Foundations of Sociological Theories

As well, the theory assumes that enough socialization and social interaction is needed in order to achieve social stability. In addition, theory assumes that the social institutions of a society perform essential functions to help facilitate social stability (Gamst, 1991). Theorists believe that it is desirable for a society to experience slow social change since speedy changes seem to threaten the social order of a society. The theorists would also use the conflict theory to interpret the social system of America. This is because, they believe that a society is described by persistent inequality based on gender, social class among other factors. In America, there are two classes of people, those that labor and those that depend on the toil of others thus, the exploited and exploiters.

These two major contending classes within the class struggle are those who possess the major economic levers of society including, production means and the laborers, those who are required to work the means of production of the other for survival. The American nation is dominated by capitalism whereby over 155 million laborers comprise the most exploited population in the world (Barkan, 2011). Given the extremely high rate of labor productivity, laborers in America create huge amounts of riches for the capitalists, yet they tend to receive a small portion of what they make in form of wages. Based on an exceptionally high productivity of labor, workers in America make a lot of wealth only to get very low wages in return. On the contrary, history has failed in supporting his prediction that capitalism will unavoidably lead to a revolution of the masses.

For instance, in America, there has never been an occurrence of such a revolution, whereby workers have never developed the level of class consciousness that is envisioned by Marx. This is because the U. S is believed to be a free nation where each individual has the chance to succeed, thus even the low-class Americans feel that the American system is basically fair. Hence, different aspects of the American society as well as the ideology have facilitated the decline in the development of class consciousness and thus prevented the revolution that had once been envisioned by Marx. S has evolved to the point whereby any individual who fails to push for special favors is considered as a fool and corruption within a system is approved as the normal as well as the unavoidable way of conducting political business.

This loss of principles and limits has consequently led to the increase of interest groups and lobbyists and each creates work for all the others. Presently, the federal government allots nearly 25 percent of the nation’s GDP while the states use another 16 percent (Mian, Sufi, & Trebbi, 2010). Based on estimates, nearly 15 percent of the nation’s GDP is controlled by the regulatory system, yet this is possibly low since it does not present the non-regulatory legal system (Mian, Sufi, & Trebbi, 2010). Therefore, almost 60 percent of the GDP is regulated by the government without the inclusion of the amount of economic activity which is suppressed due to pressure from special interest groups. Even though women continue to encounter vocational, educational and social challenges that men in the past never had to think about, does not suggest that the under-representation of only a section of the population in any certain venture is a desirable thing (DiPrete & Buchmann, 2013).