Social Class and Straification Essay

First published 1990 by Routledge 11 New Fetter Lane. London EC4P 4EE Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 29 West 35th Street. New York. NY 10001 This edition published in the Taylor & A ; Francis e-Library. 2001. © 1990 Peter Saunders All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any signifier or by any electronic. mechanical. or other agencies. now known or afterlife invented. including run offing and entering. or in any information storage or retrieval system. without permission in composing from the publishing houses. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress ISBN 0-415-04125-2 ( Print Edition ) ISBN 0-203-12971-7 Master e-book ISBN ISBN 0-203-17562-X ( Glassbook Format )

Contentss

Preface 1 2 3 4 5 6 Marx. Weber. and societal stratification Social category and societal inequality in Britain Thinking about societal inequality Social mobility The altering category system in Britain Conclusions

six 1 27 41 68 85 129 132 136

Mentions Index

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Foreword
Sociology in Britain today is strongly underpinned by a leftist political consensus – what I have termed elsewhere a ‘socialist– women’s rightist orthodoxy’ . This prejudice appears to be peculiarly marked in GCE A-level texts. as Professor David Marsland’s recent book. Seeds of Bankruptcy ( 1988 ) . London and Lexington: Claridge Press. all excessively depressingly demonstrates. Too frequently in modern-day sociology. sentiment is allowed to replace for analysis and socialist values are adopted uncritically as the get downing point of commentary and rating. The analysis of societal category and inequality is particularly susceptible to this job. given the centrality of these issues to socialist theory and political relations. Social stratification is one of the most important and absorbing countries of modern-day sociology. but it is besides one of the countries where scientific discipline and political relations have become perilously embroiled. It is frequently said that all sociological histories are partial. This is true. But this does non intend that we have to pretermit viing

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accounts which do non hold with our ain. nor does it intend that we can disregard empirical grounds which does non state what we want it to state. In this book I have tried to show for the pupil a scope of positions and to measure them against the available grounds. I have made a peculiar attempt to include material drawn from the neo-liberal tradition ( the alleged ‘New Right’ ) . for what passes for argument in the sociology of stratification has by and large ignored this literature wholly. My purpose has been to bring forth a book which goes some manner to run into David Marsland’s demand for ‘genuinely unfastened debate’ within the A-level sociology course of study. I would wish to thank David Marsland for ab initio exciting me to compose this book. Pete Langley for promoting me to print it in this signifier. and Pat McNeill for his helpful remarks on an earlier bill of exchange.

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Marx. Weber. and societal stratification
The construct of ‘social stratification’ The term ‘stratification’ has been borrowed by sociologists from the scientific discipline of geology. There it refers to the consecutive beds or strata of stone and other stuffs which have been laid down over the millenary to organize the earth’s crust. Translated into the really different scientific discipline of sociology. the construct of stratification has been adapted to mention to the different ‘layers’ or strata of societal groups which are thought to be arranged. one on top of the other. in assorted human societies. Thus. merely as the geologist who drives a bore-hole into the Earth may detect a bed of sandstone on top of a bed of basalt on top of a bed of granite. so excessively the sociologist who digs deep down into the societal construction may detect layer upon bed of different sorts of societal groupings –

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upper categories upon in-between categories upon lower categories. for illustration. The survey of societal stratification is the survey of how these different groupings or strata relate to one another. Normally we find that they are related unevenly. One group may have and bask more economic resources than another. or it may be held in higher regard. or it may be in a place to order other groups around. In our ain society there are hapless and affluent people. there are households of high birth and households of common mans. and there are politically powerful elites and comparatively powerless groups of people who are expected merely to follow bids and obey orders. The analysis of societal stratification is concerned to understand how inequalities like these arise in the first topographic point. how they are maintained or changed over clip. and the impact which they have on other facets of societal life. There are. of class. different ways in which groups may be stratified. In most societies. for illustration. there are clear systems of stratification based on gender. Inequalities between work forces and adult females may be found in the sorts of work they do. the chances which are unfastened to them. the opportunity to go powerful leaders. and so on. Similarly. it is common to detect systems of
stratification which operate between different racial or cultural groups. Sometimes one cultural group enslaves another ; sometimes one excludes another from economic privileges and political rights ; and so on. It may besides be possible to place stratification runing on the footing of age. faith or caste. In this survey. nevertheless. we shall non pay much attending to these facets of societal stratification. The issues raised by gender and generational inequalities have already been discussed in other books in this series ( O’Donnell 1985 and Garrett 1987 ) and these should be consulted as complementary beginnings. In this book. our chief concern will be with that specific facet of societal stratification which has to make with the relationship between societal categories. Before sing how sociologists have tried to analyze category stratification. we should foremost take note of the restrictions of utilizing the term ‘stratification’ at all. Sociology has frequently made usage

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of thoughts derived from other scientific disciplines – the alleged ‘organic analogy’ in which human societies are likened to populating beings is the best-known illustration. But such analogues are ever limited and can be misdirecting. In the instance of the stratification metaphor. for illustration. it is obvious that the agreement of different societal groups within a society is non truly like the agreements of stone in the earth’s crust. Geological strata do non interact with one another. for illustration. whereas in even the most stiff and hierarchal of societies there is some grade of interaction between groups at the top and those at the underside. Similarly. different geological beds can non alter topographic points comparative to one another whereas in human societies. one group may ‘rise’ in power and position over clip while another group may ‘fall’ . Fifty old ages ago in Britain. for illustration. clerks were doubtless more extremely esteemed than they are today. Similarly. in the USA. it is possible to detect the ‘rise’ in position of different cultural groups such as the Italians or the Poles who antecedently occupied really humble places as recent immigrants to that society. And in many Western societies. the place of adult females relative to that of work forces has been altering slightly over the last 20 old ages or so. Not merely do societal groups rise and autumn
relation to one another. but so excessively do single members of these groups. One of the chief jobs with using the metaphor of stratification within sociology is exactly that it can non capture the thought of single motion between degrees. The impression of single spots of granite or limestone or whatever traveling up and down within the earth’s crust is absurd. yet most human societies have enabled some grade of single motion between strata. This is true ( though far from common ) of even the most inhibitory of societal systems. Slaves in ancient Rome could really on occasion go free citizens. and helot in mediaeval Europe who managed to get away and hedge gaining control for a twelvemonth and a twenty-four hours could throw off their bondage and go ‘free men’ . In modern industrial states. such motion is much more common. In the Soviet Union. where power and position really frequently depend upon place in the Communist Party hierarchy. it is rather common to

