Conflict Theory and Structuralism Functionalism

Conflict Theory and Structuralism Functionalism as Explanations for Poverty and the Underclass

It has been said that the poor will always be with us. Yet, one might wonder why this must be so, especially in nations such as the United States, where the general standard of living is as high as it has been in any society in the history of the world. Is there a way to solve the problem of poverty and thereby improve the state of the underclass? The beginning point to answering such a question must lie in understanding how this problem comes about in the first place.

In this brief paper, the problems of poverty and the underclass will be described through the paradigms of two influential theories which have impacted the study of sociology, politics, and economics for the last century: conflict theory derived from the writings of Karl Marx and structural functionalism derived from the theories of Max Weber (among others).

Conflict theory suggests that poverty is the direct result of the struggle between the working classes and the owning classes. Both groups seek to enhance their lives through pursuing their economic interests, but the workers do not have the means to achieve this because they own neither the means of production nor, ultimately, the very product of their own labor. The owning classes benefit from their labor and they are paid just enough to subsist. Those who fall behind in such a struggle lose even the ability to subsist. Thus their poverty is not a result of their unwillingness to work or their unfortunate decisions. It is a result of the fact that they find themselves at the lowest end of the line in the struggle for resources.

Structural functionalism is based on the idea that society is a system. Its cultural, political, and economic parts work together in such a way that people are born into (or alternately fall into) a particular stratus of society and a kind of systemic force keeps them there. The poor and their labor are needed to make capitalistic society run profitably, and the poor adopt the cultural attitudes and beliefs about themselves and their place in society that make such a situation possible. The idea in this theory is not that there is a struggle which keeps people down, but that things just are the way they are in this system, and that if one wants to change it one must change the system itself.