Inequality in Poverty

The Ongoing Clash between the Political and Academic Agenda

During the communist era, the Bulgarian Communist Party had a flexible understanding of inequality. Torn, as were other ruling communist parties, by the dilemma of being true to Marxist class theory while affirming the classlessness of their own system, they embraced Stalin’s notion of “non-antagonistic relations.” According to this notion, socialist society was made up of two classes, workers and peasants, plus a “stratum” of intelligentsia, among whom the differences that were rife during capitalism were said to be fast disappearing.

Over time, however, with differences and dissatisfaction multiplying, the Party turned away from class and introduced a different unifying category, “the united socialist nation,” thus shifting the emphasis to ethnic differences, which should be overcome. The extreme point of this national identity politics was the so-called “Revival Process” of 1984–1985, which entailed compulsory renaming of Bulgarian citizens of Turkish ethnicity, changing their Turkish names to Bulgarian ones. A move to the forcible expulsion of ethnic Turks followed in early 1989, but was stopped by the upheavals of autumn.

Popular discourse, in the late communist period, already conceptualized divisions differently, as a conflict between “privileged Party functionaries” (or “nomenklatura”) against “we, the ordinary people.” This discursive dichotomy continues today, as “politicians” vs. “ordinary people,” with the former seen as the rich “winners” of transition, and the latter as impoverished “losers.” ¹ Not only does the public at large use such moral categories today, but so do most politicians, who themselves play up the contrast between “corrupt elites” and “the ordinary people” as they claim to be the authentic representatives of the latter. This pattern of channeling anger at contemporary social policies onto ambiguous others is used by most parties in Bulgaria. Thinking in large, crude moral categories is obviously more advantageous for politicians than a careful analysis of social stratification, for the latter might reveal the flaws and failures of current policies.

The durability of this moral dichotomy means that social scientists still lack political carte blanche to study social inequalities, just as they did in the past. How have they responded?

As elsewhere in the Soviet bloc, sociology was initially shunned. Soon, however, it won significant official acceptance. Sociology was first institutionally established at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences in 1968. It spread quickly. Already in 1970 the International Sociological Association held its Seventh World Congress of Sociology in Bulgaria, the only socialist bloc country to host such an event before 1989. Sociology appeared at Sofia University in 1974, a year later at the Higher School for Economic Education, and soon there were sociological research teams in various national ministries and even in the Central Committee of the Bulgarian Communist Party. Despite developing under party constraints, Bulgarian sociologists had greater freedom than their colleagues in Romania and the German Democratic Republic, though more limited than those in Poland or Hungary. ²

But how to study inequality? Those who wished to do so seriously sought to slip past the imposed model of social unity while observing the rules of ideological propriety. Starting in the 1970s, sociologists began to identify diverse specific status characteristics, in a way that did not directly challenge the ideological formula regarding class unity yet still managed to highlight existing differences. Some adopted the research methodology of western stratification studies. In his 1977 book Social Classes and Social Stratification, Chavdar Kyuranov examined income differentiation as well as categories such as “quality of life,” “quality of labor” (how interesting an occupation is), “life style” and “standard of living.” This last concept included indicators such as food, health care, education, and a sense of security, leading Kyuranov to differentiate among five groups which he called “lowest,” “low,” “middle,” “high,” and “highest.” ³ Similar work would be done by Krastju Dimitrov and Nikolaj Tilkidjiev. ⁴ Though they did not use the term class, their stratification models resembled a gradational version of a western class model.

Today, as noted, the chief challenge to those who would study inequality, as one of the main topics in sociological research, comes from public acceptance of a discourse that disregards social differences in favor of moral or ethnic ones, as well as from budget constraints for scientific research. The discrepancy between the agenda of scientific research set by national policies and the agenda of research defined by the scientific community has become quite clear in the last decade. For example, nowhere in the official “National Strategy for Scientific Research 2020,” adopted in 2011, is research on social stratification or inequality even mentioned, nor is there any reference to any study of social problems. Instead, invariably, it is cultural-historical heritage issues that are prioritized, such as national identity, Bulgarian language and history, or archeology. According to international scholars, this focus is too narrow. A 2009 international assessment of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences recommends that the Institute of Sociology “strengthen studies of social structure, stratification, social mobility, poverty and social exclusion in Bulgarian society.” The European Science Foundation’s “Forward Looks” agenda, published in April 2012, recommends research on social structure and inequality as among the most important priorities for a renewed sociological research agenda in Central and Eastern Europe. ⁵

Under prevailing conditions of project-based and program-based development and funding of academic research, the national policies for science are a crucial factor determining future research. Since these policies fail to include social stratification, the research that has nevertheless been done on this topic should be viewed as reflecting the understanding of the scientific community itself as to the importance of this field.

What then is the nature of Bulgarian class analysis today? If we apply Erik Wright’s distinction ⁶ of three approaches to class analysis—stratificational, Weberian, and Marxist—we could say that the first two have been most prominent in Bulgaria since 1989, while recent years see a revival of a specific version of the Marxist tradition. In general, there have been three main trajectories in the analysis of postcommunist society, which we characterize as follows: (1) from class-based to status-based stratification; (2) from one-dimensional to multi-dimensional stratification; (3) from a Marxist class model to a social network model. ⁷ What is common to all three approaches is that they are gradational; they do not analyze and look for specific relations between different groups.

From Class-Based to Status-Based Stratification

Thanks chiefly to Nikolay Tilkidjiev, Bulgarian sociology has joined the international theoretical debate on the relevance of class in postindustrial, postmodern societies. Even before 1989, Tilkidjiev had argued against its continued relevance. ⁸ In his 2003 book with Martin Dimov, The Status Basis of Democratic Consolidation in Postcommunism, as well as in other publications, Tilkidjiev argues that contemporary society has seen an overall transition from class to status stratification. There has been a move, he argues, from division based on “class per se” to a “social-professional-class” division. He speaks of a “transition from a traditional type of class structure to an occupational class structure, where the basic socially differentiating lines of inequality are no longer, or not so directly, connected with ownership relations but with difference in the social-economic status acquired by each individual,” such as occupation or location in a hierarchy of authority. ⁹

In his neo-Weberian attempt to operationalize the notion of “a hierarchy of social statuses, with occupational class structure at its base,” ¹⁰ Tilkidjiev reworks Goldthorpe’s famous model ¹¹ to develop his own classification of social-professional groups. He begins with a wide, “fanned-out” classification scheme that comprises the rich variety of empirical social positions, and then “folds” it into compact, identifiable units. In this way, he has defined eight basic class groups, along with more detailed classification of each one of these groups into different sub-groups. ¹² Although the categories won’t always match, such classification facilitates comparability with the European Socio-economic Classification ¹³ and, hence, comparability with the data and findings of various national and international surveys.

Besides this, the idea of the middle class is also a topic of enduring interest. Bulgarian sociology tends to assume that a successful society requires a stable, prosperous middle class. Tilkidjiev edited a 1998 volume with the title The Middle Class as a Precondition of a Sustainable Society. ¹⁴ Today, four research agendas are particularly prominent: theoretical explanation of criteria identifying a middle class, analysis of its empirical manifestation during the postcommunist transition, ¹⁵ study of the link between social development and middle-class consolidation, and analysis of the Bulgarian middle class in comparative perspective. ¹⁶ Some have argued that since 1989 there has been a “massive declassing” of the middle class, from a high of some 90 percent of Bulgarians during the late socialist period to a drastically reduced number today. ¹⁷ In our opinion, the claim of a strong “middle class” during state socialism is highly disputable, since no social group had autonomous status, salaries were based on Party decisions, and no group could even publicly differ from the Party line. If a group dared to do so, like the Bulgarian artists in 1988 who protested against the dire ecological situation in the town of Ruse, the Politburo mandated an extraordinary congress of the Union of the Bulgarian artists and changed the old ruling body, with the votes of the artists themselves.