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happen kids of provincial and working-class households lifting to high political office ( see. for illustration. Lane 1971 ) . And in Western capitalist states. motion both up and down between different societal categories is unusually common. as we shall see subsequently in this chapter. These and other illustrations of what sociologists term single societal mobility have no existent analogue in geology. and to this extent. the thought of a system of stratification composed of solid and changeless beds of different composing seems extremely deceptive when applied to the analysis of most modern-day human societies.

Activities 1. For each of the undermentioned societies. seek to make up one’s mind if there is any one characteristic – age. category. gender. ethnicity. nationality. faith. etc. – which is more of import than any other in determining people’s life opportunities: Northern Ireland The Soviet Union Israel The Deep South of the USA The United Arab Emirates South Africa Rural states of India Try to rank each of the undermentioned features in footings of their importance in determining economic inequalities in modern-day Britain: The occupation people do Their gender Their cultural individuality The household they are born into The part of the state they live in Their spiritual association How old they are

2.

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Which are the least and which are the most of import factors in determining societal stratification in Britain today? How have these changed over the last 200 old ages?

Marx on the middle class and the labor Why. if it is so deceptive. has the metaphor of societal stratification become so permeant in modern sociology? One reply likely lies in the influence of Marxist theory within this subdivision of the subject. for Marxism is much more concerned with the different strata than it is with the persons within them. Karl Marx was a nineteenth-century theoretician who developed his cardinal thoughts about the category construction of modern societies in the 40 old ages following the moving ridge of European revolutions in 1848. It seemed to him that he was witnessing the outgrowth of a modern age in which the division between two great societal categories was destined to go the cardinal characteristic. As Marx saw it. all societies that had of all time existed had been ‘class societies’ of one sort or another. There was in his position one overruling rule regulating the administration of human personal businesss in all societies up to and including the coming of capitalist economy. and that was that one subdivision of the population owned and controlled the basic stuff resources at the society’s disposal while another subdivision owned nil. In ancient Rome. for illustration. one group owned the land while another was forced to work as slaves in order to acquire the subsistence ( chiefly nutrient and shelter ) required to populate. Similarly. in feudal Europe. the Godheads owned all the land and the helot were obliged to execute labor and military responsibilities for the Godheads in return for entree to a strip of land which they could farm for themselves. And in capitalist economy excessively. harmonizing to Marx. one group of people ( the middle class or capitalist category ) owns the mills. land and Bankss while another ( the labor ) has no pick but to work for the capitalists in return for a

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subsistence pay which ne’er reflects the existent value of what is produced in the class of labor. In all of these societies. hence. the category which owns the agency of production grows of all time wealthier by working the labor of the category which owns nil. Merely as the slaves and the helot of earlier periods created the wealth which was so taken from them. so excessively in capitalist economy. pay laborers are obliged to make the goods and services which their employers so take and sell. retaining the returns for themselves. Marx did non deny that sometimes workers could go capitalists – it is in rule possible for a worker to borrow or roll up a little amount of capital. put it in a concern. win in marketing the merchandises and finally spread out to a point where he or she begins to use other workers. Marx was besides cognizant that capitalists could go workers – so. his theory held that over clip. more and more capitalists would see their concerns fail and would therefore ‘descend’ into the ranks of the labor. But although he recognised the possibility of such upward and downward societal mobility. Marx did non see it to be really of import ( nor. in the instance of upward mobility. really likely ) . Much more of import for Marx was the being of these two societal categories as the basic and indispensable elements of society conceived as a system of production. In other words. the fact that a few persons might ‘make good’ or fail was irrelevant to the go oning being of a system which required that there ever be two categories. one having the basic productive resources of the society. and the other obliged to work in order to populate. It did non truly count which persons found themselves in which of these categories. for his focal point was on the system. non on the persons within it. Capitalists as persons might be morally good or bad people. and some of them might even deplore the poorness to which their workers were consigned – in Britain. for illustration. there were many cases during the eighteenth and 19th centuries of bourgeois households who tried to better the batch of their workers by puting up schools for their kids.

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set uping theoretical account communities for them to populate in. and so on. For Marx. nevertheless. the indispensable point was that in the terminal. such people would still
hold to run harmonizing to the logic of the capitalist system of which they were a portion. If a capitalist insisted on paying higher rewards. or cut downing the hours of work. or bettering working and place conditions. he or she would merely be undercut by rivals and would finally travel out of concern. Seen in this manner. the lone alteration or motion which mattered in society was one which would shatter the system itself by agencies of a radical turbulence. Just as an temblor or volcanic eruption basically reorders the graded beds of stone and sediment beneath the earth’s surface by conveying to the top boiling stone which has hitherto been compressed far below. so excessively revolutions break up bing societal orders and convey to the top new categories which have hitherto been repressed and contained. For Marx. piecemeal reform can ne’er alter really much. and there is cherished small which persons on their ain can make to do things any different. If. incredibly. a worker does pull off to get down a successful concern and grow to go a major capitalist enterpriser. this lone means that some other capitalist loses net incomes and goes bust. If the system stays the same. so the domination of one category by another besides stays the same. no affair how much the composing of those categories might alter. Individual motion up and down the system therefore does nil to alter it – which is why. from a Marxist point of position. the geological metaphor of graded beds in society seems so appropriate.

