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A social class is a group of people that have similar social and economic status.
The most common class division in historical societies has either been bi-partite or tri-partite: a large class of people who labour and produce controlled by either: one ruling class; or, one ruling class with the assistance of a middling class. An example of this situation is that medieval European countries often had an aristocracy or nobility, a peasantry and a gradually developing urban middle class.
With the social changes stemming from the Industrial Revolution, three strata developed in most Western countries:
- an Upper Class of the immensely wealthy and/or powerful
- a Middle Class of managers and extremely highly paid professionals
- a Lower Class of people paid relatively normal wages
The composition and characteristics of the Lower Class, especially in the United States, is highly controversial; some writers eschew the term Lower Class in favor of the term Working Class.
Marxist usage of class
In Marxist terms a class is a group of people with a specific relationship to the means of production (social production). Marxists explain history in terms of a war of classes between those who control social 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 social 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.
Usage of class following 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".
Class can be used to describe the stratification of a society. This leads to schemes like the following, relating class to income:
- Upper class
- Middle class
- Lower class
Modern western societies tend to generate a large middle class in the Weberian meaning. Often, class schemes are extend to include sub-classes like "Upper middle class" and "Lower middle class".
Newer sociological theory often sees class as category that isn't very helpful for describing societies. Other approaches include using strata instead of classes, changing the view from objective -- income-based -- classes to subjective classes, having a look at lifestyle based milieux or discussing different kinds of capital (Bourdieu).
Relevance of Class
At various times the division of society into classes has had various levels of support in law. At one extreme we find old Indian classes - castes, which one could neither enter after birth, nor leave (Though this applied only in relatively recent history.) 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, e.g. between Great Britain and Scandinavia.
The concept of "caste" differs from that of "class", and refers to rigid status groupings, the membership of which is usually inherited. Particular caste groups include:
See also
- proletariat, bourgeoisie, working class, middle class, intelligentsia
- politics, sociology
- Class warfare
- Class in the United States, circa 2004
Further reading
- Consumer's Republic, Lizabeth Cohen, Knopf, 2003, hardcover, 576 pages, ISBN 0375407502 (An analysis of the working out of class in the United States)