Abstract
This article addresses polemically, perhaps, the most prominent class analyses today – the occupational and stratification approaches (OSAs) developed by various sociologists and economists. Strongly opposed to the “big class” of conventional Weberian and Marxian typologies, the stratification and occupational models have, unsurprisingly, claimed more realistic grounds. By contrast, key dimensions of social relations such as domination, exploitation and oppression are purposely overlooked. Moreover, the lack of theorization – even marginally regarded, does not take into consideration the qualitative explanatory strength for the analysis of social structure. Alternatively, the underlying optimistic market-oriented belief of the “realistic” class framework overestimates the role of institutions and economics. Thus, this “Smithian” background unveils a market fetishism as well as a functionalist and naturalized vision of class structure.
Introduction
For many scholars today, work, as we know it, has experienced major changes that class framework can no longer grasp. In a provocative book almost two decades ago, Paul Kingston rejected what he calls the “nominalist perspective” on the capitalist society and made a strong case for a “realist orientation in class analysis,” claiming that “the most useful sociological concepts tend to be tied […] to the lives of specific individuals” (2000: 16–17).
Most of the analysis on society and on labour is imbued with the prevailing belief that skill is the leading social indicators in the globalized world. In other words, as long as individuals are socially classified accordingly, “most people are classless” (Kingston, 2000: 225). In fact, behind the narrative of a society without class lie optimistic market determination and the fetishism of technology where the latter would have erased, for good, social frontiers. The truth is, technology and the market do not smooth out the imperfection of our society by narrowing the social gap, but rather create new conditions of discipline and disparity, of domination, oppression and exploitation because they still rely upon the “laws of motion” of capitalism.
Among the many debates that stirred the studies of social stratification and inequality, the one about the decline, even the end of the social classes, is recurrent. Unsurprisingly, from the 1980s to the present, discussions on the death of class engendered other discussions on the return of class that were thereafter followed by new discussions on the demise of class. Never has such a concept generated so much enthusiasm and disdain. Ever since, the validity of class as a sociological reality as well as a category has been under permanent attack while, interestingly, studies based on class analysis and class theory have never really stopped proliferating.
Yet the question of class as a category of practice and a category of relation is still a crucial one and we argue that class remains the salient feature of the mature capitalist society. Essentially, class is constituent of the social structure and therefore cannot be ignored. How could it be possible to claim “the vanishing of classes,” as Etienne Balibar so rightly put it back in 1990, “in a moment of world economic crisis when numerous phenomena can be observed which seem directly to confirm the validity of the Marxist concepts of exploitation and class struggle” (Balibar, 1991: 8–9)? Even though society has profoundly changed since then, class and its inherent inequalities are still a burning issue. Today sociologists and social scientists are invited to analyze their society through the lens of pragmatism. However, as Göran Therborn stresses, “social theorization depends on the social world it theorizes” (2018/2008: 113). The world is not more prone to realism than before because of the high complexity of societies. The situation is quite the contrary. We are still deeply embedded in capitalist social relations that are predicated on the sheer existence of dominating and dominated groups. Simply put, even if the language has changed, the grammar remains the same.
The purpose of this article is to reassess the extensive discussion on class and to reassert the theorization of class and capitalism since it fails to be addressed by mainstream approaches. Correspondingly, the coercive resources of capitalism (e.g., domination, exploitation and oppression) are still defining features of contemporary social relations that must be touched upon seriously. The discussion in the first section should sound familiar to sociologists as it outlines the challenging debates on classes, particularly the resistance against the Marxist framework which slowly moved away from an orthodox conception of class. We try to delineate as clearly as possible the conceptual importance of class theory within class analysis. We argue that the theoretical standpoint of occupational and stratification approaches – or “OSAs” for the sake of brevity and general understanding – lacks the theory of class and suggests a straightforward compliance with market determinism and the institutional structures that nurture capitalism today. In this respect, the growing disinterest in qualitative analyses in favour of more sophisticated quantifiable measures has failed to recognize the core components of mature capitalism and explain its development.
Class, an Everlasting Category
In 1959, the American sociologist Robert Nisbet opened a Pandora’s box and launched a seemingly endless discussion on class among social scientists by claiming that the concept of class was “largely obsolete” (1959: 17). Five years later, the Canadian sociologist Dennis Hume Wrong followed Nisbet’s footsteps and suggested that sociology must “abandon the concept of social class” (1964: 11). Decades later, class was being relentlessly targeted by North American and Western European scholars. Anthony Giddens’ structuration theory is often cited as an exemplar “anti-class theory” that “leaves little room for class as a source of identity, action or politics” (Atkinson, 2007b: 534). Along with Giddens, sociologist Ulrich Beck fiercely disputed the concept of class in The Risk Society (1992), claiming the process of individualization sufficed to dissolve class as a heuristic category for social science but also as an actual everyday experience. Despite strong critiques (Atkinson, 2007a; 2007b), Beck accused sociologists who study class of “having barricaded themselves in the (world society) idyll of welfare state class analysis” and have “failed to recognize the transformation and radicalization of social inequalities in a globalized world” (2007: 700). Of course, world inequalities have grown but it is inaccurate to claim that globalization wiped out social divisions as Beck believed; indeed it has rather significantly strengthened them.
