#12638 - Olin Wright Class Counts - Sociological Theory

Erik Olin Wright - Class Counts

Chapter One: Class Analysis

• Class analysis is based on the conviction that class is a pervasive social cause and thus that it is worth exploring its ramifications for many social phenomena

• Historical materialism claims that ‘the overall trajectory of historical development can be explained by a properly constructed class analysis’

• Class structure is one aspect of class analysis. There is also class formation, class struggle and class consciousness

  • class structure is conceptually pivotal to understanding any other strand of class analysis, because it will identify the essential difference between a class and any other group, for example

• Parable of the schmoo etc

  • the preference oredering of workers corresponds to universal human interests i.e. pre-class interests

  • the deprivations of the propertyless in a capitalist system are not an unfortunate byproduct of the pursuit of profit, they are a necessary condition for that pursuit

    • this is exploitation: exploiting classes have an interest in preventing the exploited from acquiring the means of subsistence even if this doesn’t come through a redistribution of wealth

• Exploitation is defined by three principal criteria:

  • a) the material welfare of one group of people causally depends on the material deprivations of another

  • b) the causal relation in a) involves the asymmetrical exclusion of the exploited from access to certain productive resources e.g. property rights

  • c) the causal mechanism that translates exclusion b) into differential welfare a) involves the appropriation of the fruits of labour of the exploited by those who control the relevant productive resources

  • without the final condition we have nonexploitative economic oppression, in which the exploiters have no interest in the life/well-being of the exploited e.g. settlers/Native Americans

  • exploitation doesn’t just define status, but also ongoing interactions

    • the dependency of exploiter on the exploited gives the exploited some power

• We can talk of exploitation in terms of surplus value, but this requires us to define ‘the costs of producing and reproducing labour power’ and this is difficult

  • if we set it as the empirical cost of living for a person, then an extremely extravagant lifestyle could be called the cost of reproducing labour power

  • if we call it basic subsistence at a culturally acceptable level, then it is a bit arbitrary

  • if we set up a counterfactual model of equilibrium wage rate in an ideally egalitarian society then we get there, but it is looooong

  • so we should generally talk in terms of ‘the extraction and appropriation of effort’

• Marxism defines class divisions in terms of the link between property relations and exploitation

  • so slaves and slave masters are classes, because a particular property relation forms a basis for exploitation

  • in capitalism, exploitation is based on property rights in the means of production

    • this generates three classes:

      • capitalists

      • workers

      • petty bourgeois (who own the means of production but do not hire workers)

    • there is an inherent conflict between workers and capitalists, not just over wage-level, but also over work-effort

• In order to analyse class across time and place, and in order to analyse the way individual lives are shaped by position in the class structure, we need a more nuanced set of categories than simply capitalist-worker

  • the problem of the middle class - how can we differentiate between people who share common non-ownership within capitalist property relations?

    • relationship to authority - managers and supervisors are used to dominate workers, and hence occupy a contradictory location within class relations - they are propertyless, and yet their role is to dominate workers

      • the higher up we move in the authority hierarchy (i.e. to CEOs), the closer the coincidence of interests with the capitalist class

    • managers also appropriate a larger share of surplus than it would cost to reproduce their labour - this is through a mechanism which incentivizes performance that is difficult to monitor

      • hence they occupy a privileged position relative to other workers

  • skilled and expert labour

    • skilled labour is often scarce, so skilled workers can extract a wage above the costs of producing and reproducing their labour power

    • skilled workers are also controllers of knowledge, and hence their work is difficult to monitor and control. So their cooperation is bought with higher wages

• The polarized location in class relations are often called ‘classes’, but a more precise terminology would describe them as fundamental locations within the capitalist class structure. There are other locations, e.g. those of skilled labour, managers/supervisors, petty bourgeoisie etc

• There are also a bunch of people who aren’t in the paid labour force

  • to be in a location within a class structure is to have one’s material interests shaped by one’s relationship to the process of exploitation, so the child of a capitalist is in the capitalist class

    • these are mediated class locations, and we can have both mediated and direct class interests

  • there is often an underclass that is economically oppressed but not consistently exploited, because they are unemployed and have dismal prospects of improvement

    • this group does not own productively saleable labour, and hence is dispensable to capitalism

    • it is controlled through ghettoization and the penal system

Marxist v Weberian class analysis

• Both:

  • define classes relationally, according to the social relations that link it to other class locations, rather than on the basis of simple inequalities

  • identify the concept of class in relation to the ownership of economically relevant assets/resources

  • see the causal relevance of class as operating in the way these relations affect the material interests of actor - the way what people have constrains what they can do to get what they want

• Difference:

  • Marx focuses on production because he is interested in exploitation

  • Weber focuses on markets because he is interested in ‘life chances’

• For Weber, class matters because the kind and quantity of resources you hold affects your opportunities to gain income in market exchanges

  • the more you own, the greater your life chances, because you have more power in market exchanges

    • e.g. if you are a capitalist, you can do zero work and still live comfortably

    • parents’ market capacity also affects the life chances of children

  • so, class position is defined in part by the trade-offs you can make - if you can give as much labour as someone else but get more income, you are in a different class

  • common trade-offs are the basis for a commonality of interests, and for potential common action

• For Marxists, both exploitation and life chances identify material inequalities that result from inequalities in access to certain resources

  • thus there is not just a problem with what people have, but also what they do with what they...