How does Webers concept of status group challenge Marxs views on Essay

How does Webers concept of status group challenge Marxs views on polarization of classes in societies - Essay Example For Marx, society is not merely a collection of separate, competing individuals, although that is the appearance that capitalist society presents. Throughout history societies have divided into competing classes, defined structurally and economically in terms of their relationship to the means of production. "In the Communist Manifesto Marx and Engels comment that the history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles." (Bottomore, 1983, p. 75). Thus, he viewed the bourgeoisie as the owners, and the proletariat as the non-owners, of the means of production. Marx believed that capitalist society was increasingly becoming polarized into "two great opposed camps" of bourgeois and proletarians, which is destined to lead to conflict among these classes. Through its own instruments of development, it is bound to give rise ultimately to its own dissolution--to a revolution that will result in the overthrow of capitalism and to the creation of a socialist order. The conquest of political power by the working class will lead, firstly, to the creation of a socialist state--a state in which the working class is the ruling class and which functions in the interests of the working class. Thus, the "dictatorship of the proletariat" will replace the "dictatorship of the bourgeoisie". By the term "dictatorial", Marx does not indicate that such states have a dictatorial political form, but rather that they rule in the interests of a particular class. However, the "dictatorship of the proletariat" is only the "first phase" of post- capitalist era. Its ultimate aim is to abolish the private ownership of the means of production, and hence the social and economic basis of class divisions. In addition, Marx believed that the rise of...(Giddens, 1971, p. 37). Weber notes that there is class conscious organization where (a) there are no groups between the real adversaries, (b) large numbers of persons are in the same class situation, (c) it is technically easy to organize those in the common class situation, and (d) where the goals of the class are well understood, and this understanding is led by those outside the class (intelligentsia). (Giddens and Held, p. 72)