Karl Marx ’s Theory of Social Classes
Fourth, power is never equally distributed Dye 4. “Power holder” must
control some values in hisher society in order to get hisher influence. This situation urge for one domination. By controlling the values, the power holder is
in a position to offer these values as rewards to others or to threaten to deprive others of these values. There is no power if power is equal.
Fifth, power is a relationship among individuals, groups, and institutions in society Dye 4. When someone is isolated from hisher society, heshe is
powerless. We can say that power is not really a “thing” that an individual possesses. Instead, power is a relationship in which some individuals or groups
have control over certain resources. When someone wants to be powerful, heshe has to manage hisher relationship well.
Sixth, power is exercised in interpersonal relations. Psychologist Rollo May wrote that “power means the ability to affect, to influence, and to change
other persons” Dye 4. In a society, interpersonal relation is the first step to “conquer” the mass as a whole community.
The last one, power is exercised in large institutions – governments,
corporations, schools, the military, churches, newspapers, television networks, law firms, and so on. Power that stems from high positions in the social structures
of society is stable and far-reaching Dye 5. Sociologist C. Wright Mills observed: “No one can be truly powerful
unless he has access to the command of major institutions, for it is over these institutional means of power that the truly powerful are, in the first instance,
powerful Dye 5 .” Not all power, it is true, is anchored in or exercised through
institutions. Yet institutional positions in society provide a continuous and important base of power. Mills explains:
If we took the one hundred most powerful men in America, the one hundred wealthiest, and the one hundred most celebrated away from the
institutional positions they now occupy, away from their resources of men and women and money, away from the media of mass communication that
are now focused upon them
– then they would be powerless and poor and uncelebrated. For power is not of a man. Wealth does not center in the
person o f the wealthy…. To have power requires access to major
institutions, for the institutional positions men occupy determine in large part their chances to have and to hold these valued experiences Dye 5.
According to the Wikipedia Encyclopedia there are some sources of power. They are delegated authority for example in the democratic process,
social class material wealth can equal power, personal or group charisma, ascribed power acting on perceived or assumed abilities, whether these bear
testing or not, expertise ability, skills the power of medicine to bring about health; another famous example would be in the land of the blind, the one-eyed
man is king - Desiderius Erasmus, persuasion direct, indirect, or subliminal, Knowledge granted or withheld, shared or kept secret, money financial
influence, control of labour, control through ownership, etc, fame, force violence, military might, coercion, moral persuasion including religion,
operation of group dynamics such as public relations, social influence of tradition
compare ascribed
power, and
in relationships;
dominationsubmissiveness PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI