[HoniSoit]

It is a fairly long article that tries to integrate the three distinct paradigms of analysing class: stratification, Weberian and Marxist class analysis. Wright basically argues that each looks at some aspects of class that are not necessarily contradictory but in fact can be integrated in ways that yield a more holistic picture of class. I am wondering what everyone thinks about the best way to analyse class.

UNDERSTANDING CLASS
Towards an Integrated Analytical Approach
Erik Olin Wright

When I began writing about class in the mid-1970s, I viewed Marxist and positivist social science as foundationally distinct and incommensurable warring paradigms. I argued that Marxism had distinctive epistemological premises and methodological approaches which were fundamentally opposed to those of mainstream social science. In the intervening period I have rethought the underlying logic of my approach to class analysis a number of times. [1] While I continue to work within the Marxist tradition, I no longer conceive of Marxism as a comprehensive paradigm that is inherently incompatible with ‘bourgeois’ sociology. [2]

Having previously argued for the general superiority of Marxist class analysis over its main sociological rivals—especially Weberian approaches and those adopted within mainstream stratification research—I now take the view that these different ways of analysing class can all potentially contribute to a fuller understanding by identifying different causal processes at work in shaping the micro- and macro- aspects of inequality in capitalist societies. The Marxist tradition is a valuable body of ideas because it successfully identifies real mechanisms that matter for a wide range of important problems, but this does not mean it has a monopoly on the capacity to identify such mechanisms. In practice, then, sociological research by Marxists should combine the distinctive Marxist-identified mechanisms with whatever other causal processes seem pertinent to the explanatory task at hand. [3] What might be called a ‘pragmatist realism’ has replaced the ‘grand battle of paradigms’.

For the sake of simplicity, in what follows I will focus on three clusters of causal processes relevant to class analysis, each associated with a different strand of sociological theory. The first identifies classes with the attributes and material life conditions of individuals. The second focuses on the ways in which social positions afford some people control over economic resources while excluding others—defining classes relative to processes of ‘opportunity hoarding’. The third approach conceives of classes as being structured by mechanisms of domination and exploitation, in which economic positions accord some people power over the lives and activities of others. The first is the approach taken in stratification research, the second is the Weberian perspective, and the third is associated with the Marxist tradition.
Attributes and conditions

Both among sociologists and among the lay public, class is principally conceived in terms of individual attributes and life conditions. Attributes such as sex, age, race, religion, intelligence, education, geographical location, and so on, are held to be consequential for a number of things we might want to explain, from health to voting behaviour to childrearing practices. Some of these attributes are acquired at birth, others later in life; some are stable, others quite dependent upon a person’s specific social situation, and may accordingly change over time. In the stratification approach, people can also be categorized by the material conditions in which they live: squalid apartments, pleasant suburban houses or mansions in gated communities; dire poverty, adequate income or extravagant wealth, and so on. ‘Class’, then, identifies those economically important attributes that shape people’s opportunities and choices in a market economy, and thus their material conditions. Class should neither be identified simply with people’s individual attributes nor with their material conditions of life; rather, it is a way of talking about the interconnections between these two.

Within this approach, the key individual attribute in economically developed societies is education, but some sociologists also include more elusive attributes such as cultural resources, social connections and even individual motivations. [4] When these different attributes and life conditions broadly cluster together, then these clusters are called ‘classes’. The ‘middle class’ here denotes people who have enough education and money to participate fully in some vaguely defined ‘mainstream’ way of life (which might include particular consumption patterns, for example). The ‘upper class’ designates people whose wealth, high income and social connections enable them to live their lives apart from ‘ordinary’ people, while the ‘lower class’ refers to those who lack the necessary educational and cultural resources to live securely above the poverty line. Finally, the ‘underclass’ are those who live in extreme poverty, marginalized from the mainstream of society by a lack of basic education and skills needed for stable employment.

In the individual-attributes approach to class, the central concern of sociologists has been to understand how people acquire the characteristics that place them in one class or another. Given that for most people in the countries where sociologists live, economic status and rewards are mainly acquired through employment in paid jobs, the central focus of research in this tradition has been the process through which people obtain the cultural, motivational and educational resources that affect their occupations in the labour market. Because the conditions of life in childhood are clearly of considerable importance in these processes, this approach devotes a great deal of attention to what is sometimes called ‘class background’—the family settings in which these key attributes are acquired. In a stripped down form, the causal logic of these kinds of class processes is illustrated in Figure 1 (below).

Skills, education and motivations are, of course, very important determinants of an individual’s economic prospects. What is missing in this approach to class, however, is any serious consideration of the inequalities in the positions people occupy, or of the relational nature of those positions. Education shapes the kinds of jobs people get, but why are some jobs ‘better’ than others? Why do some jobs confer a great deal of power while others do not? And is there any relation between the power and wealth enjoyed by some and the lack of it experienced by others? Rather than focusing exclusively on the process through which individuals are sorted into positions, the other two approaches to class analysis begin by examining the nature of the positions themselves.



