Karl Marx Class Conflict and Todays Perspectives

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Karl Marx Class Conflict and Today’s Perspectives Class-conflict is a word many also refer to as class warfare or class struggle. This type of tension or antagonism exists in society due to competitive socioeconomical interests and desires between people of different classes. There are many forms of class-conflict, such as starvation, unsafe working conditions, poverty, violence, cheap labor, and many more. Political and legal forms of class conflict also exist. Some examples of such would be, illegally lobbying or bribing government leaders to gain passage of certain laws, or tax codes. Another form of class conflict may include, a lock out aimed at destroying a labor union, and this is called “open conflict”, or “hidden conflict”, which could be a slowdown in production protesting the wages being paid. According to Karl Marx however, class conflict and struggle are inevitable dissentions that occur because of the economic organization of most societies (Johnson, 2000). Marx also believed that class is defined by the ownership of property and such ownership vests a person with the power to exclude others from the property and to use it for personal purposes. In relation to property, there are three classes of society, they include, the bourgeoisie or the people who own the means of production such as factory and machinery buildings, and whose income is profit, landowners whose income is rent, and the proletariat who own their labor and sell it for a wage. Class is therefore determined by property, and not by income or status. Distribution and consumption are what determine this and what ultimately reflects the production and power relations of the classes (R.J. Rummel understanding, 1977). Now that I have explained what class conflict is, I would like to explain that class is formed when people achieve class consciousness and unity. It will happen when
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