Exploitation as the footing of category battle It follows from all of this that the Marxist position of societal stratification is one which sees categories as existent and nonsubjective entities. A societal category is much more than the amount of the

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persons who comprise it. for these persons are all obliged by the logic of the system to move in much the same manner. and they will besides be given to believe in much the same manner excessively. All capitalists must seek to roll up capital by paying the lowest rewards they can. by increasing the efficiency of the productive procedure wherever possible. and by selling at the maximal monetary value they can achieve. Similarly. all workers must sell their labour-power if they want to populate. and must in the procedure maintain contributing to the
turning wealth and power of the category which is suppressing them. If everybody had entree to the agencies of production – the land. tools. mills and so on – so they would acquire back the full value of the labor they put into production. Person who worked for eight hours to bring forth. state. a knitted jumper would be able to interchange it for goods and services made up of eight hours of other people’s labour clip. Cipher. in other words. would be exploited. But in a state of affairs where one category monopolises entree to agencies of production. it is in a place to give back to workers less than the full value of their labor. Therefore. the individual who has to travel and knit jumpers in a mill for eight hours receives back. non the value of the goods he or she has made. but instead a pay which is merely sufficient to purchase the indispensable things necessary for him or her to remain alive and hence to turn up for work once more the undermentioned forenoon. The difference between the value of the jumpers produced. and the value of the pay received. is what is taken by the mill proprietor as net income. Harmonizing to Marx. this means that development is an nonsubjective fact of life in capitalist systems. merely as it was in feudal and slave societies. And merely as. even if Roman slaves insisted that they were rather happy with things as they were and felt that they were acquiring a just trade. this would make nil to alter the nonsubjective fact of their development. so excessively in capitalist societies. grounds of worker felicity. contentment or even active support for the system does nil to change the fact that they are members of an laden and exploited category whose long-run involvements lie in the overthrow of that system.

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This insisting in Marx’s theory on the nonsubjective character of category dealingss and development is important. for it means that the theory can still claim to be right even when ordinary workingclass people reject it. Engels. a affluent Manchester mill proprietor who collaborated with Marx through much of his life. coined the term ‘false consciousness’ to mention exactly to the state of affairs where the working category failed to understand its ‘true’ and ‘objective’ state of affairs as an laden category whose batch could merely be improved by the overthrow of the capitalist system. Indeed. Marx and Engels built into their theory an account of why workers really frequently did
non and could non appreciate their true quandary. for they argued that in any society. the category that owns the agency of production besides tends straight or indirectly to command the dominant thoughts which are current in that society. In other words. we all the clip be given to see our universe through the falsifying mirror of governing category political orientation. This statement has later been taken up and embellished by ulterior Marxist authors such as the Hungarian. Georg Lukacs. who tried to demo that left to its ain devices. the on the job category would ne’er to the full understand the necessity of emancipating itself through a socialist revolution. and that it hence needed to be led by socialist intellectuals. Much the same thought can be found in Lenin’s Hagiographas on the demand for a radical ‘vanguard party’ to take the labor to socialism. merely as it can in Antonio Gramsci’s Hagiographas on ‘hegemony’ and Louis Althusser’s construct of ‘ideological province apparatuses’ . The indispensable point shared by all these authors is that mundane life in capitalist societies obscures the world of the system of development. In portion. this is because the newspapers and electronic media. together with the schools and other bureaus. reproduce the thoughts of the dominant category as if they were obvious. natural and common-sense. But it is besides because the procedure of development itself is non obvious in the manner that it was under bondage or feudal system. The slave who worked all twenty-four hours for a subsistence repast. and the helot who tilled the lord’s land in order to be given a strip of land for his ain usage. could see that the

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merchandise of their labor was being taken from them. but this is non the instance with the modern worker. What seems to go on under capitalist economy is a free and equal exchange of so many hours’ work for so many lbs in the pay package. The fact that the pay is less than the value of what the worker has produced may non be evident to either party. and so it is that development goes unnoticed. For Marx. so. capitalist economy is a system of category domination. There are two chief categories which are locked together in an unequal relation of power and development. Obviously. the dominant category is wealthier and enjoys a better quality of life than the low-level category. but this is non the indispensable difference between them. for the basic issue has to make with
who owns the agency of production instead than the subsequent distribution of the goods and services which come to be produced. In some fortunes. for illustration at times of enlargement when labor may be in short supply. rewards may lift and workers may see themselves rather good off. but this does nil to alter the facts of category development and subjugation which are grounded in the system of ownership. Nor does it count if propertyless people do non believe of themselves as working-class. for this is non a affair of subjective opinion. Like it or non. recognize it or non. we live in a category society. and the basic manner of societal administration will non alter until capitalist economy is overthrown and replaced by a socialist system in which the agency of production are owned in common. Problems in the Marxist attack Marx’s thoughts have been tremendously influential in Western sociological believing about category. particularly since the 1960s when the growing of pupil agitation and the first marks that the long post-war economic roar was stoping combined to reawaken sociological involvement in Marxist theory. Yet the jobs with this whole manner of analysis are manifold.

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Not all societies are category societies First. it is non true that all human societies have been category societies. For Marx. the structuring rule of all societal systems of all time since the early pastoralists settled on the land has been the division between a category of proprietors and a category of non-owners. Yet the division between those who own the agency of production ( usually land ) and those who do non has non ever been the key to understanding societal constructions. In some tribal societies. the basic societal divisions are drawn on the footing of age and gender. non category. In these societies. the administration of work is frequently stiffly determined by gender – adult females may be given cowss and cook nutrient while work forces Hunt and battle. Similarly. lines of authorization may be drawn on the footing of gender and age as duty for doing jointly adhering determinations and opinions is reserved to groups such as the male seniors. Similarly. in the traditional life of rural India. the cardinal societal cleavages are structured non around category dealingss of ownership and non-ownership. but around divisions between castes. People’s caste rank is fixed at birth and the chances and
duties open to them are stiffly determined by their caste. Thus. for illustration. caste governs all signifiers of societal interaction and regulates the scope of eligible spouses at matrimony. Castes may non eat in each other’s presence lest higher caste members become ‘polluted’ through exposure to people of a lower caste. and there are prohibitions on the sort of nutrient which peculiar castes may eat. Occupations excessively are reserved in such a manner that what are considered to be ‘ritually polluting’ undertakings such as the film editing of hair or the slaughter of animate beings may merely be performed by the lowest strata – the ‘untouchables’ . What is of import about all this is that members of a high caste may be no better off materially than their societal inferiors – in Marxist footings. they may all be provincials rubing a life on their ain little secret plans of land. To analyze such a stratification system in Marxist category nomenclature is merely to

