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Social conflict is the struggle for agency or power in society. Social conflict occurs when two or more people oppose each other in social interaction, and each exerts social power with reciprocity in an effort to achieve incompatible goals but prevent the other from attaining their own. It is a social relationship in which action is intentionally oriented to carry out the actor's own will despite the resistance of others.Pruitt, Dean G., Kim, Sung Hee, Eds., (2004, 3rd Edition) Social Conflict, Escalation and Settlement, McGraw Hill Higher Education, New York, NY
One branch of conflict theory is critical criminology, a term based upon the view that the fundamental cause of crime is oppression, which results from social and economic forces operating within a given society. The perspective stems from the German philosopher Karl Marx, who viewed the justice system and the laws to favour the rich and the powerful in a society and for the poor to be punished far more severely for much smaller crimes.
Marx, a German revolutionary, emphasized his materialist views on ownership and means of production. He argued that what is most valued is a result of human labour, and he founded his ideas based on a capitalistic community, with most money being owned by only a few people. That causes a distinction between the class of the industrialists and that of the working class. The few industrialists own the means of production. The working class earns wages by selling its labour. Problems become noticeable because the upper class wants to get the most production for the least money. Surplus value is created, which the profit held onto by the industrialists from by workers producing more than the employers actually need to repay the cost of hiring labourers. Another occurrence is exploitation, which is workers receiving less money than the worth of their labour. Marx believed that the gap between industrialists and the labourers would continue to grow. The industrialists would continue to become more wealthy, and the labourers would continue to become poorer. Conflict theory is seen throughout relationships and interactions between two groups of people including races, opposite sexes, and religions.
Max Weber and Karl Marx have two different approaches to the conflict theory. Marx supported the ideas of deviance and claimed that individuals choose to engage in such rebellious and conflicting behaviour as a response to the inequalities of the capitalist system. Weber discussed the conflict of stratification and its effects on Political power in society and stressed property, prestige, and power to be the main influences to the conflicting behaviours of groups in society.
Marx argued: "The worker becomes all the poorer the more wealth he produces, the more his production increases in power and range. The worker becomes an ever cheaper commodity the more commodities he creates. With the increasing value of the world of things proceeds in direct proportion to the devaluation of the world of men. Labour produces not only commodities; it produces itself and the worker as a commodity -- and does so in the proportion in which it produces commodities generally."
A commodity is a social use value produced by its owner not for personal consumption but for exchange. Marx believed that an entrepreneur must keep up with more things as his company and power expand. That becomes more difficult each time his range of power increases. Eventually, he will become a commodity by no longer being able to keep up with the business and will have to put it up for sale on the market.
Here are some types of social conflict:
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