From One-Dimensional to Multidimensional Stratification

As access to political power has been dethroned, after 1989, as the predominant stratifying factor, stratification has moved from being one-dimensional to multidimensional. Political power certainly hasn’t disappeared as a structuralizing factor, but sociologists now notice the growing influence of occupation, ethnicity, gender, and education and their impact on income inequality. Occupation refers not only to the job one possesses but the kind of contract, if any, one holds. There is now a wide variety of limited work contracts that were unknown before 1989, while the informal sector, which always existed to some degree, has expanded with the growth of a large hidden and criminal economy. ¹⁸ Access to a full, unlimited work contracted is now a key privileging resource.

Ethnicity, meanwhile, turns out to constitute an enduring and stable social status hierarchy, justifying use of the term ethno-stratification. A series of studies have demonstrated the strong relationship between poverty and ethnicity, as well a trend towards ghettoization of the Roma. In 1996 the poverty rate was 15% for ethnic Bulgarians, 34.8% for Bulgarian Turks, and 71.4% for the Roma. ¹⁹ As for gender, Rumiana Stoilova has documented the consolidation of a very clear gender regime, with the distinct structural subordination of women compared with men in the current system of social stratification. ²⁰

The many studies of the influence of education on stratification processes are a compelling example of the poly-paradigmatic character of sociology. Valentina Milenkova uses Bourdieu’s theory of social capital and education as a factor for social reproduction ²¹ in order to analyze the basic mechanisms through which contemporary Bulgarian schools produce and reproduce social inequalities. ²² Stoilova, following Goldthorpe’s critical reassessment of Bourdieu as well as Boudon’s work on the primary and secondary effects of social origin on education, ²³ calls for a more nuanced account of the social role of education, which acknowledges the influence of education on social mobility as well. ²⁴

Finally, Kolev et al. offer a radical Marxist critique of the Bulgarian school today, calling it “a factory producing inequality” whose main function is “to articulate and affirm class differences.” These authors note that deindustrialization has led to mass impoverishment, and argue that the state has abdicated from its responsibilities to offer equal education, instead promoting “reform” which leads to “schools for the rich and schools for the poor.” ²⁵ Indeed, the results of PISA, ²⁶ the international study of school performance, and of the 2009 ICCS study ²⁷ of civic education, confirm their view: Bulgarian school children are indeed in “first place” in terms of the gap between poor students and rich ones. In other words, schools do reproduce educational and social inequalities.

From Classes to Social Networks

A well-noted feature of the communist regime was the status inconsistency it inexorably generated, with high-prestige professions like doctors and teachers systematically underpaid, and low-prestige occupations like miners and steelworkers well paid. ²⁸ Authors such as Andrej Raychev, Kancho Stoychev, Koljo Kolev, and Andrej Bundzhulov, noting the continuation of this phenomenon—the “professor who grows onions,” the “stammering fool driving a Mercedes”—believe the standard stratification model based on education and property as the key drivers of inequality has crumbled. ²⁹ They propose a new scheme based on “location in social production” and the character and level of consumption. They came up with six groups: bottom, lower, middle, upper middle, well-off, and top, later regrouped as rich, middle class, surviving, and bottom. ³⁰ They criticize the traditional Marxist class model, arguing that the description of a society like Bulgaria in terms of class, capitalism, or exploitation serves not as a critique of that society but an escape from responsibility, an acknowledgement of the inability to defend theoretically or practically the “small and weak, the losers of the game.” Bulgaria, they say, is best conceptualized as becoming “a society of networks, of spilled power/property,” in which property or educational credentials are minor resources compared to political or media power, and that the latter constitute “networks” that shape people’s social chances. Without referring to Manuel Castells, they define networks as the “exchange of influence and access, of possibilities for provision of resources and of positions from which it is possible to speak with the voice of power.” ³¹ In this sense, of course, “networks” exclude three-quarters of humankind, those who are—and here they quote Gille Deleuze—“too poor to have debts.” Those who are not in networks are powerless. Can they resist the powerful? Raychev and Stoychev’s answer is unclear. The powerless need to form “new, never before seen networks,” though what these might entail, what resources they might muster, the authors do not say. These authors present themselves as on the left, and claim their network approach to be critical of the new forms of power. By conceptualizing the networkless as powerless and devoid of opportunities, however, their approach might better be seen as upholding the established order. Because these authors were popular political commentators, and owners of a popular newspaper, their views were widely publicized in the media and provoked much public interest. Their most discussed thesis was not that of networks, but their assertion that the transition had come to an end, with new social hierarchies firmly established. Most commentators rejected this claim, however, seeing it as a backhanded legitimation of the existing order and the new political elites.

