During the last financial crises Karl Marx and his thoughts regain a lot of popularity. For instance the Occuppy Wallstreet slogan “We are the 99%” refers directly to his concept of the class struggle and supported the movement by organising their world wide protest. His thoughts and concepts seems to be embedded in the minds of the people, but are his concepts still fertile from an academic point of view?
In sociology Marx concept of the class conflict and with it the two classes of Bourgeoisie and proletariat stands beside a lot of other concepts to analyse the social structure (networked with: is diem25 really a democratic movement) Lately the British BBC started the “Great British Class Survey”, which they announce as ground breaking science. This maybe right form a British perspective, but from a German perspective the theory behind the survey is old fashioned. There survey is mainly based on the theoretical framework of Pierre Borudieu and his neo-marxist concept of social, cultural and economic capital. In Germany his concepts were adopted much earlier for instance by Gerhard Schulze in his theory of the “Erlebnisgesellschaft” (experience society) published in 1992.
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