Click here to open a larger version of this picture in a new window

Opportunity hoarding

The second approach, in which classes are defined by access to and exclusion from certain economic opportunities, focuses on ‘opportunity hoarding’—a concept closely associated with the work of Max Weber. [5] In order for certain jobs to confer high income and special advantages, it is important for their incumbents to have various means of excluding others from access to them. This is also sometimes referred to as a process of social closure, in which access to a position becomes restricted. One way of doing this is by creating requirements that are very costly for people to fulfill. Educational credentials often have this character: high levels of schooling generate high income in part because there are significant restrictions on the supply of highly educated people. Admissions procedures, tuition costs, risk-aversion to large loans by low-income people, and so on, all tend to block access to higher education, to the benefit of those in jobs that require such qualifications. If a massive effort was made to improve the educational level of those with less education, this would itself lower the value of education for those with more of it, since its value depends to a significant extent on its scarcity. The opportunity hoarding mechanism is illustrated schematically in Figure 2.



Click here to open a larger version of this picture in a new window

Some might object to this characterization of educational credentials. Economists, for example, argue that education creates ‘human capital’ which renders people more productive, and this is why employers are willing to pay them higher wages. But while some of the higher earnings that accompany higher education reflect productivity differences, this is only part of the story. Equally important are the various mechanisms through which people are excluded from acquiring education, thus restricting the supply of people for these jobs. A simple thought experiment shows how this works: imagine that the United States had open borders and let anyone with a medical, engineering or computer-science degree from anywhere in the world come to the us and practise their profession. The massive increase in the supply of people with these credentials would undermine the earning capacity of holders of the credentials already living in the country, even though their actual knowledge and skills would not be diminished. Citizenship rights are a special, and potent, form of ‘licence’ to sell one’s labour in a particular labour market.

Accreditation and licensing are particularly important mechanisms for opportunity hoarding, but many other institutional devices have been used in various times and places to protect the privileges and advantages of specific groups: colour bars excluded racial minorities from many jobs in the United States, especially (but not only) in the South until the 1960s; marriage bars and gender exclusions restricted access to certain jobs for women until well into the 20th century in most developed capitalist countries; religion, cultural criteria, manners, accent—all of these have constituted mechanisms of exclusion. Perhaps the most important exclusionary mechanism is private-property rights in the means of production. Private-property rights are the pivotal form of closure that determines access to the ‘job’ of employer. If workers were to attempt to take over a factory and run it themselves, they would be challenging their exclusion from control over the means of production; the capacity of owners to acquire profits, meanwhile, depends upon their defence of this exclusion. The core class division between capitalists and workers—common to both Weberian and Marxian traditions of sociology—can therefore be understood, from a Weberian perspective, as reflecting a specific form of opportunity hoarding enforced by the legal rules of property rights.

Exclusionary mechanisms that shape class structures within the opportunity-hoarding approach do not operate only in the most privileged strata. Labour unions can also function as an exclusionary mechanism, by protecting incumbents from competition by outsiders. This does not mean that on balance unions contribute to increasing inequality, since they may also act politically to reduce inequalities and may effectively diminish those generated by other mechanisms of exclusion—especially those connected to private ownership of the means of production. Still, to the extent that unions create barriers to entry to certain jobs, they do create a form of social closure that improves the material conditions of life for insiders.

Sociologists who adopt the opportunity-hoarding approach to class generally identify three broad categories in American society: capitalists, defined by private-property rights in the ownership of means of production; the middle class, defined by mechanisms of exclusion over the acquisition of education and skills; and the working class, defined by their exclusion from both higher educational credentials and capital. That segment of the working class that is protected by unions is seen either as a privileged stratum within the working class, or sometimes as a component of the middle class.

The critical difference between opportunity-hoarding mechanisms of class and individual-attribute mechanisms is this: in the former, the economic advantages gained from being in a privileged class position are causally connected to the disadvantages of those excluded from such positions. In the individual-attributes approach, such advantages and disadvantages are simply the outcomes of individual conditions: the rich are rich because they have favourable attributes, the poor poor because they lack them; there is no systematic causal connection between these facts. Eliminating poverty by improving the relevant attributes of the poor—their education, cultural level, human capital—would in no way harm the affluent. In the case of opportunity hoarding, the rich are rich in part because the poor are poor, and the things the rich do to maintain their wealth contribute to the disadvantages faced by poor people. Here, moves to eliminate poverty by removing the mechanisms of exclusion would potentially undermine the advantages of the affluent.
Exploitation and domination

The approach to class analysis that focuses on mechanisms of exploitation and domination is most closely associated with the Marxist tradition, although some sociologists more influenced by Weber also include these mechanisms in their conceptions of class. [6] Most sociologists, however, ignore them; some explicitly deny their relevance. ‘Domination’ and, especially, ‘exploitation’ are contentious terms because they tend to imply a moral judgement, rather than a neutral description. Many sociologists try to avoid such terms because of this normative content. I feel, however, that they are important and accurately identify certain key issues in understanding class. ‘Domination’ refers to the ability to control the activities of others; ‘exploitation’ refers to the acquisition of economic benefits from the labour of those who are dominated. All exploitation therefore involves some kind of domination, but not all domination involves exploitation.

