Punjab State Board PSEB 12th Class Sociology Book Solutions Chapter 5 Class Inequalities Textbook Exercise Questions and Answers.
PSEB Solutions for Class 12 Sociology Chapter 5 Class Inequalities
Sociology Guide for Class 12 PSEB Class Inequalities Textbook Questions and Answers
Multiple Choice Questions:
1. The history of all existing societies is the history of class struggle is stated by:
(a) Karl Marx
(b) V.I. Lenin
(c) Antonio Gramsci
(d) Rosa Luxemburg
Answer:
(a) Karl Marx
2. Who propounded the concept of class-in-itself and class-for-itself?
Or
Who propounded the concept of class consciousness and class struggle?
(a) Marx
(b) Weber
(c) Durkheim
(d) None
Answer:
(a) Marx
3. The class theory given by Eric Olin Wright is synthesis of ideas of:
(a) Marx and Durkheim
(b) Marx and Weber
(c) Marx and Spencer
(d) Marx and Engels
Answer:
(b) Marx and weber
4. Property less white collar professionals as one of the classes is discussed by:
(a) Karl Marx
(b) Max Weber
(c) Lloyd Warner
(d) Vilfredo Pareto
Answer:
(b) Max Weber
5. Which does not reveal the distinction between caste and class:
(a) Ascription and achievement
(b) Closed and open mobility
(c) Sacred and Secular
(d) Ruling and ruled.
Answer:
(d) Ruling and ruled
6. Which does not constitute the means of production:
(a) Land
(b) Culture
(c) Labour
(d) Capital
Answer:
(b) Culture
7. Who gives importance to life chances and market situation for class analysis:
(a) Karl Marx
(b) Max Weber
(c) Alfred Weber
(d) C.W. Mills
Answer:
(b) Max Weber
8. The ownership over the means of production is a determinant of:
(a) Status group
(b) Class
(c) Caste
(d) Social category
Answer:
(b) Class
9. The class of serf is opposite to
(a) Lords
(b) Petty-Bourgeois
(c) Bourgeois
(d) Master
Answer:
(a) Lords
Fill in the Blanks:
1. Class system is ……………… in nature.
Answer:
open
2. Class system is …………… in status
Answer:
achieved
3. Weber considered class in ……………….. term.
Answer:
inequality
4. Class status is determined by …………….. and ………………… of an individual.
Answer:
income, education
True/False:
1. Class system is one of the major forms of social stratification.
Answer:
True
2. A social class is essentially a status group.
Answer:
True
3. According to Weber, wealth, power and status form the basis of inequality.
Answer:
True
4. Social classes are open groups.
Answer:
True
Match the Columns:
| Column A | Column B |
| 1. Social classes | Bourgeoisie |
| 2. Capitalist | Lifestyle of a particular class |
| 3. Determinant of class | Open group |
| 4. Class consciousness | Occupation |
| 5. Mode of living | Self-awareness |
Answer:
| Column A | Column B |
| 1. Social classes | Open group |
| 2. Capitalist | Bourgeoisie |
| 3. Determinant of class | Occupation |
| 4. Class consciousness | Self-awareness |
| 5. Mode of living | The lifestyle of a particular class |
Very Short Answer Type Questions:
Question 1.
In which social group members share the same relationship to the forces of production?
Answer:
Social class.
Question 2.
Can one have upward and downward mobility in classes?
Answer:
Yes, one can have upward and downward mobility in classes.
Question 3.
Individuals or groups between different social economic positions are known as:
Answer:
Class.
Question 4.
Which social class broadly composed of people is involved in blue collar or manual occupation?
Answer:
Labour class.
Question 5.
Identify two important features of class.
Answer:
- There are many bases of class system.
- People of a group have class consciousness for their class.
Question 6.
What do you mean by ownership over the resources?
Answer:
It means that some individual has ownership over resources and he is the owner of such resources.
Question 7.
Identify means of production.
Answer:
Those means which help in the production of anything are known as means of production such as machines, industries, tools etc.