Bulgarian “Exceptionality”

The main focus of Bulgarian social science research in the entire post-1989 period has been poverty. Poverty has been identified as “the greatest social problem in Bulgaria.” It is said to be widespread and “diffuse.” Its ubiquity transforms poverty “from an individual or social group trait into a national trait.” ³² The prevalent sociological understanding of poverty is that it is not about the inability to possess one thing or another, but is “a way of life . . . manifested by the inability to satisfy the basic needs of life.” ³³ Scholars have analyzed the causes and various dimensions of poverty, ³⁴ the role of state institutions and NGOs in trying to overcome it, ³⁵ and the impacts of the social transition upon poverty and of poverty upon social integration. ³⁶ The influence of Iván Szelényi’s research program can be strongly felt in these studies. ³⁷

Studies of poverty have become a kind of stimulus to the study of inequality. As early as 1996, data clearly showed that income inequality was increasing. ³⁸ Inequalities grew much deeper in the following years, and today Bulgaria has among the highest levels of inequality in Europe, as measured by the GINI coefficient (at 35.4 in 2013, higher than any other former communist country, against an EU average of 30.5). ³⁹ Some authors have written of a sharp polarization of inequality with two distant extremes of enormous and excessive wealth (and power) on the one hand and a degrading, exclusionary, crushing poverty on the other. ⁴⁰ This is how Bulgarian “exceptionality” appears: the poorest country in the European Union proves to be likewise one of the most socially stratified and polarized. This division between extremely rich and crushingly poor is the main demarcation line not only in social science but, as noted at the beginning, in popular everyday perceptions as well.

Subjective Perceptions of Social Structure

The self-assessment of people as to their place in the social hierarchy has been explored in many studies, usually measured through closed-ended questions. As early as 1993 the national “Social Inequality” survey registered “a very definite shift” in the perception of cleavages. Summarizing the results, Tilkidjiev wrote that whereas previously most respondents checked off “social and professional differentiation” as the main source of stratification, now they see “wealth-poverty” as the key divide. In the “eyes of ordinary people,” he concluded, “post-communist stratification is shaped not like a classical social pyramid but rather like a pear—squat at the bottom and with a short narrow neck.” ⁴¹ In 1993 and 1994, fewer than 1% saw themselves as belonging to the “upper class,” about a fourth located themselves in the middle strata, and a strong majority of 63% identified with “the lower social strata.” ⁴²

Subsequent studies from 2002, 2006, and 2007 showed similar results: people saw “politicians,” “mafia members,” and “criminals” as the winners of the transition, and “ordinary folks,” “the people,” “workers,” and “retirees” as the losers. Most people self-identified with the latter. ⁴³ Subjective perception matters. As Michail Mirchev writes, the perception of inequalities “doubles their negative effects and the force of their significance.” ⁴⁴ For a large part of Bulgarian society, the functional usefulness of inequality remains doubtful. Inequalities do not mobilize the creative potential and resources of individuals and social groups. Rather, they mainly seem to create a sense of injustice and abnormality, and as such constitute a threat to social integration. ⁴⁵

So, with a by-now firm and stable dichotomy in public consciousness between “rich corrupt politicians” on the one hand and “poor ordinary people” on the other, the question is: Does this lead to mass protest?

