strengths & weaknesses of Marx's conflict theory?

Answer 1

Marx conflict theory's strength was the inherit conflict between the haves and the have nots of his time and was somewhat legitimate although I never agreed with his solutions.

The most glaring weakness of his conflict theory was that Marx either did not our could not see the rise of the middle class with plenty of disposable income. In short Marx never invisioned eliminating conflict though economic growth.

That is the reason the Soviet Union is no more. And that is the reason the Marxist countries such as China and Vietnam have adopted free enterprise systems so they have a strong and viable middle class. Hard line Marxist countries such as North Korean never develope a strong middle class and they just slowly implode.

Answer 2

To use answer one as a bouncing wall:


"Marx conflict theory's strength was the inherit conflict between the haves and the have nots of his time and was somewhat legitimate although I never agreed with his solutions."

Class confict as a sociological tool is applied to history as much to the future of human activity. The stage of the scientific progress is to describe the determinants for the next sociological product. He saw the bourgeois arising from the new constructs for production in the property class, the guilds and emerging to confront the Monarchy and Aristocracy and to threaten revolution for the rule of the bourgeois.

"The history of all hitherto existing society(2) is the history of class struggles.

Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guild-master(3) and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended, either in a revolutionary reconstitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes. "

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch01.htm



"The most glaring weakness of his conflict theory was that Marx either did not our could not see the rise of the middle class with plenty of disposable income. In short Marx never invisioned eliminating conflict though economic growth."

The middle class only make the ruling bourgeois the winner, it has very little to do with successful pacification for the working class except charities.

Economic growth which was most accellerated in the introduction of America, the new world, to European import and export did little to soften conflict. What follows is the American revolution from the English Monarchy and state. The struggle of state and state is capitalist struggle in competition.

"That is the reason the Soviet Union is no more. And that is the reason the Marxist countries such as China and Vietnam have adopted free enterprise systems so they have a strong and viable middle class. Hard line Marxist countries such as North Korea never develope a strong middle class and they just slowly implode. "

Actually free enterprize is a strength in his thinking never ackowledged by his opponents. Why he never emphazied it further, I imagine, is because there was no need to or that it would be rejected.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/manuscripts/comm.htm
"(2) Communism (a) still political in nature – democratic or despotic; (b) with the abolition of the state, yet still incomplete, and being still affected by private property, i.e., by the estrangement of man. In both forms communism already is aware of being reintegration or return of man to himself, the transcendence of human self-estrangement; but since it has not yet grasped the positive essence of private property, and just as little the human nature of need, it remains captive to it and infected by it. It has, indeed, grasped its concept, but not its essence."



Perhaps he was convinced in his own skepticism of competition and the social values, or lack of them, produced in it.

"The bourgeoisie, by the rapid improvement of all instruments of production, by the immensely facilitated means of communication, draws all, even the most barbarian, nations into civilisation. The cheap prices of commodities are the heavy artillery with which it batters down all Chinese walls, with which it forces the barbarians’ intensely obstinate hatred of foreigners to capitulate. It compels all nations, on pain of extinction, to adopt the bourgeois mode of production; it compels them to introduce what it calls civilisation into their midst, i.e., to become bourgeois themselves. In one word, it creates a world after its own image. "


http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/01/19.htm

"But I repeat that no class has ever proved as hostile to the working class as the middle class of England. (Hear, hear.) It has cast down aristocracy on the left, democracy on the right, and lives on the ruins of both. I do not wish to raise the aristocracy. No! Let the bruised serpent lie, for it would sting the hand that healed it.... Under feudalism, the people were fat slaves; under your rule, Sir defender of the middle class, they are lean slaves. (Loud cheers.)"

With the progress of technology and the specializations in production and services, the middle classes diversified. Does this mean there was a transformation and a negation in antagonisms in competition, a revolution in social ideology and an elevation of the working class intellectual status? Actually, over time yes, but humans are perfectionistic and the punitive justice ideology yet prevails over but fails in that crime is as it ever was.

http://chiron.valdosta.edu/whuitt/col/cogsys/piaget.html

"Stages of Cognitive Development. Piaget identified four stages in cognitive development:

Sensorimotor stage (Infancy). In this period (which has 6 stages), intelligence is demonstrated through motor activity without the use of symbols. Knowledge of the world is limited (but developing) because its based on physical interactions / experiences. Children acquire object permanence at about 7 months of age (memory). Physical development (mobility) allows the child to begin developing new intellectual abilities. Some symbollic (language) abilities are developed at the end of this stage.

Pre-operational stage (Toddler and Early Childhood). In this period (which has two substages), intelligence is demonstrated through the use of symbols, language use matures, and memory and imagination are developed, but thinking is done in a nonlogical, nonreversable manner. Egocentric thinking predominates

Concrete operational stage (Elementary and early adolescence). In this stage (characterized by 7 types of conservation: number, length, liquid, mass, weight, area, volume), intelligence is demonstarted through logical and systematic manipulation of symbols related to concrete objects. Operational thinking develops (mental actions that are reversible). Egocentric thought diminishes.

Formal operational stage (Adolescence and adulthood). In this stage, intelligence is demonstrated through the logical use of symbols related to abstract concepts. Early in the period there is a return to egocentric thought. *Only 35% of [high school graduates] in industrialized countries obtain formal operations* ; many people do not think formally during adulthood. "

If only 76% of students graduate high school, then only about 12 percent of students in industrialized nations achieve this degree of intellectual ability. 150 years ago, what would that percentage figure be? 1 percent? So, with the gradual liberalization in a variety of nations with higher standards of public education, more people could enter the middle classes. Does this mean technologized free enterprize is the sole contributor factorer for this increase in intellectual success? No, because literacy and other education was a forced issue in class conflict.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch02.htm

'10. Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children’s factory labour in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production, &c, &c.'