Английский язык. Мехеда О.Б. - 21 стр.

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UNIT 6
Read the text and try to understand it:
Karl Marx
Pa r t 1
The ideas advanced by Marx have had a great effect on current sociological
thought for more than one hundred years. Karl Marx has made the struggle between
competing social and economic classes a central feature of society and a dominant
source of social changes. The history of all hitherto existing societies, Marx declared
in his famous "Communist Manifesto", is the history of class struggles.
How do classes arise? According to Marx, „classes develop on the basis of the
different positions or roles which individuals fulfill in the productive scheme of a
society. The key concepts for Marx are the modes of production such as agriculture,
handicraft, or industrialism and the relations of production – the major levels or
statuses in the economic enterprise. In the industrial world the principal statuses are
worker and capitalist owner. The capitalist owner of the factories is pitted against
the non owning worker.
A crucial term in these relationships is that of "versus" or "against". As Marx saw
it, men in different relations to the means of production naturally have opposing
interests. In bourgeois capitalist society, those who own the factories have a vested
interest in maximizing profit. They seek to keep for themselves the surplus which has
been created by the worker. Naturally the worker resents this "exploitation". But the
capitalist class, due to its economic power, is able to control the power of the state. It
can use this power to block any expression of worker's discontent.
The capitalist owners secure even more effective control over the economy and
its products when the workers are fragmented and disorganized , or when they are
unaware of the sources of their debased situation, and do not actively try to remove
the causes of their distress. A key notion here is as follows: workers constitute a class
without necessarily being aware that they do so, or without necessarily taking any
collective action on the "basis of their common membership in the class. But,
according to Marx, they do constitute a class on two "objective" grounds: (1) their
common economic situation vis-a-vis the instrument of production, and (2) their
relatively uniform powerlessness in the face of state power that is used to frustrate
their expressions of discontent. The notion of the "objectivity" of class existence is a
distinguishing feature of the Marxist approach to the study of stratification.
Notes to the text:
all hitherto existing societies – все существующие до этого общества
... is pitted against the owning worker – выставляется в качестве
противника рабочего, не владеющего средствами производства
a vested interest – кровный интерес
vis-à-vis [vi:za:’vi:] – по отношению к
in the face of – перед лицом
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