![]() The study of conflict theory has evolved over the years. Mills called the ruling class by another name - The power elite, which dominates a society’s politics, military, and economy, and makes decisions to protect their status. Wright Mills (1916-1962), the founder of modern conflict theory, was aware of the Frankfurt School’s ideas. Whoever owned the means of producing the mass entertainment also controlled the cultural dialogue.Ĭ. Because money and power controlled entertainment, all entertainment was a product for profit. Later, two scholars at the Frankfurt School of critical theorists, Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno, argued that mass entertainment - Art, music, and media - was a product of capitalism that served to sustain its unequal power structure. Overthrowing the ruling class requires a complete uprooting and destruction of a society's ideology and the institutions that support it. According to Gramsci’s theory, the ruling group exercises hegemony over other groups through civil society and the state. This gave rise to Gramsci’s theory of cultural hegemony - The idea that political, economic, religious, and cultural forces around us govern our beliefs and values throughout the government, schools, and churches. Gramsci proposed that the key to power wasn’t controlling someone by force, but by controlling their consent. Italian philosopher Antonio Gramsci (1891-1937), however, believed that there must be something stronger than just a superstructure holding the inequality of class structure in place. The superstructure maintained the economic relationships required for capitalism to function there had to be an exploited class for capitalists to continue making a profit. designed to sustain the relationships of the economic base to the advantage of the bourgeoisie. The superstructure: The ideological framework of social institutions, education, religion, politics, etc.The economic base: The means of production and the relationships between the classes - the bourgeoisie and the proletariat - that maintain the production.In Karl Marx’s view, society was divided into two broad segments: For example, a drug dealer may have a lot of money, but not much social status, whereas a scientist may have less money but more prestige. ![]() For Weber, the relationship between economic class and status wasn’t always clear. While Marx's idea of class inequality was rooted in economics, Weber broadened power to mean social status or prestige as well. Weber called this inequality the "market situation" of individuals. ![]() Weber acknowledged that different classes of people had different life circumstances or advantages related to their economic or social status - such as education, health, and access to food - that allowed them to achieve higher skill sets in the marketplace than others. But power isn't limited to owning the means of production. To Weber, power is the ability to get your way in the face of resistance from others. But unlike Marx, Weber believed that conflict theory also applied to power dynamics beyond the inequalities of the rich and the poor. German economist and sociologist Max Weber (1864 -1920) agreed with Karl Marx that conflicts in society existed because of competition over resources. He argued that this was capitalism ’s fatal flaw, and that such an uprising would result in the society’s shift to socialism and communism. Marx believed that the continued exploitation of a working class would eventually lead to an uprising against the ruling class. This meant exploiting the working class, because surplus labor only produced value for the people who owned the means of production. By this logic, profit was generated if there was a surplus of accumulated labor. At minimum, a day of labor had to pay for the laborer’s food and shelter and replace the producer’s capital spent on the means of production (raw materials, factories, etc.). Marx argued that the means of production and labor were connected in that a product's value was directly related to how much labor it took to make it. ![]() Labor, which was provided by the masses, and compensated in wages.Means of production (aka raw materials, factories, etc.), which was privately owned by the producers rather than owned collectively by the laborers. ![]() Marx believed that, in a capitalist society, economic production was made up of two things: Marx argued that the distribution of wealth created class divides throughout history, and that social inequality and eventual revolutions stemmed from these divides. The main ideas of conflict theory are rooted in historical materialism - the idea that a society’s social structure and development is shaped by its economic production. ![]()
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