Conflict Theory and Society

LEARNING OUTCOMES

 Describe the conflict theory view of society

 Explain Karl Marx’s concepts of class and alienation
Conflict theory looks at society as a competition for limited resources among groups and
individuals who have unequal amounts of power. This perspective is a macro-level
approach most identified with the writings of German philosopher and sociologist Karl
Marx (1818–1883), who saw society as being made up of individuals in different social
classes who must compete for social, material, and political resources such as food and
housing, employment, education, and leisure time. Social institutions like government,
education, and religion reflect this competition in their inherent inequalities and help
maintain (perhaps unwittingly) the unequal social structure.

Karl Marx and Conflict Theory

Karl Marx is certainly among the most significant social thinkers in recent history. While
there are many critics of his work, it is still widely respected and influential. For Marx,
society’s constructions were predicated upon the idea of “base and superstructure.”
This term refers to the idea that a society’s economic character forms its base, upon
which rests the cultural and social institutions, the superstructure. For Marx, it is the
base (economy) that determines what a society will be like.
Figure 1. Karl Marx asserted that all elements of a society’s structure depend on its economic structure.

Additionally, Marx saw conflict in society as the primary means of change.

Economically, he saw conflict existing between the owners of the means of production
—the bourgeoisie—and the laborers, called the proletariat.

Marx maintained that these conflicts appeared consistently throughout history during
times of social revolution. These revolutions, or “class antagonisms” as he called them,
were a result of one class dominating another. Most recently, with the end of feudalism,
a new revolutionary class he called the bourgeoisie dominated the laboring masses that
he called the proletariat. The bourgeoisie were revolutionary in the sense that they
represented a radical change in the structure of society. In Marx’s words, “Society as a
whole is more and more splitting up into two great hostile camps, into two great classes
directly facing each other—Bourgeoisie and Proletariat” (Marx and Engels 1848).

In the mid-nineteenth century, as industrialization was booming, bourgeois industrial

employers, the “owners of the means of production” in Marx’s terms, became more and
more exploitative toward the working class proletariat. The large manufacturers of steel
were particularly ruthless, and their facilities were popularly dubbed “dark satanic mills”
based on a poem by William Blake. Marx’s frequent co-author and friend, Friedrich
Engels, wrote The Condition of the Working-Class in England (1844), which described
the horrid conditions.

Such is the Old Town of Manchester, and on re-reading my description, I am forced to admit
that instead of being exaggerated, it is far from black enough to convey a true impression of the
filth, ruin, and uninhabitableness, the defiance of all considerations of cleanliness, ventilation,
and health which characterise the construction of this single district, containing at least twenty to
thirty thousand inhabitants. And such a district exists in the heart of the second city of England,
the first manufacturing city of the world.

Add to that the long hours, the use of child labor, and exposure to extreme
temperatures and toxic chemicals, and it is no wonder that Marx and Engels referred to
capitalism, which is a way of organizing an economy so that the things that are used to
make and transport products (such as land, oil, factories, ships, etc.) are owned by
profit-seeking individuals and companies rather than by the government, as the
“dictatorship of the bourgeoisie.”

Figure 2. Karl Marx (left) and Friedrich Engels (right) analyzed differences in social power between “have” and
“have-not” groups. (Photo (a) courtesy of Wikimedia Commons; Photo (b) courtesy of George Lester/Wikimedia
Commons)

For Marx, how we labor defines who we are. Historically, and in spite of the persistent
efforts of one class to dominate another, Marx argued that some element of common
humanity still existed in pre-industrial, smaller-scale modes of productions such as guild
communities and workshops. In these workplaces, there was at least some connection
between the worker and the product, whose creation was partially governed by
seasonal cycles and by the the rise and fall of the sun, just as in earlier agricultural
societies. But with the bourgeois revolution and the rise of industrialization and
capitalism, the worker now labored for wages alone. His relationship to his labor was no
longer of a human nature, but was instead based on artificial, inorganic conditions.
Marx described modern society in terms of alienation. Alienation refers to the condition
in which the individual is isolated and divorced from his or her society, work, or sense of
self. Marx defined four specific types of alienation.

1. Alienation from the product of one’s labor. An industrial worker does not have the
opportunity to relate to the product he labors on. Instead of training for years as a
watchmaker, an unskilled worker can get a job at a watch factory pressing buttons
to seal watch pieces together. The worker does not care if he is making watches
or cars, simply that the job exists. In the same way, a worker may not even know
or care what product to which he is contributing. A worker on a Ford assembly line
may spend all day installing windows on car doors without ever seeing the rest of
the car.
2. Alienation from the process of one’s labor. A worker does not control the
conditions of her job because she does not own the means of production (i.e., the
factory and its tools and raw materials). If a person is hired to work in a fast food
restaurant, she is expected to make the food the way she is taught. All ingredients
must be combined in a particular order and in a particular quantity; there is no
room for creativity or change. An employee at Burger King cannot decide to
change the spices used on the fries in the same way that an employee on a Ford
assembly line cannot decide to place a car’s headlights in a different position.
Everything is decided by the factory-owning bourgeoisie who then dictate orders
to the laborers.
3. Alienation from others. Workers compete, rather than cooperate. Employees vie
for time slots, bonuses, and job security. Even when a worker clocks out at night
and goes home, the competition does not end. As Marx and Engels described this
dynamic in The Communist Manifesto (1848), “No sooner is the exploitation of the
laborer by the manufacturer, so far at an end, that he receives his wages in cash,
than he is set upon by the other portion of the bourgeoisie, the landlord, the
shopkeeper, the pawnbroker.”
4. Alienation from one’s self. A final outcome of industrialization is a loss of
connectivity between a worker and her occupation. Because there is nothing that
ties a worker to her labor, there is no longer a sense of self. Instead of being able
to take pride in an identity such as being a watchmaker, automobile builder, or
chef, a person is simply a cog in the machine.
Figure 3. An assembly line worker installs car parts with the aid of complex machinery. Has technology made
this type of labor more or less alienating? (Photo courtesy of Carol Highsmith/Wikimedia Commons)

Taken as a whole, then, alienation in modern society means that an individual has no
control over his life. But why, then, does the modern working class not rise up and
rebel? (Indeed, Marx predicted that this would be the ultimate outcome and would result
in the collapse of capitalism.)

Another idea that Marx developed is the concept of false consciousness. False
consciousness is a condition in which the beliefs, ideals, or ideology of a person are not
in the person’s own best interest. In fact, it is the ideology of the dominant class (here,
the bourgeois capitalists) that is imposed upon the proletariat. Ideas such as the
emphasis of competition over cooperation, or of hard work being its own reward, clearly
benefit the owners of the means of production. Therefore, workers are less likely to
question their place in society or to assume individual responsibility for existing
conditions.

In order for society to overcome false consciousness, Marx proposed that it be replaced
with class consciousness, the awareness of one’s rank in society. He thought it was
crucial that workers recognize their real relationship to, and political distance from, the
means of production. Instead of existing as a “class in itself,” the proletariat must
become a “class for itself” in order to effect social change, meaning that instead of just
being an inert stratum of society, the class could advocate for social improvements
(Marx and Engels 1848). Only once society entered this state of political consciousness
would it be ready for a social revolution.