Question 8.
Name two classes that were found during slavery.
Answer:
Master and Slave.
Question 9.
Who is a bourgeois?
Answer:
One who holds all the means of production with whose help, he exploits other classes is known as bourgeois such as an industrialist.
Short Answer Type Questions:
Question 1.
What do you mean by class?
Answer:
A class is a group of people who consider each other equal and every class has its own status in society. Members of every class are given certain specific responsibilities, rights and powers.
Question 2.
Differentiate between caste and class.
Answer:
- Caste is a closed group but the class is an open group.
- Membership of caste is based on birth but membership of class is based on individual ability.
Question 3.
Identify those classes found in rural India.
Answer:
Big landlords, the absentee landlords, the upper and middle peasantry, the capitalist farmers, low peasantry, marginal famers, landless agriculturists, money lenders etc. are the classes found in rural India.
Question 4.
“What is the meaning of this statement of Marx that the history of all existing societies is the history of class struggle”?
Answer:
‘According to Marx, till today, there existed many societies in which there were two main groups—one which owned all the means of production and the other which didn’t. That’s why, there existed a struggle among them. That’s why Marx said, “The history of all existing societies is the history of class struggle.”
Question 5.
Name those classes which have been discussed by Max Weber.
Answer:
- Propertied bougeosie
- Non-propertied white collar workers
- Middle class
- Class working in industries.
Long Answer Type Questions:
Question 1.
Discuss the views of Eric Olin Wright on class.
Answer:
Eric Olin wright gave class theory which was the mixture of Marx and Weber’s views. According to Wright, there are three bases of controlling economic resources in a capitalist society and these are:
- Control over capital
- Control over land, factory or offices
- Control over labourers.
These bases form many classes such as owner, blue collar workers, white collar workers, professional employees, manual workers etc. According to him, workers of middle classs (managers and supervisors) have direct relation with the owners but labour class is exploited.
Question 2.
Differentiate between Caste and Class.
Or
What is the relationship between Caste and Class?
Answer:
| Caste | Class |
| 1. Membership of caste is based on birth. | 1. Membership of class is based on occupation and individual ability. |
| 2. Ascribed status is given in caste. | 2. There is achieved status in the class. |
| 3. Caste is an endogamous group. | 3. Class is an exogamous group. |
| 4. Caste gets validity from the Hindu religious activities. | 4. Class gets validity from individual ability in the capitalist system. |
| 5. There is no mobility in the caste system as it is a closed system. | 5. There is mobility in the class system as it is an open system. |
| 6. One cannot change his caste in any case. | 6. One can change his class at any time with his ability. |
Question 3.
Briefly write about those classes which are found in Rural India.
Answer:
See Question No. 3-short answer type questions (III).
Question 4.
Briefly write about those classes which are found in urban India.
Or
Write about those classes which are found in Urban India.
Answer:
- Corporate Capitalists
- Industrial Capitalists
- Financial Capitalists
- Bureaucrats/Academia of upper category
- Culture, political and economic elites
- Middle class-managers, businessmen, traders, self-employed people, small shopkeepers, bankers etc.
- Lower class
- Industrial working class in organised sector
- Working class in unorganised/semi-organised sectors
- Construction workers on daily wages.
- Unemployed persons.
Question 5.
Explain the middle class phenomenon.
Answer:
See Question 24—short answer type questions (other important questions)— Chapter-3.
Very Long Answer Type Questions:
Question 1.
Explain the Marxian theory of class.
Or
Describe the Marxian theory of class.
Answer:
Karl Marx has given conflict theory of social stratification and this-theory comes out because of political and social conflicts of 19th century. According to Marx, economic factor is the alone factor of social stratification and struggle in different classes. Marx has given this theory on the base of division of labour. According to him, labour is of two types—physical and mental and this difference is the main reason of difference in social classes.
