From Marx to Warner : Class and Stratification under Scrutiny [1 ed.] 9781527509412, 9781443898805

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From Marx to Warner

From Marx to Warner: Class and Stratification Under Scrutiny By

Jacek Tittenbrun

From Marx to Warner: Class and Stratification Under Scrutiny By Jacek Tittenbrun This book first published 2017 Cambridge Scholars Publishing Lady Stephenson Library, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2PA, UK British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Copyright © 2017 by Jacek Tittenbrun All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. ISBN (10): 1-4438-9880-5 ISBN (13): 978-1-4438-9880-5

A friend in need is a friend indeed. The author got to know the entire depth of that adage thanks to Zora Wencel-Kowalska. It was in his dark hour of the utmost need that she gave him the helping hand that veritably saved him. If this book is a tribute to her, it still is just a minuscule portion of the debt I owe to her.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction ................................................................................................. 1 Chapter I ...................................................................................................... 2 Conceptual Asymmetry Chapter II ................................................................................................... 15 Pitirim Sorokin's Theory of Social Stratification and Mobility Chapter III ................................................................................................. 21 Social Mobility and Social Stratification Chapter IV ................................................................................................. 23 Information and Differentiation Chapter V ................................................................................................ 166 The Social Stratification of Yankee City Chapter VI ............................................................................................... 202 Social Class in the Pre-Marxian Thought Chapter VII .............................................................................................. 210 Marx’s Notion of Class Chapter VIII ............................................................................................ 217 Marx and Engels on the Middle Class Chapter IX ............................................................................................... 222 A Rent-Based Approach to Economic Ownership Chapter X ................................................................................................ 235 Weberian Notion of Property Chapter XI ............................................................................................... 238 Weberian Theory of Class

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Table of Contents

Chapter XII .............................................................................................. 247 Frank Parkin’s Closure Theory Chapter XIII ............................................................................................ 250 Social Stratification and Social Class Chapter XIV ............................................................................................ 257 Caste, Class and Ownership of Labour and Quasi-Labour Power Chapter XV.............................................................................................. 266 Another BBC’s Survey Offshoot Chapter XVI ............................................................................................ 270 Ralph Dahrendorf’s Conflict Theory of Social Differentiation Chapter XVII ........................................................................................... 291 Exploitation in Analytical Marxism Chapter XVIII .......................................................................................... 319 Elite Theory: Old and New Chapter XIX ............................................................................................ 347 The Structural-Functional Theory of Social Stratification Chapter XX.............................................................................................. 367 G. C. Homans’ Theory of Social Exchange Chapter XXI ............................................................................................ 370 Stratification and Interaction Chapter XXII ........................................................................................... 378 The EGP Class Schema: In Search of a Theory Chapter XXIII .......................................................................................... 444 Alvin Gouldner’s Notion of the New Class Chapter XXIV ......................................................................................... 450 The Occupational Division of Labour as the Foundation of Class in a Neo-Durkheimian Approach

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Chapter XXV ........................................................................................... 477 Anthony Giddens’ Theory of Class Structuration Chapter XXVI ......................................................................................... 494 Albert Benschop’s Transformational Theory of Class Chapter XXVII ........................................................................................ 511 Integration or Hostile Takeover? Conclusion ............................................................................................... 537 Bibliography ............................................................................................ 539

INTRODUCTION

The initial idea for writing this book has come from the author's reflection on the widespread term the “middle class”. Upon scrutiny it turns out that, contrary to its verbal guise, the term refers in fact to a social stratum rather than a class. This follows from a range of characteristics peculiar to all stratification approaches as distinct from class perspectives, the hierarchical configuration being but the most apparent one. Thus, there is a logical chain of reasoning involved here: an initial reflection upon the content of a well-known concept leads to an analysis of its theoretical background. And the present book is precisely an outcome of an investigation of the latter. In other words, it comprises an overview of a representative body of class and stratification theories. From this point of view, although the book may not have been written as a textbook, it clearly has a definite potential for classroom use. What might complicate the matter is, ironically, the book's likely merit lying in its underlying theoretical framework, which-though drawn on Marx, Weber, and to a lesser extent-Simmel and Parsons-is original and in many key respects unique to the present author. Dropping this coquetry, one could argue, of course, that it is this undergirding analytic framework that gives the entire study a high degree of coherence and consistency.

CHAPTER I CONCEPTUAL ASYMMETRY

Among the available perspectives on social differentiation there obtains indeed a certain asymmetry-many class approaches by name turn out, upon scrutiny, fit into an alternative framework of social stratification. Interestingly, while it is only seldom that one can come across what is in actual fact a class approach, but couched in stratification terms, the reverse is quite often the case. This fact by itself, however, does not, of course, transform Warner, Parsons or any other exponent of stratification, employing the language of class into a class theorists in the proper sense of the word. The former, for example, states: “no teacher teaches us the hard facts of our social-class system. It is time we learn all of the basic facts of our status system and learn them through systematic, explicit training which will teach at least the adult student much of what he needs to know about our status order, how it operates. How he fits into the system, and what he should do to improve his position or make his present one more tolerable. This book presents basic materials about social class in America, tells how to identify the several levels, and describes the movement from lower levels to higher ones” (Warner, Meeker, Eels 1960). In a fairly typical, alas, textbook definition class is described as “a ranked group within a stratified society characterized by achieved status and considerable social mobility” (Brym 2003). To make the matter worse, the above definition not only reduces the concept of class to that of stratum, but additionally supplements it with the criterion of high social mobility, which may or may not pertain to the particular socio-historical class structures. In feudalism, for example, such mobility was very low, which does not at all alter the fact that the feudal society was a class one. Interestingly enough, the source mentioned above in another definition comes to the same conclusion, as it defines “Open Class System” as a “stratification system that facilitates social mobility,

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with individual achievement and personal merit determining social rank” (Brym 2003). It only adds to the existing confusion that sometimes the reverse thing happens, that is, scholars subscribing to the stratification perspective, actually speak the language of class; a case in point is the following passage by two Greek researchers: “three main strata: The upper stratum is represented by the most prosperous peasants, large storekeepers or merchants and professionals, like doctors, teachers, governmental officials etc. In the middle stratum, there is to be found the bulk of farm owners, small storekeepers and a limited number of skilled workers who may also live in the village. Finally, the lower stratum consists of the landless farm labourers and the “outcasts” of the village (Mouzelis and Attalides 1979:183).” The alleged strata are in fact, true, not particularly precisely defined, social classes. Another researcher refers to her subject interchangeably, as if both terms involved had the same content, which in fact is not the case: “Results from hierarchical linear models indicate that differentiation has a democratizing effect on access to higher education: it increases overall enrolment as well as decreases the gap in enrolment between different social strata. Moreover, differentiation does not disproportionately divert students from less privileged family backgrounds to 4-year institutions—it actually diminishes the role of social class in access to 4-year colleges and universities” (Roksa 2008). Considering that “socioeconomic background (SES) SES is measured as a standardized composite of parent's education, occupation and income” (Roksa 2008), the former label is proper, while the latter is not. This kind of approach is common, which does not mean proper, all the more so that it often involves logical fallacies, as in the following case in which class has been defined through income, so that the author's contentions in the later part of the quotation make little sense, being analytic propositions, as opposed to synthetic; “the primary measure of class I adapt in this study is income. Given that some other scholars see a tighter connection between education and class, I also consider educational attainment” (Landry 1987). After all, to compare income-based and education-based definitions is like comparing apples with oranges.

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Chapter I

Yet another theorist fails to notice his statement contains a contradictionhe first offers a-fairly correct-definition of stratification as composed of “strata” only to give a definition of class that is indistinguishable from that of social strata: Social stratification refers to the division of a society into layers (or strata) whose occupants have unequal access to social opportunities and rewards. People in the top strata enjoy power, prosperity, and prestige that are not available to other members of society; people in the bottom strata endure penalties that other members of society escape. In a stratified society, inequality is part of the social structure and passes from one generation to the next (Long 2013). What is a Class? People who occupy the same layer of the socioeconomic hierarchy are known as a social class (Bassis, 1990:216). According to Henslin (2004:192), a social class is a large group of people who rank closely to one another in wealth, power, and prestige. Henslin (1999:253) suggests that researches can assign people to various social classes based on objective criteria involving wealth, power, and prestige. Some objective indicators can include occupation, educational level, number of dependents, type of residence, infant mortality, and life expectancy rates.

What are, then the most crucial differences between strata and classes? Differentia specifica of a class is the fact that it is a social group rooted in the economic structure, whereas, by definition, it is not necessarily the case as regards social strata. With all their differences (which often are overplayed) the only two classical theories of class-Marxian and Weberian-share this basic insight that class is an economic concept. Therefore, Haller (1970) was off base, interpreting the Weberian revision of the basic Marxian model, as emphasizing “relationships among social units whose incumbents are unequal in wealth, power, or prestige … [variables that] constitute the minimum set of hierarchical inequalities which apparently discriminate among all peoples” (Haller 2004). For his interpretation squeezes Weber’s class theory into the straightjacket of stratification, which is totally inadmissible. Moreover, in another context the same researcher goes even further, extending his reductionist approach onto Marx: “the three content dimensions of status which appear to be universal are wealth, power and prestige, as consistent with the early

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writings on stratification by classical sociologists (Marx & Weber, in particular)” (Haller 2004). Thus, whilst social stratification, as even its name suggests, always forms a hierarchy, interclass relations are more complex and hence it is only seldom that a class structure may take a ladder-like shape. This much is pointed out by Wright: “Both Marx and Weber adopt relational concepts of class. Neither defines classes simply as nominal levels on some gradational hierarchy. For both, classes are derived from an account of systematic interactions of social actors situated in relation to each other. Classes for both Weber and Marx are thus not primarily identified by quantitative names like upper, upper middle, middle, lower middle, and lower, but by qualitative names like capitalists and workers, debtors and creditors” (2002). This claim, however, falls short of an open admission that this gradational or nominal approach is not a class one at all, for it pertains to social stratification, as defined, in a typical formulation, as follows: “even the most egalitarian societies have some hierarchical structure, and in all democracies there are distinctions on the basis of education, income, occupation, cultural differences, and social mores related to prior schooling and membership in faith-based and many other institutions of society. Inevitably, some of these are perceived as having higher social standing than others; thus “social stratification” is a useful term to describe them” (Dictionary of Public Health 2013). And the importance of the distinction between social strata and classes cannot be over-estimated, given how often it is not observed: e.g., “Class is no longer simply a vertical ranking linked to capital and a system of production in some way” (Dorling 2013), as if it could ever be brought down to such a ranking. Similarly, the essential distinction noted above is completely erased in the following statement: “theories of social inequality as well as its more modern derivatives explain themes which all display an interest in the vertical nature of social class or strata and the relation of individuals or groups to differences in property and its cost, including the wages derived from the property of labor power. The result of the basic premise of theories of inequality in industrial society is that social hierarchies in the final analysis always are generated and legitimized with reference to the productive process and its organization. This implies that inequality becomes directly or indirectly a function of the relation of the individual to work or capital and its benefits in the form of monetary income, interest, rent and profit. The identity of individuals is mediated or even determined by their relation to the work process. Social strata and classes form in the same manner. In short, as both Marxist and nonMarxist approaches suggest, industrial society is still primarily a society of

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Chapter I

labor. This suggests strongly, to social scientists at least in the case of the analysis of social inequality in some contemporary societies, that social hierarchies still are shaped predominantly by class rather than other forms of social cleavage” (Stehr 1999). And even well-known Marxist authors can, by applying the term “class” in relation to what actually constitutes stratification, legitimise the latter confusing usage: “'Class' is also allowed to be used with limited application when it is part of the holy trinity of race, gender, and class. Used in that way, it is reduced to a demographic trait related to life style, education level, and income level. In forty years of what was called 'identity politics' and 'culture wars,' class as a concept was reduced to something of secondary importance. All sorts of “leftists” told us how we needed to think anew, how we had to realism that class was not as important as race or gender or culture. I was one of those who thought these various concepts should not be treated as being mutually exclusive of each other. In fact, they are interactive. Thus racism and sexism have always proved functional for class oppression. Furthermore, I pointed out (and continue to point out), that in the social sciences and among those who see class as just another component of 'identity politics', the concept of class is treated as nothing more than a set of demographic traits” (Parenti 2011). Interestingly enough, though, for all his criticism toward the said understanding of class, Parenti does not go as far as to call into question the very practice of using the term concerned in the context of the framework reproved. The reason may lie in certain shortcomings to his own position. Parenti formulates his criticism from the perspective of Marxist relational framework, using, however, the imprecise term “the relation to the means of production” which may refer to an ownership relation, but also to, e.g., the division of labour couched in technical terms. The latter would suggest an approach much closer to Goldthorpe than Marx. By contrast, from the perspective of ownership, and more precisely ownership of labour power, one can theorise some key aspects of impact of ethnic origin, sex, age, etc. on the economic structure, in which, recall, classes are rooted. In the context of the process of hiring, which in our terms should be recast as leasing, one could distinguish two basic types of labour power: one can get a job on the basis of certain objective, independent of a given specific context criteria, such as personality tests (of course, we are fully aware that the aforementioned “objectivity” is very, very contingent, and psychological tests may well reflect some Western stereotypes and biases and thereby favour, say, Caucasians over individuals of other races, but we

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leave at this point such considerations aside for the sake of argument), which could be conceptualised in terms of universalistic labour power. By contrast, other prospective employees become them in actuality by virtue of personal connections, and their personal ascriptive characteristics, such as the colour of skin, sex, or what you. These individuals could be said to hold an alternative type of labour power-a particularistic one. The contrast in question is nicely captured by a study whose authors report: “the analysis of personnel policies among our sample firms reveals two distinct models. Some firms adopt a performance model, whereby managers are hi red through formal channels, they are assessed regularly and rewarded, promoted, and dismissed on the basis of objective measures of performance. Other firms instead adopt a fidelity model of managerial talent development: they hire managers on the basis of personal or family contacts, they do not assess the managers’ performance formally, and managers’ rewards are based on the quality of their relationship with the firm's owners. The analysis also reveals that non-family firms and multinationals are more likely to adopt the performance model, whereas family firms and firms that operate exclusively in the domestic market tend to adopt the fidelity model” (Bori et al. 2010). Positive or negative discrimination on the basis of some ascribed traits may, sure enough, work in relation to many other aspects of work: job promotion, pay policy, etc. So, the notion of labour power as an object of economic ownership enables us to capture some key channels in which the factors mentioned earlier, and other unmentioned at that point, are manifested in the context of economic structure; it is clear that not only there is no opposition between the notion of class and those other concepts, but conversely, it is the former notion that allows for a scientific, empirical investigation of links between the latter factors and the economy. More broadly, this was just an example of how one could inquire into the societal efficacy of the above-mentioned factors, so often and so wrongly pitted against class; Age, gender, and race/ethnicity have long been regarded as the holy trinity of status distinctions that intersect with, reinforce, and sometimes undercut class-based distinctions (Gurin, Miller, & Gurin, 1980; Parsons, 1942; Wright & Perrone, 1977). The inadequacy of Parenti’s approach is manifested precisely in his one-sided treatment of the relation between class, race and sex. He highlights in this context the concept of interaction, but interactionism is not dialectics; from the latter viewpoint, it is not simply that one has two factors influencing each other. Nor, too, the relation in question could be rendered

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Chapter I

by means of such concepts as determination in the last instance, overdetermination and others popularised notably by Louis Althusser and his followers, which-owing most often to their formalism-are unable to reflect the all-important process of structural causation. This cannot be brought down to any mechanical queue of “instances” which one after another come to the fore, occupying the position of over-determining forces. This is not dialectics but its parody. The point is that to explore, for example, race as both a causative force and one that is itself affected by definite societal structures one may not treat the former in isolation from the economy and its societal overlay, i.e. a class structure. As demonstrated in another book (Tittenbrun 2011a), the so-called primacy of the economy does not consist in it being some all-powerful and all-pervasive force, which at that maintains this capacity irrespective of its historical context. By contrast, what is indeed particular, pivotal position of the economic structure means simply that no phenomenon or process in a society can be scientifically examined without its reference to the former. This does not mean, mind you, anything like reduction; it is just a methodological directive-under laid, to be sure, by definite ontological assumptions regarding the architecture of social reality, not to mention epistemological premises. The distinction discussed above finds its confirmation in what for many will be an unlikely source, namely chaos theory championed by many postmodernist theorists (the truth of the matter is that the author of “Dialectics of Nature” would be first to embrace this analytic perspective as being a modern articulation of precisely the very dialectical approach Engels, Marx, Simmel and many others pursued so successfully). William Johnson and Michael Ornstein, (1980). compared several different approaches to the scanning for class dynamics in complex data sets. “Those who used conventional measures of class standing (education, income, occupation, self-identification and such) were not able to locate such basins of attraction in national survey data. Those using other parameters (the ownership and control of production facilities, control over new capital investment, and control of the labour process itself), three researchers (Carchedi, Poulantzas and Wright) were able to find hidden attractors while those using conventional measures above, were not” (Young 1994). This result is all the more remarkable that the theories chosen as an alternative to social stratification are poles apart from being perfect, as is demonstrated in the present book. To revert to the aforementioned comments on the distinction between class and stratification approaches, it is paradoxical that Wright's (who in the

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meantime has managed to show up also in Young's discussion) own work illustrates how in the absence of a solid theoretical foundation, verbal objections to the so-called gradational approach, matter little, as in practice their author himself invokes precisely this kind of viewing social differentiation, laying out “the hierarchy, with capitalists and managers at the top”, followed by “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; 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; 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; 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” (Wright 2009:109). If we were to treat originality as the paramount virtue of a scholarly work, then Wright's proposal does not fare on that account particularly well; even in this book at least several class schemata have been presented that at first glance appear no different from the classification outlined above. And in a similar vein as in those other contexts, one could note that the concept of precariat does not seem to be particularly well-founded, and in general, the all-important notion of labour power as an object of ownership receives no attention at all, which is especially striking in the context of formulations about “credentials” as a supposed class criterion. Regarding the definition of “socio-economic status”, commonly used in the stratification literature, Bollen, Glanville, and Stecklov (2001:157) noted, “(SES) refers to the position of individuals, families, households, or other aggregates on one or more dimensions of stratification. These dimensions include income, education, prestige, wealth, or other aspects of standing that members of society deem salient”. Put another way, there are, broadly speaking, two basic types of stratification systems: unidimensional and multidimensional ones. In the former case there is only one criterion of distinguishing particular social strata, be it prestige, access to power (cf. Lenski 1966; Bendix and Lipset 1967), income (Gangl 2005; Iceland, Bauman 2007; Morris, Western 1999; Alderson,

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Chapter I

Nielsen 2002; Esping-Andersen 2007; Firebaugh 2000; Milanovic 2006; Hardin 2006), wealth (cf. Angle 1986), education level (Breen, Jonsson 2005), occupation (Handel 2003; Kenworthy 2008; Blau, Duncan 1967: Breiger 1981; Lyn, Vaughn, Ensel 1981) etc. (cf. e.g. Farkas 2003), whereas the latter structure is based on a mixture of criteria, such as in the following study of outdoor recreation applying a multiple hierarchy stratification perspective conceiving of socio-economic status (SES), in terms such as the level of education, level of income and occupational status (Bultina, Field 2001) or in the case of Gilbert (2011) on no less than ten discrete variables. In both instances it is possible to discern such groups throughout the entire society. A case in point is Warner and his collaborators’ statement to the effect of that. “Those who occupy co-ordinating positions acquire power and prestige. They do so because their actions partly control the behavior of the individuals who look to them for direction. Within this simple control there is simple power. Those who exercise such power either acquire prestige directly from it or have gained prestige from other sources sufficient to be raised to a co-ordinating position. For example, among many primitive peoples a simple fishing expedition may be organised so that the men who fish and handle each boat are under the direction of one leader. The efforts of each boat are directed by the leader and, in turn, each boat is integrated into the total enterprise by its leader’s taking orders from his superior. The same situation prevails in a modern factory. Small plants with a small working force and simple problems possess a limited hierarchy, perhaps no more than an owner who bosses all the workers. But a large industrial enterprise, with complex activities and problems, like General Motors, needs an elaborate hierarchy of supervision. The position in a great industrial empire which integrates and co-ordinates all the positions beneath it throughout all the supervising levels down to the workers has great power and prestige. The same holds true for political, religious, educational, and other social institutions; the more complex the group and the more diverse the functions and activities, the more elaborate its status system is likely to be” (Warner, Meeker, Eels 1960:9). The authors believe it is possible to speak of “the stratification of employees, of children on school records, of names on a customer list, or of subscribers to a newspaper or magazine” (Warner, Meeker, Eels 1960:9). Social stratification can be discerned in each and every walk of life, sports included, as an article on “Baseball's middle class” testifies; its author's reasoning clearly resembles the notion of median typical of the mainstream middle-class approach: “A usually high number of teams are

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hovering around the 500 mark. [...]The Washington Nationals are at the top of the middle class” (Bernhardt 2014). Radical as it may seem, the above case is small potatoes compared to the subsequent example, concerning a study conducted at the Mpala Research Center, Kenya that “is home to more than 20 large mammal species, which can be divided, inter alia, along the key lines of social class-the reader is told-whereby “individuals can be subdivided into three distinct social classes: territorial males (T), bachelor males (B), and nursery herd members (N)” (Estes, 1974). These classes denote age, sex, and behavior, but also reflect intraspecific gradations in territoriality, for example, territorial males defend patches of habitat against other males. This is not to deny, sure enough, sometimes elaborate social organisation that can be observed in many animal species, but the crucial question is: what cognitive advantages, as opposed to confusion, are to be derived from the terminology common to the zoologist, Marx and Weber? The question imposes itself all the more forcefully that one of the articles invoked above as a source of this peculiar approach bears the title 'stratum identification...” [emphasis-J.T], which in its own way illustrates the purported affinity of both approaches concerned that in the present study is called into question, or more precisely, reduced to the domain of language illegitimately appropriated by stratification approaches. To revert, for a change, to human populations, Bollen et al. (2001) identified a number of problems arising from the measurement of SES across a wide range of studies. These problems included a lack of consensus in terms of the conceptualisation of SES, a lack of clarity as to the underlying structure and dimensionality of SES, and the fact that various measures of SES have been used interchangeably across studies. The result of this ambiguity is that variations in SES have been measured in a large number of ways, including educational achievement, occupational standing, social class, socioeconomic status, income, exposure to poverty, and exposure to adverse life events such as unemployment or single parenthood (for discussion of these issues cf. e.g. Bollen et al., 2001; Bradley & Corwyn, 2002; Braveman et al., 2005; Krieger, Williams, & Moss, 1997; Oakes & Rossi, 2003). Furthermore, exposure to social inequality has been assessed using individual level, household level, and community level measures (Bradley & Corwyn, 2002). The result of these strategies is that the literature on social inequality and other outcomes has been based on a wide spectrum of measures that have been collected in different ways and for different purposes, but which have been used more

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Chapter I

or less interchangeably to describe social and economic stratification and its effects on life course outcomes” (Fergusson 2008). The aforementioned candid confession on the part of a proponent of a given research strand cogently shows how flawed methodologically and conceptually it is; after all, to include social class in stratification research is to blur the distinction between the latter and the alternative approach to social differentiation. On the other hand, the above SES’ description reveals its circular character. Small wonder, therefore, that 'SES was dismissed because by 1970 it had become a buzzword. Among its various meanings, as an index of household consumption it is really a measure of wealth. In another definition of SES, consistent with an early SES index developed by Sewell (1940), it encompasses “material possessions, cultural possessions, and social participation” (Haller & Saraiva, 1973:2, 8). This definition of SES works as a summary of all three content dimensions of status, “accounting for practically all the common variance of indicators of wealth, prestige and power” (Haller, 1970:471). Thus, SES is not an additional content variable. An instance of a flawed approach to multiple social stratifications is a study of social stratification in China. Hsu notes that: the social-stratification system in China has gone through shifts and turns. During different eras, different values and weights are applied to the political, economic, social, and human capitals by the government to establish the logic and justification of China's stratification of class and status of the time. The changing matrix of valuation and interactions of these categories of capitals in practice, in turn, shape the particular characteristics of the social-stratification system in correlation to China’s changing political climates. (Wang 2009).

This statement is misleading, since historicity is precisely what is missing in the author's account: Hsu distinguishes three shifts in the China's social-stratification system. In imperial China, the cultural narratives propagated the high value of human capital as the definition of class and status. Rooted in Confucian meritocracy. A system in which advancement is based on individual ability or achievement developed. Education was explicitly linked to qualities such as wisdom, righteousness, morality, and contribution to society. Scholars were an integral part of the

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government and had a significant amount of political power in a paternalistic policy or practice of treating or governing people in a fatherly manner, especially by providing for their needs without giving them rights or responsibilities. Education was intertwined with social and economic capitals, the construct of social hierarchy during this time was dominated by human capital in principal and practice. In Mao Zedong’s socialist era, political capital was elevated to dominate China’s social-stratification system with the intended devaluation […] of economic and human capital. Embodied in socialist virtuocracy, economic capital was associated with capitalism and decadence, the staunch enemy of socialism. Human capital or intellects were deemed politically weakminded yet economically indispensable, whereas party membership and positions within the party hierarchy defined social prestige and status. Banked on equality and asceticism, rejection of bodily pleasures through sustained self-denial and self-mortification, with the objective of strengthening spiritual life as the institutions advocated, China's party elites became the inexplicit social and economic elites when many took advantage of their privileged status-even though these were unintended consequences of elevating political capital while suppressing economic and social capitals. Hsu contends that the current social-stratification system combines human capital with economic capital as the definition of class and status while devaluing political capital. This stratification system is similar to none, but an ingenious hybrid of all from the past. It blends elements from discourses of Confucian meritocracy (human capital), socialist virtuocracy (political capital), and capitalist modernity (economic capital). […] Social actors who garner both human and economic capitals are revered as the new elites. The new social-stratification system in Harbin is fundamentally different from Confucian meritocracy, which combines human capital with political capital; it is fundamentally different from Socialist virtuosity as well which rewards political capital alone. The new elites and role models under the new system are social actors with advanced education and have engaged in businesses that benefit ordinary people and raise the status of China in the world; they are largely divorced from politics and let the government manage and ascertain that the economy is functioning properly. (Wang 2009)

Contrary to the above claims, the study concerned is deeply ahistorical, which is first and foremost manifested in the choice of the concept of capitals to account for China’s social differentiation not only in the modern era, but also in relation to socialism and ancient China that

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Chapter I

represented the Asiatic socio-economic formation. Whilst in the first instance it can be admitted that the issue is only the conceptualisation of purportedly peculiar characteristics of China’s capitalist system, not the very existence of that system, in the remaining cases such a question is obviously rhetoric. In a word, if one looked for a proof of absurdity of those immensely and undeservedly popular Bourdieusian categories, this study would perfectly fit. In her ill-conceived striving for a universal theory of stratification in China, the author has not reached neither that goal nor a more modest one of depicting social differentiation in one specific medium-sized Chinese city.

