Social Class Consequences

November 30th, 2007 Posted in Social Class

So far we are into an off-center investigation of social class. We have two lines into the subject.

1) We have denied to all commentators the sanctuary of the objective scientific observer. All concepts and theories are part of the field described. (This does not mean that they are all equally effective. Some are merely dust in the wind. But all have potential impact.) So what has been said and accepted about social class becomes part of the reality of social class.

2) Social class identifies a process of established and on-going advantage, sometimes called exploitation. It may be legitimate but in form and practice it mimics extortion. My way or else.

The former class system, with agriculture and military adventure dominating the economy, pitted royals against commoners and lasted, with admittedly great variations, over fifteen hundred years. The primary economic engine in our new era is industrial production and the two decisive social classes so far are the owners of factories and offices and their workers. They form a major front of advantage-disadvantage.

Each side has its own set of theories that on the one hand (usually called the socialists) claim exploitation based on legal ownership of productive facilities while the other (the capitalists) claim that the decisive rejection of the old royals-commoners form has liberated each individual for participation in a free market where the possibility of upward mobility excuses any residual advantage.

The capitalists emphasize the free individual, the socialists the cooperative human group. All of us long for and need both ways. Durkheim identified excesses in both which he called egoism and altruism. In a short story Albert Camus pictured a benign artist frozen into catatonic immobility by the necessary and impossible choice between the solitary way of the free person and the demands for solidarity from his loving support group. The active dilemma of modern social class has been well identified.

The American ideology has been successful beyond the dreams of any who experienced the Cold War. Talk about social class in the U.S.A. today focuses on style of life, income and status differences. The connect between these measures and the established advantages of industrial ownership is missing. The work of Western theorists is close to complete. Class activation of U.S.A. workers hovers around zero.

But over the years a new reality has developed that is guided and reflected in the common conceptual understanding. To identify these changes is another line of inquiry. So with the capitalist way we may note certain changes that seem to have some effect on how the system of advantage works.

1) An expanded sharing of ownership in industrial enterprises via the stock market. The general public, with savings gathered in banks, mutual funds, retirement funds now claims a part of the advantage of private property. This sharing does not extend to any effective control of policy, plans, decisions but some of the advantage is turned back as cash.

2) Part of the control of these large enterprises has devolved to a class of chief executive officers and their close aides and associates. This group of workers uses its cadre position to gain a larger control of the wealth generated. When successful they engorge themselves with fabulous wealth and become part the ownership class. They constitute a new class element that we may call the bureaucratic apparatchiks–a group of functionaries found within both industrial systems.

3) The identity of the ownership class, for it is a social class, is fuzzy. All of us with even modest amounts of bank savings and indirect participation might be drawn into the magic circle. The forms of consciousness (awareness that one is part of a class) and of solidarity (participating in the united actions in defense of the class) is not assured any more than it is for the workers.

So the nature of the cadre(s) representing the ownership class is an open question. C. Wright Mills thought of the central cadre of the class as an interlocking elite moving easily among leading positions in business and government. They tend to congregate in certain elite neighborhoods and towns, send their children to elite private schools and universities, socialize in philanthropic work. Network with each other. It is not a perfect system but it does have a gyroscopic effect–keeping things on an even keel. It is not corporate, does not have an unified form. It is more a shifting pattern of people responding to challenges. (You can get a feel of the inside of this class in the academic work of E. Digby Baltzell, “Philadelphia Gentlemen” and in the movies of Whit Stillman, “Metropolitan” and “Barcelona.”)

So although we have a very limited working class presence, the capitalist class is, in different forms, all over the place.

4) All along, with the sovereignty based on universal suffrage, an alternate challenge by the socialists (and others) to peacefully revise the basic value behind the system of advantage is available (though fiercely resisted). This way has had some success in Europe where the nationalization of health care and of some heavy industries have been enacted and annulled, back and forth.

In a radical socialist view, the state itself is seen as co-opted by the ownership class as was the case with the royal way. The center of the capitalist way forms within the governing apparatus and the politics of the class is mobilized and represented within the long established political parties. Bur enough edges exist in the modern democratic state to suggest that it has an independent role. The lobbying around all governmental functions and functionaries, the infiltration of the state bureaucracy by persons with alternative visions, the possibility of elections leading to shifts in governing values all suggest this.

The further we get into social class the more we appreciate why the majority of sociologists avoid it as a significant topic. Merton talked about theories of the middle range for example which I suspect did not include social class analysis. Derrida in his discussion of Marxism never seems to get much beyond a gigantic riff on the specter haunting Europe. It is like designs that change their look and meaning with a slight change in the observing eye and mind. The reality is both greater than and lesser than the reality.

Next time I’ll move to socialist shifts.

Stay with me; we will stagger our way through this morass or give it up sooner or later.