Economy, Society,

and Cultural
Change
The Economy as Foundation of Social Life
Karl Marx is arguing that the different kinds of social relations that
are generated by the economic production of humans of a society
shape the entire life, beliefs, and activities of that society.
• The assertion of Karl Marx is also a truism in another way.
• Marx famously observed that the degree of the development and
progress of a society is always measured by the status of
women.
 THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF
INEQUALITIES
• The distribution of wealth in society will always be dependent on the economic
structure of society.
• For Marx, class refers to relations among people who share the same class interests
in relation to the means of production.
• Those who own and monopolize the means of production in the classic Marxist
analysis, under capitalism, are called the bourgeoisie or the capitalists.
• Those who own nothing except to sell their labor power in the market are the
proletariat. (From French prolétariat, from Latin proletarius—a man whose only
wealth is his offspring).
THREE TYPES OF CLASS ACCORDING
TO MARX:
1. Bourgeoisie – which the Communist Manifesto referred to as “owners
of the means of social production and employers of wage labor.”
2. Proletariat or the Working Class – which are said to be “the class of
modern wage-laborers who, having no means of production of their own
are reduced to selling their labor-power in order to live.”
3. Lumpenproletariat – known as the “dangerous class” which is said to
be composed of “the social scum.”
 System of Stratification as Source of
Inequalities
MAX WEBER
Max Weber defined class as a category of individuals who:
1. Have in common a specific casual component of their life chances in so far as:
2. This component represented exclusively by economic interests in the possession of goods and
opportunities for income, and:
3. It is represented under the conditions of the commodity or labor market.”
• Weber’s sociology distinguished status from class as the two principal bases of social
stratification.
• Status designated the differentiation of groups in the “communal” sphere in terms of their
social honor and social standing.
 CASTE:
• Caste system as a system of social stratification
differs from class in its rigidity and in the basis of
legitimation.
• It is also called a closed system.
• Class system: Individuals are positioned according to their access
to the means of production and contribution to productive labor.
• SOCIAL MOBILITY: When people are allowed and are capable
of moving from one stratum or class to another class.
• STATUS AND CLASS: Status Groups – are communities.
• Status – refers to life chances that are determined by social honor
or prestige.
• Social Capital – refers to resources based on group membership,
relationships, and networks of influence and support.