Since Nisbet’s (1959) first attempt to prove the obsolescence of class, what is known today as “The Debate on Classes” of the late 1980s and 1990s remains a critical yet stimulating discussion on social class and the Marxian strategy of analysis. In the aftermath of the debate, it is safe to say that a paradigmatic shift occurred with regard to class analysis. Erik Olin Wright’s Classes (1985) and the subsequent debate (1989) best exemplify this change by constantly being aware of the flaws inherent in the Marxian framework. Wright used other approaches and sought to unify the three main theoretical models: the Marxist tradition, the Weberian approach, and the stratification approach (Wright, 2009: 109). Some would have it that he has entirely changed his perspective, from time to time giving the Marxian framework lesser importance. Whatever the framework may look like today, Wright has always insisted on the two major features of social class: domination and exploitation.
In the late 1990s, Jan Pakulski and Malcolm Waters went further than the general critique by declaring nothing less than the “death” of class. In their view, class analysis “deemphasizes gender and racial inequality [and] understates the exploitative character of authority relations by denying their autonomy” (1996b: 684). In short, they suggest that identity and an individual life course should be the designated social categories since social class is a relic of the past (Pakulski and Waters, 1996a). Similar to Pakulski and Waters, Terry Nichols Clark and Seymour Martin Lipset (2001) raised serious questions about the survival of class within post-industrial stratification. According to their chapter “Are Social Classes Dying?”, the decline of economic determinism, the increase of cultural factors, the reduction of family size and the rise of social mobility are convincing phenomena to sweep away social class as a pertinent category (Clark and Lipset, 2001: 52). Declaring the death of class seems a dubious claim. The actual challenge in sociology, though, does not reside in the demonstration of the non-existence of class but, as Wright points out, in showing how “these divisions remain powerful” (2015: 140).
Class Analysis Without Class Theory?
The question of whether one can have class analysis without class theory is another concern. Likewise, it is no secret, among social scientists there exists no consensus of any kind regarding the concepts of class, whether we speak of class theory or class analysis. Some authors even try to present both perspectives as two irreconcilable and completely separate things. Richard Breen and David Rottman (1995: 469) claimed that “Class analysis is a research programme which is not committed to one particular class theory”. If class analysis is such a pristine frame of analysis, what is class theory then? The tendency to comprehend class as an abstract unit outlined by market determinism is simply misleading. Similarly, it seems inadequate to conceive class analysis as being completely exempt from theory on class. In any sort of analysis, it is necessary to have a basic understanding of what is at issue and, as far as we are concerned, what class really is.
Sociologist Dylan Riley (2017, 2018) recently sparked heated debate on Bourdieu’s sociology, arguing it contains no genuine class theory and takes no account of social change. Regardless of whether or not we should agree with Riley’s interpretation, the ongoing disputation over Bourdieu’s model proves two things. First, that class is and remains an explanatory category for analyzing the social and second, that class needs to be theorized in order to be operationalized. Before the gamut of perspectives, we can nevertheless divide class theory into three general branches, each one of them capturing contributions of sociology, history and economics: class as category of practice, category of relation, and category of abstraction (see Figure 1). They distinguish one another on the basis of their fundamental features. Class is understood whether as inherent to social structure or as an ordinal position in a given stratification. This theoretical distinction also refers to a more explanatory matter based on structure and agency which might be clarified further.
The three branches of class theory.
The socially and historically grounded class theories (a and b) (see Figure 1) are combinatory as they emphasize the cultural formation of class within the process of identification on the one hand, and the process of self-reflexivity (consciousness) on the other. From both these Bourdieusian and Marxian perspectives, habitus and antagonism enable social reproduction and collective action. Bourdieu’s seminal work has been highly influential among British sociologists who improved it into what is commonly called today “cultural class analysis” (Savage, 2003). Borrowing from Brubaker and Cooper on identity, we might consider as well class as a “category of practice” (2000: 4). Class requires from social actors a repertoire of actions that shapes everyday experience and defines class identity (or class consciousness) within a given economic regime. As for identity per se, class is not an egocentric experience but is rather fraught with social conflicts. For this reason, it is necessary to preserve the Marxist explicative model asserting that class only exists in relation to other classes. The machine metaphor of society employed by E. P. Thompson insists that class is not a thing. With a hint of irony, he says that sociologists have searched the engine house high and low and “nowhere at all have they been able to locate and classify a class. They can only find a multitude of people with different occupations, incomes, status-hierarchies, and the rest” (1965: 357). But Thompson firmly maintains that class is a social and cultural formation “finding institutional expression” which, he argues, cannot be “defined abstractly, or in isolation, but only in terms of relationship with other classes” (1965: 357).
