Social Class Unmasked

November 23rd, 2007 Posted in Social Class

In sociology the concepts and theories and the persons who propound them are part of the reality described. The social order of the economic life of a society includes the understandings used to describe it. There is no neutral place. What we say about social class is part of the complexity of what it is.

When I became a student in the field I did not realize this. I thought I and my colleagues could separate ourselves from the social object and describe it as we would the action of gravity. When you fall out of a tree you will drop to the ground whatever physical or theological theory you propound or accept. But your behavior in economic life will vary considerably according to your appreciation of social class.

During the Cold War I was constantly troubled by the impossibly distinctive views of social class advanced by the political leaders and the scholars of the two antagonistic states and their allies and clients. Both claimed to be scientific and objective yet they behaved as partisans. What they saw and described was governed by a purpose. Anything contrary was ignored or denied. Each side carried an archaic theory like a banner and each side was opposed to the other on its way to its forgone conclusion.

The capitalist world turns on the free individual and his free access to an open market. The economic process is visualized as a vast exchange where an infinite number of producers and consumers meet in multiple negotiations that both reflect and determine the balance of supply and demand and the momentary price for completed trades. This is an ongoing process indexed by the distribution of money and wealth. Individuals move up and down a relative income and wealth scale. The arbitrary summary of places is considered social class. But it is of little significance since individual places are supposedly in constant flux up and down. The term social class is only used as a statistical category. Unlike the previous noble-peasant class system the capitalist way does not have legally established social classes. We are all simply and finally free and equal citizens. This includes the famous right of all to sleep under bridges in Paris.

On the socialist side the capitalist social class is primarily a group phenomenon established indirectly by the legal right to own the buildings and tools of large scale industrial enterprises. This rule and the bourgeoisie (the townspeople) for whom it produces profit had been incubating in the previous system. In turn the owners recruit and hire what is to become the opposed grouping, the working class, to use the tools and materials provided to make an expanding cornucopia of industrial goods for the free market. So a new class front of owner-worker representing supposedly opposed interests steps to stage center and the new era replaces the old.

These two concepts of class have been superseded by events. They are only a first approximation toward an understanding of what social class is now.

At the moment in the USA the discussion of social class is limited for most of us to the politics of the two conventional political parties and the statements of those seeking high office through them. The task of the sociologist is to suggest, at the least, a wider context and to offer some appreciation of the range of options.

The social organization of economic life is universal through all societies. The description of this order should be specific fot each. Any ideological rejection of the possibility of class analysis hampers the development of sociological work For example the discussion of the mass migration of potential workers from lesser developed countries toward the more developed requires the comparative analysis of the socio-economics of both societies and how they may interlock. But this push for a broader explanation is rarely if ever offered.

So ideally after the fall of the nobles and kings we have two major contradictory claims (along with a number of variations) about social class within the emergent democratic capitalist way. On one side we have reached the end of the history of social classes. The free individual reigns. But on the other we have a new social class front, with conflicting interests in play.

More on social class in our next post.