Marx was of the view that there are two classes in society. First class is the owner of the means of production and second class is not the owner of means of production. On the basis of this ownership the position of owner class is higher and position of non-owner class is lower. According to Marx, owner class is capitalist class and non-owner class is labourer class. Capitalist class economically exploits the labourer class and labour class fights with capitalist class to get their rights. This is the result of stratification.
Marx was of the view that the main reason of stratification is the unequal distribution of property. Nature of stratification depends upon the classes of that society and the nature of classes depends upon the means of production. Ways of production depend upon technique. Class is a group in which relations of its members with forces of production are equal. In this way all those persons, who control the forces of production, come in first class i.e. capitalist class. Second class is that class
which is not the owner of forces of production but it earns its livelihood by selling its labour and that is labour class. Their name in different societies is different. For example, Feudal Lords and agricultural labourers in Feudal societies and capitalist and labourer in capitalist societies. Capitalist class has all the forces of production and labourer class has only its labour to sell with which it earns its livelihood. In this way the classes made on the basis of ways of production and unequal distribution of property are, according to Marx, social classes.
According to Marx, society today comes out of four stages or societies and these are:
- Primitive ancient society or communism
- Ancient society
- Feudal society
- Capitalist society
According to Marx, the classes did not come into being in first type of society but in later societies two main classes came into being. In ancient society owner and servant, Feudal Lords and agricultural labourer in Feudal society and capitalist and labourer class in capitalist society’came into being. In every society labour was being done by second class. Labour class is more in number and capitalist class is less in number. Marx has given two classes in every type of societies but on this point his views were not the same. Marx was of the view that there are three classes in capitalist society and these are labour class, capitalist class and land owners. Marx has given difference in these three classes on the basis of means of income, profit and rent of land. But Marx’s this three classes system never came into being in England.
Marx has written that with the development of capitalism three classes system will change into two classes system and middle class will come to an end. About this he has written in Communist Manifesto. Marx has also said about other classes in specific society. He has divided the capitalist class into two sub groups and these are effective capitalists and smaller capitalists. Effective capitalists are those capitalists which are bigger capitalists and industrialists which give work to thousands of labourers in their industries. Small capitalists are those small industrialists or shopkeepers whose business is at low level and they are not giving work to many labourers. They are doing most of their work themselves. Here Marx again says that with the development of capitalism middle class and small capitalists will come to an end and will join hands with labourer class. In this way there will be two classes in society and that is capitalist class and labourer class.
Relations Between Classes:
According to Marx capitalist class always exploits the labourer class and labourer class always fights for its rights. That is why the relations between both the groups are of opposition. Yet this opposition between these groups will hide due to their mutual interests but this opposition is always there. It is not necessary that we can see this opposition directly or opposition never comes in front of us but they know about each other’s opposition.
According to Marx, relations between the classes depend upon the mutual interdependence and conflict. We can take example of capitalist society in which two classes are there. First class is of capitalist class and second class is of labour class. These both classes depend upon each other for their existence. Labour class doesn’t have the ownership of forces of production. It doesn’t have any other mean to earn its livelihood except selling its labour. Labourers sell their labour to the capitalist class and are dependent upon them. They give their labour to capitalist and for that capitalist gives money to labourers for their labour. With this money or rent of labour, labourer takes care of the needs of the family. Capitalist also depends upon the labour of labourer because without their work, production in his factory is not possible and accumulation of capital is also not possible.
In this way both these classes depend upon each other. But this dependence doesn’t mean that they have relations of equality. Capitalist class always exploits the labour class. They want to make things in their factory by giving less money so that they can earn more profit. Labourer wants more money so that he can take care of the needs of his family. Capitalist tries to sell his product with more value by paying less money so that he can earn more profit. In this way conflict of interests is always there between both the classes. This conflict will give birth to communism later on in which there would be no opposition, there would be no exploitation and there would be no conflict of interests. This society will be classless society.
Karl Marx has explained the conflict theory of stratification on historical basis. Important things in the conflict theory of stratification of Marx are given below:
1. Two Classes in Society. Marx was of the view that generally two types of classes exists in every type of society. First one is” that which has all the means of production in its hands and this class is known as capitalist class. Second class is that which doesn’t have any means of production and which earns money only by selling its labour. This class is known as labour class. First class exploits the other class. It means that capitalist exploits and labourer is being exploited by capitalist.
