SOC 102 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Labour Power, For Marx, Bourgeoisie

• School: Ryerson University
• Department: Sociology
• Course: SOC 102
• Professor: Sean Springer

Document Summary

Under a capitalist system, society is divided into different classes- what class you are depends on your relationship to the means of production. Living together in small, self- sufficient groups, humans subsisted solely on hunting and gathering. Division of labour was largely egalitarian and based solely on sex and age, not strength or perceived status of job. Gendered division of labour meant that men and women were interdependent for survival and for the maintenance of solidarity within the group. Key point: key features of foraging societies: cooperative, egalitarian, non-hierarchical. Population growth, herding of animals and the cultivation of plants were the most important changes during this period. With these changes came to the rise of structured social inequality. 5,000 years ago, population growth coupled with such innovations as the plow led the rise of agrarian societies, where land could be owned outright by a private group of people.