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Class Struggle, By Karl Marx

1263 Words6 Pages

“The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles”. Karl Marx used the word “struggle” repeatedly for the social changes in describing how society move forward. In his theory, a commodity is something that is bought and sold, or exchanged in a market. It has a “use – value” determined by the qualities of things and the purposes or needs because the commodity can satisfy human’s need and it also has a “exchange – value” determined by quantities of things and what can be gotten for them. As use – values, commodities have all of different qualities, but in terms of exchange – values, they are just different quantities and do not contain the use – value. Marx emphasized that the labor and work are quantified; in …show more content…

Marx argues that the division of labor results in alienation, and he focused on the social inequalities between two social classes. Unlike him, Durkheim claims that the division of labor is not necessarily bad for the society, it creates a feeling of solidarity between group members. Marx is quite concerned with how people relate to the most fundamental resource of all, their own power of labor and the problems of alienation. The deprive of the ownership of their labor and their own thoughts, according to Marx, causes the alienation of workers from their nature and consequently causes conflicts between the two social classes. In his opinion, the division of labor and class inequality will eventually bring about the social stratification. Marx said: “he does not fulfil himself in his work but denies himself, has a feeling of misery rather than well-being, does not develop freely his mental and physical energies but is physically exhausted and mentally debased. The worker, therefore, feels himself at home only during his leisure time, whereas at work he feels homeless. His work is not voluntary but imposed, forced labor. It is not the satisfaction of a need, but only a means for satisfying other needs”. Workers always remain in a state of oppression where they can hardly find any happiness or fulfillment. After all, workers are even alienated from their true nature and not able to enjoy their lives. For Marx, the division of labor and conflicts between two social classes are crucial problems of modern society. For Durkheim, the essential elements of modern society are conflicting Marx’s in many ways. One of his concerns is how society could maintain its cohesion in such complex environment. He realizes that the existence of division of labor is to serve the society to be healthy. Also, there are some disagreement on the relationships between the individuals

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