CHAPTER II PITIRIM SOROKIN'S THEORY OF SOCIAL STRATIFICATION AND MOBILITY

A good example of the above-mentioned multivariate approach to stratification is provided by Pitirim A. Sorokin’s theory (1959). Social stratification, to Sorokin, means “the differentiation of a given population into hierarchically superposed classes.” Such stratification, he held, is a permanent characteristic of any organized social group. Thus, so far so consistent with our characterisation of stratification theory, since, as suggested in the text, hierarchy and universality are two typical attributes of those theories. Going further, we learn that Sorokin's framework is based on multiple foundations. Stratification may be based on economic criteria-for example, when one focuses attention upon the differentials between the wealthy and the poor. But societies or groups are also politically stratified when their social ranks are hierarchically structured with respect to authority and power. If, however, the members of a society are differentiated into various occupational groups and some of these occupations are deemed more honourable than others, or if occupations are internally divided between those who give orders and those who receive orders, then we deal with occupational stratification. Though there may be other concrete forms of stratification, of central sociological importance are economic, political, and occupational stratification. Sociological investigation must proceed to pay attention to the height and the profile of stratification pyramids. Of how many layers is it composed? Is its profile steep, or does it slope gradually? The above sentence reveals a further characteristic present in many approaches to stratification; lacking anything like solid theoretical underpinning, they often use an inconsistent terminology, blurring the differences between the various dimensions to stratification or, conversely, failing to see their affinity or even identity, which generates some

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superfluous distinctions-for instance, in the above case, occupations are, implicitly, deemed extra-economic in character. Be that as it may, according to Sorokin, whether one studies economic, political, or occupational stratification, one must always be attentive to two distinct phenomena: the rise or decline of a group as a whole and the increase or decrease of stratification within a group. In the first case we deal with increases of wealth, power, or occupational standing of social groups, as when we talk of the decline of the aristocracy or the rise of the bourgeoisie; in the second, we are concerned with the increase or decrease of the height and steepness of the stratification pyramid in regard to wealth, power, or occupational prestige within groups-for example, when we say that the American Black population now has a higher stratification profile than it had at the turn of the century. In contrast to evolutionary and “progressive” thought, and in tune with his overall view of the course of human history, Sorokin argued that no consistent trend toward either the heightening or the flattening of stratificational pyramids can be discerned. Instead, all that can be observed is ceaseless fluctuation. At times, differences between the poor and the rich may be reduced through the impact of equalitarian forces, but at other times un-egalitarian tendencies will again assert themselves. Or at one point democratic participation will reduce differences in political power, while at another aristocratic and dictatorial politics will successfully increase the height of the political pyramid. In similar ways, some groups decline and others rise in ceaseless fluctuation. Exterior features of the architecture of social structures having been sketched, Sorokin proceeds to summarize their inner construction, to wit the character and disposition of the floors, the elevators, and the staircases that lead from one story to another; the ladders and accommodations for climbing up and going down from story to story (this metaphor being almost as characteristic of the stratification literature as an even more widespread image of a ladder). This brings him to the concrete details of his study of social mobility. Social mobility is understood as the transition of people from one social position to another. There are two types of social mobility, horizontal and vertical.

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The first concerns movements from one social position to another situated on the same level, as in a movement from Baptist to Methodist affiliation, or from work as a foreman with Ford to similar work with Chrysler. The second refers to transitions of people from one social stratum to one higher or lower in the social scale, as in ascendant movements from rags to riches or in the downward mobility of inept children of able parents. Both ascending and descending movements occur in two principal forms: the penetration of individuals of a lower stratum into an existing higher one, and the descent of individuals from a higher social position to one lower on the scale; or the collective ascent or descent of whole groups relative to other groups in the social pyramid. But-and this is what distinguished Sorokin’s orientation from that of many contemporary students of stratification and mobility-his main focus was upon collective, not on individual phenomena. As he puts it, “The cases of individual infiltration into an existing higher stratum or of individuals dropping from a higher social layer into a lower one are relatively common and comprehensible. They need no explanation. The second form of social ascending and descending, "the rise and fall of groups, must be considered more carefully.” Groups and societies, according to Sorokin, may be distinguished according to their differences in the intensiveness and generality of social mobility. There may be stratified societies in which vertical mobility is virtually nil and others in which it is very frequent. We must therefore be careful to distinguish between the height and profile of stratification, and the prevalence or absence of social mobility. In some highly stratified societies where the membranes between strata are thin, social mobility is very high. By contrast, other societies with various profiles and heights of stratification have hardly any stairs and elevators to allow members to pass from one floor to another, so that the strata are largely closed, rigidly separated, immobile, and virtually impenetrable. This acknowledgement of a high degree of historical variation marking different stratification systems must be regarded as a noteworthy merit to Sorokin’s approach whose historicity in that sense compares favourably with many, if not most, other approaches to social stratification. In addition, assuming that there are no societies in which strata are absolutely closed and none where social mobility is absolutely free from obstacles, one must recognize that Sorokin’s distinctions, even though stated too metaphorically, are of considerable heuristic value.

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In regard to degrees of openness and closure, Sorokin holds to his usual position. No perpetual trend toward either increase or decrease of vertical mobility can be discerned in the course of human history; all that can be noticed are variations through geographical space and fluctuations in historical time. Attempting to identify the channels of vertical mobility and the mechanisms of social selection and distribution of individuals within different social strata, Sorokin identifies the army, the church, the school, as well as political, professional, and economic organizations, as principal conduits of vertical social circulation (which classification finds itself, in a modified form, also in the functionalist theory of social stratification). They are the “sieves” that sift individuals who claim access to different social strata and positions. All these institutions are involved in social selection and distribution of the members of a society. They decide which people will climb and fall; they allocate individuals to various strata; they either open gates for the flow of individuals or create impediments to their movements. Without minutely detailing the many ways in which Sorokin illustrates the operation of these institutions or the way in which he shows why at a given time certain stratification profiles have called for specific mechanisms of selection, we should take note, however, of what he considers a “permanent and universal” basis for inter-occupational stratification, namely: “The importance of an occupation for the survival and existence of a group as a whole”, which again reveals another similarity to Moore and Davis’ later functional theory of stratification. The occupations that are considered most consequential in a society, Sorokin states, are those that “are connected with the functions of organization and control of a group”. Regarding the impact of actual rates of social mobility, as well as the ideology of social mobility, on modern societies, we find Sorokin offers a fresh approach in the light of current experience. Far from indulging in unalloyed enthusiasm about high degrees of social mobility, Sorokin, like Durkheim, was at pains to highlight it’s both dysfunctional and its functional aspects. He stressed, among other things, the heavy price in mental strain, mental disease, cynicism, social isolation, and loneliness of individuals cut adrift from their social moorings. On the other hand, he also stressed the increase in tolerance and the facilitation of intellectual

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life (as a result of discoveries and inventions) that were likely to occur with more frequency in highly mobile societies Thus, it may be conceded that analyst of social stratification, social mobility, and related matters can still learn from Sorokin’s work. It still remains a veritable storehouse of ideas. Above all “we need to take Sorokin’s advice when he urges us to consider social mobility as a form of social exchange. Just as Levi-Strauss brought about a revolution in the study of kinship (stressing that marriage is to be seen as an exchange between elementary families), so Sorokin presents the innovative idea that social mobility does not primarily concern the placement of individuals but is to be understood as exchange between social groups” (Ridener 2002). According to Sorokin, by fostering the circulation of individuals in social space, such exchange increases or decreases the specific weight and power of the groups and strata between which they move. “This central idea, if more fully elaborated, could be the impetus for a great deal of research in social stratification” (Ridener 2002). The above-cited commentator is, sure enough, entitled to such a view, but the reader would be forgiven for failing to share this enthusiasm for introducing the plank of social exchange to social analysis. Unfortunately, there is no space here for a comprehensive critical discussion, but the interested reader should consult (Tittenbrun 2011a), as well as a later chapter on Homans in this book. Anyway, what, according to Wright, is “the contrast between unidimensional and multidimensional perspectives on class and stratification” (1979) in actuality refers exclusively to stratification as opposed to class. It would be difficult to state as a general proposition that either of those perspectives is inherently superior to the other one. One-dimensional approaches can provide a good deal of factual knowledge concerning whether income or wealth distribution, etc., which may be taken advantage of within alternative perspectives, not sharing numerous shortcomings marking social stratification. Whilst the unidimensional framework could be accused of prioritising just one specific aspect of societal hierarchies, its alternative may fall victim of another deficiency-they can avoid arbitrariness, tied to the focus on a single parameter, but often at the expense of relative lucidity that in their case comes to be clouded by what is in effect a multifactorial approach, whose essential flaw consists in their anti-dialectical approach, which has little in common with such simple

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enumerations of a number of mutually interacting factors, lacking any more sophisticated analytic underpinning.

CHAPTER III SOCIAL MOBILITY AND SOCIAL STRATIFICATION

It is difficult to say too what extent its concrete shape could be credited to Pitirim Sorokin, but the fact of the matter is that in social stratification research there has emerged a strand that focuses on social mobility. Exponents of the perspective under consideration define it as drawing on Weber’s approach according to which A “'social class' makes up the totality of those class situations within which individual and generational mobility is easy and typical” (1978 [1922]:302). As argued elsewhere in the book, there are some problems with the Weberian definition. Still, there can be no denying that it is firmly embedded (even if that relationship is not perfect) in his broader theoretical framework. Meanwhile, the perspective being discussed is distinctly under-theorised. Thus, Blau and Duncan (1967) used smallest space analysis to explore the relationships of father to son mobility, deploying aggregated occupational groupings. Their explicit aim was to confirm their existing socio economic status scheme The measure of social distance, inasmuch as it is independent of the rank order of occupations based on average income and education, provides an independent check for validating this rank order. (Blau and Duncan 1967:69) They concluded that the first dimension produced from the analysis “evidently represents the socio economic status of occupations” (Blau and Duncan 1967: 71). Blau and Duncan’s work on social distance amounts to a verification of their existing labour market scheme. A similar approach was used by studies within the European tradition of research on social stratification. Both Hope (1972) and Macdonald (1972), for example, developed a dimensional analysis of father son mobility tables, in which the first dimension of the analysis produced an ordering of occupations interpreted either as a 'status’ ordering (Hope) or as an ordering in terms of 'skill or education’ (Macdonald). Both studies also found an orthogonal

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second dimension, in which farmers and agricultural workers were at a distance from other occupations, which was interpreted as a rural/urban dimension. The failure on the part of class analysts to address seriously the information on social structure revealed by relational data has been criticized by a number of authors. Very rarely has the distance information contained within mobility tables been used to modify (rather than confirm or explore) the grouping or ordering of class categories (Breiger 1981; Levine 1990; Vanneman 1977). Breiger, for example, argues that the procedures of mobility analysis should be reversed, with the flow data in mobility tables used to determine the nature of class aggregations (Breiger 1981:578). Similarly, Levine has argued that the stratification order should be identified on “behavioural criteria” (Levine 1990:208). However, such statements of the need to identify occupational hierarchies through interactional criteria have had little impact on conventional stratification research. "Although such studies have used distance information to re order class groupings, they have not affected the classifications and categories more widely used within conventional analysis” (Bottero, Prandy 2003). Again, this little impact on the mainstream theory of stratification of the research stream discussed above should come as no surprise, given its poor theoretical content. Even irrespective of confusing strata with classes to which error we should have been used at this point, it offers no theoretical framework within which to interpret its empirical findings. Such framework, by contrast, can be provided by the theory of ownership of labour power. Education, skill and some other factors mentioned in mobility studies refer in point of fact to certain qualities of labour power. From this perspective, owners of more complex, i.e. skilled labour power can access a larger pool of jobs than those holding less skilled or unskilled, simple or raw labour power. The theory in question is in reality, as has been argued above, much more sensitive empirically so that it enables one to calibrate one’s research tools to specify many different categories of this crucial object of economic ownership. It is worthwhile to bear in mind those basic premises of socio-economic structuralism (which will be examined later at greater detail) also during our further examination of other approaches to stratification.

CHAPTER IV INFORMATION AND DIFFERENTIATION

The term “differentiation” featuring in the head registers caution on our part-we do not want to predetermine whether it is actually the stratification framework that particular theories considered in this chapter belong to. A case in point is kind of French cocktail analysed in the section below.

IV.1. The discrete charm of capital or the pitfalls of hierarchy Pierre Bourdieu develops his model of the class structure by means of an analysis of survey data which include a variety of indicators of the economic and cultural capital possessed by individuals located in positions throughout the occupational system. The model may be thought of as a factorial space constituted by three orthogonal axes. The first (and most important) axis differentiates locations in the occupational system according to the total volume of capital (economic and cultural) possessed by incumbents. For Bourdieu, class location is a function of position on this axis. To illustrate, his data purportedly indicate that members of occupational categories such as industrialists, private sector executives, and college professors occupy overlapping positions at the upper end of the axis, and hence share the same class location; Bourdieu thus refers to these categories collectively as the “dominant class” (or sometimes the “bourgeoisie”). In turn, manual workers and farm laborers- which in conjunction form the so-called popular classes (“les classes populaires”) occupy overlapping positions at the other end of the axis, indicating that they share a class location opposed to the occupations making up the dominant class; In between, we find overlapping occupational categories such as small business owners, technicians, secretaries, and primary school teachers, which are collectively termed the “petty bourgeoisie” (cf. Bourdieu 1984 (1979):128-9). The second axis in the factorial space differentiates positions within class locations. Bourdieu refers to opposed positions along this axis with the Marxian vocabulary of “class fractions.” Weininger points out, though,

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that “this terminology, however, should not be interpreted according to Marxian theories, as the meaning he attributes to it falls well outside the scope of Marxism.” Indeed, from the viewpoint of French sociologist, classes are divided internally according to the composition of the capital held by incumbents that is, the relative preponderance of economic or cultural capitals within “the set of actually usable resources and powers”. Thus, occupational categories within the dominant class are differentiated from one another such that professors and “artistic producers” the occupations whose incumbents hold the greatest cultural capital and the least economic capital are opposed to industrialists and commercial employers the occupations whose incumbents hold a preponderance of economic capital but relatively little cultural capital. Located in between these two polar extremes are the professions, whose incumbents exhibit a relatively symmetrical asset structure. In a similar vein, the petty bourgeoisie is differentiated along the second axis between the small business owners, endowed primarily with economic capital, and primary school teachers, endowed primarily with cultural capital. Intermediate between them are categories such as technicians, office workers, and secretaries. In addition, the occupational division of labor is differentiated along a third axis, one which attempts at some kind of dynamic approach. On the basis of indicators of the two forms of capital of the family of origin, this axis differentiates positions according to the trajectories followed by their incumbents or in other words, according to the change or stability they have experienced over time in the volume and composition of their capital. For example, according to Bourdieu’s data, members of the professions are more likely than any other members of the bourgeoisie to have been born into this class. Even at this point it is evident what havoc can “capital” concepts wreak on a conceptual framework-in this particular instance blurring the line between the economic and the non-economic, which finds expression in the estate of teachers being reclassified as a social class, although this status pertains only to that minority that are employed at privately held establishments. Therefore, before presenting some further content of the framework under consideration, we must examine in detail the notion of capitals, as it is evident that the former stands or falls upon the latter. For it is to be

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surmised that the formulation on the economic that appears at the surface as non-economic refers precisely to this controversial set of concepts.

IV.2. Concepts of capital in Pierre Bourdieu’s theory It may be mentioned that our analysis (focusing on Bourdieu’s work rather than the secondary literature) has even broader relevance-Bourdieu is the most prolific exponent of an entire trend, nay, movement very much in academic and popular vogue. Suffice it to say that it would be difficult to indicate a field of inquiry in which this or that unorthodox, extra-economic concept of capital would not have been deployed as a research tool. The social world is accumulated history, and if it is not to be reduced to a discontinuous series of instantaneous mechanical equilibria between agents who are treated as interchangeable particles, one must reintroduce into it the notion of capital and with it, accumulation and all its effects. Capital is accumulated labour (in its materialized form or its “incorporated,” embodied form) which, when appropriated on a private, i.e. exclusive basis by agents or groups of agents, enables them to appropriate social energy in the form of reified or living labour, i.e. the set of constraints, inscribed in the very reality of that world, which govern its functioning in a durable way, determining the chances of success for practices. (Bourdieu 1986). The passage cited above is in some way a strange animal; it looks like an orthodox exposition of historical materialism but not quite. One cannot object to the French theorist’s historical approach but the thing is it is not adhered to. It is, namely, inconsistent with viewing capital as an explanatory link of that historicity. This is all the more odd that Bourdieu invokes the notion of private property which is an essential precondition of capital’s existence. How then can be the presence of capital accounted for in the whole long span of human history without private property? On the other hand, the above proposition cannot be reversed, that is to say, it is not the case that the existence of private property relations is a sufficient condition of capital; and keep in mind that all the time we are talking about economic capital. Thus even this short passage is not free of contradictions. It may well be that the notion of other capital forms is a response to problems signalled above but it is at least equally possible that those concepts will prove to create more problems than they are able to solve. Such a suspicion could be aroused by some Bourdieusian formulations. It will be especially interesting to see in what sense, if any, those other forms of capital can be said to consist of accumulated or

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crystallised labour, as is the case with economic capital. In other words, will the French thinker be able to demonstrate in practice that all forms of capital are indeed homologous? Be that as it may, Bourdieu’s programmatic proposition is astonishing: “the structure of the distribution of the different types and subtypes of capital at a given moment in time represents the immanent structure of the social world, i.e. the set of constraints, inscribed in the very reality of that world, which govern its functioning in a durable way, determining the chances of success for practices” (1996). This is an extreme form of reductionism and essentialism. Behind all appearances there lies a deep all-embracing and all-powerful structure of the social world. Based on the above claim alone, the entire social life should be reducible to a number of capitals, and because with all their diversity the particular capitals represent one and the same phenomenon, the social life is driven by the single logic of capital, or perhaps Capital. Ironically, given Bourdieu's left-wing convictions, this approach represents a praiseworthy non-partisanship, or, if you will, perverseness. Contradictory is also Bourdieu’s definition of capital as “accumulated, human labour”, which can potentially produce different forms of profits (1986:241). The first part of the definition draws on the standard Marxian approach, and only the second part may give a hint of a different perspective in that it uses the phrase of “different forms of profit”. Has the term of profit been used here in a scientific or merely metaphoric, common-sense meaning? Bourdieu further develops his aforementioned theorem, asserting that “It is in fact impossible to account for the structure and functioning of the social world unless one reintroduces capital in all its forms and not solely in the one form recognised by economic theory” (1996). This extremely strong claim may give the reader a clue what is forthcoming but what really calls attention is another simplification, this time around related to what Bourdieu refers to as “economic theory” that supposedly entertains one unified concept of capital. This, needless to say, is far from the truth-capital is a hotly disputed concept; suffice it to recall how numerous are works of Marx’s opponents developing a critique of the latter’s notion of capital and proposing such a notion of their own. The presence of such a misunderstanding as an initial premise of the theory of various capitals does not bode well for the latter.

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And indeed, further claims put forth by the French sociologist are just as contradictory and convoluted as the above-cited ones: Economic theory has allowed to be foisted upon it a definition of the economy of practices which is the historical invention of capitalism; and by reducing the universe of exchanges to mercantile exchange, which is objectively and subjectively oriented toward the maximization of profit, i.e., (economically) self-interested, it has implicitly defined the other forms of exchange as noneconomic, and therefore disinterested. In particular, it defines as disinterested those forms of exchange which ensure the transubstantiation whereby the most material types of capital those which are economic in the restricted sense can present themselves in the immaterial form of cultural capital or social capital and vice versa. […] In other words, the constitution of a science of mercantile relationships which, inasmuch as it takes for granted the very foundations of the order it claims to analyse private property, profit, wage labour, etc. is not even a science of the field of economic production, has prevented the constitution of a general science of the economy of practices, which would treat mercantile exchange as a particular case of exchange in all its forms. (Bourdieu 1966).

How come, then, that later on, (below in the present body of text) Bourdieu points to some different forms of profit, in contradistinction to the last paragraph where the notion of profit has been associated solely to the economy? Again, our creeping suspicion is that in the course of getting to know further chapters or sections within Bourdieu’s theoretical book the French scholar will not be able to provide anything like a satisfactory answer both to the aforementioned question and those ones which will be put below. Anyway, having thus introduced two key capital terms, Bourdieu goes on to attack economics for, symptomatically, its economism: “It is remarkable that the practices and assets thus salvaged from the “icy water of egotistical calculation” (and from science) are the virtual monopoly of the dominant class as if economism had been able to reduce everything to economics only because the reduction on which that discipline is based protects from sacrilegious reduction everything which needs to be protected. If economics deals only with practices that have narrowly economic interest as their principle and only with goods that are directly and immediately convertible into money (which makes them quantifiable), then the universe of bourgeois production and exchange becomes an exception and can see itself and present itself as a realm of disinterestedness. As everyone knows, priceless things have their price,

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Chapter IV and the extreme difficulty of converting certain practices and certain objects into money is only due to the fact that this conversion is refused in the very intention that produces them, which is nothing other than the denial (Verneinung) of the economy. A general science of the economy of practices, capable of re-appropriating the totality of the practices which, although objectively economic, are not and cannot be socially recognized as economic, and which can be performed only at the cost of a whole labour of dissimulation or, more precisely, euphemization, must endeavor to grasp capital and profit in all their forms and to establish the laws whereby the different types of capital (or power, which amounts to the same thing) change into one another” (Bourdieu 1966).

What attracts attention in the above cited passage is an unequivocal admission that what is objectively economic is perceived or treated by the public as non-economic. Bourdieu was even more an anthropologist than sociologist which makes one wonder how he could overlook a well-known conception of his fellow anthropologist, expanded upon by many others, i.e. Karl Polanyi who distinguished between substantive and formal understanding of economics. According to this distinction, only economics in the second sense restricts itself to the logical and historical bounds of the market economy, whereas the same discipline in its substantive guise goes beyond the logic of profit and monetary exchange. This gap is the more incomprehensible that in another context Bourdieu implicitly and partially at least refers to the above-mentioned distinction; he distinguishes between “archaic economies", whose function is to limit and hide the callous brutality of economic interests, versus a capitalist economy, which allows room for “the clear, economic (i.e. economical) concepts of the undisguised self-interest economy” (Bourdieu 1977:172). How important is this kind of specification is evidenced by, inter alia, the following claim by one of his numerous enthusiasts who contends that “it is possible to convert one form of capital into another. This entails a conceptual break with the economism of Marx and the classical economists” (Svendsen 2001). This claim, false as it is, suggests that an important reason for popularity of Bourdieu’s notion (which, as is argued in the book, is not supported by its analytical quality) may beparadoxically, considering Bourdieu’s background—its appeal for antiMarxists, who are always fishing for new arguments-thus, the authors of that hue (Kim, Kim 2007) use the concept concerned seemingly to refute what they consider to be the Marxist view on the relation between the base and the superstructure: “cultural capital, a by-product of superstructure to

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some extent, contributes to reproducing the production relation and also to determining or continuing the unequal structure in capitalist societies”. There is no space to pursue the issue further, but the interested reader may be referred to a fully blown theory of interactions taking place between the economic structure and the various non-economic structures of society presented in (Tittenbrun 2011a). But one cannot not comment on Bourdieu’s paradoxical statement which turns the matter on its head by charging Marx with economism, whereas the latter characterisation pertains to his own framework in which one economic relation in the shape of capital gets magically proliferated across the entire society. If this is not economism, then what is? In the same vein, the followers of their French idol praise him because “Bourdieu’s alternative is to depart from such substantialism and materialism by localising the economic forces behind all human actions, without necessarily seeing these as derived from naked self-interest, as the economists would have it” (Bourdieu 1977:17-8; Snook 1990:169; May 1996:125). This is not the only instance in which Bourdieu chooses a soft option by constructing a straw man the fight with whom is much less tough than with the real opponent. It follows that the real boundary between the economic and non-economic lies elsewhere than one delineated above by the French scholar, and, by extension, his charge of economism may or may be not true depending on which economics he is talking about. Paradoxically, the aforementioned charge applies, however, to his own project-“A general science of the economy of practices, capable of reappropriating the totality of the practices which, although objectively economic, are not and cannot be socially recognised as economic” (Bourdieu 1966). His initial move along this route is a laughable stratagem whereby he conveniently glosses over the fact that what he terms economism to be rejected by him owes its existence solely to his own shameful practice of castrating alternative, or considered by him as such, approaches, which provides a convenient starting point for his own conception, whose justification, however, smacks of the very reductionism of which he is so fond of accusing his rivals. His analysis would not restrict itself to actions which can be conceptualised in what Marx terms “callous cash payment” (Bourdieu 1977:177), but must encompass also actions marked by an apparent disinterestedness, behind which people seek to camouflage the economic drives which lie behind their efforts to acquire a capital. As noted above, for Bourdieu, all forms of capital can

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always, by default, be converted into economic capital which is made possible by “a conceptual break with” the economics practice of “artificially isolating an economical economy from a cultural economy” (Bourdieu 1990a:113, Lash1993). One wonders why the above list does not include “political economy”, whose convergence with an academic discipline would immediately reveal the glaring lack of validity of such concepts as “a cultural economy”, which term is, to be sure, applicable to some specific economic sectors, but this definitely is not the meaning the French sociologist and his followers are interested in. Before tracking the above-mentioned “reappropriation” let us draw the reader’s attention to a few other contradictions and ambiguities present in the above-cited statement. Bourdieu states that economic theory “defines as disinterested those forms of exchange which ensure the transubstantiation whereby the most material types of capital those which are economic in the restricted sense can present themselves in the immaterial form of cultural capital or social capital and vice versa. Interest, in the restricted sense it is given in economic theory, cannot be produced without producing its negative counterpart, disinterestedness. The class of practices whose explicit purpose is to maximize monetary profit cannot be defined as such without producing the purposeless finality of cultural or artistic practices and their products; the world of bourgeois man, with his double-entry accounting, cannot be invented without producing the pure, perfect universe of the artist and the intellectual and the gratuitous activities of art-for-art’s sake and pure theory” (1996). Bourdieu is not the only theoretical “capitalist” using a flawed notion of property. It is remarkable that the theorist who in an adjacent sentence writes about private property can oppose it to the “gratuitous”-purportedly reigning culture and pure science. In actual fact, what is treated by Bourdieu as non-economic and non-property, constitutes, as is argued in the relevant chapter, the very substance of economic ownership. The benefits inherent in the ownership of the factors of economic activity always are, to a lesser or larger extent, gratuitous. One can see that the aforementioned error pushes the theorist to the (stressed earlier) reclaiming the non-economic sphere of social life by his own theory which as declared, would use economic concepts and yet would itself not be economistic, or economic “in the restricted sense”. But some clue how this economic and yet not economic theory will likely to look like can be gauged from another amazing definition by Bourdieu,

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this time around equating capital with power. Of course, all hinges upon how the latter is understood, but even if Bourdieu implicitly adopts a broad notion of power, political power must figure prominently in any such definition, which means that, contrary to his aims, the French theorist indulges in just another form of reductionism, or, looking at the matter from another angle, imperialism. Of course, the culprit of all that mess would certainly reject such an accusation out of hand. Does not, after all, his conception of a variety of capitals respect their qualitative distinctiveness? But there is no need to take his word for this. “Depending on the field in which it functions, and at the cost of the more or less expensive transformations which are the precondition for its efficacy in the field in question, capital can present itself in three fundamental guises: as economic capital, which is immediately and directly convertible into money and may be institutionalised in the forms of property rights; as cultural capital, which is convertible, on certain conditions, into economic capital and may be institutionalised in the forms of educational qualifications; and as social capital, made up of social obligations (“connections”), which is convertible, in certain conditions, into economic capital and may be institutionalised in the forms of a title of nobility” (Bourdieu 1996:243).