Until recently, the answer was negative. In 2002, Ivan Krastev, studying survey data, found that in Bulgaria the “ordinary people” who are the losers in the transition are not inclined to protest. Why not? Krastev answered along the lines of anthropologist Iliya Iliev, according to whom poverty leads to the shrinking of social networks down to a closed circle of relatives and neighbors. In Bulgaria, argued Krastev, “social shrinking assumes the character of falling out of society in general. The lack of social networks makes collective action and political protest impossible.” If people do protest, they are likely to do so “through criminal forms of action, and/or by voting for the opposition—whoever that opposition is.” ⁴⁶

This pervasive sense of poverty and powerlessness cultivates an acute sensitivity to small status differences, preventing collective solidarity or a willingness to support the protests of others. If a particular group goes on strike, the majority of the population appears convinced that if that group wins higher pay, this will be at the cost of others. ⁴⁷ This is why people did not support the large teachers’ strike in 2008. The prevailing sense of despair may also serve as an explanation for the growing hostility towards Roma and for the repudiation of their extreme poverty. After all, any support for Roma must mean that “real Bulgarians” will lose. This feeling, combined with the hegemonic values of neoliberalism, pushes everyone to cope alone, and to look upon others more as rivals than as allies. This permeating lack of trust is clearly evident in the findings of the European Values Study, ⁴⁸ as well as the 2011 and 2013 European Social Survey. The result is a comprehensive atomization of Bulgarian society, a kind of incarnation of Margaret Thatcher’s neoliberal utopia according to which “there is no such thing as society, only individual men and women.”

The Revolt of the Powerless

The “corrupt elites” versus “ordinary people” dichotomy has heavy moral and political consequences. It means that the state itself is perceived as something alien. In this view, the state does not care about “us,” and is used by “them” for their own enrichment. We have here a return to the communist-era dichotomy David Ost identified in Poland: “state vs. society,” ⁴⁹ but now without even hope for a future democratic “normality” since this already is the democratic future. A full 87 percent of the population says that democracy in Bulgaria does not function well. ⁵⁰ “Our country is beautiful but the state is rotten,” goes one of the most popular contemporary sayings. No surprise that most people preferred “exit” over “voice,” choosing to leave in search of a better future abroad, rather than stay and fight for change.

Or at least until recently. In the last two years, a new trend has appeared. At first, there were a handful of moderately successful civic protests organized by specific groups, such as environmentalists, farmers, young people, protesting such things as ACTA (Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, widely seen as an attack on an open internet) and new eavesdropping and surveillance techniques. But these were not mass protests. Until the end of 2012, Bulgarian society had not produced its own variant of “Occupy Wall Street” (although one protest organized by environmentalists was labeled “Occupy Eagle’s Bridge”). But in February 2013 a massive wave of civic protests exploded, bringing together around three hundred thousand people (about 4 percent of the total population) in thirty-five towns. Demonstrations continued until the end of March, when they finally forced the resignation of the government and early elections.

The protests began in response to a huge hike in utility bills, escalated into a campaign against economic monopolies in general, and culminated with the denunciation of the “Mafia,” referring to the political and economic elites. “Twenty-four years are enough!” people chanted, expressing their deep sense of injustice concerning the so-called transition. Protestors demanded not just a change of the political elite but a “change of the system,” which they understood as replacing representative democracy with direct public control and other forms of direct democracy. In revolt against the functioning of the state, people sought an upheaval of political institutions and a new constitution. Some protestors resorted to extreme measures to express their anger. Six people set themselves on fire and died from their wounds.

Why these protests started in the winter of 2013 is a matter of much debate. This was in fact Bulgaria’s second “winter of discontent,” the first being the 1997 protests against poverty and inflation, which also led to the fall of the government. Were these latest protests an expression of renewed class confrontation? Such is the view of Dimitar Vatzov, who wrote in the e-journal Politiki that “neoliberalism has revived anew the class divide, a divide which the welfare state in the 1970s had managed to overcome.” ⁵¹ Other analysts demur, noting that “this rebellion did not turn to revolution. . . . The protests lacked a target,” as well as an alternative. ⁵² In fact, what happened is that as the protests grew, groups with differing and even contradictory interests and agendas emerged: there were Greens and nationalists, communists and anticommunists, Roma and local activists, such as a Varna group denouncing their local mafia. With such diversity, the protests failed to generate new leaders, and so the protestors were not elected to the new National Assembly, the May 2013 elections being won by the old parties—against which people soon protested again.

