Social class

A social class is, at its most basic, a group of people that have similar social status.

The relative importance and definition of membership in a particular class differs greatly over time and between societies, particularly in societies having a legal differentiation of groups of people by birth or occupation.

In the well-known example of socioeconomic class, many scholars view societies as stratifying into a hierarchical system based on economic status.

Using wealth as a dimension, many have used a a bi-partite model to view societies, from ancient history to the present day:

an Upper Class of the immensely wealthy and/or powerful
a Lower Class of the poor and/or weak

Karl Marx famously called this a division between the "ruling class" and the "proletariat". He identified the proletariat as the "working class" to emphasize his contention that they alone produce anything of value and as such are solely entitled to the fruits of their labor (see labor theory of value).

With the social changes stemming from the Industrial Revolution, a gradually developing urban middle class developed in most Western countries, producing three strata:

an Upper class of the immensely wealthy and/or powerful
a Middle class of managers and highly paid professionals
a Lower class of people paid average or low wages, receiving welfare, or homeless.

(Some writers refer to the Middle & Lower classes as White collar & Blue collar.)

Table of contents

1 Power and stratification

2 Ideas of Max Weber

3 Ideas of Karl Marx

3.1 Dialectics, or historical materialism, in Marxist Class
3.2 Objective and subjective factors in class in Marxism

4 Non-economic conceptions of class

5 Class in different parts of the world

6 See also

7 Further reading

Power and stratification

Many sociologists and historians see "higher" classes as controlling subordinate classes.

Some advocates view this as an Oligarchy, i.e., a ruling class with the assistance of a middling class dominating the working class. Other theories are less critical of the upper classes, seeing them as protectors or innovators (not mere leeches).

Ideas of Max Weber

When sociologists speak of "class" they usually mean economically based classes in modern or near pre-modern society. Modern usage of the word "class" outside of Marxism generally considers only the relative wealth of individuals or social groups, and not the ownership of the means of production.

The sociologist Max Weber formulated a three-component theory of stratification, with class, status and party (or politics) as conceptually distinct elements.

Class is based on relationship to the market (owner, rentier, employee etc.)
Status has to do with honour and prestige
Party refers to factors having to do with affiliations in the political domain.

All three dimensions have consequences for what Weber called "life chances".

Ideas of Karl Marx

Marx defined class in terms of the extent to which an individual or social group has control over the means of production.

In Marxist terms a class is a group of people with a specific relationship to the means of production. Marxists explain history in terms of a war of classes between those who control production and those who produce social goods. In the Marxist view of capitalism this is a conflict between capitalists (bourgeoisie) and workers (proletariat). For Marxists classes are antagonistically opposed to one another. This antagonism is rooted in the situation that control over social production is necessarily control over the class which produces goods.

The most important transformation of society for Marxists has been the massive and rapid growth of the proletariat in the last two hundred and fifty years. Starting with agricultural and domestic textile labourers in England, more and more occupations only provide a living through wages or salaries. Private enterprise or self-employment in a variety of occupations is no longer viable, and so people who once controlled their own labour are converted into proletarians. Today groups which in the past subsisted on stipends or private wealth--like Doctors, Academics or Lawyers--are now increasingly working as wage labourers. Marxists call this process proletarianisation, and point to it as the major factor in the proletariat being the largest class in current societies.

Dialectics, or historical materialism, in Marxist Class

Marx saw class categories as defined by continuing historical processes. Classes, in Marxism, are not static entities, but are daily regenerated through the productive process. As such Marxism views classes as things which change over time, with historical commonality created through shared productive processes. A 17th century farm labourer who worked for day wages shares a similar relationship to production as an average office worker of the 21st century. In this example it is the shared structure of wage labour that makes both of these individuals working class.

Objective and subjective factors in class in Marxism

Marxism has a rather heavily defined dialectic between objective factors (ie material conditions) and subjective factors (ie social conditions). While most Marxism analyses people's class status based on objective factors, major Marxist trends have made excellent use of subjective factors. E.P. Thompson's 'Making of the English Working Class' is a definitive example of this subjective Marxist trend. Thompson analyses the English Working Class as a group of people with shared material conditions coming to a positive self-consciousness of their social position. This feature of social class is commonly termed class consciousness in Marxism.

Non-economic conceptions of class

In contrast to simple income--property hierarchies, and to structural class schemes like Weber's or Marx's, are theories of class based on other distinctions, such as culture.

"Bourdieu seems to have fairly rigid notion of high and low classes comparable to that of Marxism, insofar as their conditions are defined by different habitus, which is in turn defined by different objectively classifiable conditions of existence. In fact, one of the principal distinction Bourdieu makes is a distinction between bourgeois taste and the working class taste."

Class in different parts of the world

At various times the division of society into classes and estates has had various levels of support in law. At one extreme we find old Indian castes, which one could neither enter after birth, nor leave (though this applied only in relatively recent history.) Feudal Europe had estates clearly separated by law and custom. On the other extreme there exist classes in modern Western societies which appear very fluid and have little support in law.

The extent to which classes are important differs also in western societies, though in most societies class as an objective measure has very strong empirical effects on life chances (e.g. educational achievement, life-time earnings, health outcomes). Only in the strongly social-democratic societies such as Sweden is there much long-term evidence of the weakening of the consequences of social class.

The effect of class on vote or life-style is more variable across countries and over time.