For the third category (c) (Figure 1) which will be fully discussed below, it is perhaps the most authoritative one since the underlying economic argument seeks to naturalize the social strata. Inspired by functionalist and rationalistic visions of society that come from both sociology and economics, it primarily relies upon two major assumptions. First of all, the persistence of a mythicized idea of the market as just and the life chance as equal for anyone. Only the correct understanding of the economic environment and the rational action taken would lead few people to outperform the majority. It is the long cherished notion of merit. Second, the axiomatic principle of the double inequalities as “normal” and the precondition for social cohesion. Since no one has the same ability or inherent capacity, ‘natural’ inequality, in Durkheim’s words, ought to coincide with social inequality (Cuin, 2004: 96–99). Naturalization of social differences would then prevail.
In order to continue our demonstration, we suggest the following typology of class analysis and its implicit, sometimes clear relation to class theories. Although the list is far from exhaustive, we sought to present the existing theoretical avenues in order to have an idea of theoretical orientations on class. The “type” refers to Stanislaw Ossowski’s (1963) conception of class that has generally been sorted into two main aspects: class as gradation of skill, prestige, occupation and so forth (these are by nature, ordinal measures) and class formed through social relations. The former describes but does not explain while the latter shows a greater explanatory strength (Crompton, 2008: 56). To get a better view of all the theoretical possibilities, we decided to break down those two time-tested perspectives into more precise types. Then, we tried our best to classify them on the basis of intellectual tradition, social indicators and the level of analysis. Admittedly, it remains tricky, for many reasons, to propose a satisfying typology. First, despite a significant consensus on various issues such as inequality, power and social mobility, there are opposite views on methodology and analytical strategies. Another difficulty relevant to typology is the prevailing perception on the complexity of class structure and contrasting views on class relations per se.
Our endeavour can surely be challenged, but the aim here is to arrange the models in respect of the important paradigms in social science and levels of analysis they provide. In our classification, we purposely integrated the “Smithian” tradition, which refers to Adam Smith and his legacy on classical political economy. In fact, the foundational principles of the Scottish Enlightenment still shape the economic activities of our society (Herman, 2003; McNally, 1993; Polanyi, 2001). The Smithian conception of modernity pertains to the uncontested existing market-oriented view and a class distribution based on wages and skill within a division of labour that historically tends more to greater specialization. Wage, skill, and division of labour rely on a strong market dependence as a “natural” form of self-regulation. This is perhaps the most enduring belief of our time. We will go into detail in the following paragraphs.
The following table (Table 1) also includes the intersectional approach which is not, strictly speaking, a class analysis but provides insightful observations on social mechanisms behind domination. The intersectional explicative methodology focuses on multiple hindrances and resources and examines how individuals become aware of their locations within the social system as simultaneously disadvantaged and advantaged. As for the feminist account of patriarchal domination in social analysis, gender issues must be part of the broader discussion on class theory (Crompton, 1989: 584).
Typology of class models in contemporary social science.
I: Macro-analysis, II: Meso-analysis, III: Micro-analysis. bThe list of authors is non-exhaustive.
Although we are far from achieving a unified class theory, the development of class models allows us to present a typology of class using three levels of analysis going from macro to meso to micro. These different analytical layers which in some cases can combine each other, provide emphases on various aspects of the society qualitatively and quantitatively. Let’s outline their significance by looking at three of the well-known types of class. A macro-analysis approach reaches a very wide fragment of the population by dividing society into large antagonistic forces. The Marxist tradition has made the dialectical process of exploitation the central theme and the collectively organized class struggle as the only cure. Because of its relational element, class as an aggregate of individuals who occupy a particular position within the social structure under capitalism cannot be reducible to individual disposition. It would be risky, though, to believe that the apparent fading of the Marxian “big class” analysis is definitive. If for most contemporary social theorists, the class struggle sounds antediluvian, its meaning must not be abandoned. The key question is how to organize in such a way that class—not individuals alone—can confront reliably and efficiently unfair treatments, oppression and sustainable inequalities. Erik Olin Wright has provided incisive analysis in his latest study on class struggle and class compromise and he is right to say that the resurgence of Marxism as a dominant framework is most likely to happen at any moment (Wright, 2015: 124).