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misconstrue the manner in which the society is structured and organised. Even feudal Europe does non readily impart itself to Marxist category analysis. Certainly it is true that in mediaeval times. the Godheads owned the land and the helot had to work unpaid in order to accomplish entree to a strip of land which they could cultivate for their ain demands. But this society was ordered by the dealingss between ‘estates’ . each with its ain specified rights and responsibilities. instead than by ownership of productive resources as such. In France. for illustration. the population was divided into aristocracy. clergy and the ‘third estate’ ( mainly professionals and merchandisers ) each of which was represented in the Assembly of the ‘Estates General’ . Similarly. in Britain there was a division between ‘Lords’ and ‘Commons’ . These divisions were based more on societal factors. such as high birth. than on economic ownership. An blue blood remained an aristocrat irrespective of the resources at his disposal ( adult females. of class. were excluded from ownership wholly ) . The deep cleavages and struggles in society at this clip were non by and large those between proprietors and non-owners. but those between the King and the Lords or the Church. or between different line of descents. or between the Crown and the burgesss in the towns who attempted to asseverate their liberty from monarchal control. It is for this ground that Anthony Giddens ( 1984 ) has
suggested that we should mention to societal systems like this. non as ‘class societies’ . but as ‘class-divided societies’ . for while they exhibited category inequalities. they were non chiefly organised around the dealingss between the categories.

Class may non be the most basic societal division A second job with the Marxist attack is that. even in contemporary capitalist states. category may non be the basic beginning of division. struggle. involvement and individuality. The division between work forces and adult females. for illustration. is in some respects more

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pertinent in impacting people’s societal dealingss and life opportunities than that between proprietors and non-owners of capital. A glimpse at the societal composing of assorted cardinal organic structures – Parliament. the Stock Exchange. the General Committee of the TUC. the Church of England Synod. the Senate of Oxford or Cambridge Universities. the council chambers of major companies – fleetly reveals that. although there is frequently a skewed enlisting in footings of category. there is by and large an even more pronounced maldistribution of members in footings of gender. Similarly. adult females are often paid less than work forces for making tantamount sorts of occupation. they may be discriminated against when it comes to recruitment or publicity. and they are still overpoweringly responsible in most domestic families for transporting out the majority of the housekeeping. Small admiration. so. that some women’s rightists have argued that gender dealingss. grounded in an enduring system of ‘patriarchy’ . are far more important than category divisions in determining life opportunities and the administration of power in modern societies. There are other factors excessively which Marxist theory seems illequipped to recognize as basic to modern-day systems of societal stratification. One obvious one is race and ethnicity. In states like South Africa and Israel. racial and cultural individuality is perfectly cardinal in structuring people’s entree to societal resources. but this is besides true in other states as good. In the Soviet Union. there is clear grounds of favoritism in occupations and other countries such as lodging against certain cultural groups like Jews and Latvians. In the United States. and peculiarly in the Deep South. it is still a major disadvantage to be black
or Hispanic. while in Australia. the Aborigines remain mostly excluded from the mainstream economic. political and cultural life of the state. In Britain excessively. of class. statistics on lodging. employment. instruction and so on all reveal a clear form of disadvantage in regard of ‘ethnic minorities’ . although it is of import to separate here between the Afro-Caribbean community. which seems peculiarly disadvantaged on many of these dimensions. and those from the Indian sub-continent who

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have frequently been more successful in get the better ofing the favoritism and bias directed against them. Nor are gender and ethnicity the lone ‘missing variables’ in Marxist attacks to societal stratification. Religious persuasion can be a important factor – for illustration. in topographic points like Northern Ireland and the Middle East. So excessively can national individuality: for many 1000000s of Basques. Bretons. Scots. Ukrainians. Moldavians. Lithuanians. Quebeckers. Tibetans. Mongolians and Palestinians. the basic issue which shapes their lives concerns non their category rank but their desire to populate under the Torahs of a nation-state other than that to which they are capable. The sociological analysis of stratification has excessively frequently forgotten that divisions between categories can blanch into insignificance for people who feel that they belong to an ethno-cultural grouping which is foreign to the nationstate in which they live. Marxism has at assorted times attempted to incorporate such factors into its category analysis. Socialistic women’s rightists have sometimes argued. for illustration. that the forms of domination inscribed in patriarchate are sustained by the system of category domination deducing from capitalist economy. although such statements are seldom converting. given that gender divisions predate capitalist category divisions by several thousand old ages. Similarly. there is a long history in Marxist thought which explains racist exclusion as a merchandise of capitalist economy and the imperialist urge in capitalist provinces. Again. though. the analysis lacks plausibleness. for favoritism and domination on the footing of ethnicity was about long before modern capitalist economy. There is. moreover. a sense in which free market capitalist economy. instead than bring forthing racism. can be said to assist sabotage it. A rational capitalist enterpriser will be interested in
enrolling suited labor at the lowest cost. no affair what colour the tegument of those workers may be. merely as a rational consumer will seek out the best bargains without respect to the coloring material of the people who produced the goods in inquiry. In South Africa today. the Whites who are forcing most strongly for the dismantlement of Apartheid are frequently those who are involved in running major capitalist endeavors. for a system

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which allocates people to occupations and countries by their coloring material instead than by their aptitudes is deeply anti-capitalist in its logic.