2. Right Over Means of Production. While explaining stratification on historical basis Marx says that the stratification in society is based on the right over means of production. There exist two types of classes in every society on this base. First class is that which has the right over all the means of production. Second class is that which doesn’t have any right over means of production and which earns money by selling its labour.
3. Modes of Production. Nature of social stratification depends upon the modes of production. Position of that class is higher than other classes which has all the means of production. According to Marx, this class is known as capitalist or Bourgoisie. Second class is that which doesn’t have means of production, which is not satisfied by its position and which wants to change its position. Marx has given it the name of labour class or proletariat class.
4. Human History-History of Class Struggle: Marx was of the view that human history is the history of class struggle. We can take example of any society. Struggle in class is going on, in every society, in one form or the other. In this way Marx was of the view that two types of classes exist in all the societies- capitalist and labour class. Class struggle always goes on in both the classes. There are many reasons of class struggle in both the classes for e.g. too much economic differences between both the classes because of which class struggle is going on.
Capitalist becomes rich even without doing any hard work and labourer becomes poor even after doing a lot of hard work. With the passage of time, labour class makes its organization to save and meet its demands and this organisation does struggle with capitalist class to meet its demands. Result of this struggle between both the classes comes in the form of revolution which labour class does against the capitalist class.
After revolution, labourer class will eliminate the capitalist class and establish its authority. Capitalist tries to start anti-revolution movement against labourers but this movement will be suppressed and authority of the labourer class will be established. First of all communism and then the state of socialism will come in which every one will get according to its needs and ability. There will be no class in society and this will be a classless society in which every one will get equal share. No one will be of higher or lower status and the authority of labour class will remain there. Marx was of the view that this state has never yet come but it will come very shortly and stratification in society will come to an end.
Question 2.
Explain the Weberian theory of class.
Or
Discuss the Weberian view on the concept of class.
Answer:
Max Weber gave the theory of stratification in which he explained class, status group and party differently. Weber’s theory of stratification is considered as practical and rational. That’s why his theory is given enough importance by American Sociologists. Weber has explained stratification from three aspects and these are class, status and party. All these groups could be called as interest groups which not only can fight within themselves but they can fight even against each other. They tell us about a specific authority and are interrelated as well. Now we will explain . them one by one:
Class: Karl Marx has defined class on economic basis and in the same way Weber has also defined class on economic basis. According to Weber, “Class is a group of those people which are at equal status in structure of social, economic opportunities and which live in same conditions. These conditions depend upon their form and quantity of economic power.” In this way Weber talks about a type of group in which a specific number of people have equal chances in life. Yet this concept of Weber is not very much different from Marx’s concept of class but Weber has imagined class as the group of people living in same economic conditions not as a group of self-consciousness. Weber has given three types of classes which are given below:
- A Property Class
- An Acquisition Class
- A Social Class
1. A Property Class: A property class is that group whose position depends upon the fact that how much property it has? This class is again further divided into two parts:
- The Positively Privileged Property Class. This class owns a lot of property and it lives on the income generated from its property. This class can keep monopoly over selling or buying of consumer goods, by collecting property or on taking education.
- The Negatively Privileged Property Class. Illiterate, poor, property less and people under debt are major members of this group. But there is one another group between these two groups and that is Privileged Middle class in which members of both the given classes are included. According to Weber, Capitalist is member of this group due to his privileged position and Labourer is its member due to its negatively privileged position.
2. An Acquisition Class: It is that type of group whose position is determined by taking advantage from opportunities of services available in the market. This group is of three types:
- The Positively Privileged Acquisition Class. This class keeps monopoly over administration of producer manufacturers. These factory owners are bankers, industrialists, financiers etc. These people not only keep control over administrative system but they exert influence on government’s economic policies as well.