A meso-analysis level combines overlapping dynamics from the broader level and from the individual level. We can think of Erikson and Goldthorpe’s model (Erikson et al., 1979; Erikson and Goldthorpe, 1992) as one which succeeded in combining a certain complexity from occupations and skills and a traditional class analysis. This Weberian-like model has become a mainstream application mainly because it focuses on the ordinal variable of class structures: that of occupation. However, his model does not provide any class theory. By focusing only on occupations as a category of distinction, the model found itself trapped in a circular reasoning. Influenced by economist Thomas Piketty’s (2014) seminal work on social inequality and Bourdieu’s multidimensional model, the recent studies of Michael Savage and his collaborators responded to the flaws of the Erikson–Goldthorpe–Portocarero (EGP) model and reintegrated the elites in the study of social structure (Savage et al., 2013; Savage, 2015). While this exclusive group is characterized by having the highest level of all forms of capital—cultural, social and economic—capitalism and its coercive means are never satisfactorily addressed. The most recent works on social class, although they do call into question the growing wealth of the elite and pinpoint that particular group’s conspicuousness lifestyle, just bypass the question of capitalism as generative of inequality.
Finally, a micro-analysis perspective is said to be better suited for occupational stratification. It renounces class as collective experience by placing the emphasis on individuals. Inequality is captured through various social characteristics. Within the functionalist and empirical realms however, market and skills play a decisive if not exclusive role in the sociology of inequality.
The Underlying Market Fetishism of The Occupational and Stratification Approaches
Contemporary analyses of class such as “micro-class” or “micro-stratification” attach particular importance to statistics. Despite its importance in social science, quantitative analysis has rapidly developed to the detriment of qualitative analysis, the latter of which is known to provide better explanatory frameworks and operative concepts. While sociologists unanimously agree with the fact that inequalities exist among groups and individuals, the stratification standpoint appears to deliver no satisfactory explanations about why such social divisions exist and how they are enduring. In the name of “realism,” the occupational and stratification approaches share a strong empirical posture and intend to show the actual consistency of an individual’s position within the social structure by mapping institutional processes such as the division of labour and the distribution of goods and wealth. American sociologists David Grusky, Kim Weeden and Jesper Sørensen have shared this view extensively.
In this section, we will first briefly present the main arguments that different OSAs theorists circulated in North America against the concept of class. The OSAs remain fairly broad. For that reason, our analysis will be limited to selected contributions bearing in mind that their line of argument has been carried forward by other social scientists. Again, these assumptions formed part of the larger debate on classes that raged for decades in the United States and in Canada as well (Langford, 2013: 306–36). Second, by examining the theoretical and cultural bases of strata analysis, we will show the tacit, sometimes clear conformance with the Smithian optimistic model of the capitalist economy making the division of labour the locus of modernization. Today, the OSAs are grounded in a sort of indulgent economism where the division of social labour refers to the logical economical distribution of occupations of a given society. Some sociologists defend an analysis of institutional categories of occupation by suggesting a renewed approach to stratification through what is commonly called disaggregation.
Breaking Class with the Neo-Durkheimian Hammer
By the turn of the 21st century, David Grusky, Jesper Sørensen and Kim Weeden claimed that class analysis should be “disaggregated” from the big conventional class aggregation. This assumption, of course, has theoretical consequences. Before expressing our reservations, let’s present the core thrust of this argument. In “A Case for a New Class Map”, an article published in 2005, Grusky and Weeden assess a “revolutionary shift” in the rationale of class analysis, proving again that “the class concept has been so poorly operationalized” (Grusky and Weeden, 2005: 142). They claim at the very beginning of their research that what they call “big-class assumption” “allows class analysts to ignore or dismiss the smaller social groups (i.e., “occupations”) that emerge around functional niches in the division of labour and that typically become deeply institutionalized in the labour market” (2005: 142). The argument is not new. To understand class experience more clearly, social scientists must overcome serious analytical weaknesses (Grusky and Sørensen, 1998: 1190). Weberian (e.g., Robert Erikson and John Golthorpe’s model) as well as Marxist (e.g., Erik Olin Wright) class categories have appeared deficient.
Against postmodernism’s theoretical appeal and the neo-Marxist approaches, Grusky and Weeden called for an entire revision of class models through a definitive disaggregation of class. As they put it, the macro-level scheme “is not optimal for the purposes of individual-level explanation” (2002: 235). According to their position, the modern-day realist categories are “the unit occupational groups that emerge around functional positions in the division of labour” (2001: 214). The two sociologists have gone on to severely criticize conventional class approaches, maintaining they are limited per se and incapable of improvement.