The answer to the above, ostensibly rhetoric question is no. In the last analysis there is only one real substance of social reality which is capital that can appear in a number of guises, which does not, however, disturb this ultimate underlying unity. This is an unacceptable practice in its own right, which assessment is further strengthened by the absence of any grounds for a series of particular equation marks and identities postulated by Bourdieu. Referring to his formulation given above, patens as a form of what he would term property rights can indeed be regarded as a kind of intellectual property. But this does not mean that they cease to constitute economic phenomena; this is but one example of the perils of the broad anthropological definition of culture that is discussed later on in the book. On such a basis a machine could also be classed as a cultural object rather than an economic one, and indeed Bourdieu frames the latter as an element of culture. This nonsense is due to the formalist or non-dialectical mind-set of the French theorist, which is analysed at more depth below-in the context of his connections with the whole direction of French structuralism. Bourdieu, to be sure, did not maintain that there are no differences between economic and cultural capital. However, in his view they boil

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down to the different modes of legitimation pertaining to the two respective dimensions of inequality. In the case of cultural capital, despite the fact that cultural capital is acquired in the home and the school via exposure to a given set of cultural practices-and therefore has a social origin-it is liable to be perceived as inborn “talent,” and its holder “gifted,” as a result of the fact that it is embodied in particular individuals. Moreover, because the school system transforms “inherited” cultural capital into 'scholastic’ cultural capital, the latter is predisposed to appear as an individual “achievement”. For example, researchers have demonstrated that what they conventionally classify as middle-class parents typically talk more to infants and young children than do workingclass or poor parents. As a result, middle-class children often have larger vocabularies when they enter school, and subsequently score more highly on standardized tests measuring verbal skills (Hart and Risley 1999; Lareau 2003). “Nevertheless, teachers, parents, and students themselves are likely to interpret the differences in test scores as a matter of natural talent or individual effort” (Lareau, Weininger 2003). Pertinent as those observations are (barring the unfortunate terminology), they do not capture any unique feature of cultural, as distinct from economic inequalities. In the latter instance just as in the former one powerful class ideologies and rationalisations are at work to disguise the real socio-economic source of the disparities concerned, and among those, incidentally, individualistic myths of self-made men, are, and long have been salient in capitalism's economic life, notably in its stockholder, Anglo-Saxon variety. An important source of all this confusion, and at the same time a further misnomer lurking behind the construct under consideration is revealed in the following statement: “Cultural capital (Bourdieu, 1986; Bourdieu & Passeron, 1977) includes culture-based factors and indicators of symbolic wealth that help define a person's class” (Wells 2008). What we have in mind is the term 'symbolic wealth’. Symbolic or not, wealth is closely related to property, as is, on its side, also the following statement “cultural “habits and dispositions” comprise a resource capable of generating “profits”; they are potentially subject to monopolization by individuals and groups; and, under appropriate conditions, they can be transmitted from one generation to the next” (Lareau and Weininger 2003). And there lies the rub. It is arguable that social differentiation in the noneconomic realm is grounded in non-economic property relations, as discussed at length in other publications of the author. This suggests that

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the inclusion of class in the above-mentioned particular context, is -from our perspective-ill-conceived, since although according to our approach classes may be involved in certain non-economic property relations, it is nevertheless economic ownership that determines their location in the structure of societal differentiation. The second point suggested by the above-cited statement is that, in a sense, but quite different from one intended by Bourdieu, his pointing to the economic origin of his multiple concepts is correct, namely, the French thinker “capitals” refer to some actual forms of property, only that including non-economic property, of which Bourdieu's connections are but one example (as elaborated in our theory of social estates, laid out in the next chapter- drawn on Weber’s notion of 'soziale Stünde’, commonly mistranslated as 'status groups’), WHILE Educational qualifications are of course part and parcel of the ownership of labour power, and in connection with economic capital Bourdieu himself mentions the concept of property rights. Indeed, referring back to the above distinction between socio-economic classes and non-economic estates, Bourdieu’s “Distinction” revolves around precisely the relation between social classes and status groups. According to Weininger (2005), the latter are understood, following Weber, as collectives defined by a uniformity of lifestyle, which sure enough constitutes a pared down notion, leaving out of the picture other elements of Weber’s sociologically rich conception. There is an earlier article, prefiguring many of the ideas to be found in “Distinction”. While for Weber class and estate (not status group!) formed two types of real entities which “would come together more or less frequently (according to the type of society)”, this particular French reader of his work maintains instead that “to give Weberian analyses all of their force and impact, it is necessary to see them instead as nominal unities which are always the result of a choice to accent the economic aspect or the symbolic aspect aspects which always coexist in the same reality” (Bourdieu 1966: 21213). For our purposes the mention about merely nominal character of both categories involved is crucial, since it corroborates the relationship between the Bourdieusian framework and that of social stratification. It can be also seen that Bourdieu brings down Weber’s opposition between class and estate to what fails to render the latter, as it turns it into not completely analogical distinction between the material (or “economic”)

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and the symbolic. In addition, the French thinker kind of deontologises Weberian notions, giving them purely epistemic interpretation, as in his view the latter should not be regarded as alternative types of social differentiation giving rise to different types of social collectivities. Bourdieu, namely, says that the distinction between class and status group must be viewed purely as an analytical convenience-one which Bourdieu, moreover, is quite willing to disallow. As a result Bourdieu would insist that class analysis should not be reduced to the analysis of economic relations; rather, it simultaneously entails an analysis of symbolic relations, roughly along the lines of the status differentiation referred to by Weber (or rather, according to the Bourdieusian interpretation of the latter, which is anything but faithful to the original). Now, as it has been argued in some other contexts, the issue is by any means an analysis of an ideational dimension of a given class existence per se; but kind of fallacy of misplaced concreteness- to use A. Whitehead’s neat phrase-i.e. stretching the said aspect beyond that focus to constitute a built-in component of class definition, as this is bound to give rise to incoherence and confusion. Meanwhile, Bourdieu adds yet another argument justifying the contention associating his approach to societal differentiation with stratification. Namely, the author of “Distinction”-contrary to what the title of his work implies, as it were-rejects one of the most basic objectives of class theory, consisting in drawing -on the basis of well specified theoretical premisesclear dividing lines between classes. The reasons behind this rejection are worth noting, too: Numerous studies of ‘social classes’ merely elaborate the practical questions which are forced on those who hold political power. Political leaders are continually faced with the practical imperatives which arise from the logic of the struggle within the political field, such as... the need to mobilize the greatest possible number of votes while at the same time asserting the irreducibility of their project to those of other leaders. Thus they are condemned to raise the problem of the social world in the typically substantialist logic of the boundaries between groups and the size of the mobilizable group... (Bourdieu 1991:246) Well, Bourdieu’s credentials as a sociologist of knowledge are extremely problematic, to say the least. The above argument, reducing-as it doestheoretical considerations to simply political convenience constitutes an incredible over-simplification and crude vulgarisation of the question, thus

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echoing Stalinist intellectual abuses (which, needless to say, could have fatal consequences). Bourdieu’s justification for discarding any sort of theoretical specification of whatever boundaries may separate particular classes from one another is hardly convincing. As Weininger (2005) clarifies, for Bourdieu “argumentation over the boundary separating one social collectivity from another is a fundamental form of political conflict, and Bourdieu adhered throughout his career to a vision of social science which repudiated the amalgamation of political and scientific interest”. Now, this makes Bourdieu’s overall sociological credentials look even more suspect-the association (or lack thereof) between theory and the political process cannot be predetermined by the creator of the former, as it is always decided by the concrete historical context, the resultant being, of course, mediated by the theory concerned. Meanwhile, the French scholar kind of turns the above argument on its head, claiming -as he does-that the procedure of theoretically based class delimitation leads to framing classes as “self to -subsistent entities which come “preformed,” and only then...enter into) dynamic flows...” (Emirbayer 1997:283). We are told that “both of these objections stem[...] from Bourdieu’s antipathy towards arguments (frequent during the 1960s and 1970s) over the “real” lines of division separating classes -above all, those separating the middle class from the proletariat and the political implications of the location of these lines” (Weininger 2005). What lies behind the above named claims of the French theorist is in fact a Heraclitean vision of the world as an incessant flow without any discernible structures; in which everything is and is not, for everything is fluid, is constantly changing, constantly coming into being and passing away. Only in this way can one make sense of the aforementioned attack on the very idea of structural demarcation as leading of necessity to a static, or at best pseudo-dynamic view of things. Meanwhile, this private opinion on the relation between the structural and the dynamic ought to remain what it actually is-an idiosyncratic idea, galvanising some ancient antinomies and completely ignoring advances of modern science, which refute the said view once and for all. Even if experimental physics tells us that the lifespan of, say, an elementary particle amounts to fractions of seconds, this does not alter the fact that during that time period-however short it would be-the entity in question exists as a definite whole, structure, differing from its environment. What processes it is subsequently subject to does not matter from this point of

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view; similarly, social classes may grow, shrink, even annihilate one another, but this does not negate the validity of distinguishing them in the first place. Quite the contrary, it stands to REASON THAT without the latter step, any dynamic or diachronic investigation would be impossible. How Bourdieu offers to address the problem is apparently driven by the proverb: A bad excuse is better than none. In his case the latter testifies to another philosophical source of inspiration-not that surprising, after all, considering that some key figures in the existentialist philosophy were Bourdieu’s countrymen. Anyway, this follower of Sartre insists that “the question with which all sociology ought to begin” is “that of the existence and mode of existence of collectives” (Bourdieu 1991:250), the implication being that boundaries need to be viewed in terms of social practices rather than theoretical framework. Given that this philosophical current was, as is well known, opposed to essentialism-whose presence has been earlier identified in Bourdieu’s work, his invocation of “existence” is bound to be regarded as -not that ingenious-excuse. And again, the following ominous implication of Bourdieu’s failure to distinguish social classes in the economy-the area where they were located with two classical class theories echoes with salient features of stratification: The entire argument in “Distinction revolves around the assumption that social collectivities are formed primarily in the area of consumption. And conversely, for Bourdieu, production is of at best 'secondary importance as a site in which the formation of solid ties and collective mobilization are likely to occur in the contemporary period (Weininger 2005:106)”. Again, skin-deep and under researched Bourdieu’s claims mirror some hackneyed views. Everybody knows, after all, that Western societies are “consumer societies”, born with “the consumer revolution” that in the long run leads inevitably to “consumerism”. Add to this such clichés as “the nation of shoppers”, and we have, more or less complete, set of terms describing the same phenomena Bourdieu investigated. After all, when nowadays friends have a chat, the topic of their conversation would be most likely the latest baseball match watched on TV, or the latest fashion of a dress bought by

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one or both ladies. True, but in point of fact this is not an argument for, but rather against the Bourdieusian theory. The aforementioned circumstances mean, after all, that the latter reflects what may be called folk sociologynotions and perceptions that naive (untrained) individuals have about the social world. First and foremost, any social science that confines itself to replicating what can be grasped at a common-sense level, loses its rationale-after all, is not the whole academic edifice good for nothing when all the scientific achievements are available to John Q Public? And the problem is, those pre-scientific “truths” do not move beyond the world of appearances; a case in point is the above-mentioned Bourdieu’s assertion concerning the relation between consumption and production, which in actual fact should be reversed- in particular J. K. Galbraith insisted on the inverse sequence consumers don’t initiate the production process, producers do, conditioning the needs of the consumers to what they produce. The system of production produces thus not only goods but also consumer needs. This transforms the imposed “freedom of choice” and “consumer sovereignty” into the hallmarks of industrial ideology Meanwhile, by choosing to concentrate on Homo consumericus rather than homo faber, the French thinker is bound to share all the illusions cherished by the former. Hence, what Marx and Engels wrote regarding an earlier historical period is, mutatis mutandis, applicable to the case under investigation as well: “the apparent absurdity of merging all the manifold relationships of people in the one relation of usefulness, this apparently metaphysical abstraction arises from the fact that in modern bourgeois society all relations are subordinated in practice to the one abstract monetary-commercial relation [...].” Holbach depicts the entire activity of individuals in their mutual intercourse, e.g., speech, love, etc., as a relation of utility and utilisation. [...] in this case moreover the use that I derive from some relation is entirely extraneous to this relation, as we saw above in connection with ability [Vermögen] that from each ability a product alien to it was demanded, a relation determined by social relations-and this is precisely the relation of utility. All this is actually the case with the bourgeois. For him only one relation is valid on its own account-the relation of exploitation; all other relations have validity for him only insofar as he can include them under this one relation; and even where he encounters relations which cannot be directly subordinated to the relation of exploitation, he subordinates them to it at least in his imagination. The material expression of this use is money which represents the value of all things, people and social relations. Incidentally, one sees at a glance that

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Chapter IV the category of “utilisation” is first abstracted from the actual relations of intercourse which I have with other people (but by no means from reflection and mere will) and then these relations are made out to be the reality of the category that has been abstracted from them themselves, a wholly metaphysical method of procedure. In exactly the same way and with the same justification, Hegel depicts all relations as relations of the objective spirit. Hence Holbach’s theory is the historically justified philosophical illusion about the bourgeoisie just then developing in France, whose thirst for exploitation could still be regarded as a thirst for the full development of individuals in conditions of intercourse freed from the old feudal fetters. Liberation from the standpoint of the bourgeoisie, i.e., competition, was, of course, for the eighteenth century the only possible way of offering the individuals a new career for freer development. The theoretical proclamation of the consciousness corresponding to this bourgeois practice, of the consciousness of mutual exploitation as the universal mutual relation of all individuals, was also a bold and open step forward. [...] Even if Sancho [this nickname could be in our context taken to refer to the author of “Distinction”) done the same thing in his “book” as Helvétius and Holbach did in the last century, the anachronism would still have made it ridiculous.[...] His sole service-rendered against his will and without realising it-was that he expressed the aspirations of the German petty bourgeois of today [...] The advances made by the theory of utility and exploitation, its various phases are closely connected with the various periods of development of the bourgeoisie. In the case of Helvétius and Holbach, the actual content of the theory never went much beyond paraphrasing [...] a method of expression which reflected the desire to reduce all relations to the relation of exploitation and to explain the intercourse of people from their material needs and the ways of satisfying them, [...] The theory which for the English was still simply the registration of facts becomes for the French a philosophical system. This generality devoid of positive content, such as we find it in Helvétius and Holbach, is essentially different from the substantial comprehensive view which is first found in Bentham and Mill. “The former corresponds to the struggling, still undeveloped bourgeoisie, the latter to the ruling, developed bourgeoisie” (1947, Ch. 3).

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It can be seen, then, that even the national labels appearing in the final paragraph can be left as they stand. To generalise, Marx’s approach is to inquire into the underlying social relations behind the surface appearance of reality. There is a mismatch between many of the appearances of capitalism and the actual social realities that underlay them. The world of appearance is dominated by fetishism. When individuals meet in the market they are merely exchanging commodities, seeking to fulfil their own needs and wants. While bourgeois economics sees this subjective, utility maximizing behaviour as the starting and ending point of economic analysis Marx sees that behind these transitory, fleeting acts of exchange lies a network of social relations, social relations that result in the allocation of labour time in order to meet society’s needs. It is the process of exchanging these things, these commodities, that creates and coordinates these social relations. Yet at the same time these social relations appear not to be social at all. They appear to be relations between individuals and commodities, or things. What Bourdieu has to offer by way of empirical illustration, let alone demonstration, of the thesis on the primacy of consumption is nothing but compelling. On the contrary, it brings to light additional shortcomings pertaining to his approach. Recall that “Distinction” is based on data collected in France in the 1960s and 1970s, which is important, since the best part of Bourdieu’s argument appears to be strongly context-dependent, locally relevant only. In his account Bourdieu reviews some data on consumption practices and preferences, including those having to do with “canonized” or high-brow forms of culture (art, literature, music, theater, etc). and those that belong to culture in the wider, anthropological sense of the term (food, sports, newspapers, clothing, interior decor, etc.). Bourdieu’s purpose is to show that the various indicators of lifestyle exhibit a structure that is -as he would have it-”homologous” to) that of social space. This implies that different preferences and practices cluster in different sectors of social space (Bourdieu 1998b (1994):4-6). As a next step, Bourdieu brings out what he terms the particular “scheme” or “principle” that underlies them, and which orients the expenditure of economic and cultural capital in a manner that supposedly gives rise to the semantic coherence of a lifestyle. In his view then, amongst the members

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of the dominant class, a unitary lifestyle emerges around what he calls “the sense of distinction.” This habitus is defined, above all, by its overriding aesthetic sensibility. It is paradoxical that the same scholar argued against using any deductive knowledge for the purpose of drawing a picture of a class structure. Meanwhile, it is the same Pierre Bourdieu, who does not shy away from exactly the practice he elsewhere condemns-his discourse is structured by the supreme principle of homology, the upshot being a blatantly essentialist reasoning, with any empirical evidence that might prove pertinent pushed aside. And this is potentially damaging for the thrust of the Bourdieusian argument, as (recall his above cited statement the role of the workplace in creating and maintaining some, if not most of the phenomena examined is a priori left out of the picture. Not considering the possibility that workers’ habitus, and thereby its effects are created and reproduced in the workplace leaves the book open to questions regarding the accuracy of the empirical story, which otherwise should come as no surprise at all, given his self-confessed “anti-empiricism” (Sulkunen 1982) -as we recall below, echoing the same attribute pertaining to the most prominent structuralist of them all, at least as cultural or social anthropology is concerned. After all, the flip side of any essentialism-all the more of structuralisminspired one -is its tendency toward reductionism, which is also noted by Catherine Belsey, who points to “the structuralist danger of collapsing all difference” (1983:17). Owing to its importance, we deal with the topic of the close affinity between Bourdieu and the French variety of structuralism, but at this juncture the reader’s attention should be drawn to Claude Lévi-Strauss’ (1962) treatment of the rules that govern social action (what he calls schemas, which term we literally find with Bourdieu) as generalizable procedures for the reproduction and enactment of social life. They make up structures. Another point of affinity between the two theorist concerned is the consequence of the above named limitations, which go some way toward explaining the Bourdieusian reluctance to extrapolate beyond the boundaries of what is in effect a case study. This circumstance is, however, profoundly disappointing; one would not expect such selflimitation in a book of this calibre and fame-rather, the expectation would

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be that the author will at least try to show how the current analysis might be useful in understanding other cases, as Bourdieu otherwise cherishes such ambitions (vide his “general science of the economy of practices”)., as well as in an analysis of some important aspects of the social efficacy of class. However, the outcome of Bourdieu’s musings is largely disappointing; what the reader gets instead is an extremely schematic exposition, bringing to mind the worst excesses of Stalinist Marxism, Zhdanov style. As Sulkunen (1982) clarifies, “the homology principle means simply that the habitus integrates different aspects of the life-style: taste in dietary patterns, housing patterns, style of dressing, aesthetic codes, etc. into a consistent whole. Thus the same principles (or meaning structures) that appear in working class clothing should be found in its dietary patterns and artistic taste”. Thus, the reader is told that the working class is characterised by the primacy of function over form-as opposed to the bourgeoisie. The entire description is built on this single tone-opposition (as the reader is reminded below, this was of course, the flagship notion of the structuralist framework) between two major classes, with the petty bourgeoisie occupying an intermediate position. In a manner characteristic of structural formalism, Bourdieu overplays the opposition in question, which in conjunction with his programmatic anti-empiricism that does not preclude, but conversely, implies that many empirical facts are smuggled in by the backdoor, thus fortifying the “glocalised” quality of Bourdieusian schemata-in the sense of an unstated localism of global aspirations, which precisely by virtue of that cryptic, as opposed to open, dependence upon concrete facts are doomed to failure. For instance, in Bourdieu's ahistorical view, the working class’ incapacity to participate in the race to claim those forms of culture whose legitimacy its members nonetheless acknowledge (at least implicitly) is so severe that they may be said to be “imbued with a sense of their cultural unworthiness” (Bourdieu 1984 [1979]:251). By contrast, according to Bourdieu “the petty bourgeois exhibits a lifestyle born of the combination of an aspiration to the bourgeois lifestyle, on the one hand, and insufficient economic or (especially) cultural capital to attain it, on the other. Its members are therefore inclined to a “cultural goodwill”: lacking “culture” (in the bourgeois sense) they tend to embrace “popularized” aesthetic forms (e.g. “light” opera)” (Weininger 2005). And the fact of the matter is that Remarks that MOVE beyond the confines of that matrix primarily serve to vindicate our earlier criticism; Bourdieu’s

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contention that the working class stands out by its “demand of choices that evidence a conformity with the class as a whole (which are viewed as an implicit demonstration of solidarity)” (Weininger 2005) remains unexplained, which is by any means surprising, given that such an explanation would in all likelihood call for his backing out of his own claim concerning the alleged irrelevance of the workplace as a condition for forming the said collective solidarity. Anyway, even at the present stage of analysis we are in position to pin down A KEY property of Bourdieu’s theory of capitals; his capital concepts do not bring anything new in the way of information on the social world, they merely replicate the content of other pre-existing concepts. The same applies to the Bourdieusian extension of the cultural capital concept: Cultural capital can exist in three forms: in the embodied state, i.e. in the form of long-lasting dispositions of the mind and body; in the objectified state, in the form of cultural goods (pictures, books, dictionaries, instruments, machines, etc)., which are the trace or realisation of theories or critiques of these theories, problematics, etc.; and in the institutionalised state, a form of objectification which must be set apart because, as will be seen in the case of educational qualifications, it confers entirely original properties on the cultural capital which it is presumed to guarantee. (Bourdieu 1996:243).

