Essay on Cultural Anthro - Karl Marx

The social class in America is everywhere but it is often quite hard to recognize only because it is against the American principle for the social class system to exist. Whether we know it or not, we tend to participate in the class system.. By doing so, this leads us to separate ourselves based on our social class system, including class discrimination and social mobility

Have you ever referred to someone as “high class,” “middle class,” or “low class?” The article “Class In America” is a very educated read and describes the way people are characterized by their “class.” I think that this article informs all types of readers and allows people to see how people are grouped based on themselves. “Class in America” is written to show and prove to society that people do not talk about “class” anymore, because of the way the world looks at it today. Gregory Mantosis is the author of the article, and he uses many facts and data to prove his points.

Contrary to the upper class, the middle class retains an opportunity for growth and therefore believes in the American Dream. However, their dreams shy away from the common view of the American Dream and instead revolve around their values and wants. Primarily, the middle class is defined as having an income between $46,960 and $140,900, although the economic boundaries that make up the middle class constantly varies (Luhby). Besides income, the middle class also can be identified by occupation, net worth, or education, but every middle class citizen, no matter how they are identified, experience similar circumstances (Elkins). The majority of the middle class yearn to have a nice home and secure job, along with extra money to enjoy their interests and hobbies. In addition, they strive to set aside savings for their children’s transition into the working world or future education. Although the middle class has more opportunities than lower class citizens, they still encounter their own struggles. For many middle class families, hard times come and go while they try to maintain a comfortable living situation. Money for them does not come as easily as it does for the upper class, who typically have enough to constantly feel stable. Nonetheless, the middle class obtains enough to live more

The wage-earning class was the debtors, debtors who owed money and had to work to make a living for creditors, most of whom made up what would be known as the middle class. The tradition of fathers passing their land on down to their sons was slowly dying such as with Mayo Greenleaf Patch and his sons. Mayo Patch’s life was riddled with owing debts to the middle

Despite the debates about social class, the United States is usually described as having four major social classes, the elite or upperclass, the middle class, the working class, and the lower class (Goldscmidt). Classes are generally differentiated by income, education, and occupation although other factors do have an effect. The upperclass consists of about 1% of the population making 750,000 dollars or more a year as investors, top executives, or heirs to large fortunes (Hughes and Jenkins). There tends to be no question about who is in the upperclass as they are pretty clearly isolated in their power and wealth. The middle class makes up about 40% of the population making anywhere from 40,000 to 749,999 dollars a year (Hughes and Jenkins). The large disparity in income and wealth have led to a further division of this class into upper-middle class and middle class in some circles. The middle class usually work white collar jobs as professionals and managers, however some highly skilled blue collar workers are included. Those in the middle class have usually obtained higher education degrees and place a high value on individual responsibility for one’s class (Goldschmidt). The working class is composed of about 50% of the population earning 13,000 to 39,000 dollars a year (Hughes and Jenkins). Some also divide this class into a working class and a

* The middle class lay in the middle and was the group of people in society that had bigger better houses on their own block of land and were quite well off when it came to money and resources.

A healthy robust middle class constitutes the backbone of the social and economic fabric of a country. It is also highly significant for the maintenance of political peace and cultural vibrancy. The reason every country needs to have a healthy middle class is grounded in its ability to minimize the risk of potential class conflicts. Karl Marx (1948) argued that economic history of the world is defined by class related conflicts and these arose from the struggle between haves and have-nots. However Marx did not mention the power of the middle class to minimize these conflicts. Thomas Malthus, the man who had been a strong supporter of population control, was at least wise enough to recognize the importance of the middle class when he wrote in 1803 in his second Essay on Population, "Our best grounded expectations of an increase in the happiness of the mass of human society are founded in the prospect of an increase in the relative proportions of the middle parts."

