Chapter One:
The Nature of Social Classes

Stratification: is "any hierarchical ordering of social groups or strata in a society"

the symbol of our course!!

Its principal forms are (p. 5):

1. slavery
2. caste		(India)
3. estate		(castle: lords, priests, knights)
4. social class		(social climbing)
5. status groups		(hereditary cost of arms; crest)

Note: boundaries are more clear in classes than in status groups

1) Distinction Between Natural and Social Inequalities: stratification is based on social, not natural inequalities; it is a human invention; therefore it can be changed. Thus, inequalities of income and property are not based on natural ability; stratification of ability and social inequalities are entirely distinct.

2) Distinctive Features of Classes:

• more exclusively economic than castes and estates (latter are more religious)
• boundaries of classes are less stable than castes and estates. This is especially so for the boundaries around the middle classes than those between the bourgeoisie and proletariat.
• classes are less stable than estates and castes; there is more mobility in class systems than in castes and estates. Though one is born into each, but mobility is easier out of classes than estates or castes.

Note: we will consider Marx in greater depth next week.

A. Three themes:

1. strong economic base
2. antagonistic relations between classes
3. role in social development:
   • rooted in system of production
   • overthrows present system of production; if capitalism, ushers in socialism and communism.

B. Origins of Class:

1. expansion of productive forces beyond subsistence;
2. division of labour beyond family;
3. accumulation of surplus wealth;
4. emergence of private ownership in instruments of production and property.

C. Epochs or Historical Phases of Class:

1. primitive communism
2. asiatic (state elites; parallels with actually existing socialism?)
3. ancient (slavery)
4. feudalism (serfdom)
5. modern capitalism (wage labour)

D. Structure versus Agency:

1. Marx was not an economic determinist.
2. revolt of working class, formation of working class consciousness, emergence of political and ideological factors, all involve agency.
3. interplay between real situation of individuals and the conceptions they form of it (e.g. Marx was convinced that the modern factory system would favour an increase in working class consciousness).

E. Dichotomous View versus Intermediate Strata:

1. Marx saw modern capitalism (based on England) in terms of conflict between two main classes (bourgeoisie and proletariat);
2. Decline of small shopkeepers and other middle strata
3. Fragments in Theories of Surplus Value suggest Marx's recognition of a possible future expansion of intermediate strata based on knowledge and technical skill.

F. Critiques of Marx (starting with Bernstein):

(see also Frank Parkin's criticisms next week)

1. class polarization: society is not breaking up into a conflict between two main classes, but is becoming more complex, especially with the rise of the middle strata;
2. concentration of capital is not occuring; growth of small and medium size businesses is occuring; property ownership is spreading (note :productive versus non-productive sectors)
3. rising standard of living, especially of working class; no impoverishment (relative versus absolute);
4. failure of socialism to result from class conflict in advanced stages of capitalism;
5. non-class bases of inequality (nationalism; ethnicity; gender)
   • nationalism: two forms which Marxism has difficulty coping with:
     1. citizenship rights: emphasis on nation weakens emphasis on class and class consciousness; national identity overrides class identity; national consciousness versus class consciousness.
     2. nationalism as a powerful political force, internlly and externally; e.g. religious movements; movements of national liberation; nationalism as expressions of nation-state interests; Marxism is/was unable to cope with nationalism as an expression of militaristic statism in the First and Second World Wars, especially in the face of the rise of fascism. Marxism has analyzed nationalism as ideology of imperialist expansion, or as third world liberation movements.

3 of Marx's expectations:

1) -polarization: gulf between bourgeoisie and proletariat would increase for two reasons:

• their conditons of life would become more different;
• disappearance of middle strata

2) revolutionary class consciousness: increase in class consciousness of proletariat, assuming revolutionary proportions;

3) revolution: bourgeoisie wold be overthrown by revolution by immense majority.

(Note: Bottomore has little to say about the theory of surplus value, and nothing about the decline in the rate of profit; or about his extensive analysis of the relations between capital and labour in industry, such as the length of the working day or the development of technology in industry and how this affects class relations.)

Un-Marxist Changes in Class:

I) Rise in living standards of working class

brought about by general rise in living standards brought about by rise in productivity. This is bound to affect aspirations of working class in a non-revolutionary direction.

II) Growth of middle strata

complicates the stratification structure, introducing other criteria, such as prestige and careers. This is opposite Marx's prediction of a simplication of classes into two opposed ones, and the disappearance of the middle, though Marx here was thinking of the traditional petite bourgeoisie.

III) Weber's status stratification by presitige

directly challenged class stratification based on property as the only stratification system. Particularly important in the educational and cultural criteria of stratification for middle strata of officials and professionals. Presents marxism with three challenges:

a) presents a continuous gradation in a system of stratification with no sharp breaks between strata.

b) competition between status groups rather than conflict;

c) undermines class consciousness as people are more concerned about their occupational identity and careers than with their class identity and the careers of their classes.

Weber saw class and status stratification co-existing; many modern sociologists see status stratification as displacing class stratification.

IV) Dissociation between Economic and Political Power.

-Weber's posing of stratification based on political power as distinct from class and status stratification.

-Dahrendorf seeing economic and political power as separate. (This is important in Dahrendorf's concept of institutionalization of class conflict which we will consider later in the course. Click HERE for details.

-Raymond Aaron replacing class conflict with conflict between elites.

Bottomore rejects the most extreme formulation of these criticisms, suggesting that numerous studies show that political conflict in advanced industrial societies is based in industrial conflict and conflict between classes.

Bottomore accepts less extreme formulation of these criticisms:

• links between industrial and political conflict must be investigated in each instance and not assumed;
• non-class groups may arise which may become the focus of political conflict;
• changes in political conflict have occurred in modern societies which could not have been forseen by Marx.