- The Middle Privileged Acquisition Class. This class belongs to middle class people in which small professional people, artisans, independent farmers etc. are included.
- The Negatively Privileged Acquisition Class. People of lower classes are part of this group which include trained, semi trained and untrained labourers.
3. Social Class: Most number of people are included in this group. This class observes definite changes due to progress made by different generations. But Weber does not explain social class according to privileges. According to him people of labour class, lower middle class, intellectual class, property owner class are included in it.
According to Weber, members of class work with each other under specific circumstances and to this protest of doing work is being given the name of class action by Weber. According to Weber feeling of mutually related gives birth to class action. Weber has not believed that the thing like class action could take place all the times. Weber was of the view that there is no class consciousness in class but its nature is completely economic. There is no possibility among them that they would struggle collectively to achieve their common objectives. A class is only a group of people whose economic condition is same in the market. They can feel changes in their lives while collecting those things which have some respect in society and there is a possibility that they would collectively perform some action. Weber was of the view that if it does so then class can take the form of a community.
Status Group: Status group is generally considered as opposite to economic class stratification. Class is only based on economic assumption which is a group of same interests due to market conditions. These are not statistical classes but these are actually those groups whose life-style is common, outlook towards the society is common and which keeps unity among them.
According to Weber there is some difference between status group and class. Each has its own style and people can be unequal among them.
For example, teacher of a school. Yet his income might be 8-10,000 per month which is quite less in today’s age but his status is quite high due to his sacred profession. But on the other hand any smuggler or a prostitute could earn lakhs in a month but their status group will remain low because their profession is not sanctioned by society. In this way difference is there between both the, groups. Any occupational group can be called as a status group because in each type of profession, people get equal opportunities to earn money. This group also leads to same life-style of people. Members of one occupational group remain near to each other, wear same type of clothes and even have same type of values. That’s why its members have quite a wide circle.
Party: According to Weber, Party represents the determined interests associated with class status or status group. This party enrolls those members, in any condition, whose ideology matches with the ideology of party. But it is not necessary that the party could become status party for them. Weber was of the view that Parties always want to keep control over power. It means power should remain in their hands. Weber was of the view that yet parties are a part of political authority but even then power could be gained through various means like wealth, influence, pressure, rights etc. Parties want to obtain the power of State and State is an organisation.
Each activity of the party is concentrated on the fact that how the power could be obtained? Weber analysed the state and from here he gave the theory of Bureaucracy. According to Weber, parties are of two types. First one is Patronage party in which there are no .class rules, concepts, ideology etc. These are made for special purposes and could be left after the completion of objective. Second type of party is party of Principles which has clear and strong rules. These parties are not made for specific purposes. Weber was ‘of the view that there is quite much difference between these three i.e. class, status group and party but the mutual relation is always there among them.
Question 3.
What is the relationship between class, social mobility and social stratification?
Answer:
Class, social mobility and social stratification are deeply related but before checking their relation, we need to look into their meaning.
- Class: Class is a group of people which is different from the other groups on one base or the other. Members of a group are conscious of their group and never let others to enter in their group very easily.
- Social Mobility: Whole of the society is divided into different groups and when people leave their group to join the other one then this process is known as social mobility. With their individual ability, people change their class and the process of mobility is always going on.
- Social Stratification: The process of dividing society into different layers is known as social stratification. Society is divided in different layers on different bases such as age, caste, sex, income, education, wealth, etc.
If we look at the meaning of all these concepts carefully, we observe that they have quite a close relationship with each other. The process of dividing society into different classes is known as stratification and people keep on changing their groups. One can change his class according to his ability and the process of moving from one group to the other is known as mobility.
Presently, people are taking education and are adopting different occupations. After getting an education, their social status moves upward and they get a better job. This job brings a lot of money for them and they reach a higher level of social stratification. Gradually, they change their job to earn more money. In this way, they become the members of different groups and the process of social mobility moves on.
After looking at the given explanation, we can say that class, mobility, and stratification are deeply related. All these help in individual as well as social progress.