In relations of exploitation and domination, it is not simply the case that one group benefits by restricting access to certain kinds of resources or positions; in addition, the exploiting/dominating group is able to control the labour of another group to its own advantage. Consider the following contrasting, classic cases: in the first, large landowners seize control of common grazing lands, prevent peasants from gaining access to them, and reap economic benefits from having exclusive control of that land for their own use. In the second, the same landowners, having seized control of the grazing lands and excluded the peasants, then bring some of those peasants back onto the land as agricultural labourers. In this second case, the landowners not only gain from controlling access to the land (opportunity hoarding), they dominate the farm workers and exploit their labour. This is a stronger form of relational interdependency than in the case of simple exclusion, for here there is an ongoing relationship between not only the conditions but also the activities of the advantaged and disadvantaged. Exploitation and domination are forms of structured inequality which require the continual active cooperation between exploiters and exploited, dominators and dominated.

We could, then, summarize the contrast between the role of social relations in each of the three approaches to class analysis as follows. In the stratification approach, neither the economic conditions in which people live nor their activities are understood as directly reflecting social relations; it is the least relational of the three. The Weberian approach sees people’s economic conditions as being formed through relations of exclusion, but does not specify class as embodying relations among activities. The Marxist tradition is relational in both senses, drawing attention to the structuring effect of exploitation and domination on both economic conditions and activities.

The Marxist approach to class is represented in Figure 3. As in the Weberian tradition, power and legal rules which enforce social closure are important in defining the basic structure of social positions—particularly private ownership of the means of production. But here the critical effect of opportunity hoarding is domination and exploitation, not simply market advantage.

Within this approach, the central class division in capitalist society is between those who own and control the means of production—capitalists—and those hired to use those means of production—workers. Capitalists, within this framework, exploit and dominate workers. Other positions within the class structure draw their specific character from their relationship to this basic division. Managers, for example, exercise many of the powers of domination, but are also subordinated to capitalists. ceos and top managers of corporations often develop significant ownership stakes in their corporations and therefore become more like capitalists. Highly educated professionals and some categories of technical workers have sufficient control over skills and knowledge—a critical resource in contemporary economies—that they can maintain considerable autonomy from domination within work and significantly reduce, or even neutralize, the extent to which they are exploited.

In Weberian and Marxist approaches alike, power plays an important role. In both, the inequalities in income and wealth connected to the class structure are sustained by the exercise of power, not simply by the actions of individuals. The inequalities generated by opportunity hoarding require power to be used in order to enforce exclusions; the inequalities connected to exploitation require supervision, monitoring of labour and sanctions to enforce discipline. In both cases, social struggles seeking to challenge these forms of power would potentially threaten the privileges of those in advantaged class positions.



Click here to open a larger version of this picture in a new window

Integrating three mechanisms

While sociologists have generally tended to base their research on one or another of these three approaches to class, there really is no reason to see them as mutually exclusive. One way of combining them is to see each as identifying a key process that shapes a different aspect of the class structure:

These three processes operate in all capitalist societies. The differences in class structures between countries are produced by the varying interactions of these mechanisms. The theoretical task is to think through the different ways they are linked and combined; the empirical task is to develop ways of studying each mechanism and the interconnections between them.

One possible nested micro-macro model is illustrated schematically in Figure 4. In this model the power relations and legal rules that give people effective control over economic resources—means of production, finance, human capital—generate structures of social closure and opportunity hoarding connected to social positions. Opportunity hoarding then produces three streams of causal effects: firstly, it shapes the micro-level processes through which individuals acquire class-relevant attributes; secondly, it shapes the structure of locations within market relations—occupations and jobs—and the associated distributional conflicts; and thirdly, it shapes the structure of relations within production, especially relations of domination and exploitation, and the associated conflicts in that sphere. The first of these causal streams in turn directs the flow of people into class locations within the market and production. Jointly the class attributes of individuals and their class locations affect their levels of individual economic well-being.