In developing the notion under consideration, Bourdieu’s starting point was his inquiry into the causes of the discrepancies in educational attainment shown by different social classes in France in the 1960s. For Bourdieu, the gap in access to economic capital had not been able adequately to account for the educational disparities present there. Instead, the French sociologist proposed that, above and beyond economic factors, two other forms of capital--cultural capital and social capital-should be looked to as responsible for the reproduction of class privilege. Within cultural capital Bourdieu (1986:243) focuses on “physical capital” as consisting in “long-lasting dispositions of the mind and body” that carry with them particular social and cultural meanings that set parameters for individual action and serve to reproduce and legitimize structures of inequality. When class inequality is conceptualized in this way, the differences that establish the broadly defined categories of upper, middle, and lower class are more than just differences in access to material, cultural, and social resources. Instead, they are differences that are actually embodied. In other words, class inequality can find expression in embodied

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ways, such as physical appearance, pronunciation, stride, style, posture, Body language, diet, handwriting, and so on. For Bourdieu, then, the body itself is a marker of social class, as particular embodied properties exist as a consequence of specific class practices. In Bourdieu’s view, for the body to be recognized as a “marker” of class, some bodily properties must have attached to them more (or less) symbolic value than others. These different “valuations” attached to the size, shape, and appearance of the body mean that individuals possessing particular valued bodily traits are more able to “exchange” these physical properties for other valued resources. In this way, Bourdieu views the corporeal as a form of currency that results in the unequal accumulation of material resources and, by extension, an important contributor to class inequality. (Perks 2012). There are several problems with the conception laid out above. Firstly, it assumes a peculiar concept of the physical where both the body and mind are recognised at par as physical objects. This is all the more odd that Bourdieu points also to the symbolic nature of what he defines as cultural capital. To consider human consciousness as nothing more than as a set of energetic at the end of the day material impulses of the brain is to indulge in a form of crude, naive materialism (cf. in this connection Bourdieu’s notion of “social energy” mentioned above). This kind of vulgar materialism turns out to be infectious at that, as evidenced by the following statement by one of Bourdieu’s adherents: “the direct producers of the work in its materiality (artist, writer, etc).” (Gracey 2007). Naturally, the fact that a painting, or a book appears in a material guise does by any means entail that the cultural objects in question are material, not ideal objects. For what matters in their case, the reason why a particular painting, or a poem are admired, is not their material form, but, conversely-ideal content. While indulging in this crude materialism or physicalism Bourdieu subscribes to the long tradition of French philosophy: consider, e.g. La Mettrie, this, needless to say constitute no justification for adopting this by no means just antiquarian doctrine- as it has been apparently galvanised by successes of neurology, and at an another plane, genetics in recent years. This assessment of the Bourdieusian notion, of course, calls into question its interpretation as one which “represents the social-structural change from materialism to postmaterialism” (Kim and Kim 2007), which claim becomes less surprising given the same authors” subsumption of even “environment [under] the mental sphere rather than the physical one”. Elsewhere, the French sociologist assures the reader that 'symbolic structures have an altogether extraordinary power of constitution [of the

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social structure] which has been greatly underestimated” (Bourdieu 1984:18). From our perspective, although surely it is not what Bourdieu means, his proposition has a modicum of applicability in the context of social estates, among the determinants of which THERE is also a nonownership relation of a symbolic nature. To identify such concrete cases is one thing, however, whilst to indulge in sweeping, all-encompassing assertions is quite another. A more extensive analysis of Bourdieu’s treatment of the symbolic goes beyond the confines of the present book, although by way of illustration, let us cite just one claim of the theorist whose contribution in that field is critically acclaimed; meanwhile, to lay out the following claim, picked out in a haphazard way one hardly needs any sociological training, a high school graduate would be a good match to one of the most famous social scientists of the past century, who used to announce also such “discoveries”: “any predicative statement with “the working class” as its subject conceals an existential statement (there is a working class)” (1991:250). Besides, the above-mentioned definition referring to dispositions, etc. overlaps, to a degree that it becomes indistinguishable from, another Bourdieu’s notion of habitus; after all, habitus is often defined as dispositions that are inculcated in the family but manifest themselves in different ways in each individual. (Harker, 1990:10; Webb, 2002:37; Gorder, 1980:226). Moreover, there is yet another term overlapping the above-mentioned one. What Bourdieu (1986) terms embodied cultural capital is tightly linked to the dispositions of the habitus, and Bourdieu describes it as a “corporeal hexis,” a “style of expression,” (1988: 56) “a durable way of standing, speaking, walking” (1990b: 70). Regarding specifically the central notion under consideration, it is our contention that a much better conceptualisation of the above-mentioned problematics is provided by our general theory of society, i.e. socioeconomic structuralism. Within the said framework society at large is conceived of as a system of four structures. One of these is the ideational structure whose products are to be sought amongst Bourdieu’s cultural goods. To describe analytically given objects we do not need any “capital”; nay, even “culture”.is not needed. The latter concept is commonly taken for granted, but its raison d’etre in sociology is nothing but self-evident. Cultural anthropology and cultural studies is another matter, without it those disciplines would lose their subject but in sociology, and in other

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social science disciplines, the concept does more harm than good owing to its inclusiveness and fuzziness. Essentially, culture in an anthropological sense i.e. all human phenomena that are not purely results of human genetics, or the totality of patterns of human behaviour and its products borders on the concept of society, its usefulness, or, rather, harmfulness is thus equal to that of “capital” understood in an inclusive, Bourdieusian sense. What is for the French scholar the prime example of cultural goods, i.e. tools and machines shall be regarded as such because they are indeed artefacts. In another context Bourdieu defines “cultural goods” as “paintings, monuments, machines, and any objects shaped by man” (Bourdieu 1996:255). What may be adequate for an anthropologist is, however, too general from the sociological point of view for which the former objects are to be considered as components of the economic structure of society, and lumping them together with the aforementioned monuments as being manmade is utterly useless from the standpoint of social theory. The following Bourdieu’s account is of some interest as showing his eagerness to enter the contest with human capital theory that claims an explanatory power in the same regard: “The notion of cultural capital initially presented itself to me, in the course of research, as a theoretical hypothesis which made it possible to explain the unequal scholastic achievement of children originating from the different social classes by relating academic success, i.e. the specific profits which children from the different classes and class fractions can obtain in the academic market, to the distribution of cultural capital between the classes and class fractions” (Bourdieu 1996:243).

This autobiographical confession is indeed useful in that it reveals the lengths to which will Bourdieu’s linguistic tricks go to justify his central idea; he first introduces the concept of profit with which, logically, the notion of capital as its underlying cause is associated. The trouble is, the premise of this reasoning is misplaced; why should educational attainment be dubbed “profit”? One could use other terms such as advantages or benefits as well in which case the connection with capital would be, however, not that apparent. But the whole proof of the alleged relationship is accomplished through verbal manipulation only, that is, ironically, through the use of linguistic symbols, those exemplary cultural objects. The French theorist draws on the jargon of stock exchange whose agents espouse the policy of asset diversification, risk minimisation, and gain

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maximization, the effect of which is an array of false analogies: “the dominant fractions […] tend to place ever greater emphasis on educational investment, within an overall strategy of asset diversification and of investments aimed at combining security with high yield” (Bourdieu 1996:240). As far as the aforementioned competition is concerned, Bourdieu is aware who his chief rival is, and launches an attack on human capital theory: Their measurement of the yield from scholastic investment takes account only of monetary investments and profits, or those directly convertible into money, such as the costs of schooling and the cash equivalent of time devoted to study; they are unable to explain the different proportions of their resources which different agents or different social classes allocate to economic investment and cultural investment because they fail to take systematic account of the structure of the differential chances of profit which the various markets offer these agents or classes as a function of the volume and the composition of their assets (see esp. Becker 1964b). Furthermore, because they neglect to relate scholastic investment strategies to the whole set of educational strategies and to the system of reproduction strategies, they inevitably, by a necessary paradox, let slip the best hidden and socially most determinant educational investment, namely, the domestic transmission of cultural capital. Their studies of the relationship between academic ability and academic investment show that they are unaware that ability or talent is itself the product of an investment of time and cultural capital (Becker 1964a: 63- 66). Not surprisingly, when endeavouring to evaluate the profits of scholastic investment, they can only consider the profitability of educational expenditure for society as a whole, the 'social rate of return,” or the 'social gain of education as measured by its effects on national productivity” (Becker 1964b: 121, 155). This typically functionalist definition of the functions of education ignores the contribution which the educational system makes to the reproduction of the social structure by sanctioning the hereditary transmission of cultural capital. From the very beginning, a definition of human capital, despite its humanistic connotations, does not move beyond economism and ignores, inter alia, the fact that the scholastic yield from educational action depends on the cultural capital previously invested by the family. Moreover, the economic and social yield of the educational qualification depends on the social capital, again inherited, which can be used to back it up. (Bourdieu 1996:244) As in many other cases, what is striking by its absence in the above argument is an explicit reference to ownership; in particular, Bourdieu fails to perceive family as a unit based on common property from which definite consequences follow for his theory of different capitals.

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The same considerations apply thus, inter alia, to his deliberations on social capital where commensalism is such a phenomenon crying out for an interpretation in terms of common ownership; “Exchange transforms the things exchanged into signs of recognition and, through the mutual recognition and the recognition of group membership which it implies, reproduces the group. By the same token, it reaffirms the limits of the group, i.e., the limits beyond which the constitutive exchange trade, commensality, or marriage -cannot take place” (Bourdieu 1996:250). As far as the above-mentioned critique of human capital theory is concerned, it is in point of fact not fair in that human capital theory is perfectly capable of capturing other than purely financial benefits of education. This does not alter the fact that the key criticism attacking the theory concerned for disregarding class relations is sound. The trouble is, this criticism by no means necessitates the use of such notions as cultural or social capital. Bourdieu takes this relationship for granted which reveals his arrogance, if not insolence. Eristic cannot substitute for solid argument. In fact, it only adds to confusion in that it disallows the application of precise categories of property theory replacing them with void categories of capitals which obscure the former, inter alia, making the differentiation of the private and personal impossible. Certain objects considered by the French sociologist as part of cultural capital may function as private property, e.g. marketable works of art. Other ones, however, constitute personal property in that they sole function is the satisfaction of aesthetic, intellectual needs of their possessor. Bourdieu’s comments on the next form of his cultural capital betray the same ignorance of ownership theory. Embodied capital, external wealth converted into an integral part of the person, into a habitus, cannot be transmitted instantaneously (unlike money, property rights, or even titles of nobility) by gift or bequest, purchase or exchange. It follows that the use or exploitation of cultural capital presents particular problems for the holders of economic or political capital, whether they be private patrons or, at the other extreme, entrepreneurs employing executives endowed with a specific cultural competence (not to mention the new state patrons). How can this capital, so closely linked to the person, be bought without buying the person and so losing the very effect of legitimation which presupposes the dissimulation of dependence? (Bourdieu 1996:245)

Whilst for the Bourdieusian framework the aforementioned question poses a difficult problem, from the standpoint of socio-economic structuralism it is rather easy to answer. Owners of real, as distinct from cultural, social, political or whatever capital can rent the labour power of given individuals without buying them in person which, by the way, is impossible in the civilised world. On the ground of Bourdieu’s notion of cultural capital, though, this self-created puzzle must remain without solution. Bourdieu

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adds that “Cultural capital can be acquired, to a varying extent, depending on the period, the society, and the social class, in the absence of any deliberate inculcation, and therefore quite unconsciously. It always remains marked by its earliest conditions of acquisition which, through the more or less visible marks they leave (such as the pronunciations characteristic of a class or region” (1996:245), which is true enough, the only awkward question remaining: why language should be termed capital? Given that the preponderant mass of social actions involve the use of language, it follows that, apart from the span whereby one learns his or her language, and obvious periods of sleep, etc. the whole social life is infused with capital. This is no small intellectual coup, but its benefits appear limited, not to say confusing. Further Bourdieu’s statements aggravate this confusion still more; linked in numerous ways to the person in his biological singularity and is subject to a hereditary transmission which is always heavily disguised, or even invisible, it defies the old, deep-rooted distinction the Greek jurists made between inherited properties (ta patroa) and acquired properties (epikteta), i.e., those which an individual adds to his heritage. It thus manages to combine the prestige of innate property with the merits of acquisition. Because the social conditions of its transmission and acquisition are more disguised than those of economic capital, it is predisposed to function as symbolic capital, i.e., to be unrecognised as capital and recognised as legitimate competence, as authority exerting an effect of (mis) recognition, e.g., in the matrimonial market and in all the markets in which economic capital is not fully recognised, whether in matters of culture, with the great art collections or great cultural foundations, or in social welfare, with the economy of generosity and the gift. Furthermore, the specifically symbolic logic of distinction additionally secures material and symbolic profits for the possessors of a large cultural capital: any given cultural competence (e.g., being able to read in a world of illiterates) derives a scarcity value from its position in the distribution of cultural capital and yields profits of distinction for its owner. In other words, the share in profits which scarce cultural capital secures in class-divided societies is based, in the last analysis, on the fact that all agents do not have the economic and cultural means for prolonging their children’s education beyond the minimum necessary for the reproduction of the labour-power least valorized at a given moment. (cf. 1996:245) Here Bourdieu claims innovation in the property theory whereas his own conceptualisations have in fact the opposite effect: obscuring rather than contributing new useful distinctions. The above-quoted passage adds insult

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to injury in that it reveals that the French scholar is perfectly aware and capable of using the concept of labour power whose relationship to ownership and capital, other terms in his repertoire, remains, though, obscure to him. Going further, we are presented with the continuation of spurious analogies with economic relations: The capital, in the sense of the means of appropriating the product of accumulated labour in the objectified state which is held by a given agent, depends for its real efficacy on the form of the distribution of the means of appropriating the accumulated and objectively available resources; and the relationship of appropriation between an agent and the resources objectively available, and hence the profits they produce, is mediated by the relationship of (objective and/or subjective) competition between himself and the other possessors of capital competing for the same goods, in which scarcity-and through it social value-is generated. (Bourdieu 196:246)

The use of such terms as “means of appropriation” is meant to legimitise the economic analogy (with the means of production) but in actual fact it has an exactly opposite effect it highlights the divergence between the two. The reference to the notion of value in connection with cultural capital does not do the trick either; Bourdieu ignores the difference between reproducible goods to which both Ricardian and Marxian theory of value applies, and unique objects such as works of art whose price is determined by quite different mechanisms, and which cannot be couched in terms of accumulated labour. Meanwhile, for Bourdieu, the economic theory of value applies in all other, in his terminology, fields, each being reigned by a different type of capital; “The universal equivalent, the measure of all equivalences, is nothing other than labour-time (in the widest sense) and the conservation of social energy through all its conversions is verified if, in each case, one takes into account both the labour-time accumulated in the form of capital and the labour-time needed to transform it from one type into another” (1996:253). The next pronouncement simply corroborates previous considerations: The structure of the field, i.e., the unequal distribution of capital, is the source of the specific effects of capital, i.e., the appropriation of profits and the power to impose the laws of functioning of the field most favourable to capital and its reproduction. But the most powerful principle

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Chapter IV of the symbolic efficacy of cultural capital no doubt lies in the logic of its transmission. On the one hand, the process of appropriating objectified cultural capital and the time necessary for it to take place mainly depend on the cultural capital embodied in the whole family. (1996:246).

Considering that in the Bourdieusian social theory the concept of structure as a building block of society is replaced by the notion of field, its cultural variety proves to be determined by what translated into another language with which the French theorist is barely familiar, is property relations. The notion of non-economic property, however, should be applied to specific relations only, which are to be distinguished from economic (private or personal) property. By contrast, it is unknown what, if any, ownership implications pertain to “Manners (bearing, pronunciation, etc). [which] may be included in social capital” (Bourdieu 1996:255). Contrary to what, it seems, appears to Bourdieu, science is not magic in which putting a spell on an object can effect in its transubstantiation and corresponding renaming; in real social life property is property is property, and capital is capital is capital, to borrow, with a difference, Gertrude Stein’s famous saying. None of those guidelines is abode by Bourdieu: The cultural capital objectified in material objects and media, such as writings, paintings, monuments, instruments, etc., is transmissible in its materiality. A collection of paintings, for example, can be transmitted as well as economic capital (if not better, because the capital transfer is more disguised). But what is transmissible is legal ownership and not (or not necessarily) what constitutes the precondition for specific appropriation, namely, the possession of the means of “consuming” a painting or using a machine, which, being nothing other than embodied capital, are subject to the same laws of transmission. (Bourdieu 1996:247).

Again, the existence of “the same laws” governing the economic and cultural field, to use Bourdieu’s own terms, is his wishful thinking. The French writer in fact goes a long way towards blurring the distinction between the two, which only compounds confusion. A case of transfer of a work of art or other “cultural object”, or piece of “cultural capital” may mean very different things socio-economically. Selling a painting for profit is worlds apart from giving it as a gift to one’s niece, and still different from bequeathing it for the public museum. In Bourdieu’s night all cats are, however, grey, as the Polish saying goes. And treating machines on a par with paintings as ostensibly embodiments of cultural capital in both cases makes matters even worse. One may agree that industrial machinery is an example of efficacy of aesthetics as objectified in industrial design, but it does not alter the elementary fact that a piece of

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machinery constitutes first and foremost constant capital (if, of course, is used in the process of production), or the means of a specific type of quasi-work (when it is used in the household), in which case it is no capital at all. For Bourdieu’s theory of cultural capital all these cases boil down to the same thing. His tendency toward Gleichschalten is glaringly manifest in such pronouncements as the following one: "It is possession of cultural capital that makes it possible to derive greater profit not only from labour-time, by securing a higher yield from the same time, but also from spare time, and so to increase both economic and cultural capital" (Bourdieu 1996.:240) It is easy to see why it is fair to refer to the above statement as an example of what might be called conceptual "uravnilovka"- all the distinctions between those activities that sustain the livelihood, i.e., work, and those that, as household chores do not (which is captured by the term “quasiwork”, whose construction is designed to underscore both differences and common features with work), between the respective parts of human personality (constituted by the concomitant capacities-labour power and its “quasi” counterpart), and between real capital and non-capital have been erased.

Bourdieu’s otherwise untenable notion raises, though, certain questions concerning this specific form of quasi-work that is performed in the household. The point is that the latter, “which in the early days of second-wave feminism was largely construed as “housework”” (Oakley 1974) and debated within the Marxist-framed “domestic labor debate” (Seccombe 1980), later came to be analysed as personal services delivered within the household and § named as “care,” or, in the particular case of care of the disabled, “informal care”. “There is now a considerable literature on care, construed both as motherhood and as care of disabled people including the elderly and children with special needs (for example)” (Ungerson 1997). The evocative term betrays what appears to be an ideological motivation of its creators and propagators, consisting in an enhancement of one’s selfassessment. The chief objection to the concept in question is not that it is value-laden, but that is inaccurate, which is being indirectly admitted even by its proponents. The reason for which the term 'services’, personal or not, is completely out of place here is not that “Caring may also involve

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various forms of physical “tending”, whether that is the washing of a frail elderly person, the dressing of a child, or the relaxing massage given by a practitioner”, as -which is discussed at more length in the section 22.1 of the book- physical or manual work is by no means the same as material labour. But advocates of what in our view is a misconception of domestic chores as a service themselves call attention to such its types that definitely fall into the concept of material work; Elisabeth Bubeck Diemuth, for instance, argues that “the younger the children are, the more care and attention they need. Also, their needs add substantial amounts of housework (washing, preparation of meals, cleaning and tidying up) to the child care itself and the usual amount of domestic work needed by a childless couple” (1997). The end product of cooking is a material good-a steak, a soup, a salad or whatever. As a subtype of material work one can distinguish repairs of both investment and consumption goods. To repair, say, a chair (which may also take the form of quasi-work) or a shoe is to produce them anew, albeit only in part. However, if one would like on that basis to reject our thesis of the material character of such activities, one would have to do the same with reference to the production of semi-finished goods or subassemblies which, by definition, are not final products themselves. To put it differently, partial manufacturing is still manufacturing. Another related, albeit at the same time distinct form of material work consists in conservation or maintenance, i.e. preservation of use-value of the means of production or consumption. However, as distinct from both previously discussed types of material work, this one should be called indirectly, rather than directly material. Naturally, also in this case a transformation in the opposite direction to that mentioned above, is possible-a woman can work as a housekeeper in a residence for the elderly, for instance, making beds and cleaning toilets. The alleged presence of capital in the household has, however, another important implication, which at that could be seen by some to be enhanced by our own this time around attribution of material qualities to a considerable portion of housework. What is at stake is the view articulated most unequivocally in a paper by Mariarosa Dalla Costa, published as a voice in the so-called domestic labour debate of the 70s, which says that housework only appears to be outside the arena of capitalist production. In reality, it produces not just use-values for direct consumption but also the essential commodity -

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labour power, which logically leads to the claim that housewives, as being productive workers, are exploited in the strict sense, for they produce surplus-value. Appropriation of this surplus-value is accomplished by the capitalist’s payment of a wage to the working-class husband, who thereby becomes the instrument of woman’s exploitation. Domestic labour is thus “a «masked form of productive labor” (Dalla Costa 1972:34). To be sure, the treatment of the activities in question as a form of quasiwork is, of course, irreconcilable with the view of the former as a source of value and surplus value, yet to engage more directly with the aforementioned influential debate it is useful to add a few remarks. Neither what is being called the production of human life nor the reproduction of labour power are economic activities. The opposite view involves in fact a common epistemic error consisting in the conflation of two distinct relationships: the circumstance that X influences Y, does not mean that X becomes an integral part of Y. The family is, according to our socioeconomic structuralism, part and parcel of the reproductive substructure of society and is, to borrow Weber’s term, economically relevant, having-as it does-a multifarious impact on the economy. Yet, it does not “produce labour power”-for an individual to be employable a range of processes beyond the familial socialisation need to take place. Furthermore, even a fully trained individual may exploit her skills not within but beyond the economic structure, and so on. Similarly, the essential function of the family as a unit of labour-power reproduction is not contestable, yet again none of the processes composing the latter becomes thereby an element of the economy. Those epistemic problems have, in a sense, been addressed within the aforementioned debate. To pre-empt possible objections on the part of feminist critics, a critique of the notion of housework as productive of surplus value and thereby exploited in no way plays down problems usually raised by the feminist literature. This has been well rendered by Seccombe, who points out that: "In maintaining that domestic labour is productive [Dalla Costa and James] never make the distinction between a labour’s general character, and its specific relation, and so they cannot employ a rigorous category like “productive” at all.… They use the term “productive” primarily to emphasize the indispensable nature of domestic labour to capitalist production, and to counteract the denial of domestic labour’s role by past generations of Marxists. This point is well taken, but it is surely not impossible to rectify this omission while retaining some precision in the use of Marxist categories" (1974).

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Seccombe also refuses Dalla Costa’s characterization of women as exploited: "The housewife, in Marxist terms, is unexploited because surplus value is not extracted from her labour. To say this is not as James and Dalla Costa imply, to be soft on women’s oppression. The housewife is intensely oppressed within the nuclear family under capitalism, but she is not exploited" (Seccombe 1974.: 11; my emphasis).

Having cleared up some widespread misunderstandings, we can now return to Bourdieu’s cultural capital, which- in his view- “exists as symbolically and materially active, effective capital only insofar as it is appropriated by agents and implemented and invested as a weapon and a stake in the struggles which go on in the fields of cultural production (the artistic field, the scientific field, etc). and, beyond them, in the field of the social classes-struggles in which the agents wield strengths and obtain profits proportionate to their mastery of this objectified capital, and therefore to the extent of their embodied capital” (Bourdieu 1996.:247). So far, so consistent-in the sense of similar unfair tricks employed to substantiate the capital status of the construct under consideration. Unfortunately, contrary to the French sociologist's opinion, it is not sufficient to use the concept in question in connection with such terms as “profit”, ““appropriation”, “investment”, “production”, and so on, as each of those purported relationships must be separately validated, which has not been done. Anyway, it is precisely along similar lines that Bourdieu’s further argument runs: cultural goods can be appropriated both materiallywhich presupposes economic capital-and symbolically-which presupposes cultural capital. It follows that the owner of the means of production must find a way of appropriating either the embodied capital which is the precondition of specific appropriation or the services of the holders of this capital. To possess the machines, he only needs economic capital; to appropriate them and use them in accordance with their specific purpose (defined by the cultural capital, of scientific or technical type, incorporated in them), he must have access to embodied cultural capital, either in person or by proxy. This is no doubt the basis of the ambiguous status of cadres (executives and engineers). If it is emphasized that they are not the possessors (in the strictly economic sense) of the means of production which they use, and that they derive profit from their own cultural capital only by selling the services and products which it makes possible, then they will be classified among the dominated groups; if it is emphasized that they draw their profits from the use of a particular form of capital, then they will be classified among the dominant groups. Everything

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suggests that as the cultural capital incorporated in the means of production increases (and with it the period of embodiment needed to acquire the means of appropriating it), so the collective strength of the holders of cultural capital would tend to increase-if the holders of the dominant type of capital (economic capital) were not able to set the holders of cultural capital in competition with one another. (They are, moreover, inclined to competition by the very conditions in which they are selected and trained, in particular by the logic of scholastic and recruitment competitions)” (Bourdieu 1996:246). “It exists as symbolically and materially active, effective capital only insofar as it is appropriated by agents and implemented and invested as a weapon and a stake in the struggles which go on in the fields of cultural production (the artistic field, the scientific field, etc). and, beyond them, in the field of the social classes-struggles in which the agents wield strengths and obtain profits proportionate to their mastery of this objectified capital, and therefore to the extent of their embodied capital” (Bourdieu 247).