The rise of the in-between category and the fragmental category construction A 3rd major job with the Marxist attack concerns its committedness to a double category theoretical account. If category is defined in footings of ownership or non-ownership of the agencies of production. so it is hard to see how a ‘middle class’ can originate. Marx and his followings have recognised that the two chief categories in capitalist societies are frequently fragmented into what they call ‘class fractions’ . The middle class. for illustration. consists of industrialists. moneymans. merchandisers and landholders. and these different fractions frequently find themselves in struggle. Industrialists may resent paying increased rents to landholders. or merchandisers may kick bitterly at the involvement charged on the money they borrow from Bankss. Similarly. the labor is besides divided between people in unafraid employment and those ( the ‘lumpenproletariat’ ) who drift in and out of employment. and between direct manufacturers of goods and those employed in service industries such as retailing or the fiscal sector. Further. Marx besides recognises that non everybody in capitalist societies needfully belongs to one of the two great categories since certain strata. such as the peasantry in France or the nobility in England. may still be in grounds from earlier historical periods. Nevertheless. neither the theory of category fractions. nor the acknowledgment of category residues. can assist to explicate how it is that in most advanced capitalist states. a distinguishable ‘middle class’ has grown up over the last hundred old ages. Marxist theory confronts a existent and unsolved job in covering with groups like directors. civil retainers. physicians.
computing machine coders and the 1000000s of others who draw a salary yet in most other respects seem most unlike workers.

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Groups like these seldom ain much. if any. productive capital. yet some of them employ people. they frequently issue bids to other workers and do determinations about how capitalist endeavors should be run. and they are normally well-remunerated and rather extremely esteemed. Specifying them as ‘working-class’ seems no more plausible than specifying them as capitalists. Marxism has frequently skirted around this job by mentioning to ‘the bourgeoisie’ as an unclear. catch-all class encompassing both capitalists and in-between categories. but this merely ducks the issue. Over the last 10 old ages or so. assorted Marxist theoreticians have attempted to speculate such groups as a distinguishable ‘middle class’ or ‘new junior-grade bourgeoisie’ . but this work has seldom been converting. and has usually entailed a important interruption with the thought that classes arise around the ownership and nonownership of the agencies of production. For illustration. the Grecian Marxist. Nicos Poulantzas. tried to speculate what he termed the ‘new petit larceny bourgeoisie’ by proposing that any employee who was engaged in mental labor. or who had duty for oversing other workers. or who was non employed straight in production. should be deemed ‘petty bourgeois’ . but the consequence made small sense. Included in Poulantzas’s designation of the ‘middle class’ were non lone directors and professionals. but besides service workers such as garage forecourt attenders. supervisory workers such as chiefs. and so on. Other efforts at deciding the job have been merely every bit unsuccessful. The American Marxist. Erik Olin Wright. identified three chief categories in capitalist societies – capitalists. who own the agency of production. workers. and little. independent concern people ( for illustration. the freelance ) whom he termed the ‘petty bourgeoisie’ . He so went on to reason that many people fall between these three categories into what he termed ‘contradictory category locations’ . Directors and supervisors. for illustration. are involved in running capitalist endeavors. yet they are besides employees of these endeavors. and in this sense they occupy a category location midway between

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capitalists and workers. Similarly. many proficient and professional workers enjoy significant occupation liberty. as the petit larceny middle class do. but are non freelance. and they therefore find themselves in a place between the capitalist and junior-grade businessperson categories. Harmonizing to Wright. people in these contradictory locations may be pulled to one or other category pole – their commitment displacements and they are at that place to be won by either side. Yet this kind of analysis does non truly decide the job either. and Wright himself has late confused affairs even further by revising his scheme and coming up with a new twelveclass theoretical account! What seems to be traveling on in work like this is little more than a redescription of the troublesome strata. but as the classificatory systems expand. so the power of Marx’s original penetrations get watered down. The strength of Marx’s ain analysis was that it identified two categories locked into an counter yet reciprocally dependent relationship – capital and labor could non populate together and could non populate apart. This was so used to explicate what Marx saw as the built-in and ageless category battle in capitalist societies – a battle which represented the motor of societal alteration. In modern preparations. nevertheless. this dynamic. relational thought of category has been lost. and we end up with luxuriant descriptions of different places in society with small thought of how they relate to each other. Marxism is ill-suited to analyzing the growing and significance of the in-between category merely because an analysis which theorises categories in footings of dealingss to the agencies of production is needfully dichotomous. Either people own the agency of production. or they do non. Attempts to construct a in-between category into this scheme will necessarily stop up manipulating the theory. Furthermore. the whole push of Marxist theory has ever been that ‘intermediate classes’ should be vanishing instead than increasing in size and importance. Marx himself developed the position that. as capitalist economy progresses. so the blunt spread between the middle class and the on the job category grows of all time wider. The theory predicted that category hostility would go clearer as the gulf between the two chief categories became deeper. and those in

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the center would be squeezed out into one or other of the two hostile cantonments. Yet what has really happened is that category lines have become blurred. the in-between category has grown in size and the blunt nineteenth-century split between the rich persons and the havenots has been confused as life criterions have risen all unit of ammunition. The clear division which existed in the 19th century between capitalists and workers has broken down. for most big companies are no longer owned by peculiar persons or households. but by insurance companies. unit trust financess and pension financess. all of which invest the nest eggs of 1000000s of ordinary workers in capitalist endeavors. This failure of Marx’s anticipation of societal polarization has been a major blow for the theory as a whole. for in the last hundred old ages the working category has become smaller. better off and unquestionably less radical in its excitement. Working-class consciousness and rational wishful thought Yet another job for Marxist category analysis has concerned the inquiry of category consciousness. As we saw earlier. Engels really early on introduced the thought of ‘false consciousness’ to account for the fact that many propertyless people do non see their state of affairs in the manner that Marxist theory does. and this construct has since been pressed into service by many theoreticians to account for the deficiency of proletarian radical ardor. Some. like the guru of the sixties’ pupil motion. Herbert Marcuse. have argued that the workers have been bedazzled by consumerism. Therefore Marcuse argued that capitalist economy has implanted ‘false needs’ into workers’ consciousness in such a manner that they have been fobbed off with autos and rinsing machines while all the clip staying in a province of disaffection and development. Others. like the Gallic philosopher Louis Althusser. have blamed ‘ideological province apparatuses’ such as the schools and the media for repro ducing the illusory thought that we are persons in control of our ain

