Class Conflict
Marx did not originate but popularized the idea of irreconcilable conflict between social classes.1 In Marx’s view, occupation alone determines class. An individual is either an owner and a member of the bourgeoisie or a worker and a member of the proletariat.
In his view, the bourgeoisie manipulate education, family, law, religion and other elements of society to insure their control of the means of production, such as farming, herding, manufacture, and trade.Marx maintained that the transition from feudalism to capitalism merely changed peasants who slaved for noblemen into workers exploited by the bourgeoisie. The “iron law of wages” held: owners paid workers just enough for them to survive and reproduce. The “labor theory of value” also held: the workers alone were responsible for profit. Owners were parasites. Marx did not originate this idea either. His contribution was the inevitability of socialist revolution. With what he thought was impeccable logic he argued that the owners who controlled both economic and political power never would permit reforms that would reduce their profits. Workers would sink deeper and deeper into poverty until their suffering became unbearable and they revolted to replace capitalism with socialism, which with classes eliminated would put an end to conflict. Events already had refuted much of what Marx wrote by the time he wrote it, and most of his predictions have proven false (Chapter 5).
James Madison’s Federalist Paper Number 10 is a more important—and earlier—document on divisions in society. He recognized that factions, as he called them, had to be considered in organizing a government:
The instability, injustice, and confusion introduced into the public councils, have, in truth, been the mortal diseases under which popular governments have everywhere perished; as they continue to be the favorite and fruitful topics from which the adversaries of liberty derive their most specious declamations.
Anticipating Marx, Madison also wrote that:
The most common and durable source of factions has been the various and unequal distribution of property… A landed interest, a manufacturing interest, a mercantile interest, a moneyed interest, with many lesser interests, grow up of necessity in civilized nations, and divide them into different classes, actuated by different sentiments and views. The regulation of these various and interfering interests forms the principal task of modern legislation, and involves the spirit of part in the necessary and ordinary operations of the government.
Madison argued that it is impossible to remove the causes of factions, but, taking his solution from Montesquieu, that they can be checked and balanced by distributing power among three branches of government that cannot encroach on or reduce the powers of the others, although each will try.
Max Weber (1968) agreed with Marx in seeing class conflict as important, and in seeing economics as a primary force for social change. But, where Marx had seen stratification based only on economic class, Weber suggested political and social forces among independent elements of social stratification in modern societies. Weber agreed with Marx that social change grew out of social conflict, and he discussed how leadership evolves, which he saw as taking one of three main forms (Chapter 9). In another departure from Marx, he discussed how society can function despite its underlying conflicts. Finally, unlike Marx, he did not see forces of production as the sole foundation of social change, and stressed ideas as having an independent influence (Chapter 5). In The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, Weber (2012) tried to show that religious ideas were crucial in building modern capitalism. This is the opposite of Marx—ideas affect material forces, rather than the other way round.
Ralf Dahrendorf (1959), building on Marx and Weber, also saw conflict as a primary source for social change.
He assumed power differentials within any organization were the key to understanding conflict. Superiors and subordinates look at the world differently and have different goals, creating conflict that is more political than economic. Class conflict was merely a special case within the more general phenomenon. Despite sometimes sounding like Marx, his theory is more general and parsimonious. He further thought that, while some conflicts can be resolved, those involving class could at best be restrained. Marx’s idea of resolution through violent struggle leading inevitably to a class-less utopia was, in Dahrendorf’s view, delusional. All class struggle did was change who holds power, leading to a new conflict. Building on this, Louis Kriesberg (1973) concentrated on what he calls "intractable conflicts," those that resist all efforts at resolution. Threats degenerate into distorted descriptions of opponents, hardening of positions, stereotyping, and automatic responses that make resolution increasingly difficult if not impossible.Talcott Parsons (1977), unlike Marx, saw little good in conflict. Often thinking in biological analogies, he likened it to disease and saw it as a threat to the community. And, like disease, if possible it was to be prevented and if not it was to be cured with social control as the medicine of choice or force as the surgery of last resort. His primary concern was with how social order, integration, and equilibrium are possible. He thought in terms of social levels (behavioral, personal, social and cultural), although he did not see any general process that affected all societies equally and felt that individual societies could advance, stagnate, or regress. As his thoughts developed, he identified four imperatives for social order and survival, identified by the acronym AGIL:
Adaptation to the inevitability of change: Social subsystems of successful societies evolve in the direction of improved function and greater distinctiveness.
Goal attainment: Societies must achieve their primary goals, which require cooperation among its members to insure completion and coordination of primary tasks.
Integration: Channels of communication and a common language are required to regulate the relationship among adaptation, goal attainment, and latency.
Latency: A stable, meaningful, and predictable society requires teaching a cultural value system to its members. However, as a society’s subsystems adapt, the value system itself must become more general and tolerant if it is to legitimize the wider variety among its subunits.
Georg Simmel (1955) and his disciple Lewis Coser (1956) took the opposite view from Parsons, emphasizing possible positive effects of conflict. Among them, conflict established and maintained community identity and boundaries, increased cohesion, and energized members. Conflict can help to maintain relationships and allow consensus to develop. Echoing catharsis, they thought protests and demonstrations provide a safety valve that reduce frustration and allow consensus to develop. However, conflict does not always allow consensus to develop. Countless religious conflicts have led to schisms. Endless demonstrations and some violence have not resolved disputes over abortion—but neither have legislation or court cases. War and diplomacy determined the existence and boundaries of many nations, and colonial powers imposed many of the rest with a view to keeping the indigenous population divided and conquered. Similarly, gangs establish and mark their “turf” and sports fans usually are loyal to local teams. War can divide as well as unite societies, as happened in the United States during Vietnam and both parts of the Gulf War.
Simmel and Coser also suggested that conflict might signal problems in the community. Lawsuits, bus boycotts, sit-ins, and protest marches warned Americans of the need to eliminate segregation and address poverty in the inner cities, leading to the Civil Rights and Great Society legislation in the mid-1960s. Finally, Simmel and Coser saw conflict as readjusting power within a group. If there is no tradition of a peaceful means of doing so, such as through elections, then less peaceful ones, such as coups or civil wars, will. Either way, they said leadership eventually would reflect political changes in a community.