One final element in the broad synthetic model is needed. Figure 4 treats power relations and institutional rules as exogenous structures, whereas in fact they are themselves shaped by class processes and class conflicts. This matters because structures of inequality are dynamic systems, and the fate of individuals depends not just on the micro-level processes they encounter in their lives, or on the social structures within which those lives take place, but on the trajectory of the system as a whole. Treating the underlying power relations that support a given structure of class locations as fixed parameters is deeply misleading and contributes to the incorrect view that the fate of individuals is simply a function of their attributes and individual circumstances. What we need, therefore, is a recursive, dynamic macro-model in which social struggles contribute to changes in the trajectory of the relations themselves, as pictured in a highly simplified form in Figure 5 (below). A fully elaborated class analysis, then, combines this kind of macro-model of conflict and transformation with the macro–micro, multi-level model of class processes and individual lives. In such a model the key insights of stratification, Weberian and Marxist approaches can be combined.



Click here to open a larger version of this picture in a new window

Class in America

Socio-economic systems differ in the degree to which they constrain the rights and powers accompanying private ownership of the means of production, and thus in the nature of the class division between capitalists and workers. The us has long possessed among the weakest public regulations of capitalist property. This is reflected in a number of crucial characteristics: its very low minimum wage, allowing for higher rates of exploitation than would otherwise be possible; low rates of taxation on high incomes, which enable the wealthiest segments of the capitalist class to live in extraordinarily extravagant ways; weak unions and other forms of worker organization that could act as a counterweight to domination within production. The result is that, among developed capitalist countries the United States probably has the most polarized class division, viewed along the axis of exploitation and domination.



Click here to open a larger version of this picture in a new window

Turning to the middle class and its formation through mechanisms of opportunity hoarding—especially those linked to education—the us has historically had one of the largest middle classes among advanced capitalist states. It was the first country massively to expand higher education, and for a long time access to such qualifications was very open and relatively inexpensive, allowing people with few resources to attend universities. The us also possesses a multi-tiered higher-education system—with community colleges, junior colleges, liberal arts colleges, universities, public and private institutions—that made it possible for people to enter higher education later in life, acquire credentials and gain middle-class employment. This large and diverse system helped support the creation of a large number of middle-class jobs. It was complemented, in the decades after the Second World War, by a relatively strong labour movement that was able to mute competition for those jobs in the core of the American economy that did not require higher education. This enabled unionized workers in such positions to acquire income and security similar to those of the credentialed middle class.

However, it was never the case—contrary to popular rhetoric—that the United States was overwhelmingly a ‘middle-class society’. Most jobs in the American employment structure did not confer advantages on the basis of exclusionary credentials, and the labour movement never organized more than about 35 per cent of the non-managerial workforce. Furthermore, in recent decades there has been an erosion of at least some processes of middle-class exclusion: the labour movement has precipitously declined since the 1970s, many kinds of middle-class jobs have become less secure and less protected by the credentials usually associated with them, and the current economic crisis has intensified the sense of precariousness among many who still think of themselves as working in middle-class jobs. Thus, while it is still certainly the case that higher education and, increasingly, advanced academic degrees play a central role in providing access to many of the best jobs in the American economy, it is much less clear what the future prospects are for a large and stable middle class. [7]

Finally, the American class structure has been marked by the particularly brutal process through which the attributes relevant to the fate of individuals are formed. The us educational system is organized in such a way that the quality of education available to children in poor families is generally vastly inferior to that on offer to children from middle-class and wealthy families. This deficit in publicly provided education for the poor is intensified by the deprivations caused by the absence of an adequate safety net and support services for poor families. The rapid de-industrialization of the American economy and the absence of comprehensive job-training programmes for those thrown out of work by the shuttering of factories means that a significant number of people find themselves without the kinds of skills needed for the current labour market. The result is that the American class structure is marked by the highest rates of poverty and economic marginality of any comparable country.

Taking all of these processes together yields the following general picture of the American class structure at the beginning of the 21st century:

1. At the top, an extremely rich capitalist class and corporate managerial class, living at extraordinarily high consumption standards, with relatively weak constraints on their exercise of economic power.
2. A historically large and relatively stable middle class, anchored in an expansive and flexible system of higher education and technical training connected to jobs requiring credentials of various sorts, but whose security and future prosperity is now uncertain.
3. A working class which once was characterized by a relatively large unionized segment with a standard of living and security similar to that of the middle class, but which now largely lacks these protections.
4. A poor and precarious segment of the working class, characterized by low wages and relatively insecure employment, subjected to unconstrained job competition in the labour market, and with minimal protection from the state.
5. A marginalized, impoverished part of the population, without the skills and education needed for jobs that would enable them to live above the poverty line, and living in conditions which make it extremely difficult to acquire those skills.
6. A pattern of interaction between race and class in which the working poor and the marginalized population are disproportionately made up of racial minorities.