There are a couple of problems with this argument. Firstly, it sounds very warlike each field is beset with struggles, fights, or what have you. But, as is customary in the case of the thinker being discussed, the point is greatly overdone. It is put in such a way that one does not know what, if any, difference there is between those cultural or other, as the case may be, activities that are not conflict and such ones which can be considered in such terms. In a word, another case of “leaping” notion. The fact is that the term concerned is meant to recall a battlefield or a playing field, and more specifically, the fact that the individuals who confront one another will enter into conflict or competition with one another, each from a more or less advantageous position (Bourdieu and Wacąuant 1992: 16-18). On this basis, Bourdieu’s social space can equally be termed a “field of social classes” (e.g. Bourdieu 1984 [1979]:345; 1991:41), which over-stretches the concept of class, which in such a diluted form loses most of its theoretical relevance; the whole social reality is reduced to class terms, and one at best could discern different shades of this uniform reality. In terms of “Distinction”, this general agonistic worldview means that lifestyles are caught up in social struggles. Aspects of a lifestyle such as haute cuisine or an antique collection, on the one hand, are not simply distinct from “hearty” foods and mass-produced decorations, on the other. To the contrary, the different forms of the same lifestyle element (furniture, food, etc). stand in a hierarchical relation to one another, and as a result of this, lifestyles themselves are socially

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ranked, which by any means is the only context exposing that hierarchical quality According to Bourdieu, the hierarchical 'status” of a lifestyle is a function of its proximity to or distance from the “legitimate culture.” The latter refers to those elements of culture universally recognized as “worthy,” [...] the composition of the legitimate culture is permanently in play: it is the object of a perpetual struggle. Thus, for example, when apprehended in relation to the underlying habitus that generated them, the characteristic minutiae of the bourgeois style of eating and the workingclass style of eating amount to nothing less than “two antagonistic world views, two representations of human excellence” (Bourdieu 1984 [1979]:199). Strangely enough, on the one hand, as we have seen, Bourdieu overstretches the notion of class, turning it into kind of universal logic of social life, but on the other hand he fails to recognise the role of class where it actually exists. After all, what the French scholar calls universally recognised as worthy, distinguished, etc. culture is class-conditioned, being the result of his favourite class struggle and class domination implemented in the ideological domain. Secondly, Bourdieu touches on the issue of class, but the outcome is very problematic. First, the logic of his argument would tend toward classifying managers, conceived of by him as holders of cultural capital, as capitalists themselves. The French sociologist withdraws at the last moment, leaving the matter in the state which is doubly unsatisfactory. If executives (which again is an inclusive notion encompassing not only corporate managers but also, e.g., government officials) “draw their profits from the use of a particular form of capital, then they will be classified among the dominant groups“; this is contradicted by his another contention to the effect that if “they derive profit from their own cultural capital then they will be classified among the dominated groups”. Apart from the adherence to the simplistic bipolar image of social differentiation, the above shows how difficult, if possible at all, is to determine the social location of groups connected with his newly invented cultural capital without the concept of ownership of the means of production which at the end of the day is invoked to that end. Another missing concept is one of labour power which of course is implicitly referred to in the theorist’s account of the dominated as those who “derive profit from their own cultural capital only by selling the services and products which it makes possible” (Bourdieu 1996:247).

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Owing primarily to space limitations, our discussion of social capital will focus on its characteristics relevant to Bourdieu's Broad theory of a range of capitals. Take, for example, the following claim: The reproduction of social capital presupposes an unceasing effort of sociability, a continuous series of exchanges in which recognition is endlessly affirmed and reaffirmed. This work, which implies expenditure of time and energy and so, directly or indirectly, of economic capital, is not profitable or even conceivable unless one invests in it a specific competence (knowledge of genealogical relationships and of real connections and skill at using them, etc). and an acquired disposition to acquire and maintain this competence, which are themselves integral parts of this capital. (Bourdieu 1996:250).

The theorist who accuses others of economism describes as work (This is by any means an isolated formulation; in another place the reader is invited to consider “the profitability of this labour of accumulating and maintaining social capital” ([Bourdieu 1996:250]), everyday conversations with friends and other similar activities on the basis that they require some expenditure of time and energy, and/or material resources. For one thing, this amounts to an equally grave sin of physicalism, otherwise elicited above. And it is not an accidental slippage at all, as evidenced by his other claims such as “In accordance with a principle which is the equivalent of the principle of the conservation of energy, profits in one area are necessarily paid for by costs in another” (Bourdieu 1996:253), or “A general science of the economy of practices that does not artificially limit itself to those practices that are socially recognised as economic must endeavour to grasp capital, that “energy of social physics”... in all of its different forms... I have shown that capital presents itself under three fundamental species (each with its own subtypes), namely, economic capital, cultural capital, and social capital. (Bourdieu, in Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992: 118-9). Secondly, the aforementioned contention is bound, again, to dilute the concept of (economic) capital in that everyday banal activities turn out to be either capital investments or capital deployments. Paying for a bus ticket in order to meet with a friend living in a distant quarter of the city, or dining with him at the restaurant has really nothing to do with capital or investment, and viewing them in such terms is economism writ large. The capitalistic imperialism espoused by the French thinker goes still further in that even the following ingredients of human personality are transformed by him into components of capital “a specific competence

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(knowledge of genealogical relationships and of real connections and skill at using them, etc). and an acquired disposition to acquire and maintain this competence, which are themselves integral parts of this capital”. And any such “proof” of the possibility of reducing a given social phenomenon to one or another form of capital is at the same time economism in that “economic capital is at the root of all the other types of capital and that these transformed, disguised forms of economic capital […] produce their most specific effects only to the extent that they conceal (not least from their possessors) the fact that economic capital is at their root” (Bourdieu 1996:251). Bourdieu, to be sure, would loudly protest arguing that “The real logic of the functioning of capital, the conversions from one type to another, and the law of conservation which governs them cannot be understood unless two opposing but equally partial views are superseded: on the one hand, economism, which, on the grounds that every type of capital is reducible in the last analysis to economic capital, ignores what makes the specific efficacy of the other types of capital” (1996:252), which however, is inconsistent with what he has to say even in the same sentence: “and on the other hand, semiologism (nowadays represented by structuralism, symbolic interactionism, or ethnomethodology), which reduces social exchanges to phenomena of communication and ignores the brutal fact of universal reducibility to economics” (1996:253; emphasis: J. T). Reading his ruminations on cultural capital, one may think it is the favourite child of its French parent, but certain claims regarding the blown out of proportions importance of social capital may shake this conviction 'social capital […] is the basis of the existence of the group (a family or a nation, of course, but also an association or a party)” (Bourdieu 1996:251). This is an astounding claim given the restricted (to interpersonal relationships) connotation of social capital. It is precisely the said narrow focus that accounts for the use of the phrase of sociability in the above Bourdieusian deliberations on the form of “capital” in question, and the very definition of social capital: “The aggregate of the actual or potential resources which are linked to possession of a durable network of more or less institutionalized relationships of mutual acquaintance or recognition” (Bourdieu 1985:248). It is only from a common-sense perspective that face-to-face relationships appear to be the most important, if not the sole form of social relations. In actual fact, each member of a society, and in its globalised form-in an enhanced way, is entangled in a plethora of

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intermediate relations, most of which are, as opposed to the former, not registered by human consciousness, but which nevertheless can powerfully affect human behaviour, health, etc. Meanwhile, certain justifications of the aforementioned importance of social capital given by its champion are perplexing: National liberation movements or nationalist ideologies cannot be accounted for solely by reference to strictly economic profits, i.e. anticipation of the profits which may be derived from redistribution of a proportion of wealth to the advantage of the nationals (nationalization) and the recovery of highly paid jobs. To these specifically economic anticipated profits, which would only explain the nationalism of the privileged classes, must be added the very real and very immediate profits derived from membership (social capital) which are proportionately greater for those who are lower down the social hierarchy (“poor whites”) or, more precisely, more threatened by economic and social decline. (Bourdieu 1996:255)

It is not our purpose here to argue over the so-called economic interpretation of national liberation movements and nationalism in general, barring drawing attention to Bourdieu’s unfounded reduction of the said interpretation to a form of monocausalism. Equally characteristic of Bourdieu who despite the frequent use of the term “property” does not hold any consistent and sound theory of one, is his failure to see the socio-economic significance of nationalisation. If the move is skewed so that the overwhelming bulk of benefits therefrom are pre-empted by the privileged classes, then and only then his abovementioned claim is correct; otherwise, however, the labouring masses stand to gain much from such a measure. In terms of analysis of Bourdieu’s theory of capitals the most striking thing about the above-cited argument is purely notional role played by his term of social capital. Social factors relevant to membership of nationalistic movements are one thing, but their conceptualisation in terms of social capital is quite another; the former by no means entails the latter. The goal of establishing social capital as a potent social force is for sure not served particularly well by the contradictions present in this section of Bourdieu’s theory as well; on the one hand he criticises, correctly enough, those who interpret generous or charitable conduct as “calculated acts of class appeasement”. “This naively Machiavellian view forgets that the

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most sincerely disinterested acts may be those best corresponding to objective interest. […] It would be thoroughly erroneous to describe the choices of the habitus which lead an artist, writer, or researcher toward his natural place (a subject, style, manner, etc). in terms of rational strategy and cynical calculation” (Bourdieu 1996:240). The trouble is, Bourdieu is not able to stick to the dialectical position outlined above, and fully in line with the way of thinking he himself rejects above states that “The network of relationships is the product of investment strategies [...] aimed at establishing or reproducing social relationships that are directly usable in the short or long term [Bourdieu 1986:248-249]. If the reader thinks the list of capitals utilised by the French theorist has been exhausted, she would be mistaken. Bourdieu holds that “the state is the culmination and product of a slow process of accumulation and concentration of different species of capital: a capital of physical force, in the form of the military and the police (which is evoked by Weber’s definition of the state as exercising the “monopoly of legitimate physical violence”); economic capital (which is necessary, among other things, to provide the funding for the physical force) cultural or informational capital, accumulated in the form of statistics, for example, and also in the form of instruments of knowledge endowed with universal validity within the limits of its competence, such as weights, measures, maps or land registers; and, lastly, symbolic capital. In this way, it is able to exert a determining influence on the way the economic field functions (and also, though to a lesser extent, on the other fields). This is the case chiefly because the unification of the market of economic goods (and also of symbolic goods, the marriage market being one dimension of this) accompanied the construction of the state and the concentration of different species of capital it brought about. This means that the economic field is, more than any other, inhabited by the state, which contributes at every moment to its existence and persistence, and also to the structure of the relations of force that characterise it” (Bourdieu 2005:13). In all honesty, a text of similar length that would accumulate similar amount of errors is barely imaginable. None of the factors attributed by Bourdieu to the state can be couched as a form of capital. Even financial resources held by the state cannot be

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characterised in those terms, because capital is intrinsically linked to private property that by definition is absent in the public sector. There is no reason for labelling by the stamp of capital physical force (whether in its state or other applications) either, and Bourdieu's reference to Weber in this connection is based on an utter misunderstanding. The same applies to his subsequent remarks. To invoke Weber as a patron of viewing the economy as an extension of the state is a blunder; Weber, on the contrary, insisted on distinguishing the economy and politics whose differentia specifica is the use of (legitimate) force or coercion, which, needless to say, had in his view nothing to do with capital that constituted a key economic concept in his overall framework. This does not imply (as it did not imply for Weber as well) any downplaying of economic interventions undertaken by the state. It stands to reason, though, that in order to examine how X affects Y, it is essential to establish that they are distinct from each other; if they were the same thing, one would relapse to the level of Munchausen tales whose hero, and perhaps only him, could pull themselves up by their own bootstraps. It would be unfair to justify the above-mentioned errors as a form of petty ethnocentrism, indeed fairly commonly displayed by Bourdieu; yes, France has a long tradition of centralised, strong state, but this cannot justify Bourdieu’s generalisation of these properties elevating them to the level of General theory. All in all, one can subscribe to the following summary, with a difference, the difference being the opposite sign what for the commentator is the reason for praise, in our judgment is rather the reason for criticism: “Bourdieu’s expanded concept of capital as a general framework for interdisciplinary research that seeks to dissolve what is largely inartificial distinction between economics and social science” (Svendsen 2001:2). To be more specific, the overall objective outlined above is of course justified, what is objectionable is the set of means to achieve that end. Having pored over the crucial conceptual foundation of Bourdieu’s work, we may come back to the question of precisely what the theoretical nature of the Bourdieusian theory of social differentiation is. Arguably, Bourdieu’s conception is in part at least a misconception in that, its Marxist-like terminology notwithstanding, both its lack of specifically economic locus and gradational character (e.g. in the form of the aforementioned tripartite hierarchy) show it is consistent with the core

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principles of social stratification. And this much, however reluctantly, is conceded by his followers. Thus, Weininger (2005) in his mostly hagiographic account argues, inter alia, that “Bourdieu’s social space is separated from the more familiar traditions of class analysis by the fact that the three axes which constitute it volume, composition, and trajectory -are viewed as continuous dimensions, from both a methodological and a theoretical vantage point” (Bourdieu 1990a (1980) :140). By the same token he admits: “This implies that the model does not postulate any inherent lines of cleavage specifying the structural threshold where one class gives way to another”, and hencethat “within “this universe of continuity” the identification of discrete class (and fraction) locations amounts to no more than a heuristic convenience” (see Bourdieu 1984 (1979) 258-9, 339). The benignant commentator takes, however, the French social scientist’s side, arguing “although the fact that Bourdieu conceptualizes social space in gradational terms appears to echo those 'stratification” models in which the occupational order is understood as a continuous scale of positions (differentiated, for example, in terms of the rewards they carry), it nevertheless stands far apart from them by virtue of its multidimensional configuration (see Bourdieu 1984 (1979):124-5; also 1991: 244-5). This loyalty is, sure enough, moving, but it ignores the undeniable fact that stratification may as well appear in the form of a multidimensional scale, as has been pointed out above. However, there is a grain of truth to the above defence in the sense that the Bourdieusian framework cannot be brought down to just a plain scale, (on which individuals are placed in terms of their possession of more or fewer elements of capital, or rather its two/three forms), wherein The relation between the particular cells or classes is of necessity gradational, and the break-off points between the latter arbitrary. This is the case because of a close affinity between the Bourdieusian thought and the tradition of conflict theory. Nay, Bourdieu laid out what may be called a pan-agonistic approach, overplaying the role of such phenomena as struggle, conflict, etc. in social life. Thus, the composition of the legitimate culture is the object of a perpetual struggle. By way of illustration, when apprehended in relation to the underlying habitus that generated them, the characteristic minutiae of the bourgeois style of eating and the working-class style of eating amount to

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nothing less than “two antagonistic world views, two representations of human excellence” (Bourdieu 1984 (1979):199). Relatedly, a parallel aspect of Bourdieu’s framework is his rather loose or fuzzy use of the concept of power; there is power as such, political power and economic power in connection with which one wonders if it really constitutes the primary objective of economic agents. What about profit, capital accumulation and pay as the ends of various classes? An even more serious weakness of Bourdieu’s otherwise interesting notion of the field is its lack of clear explanation of the relationship between it and the concept of structure. Bourdieu once used the two concepts in a parallel way; at other times he spoke of the structure of the field, and anything like convincing proof that his conceptual innovation allows one to say something about reality that cannot be said by means of the category of structure is missing. Any misgivings about the use or misuse of the above concepts pale into insignificance, though, as compared with an almost magical ability with which Bourdieu would multiply the concept of all kinds of capital. In the panorama apart from the acceptable as related to the economy financial, commercial, technological and technical (what the difference between the two remains unexplained) capital there was no lack of attributed to the state “the capital of physical force”, social capital to which Bordieu claims copyright, cultural capital, supplemented with informational and scientific as well as symbolic capital (to which he claims an analogous copyright) and even such bizarre creations as legal capital. Ironically, the author of a book under the same title, seems to fail to recognise the distinction between the particular and the general for, on the one hand, he associates the state with its specific capital in the form of force but simultaneously, on the other, states: “the different types of capital (or power, which amounts to the same thing” (Bourdieu 1984). More broadly, the homogenising, one would like to say “capitalism”, but it is an akin term “imperialism” that better renders the quality of his approach. For Bourdieu, capital acts as a social relation within a system of exchange and can be extended to “all the goods, material and symbolic, without distinction, that present themselves as rare and worthy of being sought after in a particular social formation” (Harker et al. 1990:1). Oomph! While in this competition he had many prominent rivals (including Nobel laureates), the French scholar outclassed them all, emerging as by far the most prolific to date manufacturer of “capitals”.

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This list prompts one more conclusion, consistent with classifying Bourdieu’s framework as akin to that of social stratification, as it shares with the latter its key feature-arbitrariness. Namely, looking at the myriad of “capitals” available, one wonders why some of them, and not others have been chosen as determinants of class. Ironically, we may be grateful to the French author for his lack of consistency-it is easy to imagine what chaos would have ensued had Bourdieu in fact incorporated the complete set of his forms of capital in the theory of social differentiation inasmuch as working with a limited set produces such a mishmash: “The opposition between the “elite” of the dominant and the “mass” of the dominated, a contingent, disorganised multiplicity, interchangeable and innumerable, existing only statistically; “the dominant fraction of the dominant class”; “The major relations of order (high/low, strong/weak etc). reappear in all class-divided societies” (Bourdieu 1984: 466).

Before proceeding further, the reader’s attention should be drawn to some salient traits of Bourdieu’s modus operandi. The choice of terms deployed above points to his dependency on another anthropologist, Claude LéviStrauss, and more broadly, the entire French structuralism, which current had been very influential in this country (and beyond), including its Marxist branch: Louis Althusser’s school. This is highly relevant to grasping some fundamental properties of Bourdieu’s thought, as the aforementioned intellectual stream can be charged with formalism, stretched to the point of dogmatic rigidity, and epistemological idealism-in the sense of subordination reality to a concept. In the chapter on equality of “Anti-Dühring” Engels thusly characterises what he and his companion dubbed “ideology”: “the old favourite ideological method, also known as the a priori method, which consists in ascertaining the properties of an object, by logical deduction from the concept of the object, instead of from the object itself. First the concept of the object is fabricated from the object; then the spit is turned round, and the object is measured by its reflexion, the concept. The object is then to conform to the concept, not the concept to the object. With Herr Dühring the simplest elements, the ultimate abstractions he can reach, do service for the concept, which does not alter matters; these simplest elements are at best of a purely conceptual nature. The philosophy of reality, therefore, proves here again to be pure ideology, the deduction of reality not from itself but from a concept” (1987).

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Recall that Levi- Strauss would never touch on his own anthropological field data such as those coming from the Loyalty islands and New Zealand), the two texts having in common that they each deal in topographical detail with the land-tenure claims of the said descent line, which obviously, suggests that to inquire into the subject one would have to explore the corresponding economic structure; meanwhile, “the pope of structuralism” was interested exclusively with the formal aspects of each story, considered by him as the result of the workings of the collective unconscious of each group, which idea was taken from the linguists, but cannot be proved in any way Another concept used in structural anthropology came from the Prague school of linguistics, where in particular Roman Jakobson analyzed sounds based on the presence or absence of certain features (such as voiceless vs. voiced). Lévi-Strauss incorporated this device IN his conceptualization of the universal structures of the mind, which he held to operate based on pairs of binary oppositions such as hot-cold, male-female, culture-nature, cooked-raw, or marriageable vs. tabooed women. An inquiry into the relations between mythemes was THUS supported by the investigator’s belief and at the same time confirmed in his view that a myth consists of juxtaposed binary oppositions. Influenced by-NOT coincidentally- Hegel, Lévi-Strauss held what was at its source a Kantian view, according to which human mind thinks fundamentally in these binary oppositions and their unification (the thesis, antithesis, synthesis triad), and that these are what make meaning possible. In other words, from that perspective, myths consist of: 1. Elements that oppose or contradict each other and 2. Other elements that “mediate”, or resolve, those oppositions. Lévi-Strauss postulated that universal laws must govern mythical thought and resolve this seeming paradox, producing similar myths in different cultures. Each myth may seem unique, but he proposed it is just one particular instance of a universal law of human thought. In studying myth, Lévi-Strauss tries “to reduce apparently arbitrary diverse and data to some kind of order, and to attain a level at which a kind of necessity becomes apparent, underlying the illusions of liberty” (1969:10), which even wording itself suggests that formalism and dialectics do not match.

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This kind of determinism is but one example of a theoretical feature shared by Bourdieu, too, as demonstrated below. His numerous protestations to the contrary notwithstanding, Burdieu’s much-trumpeted overcoming of the dilemma: subjectivism vs. objectivism that in particular the concept of habitus purportedly permits, is illusory. Bourdieu, who as most French Marxists, neo-Marxists and post-Marxists, whatever it would mean, is largely incapable of dialectical thinking, which demonstrates his dependence on the Althusserian formalism, style of thought that has exerted a huge influence on now already generations of especially French thinkers. But regardless of which of the French structuralists had been the paramount inspiration in that regard, the Bourdieusian statement reproduced below is a blatant example of determinism, thinking along the lines of “iron laws”. “The passions of the dominated habitus, a somatised social relationship, the law of the social body converted into the law of the body, are not of a kind that can be suspended by a simple effort of will, founded on a liberatory awakening of consciousness” (2000, 179-80).

A critic points out that “in Bourdieu’s accounts of bodily hexis, the body appears as a sort of physiological template that is “written by” culture and that reciprocally reproduces culture. [...] Bourdieu presents us with a sophisticated, yet deterministic, cycle of causation that runs from culture to the body, and back to culture” (Fries 2005). Thus, Bourdieu “position is a curious and unsustainable mix: on the one hand, his emphasis on the body, and “habitus deterministically connected with the body (Fries 2005)” represents a crude form of materialism, or physicalism; on the other hand, considering the fact that the body is conceived of as a mere extension of culture, as it were, it is a form of culturalism, i.e. idealism. Such criticisms should cause to think twice all those who see the concept in question as a universal magical wand, applicable to all imaginable problems. Bourdieu, for example, contends that: The concept of habitus also enables us to escape the dichotomy between finalism-which defines action as determined by the conscious reference to a deliberately set purpose and which, consequently, conceives all behaviour as the product of a purely instrumental, if not indeed cynical, calculation-and mechanism, which reduces action to a pure reaction to undifferentiated causes. [...] But the task of reconciling the irreconcilable is made easier here by the fact that the two branches of the alternative are really only one [...]

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Habitus is a highly economical principle of action, which makes for an enormous saving in calculation (particularly in the calculation of costs of research and measurement) and also in time, which is a particularly rare resource when it comes to action. It is, therefore, particularly well suited to the ordinary conditions of existence which, either because of time pressure or an insufficiency of requisite knowledge, allow little scope for the conscious, calculated evaluation of the chances of profit. [...;] this practical sense cannot be assessed outside of the practical conditions of its implementation. [...] the habitus [...] lies below the level of the dualism of subject and object, activity and passivity, means and ends, determinism and freedom—in which the habitus determines itself in determining what determines it, is a calculation without calculator and an intentional action without intention, for which there is much empirical evidence. In the particular (and particularly frequent) case in which the habitus is the product of objective conditions similar to those under which it operates, it generates behaviours that are particularly well suited to those conditions without being the product of a conscious, intentional search for adaptation. [...] In this case, the effect of the habitus remains, so to speak, invisible, and the explanation in terms of habitus may seem redundant in relation to explanation in terms of the situation (one may even have the impression that we are dealing with an ad hoc explanation along the lines of the explanation of sleep by some “dormant property”). (Bourdieu 2005, 114; author’s emphasis). According to Lévi-Strauss, “mythical thought always progresses from the awareness of oppositions toward their resolution”. This is doubly significant, given how all-encompassing is an anthropological definition of culture. Accordingly, the author of 'structural Anthropology” frequently speaks of treating culture as the product of the axioms and corollaries that underlie it, or the phonemic differences that constitute it. Therefore, the same method can be extended to other areas. According to structural theory in anthropology and social anthropology, meaning is produced and reproduced within a culture through various practices, phenomena and activities that serve as systems of signification. A structuralist approach may study activities as diverse as foodpreparation and serving rituals, religious rites, games, literary and nonliterary texts, and other forms of entertainment to discover the deep structures by which meaning is produced and reproduced within the

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culture. For example, Lévi-Strauss dissected phenomena as diverse as mythology, kinship (the alliance theory and the incest taboo), and food preparation. Regarding the area with his name has come to be identified, in his analysis of marriages between tribes, Lévi-Strauss believed he discovered that the relation between the uncle and the nephew was to the relation between brother and sister, as the relation between father and son is to that between husband and wife, that is, A is to B as C is to D. Therefore if we know A, B, and C, we can predict D, just as if we know A and D, we can predict B and C. The goal of Lévi-Strauss’s structural anthropology, then, was to simplify the masses of empirical data into generalized, comprehensible relations between units, which allow for predictive laws to be determined, such as A is to B as C is to D. He postulates, furthermore, that it is logically possible for a different atom of kinship structure to exist–sister, sister’s brother, brother’s wife, daughter–but his programmatic anti-empiricism and formalism explains why there are no real-world examples of relationships that can be derived from that grouping (Engelsian critique cited above fits here as well) The problem this view poses has been pinpointed by the Australian anthropologist Augustus Elkin, who insisted on the point that in a four class marriage system, the preferred marriage was with a classificatory mother’s brother’s daughter and never with the true one. Lévi-Strauss’s atom of kinship structure deals only with consanguineal kin. There is a big difference between the two situations, insofar as the kinship structure involving the classificatory kin relations allows for the building of a system which can bring together thousands of people. Simply put, Lévi-Strauss’s atoms of kinship do not work. Similarly, Lévi-Strauss identified myths as a type of speech through which a language could be discovered. His work is a structuralist theory of mythology which attempted to explain how seemingly fantastical and arbitrary tales, could be so similar across cultures. Because he believed there was not one “authentic” version of a myth, rather that they were all manifestations of the same language, he sought to find the fundamental units of myth, namely, the mytheme. Lévi-Strauss broke each of the versions of a myth down into a series of sentences, consisting of a relation between a function and a subject.

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Sentences with the same function were given the same number and bundled together. These are mythemes. As can be seen, then, there is an essential affinity between the thrust of structuralist thought and Bourdieu’s analytic output. Alongside other examples, suggested above, one could point to the continuation of the above cited argument in which the reader is served with the repeated recurrence of a triadic structure (after all, the digit three has magical properties in many cultural systems of all times): “The relations between dominated fractions and dominant fractions within the dominant class; the relationship between the dominant and the dominated, can also, by means of a first transformation, designate the relations between dominated fractions and dominant fractions within the dominant class. The intersection of the two principles of division which are at work in all class-divided societies-the division between the dominant and the dominated, and the division between the different fractions competing for dominance in the name of different principles, bellatores (warriors) and oratores (scholars) in feudal society, businessmen and intellectuals now”. (Bourdieu 1984: 466-484).

