assess the contributions of Marxism to our understanding of society. (33 marks)

Marxism looks at the large scale societal structure in order to gain answers about how society work and operates. Marxism at its core is about the class struggle between those who own the means of production and those who use the means of production. These two groups are called the bourgeoisie, the ruling class and the proletariat, the working class. The Marxism perspective looks at the development of the western world, in particular capitalist countries. They believe that in a capitalist society, the owners of the means of production, the bourgeoisie, continually seek to exploit their labours, the proletariats for profit of their own gain. So majority off the working class who are the labourers work to earn a poor wage while the profit exceeds into the pockets of the owners, the business men, the ruling class. The owners of these productions control the state and institutions such as education and the media. The media portrays ideas to keep the working class under false class consciousness and alienation. If the proletariat members of society were to be class conscious then they would also be aware of the need to overthrow capitalism. Society as a whole alienates the working class by separating them from materials they have made or the work that they have done, stripping them of their identities. Keeping them away from other workers puts a stop to any thought processes about a revolution. If the working class became aware of this exploitation they could get together and either force or by both classes come to the agreement of their needing to be change towards the construction of new classless society. This is also a feature of Marxism, class consciousness. So there are two versions of Marxism establishes the structural and the humanistic Marxism. The founder

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