The starting point for a modern Durkheimian analysis is what Grusky calls the “unit occupation,” a defining concept for a “grouping of technically similar jobs that is institutionalized in the labour market” (Grusky, 2005: 66). According to this concept, the labour market becomes the regulatory framework based on skill demand. An example of this is found in an examination of the “Third Revolution” by Yujia Liu and Grusky. They argue that it is the institutions that generate cognitive, creative, technical, and social skills demands within the changing market conditions and, more importantly, that “institutions also affect how labour responds to changes in demand” (2013: 1368–69). Another key of the puzzle of the new Durkheimian class analysis is inequality. A micro-class scheme can capture “the amount of inequality” and the “trends in the amount of inequality” but a conventional class scheme cannot (Grusky and Weeden, 2012: 1756). To prove his point, Grusky rests on Durkheim’s institutionalist view inasmuch as “small classes can be shown to take on properties that class analysts have conventionally (but mistakenly) ascribed to big classes” (2005: 55). In other words, the normative institutionalization of occupational differences only becomes clearer through the lens of the micro-class. Finally, following Grusky’s point, class relies upon a variety of causal mechanisms that condition an individual’s occupation in the market: allocation, social conditioning and the institutionalization of conditions (Grusky and Weeden, 2012: 1728–30).
One problem arises with this kind of theoretical standpoint. How is it that an institutionalist view of social class can make sense of the poor and the unemployed? The centrality of the labour market as the reflection of the market itself fails to take into account the marginalized social experience of the deprived member of society. Behind the theoretical urge for an analysis of the individual and not aggregates resides an individualistic and almost moralistic view of the market and life chance. But this is only one side of the story. Such analysis of society fragmented in atom-like agents not only precludes the correct identification of the relations of domination within capitalism, but basically neutralizes any attempt to forge a grand social theory.
The Return of “Abstracted Empiricism”
The realistic assumption of OSAs rests upon the individual’s location within a functional and concrete system of market-oriented action. The obvious resurgence of the functionalist rationale, a theoretical stance against which many sociologists have been fighting for decades (Abrams, 1982; Delanty and Isin, 2003; Skocpol, 1984; D. Smith, 1991; Wright Mills, 2000/1959). This theoretical revitalization is worthy of serious consideration. The Durkheimian functionalism and its Parsonian derivative bring two major problems when it comes to assessing social relations: an ahistorical ground of class analysis on the one hand and an overdetermination of economical norms within the social system on the other. Occupations, skills and lifestyles expressed in this normative way call into question the actual conception of the agency of groups and individuals.
The alternative categories such as unit occupation and micro-class retrieve what Charles Wright Mills called the “abstracted empiricism”: detailed studies that carefully avoid any work of generalization and theorization (2000/1959: 125). More importantly, abstracted empiricism tends to support the established argument that data gathering ensures accuracy. While it does produce accurate descriptions (under the realistic imperative), it does not imply adequacy in explanation. If institutionalized labour relations and market-oriented skills demand are the defining features of stratification analysis, why is no one addressing domination, oppression and exploitation as the source of inequality? Here, the micro-level model has failed to acknowledge the qualitative necessity of understanding class as a category of practice in a capitalist society and more broadly to stress what capitalism really is and how it affects us all. From this perspective, the positive norms of capitalism effectually silence the social relations of domination and legitimate functions of gain and profit maximization through the prism of skill and demand.
In substance, the OSAs remain a market-based analysis which strictly relies upon an ahistorical and abstract view of the market. As Erik Olin Wright points out, the micro-stratification approach is “firmly anchored in the arena of immediate economic interests” (2015: 124). The micro-stratification and occupational analyses turn a blind eye to coercive resources within capitalist society and the rapid accumulation of capital, accepting the dominant regime of social relations. An optimistic view of the market’s autoregulation and the so-called natural “self-interest behaviour” inherent in human beings prevail. In fact, this certainty is also very Smithian because the market of commodity exchanges and the labour market (i.e., the sphere of circulation of capital) are the only prioritized environments that classes (or units) can structure (Sørensen, 2007). Consequently, the labour conditions and the “laws of motion” of capitalism are not examined as the actual sources of inequality and class formation (i.e., the sphere of the production of capital).
It is well-known that the division of labour as the cornerstone of society’s regulatory capacity and progressing individualization is, of course, related to Durkheim. Under Grusky’s reading of Durkheim’s theory, institutionalized market labour shapes individual values, life chances, and lifestyles. Following Grusky and Weeden, individuals’ working conditions are specific to the profession and therefore mark the frontier of class, or what the two sociologists call “occupational closure”—the socializing of individuals primarily operating among those who share the same occupation. As long as the OSAs focus on the level of institutionalized occupations, the question of domination and coercive means under capitalism remains unsolved in the same way that class consciousness remains unexplored. Indeed, if class needs to be fragmented into micro strata, how can a collective consciousness possibly be identified?
Before going further, let’s summarize the major theoretical drawbacks:
1) The OSAs lack qualitative analysis of a theory of class.
2) The OSAs fail to address structure and agency adequately.
3) The OSAs maintain market abstractionism where capitalism is merely captured as a mode of circulation (goods, services), ignoring the fundamental productive nature of it. In other words, these approaches separate the economic features of occupation from the underlying social relations.
4) Hence, market abstraction is supported by
A technological determinism (skills and innovation) while the underlying social conditions of production are disregarded.