The apparent lack of clarity, to put it mildly, of the above statements is paralleled by an equally evident lack of self-knowledge as regards the significance of his own theoretical output on the part of the French theorist. It is paradoxical that Bourdieu can criticise G. Becker for his concept of human capital, without noticing that the weapon he uses is double-edged. This proliferation of terms is subject to the criticism by Baron and Hannan (1994: 1124) who describe as puzzling efforts by rational choice sociologists, including exchange theorists, to expand the types of capital, stating that they are “baffled that sociologists have begun referring to virtually every social feature as a form of capital”. From our theoretical point of view the concept of all kinds of capitals of Bourdieu represents confusion of non-economic phenomena (e.g. belonging IN the ideational structure), including objects of estate, noneconomic ownership relations (which is apparent, e.g., in the following definition: “cultural capital, i.e., as a means of acquiring exclusive advantages” (Bourdieu 1986). with elements associated to the economic structure, including aspects of ownership of labour power. Indeed, this

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example clearly shows what may happen if a theorist is confused as to what property is in the first place-Bourdieu has conflated the latter concept with that of capital as such: “the structure of the distribution of the capital among the various directors (dirigeants) of the firm, that is, between owners and “functionaries”-managers-and, among these latter, between the holders of different species of cultural capital: predominantly financial, technical or commercial, that is to say, in the French case, between the various elite corps and the schools where they received their training: the Ecole Nationale d’Administration, the Ecole Poly technique or the Ecole des Hautes Etudes Commerciales” (Bourdieu 2005). Bourdieu’s incapacity to recognise that the above case refers in actual fact to the various degrees of labour power is, In all honesty, rather surprising given that the French theorist uses the concept himself: “[The popular valorisation of physical strength as a fundamental aspect of virility and of anything that produces and supports it ('strong” food and drink, heavy work and exercise) is intelligibly related to the fact that both the peasant class and the industrial working class depend on labour power which the laws of cultural reproduction and of the labour market reduce, more than for any other classes, to sheer muscle power; and it should not be forgotten that a class which, like the working class, is only rich in its labour power can only oppose to the other classes-apart from withdrawal from its labour-its fighting strength, which depends on physical strength and courage of its members, and also their number (Bourdieu 1984: 384). That consistency is not a particularly salient trait of Bourdieu’s, as well as his supporters”, theorising is evidenced by the fact that at the same time one of the latter and the master himself state that all builders must necessarily have a degree of pragmatic physical fitness which earns them respect from their work groups and communities: a form of localized “physical capital” (c.f. Bourdieu 1986; Wacquant 2004). Therefore Bourdieu’s defence against some of his critics, who claim that he “is incapable of differentiating fractions within the working class on the basis of his available data” (Weininger 2005:96) to the effect that “better data would enable him to draw such a contrast” (Bourdieu 1984 (1979:115) does not hold water. The core of the problem is the deficient theoretical rather than empirical base of Bourdieu's framework. This judgment is endorsed by the continuation of Bourdieu’s pursuit of “essences”, as apparent in the treatment of relation of function to form:

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(w)hile it is clear that art offers it the greatest scope, there is no area of practice in which the intention of purifying, refining and sublimating facile impulses and primary needs cannot assert itself, or in which the stylization of life, i.e. the primacy of form over function, which leads to the denial of function, does not produce the same effects. In language, it gives the opposition between the popular outspokenness and the highly censored language of the bourgeois the same economy of means is found in body language: here too, agitation and haste, grimaces and gesticulation are opposed... to the restraint and impassivity which signify elevation. Even give rise to an analytic richness which, unfortunately, cannot be evoked here. Which characterizes the lifestyle of members of this class inclines them to assign an absolute priority to function over form, to insist that art carry a moral message, and for its part, themselves to activities intended to achieve cultural self-betterment.

Furthermore, Bourdieu tries to illuminate at least some of the differences present within both the dominant class and the petty bourgeoisie according to variations in the asset structures associated with the corresponding positions (that is, according to the composition of capital). Thus, within the dominant class those endowed primarily with economic capital-the commercial and industrial employers-express their 'sense of distinction” through the pursuit of luxury goods and a carefully crafted opulence, whereas their counterparts-the “artistic producers” and university professors-express this impulse by practicing a cultural “asceticism” geared towards the intellectually most demanding (and least expensive) forms of culture. Bourdieu summarizes this opposition of habitus and lifestyles as follows: (o)n one side, reading, and reading poetry, philosophical and political works, Le Monde, and the (generally leftish) literary or artistic magazines; on the other, hunting or betting, and when there is reading, reading FranceSoir or.. .Auto-Journal On one side, classic or avant-garde theater..., museums, classical music,... the Flea Market, camping, mountaineering or walking; on the other, business trips and expense account lunches, boulevard theater... and music-hall, variety shows on TV,... the auction room and “boutiques,” luxury cars and a boat, three-star hotels and spas. (cf. Bourdieu 1984 (1979):283)

Situated in between these two poles of the dominant class are the professionals and (especially) the senior executives, who, eschewing both the overt luxury of the employers and the “asceticism” of the intellectuals, exhibit a lifestyle built around aesthetic commitments to “modernism,” “dynamism,” and “cosmopolitanism”: embracing new technology and open to foreign culture, they view themselves as “liberated” and espouse a

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“laid back” way of life (Bourdieu 1984 (1979) 295-315). Bourdieu goes on to chart analogous oppositions within the petty bourgeoisie, where variations in the ratio of economic to cultural capital correspond 16 Recall (note 9, above) that Bourdieu is unable to clearly identify class fractions in the working class, but insists that this is a shortcoming of his data. To different “modalities” of its members” signature “cultural goodwill.” He also adduces numerous qualifications of his characterization of each class’s and fraction’s lifestyle as a result of internal differences in trajectory. The lifestyles that Bourdieu documents so extensively in Distinction pertain to a specific place and time, and thus need not be extensively recounted here (for a discussion that provides some of the historical context, see (Weininger 2005:94); the aforementioned commentator ventures what is indeed a risky contention to the effect that Bourdieu is able to provide a compendium of data establishing both that an isomorphism obtains between the structure of social space and the distribution of consumption practices, and that this correspondence is mediated by a subjective system of dispositions whose “expression” across multiple domains of consumption confers a semantic unity on the practices that warrants reference to coherent “lifestyles.” Thus, in keeping with the claims of his early remarks concerning Weber, he establishes a necessary relation between class and status. Nevertheless, even the aforementioned commentator, for all his generosity to the French scholar, calls attention to Bourdieu's own words “that the analysis remains incomplete. Above all, this is because the presentation has been essentially static, freezing the practices being studied into a kind of snapshot. Hence, one must move beyond this provisional objectivism, which, in “treating social facts as things”, reifies what it describes. The social positions which present themselves to the observer as places juxtaposed in a static order of discrete compartments are also strategic fortresses to be defended and captured in a field of struggles” (Bourdieu 1984 (1979) :244). Differences of lifestyle are, for Bourdieu, profoundly implicated in conflicts over individuals” location in social space and the structure of that space itself. This implies that conflicts between classes and between class fractions have an ineluctably symbolic component. It is in this proposition that the full significance of Bourdieu's attempt to yoke together “class” and 'status” becomes apparent. Bourdieu views the class structure of a social formation as an objective network of positions which are systematically related to one another in terms of the distribution of cultural and economic capital across

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occupational locations. The concept of field is intended to foreclose what Bourdieu considers as an overly structuralist interpretation of social space that is, one in which the individuals who “occupy” the various positions are reduced to the role of mere “bearers” of the structural relations that are encapsulated in them (cf. Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992: 94-115). In this context, the term is meant to recall a battlefield or a playing field, and more specifically, the fact that the individuals who confront one another will enter into conflict or competition with one another, each from a more or less advantageous position (Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992: 16-18). On this basis, Bourdieu’s social space can equally be termed a “field of social classes” (e.g. Bourdieu 1984 (1979):345; 1991:41). In the context of Distinction, this means that lifestyles are caught up in social struggles. Aspects of a lifestyle such as haute cuisine or an antique collection, on the one hand, are not simply distinct from “hearty” foods and mass-produced decorations, on the other. To the contrary, the different forms of the same lifestyle element (furniture, food, etc). stand in a hierarchical relation to one another, and as a result of this, lifestyles themselves are socially ranked. According to Bourdieu, the hierarchical “status” of a lifestyle is a function of its proximity to or distance from the “legitimate culture” (cf. Weininger 2005:96). The latter refers to those elements of culture universally recognized as “worthy”, “official”, high-brow”,” or in some other way “distinguished.” As such, the composition of the legitimate culture is permanently in play: it is the object of a perpetual struggle. It is [pertinent to note that this model has proved to be incapable of accounting for, let alone predicting the emergence of a new type of cultural consumption unearthed by the studies of latter carried out in the US over the last few decades- namely, what Peterson and Kern (1996) designate as the ideal of the “cultural omnivore.” Under this ideal, rather than standing in a hierarchical relation, the different forms of each cultural practice or object for example, the various cuisines, musical traditions, or literary genres are understood to all have their own meritorious exemplars, as determined by evaluative criteria which are indigenous to their particular “cultural milieu,” and therefore mutually irreducible. The resulting social imperative amounts to a kind of cultural “cosmopolitanism,” hinging on facility with the immanent meaning and unique virtues of a wide range of objects and practices. Relatedly, an influential social reproduction argument concerns the special importance of cultural capital (Bourdieu and Passeron 1970; Bourdieu 1997 [1983]) that the odds in school are stacked particularly heavily in

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favor of children and youth whose parents are the well-placed insiders in a society's educational and cultural institutions, the cultural elite. Not only can such parents urge their children on in school and help them with the schoolwork. Bourdieu’s particular claim is that in order to succeed, especially in the selective stages of the system, you also need to be at ease with the life style which is taken for granted among those who have high status in this social field: the nuances of language, the aesthetic preferences, and other symbolic expressions which mark the insider against the outsider. Such elements are not just accoutrements of cultural privilege, according to Bourdieu; they serve as prerequisites for success. It would seem that the further one’s origin is from a country’s cultural elite, the fewer are one’s chances of doing well in school. By this line of reasoning, immigrant children should be destined to fail in school. Very often, immigrant parents do not speak with ease the language of the country to which they have moved, let alone master its more socially exclusive nuances. Not being familiar with the education system from their own experience, immigrants should be at a disadvantage in helping their children navigate through it. Excepting those few who belong to a jet-setting international elite, the parents” grasp of the life-style subtleties of the form of cultural capital into whose ambit they have moved would be poor. Apart from the disadvantage due to having an immigrant background as such, the chances of failing in school are greater when the parents are poor, when parents secure menial jobs, and/or had little schooling. Insofar as immigrant groups are disproportionately in these social categories, the educational prospects of youth from immigrant background should be dim. Further, if the family belongs to a “visible minority” typical of those who have migrated to the “the North” from a developing country, there is racist exclusion which could cause outright opposition to the “white man’s school” and channel immigrant youth towards a future in an ethnically distinct new “underclass.” Social reproduction theory would also imply that among immigrants the principles of reproduction would broadly apply as among non-immigrants: that the relative educational success of children would mirror their family’s social class and relative possession of cultural capital. (Laugiq 2000)

Meanwhile, intuition and common sense are not the best advisers in scholarly matters. So it is fully proper to query: “Does the weight of research evidence support such pessimistic hypotheses?” Pre-empting the conclusion, which is that immigrant children are doing surprisingly well, before the data, let us consider the possible reason for

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this empirical failing. Now the Bourdieusian determinism discussed earlier means his approach is also mechanistic and certainly antidialectical. Positing reproduction (which is merely one type of change), he cannot grasp any counteracting tendencies and countervailing forces. The result is predictable: Findings of poor achievement are not dominant in international research literature on the educational achievement of immigrant youth. Sometimes immigrant youth from certain backgrounds lag behind others in school, but they typically do better than might be expected when account is taken of their parents” social class circumstances and level of schooling. The theme of “trying hard” is common to the ethnographic studies on immigrants to the United States, reported in a compendium edited by Gibson and Ogbu (1991). Many of these studies fit Ogbu’s (1991) distinction between immigrant minorities and “involuntary” minorities. Youth from the former background do better in school. Quantitative survey research in the United States has corroborated the theme of immigrants trying harder and having high educational ambitions (Rumbaut 1997a; Fuligni 1997). In the UK, Tomlinson (1991) similarly claims that immigrant minority pupils show greater persistence and motivation than non-immigrants. An earlier Norwegian youth study (Lauglo 1996) found that, compared with ethnic Norwegians, immigrant youth of non-Western background did more homework and had more positive attitudes to school. Concerning educational performance and attainment, the consistency of positive results is less internationally complete. Before controlling for social class [this suggests a key role of class position as a determinant of academic attainment-note: J. T.] and/or parental education, some immigrant groups match the native majority but others lag behind (Gillborn 1997 on the UK; Portes and MacLeod 1996 on the US; Engen, Kulbrandstad, and Sand 1997 on Norway; Lofgren 1991 on Sweden). In those studies that control for socio-cultural class conditions, the findings present a more optimistic view. In the case of American research, the focus has been on the predominantly Asian and Latin American nationalities in the new wave of immigration since the early 1980s. Most of the immigrant groupings examined outperform their peers (Fuligni 1997; Rumbaut 1997a, b; Portes and MacLeod 1996). Immigrant youth also seem to perform better than non-immigrant peers from the same ethnic background. (Rumbaut 1995:146). Laugiq notes that:

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Chapter IV European results are more mixed. British studies show that whilst Asians perform well after social class controls, youth of West Indian background do not perform as well as the majority white population (Gillborn and Gipps 1996). The few nationwide surveys which have been carried out elsewhere in Europe seem to show that performance differences from the majority grouping in secondary school achievement disappear once social class is controlled for [which demonstrates again the preponderant impact of class—note: J. T.]. Vallet and Caille (1996) found such results in France, and Lauglo (1996; 1999) in Norway. In Sweden, in a study of whole cohorts of people born in Sweden during 1953–70, Simila (1994) found that those of immigrant background obtained higher rates of upper academic-secondary schooling than those of non-immigrant parentage, after controlling for parental socioeconomic status (SES). Intriguingly the sole exceptions were those of Finnish, Norwegian and Danish parentage, groups which had come from just across the border. (Laugiq 2000).

The aforementioned scholar thus summarizes the evidence reviewed: A weakness of social reproduction theory is that it fails to explain such social fluidity and social advancement as does occur in a society. In particular, it offers little help in explaining educational success among individuals who lack the very class-related background resources which are deemed to be of decisive importance. Other conditions of social structure … also structure social action. In addition to the individual exceptions, it is also possible to trace particularly strong social ascent over generations by certain cultural groups. Social history is replete with examples concerning certain religious minorities as well as certain immigrant groups who in the space of two to three generations have risen from humble beginnings to a preponderance in middle-class professions: for example, Japanese Americans, Chinese Americans, immigrant Jews who started in the sweatshops of New York’s garment district or in London’s Spitalsfield. Social reproduction is a reality, but so also are the forces that defy it. (Laugiq 2000).

To be sure, there is no logical reason for which cultural capital scholars should be prevented from accommodating social, including class mobility. Thus, Dunlap (1986) argues that “every class has its own cultural capital,” concluding that “to move from one class to another, people must gain new cultural capital.” Given the poor quality of class theory pertaining to the capital cultural literature and the spurious character of its central construct, the argument cited above is misleading. Reducing cultural capital to labor power, it is trivially true that different classes require distinct types of labor power, albeit this is by no means a universal regularity; a rentier, for example, does not work and, thus, does not own any labor power. Second, class mobility is driven by shifts in one’s economic ownership, not

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cultural capital situation. Even granted, for the sake of argument (which is too crude an assumption) that every class is characterized by an unique bundle of behaviors linked to the notion of cultural capital, a nouveauriche is not required to acquire habits and speech patterns of the bourgeois class to be its effective member, this being based on his or her ownership position. This may suggest that, as regards the Bourdieusian thesis, the bone of contention is not the fact of social reproduction as such but its mechanism. And there the Bourdieusian conception is at its weakest. “The Bourdieuian argument critically depends on the assumption that teachers value elite culture” (Kingston). Broderick and Hubbard examined this assumption by investigating to what extent, if any, students” cultural capital is taken account of by teachers, thereby determining grades: None of the cultural capital variables that included “household educational resources” was found to be significantly related to teachers” perceptionsand the addition of these variables to the model only slightly reduced the association between socioeconomic status (SES) and teachers” perceptions, which suggests that the alleged impact of cultural capital is spurious. Not only are teachers generally unimpressed by what researchers have regarded as cultural capital, but, the cultural capital variables had virtually no impact on the relationship between teachers” perceptions and students” grades and the former also accounted for only a small fraction of the substantial relationship between SES and grades. (2000)

This is not an isolated view; another study also concludes that “the association between parents” participation in high culture and children’s educational attainment proves to be spurious. …The social background variable predicts both the lifestyle and the educational attainment of the family. This has very serious negative implications for Bourdieu’s theory” (de Graaf 1986). It may be surmised that those implications would have been somewhat mitigated had Bourdieu adopted a more robust conceptualization of this 'social background.” This is also pointed out by McNeal in whose opinion sociologists of education encounter problems in applying the Bourdieusian notion of cultural capital because of their lack of “assessing the extent to which parent involvement differentially affects academic achievement by social class” (2001).

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With that, the argument comes full circle, as the Bourdieusian and postBourdieusian sociology of education hinges on the notion of social differentiation. This implies that to criticize Bourdieu’s specific approach to social roots of educational inequalities is not to deny the need for this kind of research. To demonstrate this, it is useful to review again the main points that have emerged in the debate among educational sociologists. Perhaps the most prominent issue surrounding cultural capital research is the empirical measurement of the concept. In one camp, researchers adhere closely to the measurement of cultural capital as outlined by Bourdieu, who used such items as one’s taste in and knowledge of music and art to measure cultural capital. Many researchers follow his example, using similar measures, such as trips to museums, classical music concerts, and music and art classes (DiMaggio 1982; DiMaggio and Mohr 1985; Ganze-boom, DeGraaf, and Robert 1990; Kastillis and Rubenson 1990; Kalmijn and Kraaykamp 1996; Aschaffenburg and Maas 1997; Roscigno and Ainsworth-Darnell 1999; Sullivan 2001; Dumais 2002; Eitle and Eitle 2002). The other camp consists of those who argue that participation and interest in high-status art is irrelevant to school success in the American context. Farkas argues, for example, that what schools reward is not necessarily involvement in high-status culture, but certain “skills, habits, and styles,” such as classroom deportment, that are valued by schools and teachers (1996). In this view, cultural capital refers less to one’s knowledge of and interest in high-status culture than one’s tool kit of practical skills that can be put to use in school. However, as Kingston points out, this turn in recent years toward expanding the measurement of cultural capital to include such things as household educational resources (e.g., books and computers) is inconsistent with a crucial aspect of the definition of cultural capital-that cultural capital is a high-status cultural signal used for the purposes of exclusion. Kingston writes that 'such home practices represent the impact of “culture,” even what may be called middle-class culture. But they do not represent exclusionary practices that are valued for their connection to a social group” (2001). This is not to say that Kingston agrees neither with the measurement of cultural capital as participation in high-status cultural activities. Indeed, he argues that in the “highly pluralized and democratized” context of American culture, few “class-based exclusionary cultural practices” still exist (2001). Similarly, Lareau and Weininger argue that cultural divisions along social class lines have dissolved in the United States, which should lead to a diminished role of high-status cultural capital in perpetuating social class inequality in education (2003).

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It is true that “participation in high-status cultural activities is on the decline in the United States” (DiMaggio and Mukhtar 2004). Peterson and Kern found that individuals who are most interested in high-status culture have become more culturally omnivorous, expressing a wide variety of cultural interests, suggesting that elite rejection of popular culture has declined (1996). However, the unequal distribution of high-status cultural participation across different levels of education persists, with highly educated people still more likely to participate in high-status cultural activities than are those with less education (DiMaggio and Mukhtar 2004). As long as high-status cultural participation is still disproportionately found among the socioeconomically advantaged, this means that there is some correlation between high-status cultural participation and social class. We may even witness a resurgence of high-status cultural participation being wielded as a tool of exclusion in the name of securing academic advantage among the socioeconomically privileged. As Lucas argues, when access to a given level of education becomes universal, as has occurred with high school in the United States, the socioeconomically advantaged switch their focus from securing quantitative advantages (e.g., completing high school versus not) to seeking out qualitative advantages within that level of education (2001). As access to more years of education continues to widen, students” possession of high-status cultural capital could well assert itself as an important tool for the maintenance of socioeconomic inequality in high schools, with subtle differences in cultural experiences between students becoming increasingly consequential markers of distinction. Therefore, there remains a place in educational research for examining the relationship between cultural capital, conceived as involvement in highstatus culture, and educational outcomes. Indeed, as educational access has expanded to larger numbers of people, involvement in high-status culture may become a more important criterion for sorting students. It is in the spirit of measuring cultural capital such that it taps exclusionary classbased practices, along with an empirically supported belief that there do remain such exclusionary class-based practices in the United States, that the current study measures cultural capital as students” participation in high-status cultural activities. (Wildhagen 2009). Finally, a thorough statistical study of the Netherlands, where education has been almost completely free since 1950 found that “the influence of

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cultural resources, which was small before 1950, became even smaller after 1950 (Idenburg 1964). The association between parents” participation in high culture and children’s educational attainment proves to be spurious” (De Graaf 1996). Having reviewed some of the core views of the French sociologist, we do not part company with him, as his thought is present in a number of works whose authors do not hide their intellectual debt toward Bourdieu.

IV.3. British epigons What on the surface may seem to be a harsh judgment, upon scrutiny will be perhaps seen in a new light. Indeed, it is fair to say that it would be rather hard to find another research that would so singularly squander extent the unprecedented opportunities offered to it in the form of public resources and promotion. The starting point for a group of British social scientists was-rather modest for our taste-critique of the dominant official so to speak class scheme by Goldthorpe et al. The bulk of material for their study was going to be provided by -as they boast-the largest survey of its kind ever conducted in Britain, the BBC's 2011 Great British Class Survey, with 161,400 web respondents. From a sociological viewpoint, this immediately raises the question of representativeness, which, however, does in no way detract from the wellbeing of the study’s authors, as they do not shy away from registering how good they are feeling about themselves in the form of an importunate eulogy of themselves to the effect that their findings” will attract enormous interest from a wide social scientific community in offering an up-to-date multi-dimensional model of social class” (Savage et al. 2013:220). Well, hubris can be quite risky, as the voice not unrepresentative of that community shows, whose bearer is clearly repelled by rather than attracted to the allegedly path-breaking model: “It is so theoretically and methodologically flawed that it can contribute little of value to our understanding of the structure of systematic social inequality in the UK” (Mills 2013). Apparently, what the aforementioned critics means does not include what constitutes the pivotal criticism that could be levied against Savage et al.” study-from our perspective, it is imperative to call into question their fundamental premise and at the same time rationale. For Savage et al.” a

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negative frame of reference is constituted by the EGP schema, as a consequence of which their investigation remains highly dependent upon that alternative framework. Thus, Savage et al. argue that their own framework is wider than that of the EGP schema, especially with regard to cultural and social factors that are left out by the latter, as opposed to the former. This speaks to the debate reported at more length in the respective (33) chapter, our own position being that the kind of arguments named above are flawed; one does have to define one’s units of class analysis first, which implies a theoretically grounded conceptual apparatus. John Goldthorpe and his associates employ to that end occupational and employment criteria, but this is by any means the only possible approach, as could be surmised on the basis of Savage et al.’s exposition. In a word, whilst Goldthorpe’s approach is not immune to criticism, their basic perspective calling for definite economic relations by which to delineate class boundaries and only then proceed to an investigation of those noneconomic phenomena, which enables the researcher, inter alia, to grasp how the latter are dependent on or conditioned by the class-relevant economic relations. But as suggested, there are also a number of alternative views on how to conceptualise given economic relations, including our own framework that focuses on economic property relations. As noted elsewhere, from such a perspective one can investigate the relationship between the economic or class in this elementary, primal sense and any other factors that one wishes to capture, including class consciousness, cultural and political participation and so on. To pre-empt one particular kind of the criticisms that might be levied against the said perspective, this approach has nothing in common with any reductionisman examination of what relations there are between the underlying class/property relations and all the non-economic phenomena that one happens to explore does not obligate one to negate whatever degree of autonomy given extra-economic processes or structures might enjoy. To us, this constitutes an elementary knowledge, but the fact is that again and again some major misconceptions and misunderstandings in that area cloud what seems a fairly straightforward picture. To turn to the aforementioned specific shortcomings present in the framework of the study under consideration, it is incomprehensible, Given that all nine (sic!) authors are professional sociologists, why they had to wait till the completion of the survey to find out that “the GBCS web survey suffered from a strong selection bias, with respondents being predominantly drawn from the well-educated social groups”, as though this self-selection effect could not be foreseen. Somehow, only then it was decided to conduct a supplementary national survey (using quota

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sampling), with 1026 respondents, which is for sure a tiny percentage of the number of those who had bothered to answer the web questionnaire. And contrary to the authors” opinion, the statistical technique that was supposed to address this disproportionality is ill-suited to do the job, at least in their version; according to a peer review, “the model of latent classes resulting from the analysis is not coherent, with groupings that might be better distinguished as class fractions” (Bradley 2014). Another member of the sociological community was even less impressed, as evidenced by the title of his appraisal “The Great Fiasco”: “a theory free (though Bourdieu inspired) data dredging exercise. What they derive is an arbitrary typology determined by a contingent fact- the size of their sample” (Mills 2013). The critic rightly points out that whereas “with a probability sample there is a coherent procedure for making sample to population inferences, including, most importantly, inferences about uncertainty: with a quota sample there is none, unless one is prepared to assert that the “correct” data generating model has been identified” (Mills 2013). As a result 'savage et al. have a mountain of highly self-selected poor quality data sitting on top of a molehill of (slightly) better quality data. Ultimately they want to use the latter to make a sensible calibration of the former, but they have to do this without any basis for assessing the uncertainty surrounding the numbers they estimate.” (Mills 2013). And one do not have to be a rocket scientist to see that this is far from being inconsequential “to take just one example of the difficulties this creates, much fuss is made about the discovery of a social class category they call the “elite”. They tell us that this is about 6 per cent of the population. If the data were from a simple random sample a rough 95% confidence interval would be ± 1.5 per cent. But that is foolishly optimistic and takes no account of any other source of variance inflating error. One could easily double this number. So the “elite” could, on the basis of these data, be 3 per cent of the population, but it could also be 9 per cent of the population. Nine per cent is so large that Savage et al. might want to think again about the appropriation of the “elite” label. They have no basis, other than wishful thinking, for favouring either number (or anything in between). As might be expected, this is not the end of Savage and Co.'s methodological trials and tribulations:

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“The seven social classes that Savage et al. find fall out of a so-called latent profile model estimated on the GfK (the name of the survey firm involved) quota sample plus one case consisting of the 161,400 responses to the GBCS each given a weight of 1/161400. This means that the parameter estimates that determine how respondents are allocated to social classes are derived almost entirely from the quota sample. The GBCS respondents are then allocated to the latent class categories on the basis of the model. There will be a considerable amount of uncertainty in doing so because the parameters of the latent profile model will not be well determined” (Mills 2013).