In the late ninetieth and early twentieth century; also known as the Gilded Age, there was a rapid growth in the Unite States’ economy and a large increase in population due to the significant changes made in the industrial industry of the country. The reasoning behind the rapid influx of European citizens migrating to United States was because payment wages in America were dramatically higher than those in Europe and the availability of jobs were also significantly higher as well. All the new immigrants coming in from Europe, the Native Americans, and the African Americans trying to adapt into the labor force of the country were referred to as the “non-white” category. The changes made in society forced these groups of individuals to assimilate into industrial labor process of America and by adapting to the way of society. Which caused all the minority groups to take away or change their own certain cultural value and ways of life . Being forced to adapt to new ways in society is how a country grows and proposers, by living in the country you sometimes have to make certain changes you do not want to make in order to survive in the country. The changes were not made in order to target and attack certain minority groups, but rather to help the United States economy and bring more job opportunities for all the people. Racism and segregation played a big role in the adapting process in the United States economy because the job opportunities provided many new benefits

In America the middle class is nothing short of substantial, and this was paralleled when the class was first born in feudal Europe, due to the Crusades, along with many other impacts. The Crusades’ most impactful repercussions were the expansion of trade and the rise of the new middle class. The former revolves around how the growth of trade lead to the growth of other aspects in medieval times. For example, the Crusades causing more trade led to more complex banking styles, like bills of exchange. Not only this but they also attracted more people into Europe, consequently expanding cities and towns. This is important because the bills of exchange -- although not tremendously influential then -- eventually lead to debit cards today, and the

Paul Fussell, author of Class: A Guide through The American Status System, observes, “We’re pretty well stuck for life in the class we’re raised in” (169). Fussell’s statement can be supported and verified by many other sources such as the series of social class articles from New York Times. Janny Scott and David Leonhardt state in their article, “Shadowy Lines That Still Divide”, “Americans are arguably more likely than they were 30 years ago to end up in the class in which they were born” (3). The New York Times revealed that “there is, statistically, far less movement of families up and down the economic ladder than common people believe” (4); However, the same article also documents some examples that qualifies Fussell’s statement about

In the second book, Looking Backwards, Edward Bellamy demonstrates the worldview question “what is the zeitgeist”. In humanities zeitgeist is defined as the spirit of the times. Throughout the book Bellamy gives the reader different time frames to look at, to help examine the zeitgeist. The time frames presented in the book involve the 19th century and the 20th century. Bellamy distinguishes the time periods through his characters Julian West and Dr. Leete.

When Karl Marx, founder of conflict theory, witnessed the Industrial revolution that occurred in Europe, he had the opportunity to witness workers and the clear division of classes. What he witnessed was a clear division of peasant workers and then the wealthy owners of those businesses. The peasant workers he called the Proletariat people, they are poor and struggle to make ends meet and they were also the majority group. The business owners he called the Bourgeoisie, who are wealthy and control or exploit the proletariats in such as Karl Marx, took on a macro-level perspective, in such that they looked at how society, as a whole function. These two groups of people need one another, and sometimes, when conditions are right there can form a new group, which is called the synthesis or middle class. The middle class is the result of the tension between the bourgeoisie and proletariats.

Karl Marx describes “Society as a whole [as being] more and more [split] up into two great hostile camps, into two great classes directly facing each other-bourgeoisie and proletariat” (Marx 124).  As Marx made his distinction between upper class, bourgeoisie, and lower class, proletariats, it is important to keep in mind the societal structure at the time.  To understand how classes were created and the disparity between the rich and poor, or, bourgeoisie and proletariat, it is necessary to examine how people came to be rich and poor.  Exploring a time before money existed will help us to process and understand reasons why the binary between rich and poor exists and how it is reflective of low and high art distinctions.

People always wonder what makes them who they are. However, the extent to which our characters are derived from ourselves is always an argument for many philosophers. Marx, a German philosopher, and Mengzi, a representative thinker of Confucianism, present similar accounts in explaining how humans are shaped. Both Marx and Mengzi believe that our individual character is not solely shaped by ourselves but are shaped in ways by external forces. However, I will argue that, compared with Mengzi’s view of the moral attributes that inherently exist in humans themselves, Marx’s account is more systematic and compelling due to his emphasis of the effect of the interrelationship between humans themselves and the external forces of labor and social structures.

Human societies have been class based in some way and the class factor has been the most basic dividing or differentiating factor between broad social groups. In the economic sphere that Marx’s theory focuses on, there is a class that own and control means of economic production which could be referred to as the upper class, and there is the class that maybe own nothing, but their ability to sell their labor power in return for wages which could be referred to as the middle or low class. From that understanding, and based on the conflict theory, one might argue that unequal distribution of resources and access