Marx's Impact on Social Stratification Theories

Paper Summary:

This paper will examine Karl Marx's class stratification; Max Weber's status and political stratifications; Gerhard Lenski's class systems' stratification; and, Edna Bonacich's split labor market theory. Criticisms of power-conflict stratification will be discussed and examples will be provided. The author will then focus on Karl Marx's theories of class startification.

From the paper:

"People are unequal in their access to wealth, power, and prestige. In all societies, people receive different shares of what is valued and limited. This unequal distribution of the society's resources creates a system of stratification. People are grouped based on how much of the society's rewards they receive, and these groups, or strata, are arranged in a rank order, or hierarchy. Those at the top receive the most of what there is to get and those at the bottom the least. According to Leicht (2000), societies may include any number of strata, but in all cases, this system of inequality is structured. This means that stratification is not random, with groups and individuals occupying different positions by chance; rather, social institutions such as government, the economy, education, and religion operate to assure the position of various groups in the hierarchy. In addition, the system of stratification in all societies is legitimized by an ideology that justifies the resulting inequality. The pattern of stratification in a society is therefore stable for many generations."

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