A radical individualism as a result of the overestimation of occupational/skills locations.
A relational reductionism where social relations are simplified into an employer–employee contract.
The disregard of capitalism’s driving force of “mise en ordre.” Thus, the very nature of capitalism and its laws of motion is left unexplained.
A quasi-moralistic view of individuals’ market accessibility.
It worth stressing that there exists no actual rationale nor natural hierarchy between occupations. In reality, a plumber is not less important or less prestigious than a banker, and a fund manager is not worth more than a farmer. Capitalism requires and preserves an “abstract stratification” to ensure that society relies on some sort of order of things. By abstract stratification, we mean distributing occupations concordantly to the prevailing needs of the system, maintaining a “chain of values” and legitimating the moral foundation of society. Abstractness of economic categories such as productivity, profitability and capital are made possible by labour relations. The capricious needs of capitalism are satisfied through easily observable means of coercion such as layoffs and pension cuts, and discipline such as overwork, wage reduction and stagnation. Again, capitalism has the capacity to “rearrange” the social structure, lifestyles and beliefs. This refers in fact to a whole concept of alienation. This simulacrum is one of capitalism’s fundamental features and most powerful means over members of the society: a “violence of abstraction” (Sayer, 1987) capable of persuading of the natural ground of social inequality. Since “difference does not necessarily imply unequal”, the capitalist normativity and category manage to ensure that differences of ethnicity, gender, religion, class etc. “do have a systematic bearing on inequality” (Brubaker, 2015: 11) and that inequality is structurally rooted in the general process of exploitation, oppression and domination.
Class is What Capitalism Makes of It
Our main objection against the mainstream model leads us to look more closely at the capitalistic processes at stake and how class as a domination-based category should be addressed qualitatively. Far be it from us to reject en masse decades of class analysis and class theory. In contrast, our aim is to refocus the analysis on labour under capitalism, around which relations of domination are articulated. In simple terms, modern social classes are shaped by previous domination relations, historically grounded. The making of social frontiers results in a complex spanning of inclusive and exclusive relations fashioned by history and, more precisely, by the history of western capitalism. Given the long-standing maturation of capitalism and class formation, the way we perform and define work has dramatically changed, but the very nature of labour itself has not changed as such. In our day and age, organizations such as small businesses, corporations and multinationals comprise the workplace for a majority of workers. Inside each organization, the rules can be simplified through a binary opposition. On the one hand, we find a group of people who control various means and resources of the organizations and, on the other hand, a group that is subservient and dependent on these resources. As for the society as such, this structure is supported by the internalization of social locations and roles from each group.
There are, of course, in-between situations where boundaries of the location seem blurred. However, struggle for work and at work is an everyday life experience for a vast majority of individuals while domination, oppression and exploitation remain the central condition on which the vitality of capitalism depends. A distinctive characteristic of class is that individuals may not know each other nor do the same work at the same place, but eventually they will share a common experience of inequality. The structuration of class is driven by class relations and then determines class locations. Within social structure we find the very nature of work conditions, which is, by definition, the selling of the worker’s labour force—his or her energy and strength in exchange for wages while the employer is looking for assets to buy the workforce. This leads to the extraction of labour, the process at the root of the development of capitalism. This relation becomes of social importance since it is materialized through the principle of the contract, the embryonic form of more encompassing class relations, behind which is found coercion as a potentiality and practice.
For instance, if we look closely at the work conditions of the “gig economy” mainly made up of short-term contracts, we find (1) the reduction in social security where the risk is borne entirely by the worker (ironically labelled “flexibility”), (2) the reduced investment of companies in pension funds, (3) a late retirement corollary to the decline of social protection mentioned above, (4) the rise of income insecurity and many other transformations including the collapse of unions and the pressing culture of innovation. The increase in atypical employment reveals the precarization at stake (understood as another facet of proletarianization and pauperization) and how we might conceive social class in the future. Economist Guy Standing suggests a seven-group format, while underneath the first four groups stands the growing “precariat,” the unemployed, and the “lumpen-precariat.” Standing conceives the precariat as a “class-in-the-making” but surely not “a class-for-itself,” dismissing the “old notion of working-class” because it does not reflect the appropriate vocabulary and set of images of 21st century analysis (2009, 2014: 25, 31). Although we might find some truth in it, Standing’s argument does not stand because it theorizes neither class nor capitalism. Despite Standing’s insightful contribution, we are not entirely inclined to the idea of the “precariat” as being a social class in that it shares a set of distinctive socio-economic characteristics and criteria that he introduces such as precariousness, vulnerability and marginality. Rather, we argue that what is called the precariat is actually another modality of class structure under capitalism with the same rules that govern it and the same means of coercion put in place centuries ago. Again, social class, we believe, has become intelligible within social relations, not within the assortment of positions and occupations. Once we assess capitalism today’s maturation by examining precarious employments and the power behind the growing financialization of lives (Lapavistas, 2014; Gindin and Panitch, 2013; Roberts, 2016), it goes without saying that social classes are still relevant categories. That is why the coercive means of capitalism remain crucial in the study of class, because coercion exists as potentiality and practice. It never ceases to exist but instead tends to normalize.