V) Changed nature of the bourgeoisie as the dominant class:

a) no longer concentration of wealth and resources in its hands as property ownership becomes more widespread;

b) no longer acts as a cohesive ruling class because of its internal differerentiation and growing complexity of society makes wielding such a force by a small group impossible.

Bottomore generally rejects these criticisms.

VI) Changed nature of the working class:

A) Marx: working class would become more homogeous in terms of skill and earnings;

Criticism: increasing differentiation of skill in working class, though Bottomore thinks there may have been more homogenization in earnings.

B) Marx: working class would become numerically larger because the middle would sink into it.

Criticism: growth of middle strata has limited growth of working class.

C) Marx: working class would become more class conscious because of greater similarity in condictions of life and work among workers, and greater communication among working class organizations, and spread of socialist doctrine.

Criticism: increased mobility have mitigated working class consciousness.

D) Marx: working class would become more revolutionary because of growing disparity between itself and bourgeoisie.

Criticism: it has not happened as standard of living of working class has increased, bringing about an embourgeoisiement of working class as it adopts middle class style of life and aspirations, as in education and consumerism. Citing Goldthorpe and Lockwood's 1963 article on Affluence and the Working Class, Bottomore rejects the embourgeoisiement thesis on the three grounds cited by G and L:

1. economic: working class not become assimilated into middle class as its wages, fringe benefits, and economic conditions of life remain poorer than middle class;
2. normative: working class has not adopted the aspirations of middle class
3. relational: working class has not been accepted as social co-equals in the relationships in middle class.

Serge Mallet: distinguishes between spheres of production and consumption; worker continues to be a worker when at work, but when he leaves work, he enters world of middle class consumption (ceases to remain a worker). ; and that, because of technological changes at work, worker will one day become controllers of industry, supplanting capitalists.

1) Traditional or Orthodox Marxists; refuse to alter their analyses from Marx or Stalinists; they have lost any influence.

2) Poulantzas: Bottomore is highly critical of him:

1. theoretical, de-emphasizing empirical and historical studies
2. structuralist, ignoring role of agent or subject in history
3. conflates class structure, class consciousness, and political organization, making impossible an analysis of their relationships.
4. reduces the working class to the industrial manual sector, a small minority, as a basis for the French Communist Party electoral strategy (me).

Note: We will consider these criticism in greater detail when we examine Poulantzas later in the term.

3) Wright and Roemer: (Note: Erik Olin Wright will be considered in depth near the end of the term)

a) substitues general property relations for relations of production, thus losing sharpness of class analysis in Marxism;

b) analyzes middle as contradictory class locations.

c) looks empirically at relations between class structure and class organization in Sweden and US

d) expands size of working class, in contradistinction to Poulantzas.

Assessing Marxist Transition from Capitalism to Communism in Light of Eastern Europe and Soviet Union:

1) Marx: capitalism would be last stage of production before new classless society, communism.

2) Reality and Eastern Europe turned out much different:

1. These societies did not necessarily arise out of the most advanced forms of capitalism;
2. Political dictatorship associated with Stalin rather than democratic communism emerged; this was commented on and criticized by many marxists, but the explanations for how this happened have been vague and contradictory. Analyses suggest that either a ruling group or a new ruling class emerged, based either in party officials, state administrative structures, or intellectuals; Trotsky saw this as a 'degenerated workers' state".
3. organized ruling group: non-class elite versus mass: some thought classes do not exist in traditional sense in socialist countries since there was not private ownership of the means of production; the ruling group controlling the state and having effective possession of the means of production was seen as an elite as against a large majority of the population, analysed in terms of Weberian status groups.

a) Weber:

(Weber is the only author in the following list that we consider in depth in this course; Click HERE for details. )

-Weberian elite theory and stratification analyses arose to prominence in analyzing both socialist and capitalist societies

• transiton to socialism is as more likely to lead to the dictatorship of the official than the dictatorship of the proletariat (Weber);
• more nuanced analysis of stratification possible with Weber's distinctions among power, status, and class;

-class: unequal access to acquisition (production) of goods and services; status: unequal access to consumption of goods and services; (26)

-community not inevitable on basis of class, but depends on transparrency of reasons for class;

-prominence of status versus class depends on economic conditions: stable times: prominence of stratification by status; unstable times: stratification by class.

-classes, status groups, and parties all "phenomena of the distribution of power";

-parties can be based on either classes or status groups, or mixture of two;

b) Mosca:

division of society into dominant (organized minority) and subordinate (unorganized majority) groups is universal and inevitable.

c) Pareto:

elite based on the superior individual qualities of their members in all walks of life.

d) Michels:

'iron law of oligarchy': inevitable that a tiny minority in any organization (whether socialist or capitalist) constitutes an elite. (Applies equally to socialist parties and trade unions).

e) Mills:

divided US society into three elites: economic, political, and military, with economic dominant.

f) Porter (not discussed by Bottomore):

competition among five elites in which the economic seems to be predominant.

1) increasing complexity and ambiguity of classes in capitalist societies since WWII.

2) size and composition of particular classes has changed;

3) relations among class sitution, class consciousness, and political action has become less clear and stable for some classes;

4) socialist societies have ushered in, not 'classless' societies, but new social hierarchies requireing new approaches in stratification analyses.

5) these new approaches must comprehend complicated and fluctuating relations among classes, status groups, elites, parties, social movements, political insistutions, and ideology.

© Copyright Carl Cuneo, Department of Sociology, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada.
URL: http://socserv2.mcmaster.ca/soc/courses/soc2r3/botom01.htm