The theory of conflict declares that the company or the organization functions so that each individual participant and his groups fight to maximize their advantages. What inevitably contributes to the social changes like the political evolutions and/or the revolutions.

This theory is most of the time applied in order to explain the conflict between the social classes, proletarian against bougeoisy like, for the ideologies, capitalism against socialism. The theory tries to refute functionalism. Indeed, it is not question of considering that the companies and the organizations function so that each individual and groups cheek a specific role, like bodies in the body.

There are radical basic assumptions (the company is eternally in conflict, which could explain the social change), or moderate those (the habit and the conflict are always mixed). The moderate version takes account of functionalism since it would accept this same negative play of social institutions per part in the individual-Beibehaltung of the company.

The gasoline of the theory of the conflict is summarized better by the “structure of pyramid” traditional in than an elite dictates limits with the larger masses. All positions, laws, and traditions principal in the company are conceived to support those which traditionally were in the power, or the groups which are perceived to be higher in the company according to this theory. This can also be increased to include “morality” of any company and by prolongation their definition of deviance. Something which defies the ordering of the elite will be probably considered “deviating” or “morally reprehensible. ”

The theory can be applied to the macro level (like the government of the USA or the Soviet Russia, historically) or the micro level (a club of organization or school of church).

In short, the theory of conflict seeks to catalog the ways in which those in the search for power to remain in the power. In the theory of conflict of arrangement, social class competes with cheek a main role.

Primary meanings

It follows following categorization as for the manifestations of the modern theory of the conflict :

1. Competition. Rare resources of surplus of competition (money, sexual leisures, associates, and so on) are in the middle of all the social reports/ratios. Competition rather than the consensus is characteristic of the human reports/ratios.
2. structural Inequality. Inequalities in the power and the reward are established in all the social structures. The individuals and the groups who draw benefit from any particular structure try to see that it maintained.
3. Revolution. This abrupt change seems the result of conflicts between the interests in competition of the social classes. It is often abrupt and revolutionary rather than évolutionnaire.
4. War. Even the war is one to unify implied companies, as the war can place an end at the whole companies.

The theory of conflict was in particular elaborate in the United Kingdom by max Gluckman and John Rex, in the United States by Lewis A. Coser and Randall Collins, and in Germany by Ralf Dahrendorf, all more being less or influenced close Karl Marx, Ludwig Gumplowicz, Vilfredo Pareto, Georg Simmel, and other father-founders of European sociology.