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The Marxist Model of Class Structure and Conflict with Reference to the Caribbean.

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The Marxist model of class structure and conflict with reference to the Caribbean.

Class refers to one’s position in the socialhierarchy based on accessibility to wealth, power, privilege and ownership of the means of production. Sociology has a number of sociological theories that attempt to explain how society works. A sociological theory is a set of ideas that attempt to explain a particular problem. One of these sociological theories is called Maxism. This was developed by Karl Marx and is considered to be a macro theory. This theory seeks to explain society as a whole and to find general laws about human behaviour.
In Marx’s explanation of society, he came up with the explanation of class structure and class conflict. According to the Marxist model of class structure society is divided into two major classes. Firstly, there is the bourgeoisie (ruling class) who owns the means of production. However, there was another class called the proletariat (working class) who worked for the bourgeoisie. Marx was of the view that class is related to the ownership of the means of production. Hence, he believed that those who owned the businesses were of the ruling class while those who worked and produced belonged to the working class. Marx viewed society as being structured in such a manner where there will be a ruling class (bourgeoisie) who would from the labours of the working class (proletariat). In this way, the power of the ruling class to exploit and take advantage of the working class helped to reinforce their domination in the society, apart from being the most wealthy. Finally Marx saw conflict as the basis of society. He believed that society would be in chaos due to the inequality between different classes.
There is a parallel relationship that exists between the Marxists model and Caribbean society. In the Caribbean, wealth is unequally

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