Social Stratification

“There is a sense in which the whole of Marx’s writing boils down to several embarrassing questions: Why is it that the capitalist West has accumulated more resources than human history has ever witnessed, yet appears powerless to overcome poverty, starvation, exploitation, and inequality?

                -Terry Eagleton (The Chronicle Review, In Praise of Marx)

In class we began to look at different ways that people are divided or stratified. Social stratification is defined as: the division of large numbers of people into layers according to their relative power, property, and prestige; applies to both nations and to people within a nation, society or other group.

Some countries, like India, divide their individuals into different categories in a caste system. One is born into and cannot move up or down into their specific placement in society. The lowliest people in this system are considered “impure” and are known as the untouchables. Some activist untouchables are fighting for integrity and equality in a civil right movement.  Here’s a video showing their fight and struggles in 2007 and is still occurring now:

So Karl Marx taught socialism over capitalism. He spoke of the possibility of dramatic change. This change consisted of different ways of dealing with money and economics, not the human consciousness. He was very level-headed and intelligent, but his ideas got blown out of proportion by the Communist regimes of China and Russia.  “He did not believe that men and women could surpass the Archangel Gabriel in sanctity. Rather, he believed that the world could feasibly be made a considerably better place.”  Karl Marx was reasonable because he had seen what capitalism and socialism could do. He knew that there were plenty of resources to share in the world. In Praise of Marx mentions, “ All he meant was that there are more than enough resources on the planet to resolve most of our material problems, just as there was more than enough food in Britain in the 1840s to feed the famished Irish populations several times over.”

Karl Marx

But what can we do? How can we solve this issue of unfair stratification in society?  Marx was famous for not laying out any future plans. Karl Marx was one of the first men to speak of the system by which we live by. He sought out the contradictions, historical origins, and the potential demise. He was sure to predict that if dramatic change was not considered, capitalism will only lead to major problems. Prosperity of some leads to suffering of others. Nations gain power by conquering and striping others of their rights.

This idea can be applied to any other group or society as well. Competiveness and “being better than your neighbor” has been taught to children since they were born.  One must compete for the best position in house baseball, for the place in school play, and for admission into the best college. The current fight in India is just one real-life and extreme example of social stratification in action. We are constantly being measured based on what power, prestige, and property these roles give us. Capitalism feeds on the idea that humans superficially and consciously strive for greatness and look down upon those who choose not to or who do not have the resources to do so.