Refocusing Class Analysis on The Coercive Resources of Capitalism
The abandonment of the labour theory of value as a cogent analysis and the declining usage of the concept of exploitation in class analysis have brought many scholars to mistakenly view the Marxian theoretical apparatus as antiquated. The dominant ordinal measures such as income, occupation and education, where the latter strongly determines the two others, have become the pragmatic gradient to gauge inequality. It is evident that education defines class location more than anything else and normalizes the means of social reproduction. However, this process occurs within the market only. Class analysts may have successfully shown the relation between class position and underlying inequality, but they have failed to explain the mechanism behind it. Earnings indeed represent a certain reality of personal and household wealth, but workplace relations also reveal the reality of collective social experience within a capitalistic regime. What might be considered is the context (locally and broadly) in which the wage is earned, not the amount. Wage earning conditions mirror the discipline of work and at work behind class relations (Figure 2). For that reason, income distribution is likely to be a flat indicator, not an adequate category to grasp the means of coercion that bring about inequality. It is the basic dynamics of capitalist accumulation that defines the parameters of the labour market (Botwinick, 2018/1993: 131), not the other way around.
Capitalistic processes of production and circulation.
Domination has a long story within social theory and it is not our aim to elucidate the subject, the issue being far beyond the scope of this article. However, we may mention two major figures, Marx and Weber, who respectively problematized the relationship of domination in ancient and modern societies, Marx in a prolix manner and Weber in a systematic way. Marx is the instigator of a long critical tradition in which domination with exploitation represents the basis of social relations under capitalism. Ironically, Marx himself has not paid similar attention to domination, nor deliberately theorized it, as he did for other normative concepts such as “capital,” “labour,” “primitive accumulation” and “exploitation.” In other words, domination is implicitly part of the Marxist theoretical framework. Unlike Marx, Weber’s aim was to specifically detail domination as a tangible and typical phenomenon. However, the theoretical ambition of the Weberian concept of domination seems to unravel when social class and capitalism need to be theoretically clarified. The Weberian concept of domination as being explanatory only of social class might fall short of its potential. There are two reasons for this. The first has to do with the concept of domination itself and the second regards Weber’s conception of class.
In sociology, Weber is far better known for providing a typology of domination. He theorized domination (Herrschaft), in a seemingly syllogistic way, as the capacity someone has over a person to make him or her do something he or she would not have done without the intervention of this given individual (Weber, 2015). There are limits to the Weberian explanation of domination; it is much too mechanical, and it situates the relations outside of capitalism instead of bringing into focus the social conditions for domination and eventually exploitation. Furthermore, Weber’s view on social class is clearly market-oriented whereas class is perceived as the location (or situation) within the market only. Social class in Weberian terms is then associated with “economic class” in which a class situation provides material resources and prestige and so forth. Of course, the market remains a significant variable, but capitalism also depends on productive forces which enable the market to operate and make it possible. Class is, in the first place, defined by its location among the system of production. Nonetheless, Weber provided valuable insights that might not be overlooked.
In Marx’s writing, domination has always reflected a state of subordination. Domination as subordination may seem meagre theoretically, but once we displace the concept from a purely notional standpoint to the empirical reality of social relations, domination takes on a whole new significance. Marx’s originality comes precisely from the reinterpretation of the perennial experience of subordination and constraint among individuals: i.e., the social relations between the capitalist class and the working class. The centre of gravity of domination is undoubtedly found in the concept of social class. The nature of domination brings to light social relations under capitalism. The question which comes to mind is “what then are capitalist social relations?” Well, what best epitomized the established domination under capitalism is of course the 19th century manufacture. The relations found in the workplace today, although their characteristics can be transposed to any other situation in society, are still the source of capitalist activities. By extracting labour, capitalism has the capacity of defining the collective meaning of work, values and normative orientations and on this basis, shaping the different experiences of domination.
In his early works, Erik Olin Wright adopted a “taken for granted” Marxist perspective on domination and omitted to detail the operative dimension of the concepts per se. His later studies found affinities with the Weberian concept of domination, which he used exclusively. Domination, he wrote, refers to “the ability to control the activities of others,” while exploitation, still strongly influenced by Marxism, is “the acquisition of economic benefits from the labouring activity of those who are dominated” (2015: 9). Here, we can only agree with the latter definition while the former reveals a crude attempt to define something more complex in Marx’s analysis of capitalism. With all due respect to Wright’s seminal work, we argue that the Marxian conceptualization of domination is fully adequate without the use of the Weberian tradition.