More specifically, the reader of Savage et al. is kept almost completely in the dark as far as the process of discovery of their seven social classes is concerned. While they state that the Bayesian Information Coefficient is minimized when seven latent classes are assumed, we are not told what difference does it make-how much worse things are when, say, six or eight latent classes are assumed, “or the extent to which these solutions resemble the seven class solution. We are given no sense whatsoever of model uncertainty. In fact there is a dark secret” (Mills 2013). It follows that the selection of the aforementioned seven classes is simply a function of what is from this point of view accidental, i.e. the sample size of the GfK survey “and without well-articulated theoretical grounds for distinguishing the classes it could not be otherwise” (Mills 2013). The corollary is an inseparable aspect of stratification schemes, i.e. arbitrariness; “it is just as well that Savage et al. discard the GBCS data. If they had estimated their latent profile model with 161,400 cases they would conclude that there were rather more than seven classes. The number of classes is a consequence of a decision about how much data to collect” (Mills 2013). The polemist being cited anticipates the possible response of those being criticised and confutes their invocation of induction as a purported vindication of the details of their methodology reported above: “Savage et al. will no doubt claim that they are pursuing an open-minded inductive strategy but this simply won’t do. A sensible model selection strategy must be based not only on formal statistical criteria but also on whether the model makes sense in terms of the configuration of variables that go into it; but it is just too facile to pass off unconstrained post-hoc interpretations as though they are facts of nature. This is particularly true when one allows oneself, as Savage et al. do, to go on a fishing expedition that encompasses variables external to the latent profile model itself. It is permissible to use external variables to validate a typology once you have made it, but peeking at them while making decisions about whether there

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One could put forward an even stronger case for an approach alternative to such a pure inductivism in defining class and delineating the boundaries of classes. This is necessarily so, because class analysis is “the empirical investigation of the consequences and corollaries of the existence of a class structure defined ex-ante”. By starting from a particular definition, sociologists can assess the extent to which such things as inequality in life chances among individuals and families are structured on the basis of class. This approach stands in contrast to one that discovers a class structure from the empirical distribution of inequality in society (Sorensen 2000 labels this the “nominal classifications” approach). In class analysis the theoretical underpinnings of the version of class that is being used have to be made clear at the outset, and the concept of class has to be operationalized so as to allow claims about class to be tested empirically. If we examine the two main varieties of contemporary class analysis namely Marxist class analysis [...] and the neo-Weberian class analysis we find that these two tasks are central to both” (Breen 2005:14). But even granting the researchers the benefit of the doubt does little to relieve their predicament- for Even assuming -counter-factually-that “the model is capable of allocating individuals in the GBCS data to the right classes, it does not allow the relationship between the class categories and any variable in the GBCS external to the latent profile model to be estimated without bias” (Mills 2013). This is significant, since it is precisely what Savage et al. set out to do; for instance, when they tabulate data on occupations conditional on class membership, or when they map the density of class membership by geographical region. The thing is, “calibration of the GBCS by the GfK only works for variables that have been observed in both surveys but it cannot make an appropriate adjustment for selection into the GBCS on the basis of unobservables” (Mills 2013). The problem is that the aforementioned selection bias has far-reaching consequences-even if “we correctly assign a GBCS respondent on the basis of the GfK to be a member of the “traditional working class”, they would, on average, have a “curiosity” score (i.e. a propensity to contribute to the web survey) that “was higher than the average in their class and [...] they would also have a higher than average propensity to be a graduate than a non-graduate. The magnitude of the bias induced by selection into the GBCS on the basis of unobservables is unknown and, I believe, not

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estimable from these data. It would, however, be heroic to assume it didn’t exist and doubly heroic to assume that it wasn’t compounded by a similar selection bias affecting inclusion in the GfK quota sample.” (Mills 2013). Given the weight of the aforementioned criticisms, the reader could be forgiven for believing that they pretty much exhaust the matter. Unfortunately, this is not the case; even on the methodological front one could additionally make clear what follows from the preceding argument: “it is highly likely that any comparison between Savage et al.'s class categories with respect to variables contained in the GBCS but not used to derive the class categories such as educational attainment, type of university attended, geographical location and so forth will be biased to a degree that may be substantively significant.” (Mills 2013). To pick up on that remark, the methodological objections-important as they are-pale into insignificance in comparison with a range of even more crucial flaws to the approach concerned. Its authors display an amazing lack of self-knowledge; two leading scholars in that team suggest they were influenced by Bourdieu, Marx, Weber, Giddens and several other-lesser or greater-social-science giants, as well as by what they -rather vaguely-call dis-identification, whose particular merit is that it is supposed to bring out the “relationality” of class (Savage and Devine, 2013). Obviously, there can be no denying that the authors of the study concerned owe a lot to Bourdieu, but one could be forgiven by being perplexed by the presence of the remaining names on the list, notably those of Marx and Weber. This is the case because, as argued above, they both may be regarded as the founding fathers of socio-economic class theory. Meanwhile, this is a far cry from the approach of Savage et al., which is by any means relational but, conversely, gradational. In other words, instead of the classics” complex structure of classes and their relationships we are presented with a rather simple, three-dimensional scale, which obviously is the hallmark of social stratification rather than class, which, parenthetically, the sociologists concerned seem to be aware of, as the phrase “the lower levels of the class structure suggests. It should be emphasised that the point is not simply that the sociologists concerned do not follow in Marx and/or Weber’s footsteps. The gist of the matter is, rather, that by abandoning the relational and economically grounded perspective Savage et al., as their report amply documents, lost

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any chance whatsoever of working out a theory that would capture the relationships between the economic and non-economic dimensions of social life, which was precisely their goal, according to their own testimony. Although we do not share the following critic of Savage et al.’s admiration for postmodern perspectives in sociology, this does not prevent us from appreciating her apposite comment targeting the study under consideration: “A major insight of the postmodern moment in sociology was that forms of social differentiation are marked by “othering”. My social identities (gender, class, ethnicity, etc). are defined against those who are other/not-me. In a gradational account of class this process is lacking, or indeed concealed, although it is devastatingly revealed in [...] the habits of upper-middle-class private-school students sneering at working-class or state school students as “peasants” or “chavs” (Bradley 2014). More broadly, 'savage et al. ”underplay the importance of the various forms of economic capital which still lie at the centre of class configurations. [...] Thus their empirical schema appears confused” (Bradley 2014). As we themselves underscored above, this charge (including the relevance of the concept of economic, that is, the only capital that exists) seems indeed go to the heart of Savage et al.'s approach that is incapable of conceptualising the economic in an objective fashion and, by extension, of capturing the real interconnections between the aspects of social life to which their, or rather Bourdieusian, “capitals” vaguely refer. The underlying reason of the above incapacity is, sure enough, their Stratificatory approach whereby Class is reduced to “a scale, on which individuals are placed in terms of their possession of more or fewer elements of capital. The relation between the classes then is gradational, and the cut-off points between the classes concomitantly arbitrary, as Bradley (2014) notes, by the same token endorsing our earlier diagnosis. Interestingly enough, this is at least indirectly acknowledged also by the culprits themselves, who declare that they “are using their various indicators to differentiate “parsimoniously” statistical clusters of people and thence locate the main class boundaries” (Savage et al. 2013:229). To be sure, the aforementioned lack of epistemological self-knowledge prevents Savage et al. from adopting the terminology best suited for the hierarchic framework, i.e. that of social strata, which leads to the predictable result, parallel to that encountered in the previous section, i.e. a heterogeneous patchwork rather than a coherent analytic framework.

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With the difference in relation to stratification perspectives lying in the nomenclature only, Savage et al. group people into clusters on the basis of the possession of different forms and degrees of three types of capital: economic, cultural and social, which is, of course, the “unholy trinity” originated with Bourdieu; though they number as many as nine full-time researchers, they have been not able to enrich the Bourdieusian scheme by even one slot. While it is safe to say that Savage et al would not agree, pointing too many-to their mind-ways in which their scheme is innovative, this claim can be refuted by indicating that modifications, if any, concern merely the content of particular categories, not to say otherwise that they are for worse rather than for better. The so-called economic capital refers simply to income and wealth-both being standard stratification determinants. Savage et al. stress the purported advantage of their research over other approaches: “The questions on economic capital asked not only about household income, but also savings and the value of owner-occupied housing, so allowing unusually detailed measures of economic capital”. The authors, as well as perhaps the reader, should be disabused-one cannot automatically equate each and every income and/or wealth item with capital. A complete list of criteria by which to differentiate between real, and merely formal ownership of capital is presented elsewhere (Tittenbrun 2011b), so for the sake of space savings we will refer at this point to just one condition-if and when a given pool of savings, be they a bank account or a bundle of securities, is for a given individual a more important source of livelihood than her wage or salary, then it may be said to constitute the real-as opposed to formal-economic ownership. It is no brainer that the authors of the study concerned do not draw any such comparisons, being moreover complacent about the quality of their data; meanwhile, it is widely known that questions about wealth or income pose special difficulties in sociological surveys, which is totally ignored by Savage et al., who would make us believe that their data -contrary to what is (almost, as Savage et al. at least are excluded from this overwhelming majority) universally known-are credible. Add to the usual list of misgivings concerning social surveys” reliability some technical complaints-for instance, expecting respondents to provide

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an accurate estimate of the value of their pension is “a stretch too far” (Mills 2013). This being said, it is impressive that Savage et al. succeed in a veritable coup, conceptualising -as they do-the two remaining forms of “capital” in an even more problematic manner. Thus, their report makes one believe that there is something to be said for an otherwise strange decision of the French theorist about putting the form of capital, made famous mostly by others, on the back burner. Savage et al. define social capital as “contacts and connections which allow people to draw on their social networks”. (2013) In practical terms, the questions on social capital -clarify Savage et al.-”mainly take the form of “position generator” developed by the American sociologist Nan Lin (2001) to measure the range of people’s social ties. We asked respondents whether they knew anyone in 37 different occupations, which is the most complex and granular question of its type ever used in social research in any part of the world” (2013). While their self-marketing ability is incontestable, there are no grounds not to take Savage et al's word but there is a snag; the paramount objective of the whole project based on the BBC’s Great Class Survey was to challenge the monopoly enjoyed, notably in Britain, by the EGP occupational scheme. Indeed, the rationale of using occupational labels for research purposes is increasingly undermined by their purportedly unrestrained inflation, discussed in the chapter on the aforementioned scheme. So it appears to be both an unconventional and controversial decision on the part of Savage et al. to “used what respondents wrote about the occupations of their acquaintances in their assessment of everyone’s class.” (Dorling 2013). But it still may well be that Savage et al.’s ambitions to 'shed more light on how cultural and social boundaries operate in Britain and how this might suggest new lines of class division” (2013) will be fulfilled thanks to the next section in their research report, may it not? After all, judging from their self-identification in terms of “cultural class analysis” (Savage et al. 2013) it is exactly this section that occupies particularly prominent position in the research project concerned. So it must be disappointing for anybody cherishing such high hopes that Savage et al.’s discussion of the respective portion of their findings

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replicates the same -associated with their inadequate methodological selfawareness-baffling slip. Namely, Savage et al. criticise the EGP 'schema [as being] of less use in explicating the wider cultural and social activities and identities … which do not appear to be closely linked to people’s class position, as defined by the Goldthorpe class schema … (2013:222) And again, analogically as in the case of social capital discussed above, this claim happens to be contradicted by their own evidence. Consider Savage et al.’s Figure 1 (2013:227). and Figure 2:

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[http://soc.sagepub.com/content/47/2/219.full.pdf+html]2013:228).

It could be shown that the categories of the conventional EGP scheme fall from top to bottom, corresponding to the particular points along the cultural dimension drawn. In a word, 'savage et al.’s initial belief is wrong. We are told that one of the motivations for the project is that conventional class categories are inadequate for the sociological analysis of the sorts of cultural tastes and practices they are interested in. But when their own data show that they are mistaken, rather than abandoning their initial premise they carry on regardless” (Mills 2013). To make matters worse, the second dimension in Figure 1, labelled “emerging cultural capital”, leaves out “in what sense it is emerging and

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what it is emerging from. [...] it distinguishes the sorts of things that young people like doing from the sorts of things that older people dislike or don’t do. There is no doubt that younger people do and enjoy things that older people don’t but what has this to do with social class? Do people’s tastes and activities change as they get older? Yes. Do people’s tastes depend on when they were born? Yes. What dimension 2 represents is a mixture of life-cycle and cohort differences. Nobody denies that the young and old are different. It’s a novel claim, however, to assert that they are different social classes” (Mills 2013). Thus, supporters of Savage et al.’s claims for novelty may feel satisfied, though it is less than certain that it is this kind of novelty that the authors of the study originally meant. In brief, the good old economic relations reassert themselves, demonstrating that one cannot choose whatever phenomena one pleases as the foundation of class locations. regarding the above-mentioned “new lines of division” ostensibly discovered as a result of their research, the “Cultural Capital” section of Savage et al.’s investigation is based on, conversely, a traditional and conventional partition of given activities into two classes: “highbrow” and “emerging. It is paradoxical that the study aimed at discovering new lines of class divide should end up reinforcing class-based stereotypical divisions. Such a conclusion follows also from another apposite critique of the study: The markers of cultural capital are highly selective and therefore inappropriate for empirical operationalising, skewing instead the empirical findings, and leading to a negative view of working-class culture [...] there is a strangely old-fashioned feel to their choice, harking back to the old debates about “high” versus “popular” culture. This seems odd, since Savage et al. have already identified the “middle class” as omnivores, consuming theatre/opera/ratatouille and rap/football/fish and chips” (Bradley 2014). Furthermore, as Bradley argues, “there is an ambivalence about the working class”: on the one hand they are portrayed as one-sided consumers of low-brow cultural genres and varieties, and on the other they are treated as culturally deprived. Bradley makes a compelling case for the recognition of “distinctive working-class cultural life: betting shops, pubs, greyhound racing, darts, pigeon-fancying, seaside trips, package holidays, DIY skills, professional playing of football, reading of sports papers and “true life romances”.

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What I see as a vigorous enjoyment of cultural forms in working-class communities is missing from this particular strand of Bourdieusian analysis, so that working-class attributes appears as a lack, a cultural deficit” (Bradley 2014). Her final remark indicates that the source of those cognitive biases and errors lies in the vicious circle created by the “capitalist” framework: “It can be argued that the reason for ignoring such cultural forms is that they do not carry social legitimacy, so cannot be considered as symbolic capital. “(Bradley 2014). Thus, one form of “capital” accounts for the deficiencies in the approach to another form. But all this makes such satirical interventions as that cited below more than welcome as an antidote to class labelling and stigmatizing. In his column in the Independent newspaper, comedian Mark Steel put his finger on the chief reason why the project concerned has failed and why the members of the privileged classes and estates might read it complacently: “One question the survey didn’t seem to bother asking was what job you did, although it does ask for the jobs of your friends. So if you’re a cleaner who knows some teachers, that makes you middle class for having teacher friends, but those teachers will be working class for having a friend who’s a cleaner” (2013) “(Dorling 2013). Given our earlier criticisms, it is not surprising that the overall result of Savage et al.’s classificatory labours falls into the same trap as the abovementioned chunks of the study. As suggested above, Savage et al. build their classification on the critique of the EGP scheme: “rather than seeking to locate class fundamentally in occupational “blocks”, the time is now ripe -they emphasise-for a different, multi-dimensional perspective” (2013). Yet the said multidimensional approach results in two essential effects: “the seven classes are categorised in fairly conventional economic and occupational terms: “technical middle class”, “emergent service workers” and so forth. Yet because the classes consist of clusters of individuals grouped in terms of social contacts and cultural activities, people from the same occupations appear in different “classes”: care workers pop up in three of them. Looking at the occupations seen to predominate in each identified class, one has to ask whether there is anything which really binds them together into a coherent body” (Bradley 2014).

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This is not surprising at all, given that not only in the case of this particular classification its under-theorisation can scarcely be counterbalanced by the sheer proliferation of classificatory descriptors; what the latter produces is simply confusion. Even conceding that “there are differences between the classes” (Mills 2013), the awkward question immediately arises: “which differences are important?” (Mills 2013) At this juncture some critical level as regards rising the above identified self-contradiction like a phoenix from the ashes again and again seems to have been reached, so perhaps instead of persisting in chastising our “Magnificent Nine”, we should congratulate them on their consistency? Anyway, another witness to the spectacle of the aforementioned unending reproduction confirms that “in fact the interpretation and certainly the labels applied to the classes actually come from information quite extraneous to the latent profile analysis itself (Table 7:231). Bizarrely, one of the key ingredients is the percentage classified in the NS-SEC categories that Savage et al. claim are inadequate” (Mills 2013). And the above critic contributes also to the above reported incoherence debate, noting that “Age also seems to play a prominent part in the construction of the classes. While this would be unobjectionable if the objective was market segmentation, it is difficult to see how it can be reconciled with conventional understandings of social class. Usually, classes are thought of as groups within which individuals could potentially spend the whole of their lives. However, Savage et al.’s inductive method allows classes to be distinguished by tastes and activities that have a strong age gradient. The implication is that individuals can either grow out of their class because they become too old to get down to the gym, or become stuck because of the cultural tastes they acquired during early adulthood. Table 7 is a critic’s gold-mine. Take for instance the “traditional working class”. The average age of this group is 66! They have modest incomes, are low on “emerging cultural capital”, yet 30 per cent have, or had, jobs that would be classified as professional or managerial. A large proportion of this group are pensioners. Pensioners are an important interest group, but what analytical insight do we get from calling them a social class?” (Mills 2013). Irrespective of whether one agrees with the final statement, to which we come back below, the presence of pensioners in the ranks of the class

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concerned explains what otherwise may appear to be rather puzzlingSavage et al. treat nearly identical percentages in a very different fashion, depending on which class is at issue: thus, the precariat is, as they put it, “a relatively large social class, with 15 per cent of the population”. But when it comes to the class previously mentioned, their wording radically changes “the surviving rump of the working class [...] they now only comprise 14 per cent”. Be that as it may, statistical issues are relatively independent of the authors” clearly biased language as regards the working class is concerned, which suspicion we shall come back to in somewhat different context. Mills, meanwhile, goes on to argue that: Life cycle plays a role in distinguishing what Savage et al. term the “elite” and the “established middle class”. The latter differ from the former principally by having smaller incomes, less savings and living in cheaper houses. In terms of social and cultural capital they don’t differ at all. When we look at Table 7 we find that the “established middle class” are on average 11 years younger than the elite and other differences are quite marginal. A substantial part of the difference could plausibly be attributed to life-cycle stage and having a stake in the south-east’s housing market. Again we must ask: what is gained by relabelling age and now geography as “class”? Life cycle also plays a role in the identification of the “emergent service workers”. These are young people who go to gigs, join a gym and watch sport. They have few savings and little invested in home ownership. If you were to say that this is a lifestyle group, say young single people or young childless couples then there would be little to object to: but a social class? It’s a strange sort of social class that people will grow out of simply by ageing, getting married and having kids. In short, Savage et al. fail to take the content of their typology seriously. If they did they would have to confront consequences which should give them cause to rethink their approach. For example, they would have to accept that people could change their social class at will simply by turning off the Beatles and turning on to Beethoven. Of course people do change class but if it was as easy as this the solution to Britain’s so-called 'social mobility problem ”would have been spotted long ago” (Mills 2013).

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While many of Mills” criticism appear to be sound, there are some exceptions; he has no theoretical grounds on which to define pensioners as a social class or reject such a definition. In our own theory of social differentiation these are classed as a typical social estate, though of course this refers to kind of model source of livelihood-which does not take account of possible other income sources pertaining to individual members of that category. This points to, as will be seen, a key flaw to Savage et al.’s classification. Let us put aside, for the sake of argument, the extra-economic determinants of societal differentiation as depicted by the above classification. Let us consider the topmost class (labelled “the elite”) which in terms of occupations consists primarily of “chief executive officers, IT directors, marketing and sales directors, financial managers and management consultants, along with elite professions of dentists and barristers”. Their label notwithstanding, a closer look at the basis on which the aforementioned economic agents are grouped together shows that those are predominantly stratificatory criteria. Whether a stratum, a class, or whatever, Savage et al.” elite leaves out traditional business owners, which is sure enough manifestly unfounded. It is true, as argued elsewhere that top corporate managers epitomise the modern capitalist class, yet a rentier or an owner of a firm does not need to be its CEO (which in the former instance is by definition ruled out) From this point of view the characterisation of the group in question Savage et al. provide leaves much to be desired: “contrary to their opinion it falls short of comprising “the most privileged backgrounds” (2013), and owing to the gaps mentioned above it is Savage et al.’s wishful thinking that it “also is an important demonstration of the accentuation of social advantage at the top of British society” (2013). Such are deficiencies of methods for which occupational categories, however understood, constitute a key, if not a paramount analytical tool. Class 2, “Established middle class” is, according to the classification concerned, the second most advantaged class has a household income of £47k a year, owns a relatively expensive house worth £177k, and has moderately good savings of £26k” (Savage et al. 2013). Again, one wonders what is the point of all this extended discussion of economic standing, social connections and cultural consumption (not reproduced here) -which all in Savage et al. are supposed to substantiate

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their joint categorisation, inasmuch as it ultimately turns out that “It might be seen as comprising the bulk of what Goldthorpe identifies as the professional and managerial 'service class”; it has a higher proportion of members working in it management and the professions than any other class except the elite”. (Savage et al. 2013) It must be said that Savage et al. represent a peculiar method of analysisfirst they pay what proves later to be lip service to a much trumpeted wholesale dismissal of Goldthorpe’s scheme, on which seemingly discredited source they then extensively draw. Naturally, however, consequences of that odd policy bring to light the deep-seated weaknesses of their approach. In the above case, for instance, what is striking is the absence of any objective criteria by which to decide what percentage of Goldthorpe’s class is to be included in Savage et al.’s Class 2, and what in class 1. And recall that arbitrariness has been identified above as a hallmark of social stratification research. Because of our general topic, it is also useful to get to know Class 3: Technical middle class. It is marked by fairly high mean good household incomes (£38k), excellent household savings (£66k) and houses worth considerable amounts of money (£163k). It competes with the established middle class to be the second most prosperous class in terms of economic capital. Socially and culturally, however, it is much more restricted than the established middle class. It reports the lowest number of social contacts of any of the classes (an astonishingly low average of four out of 34 possible contacts, compared to 17 for the established middle class), its social circle is much more restricted than other social classes, and it presumably socialises nearly exclusively with other professional experts. This is an interesting riposte to those who think it is the poor or disadvantaged whose social networks are the most restricted. On the basis of savage et al.’s data, those counted in the category under consideration are by far the most limited here. This class is distinguished both by its relative social isolation and its cultural apathy. According to the authors, it comprises “those doing research, scientific and technical forms of work” (2013).

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Granted that the kind of information reported above reflects the socioeconomic situation of the conceptual class and a couple of social estates (scientists in research centres and academicians), as well as-possibly-some direct producers or performers of material labour (technicians), one must take issue with Savage et al’s contention that “the technical middle class are also a powerful reminder that not all those with economic capital have extensive social networks” (Savage et al. 2013). The above claim may or may not be true regarding the range of social contacts characteristic of the bourgeois class, but it is safe to say that among those counted in “the technical middle class” true capitalists constitute sure enough a small minority. Apart from those members of that category whose shareholdings qualify as real economic capital, in a concrete, case-by-case investigation one should look at their house ownership, -e.g. With London property prices at a record high, the practice “buy to let”, just as the business of letting out in general, becomes -at the time of writing-increasingly popular, which may alter whatever class position a given landlord/lady otherwise occupies-although it still does not transform her into a capitalist, as we are dealing here with a peculiar proprietary class (needless to say that the above reasoning may refer also to other segments of society). More broadly, it is high time to clear up a misunderstanding involved in the notion of social and cultural forms of “capital”, as these are used within the framework concerned. Of course, both the range of one’s social circle and cultural participation are legitimate objects of class analysis, but not in those terms that Savage et al. adopt. If one wants to preserve some order and coherence in one’s research, this kind of investigation should follow the step of class determination on an economic basis. In fact, in our socio-economic structuralism we have been long engaged in precisely this sort of research-in terms of rigorous theoretical apparatus, distinguishing two basic forms of societal activities a given class is engaged in: classdependent phenomena, most directly influenced by one’s ownership position and class-conditioned ones, more indirectly dependent on the latter, whose dependency on their class base could be also dubbed soft. By way of illustration, the former category includes income, while the latter the size of one’s home book collection. It needs to be emphasised that the prerequisite for any such research is a former distinguishing factor of a given socio-economic class. Absent this step, one’s research is bound to end up in a chaotic confusion of phenomena pertinent to distinct levels of the social world-as is the case in the instances considered earlier in the present chapter.