The wave of protests starting in June 2013, a month after the elections, were sparked by the new government’s appointment of a thirty-three-year-old media mogul with suspected ties to the criminal underworld as chief of the National Security Agency. People felt humiliated by government arrogance and total neglect of public opinion. Where the first wave of protests initially brought mostly working-class people into the streets, protesting economic policies, this time people from all social strata participated, with demands focused more on basic dignity and adherence to the rule of law. Once again, people framed it as a clash between “ordinary people” and “mafia-politicians,” but this was less about economic issues than about the immorality of power, and the fight to change that. It was a protest against façade democracy and oligarchy, a protest for political rights and personal dignity. ⁵³ Finally it reached one of its goals—after 404 days of constant street protests, mainly in Sofia, the government resigned on 23rd July 2014, and new elections were held in October 2014.

The waves of protests made publicly visible two very important social facts: the existence of deep divisions in Bulgarian society and the formation of a large social group of discontented people who wish to be heard and to have a say. These people are united by the feeling that they are powerless and manipulated by corrupt elites who make all the decisions. Figuring out the class basis of the confrontation, if any, will require future research, as well as perhaps a new understanding of class.

The New Dynamics of Protest and the Responsibilities of Sociologists

One of the key challenges facing sociology today is understanding the contemporary social movements and the new dynamics of social protest that have arisen in the aftermath of the economic crisis, and that have gradually expanded their targets. The current situation in Bulgaria is “pregnant” with protests because of the continuing impoverishment of large strata of the population, pervasive corruption of government officials, and a consequent instability of the political status quo. In what ways can a revived class analysis make sense of these developments? Is Bulgarian sociology capable of carrying it out?

We believe that a class-focused research agenda encompassing a variety of approaches to the concept of class may well contribute to a rich understanding of the diverse dimensions of inequality and the reactions they provoke. ⁵⁴ As we have seen, after 1989 Bulgarian sociology has approached the study of poverty from a number of different angles. The broader the gaze and more diverse the research agenda, the greater are the possibilities for grasping the multidimensional and multilayered character of inequality and their political impact.

We see three obstacles to carrying this out. The first stems from the fact that contemporary poverty and inequalities are different from what they were until the middle of the twentieth century, and their interpretation requires new theories and research tools. ⁵⁵ We need to rethink the sociological classics and develop new theoretical approaches. What are the relevant profiles and causes of poverty today? How can an increasingly atomized society develop and sustain solidarity? What kind of self-identities emerge from poverty and the feeling of exclusion today? What kind of civic and citizenship behavior emerges?

The second obstacle refers to the empirical basis of our investigations. Only recently have Bulgarian sociologists started to base their studies on data from international comparative and longitudinal surveys, and to apply more sophisticated methodological and statistical methods for data analysis. ⁵⁶ We have a lot of work to do in this regard.

The third obstacle is more a practical or policy-oriented one and is perhaps the most difficult to resolve. We have in mind the discrepancy, as noted at the beginning of this article, between the research goals promoted by national policy and the research agenda determined by the academic community itself. There is a danger that the blindness and insensitivity of the Bulgarian political elite to the problems of social stratification and inequality may serve as an easy excuse for Bulgarian sociologists to turn their backs on these problems. Yet, as one of us has written before, we believe that “if sociologists want their research to have practical application and a socially significant effect, they should undertake, as part of their professional responsibilities, to work towards establishing a sociological culture in different social groups, especially in those that act as mediators between sociology and society,” such as politicians and journalists, and that have special power over the public legitimization of sociological knowledge. ⁵⁷ It is our responsibility as sociologists not only to carry out a deeper study of social inequalities but to seek ways to make these problems part of the public debate and of the political agenda of society. Otherwise, we risk finding out that our science neither foresees nor shapes events but merely registers them.