1800s: Martineau · Tocqueville · Marx · Spencer · Le Bon · Ward · Pareto · Tönnies · Veblen · Simmel · Durkheim · Addams · Mead · Weber · Du Bois · Mannheim · Elias Social conflict is the struggle for agency or power in society.
The perspective stems from the German philosopher Karl Marx, who viewed the justice system and the laws to favour the rich and the powerful in a society and for the poor to be punished far more severely for much smaller crimes.
Mankind thus inevitably sets itself only such tasks as it is able to solve since closer examination will always show that the problem itself arises only when the material conditions for its solution are already present or at least in the course of formation.
In broad outline, the Asiatic, ancient, feudal and modern bourgeois modes of production may be designated as epochs marking progress in the economic development of society.
The prehistory of human society accordingly closes with this social formation.Marx, a German revolutionary, emphasized his materialist views on ownership and means of production.
He argued that what is most valued is a result of human labour, and he founded his ideas based on a capitalistic community, with most money being owned by only a few people.
Surplus value is created, which the profit held onto by the industrialists from by workers producing more than the employers actually need to repay the cost of hiring labourers.
Marx supported the ideas of deviance and claimed that individuals choose to engage in such rebellious and conflicting behaviour as a response to the inequalities of the capitalist system.
He defines social conflict as "a struggle over the values and claims to scarce status, power and resources in which the aims of the opponents are to neutralize, injure, or eliminate their rivals".