On Social Class,
Power, Property, Reification, and Poverty
November
30th 2005
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Karl Marx |
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The ideas of
social class, power, property, reification and poverty are
inextricably linked by the factor of oppression. All of these things
are seen or attained through the oppression and exploitation of one
class by another. Social class is a socially constructed idea,
usually defined by the strata of income in which one is a part of.
Power is gained usually by being in the upper social classes, and
also exhibits the exploitationist traits through the method of
keeping power.
Property is
another social construction made to prevent certain individuals from
becoming equally as powerful as another by way of preventing them
from having the most valuable non-essential commodity. Reification
is that which makes the individual part of the collective whole and
denies them the ability to be one amongst many rather than one as a
part of many. Poverty is the result of the oppressive ruling classes
using the other traits in a combination of sorts and then finally
ruling the proletariat.
Karl Marx said: “Society does not consist of individuals
but expresses the sum of interrelations, the relations within which
these individuals stand” and those inter-relations are what we call
class structure. The upper classes usually make more money, have
more power, and own the means of production (which are the machines
by which the proletariat produces things).
The lower class work for the capitalists who own the
manufacturing technology. These classes are the engines for social
progression and development. The class system does not need to
exist, however, it cannot be rejected over-night either. To quote
Ira B. Cross, a professor at Stanford University, “[…] the change
from capitalism to socialism must come as a result of evolution
rather than revolution.” Social class spurs many other inequalities
as will be further expounded upon here in this essay.
Power is the use of a social position in order to rule over
another person or thing. Power can be exercised through the use of
wage labour, freedom restriction, through the restriction of the
proletarian ability to own property, or through the taking of one’s
life. Power is not always in the hands of one particular group or
person, it is a changing pendulum, something which may change at a
whim, and yet may also hold fast for many ages. Such as the Catholic
church controlled the goings on in Europe for hundreds of years, so
too does the power change very quickly in the poor regions of Africa
in the modern age. Lenin states that power “[…] consists of special
bodies of armed men who have at their disposal prisons, etc.”.
This argument is
true even in the modern day United States of America. The government
has at it’s disposal, military personnel, as well as a prison system
which has the largest number of people in it, per capita in the
entire world. Power and social class are related due to the fact
that the people in power are mostly from the upper echelons of
society.
Property is one of the many exploitive means by which the
ruling class exercises their power. Property ownership is also one
of the main means of class stratification. The modern usage goes
back to the feudal ages when the lords of regions would fence off
certain parts of land in order to make sure the peasant classes
couldn’t use it for their own means. Property has been used as a
means for acquisition and the retaining of power for many, many
ages. Since the beginnings of human society it can be traced as a
method of power and keeping the status quo therein.
Private property
in and of itself is a social construction used only for the
exploitation of an underclass by the class who owns the land, or in
the most basic of terms, the mean of production. The only way to
eliminate this disparity is by the collectivization of all land, and
the consolidation of it for the use of the general whole in an equal
amount for a purpose of united benefit. Capitalism is the furthered
by the concept of privatization, and the privatization is being
manifested in the form of land, and he who owns it. It is not
something which has natural and visible boarders, but it is
something which ownership must be accepted.
It is an idea,
just as the concept of social class is an idea, furthered by the use
of constructed facts and appliance of numbers who’s significance if
granted only by the acceptance of the general populace as a rite of
power and prestige. Property, the land we live on, has value placed
on it in the form of price for the purposes of selling to the wage
labourers for the use of building something atop it. The value
placed on the parcel is only something which is determined by
surrounding area, inasmuch as property adjacent, or in proximity to
the plot of interest. The collective values of those parcels are, in
turn, just as artificial as that of the first, and therefore, they
are circularly valuable. This concept is the very one which has so
furthered the possibility of oppression and usury in the name of
land acquisition.
The only way
which these three things can be kept in the hands of a select few
are through the use of reification. Reification is something which
de-humanises the individual and makes them not one among the many,
but one as a part of the many. As Marx said: “Society does not
consist of individuals but expresses the sum of interrelations, the
relations within which these individuals stand.” Some ways by which
the ruling classes attain these ends are though the use of wage
labour, uniforms for work, the use of military can also be put forth
for such a purpose.