Towards synthesis

Adopting the integrated framework of class analysis proposed here poses different kinds of challenges for scholars working in the Marxist tradition and those adopting the stratification or Weberian approaches. For many Marxists, the main challenge is to recognize that what is most powerful within Marxist social science is its theory of a specific array of causal mechanisms, rather than its aspiration to be a comprehensive paradigm. In the past, the relevance of these mechanisms has been defended by a rhetoric stressing the incommensurability of Marxism with other theories, and arguing that Marxist epistemology and methodology sharply differentiates it from its rivals. Such arguments are unconvincing. Marxism is a powerful tradition in social science because it provides far-reaching explanations for a range of important phenomena, not because it has some special method that sets it apart from all other theoretical currents. Of course, it is always possible that future efforts to formulate Marxism as a distinctive, comprehensive paradigm may succeed. But for the present, it seems more helpful to see Marxism as a research programme defined by attention to a specific set of problems, mechanisms and provisional explanatory theories.

The challenge of an integrated class analysis may be even greater for sociologists working in the stratification tradition. Marxist analysts of class, after all, have always in practice included discussions of the individual attributes and material life conditions of people located within an economic structure, and opportunity hoarding is an integral part of the concept of social relations of production. Stratification theorists, on the other hand, have totally ignored the problem of exploitation, at most talking about ‘disadvantage’, and even domination is absent from their approach. To recognize exploitation and domination as central axes of class analysis is to recognize the importance of a structure of social positions distinct from the persons who fill those positions, and this too is largely alien to stratification research.

In a sense, it is Weberians who may have the easiest task. On the one hand, most Weberian sociologists have not aspired to create a comprehensive paradigm, and have been satisfied with a theoretical tradition that provided a rich menu of loosely connected concepts addressing specific empirical and historical problems. This has been one of the principal attractions of Weberian sociology: it is basically permissive about the incorporation of almost any concept from other currents of social theory. On the other hand, Weberians have always emphasized the importance of power within social structures, and have no difficulty in distinguishing between persons and structured positions. While exploitation has not figured centrally within Weberian class analysis, the logic of Weberian categories presents no fundamental barrier to its inclusion.

It might seem from this assessment that, in the end, we should all simply declare ourselves Weberians. This was one of the accusations levelled against my work and that of other Marxists thirty years ago by the British sociologist Frank Parkin when he wrote: ‘inside every neo-Marxist there seems to be a Weberian struggling to get out’. [8] I do not think this follows from the kind of pragmatist realism I am advocating here. Marxism remains a distinctive tradition in social science because of the specific set of problems it addresses, its normative foundations, and the distinctive inventory of concepts and mechanisms it has developed.

New Left Review

[QatzelOk]

the key individual attribute in economically developed societies is education, but some sociologists also include more elusive attributes such as cultural resources, social connections and even individual motivations.

The most important determinant in income potential is actually social connections, and not education.

It really is WHO YOU KNOW.

The rest - including education - can be obtained AFTER you have the right connections lined up.

And this is why I criticize class privilege so strongly: because it allows imbeciles to rule over people who have more to offer society than they do.

[Cartertonian]

It's rare that I agree with Qatz...

...but I agree with Qatz!





...now. let this thread die before anyone notices!



PS. Thanks, Honi. I'm doing some academic work on the perpetuation of class divisions in the military, for which this reference may well prove highly useful.

[HoniSoit]

Cheers, cartertonian.

How are you going about doing your research? What theoretical approach are you taking?

[Cartertonian]

At the moment I'm just searching the literature and developing the idea. A mate of mine is a sociology lecturer (as well as a fellow psych nurse) and is going to send me some examples of questionnaires that I might be able to adapt for my use.

I suppose my central question will be to try and establish whether or not people were motivated to join up as either officers or other ranks (enlisted ranks - as the US put it) based on their perceptions of class and where they felt they fitted into that structure.

In my case, I had no 'sense of entitlement' to officerhood. I simply left school at 16, later decided that had been a mistake and visited an Army Careers Office, aged 17 (1984!). I took their entrance tests and, on the basis of my scores, was advised to go back to school for further study (to 'A' Level) and then go for a commission. Thereafter, even though my life took a different path into nursing, when I qualified as a nurse I never gave a thought to joining up in the ranks, which I could have done. I had been told I should go for a commission - so I did.

But to this day, many young men and women still go down the officer route because they identify with that strata of society that we sometimes call the middle class, whereas the same folk identify the soldier option as being for lower or working class.

And there is no doubt that there is intense 'inverted snobbery' in the ranks, to the point where highly able individuals who would perhaps have been better advised to seek commissioning, are shunned and bullied by their peers.

I would also like to explore whether perpetuating the ‘class system’ – or at least the rigid, hierarchical elements thereof – is actually crucial to the function of a military force. In military theory terms, the organisation is structured as it is specifically so that the commander can issue orders that then cascade down a tried and tested chain of command such that actions are carried out by all personnel in a formation toward a common goal. They don’t call the Army ‘the Green Machine’ for nothing. There is no doubt that the strict hierarchy and culture are instrumental in enabling a formation of any size to function as if it were a machine, rather than a collection of individuals.

Therefore, it is beholden upon us to identify those elements of our culture and structure that we must preserve for functional reasons, and those elements that genuinely are anachronistic, serve no functional purpose and could and should be discontinued.