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fate. thereby hiding the truth of category power. Still others. such as the influential German Marxist. Jurgen Habermas. have written of a ‘systematically distorted communication’ which prevents us from developing independent idea and an effectual review of the system in which we live.
All of these attacks suffer from the same two jobs. First. they beg the inquiry of how Marxist theoreticians can claim to cognize the truth when it is concealed from everybody else. Despite many elaborate and clever efforts at replying this inquiry. we are ever finally left with an uncorroborated claim to favor penetration affecting a entirely round statement: Marxists know the true state of affairs because Marxist theory is true! And secondly. all these discrepancies on the subject of false consciousness terminal up haughtily dismissive of what workingclass people themselves say and think about their state of affairs. The abstract category is thought to be the depository of a true socialist consciousness while the flesh and blood persons who make up that category are ignored. As Frank Parkin puts it. authors like Marcuse and Althusser seem to offer a ‘diagnosis implying in the most oblique and scholarly mode that the labor was enduring from a sort of corporate encephalon damage’ ( 1979: 81 ) . These factors – the insensitiveness to systems of stratification other than those based on category. the failure to speculate divisions grounded in gender and ethnicity. the inability to explicate the growing of the in-between category within capitalist economy. and the involuntariness to see existent signifiers of category consciousness as opposed to idealized 1s – all basically undermine Marxist attacks to societal stratification. These are non the lone jobs with this attack – the theory of development. for illustration. can be challenged. as can the position that capital and labour represent inherently unreconcilable involvements – but many sociologists have felt that they are adequate to warrant a hunt for an alternate attack.

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The Weberian alternate Max Weber was a German historiographer and sociologist composing chiefly in the early old ages of this century. It has been suggested that Weber engaged in a ‘dialogue with the shade of Marx’ . for he addressed many of the issues at the bosom of Marx’s theory but came to really different decisions. Weber’s sociology was based in a committedness to ‘methodological individualism’ . In other words. while Weber recognised that it is utile to use corporate constructs such as ‘social class’ . he argued that these were merely shorthand labels for sums of persons. Unlike Marx. who saw
categories as existent societal entities. Weber used the term to mention merely to groups within a population who shared certain common economic features. Weber’s chief concern in his work on stratification was with the exercising of power and the administration of domination in human societies. He suggested that there were three sorts of state of affairs in which one group of people might anticipate to acquire its ain manner in relationships with another group of people. First. power could originate on the footing of unequal entree to material resources. If I have something that you want or need. so I am in a place to exert power over you. Weber referred to this as category power. Second. power can be a map of societal position and regard. If you look up to me or believe that I am in some manner your societal higher-up. so once more you are likely to postpone to my wants and bids. Weber saw this as societal power – the power exercised by position groups as opposed to categories. Third. one group may rule another through the bureau of the province. either by straight commanding it. or by act uponing those who do command it. As Weber emphasised. the province is the lone establishment in modern societies which claims the right to coerce people to make things. If I do non pay my revenue enhancements. or neglect to direct my kids to school. or seek to print what the province deems to be secret. so I can be sent to gaol. This province usage of ‘legitimate coercion’ is referred to by Weber as political power exercised by parties. by which he meant non

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merely formal political parties. but any organized involvements which seek to act upon the operations of the province. This attack to power is different from that of Marx in four of import ways. First. it distinguishes three dimensions of power in society which Marxist theory elides. For Weber. unlike Marx. the group which enjoys most category power is non needfully the same as the group with societal power or the group with political power. Put another manner. wealth. position and influence are non needfully synonymous. This insight enables us to recognize that some groups may be politically powerful without being peculiarly wealthy ( trade brotherhood leaders might be one illustration ) . or that the most esteemed strata ( for illustration. the old landed nobility with its rubrics and sole hangouts ) are non needfully
the most economically powerful involvements in the land. or that those who own considerable wealth are non automatically to be thought of as a political ‘ruling class’ . Weber’s attack besides allows us to analyze power and domination on the footing of gender and ethnicity. for it tells us that people in the same category state of affairs ( for illustration. black and white mill workers or male and female barristers ) may however portion really different position places. Black workers. for illustration. may be looked down upon by their white co-workers and excluded from assorted privileges even though they do the same occupation for the same money. Similarly. the female barrister may happen it hard to procure instances because of intuition or ill will on the portion of male canvassers. and she may good happen that her calling is hindered by domestic duties which her male co-workers are non called upon to execute. Thus. unlike the Marxist attack. Weberian stratification theory is multi-dimensional. and this enables it to analyze both category and non-class bases of inequality. Second. this same division between economic. societal and political power besides means that Weber could analyze noncapitalist societies without falling into the ethnocentric mistake of presuming that they were all category societies. The Indian caste system. for illustration. is an about pure illustration of a system of stratification based on position. or ‘social honour’ . As we saw

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above. the differentiations between different castes are stiff yet have small to make with wealth as such. Rather. caste. like all signifiers of position. is defined in footings of life styles – the sorts of business you do. whom you marry. how and what you eat. and most crucially. your parenthood. Weber recognised that. with the coming of modern capitalist economy. such status-based societal orders tended to withdraw. and category systems of stratification became more of import. but he besides pointed out that position power has been far from eclipsed in modern societies. Third. the manner in which Weber defined category was really different from Marx’s attack. In the Weberian tradition. category is a map of market power instead than ownership or nonownership of the agencies of production. Seen in this manner. people form a category if they portion approximately common life opportunities. They may bask similar life opportunities because
they own significant belongings retentions from which they can gain a net income. but the belongings market is non the lone factor which influences our economic state of affairs. What is besides important is our place in the labor market. Some people have peculiar accomplishments or abilities which enable them to command high rewards when they take their labor to the market. and this excessively will impact their category place. For Weber. so. category has to make with both belongings and business. In his footings. there are positively and negatively privileged belongings categories. but there are besides positively and negatively privileged occupational or commercial categories. It is non hence the instance that if people do non have belongings such as land. Bankss or mills. they are all proletarian. for some will be more powerful in the labor market than others and will hence be able to procure greater stuff wagess. It is this which allows Weber to place the nature of the in-between category under capitalist economy in a manner that Marx could non. For Weber. the upper category consists of those who live off belongings income and bask the privileges of instruction. The lower category. by contrast. is ‘negatively privileged’ on both dimensions. They neither ain resources which can be used to bring forth gross. nor do they hold the instruction which could convey them a high wage. In

