Different people have different thinking and they want the things to be the way they like. But no one is completely satisfied. This gives birth to a conflict within the society. Social conflict is a struggle of power in society. These kinds of conflicts mainly occur when two or more parties oppose each other or one in any social interaction.
This reciprocally exerts power in order to attain goals and prevent the opponent from attaining those goals; this gives rise to a social conflict.
Social conflicts are seen as a normal occurrence in the society rather an abnormal one. One theory on the topic of social conflicts was put forward by Karl Marx named as ‘Social conflict theory’. In this theory Karl Marx states that in the communal production of their being, men inevitably go through specific relations, who are independent of their will, namely relations of production suitable to a given phase in the growth of their material forces of production. The whole of these associations of production comprise the economic structure of society, the real basis, on which arises a legal and political structure and to which correspond specific forms of social awareness.
The method of creation of material life conditions the procedure of social, political and intellectual life. It is not the perception of men that establish their existence, but their social being that decides their consciousness. At a definite stage of expansion, the productive forces of society come into conflict with the existing associations of production or – this only expresses the same thing in legal language – with the property relations within the outline of which they have functioned till then giving rise to a social conflict. From types of expansion of the productive forces these relations turn into their shackles and that begins a period of social conflicts.