And boy...! does that cause arguments in the military!!

[HoniSoit]

That's highly interesting!

I am interested to know how you define class in your research. It sounds like it may be closer to the stratification and Weberian conception of class than Marxist. Are you consciously adopting any theoretical paradigm?

[Cartertonian]

I've only skim-read the article you posted and ID'd its likely usefulness, so at this stage I don't know whether I'm likely to subscribe to any particular paradigm therein. But I was taken by Weber's observation that:

In order for certain jobs to confer high income and special advantages, it is important for their incumbents to have various means of excluding others from access to them.

Clearly, in the military, one could argue that the officer class exclude other ranks from the 'special advantages' they enjoy, but that sems to fit more with the 'individual attributes' approach than the opportunity hoarding the author describes.

As it stands, I really can't see how the Marxist approach (and some elements of Weber's work) that (my precis) in order for the upper stratas to 'have' it is therefore causally linked that the lower stratas must 'have not', factors into the military, per se, but if you are anyone can help me conceptualise that, I'd appreciate it.

[Potemkin]

I would also like to explore whether perpetuating the ‘class system’ – or at least the rigid, hierarchical elements thereof – is actually crucial to the function of a military force. In military theory terms, the organisation is structured as it is specifically so that the commander can issue orders that then cascade down a tried and tested chain of command such that actions are carried out by all personnel in a formation toward a common goal. They don’t call the Army ‘the Green Machine’ for nothing. There is no doubt that the strict hierarchy and culture are instrumental in enabling a formation of any size to function as if it were a machine, rather than a collection of individuals.

I think it's important to make a distinction here between how a particular class is recruited, and how the class system operates as a whole. It is, for example, entirely possible for a society to have a ruling class which simultaneously has almost absolute power over the lower classes and is almost completely open for gifted or determined members of the lower classes to join. The Soviet system (replacing the word 'classes' with 'strata') might be a good example. The British system is almost the reverse of the Soviet one - the ruling class has very restricted power over the lower classes, yet it is relatively closed to talented or determined members of the lower classes joining it. The implication of this, of course, is that the British ruling class will become increasingly marginalised and ignored until eventually fading into insignificance; and this is in fact what we see happening. The two characteristics of social exclusion and a relatively loose grip on society, if they occur simultaneously, are usually fatal to a ruling class. It eventually becomes merely a quaint anachronism, rather like the hereditary aristocracy in Britain. But I digress.... The point I'm trying to make is that the Army's ruling 'class' (actually ruling stratum) must have almost total control over the lower 'classes' (lower strata or ranks), if the Army is to function properly at all. The openness or exclusivity of that ruling 'class' to talented individuals from the lower 'classes' joining its ranks is a separate issue, and is not determined by the degree of control of that ruling stratum over the lower strata.

[QatzelOk]

It is, for example, entirely possible for a society to have a ruling class which simultaneously has almost absolute power over the lower classes and is almost completely open for gifted or determined members of the lower classes to join.

In this case, "gifted and determined" can be used to filter out entire substrata of society from the halls of power. These words - like democracy and evil - can be used to mean whatever the oligarchy wants it to mean.

I am not convinced.

[Potemkin]

In this case, "gifted and determined" can be used to filter out entire substrata of society from the halls of power. These words - like democracy and evil - can be used to mean whatever the oligarchy wants it to mean.

I am not convinced.

'Gifted' means having talents out of the ordinary, specifically talents which would be useful to the exercise of power (eg, organisational ability, bloodthirsty ruthlessness, etc), 'determined' means having the motivation to apply the necessary amount of hard work to rise through the ranks and to overcome any opposition to their rise from snobbish 'superiors'. Is that clearer?

[Zyx]

Thank you for the article, HoniSoit.

I had considered myself a follower of Erik Olin Wright, a Neo-Marxist if you will, but I forgot this in my recent pursuit of the opposite sex. It has destroyed my once scholarly personality, yet seeing Erik Olin Wright again, I became revived. Many thanks.

I see his deficiencies in how he's more a local analyst. Mine is Global but an outgrowth of his. Still, I'm impressed at how clear he is and his excellent use of terminologies.

I am not well read, but I suppose that he is now my favorite author/scholar. Maybe I will email him, one day, on my ideas on ethics.

It may be that the global paradigm that's necessary is the Ethicist one that I am developing. Maybe.

As to class analysis, just like I said, I find morals a better analysis.

For the truth be told, even a slave owner, deeply bourgeois, can be a good soul worth helping. It's rare, yes, but it's clear that simply being poor or rich doesn't make for good or bad, deserving to live or die.

[QatzelOk]

'Gifted' means having talents out of the ordinary, specifically talents which would be useful to the exercise of power (eg, organisational ability, bloodthirsty ruthlessness, etc), 'determined' means having the motivation to apply the necessary amount of hard work to rise through the ranks and to overcome any opposition to their rise from snobbish 'superiors'. Is that clearer?