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between these two categories. the in-between category consists of people who have some belongings but small instruction ( the ‘petty bourgeoisie’ such as little tradesmans and enterprisers ) . and people who have small belongings but can command high rewards by virtuousness of their instruction and makings ( the ‘intelligentsia and specialists’ ) . This latter group. of class. is exactly the stratum which has been turning fastest over the last hundred old ages. Fourth. Weber was watchful to the subjective facet of stratification. The assorted categories which he identified make non be as existent entities unless and until their members come to believe of themselves in category footings. Marx excessively understood this. but for him. it was self-evident that the on the job category would bit by bit develop a category consciousness which would take to a radical rebellion against the middle class. For Weber. whether or non people come to believe and move in category footings is an unfastened inquiry. In some state of affairss. and for some intents. they may make. but they may every bit organize themselves
around other involvements and individualities. Political struggles could take the signifier of category battles ( for illustration. work stoppages by brotherhoods or presentations by leftist parties ) . but they may besides affect the mobilization of position groups ( as in black motions or feminist political relations. for illustration ) . and they are sometimes based in neither category nor position associations ( proand anti-abortion runs. the ‘peace movement’ . and so on ) . In Weber’s sociology there is no infinite for a construct like ‘false consciousness’ . for people act in ways that are meaningful to them given the values that they hold. and it makes no sense for a sociological perceiver to knock these values as ‘false’ . nor to disregard people’s actions as in some ethical manner ‘wrong’ or ‘misguided’ . The bequest of Marx and Weber Contemporary sociological work on category and stratification has been strongly influenced by the Hagiographas of both Marx and

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Weber. Today work continues in both traditions. Opinion as to their comparative worth is about necessarily clouded by personal and political values. The chief ground for this is merely that Marx was ne’er merely a societal scientist ; he was a political revolutionist. One of his most celebrated remarks. which is engraved on his grave in Highgate graveyard in London. was that. ‘The philosophers have merely interpreted the universe in assorted ways ; the point. nevertheless. is to alter it. ’ Marxist theory is therefore inextricably jump up with the political undertaking of revolution. Those who seek to dispute capitalist economy are by and large attracted to this theory with its position of modern society as two warring cantonments and its vision of a future socialist universe. Many leftist sociologists hence endorse the basic lineations of Marx’s attack while at the same clip recognizing that the theory has to be revised to take history of the changed conditions of the late 20th century. The job with modern-day Marxism. nevertheless. is that cipher has yet been able to happen a manner of revising the theory while staying faithful to the basic thoughts set down by its laminitis. The chief alternate to Marxist theory in the field of societal stratification is that established by Weber. This attack is non without its jobs either: Marxist critics claim. for illustration. that Weberian attacks fail to understand the
structural footing of category hostilities and overemphasize the division between economic and political power in advanced capitalist economy. Theorists within each of these traditions could ( and perchance will ) go on their statement for old ages without making any point of understanding or via media. Possibly. hence. we should measure these two positions in footings of their empirical cogency instead than their theoretical premises. As we shall see in the following chapter. a survey by Gordon Marshall and his co-workers at the University of Essex has late done exactly this. and their consequences suggest that it is likely more utile to analyze modern-day category dealingss utilizing a Weberian theoretical account than it is using Marxist constructs. Their findings are non conclusive – such findings seldom are – but taken together with the

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serious theoretical jobs which remain unsolved in modern-day Marxist theory. they do propose that a Weberian accent on differences in market power is likely to turn out more utile in understanding the British category system than a Marxist focal point on ownership of the agencies of production.

Activity Marx and Weber differ in the manner they approach each of the undermentioned inquiries. For each inquiry. compose one paragraph sketching how they differ. How is societal category to be defined? How is someone’s category rank determined? What is the relation between economic wealth and political power? How cosmopolitan are category systems in human history? Do categories be if people do non recognize them?

Further reading The individual best secondary beginning on the issues discussed in this chapter is Anthony Giddens ( 1973 ) The Class Structure of the Advanced Societies. London: Hutchinson – see particularly the first five chapters. Important and pertinent reviews of Marxist category theory can be found in Frank Parkin ( 1979 ) Marxism and Class Theory: A Bourgeois Critique. London: Tavistock. and David Lockwood. ‘The weakest nexus in the concatenation? ’ . in David Rose ( ed. ) ( 1988 ) Social Stratification and Economic Change. London: Hutchinson. A instead easier beginning is Tom Bottomore ( 1965 ) Classes in Modern
Society. London: Allen & A ; Unwin. ch. 2.

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Some of the cardinal primary beginnings are rather clear and accessible. For Marx. start with Part One of The Manifesto of the Communist Party. This can be followed by the essays on ‘The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte’ ( subdivisions 1. 2. 3 and 7 ) and ‘Civil War in France’ ( Engels’s debut and Part Three ) . All three essays can be found in the individual volume of Marx and Engels ( 1968 ) Selected Works. London: Lawrence and Wishart. For Weber. see his Economy and Society ( 1968 ) . New York: Bedminster Press. Part One: ch. 4 and Part Two: pp. 926– 39. The first of these essays can besides be found in Max Weber ( 1947 ) The Theory of Social and Economic Organisation. New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 424–9. and the 2nd is reprinted in H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills ( explosive detection systems ) ( 1948 ) From Max Weber. London: Routledge & A ; Kegan Paul. Besides utile is Peter Worsley ( 1982 ) Marx and Marxism. London: Tavistock.

