Class is a construct based on a set of values normally related back to both wealth and power. It works as the hierarchical stratification of groups of people. Normally these groups are working, middle and upper class in a pyramid structure.
"The history of all human society, past and present, has been the history of class struggle"
- Manifesto
Marx, K. The Communist
London: Pluto
Press, 1996
Marxist theory of class
Karl Marx was a German philosopher, economist and social scientist. His thoughts about labour, capital and power is what forms the basis of Marxism.
The ruling class has material force because it has the means to produce material objects. He called all things relating to production the Base.
He defined three classes:
Proletariats (Working class - those who work for means of production)
Bourgeoisie (Middle class - those who live off the means of production)
Aristocracy (Upper class - those who own land etc as means of production)
"Moving beyond Marx, but still moving alongside but not wholly within economics, class is made through cultural values premised in morality embodied in personhood and realised (or not) as a property value in symbolic systems of exchange"
- (Skeggs, B. 2005, reacting to Reality Tv)
OUCA401
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