A 5-minute read | sociological perspectives, condensed
Full study notes: Marxism: Class, Ideology and the Conflict Theory of Society, elsewhere on histpology.co.uk.
“The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.”
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto (1848)
Marx and Engels meant that every society, right up to their own time, has split into two groups with opposing interests. History, they argued, is really the story of the struggle between them.
In a nutshell
Marxism is a structural theory, like functionalism: it argues that society’s structure shapes behaviour more than personal choice does. But unlike functionalism, Marxism is a conflict perspective. It argues that this structure benefits one class, the bourgeoisie (the ruling class), far more than the other, the proletariat (the working class).
Marx argued that a society’s economic base (how it organises work and ownership) shapes its superstructure (everything built on top: law, politics, education, religion, family life). Laws and widely held ideas tend to serve whoever owns and controls production.
The bourgeoisie profit by paying workers less than the value of what they produce. Marx called this gap surplus value. This can create false consciousness: workers accepting ruling-class ideas as natural or fair, instead of seeing them as serving the bourgeoisie’s interests. Marx believed growing class consciousness (a clear-eyed awareness of exploitation) would eventually push workers to overthrow capitalism.
| Key terms |
| Structural theory: explains behaviour mainly through society’s structure acting on the individual, e.g. Marxism and functionalism. |
| Conflict perspective: sees society as built on conflict between groups with opposing interests, rather than shared agreement. |
| Base and superstructure: Marx‘s model in which a society’s economic organisation (the base) shapes its politics, laws and culture (the superstructure). |
| Surplus value: the extra value created by workers’ labour, kept by the bourgeoisie as profit instead of paid in wages. |
| False consciousness and class consciousness: accepting ruling-class ideas as natural and fair (false consciousness), or seeing through and resisting them (class consciousness). |
| Feature | Bourgeoisie | Proletariat |
| Owns | Factories, land and capital | Only their own labour power, sold for wages |
| Gets income from | Profit, drawn from surplus value | Wages, often below the value of what they produce |
| Outlook, in Marx’s terms | Treats its own interests as common sense | At risk of false consciousness |
Table 1: Marx’s two great classes, condensed from The Communist Manifesto (1848).
Evaluating Marxism, fast
- Strength: gives a clear, testable explanation for persistent inequality, without needing everyone to genuinely agree with an unequal system.
- Strength: Gramsci‘s idea of hegemony (winning genuine consent, not just using force) explains why capitalist societies stay stable without an automatic revolution.
- Strength: the base and superstructure model usefully links economic change to change in law, education and culture.
- Weakness: Heidi Hartmann (1979) argues classical Marxism is largely gender-blind, treating women mainly as members of a class rather than facing separate patriarchal power.
- Weakness: Jan Pakulski and Malcolm Waters (1996) argue class has become a weaker source of identity than Marx assumed, as lifestyles and consumption fragment.
- Weakness: Weberian sociologists argue Marxism squeezes all inequality into class, when status and political power can operate separately from a person’s relationship to production.
| ANALYSIS — AO2 | EVALUATION — AO3 |
| Marxism and functionalism are both structural theories, since both see society’s structure as shaping the individual. They disagree sharply about why that structure holds together: functionalism points to shared values, while Marxism points to ruling-class ideology backed by power. | Marx‘s account explains persistent inequality more convincingly than functionalism does, since it does not need everyone to genuinely agree with arrangements that benefit them unequally. Critics such as Hartmann (1979) and Pakulski and Waters (1996) show it cannot explain inequality fully on its own. |
| Key Takeaways |
| Marxism is a structural, conflict perspective, developed by Marx and Engels in the 19th century. |
| Marx‘s base and superstructure model argues that a society’s economic organisation shapes its law, politics, culture and ideas. |
| Surplus value, false consciousness and class consciousness explain how exploitation is hidden, and how Marx believed it would eventually be overcome. |
| Neo-Marxists such as Gramsci kept Marxism‘s conflict core, while giving culture and ideas more independence from the economic base. |
| Check your understanding |
| 1. Explain what Marx meant by saying the economic base determines the superstructure, using one example. You could: pick one part of the superstructure, such as education or religion, and explain how Marx thought it serves the interests of the class that owns the means of production. |
| 2. “Marxism is now an outdated explanation of inequality.” To what extent do you agree? You should: name one strength and one weakness of Marxism from this page, each with a specific thinker, and reach a supported judgement. |
Specification links: AQA 7192 3.1.3 and 3.3.2 (Theory and Methods).