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2
Social category and societal inequality in Britain
From theory to systems of categorization Sociologists down the old ages have devoted much clip and idea to the theoretical jobs raised in category analysis. yet empirical surveies have frequently persisted in sorting people in really rough and atheoretical ways. The manual / non-manual division One illustration of this is the usage of simple manual/non-manual category differentiations. Some of the authoritative post-war sociological surveies grounded their analyses in this division – Young and Wilmott ( 1957 ) Family and Kinship in East London drew a cardinal duality between professional and clerical

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workers on the one manus and manual workers on the other ( see. for illustration. p. 171 ) . and Douglas’s survey of the effects of societal category on educational
attainment likewise distinguished the in-between category from the working category harmonizing to whether children’s male parents were in non-manual or manual businesss ( Douglas et al. 1968 ) . There are two major jobs with this kind of attack. The first is that there is small or no footing in societal theory for spliting the population harmonizing to whether or non people work with their custodies. This means that our theoretical classs such as ‘working class’ or ‘middle class’ do non match to the empirical classs through which informations are gathered. Such surveies can therefore state us small about forms of category inequality since the strata they identify are non categories as such. The 2nd job is that the manual/non-manual division fleetly becomes confounding if non downright misdirecting. On what footing. for illustration. is a everyday clerical worker held to be in a higher category than a skilled lathe-turner? The latter may good be better off financially. more extremely skilled and may take a really similar manner of life. Furthermore. many alleged ‘white-collar’ occupations are today filled by adult females and they frequently have lower rewards. lower position and less occupation liberty than many preponderantly male manual businesss. To denominate such adult females as members of a higher class-grouping merely because they do non acquire their custodies dirty seems funny. to state the least. Some research workers. recognizing the limited cogency of simple manual/non-manual dualities. have alternatively made usage of the advertisement industry’s system of categorization by which people are allocated to sort A. B. C and so on harmonizing to forms of disbursement and ingestion which are associated with different occupational groupings. Such an attack may good turn out fruitful for houses seeking to happen out about their possible clients for a given merchandise. but for sociological intents they are small better than the dichotomous theoretical accounts. Such schema bear no relation to the category theories developed within either Marxist or Weberian attacks and their utility in sociological analysis is hence highly limited.

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The Registrar-General’s category scheme A instead more prejudiced system of categorization which is frequently employed in empirical societal research is that used by the government’s ain Office of Population Censuses and Surveys.
Since 1911. the OPCS has listed 1000s of occupational rubrics and has so classified them into a much smaller figure of graded societal groupings. The system of categorization has changed over the old ages. but the most recent. devised for the 1981 nose count. allocates people to one of six categories on the footing of their business and their ‘employment status’ ( such as director. chief or whatever ) . The first two of these categories include directors. decision makers and professionals. The 3rd fundamentally includes white-collar businesss with limited or no authorization. and the concluding three refer severally to skilled. semi-skilled and unskilled manual workers. While this system can be utile. and is surely preferred to simple manual/non-manual differentiations or to the A to E scalings used in market research. the theoretical principle behind it is still far from clear. In 1971. the OPCS claimed that it was an effort to group categories harmonizing to their ‘standing in the community’ ( what Weber would hold recognised as a position standard ) . In 1981. basically the same six groupings were said to reflect ‘levels of occupational skill’ ( or what Weber would hold recognised as a distinction of commercial categories ) . Sociologists have frequently criticised such ambiguity in what the OPCS scheme is really meant to mention to. and at the clip of composing it is once more under reappraisal. By the clip of the 1991 nose count it seems likely that a new nonuple ‘Standard Occupational Classification’ system will be in operation which will sort groups by their degree and country of competency. and this may come to replace the bing six-class theoretical account. A job common to both of these theoretical accounts is that. by trusting on occupational informations for screening people into categories. the bulk of the population who are non in paid work get left out. There are two points here. One is that these strategies ignore the category of affluent people who live entirely from income from belongings – in

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a sense. they are unsighted to the being of the ‘upper class’ . The other is that they besides have trouble sorting people like homemakers. the unemployed. pensionaries and pupils to any given category. The nose count itself tries to decide this job by sorting people harmonizing to the societal category of the ‘head of household’ . but this is far from satisfactory. What is
clearly needed is a system of categorization which can be employed reasonably easy in empirical work but which is besides grounded in a coherent theory of societal stratification. be it Marxist. Weberian or any other. And in recent old ages. sociologists have begun to develop merely such an attack. Activity For this exercising you will necessitate a transcript of the OPCS Classification of Occupations 1980 ( HMSO 1980 ) . Find which of the Registrar-General’s societal classes the undermentioned people belong to: A primary school teacher A freelance jewelry interior decorator who does non use any assistants A coach driver The director of a little mini-cab house A detective inspector in the constabulary force Note: To sort an business. first look up the occupation rubric in the index of businesss between pp. 6–109. Write down the codification figure which you find at that place. and look this up in Appendix G ( pp. 111–14 ) . This will give you a codification reflecting both business and employment position. You so utilize this codification to look up the category of the individual in Appendix B1 ( pp. lxxxiv–civ ) . If several people do this exercising independently. you should so look into all the consequences against each other. How many disagreements are at that place? How dependable and foolproof is this system of categorization?

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David Lockwood’s development of Weber’s category analysis The beginnings of this work prevarication in David Lockwood’s survey of the category state of affairs of clerks. published in 1958 as The Blackcoated Worker. Developing Weber’s differentiation between categories and position groups. Lockwood argued that the place of clerks had to be considered in footings of three facets – their market state of affairs. work state of affairs and position state of affairs. The market state of affairs refers to the income which clerks can achieve in the labor market. the security of their employment. the periphery benefits available to them. and so on. The work state of affairs refers to the extent to which clerks can exert liberty and discretion in their work. the kind of surveillance to which they are capable. whether or non they come into contact with their foreman. and the accomplishments they need to exert in their daily life in the office. Finally. the position stat