The wages
equalize the working people in order to make them not one above
another, so as to keep a false sense of peace amongst them.
Uniformed jobs, which come about in even such places as automobile
manufacturing will take away someone’s outward individuality, and
make them of the many, therefore taking away any visible quality
which may make them more apt to rise against the ruling class,
through the use of some sort of clothing symbol or otherwise. The
military is meant to create the perfect soldier. The use of mental
de-construction is to make someone no longer have the same concept
of death, murder, right, wrong, etc. There is a new definition given
to each.
The loss of
individuality is a trait which many attribute to the socialist idea,
however, in the capitalist ideal if fits more snugly. In the idea of
capitalist production, individuality may well incite a revolt,
wherefore conformity will make labourers more adept to staying
within the accepted confines of enslavement. In the socialist
society, individuality is commonly seen as counter-intuitive as it
may make one exploit the many, whereas in reality, individuality is
not discouraged. Marx himself made mention to the policy of the
capitalist system taking an individual’s sense of self: “All social
rules and all relations between individuals are eroded by a cash
economy; avarice drags Pluto himself out of the bowels of the
earth.”
Poverty is forced
upon the usually unwilling by the elite ruling capitalist classes
who wish to create personal wealth and spare the expense of no-one
in their personal attainment of that wealth. The way it comes about
it through the use of the tools given to the capitalist through
their means of production, which they own on the whole. Poverty is
defined by the United States government as of 2002 for a
non-married, working age person as having an annual income of $9,183
or less.
Anyone who lives
day to day life knows that this number is far below the required
income to live in a dwelling of any sort, let alone pay for food.
This shows that very idea of poverty is constructed, not by reality
as is hunger, but by the accepted social view of the idea such as
attractiveness is. The people who make this decision are not you and
I, as most socially constructed things are, but rather the ruling
elite which tend to be capitalistic in nature, and why would they
post a figure which would require change on their part? If someone
makes a meager $800 per month, then they are not considered to be in
poverty, and therefore cannot qualify for many government programs
which are aimed at helping the downtrodden and distressed.
The way in which
all these topics relate to my life are in that I have experienced
various aspects of all these things. Social class, I have been a
part of the welfare system, as well as “working class” family, and
even most recently, part of the capitalist class in that my step-Mom
owns a business and employs some people. I have not ever had true
political power, however, I have been a part of it. I worked for the
County Supervisor of San Bernardino County and I saw the
inter-workings of local government. The immense power of on
individual to deny a business license can make or break a person’s
dreams.
In one
inspection, the supervisor can say a building is unsanitary, or does
not meet a building code without any evidence at all. Property has
been a part of my family for many years. Since 1917, when my
great-grandparents came from Poland, my Dad’s side of the family has
had multiple farms in the mid-western USA. On my Mom’s side of the
family, they own over 1,500 acres of land in the Carolinas. This was
used as a source of power in the pre-civil war days, as they owned
more than 200 slaves at one point. Reification was experienced
during the days that my Mom and I were a part of the welfare system,
we were treated as a part of the system which needed correction.
There was no individual help given to us in the form of education,
land-cost adjustment (being that we live in Southern California,
prices can be quite high), nor any other way. Poverty has never been
something I have had to truly experience, as I have never been
homeless or been below the required poverty income level. While on
welfare however, the money which was granted to us by the State of
California was in fact less than the poverty line, however, my
grand-father helped my Mom and I, and that made us able to get by.
The system of
wage-labor and exploitation is not a new phenomenon, and as long as
the capitalist ruling class has power to ostracize the individual
from what they hope to attain, this problem of the huge gap between
rich and poor will never be closed. Change is obviously something
which needs to happen, however, without the force of the working
people, this cannot be effected.
By
Tony
Kaminski
I am a Political Science AND International Studies major at the University
of Oregon, and am currently living on campus. I am originally from southern
California, in the city of Victorville.
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