These precisions are still vague enough to be bent to suit the whims of nepotism.

"Out of the ordinary" is the opinion of everyone's dad about their own son.

[Cartertonian]

Sorry to rejuvenate this thread – it should probably be allowed to die quietly, but...

What, if any, relationship is there between educational attainment and class? I don’t necessarily mean in terms of access to education, i.e. that the middle classes are better able to access higher quality education, by and large, and furthermore seek to positively encourage educational attainment in their children. Rather, it strikes me from my own life experience that there is often – indeed usually – a subtle but obvious correlate between the perceived ‘class’, or ‘social stratification’ of an individual and their academic record.

Given that I’m looking at this from a military perspective and seeking to explore the relationship between military rank/status and social strata or class – in the US military (essentially) status is accorded on the basis of academic attainment. We do not replicate this exactly in the UK military, although there are minimum educational standards for entry. But in the US, to be an officer, it is commonly necessary to have a bachelor’s degree, whereas many UK officers join straight from secondary education. They may progress on to degree study through their career, but it is certainly not a prerequisite for officer status. Also, in the US it is usual for advancement to major’s rank to be dependent upon having obtained a masters degree – indeed I understand that achieving that level attracts an increase in pay. We certainly do not do that! I’d be very happy if we did, having recently got my MSc, but the two are not connected in any way.

[Potemkin]

What, if any, relationship is there between educational attainment and class? I don’t necessarily mean in terms of access to education, i.e. that the middle classes are better able to access higher quality education, by and large, and furthermore seek to positively encourage educational attainment in their children. Rather, it strikes me from my own life experience that there is often – indeed usually – a subtle but obvious correlate between the perceived ‘class’, or ‘social stratification’ of an individual and their academic record.

You seem to have answered your own question: easier access to good quality education, encouragement by parents, expectations, etc. However....

Given that I’m looking at this from a military perspective and seeking to explore the relationship between military rank/status and social strata or class – in the US military (essentially) status is accorded on the basis of academic attainment. We do not replicate this exactly in the UK military, although there are minimum educational standards for entry. But in the US, to be an officer, it is commonly necessary to have a bachelor’s degree, whereas many UK officers join straight from secondary education. They may progress on to degree study through their career, but it is certainly not a prerequisite for officer status. Also, in the US it is usual for advancement to major’s rank to be dependent upon having obtained a masters degree – indeed I understand that achieving that level attracts an increase in pay. We certainly do not do that! I’d be very happy if we did, having recently got my MSc, but the two are not connected in any way.

You seem to be asking why academic attainment is used as a metric for promotion in the officer corps more in the US than in Britain. My guess would be that because of the (perceived) egalitarianism of American society, social class cannot be used as a metric for promotion there in the same way that it can be here. Because of this, some other metric must be found, and educational attainment is the most convenient one to use. After all, there has to be some way of separating the sheep from the goats.

[Cartertonian]

Yeah, I see what you mean. But one of the elements of the work I'm scoping is the injustice/danger - or possibly the benefits - of making assumptions of 'goathood' or 'sheephood'. And, as a consequence, what actions could or should be taken to mitigate against the potential pitfalls of such assumptions. After all, as I'm sure you know, Potemin, when we 'assume' something we make an Ass of U and Me!

[Potemkin]

Yeah, I see what you mean. But one of the elements of the work I'm scoping is the injustice/danger - or possibly the benefits - of making assumptions of 'goathood' or 'sheephood'.

Some such separation has to be made. After all, incompetence at high levels in the armed forces can have catastrophic consequences, so you want to make sure you have the most competent people possible in charge. Of course, this does not necessarily mean the poshest or the most academically gifted. However, short of following someone around with a clipboard all day for months at a time observing their actions and giving them points out of ten for every decision they make, some simple metric has to be used. In Britain, it tends to be social class, in America it tends to be academic ability.

And, as a consequence, what actions could or should be taken to mitigate against the potential pitfalls of such assumptions. After all, as I'm sure you know, Potemin, when we 'assume' something we make an Ass of U and Me!

Because of limitations of manpower and time, some simplifying assumptions have to made. The question is, which assumptions and how safe are they?

[Cartertonian]

In Britain, it tends to be social class

Yes, I'm afraid you're right. Part of my agenda in looking at this issue is to better articulate why that is (at least potentially) wrong, but the US set-up is to an extent the confounding aspect to this. There are - indeed I know personally - many people serving in the ranks who both have more academic qualifications than their officers AND have a more rounded skill-set of interpersonal, leadership and management skills than their officers, but because they are percieved to be the wrong social class, they are impeded from advancement to officer status. Some, though thankfully not all, of this group suffer harrassment and bullying (inverse snobbery!) from their peers, because as per my earlier post they subliminally exhibit characteristics which are more readily associated with higher social strata, and are thus rejected by the group, wherein the socio-cultural norms of lower social strata predominate.

