Quote for the Week

Predictable, I know, but one which all Sociology students should get familiar with.

” The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles. Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guild-master and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended, either in a revolutionary re-constitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes.”

The Communist Manifesto, Marx and Engels.

And in riposte to the ‘out of date’ brigade, let me say that this quote still raises questions which are highly relevant to anyone studying Sociology today. Unlike our friends in the natural sciences, in social science it is far harder for us to consign ‘old’ work to the dustbin of history.

So get thinking:is this a useful model of social change? And what is class and does it still exist?