Deck 9: Classical Explanations of Inequality

Question 1

If Marx did not believe that all human conduct is determined by the economic structure, isn't saying that economics is the "ultimately decisive" factor saying the opposite?

A) No, because other factors such as politics, religion, culture, even love, can influence the course of human life, but behind them is a fundamental economic basis.
B) Yes, the distinction here still cannot rule out economics as having an influence.
C) Yes, because Marx also saw that more than two classes existed in society too.
D) No, because Marx and Engels saw economics itself as being influenced by an "endless host of accidents."

Answer 1

A

Question 2

Would the following be considered a class?

A) a group factory owners who are part of the same lobbying group
B) workers in the same factory
C) people who work with their hands
D) members of the same political party

Answer 2

A

Question 3

What question is omnipresent for a Marxian sociologist given the theory of class struggle? Who is the hostile class?

A) Is there an enemy?
B) What is the material force of the society and what is the intellectual?
C) What is the stage of capitalism?

Answer 3

A

Question 4

What happens to the worker with each successive change in the mode of production?

A) A division of labor occurs that devalues the worker's labor and weakens his or her ownership of that labor.
B) Workers are dehumanized.
C) Workers begin to organize into labor unions.
D) Workers have to be increasing coerced to do their jobs.

Question 5

Which aspect of Marx's theory results in the critique that Marx underrated the ability of individuals to adjust to inequality?

A) Marx underestimated the proletariat and its willingness to engage in a long historical process rather than their day-to-day concerns.
B) Marx underestimated the strength and adaptability of capitalists.
C) The bourgeoisie did not provide for the proletariat the intended revolutionary impetus.
D) Marx was a good sociologist but not a good judge of human nature.

Question 6

For Weber, which of the following concepts on the nature of bureaucracy makes the elimination of inequality less likely?

A) Bureaucracies, in leveling status and treating people as equals, also increases their power over people's lives.
B) Bureaucracies encourage a dehumanizing form of false equality.
C) He saw equality as another iron cage.
D) Socialism establishes bureaucracies as a new and superior class.

Question 7

For Weber, how can a class of people not be conscious that they are, indeed, a class, as in Marx?

A) Class consciousness requires a complex set of circumstances for people to come together. Large numbers of people must also be affected.
B) They are simply not capable of being conscious of being a class at all times. There has to be a single reason.
C) They are only a class when their life chances are threatened by a specific economic event, such as a depression.
D) Class consciousness only occurs when the intelligentsia inform and organize them.

Question 8

Weber believed that class, status, and political power can be reciprocally related, with each affecting the others. Which of the following would serve as an example?

A) The way billionaire Warren Buffett compels other millionaire investors to be involved in the political system.
B) The independent film actor whose acting skills are esteemed by her colleagues who appear in Hollywood films.
C) A political party seeking donors from among the wealthy.
D) A liberal arts professor is hired as a college president.

Question 9

Why is Weber more acceptable than Marx to certain schools of sociology, especially in the United States?

A) Weber appeals to sensibilities conditioned by a society that is generally antiradical and believes that individuals are not shaped by economics.
B) Weber's vagueness allows American sociologists to fit him to their agenda.
C) Marx had omitted the importance of bureaucracies in the modern era such that Weber is a necessary and profound course correction.
D) Weber is the more authentic because he saw that the proletariat, as a class, would need a political party to act on its behalf, that is, an intelligentsia (e.g. the Bolsheviks).

Question 10

What is the basic difference between the two forms that society takes in Durkheim?

A) Societies that exhibit mechanical solidarity have a simpler division of labor and a group conscience. Societies that exhibit organic solidarity have complex divisions of labor and increased individualism.
B) Mechanical societies are those that came with the Industrial Revolution. Organic, that is, agrarian societies represent what came before.
C) Organic societies are collectives, cohesive, and communal, whereas mechanical societies are dehumanizing, deleterious, and capitalistic.
D) As the word implies, societies that exhibit organic solidarity have a simpler division of labor and a group conscience. Societies that exhibit a mechanical solidarity have machine-like divisions of labor and increased individualism.

Question 11

How did Durkheim envision a fully developed organic society?

A) Society would be more equal vis-a-vis external qualities (race, class), whereas inequalities would exist based on differences between external abilities.
B) Such a society would see equal opportunity for all no matter what skill, vocation, gender, race, class, and the like.
C) Like Marx, he saw a divided society, split between "masters and workers," in which the organization is privately owned by the masters.
D) Like Weber, he saw society, managed by impersonal bureaucracies in government and business, devolving into increasingly anomic complexity.

Question 12

Although seemingly in agreement about the alienating character of industrial work, this is actually a point of departure between Marx and Durkheim.

A) Unlike Marx, Durkheim did not see the division of labor as a problem, or the existence of classes as progress.
B) Durkheim did not see earlier, classless societies as ideal in any sense.
C) Marx advocated class revolution, whereas Durkheim believed workers should acclimate themselves and find other ways of fulfilling their lives.
D) Durkheim did not see one class destroying another, as did Marx, but rather as constantly reconstructing themselves.

Question 13

What does Herbert Spencer mean in seeing the origins of inequality in militancy?

A) Spencer saw human relations as being in a constant state of aggression between those who dominate and those they subjugate.
B) Spencer saw the origins of class structure in inequality, which in its earliest form was between the sexes.
C) Those fit to lead subjugated those fit for obedience.
D) The origins of class structure begin with the earliest family units in prehistoric times, in which men are dominant over women.

Question 14

Spencer observed the same Industrial Revolution as Karl Marx and yet both saw a completely different society taking form. What best describes Spencer's worldview?

A) Spencer saw industrial societies bringing more freedom and greater reverence for the individual as well as equality-indeed, a world unlike the one Marx saw.
B) Spencer saw humankind learning to adaptive to their alienation and to even rationalize it as positive.
C) Marx saw capitalism as dying much the way an unfit species becomes extinct. Spencer was a social Darwinist who saw capitalism as a fit institution, however.
D) Spencer saw the proletariat as species evolving in step with capitalism and industrial progress.

Question 15

One of the countries that has benefitted from capitalism's embrace of globalization is the People's Republic of China, which is still a communist society. Would Marx approve from his tomb and on what basis?

A) The outsourcing of jobs in the West and the exploitation of workers in China would still be seen as capitalism prior to the dictatorship of the proletariat.
B) Marx might applaud the Communist Chinese strategy of letting the capitalists "hang themselves with their own rope."
C) China, a communist state, can more easily bring about world revolution if capitalist nations are indebted to it.
D) Marx would be validated in that previous communist revolutions had been either premature or simply shams.