What I don't yet know is what else the US military uses to select their officer corps, and thus on what basis they reject individuals for officer service, who may then go on to enlist instead and, potentially, run the same risk of harrassment as their UK counterparts.

[Potemkin]

Yes, I'm afraid you're right. Part of my agenda in looking at this issue is to better articulate why that is (at least potentially) wrong, but the US set-up is to an extent the confounding aspect to this. There are - indeed I know personally - many people serving in the ranks who both have more academic qualifications than their officers AND have a more rounded skill-set of interpersonal, leadership and management skills than their officers, but because they are percieved to be the wrong social class, they are impeded from advancement to officer status. Some, though thankfully not all, of this group suffer harrassment and bullying (inverse snobbery!) from their peers, because as per my earlier post they subliminally exhibit characteristics which are more readily associated with higher social strata, and are thus rejected by the group, wherein the socio-cultural norms of lower social strata predominate.

This has been my personal experience in British society in general, which the military seems to reflect quite accurately. When I gained a scholarship to the local grammar school at 11, all of the 'friends' I had had up that point in my life simply stopped talking to me. To this day, I have no contact with them. As soon as you are perceived as being 'better' than anyone else, your social peers reject you. It was this experience which first made me acutely aware of the class system in Britain, an awareness which intensified over the years. Most intelligent members of the lower classes in Britain find themselves in a similar position: rejected by their own social class, yet not accepted by the upper classes. This is why most such people either become fascists or communists - by rejecting bourgeois liberalism, we are symbolically rejecting the system which has rejected us. The British class system is rather efficient at creating a large group of declasse people who are both highly intelligent and deeply resentful of the status quo; a rather dangerous state of affairs for the long-term stability of the system itself. As I said, the Army merely reflects the wider malaise of British society in general; the Army cannot be reformed without reforming that wider society of which it is an integral part.

[Cartertonian]

I had a similar school experience, in that we were streamed according to ability. I was streamed into the top form, whereas all but a couple of my friends from primary school were streamed into the lower forms and instantly turned on me.

As an aside, one of the great ironies of the streaming set-up was that the 'lowest of the low' was the 'City & Guilds' class, who didn't do O levels or CSEs, but worked toward C&G Quals in agriculture and horticulture. Those who were streamed into this class were mostly farmers' sons who knew full well that they were going to leave school at 16, help run the family farm and, one day take the farm over from their fathers. Many were clearly, however, far better furnished in the brain department than I! Yet they were treated as the 'thickos'?

And again, when I left school at 16 to train as a carpenter, I discovered that although I (literally) had more O levels than the other 14 guys in the class had collectively, I was by no means the sharpest tool in the toolbox - not by a long way. This taught me a valuable life lesson and perhaps explains why I struggle at times with rigid heirarchies that perpetuate assumptions of someone's worth by their position in that heirarchy. And yet, we need these heirarchies - unless we can radically and comprehensively re-design the whole of society from the ground up, and even then, in socio-anthropological terms there are leaders and followers - it's innate.

Going back to your eloquent response, the incongruity for me is that - if we accept your hypothesis - it infers that those that go on to activism are ultimately championing the cause of that strata of society that rejected them. As you said in response to me in another thread recently - 'does not compute!'

[Potemkin]

And again, when I left school at 16 to train as a carpenter, I discovered that although I (literally) had more O levels than the other 14 guys in the class had collectively, I was by no means the sharpest tool in the toolbox - not by a long way. This taught me a valuable life lesson and perhaps explains why I struggle at times with rigid heirarchies that perpetuate assumptions of someone's worth by their position in that heirarchy. And yet, we need these heirarchies - unless we can radically and comprehensively re-design the whole of society from the ground up, and even then, in socio-anthropological terms there are leaders and followers - it's innate.

Indeed. As Engels pointed out in his article On Authority, some sort of hierarchy of command is essential even in a socialist mode of production. But having leaders and followers in society is not equivalent to having classes in society. The existence of classes produces suboptimal hierarchies of authority, for obvious reasons.

Going back to your eloquent response, the incongruity for me is that - if we accept your hypothesis - it infers that those that go on to activism are ultimately championing the cause of that strata of society that rejected them. As you said in response to me in another thread recently - 'does not compute!'

The point is that the proletariat will liquidate the bourgeoisie as a class and by doing so will liquidate themselves as a class. A classless society is only possible if one class gains dictatorial power over society and uses that power to liquidate the existing mode of production. The working class is the only class created by the capitalist mode of production which has the will or the ability to do this. I have placed my Pascalian wager on the working class precisely because it is the only possible means by which my dream of a classless society can possibly be attained. My subjective feelings towards individual members of that class are irrelevant; as a good Marxist I aspire to be objective and scientific at all times.