Over the past decades, there has been different explanation of social class. In which sociologist describes social classes as a form of social stratification.
For the purpose of this assignment, I will be critically analysed the various perspectives of social class and its impacts on society.
However, this essay will analyse three major perspectives of social class, which are Marxism, Functionalism and Weberian. The impacts of social stratification an individual’s life chances and finally explains and evaluate social classification and their usefulness to the society.
Social Class refers to a group of people who share a similar economic status, such as an occupation.
According to the Oxford dictionary, social class is a system whereby people are divided into groups based on perceived social, cultural and economic status. However, social stratification is an element of social class, which is usually defined by sociologist as an inequality of uneven distribution of power, prestige and wealth. The structure of stratification use culture, social mobility and life chances, to report the issues of social inequalities Haralambos and Holborn (2013).

The Marxists perspective of social class pioneered by Karl Marx (1972), the Marxists perspective focuses on the social strata drawn from the relationship of social groups to the means of construction, rather than social inequality in general.

Marx’s classical definition, opposing proletarians and bourgeois in the society on the basis of their different relations to the means of production. Marx (1972) clearly perceives social class as a divisive social structure by the ruling class exploiting and oppressing the lower class, resulting in conflict between the two classes. Therefore, Marxist defined social class as social groups whose members are related through a common means of production Haralambos and Holborn