Marxism And Elitist Analysis

There are three approaches to understanding power: pluralism, elitism, and Marxism. They serve differing views on the distribution of political power and of the sources and nature of conflict within a society. Pluralists focus on how decisions are made and analyze competing power sources. Pluralism is consistent with capitalist democracy and focuses not on the collective, but rather on competing groups. Pluralism allows for different sections within society to be heard by the government. This allows groups to influence public opinion and spur policy change. In the pluralist theory, groups of individuals hold the power. Where pluralists see power as dynamic and every shifting based off of groups, elitists believe that power is allotted to …show more content…
The pluralist view is full of conflict, but is not fundamental. These theorists view politics as a process though which rivals are balanced against each other. Pluralists prefer a gradual change in society in order to avoid conflict and keep a stable government. It is believed that all groups should be able to cooperate with others to make agreements and maintain stability within society. Elitists theorists believe that conflict is squashed by the elites through a show of dominance on the lower classes. Conflict is unlikely within this theory, unless all of the people of the non-ruling classes banded together for political change. Class conflict is fundamental in the view of Marxists. In Marxism, politics is the means by which one class is able to dominate another. Marxists believe that political change must happen though violence and revolutions, rather than compromise like the pluralist view. Marxism takes the most active view in terms of conflict whereas elitists see it as a non-issue and pluralists focus on …show more content…
The feminist critique claims that liberal democracy encourages men to hold power and thus reinforces the power imbalance between men and women. Feminist theorists seek to analyze the means through which subordination has been achieved and find a way to challenge this idea. The famous slogan from the second-wave of feminism; “The personal is political” seeks to convey the message that feminism is not only concerned with issues traditionally associated with women, but with challenging the patriarchy in all forms of politics (Haywood, 62). Feminism argues that it is difficult to have a true democracy in a society that excludes half of the population from political participation or