Following Emmanuel Renault’s reading of Marx, domination has three dimensions (Renault, 2011: 11) that we might consider in our attempt to restore the critique of capitalism in class analysis. Modern class relations are the combination of interwoven domination patterns (see Figure 3): (1) domination of work, that of the simple hierarchical order, let’s say, between the foreman and the operative, and (2) domination within work activities, which implies the performing of the work itself, its intensity and duration sustained by the technology imperative. These two patterns are embedded in a societal normative frame which can be named (3) domination by a form of work or “normative domination” implemented by an ongoing disciplinarization of labour.
Patterns of domination under capitalism.
In Marx’s view, the process in which capitalism unfolds leads to work as being the absolute domination. It refers in the Marxology to the “two-fold character of labour,” namely the convergence of concrete labour (actual labour) and abstract labour, a disciplined and monitored activity performed at a certain rate and intensity also known as the “socially necessary labour-time.” Modern work relations are inseparable from any of the three relations of domination that shape work and channel its reproduction. Domination corresponds then to the fertile ground on which oppression and exploitation may flourish and deploy at an individual level as well as in society as a whole.
The coercive nature of capitalist social relations is normatively accepted and legitimized through institutions and socialization. They create normative strain over classes while every social agent has to accept and conform to the rule of capitalism. This leads us to the ongoing tension between agency and social structure. Weberians have this obscure term of life “chance” to designate social possibilities. However, chance does not come to life ex nihilo. Social structure predisposes opportunity and action. Agency is thus an uneven disposition and represents the consequence of the location in the social structure. Every group seeks to improve their condition and eventually their position depending on their class’ agency. In this respect, strategy reflects agency. Classes have of course agency, but capitalists and other corollary ruling class, more than any other, not only have agency to determine economic outcomes but also the ability to maintain their privilege.
We might bear in mind that agency and structure remain the two founding conceptual features of social analysis. Still, it would be a mistake to favour one or another. As the historian William H. Sewell puts it, structure and agent do not oppose, but “presuppose each other” (2005: 127; emphasis added) because structure shapes social practices and social agents reproduce structures in turn. In our point of view, capitalism is the prevailing social structure. Through market compulsion and wage-earning labour, capitalism entails a regulatory regime which ensures the reproduction of capital, the capital being, simultaneously, resources and rules. For this very reason, capitalism is never static, but stays highly dynamic and contingent. This means that while the “laws of motion” of capitalism stay the same, the social relations might present distinct characteristics throughout history. Therefore, class structure tends to become more complex. Whether we are plunged into the early industrial era or the Post-Fordist society, it is still capitalism. What accounts for these apparently quite different regimes are the social property relations upon which the maturation of capitalism relies (Wood, 2002). Of course, the enactment of capitalist structure implies agency which determines the ability to control to some degree the nature of social relations. For that reason, domination, exploitation and oppression remain crucial concepts and the core component of capitalist social relations. In respect of what came out of the debates on classes, we argue that class analysis must involve the careful examination and problematization of capitalism, assess the mechanisms behind the social division and scrutinize more fully the historical depth of capitalist social relations.
Conclusion: Toward An Other Class Configuration
We began this paper by arguing that despite the attempt to distance themselves from previous major social theories, occupational and stratification approaches (OSAs) ultimately succumb to a scientificity and a blind adherence to capitalist normativity. This sociology, imbued with the imperatives of the free market, represents in some points what Bourdieu once called, a “sociology of service” (1981: 49). Our goal was not only to unveil the market fetishism of OSA, but to set the agenda for further Marxist class analysis. We had to first present an extensive critique of mainstream class analysis in order to set the methodological basis for subsequent empirical research. Class analysis must contain a substantial critique of capitalism and challenge any naturalization of social hierarchy. Moreover, class analysis must remain unreservedly self-critical and continue with a correcting mode to ameliorate the theoretical and explanatory effects of a given framework. By echoing Wright’s famous statement, “if class is the answer, what is the question,” (2005: 180) our paper sought to reassess the utilization of Marxian operative concepts and call for them to be fully integrated into empirical methodologies. Domination, oppression and exploitation constitute wholly tangible social phenomena which deserve more than just remote attention. They need to be problematized in a such way that critical sociology can grasp the complexity of the mature 21st century capitalist regime and ultimately foster change.
In the context of everything that has just been described, it becomes clear that future studies need to radically rethink our understanding of class analysis by integrating social experiences of domination, exploitation and oppression within their location instead of sorting them into occupation, incomes, skill or other classic indicators. In this respect, when it comes to inequality, we shall stop starting our analysis from the effect and rather be looking for causes (Pinto, 2016). As long as contemporary societies remain capitalist, they continue to be a class society with their well-known chronic problems. It is the task of social science to address them pointedly.