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From the point of view espoused here, for instance, instead of Savage et al.’s differentiation between Class 4: New affluent workers and Class 5: Traditional working class, whose composition is unclear, to say the least, one should determine first on the basis of economic criteria what working classes are there, and only then characterise their non-economic parameters. This would be an optimal, efficient procedure, yielding relatively most cognitive benefits, as only in this case it would be known concretely what groups manifest what behaviours, which knowledge must remain unavailable within frameworks such as those analysed earlier. Likewise, in the absence of any exact determination of their relation to ownership, including ownership of labour power, one is unable to say whether Savage et al’s’ class of people who are “making their way” in a range of relatively insecure occupations” (2013) in the service sector ought to be separated from another service class, as well -due to the aforementioned “insecurity”-from the next and final class on the list. This is Class 7, dubbed Precariat. Savage et al. estimate that it comprises 15 per cent of the population. As they would have it, “occupationally”, they encompass the unemployed, van drivers, cleaners, carpenters, care workers, cashiers, postal workers, as well as shopkeepers. Thus, the British researchers put very different categories in one bag; even abstracting from the question whether an unemployment qualifies as an occupation at par with airline pilots, journalist, carpenters and a myriad of others, their particular groups making up the purported social class include a proprietary class (shopkeepers), as well as classes standing at the opposite side of the class divide, though not all of those -contrary to Savage et al.-work in services: e.g. van drivers, as the transport employees generally, constitute a separate class, whose distinctiveness, nb., was clear both for Marx and Weber. The transportation employees” class position shows, however, many features in common with the industrial proletariat. Members of both classes are owners of material labour power (as they are involved in material labour), and, secondly, they both possess abstract labour power, i.e. are capable of producing surplus-value. Marx elucidates this question in Grundrisse asking himself the following question: "… can a surplus value be extracted from the transport costs? Let us deduct the constant part of the capital consumed in transport, ship, vehicle etc. and everything which falls under the heading of their application, since this element contributes nothing to the question, and it is irrelevant

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whether this is posited as = 0 or = x. Is it possible, then, that there is surplus labour in these transport costs, and that capital can therefore squeeze a surplus value out of them? The question is simple to answer if we ask a further question, where and which is the necessary labour or the value in which it objectifies itself? The product must pay (1) its own exchange value, the labour objectified in itself; (2) the surplus time, which the shipper, carter etc. employs on its transportation. Whether he can or cannot extract the surplus value depends on the wealth of the country into which he brings the product and on its needs etc., on the use value of the product for this land. In direct production, it is clear that all the surplus labour which the manufacturer makes the worker do is surplus value for him, in that it is labour objectified in new use values, which costs him nothing. But he can obviously not employ him during transport for a longer time than is required for the transporting. Otherwise he would throw labour time away instead of realizing it, i.e. he would not objectify it in a use value. If the sailor, the carter etc. require only half a year of labour time to live a full year (if this is generally the proportion of labour necessary for subsistence), then the capitalist employs him for a whole year and pays him a half. By adding a whole years labour time to the value of the transported products, but paying only ½, he gains a surplus value of 100% on necessary labour. The case is entirely the same as indirect production, and the original surplus value of the transported product can come about only because the workers are not paid for a part of the transportation time, because it is surplus time, time over and above the labour necessary for them to live. That an individual product might be made so much more expensive, owing to the transport costs, that it could not be sold—on account of the disproportion between the value of the product and its surplus value as a transported product, a quality which becomes extinguished in it as soon as it has arrived at its destination-does not affect the matter" (Marx 1939).

It is thus only transport of persons, not goods, that constitutes a service. As do some other examples mentioned by the authors as constitutive of Class 7, such as care work-as opposed to the sort of work the cashiers are engaged in, for instance. The latter is employed in the sphere of circulation, or commodity-money exchange. As such, this kind of labour does not add new value, does not act on the use-value of a given good, which-socio-economically-entails that its bearers possess a labour power quite different than that held by the industrial working class.

IV.3.1. Job Ownership It is also the concept of labour-power ownership that allows one to pinpoint a characteristic feature of this so-called precariat. The purported class distinctiveness of the latter is usually being related to “uncertainty in

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labour markets [which] has increased. The number of workers in precarious positions is growing everywhere. In the year 2011 about 20 % of EU-27 workforce had a part time job and 14 % had fixed term labour contract. In Sweden more than a quarter of all wage employees had a part time job” (Blom, Melin 2013). Now, these and other similar phenomena express one’s difficulty in realising the value of one’s labour power; if one is being employed at a series of part-time jobs -as distinct from a fixed term contract then one sure enough will be underpaid relative to the value of one’s labour power. By default, too, such employees are excluded from another important ownership relationship in which a portion of their more fortunate fellow employees are engaged in-flexibility, precariousness (dispossession of employee ownership of jobs), and the diffusion of parttime is a form of sharing waged work at the social level and at the same time a compulsion for its intensification and extension. Thus, a growth rate of part-time and temporary (para-) work which is higher than the growth rate in employment implies, ceteris paribus, a reduction in the average waged working time. This, however, is not true if the income earned by part time and temporary workers is less than the value of labour power, i.e. insufficient to make ends meet". As precariousness compels part-time and temporary workers to have a “portfolio” of jobs, the overall effect could be an increase in average waged working time and a corresponding reduction in the average wage rate. The ownership of jobs on the part of employees, revealed in, among others, guarantees of employment, conditions of lay-offs (severance, or outplacement), etc. How important not only in practical (for the persons involved and the policy-makers) but also in theoretical terms is the category of ownership of labour power and its corollary in the form of the above-mentioned notion of ownership of jobs is shown, amongst others, by some claims put forward by Ulrich Beck believing that it is the notion of risk that is constitutive of modern society. Arguably: An increase in patterns of flexible working has intensified the degree of risk involved in acquiring and maintaining employment. In modern society, employees are required to be adaptable and receptive to change in a fluctuating labour market. In support of the risk society perspective, flexibilization has eaten away at standardized full-time contracts and facilitated the diversification of employment practices. In Britain, over six million people are currently employed on a part-time basis, with selfemployment becoming an entrenched trend.

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Although predominantly located within manual and service industries, 'self-employment” has also seeped into the professions, with employment agencies supplying lecturers, accountants, and computer analysts on demand. Again, at a surface level we can agree with Beck’s line of reasoning. It is probable that employment risks are impacting upon a wider section of society than in previous eras. However, from this axiom, Beck super induces that risk and insecurity are becoming universal features of employment. It is at this deeper structural level that the risk society thesis comes unstuck. (Mythen 2005)

According to Beck, the overarching purpose of the Fordist system was to eliminate scarcity by producing sufficient goods to meet the collective needs of society. Hence, the central dynamic (or logic) of the Fordist regime revolved around the concept of class. Beck argues that the distributional patterns of the class society were noticeably interrupted in the 1970s, when the distribution of social goods became augmented by a cachet of “social ills,” such as endemic unemployment, mass pollution and nuclear hazards. Underlying the division between “goods” and “bads” is a rudimentary distinction between social priorities under the two modes of organisation: class societies are bound up with issues of scarcity, risk societies are preoccupied with the problem of insecurity (Beck 1992, 49). In the risk society perspective, labour market insecurity is emblematic of a new fleet of risks which undermine social structures and threaten established cultural practices. The most obvious manifestation of employment risk is the social diversification of joblessness. With the emergence of cyclical global recessions, unemployment and job insecurity no longer blight only the poorest and least academically qualified groups in society. In times of economic uncertainty, labour market fluctuations universalise the threat of redundancy: “you can run into anyone down at the unemployment office” (Beck 1998, 55). Not only does employment insecurity undercut established class and gender divides, the new logic of risk produces a circular motion of “boomerang effects,” as risks return to haunt their original generators. For example, high-status business elites well-schooled in dispensing with labour, themselves become dispensable. In this way, the sectoral effects of the class society are juxtaposed with the universalising effects of the risk society: “poverty is hierarchic, smog is democratic” (Beck 1992, 36). Owing to the purported diffusion of unemployment across traditional class lines, combined with the flexibilization and casualization of labour the traditional logic of the wealth distributing society is being superseded by a burgeoning logic of risk. In the risk society, new inequalities and alliances emerge while class positions come to be replaced by “risk positions.” As risk and insecurity

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become routine features of the employment system, the distributive motor of the class society misfires, leading to widespread uncertainty. What Becks considers as a marked rise in cross-class unemployment in Europe prompts his apocalyptic vision of “capitalism without work” as the destiny of today’s “post-industrial societies: “Insecurity on the labour market has long since spread beyond the lower classes. It has become the mark of our times. The old “lifetime profession” is threatened with extinction. No one wants to admit that with it an entire value system, a society based on gainful employment, will disappear.” (Beck 1998, 55) From the viewpoint of socio-economic structuralism, the key weakness of Beck’s argument lies in its lack of the category of ownership of labour power. From this perspective, it is clear that the phenomena depicted by Beck refer to various degrees of expropriation from that ownership, its extreme form being an employee’s long-term unemployment leading to deskilling and eventually to elimination from the labour power market. Similar considerations apply to Manuel Castells’ approach which addresses the issue under consideration and would greatly benefit from the notion of ownership of labour power. Castells’ labour is divided into networked labour, which serves the goals of the network, and switched-off labour, which has nothing to offer the network and in the context of the network economy is non-labour. On the other hand, short-term contracts, casual labour practices and other processes considered under the rubric named “individualisation” express depriving a given worker of his or her property in the form of either his/her labour power or job. Even granted the wide incidence of such practices, Beck's far-fetched conclusion about his “risk society” as replacing “class society” is untenable, however. In a nutshell, the crux of the matter boils down to the question whether there has been a discernible shift from a sectoral logic of class to a universal logic of risk. Unless one indulges oneself in abstract philosophical or even metaphysical deliberations or in other way dissociates oneself from reality, the latter speaks for itself-the logic of class demonstrates remarkable continuity (Goldthorpe and McKnight 2003; Mackintosh and Mooney 2004, 93). Interestingly enough, Beck is far from being unaware of the resilience of economic inequalities (1992, 35), and in spite of this he holds his ground that risk positions are steadily supplanting class positions as principal markers of identity and experience. Lest there be no misunderstanding, one should keep separate two aspects of the matter. It cannot be ruled out then that social classes lost some of their previous relevance as subjective groups of reference. Yet class identity is one issue, and class location

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determined by the relation to the ownership of means of economic action and labour power is quite another; its impact on not only economic but also extra-economic aspects of life of a given individual is beyond question-the following are just two items from what constitutes a long list of studies documenting the social potency of class (Nolan and Whelan 1999; Tittenbrun 2011b). Since the diffusion of employment risk is strikingly uneven, labour market insecurity is universal in a strictly hypothetical sense. Regarding some of Beck’s specific claims, the ball is in his court to demonstrate empirically how many CEOs do actually frequent unemployment offices; in point of fact of course, the class composition of those who are routinely dependent on social security is no secret, and it is at all honesty discreditable for a sociologist to preach the ascendancy of “the risk society’, disregarding the scientific evidence to the contrary. if one does not want to conduct research of one’s own, there are numerous studies that show that vulnerability to unemployment depends on one’s class position in a big way (see Gallie et al. 1998; Goldthorpe 2002). Again, one should not commit the pars pro to fallacy and confound the issue of risk perception with that of risk real impact. While, to list a couple of usual culprits, globalisation, recession, offshoring, automation, etc. sure enough contribute to a widespread sense of job insecurity, particular social classes and estates bear the real-world consequences of those processes in nothing but equal measure. Indeed, the socio-economic divide is expanding, rather than contracting in virtually all advanced capitalist societies. In a word, there is Strong disconfirming evidence of the emergence of a “universalising logic of risk”. “A fortunate group of employees remain insulated against risk, whilst the unlucky numbers find themselves episodically out in the cold. From a theoretical point of view, the distinction between class and risk positions is far from drum tight. At best, the risk society thesis makes an unclean separation between class and risk effects. At worst, Beck’s presentation of distributional logics is internally inconsistent, with his vista obscured by an unrelenting fixation with risk” (Mythen 2005).

Thus, to refer back to Beck’s aphoristic summary of the thrust of his theory, it is, sure enough, manifestly unfounded; to cite a cogent rebuttal to what Beck claims: “the wealthy were protected from scarcity and remain protected from risk; “protection” here being understood as “relative protection”. Smog is just as hierarchical as poverty so long as some places are less smoggy than others.” (Scott 2000, 36).

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Moreover, Beck's claim that long-term stable employment is a relic of the past is not born out by empirical research as well. To exemplify, Doogan (2001) on the basis of EUROSTAT data demonstrates that average job tenure in Britain remained relatively constant between 1992 and 1999, with long-term employment showing a significant increase from 7.4 million in 1992, to 9 million in 1999. Thus, the British case shows that the general trend toward downsizing (taking place in the 1990s) can co-exist with an extension of long-term employment. Similarly, Mc Govern et al. (2007:50-51) report that “the proportion of full-time, permanent jobs held by males fell between 1986 and 1994 (by 6 points), as Grimshaw and Rubery reported in their account of the “well-known shift” to flexible employment. It has, however, remained quite stable for the period between 1994 and 2004. Meanwhile, the proportion of such jobs held by women has increased, though somewhat modestly. Or, to put it another way, the proportion of all “flexible” jobs has not changed dramatically since the mid-1990 s. Bringing these points together, “we must reject the notion of an ever increasing trend or shift to non-standard forms of employment (e.g. Beck 1992; Gorz 1999). The “well-known shift” that was evident in the earlier period may have been simply a response to the recession of the early 1990s and could yet be reversed by the sustained period of economic prosperity that has followed” (McGovern et al. 2007). Given both the popularity of the notion of precariat and its ideological salience, it is useful to dwell on it a bit. The view contested above underlies a myth according to which changes in capitalism have made workers virtually powerless. Even in this book one can find a wide range of claims made by political commentators and academics to the effect that permanent jobs are in principle a thing of the past and that everyone now faces a world of constant turbulence, flux and evanescence, a world whose sole fixed attribute is its changeability, which in concrete economic terms translates into transient work and rootless employment conditions. This has clear implications for the class balance of power; if the great majority of the working population are permanently insecure at work, the balance of power has swung massively towards the employers. One of the most prominent exponents of such views is Guy Standing, whose most influential book is “The Precariat: The New Dangerous Class” (2011, in which he argues the case for the presence of a global Precariat-an emerging class comprising the rapidly growing number of people facing lives of insecurity, moving in and out of menial jobs that give little

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meaning to their lives. The instabilities this could lead, Standing contends, to a “politics of inferno”. The only option in the face of those technologically determined necessities is an attempt to adjust to them by reconstructing the concept of work in the 21st Century. As suggested above, however, this kind of views have not gone unchallenged. The most compelling counterevidence has been provided by Kevin Doogan (2009). He most emphatically disagrees with all the theories of increasing precariousness in employment. We are bombarded on a daily basis with the ever increasing mountain of news about offshoring, outsourcing, job migration to China and India, the upshot being the doctrine of job for life is most definitely a thing of the past. Doogan’s response is that the resulting precariousness cannot be regarded as a natural consequence of a fast changing global economy, but a manufactured set of insecurities engendered by neoliberal policies entailing marketisation, commercialisation and commodification. Doogan rejects the very idea of “societal shifts based on a more tenuous connection between employers and workers” (2009:3) on the basis that “it privileges discontinuity and it “overdetermines” the role of technological change. In stressing the significance of global flows of finance, and the integration of capital beyond the national economy, it greatly exaggerates the mobility propensity of non-finance capital and neglects the continuing significance of the role of the state in the workings of the market economy” (2009:6). It must be pointed out that this is not an academic debate, although on the other hand it needs to be realised that it is by no means just open apologists for capitalism who have spread such ideas. Particularly harsh words are in Doogan’s book directed against Michael Hardt and Tony Negri (who receive their fair dose of criticism in the present book as well) for providing “the presence of left wing harmonies in the neoliberal chorus” (2009:11). Examples of corporate tactics consisting in a series of attacks against the workforce and its union representation followed by kind of black-mail: if there is any resistance, the firm will move overseas or substitute agency workers for its recalcitrant employees abound. The class function of the belief that companies can flit around at will and that it is always easy to find an alternative workforce is manifestly clear “The spectre of capital mobility and the economic insecurity it engenders has served to constrain wages and union activity in a period of tight labour

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markets” (2009:76). Those who promulgate the myth about the emasculation of labour brought about by such a labour power arbitrage should put it to the reality test. “Doogan points to, inter alia, “the labour force survey data from North America and Europe [...which] shows that job stability has not declined and that long-term employment has increased in many sectors of the advanced economies” (2009:4).

The figures speak for themselves: “over both shorter and longer time frames, the growth of the long-term workforce has been significant in Europe and North America. This is all the more remarkable as it has occurred during a period of substantial employment expansion” (Doogan 2009:177), as one would expect expanding employment, and lots of new starters, to drive down the length of time people stay in jobs. But this simply has not happened. There is no denying that in some sectors, notably manufacturing, one can encounter some examples of corporate relocation outsourcing and downsizing, but such practices are virtually unknown in retail or health and education-which are the areas of the greatest growth in employment. Doogan rightly argues, too, that the claim that companies have abandoned all domestic attachments and move around the world at will is implausible. “The domestic economy provides the key market and base of operations” (2009:72) even for many top multinationals. In fact, the annual surveys of multinationals conducted by United Nations agencies shows that the top 100 non-financial corporations have a transnationality index of approximately 50 percent. This means that their sales, employment and value added in the home economy are as important as their combined operations in overseas markets. Data gathered by the Bureau of Economic Analysis on US multinational firms shows that investment and employment in the domestic economy have kept pace with expansion overseas. It turns out that three decades of corporate globalisation have left little impression on the balance between the domestic and foreign activities of US multinational corporations. Furthermore, Doogan notes that analysis of global foreign direct investment patterns also reveals two interesting and counterintuitive trends. In the first instance FDI [foreign direct investment] expands during boom periods and contracts during recessions. Thus, to blame job losses on capital migration is highly questionable.

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“Secondly the lion’s share of overseas investment goes to the rich rather than poor countries. Between 1980 and 2006 the developed economies” share of global FDI inward stock has grown from 56 percent to 70 percent, consolidating their position as the prime target for overseas investment. In other words, capital moves abroad primarily to access rich markets rather than exploit cheap labour. This shows that fears of exporting jobs are misplaced, misunderstanding-as they do-the aforementioned corporate tactics; “Research in America, where fears of overseas job loss have a much higher profile than in Europe, shows that companies use the threat of corporate relocation in order to maintain the compliance of trade unions during contract negotiations”. To be sure, Doogan’s analysis is hardly a pioneering one (which does not detract from its value) suffice it to point to a study that found that “Many of the commonly held assumptions about today’s world of work need to be seriously questioned. A wide gulf exists between the over-familiar rhetoric and hyperbole we hear daily about our flexible and dynamic labour market and the realities of workplace life. The evidence simply does not sustain the view that we are witnessing the emergence of a “new” kind of employment relations, seen in the “end of the career” and the “death of the permanent job for life” (Taylor). Nevertheless, never enough such well-founded endorsements of the continuing potential power of workers to resist their class opponents. Doogan calls attention to some elementary facts pertaining to the capitalist economy: “capital needs labour. Despite all the rhetoric of foreign competition and threats to relocate and outsource, employers generally prioritise the recruitment and retention of labour. Otherwise it would be difficult to explain the international evidence of job stability and rising long-term employment” (Doogan 2009:206). On the other hand, one should not overstate the case against the received wisdom and deny that there are the some areas where the number of workers on non-permanent contracts of employment is genuinely high. This reality was already clear in a European-wide study from 1998 which showed that in countries such as Spain (40 percent non-permanent), France (22 percent non-permanent) and Greece (18 percent non-permanent) the scale of non-permanent employment was at a level which would penetrate deeply into workers’ consciousness. It follows that there is a need for a class breakdown of the term “non-permanent”, as it can cover a wide diversity of situations, it is safe to presume that, e.g., the consultant on 1,000 euros a day will not despair if his contract means only six months’ work. Such cases, however, should not be over-generalised; studies by the Institute of Manpower

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Studies in the 1990s demonstrated the insecurity and inequality of the “new economy” of flexible labour markets, outsourcing, contract working and self-employment. Self-employment, the British institute in question found, was characterised by extremes of high and low pay, with the betteroff over-represented in banking, finance and business, and the poorest in personal and domestic services such as hairdressing and cleaning. It was not only exacerbating wider social inequality, according to the institute; the economic penalties it carried persisted into old age. And for many “flexibly employed” people, the new economy was not an invigorating world of economic freedom and dynamism the picture neo-liberal and other champions of capitalism like to portray. At the bottom end of the market, in particular, it was a universe of constraint and financial penalty. In turn, a study of the Italian labour power market found that “while fulltime permanent employees account for almost 51 percent of the Italian labour force and 'standard” workers for 72 percent, the extent of atypical workers varies according to the definition adopted…they represent between 8.1 percent and 20.5 percent of the Italian labour force according to the particular definition. Non-standard employment contracts are more likely among young people aged 15 to 29 years and those living in southern regions of Italy. Women are more likely than men to work on such contracts” (European Foundation 2008). Secondly, it is evident that the economic crisis has intensified some alarming trends such as the rise in the number of workers who are part time simply because they cannot get a full-time job, as, inter alia, the number of under-employed Americans shows. A recent TUC analysis of official statistics found that one in nine (11.2 percent) of people in parttime work are in this position. The number of involuntary part-time workers has recently increased sharply to 829,000. The lack of full-time work is demonstrated in Jobcentres across the UK, with government statistics showing that over one in four (27 percent) of vacancies are for less than 16 hours a week. The majority of involuntary part-time workers are female (451,000 women compared to 378,000 men), reflecting the fact that around 80 percent of the UK's part-time workforce are women. However, one in five (21.2 percent) men working part time are doing so because they cannot secure full-time unemployment. It follows that Doogan’s debunking of some myths around the present-day job market is highly useful, yet one should keep the pendulum from swinging too far in the other direction.

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To revert to the sociologist who sort of prompted the above discussion, one may wonder how such critically acclaimed scholar could commit such empirical blunders. At a deeper structural level an answer can be found, we surmise, at a deeper epistemic level; the risk theory stems from the same intellectual roots as, for example, Parsons’ general value system theory or Lukacs” notion of alienation or reification as an overriding principle of capitalist society. Suffice it to point out that reification is conceived of as a universal, affecting all of society equally. All these conceptions, and our list could be easily extended, (consider the French cases discussed above) conceive of the relationship to society of their selected idea just as Hegel conceptualised his 'spirits.” Well, the term itself may be outdated, but this by no means applies to the underlying notion. All the essentialist conceptions, establishing one all-pervasive principle permeating the entire social world bear thus strong resemblance to Hegelian explanations. Hegel’s philosophy of history is termed objective idealism, belonging to one family with, for example, Platonism; and Plato’s cave is not necessarily the best vantage point from which to observe and describe external reality. From this standpoint, the abovementioned errors are not accidental, which of course constitutes no justification. To round off our discussion of the theory forming the chief subject of the present section, the preceding suggests that we are sorry not to be able to share Savage et al.’s ebullient mood; they appear to be not a little edified by the significance of their findings: “our new model of class offers a powerful way of comprehending the persistence, yet also the remaking of social class divisions in contemporary Britain. Our multi-dimensional analysis reveals the polarisation of social inequality (in the form of an elite and a precariat), and the fragmentation of traditional sociological middle and working-class divisions into more segmented forms. [...] We hope that our new model of class will prove a valuable resource for future social researchers in exploring the complex and multi-dimensional nature of social class inequality in the UK in a way which permits us to recognise the ongoing salience of social class divisions in the stratification of British society” (2013).

Thus, inadvertently, Savage et al. vindicated in the end our assessment of the theoretical nature pertinent to their typology, though they would perhaps protest about this qualification, pointing to the use of “class”. But this only adds insult to injury, as it is suggestive of a wide diversity of conceptual frameworks they draw upon- (tacitly) stratification, which tacitness does little to improve their modus operandi; as to class theory, it is present in their study primarily, if not exclusively, in the form of

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incessant polemics with John Goldthorpe, as though his schema represented an apogeum of class theory (which, it definitely is not, as demonstrated in another chapter), which is baffling when compared with only scant attention given to the founding fathers of the whole perspective. Finally, to account for what is hardly a resounding success, to put it mildly, it might be useful to call in the sociology of knowledge: “this culture-led version of Bourdieu is misguided, a product perhaps of decades of prosperity and consumerism” (Bradley 2014). And returning to the question of the title of the chapter, it appears to be justified-not only the authors of the study considered above took simply over the Bourdieusian tool kit, without any attempt at shifting the perspective, but also duplicated all the flaws of his approach, such as the proliferation of empty concepts that at the very best could be treated as abortive metaphors, but which are intrinsically incapable of serving as genuine research tools. What is more, the net result of their efforts resembles Bourdieu’s mixing up miscellaneous concepts belonging to very different perspectives-strata, classes and elites (their “creative” contribution to this mixture boiling down to the backdoor introduction of age groups or perhaps generations). As they say, the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree

IV.4. Entangled in the net Another author who subscribes to the obsolescence of old class divisions thesis that are allegedly replaced by some novel cleavages is Manuel Castells, who in his theory of network society Castells (2000a; 2000b) claims that we are passing from the industrial age into the information age. This historical breakthrough is brought about by the advent of new information technologies-particularly those for communication and biological technologies. Society remains capitalist, but basis of the technological means by which it acts has changed from energy to information. This information is of central importance in determining economic productivity. But this central to an economic justification of the purported new era claim is hardly supported by any hard data. According to Garnham, there is little evidence of such productivity increases. Furthermore, as he aptly notes, the “lack of a stable calculable relationship between the value of outputs lies behind the historical difficulties in commodifying information” (Garnham 2004: 191).

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In other words, even if information output is increasing productivity, this activity is difficult for capitalists to measure and commodify, therefore it is difficult to integrate into a capitalist economy. Granted this to be the case, the aforementioned claim that the wide incidence of information technologies does not cause any qualitative socio-economic innovations loses its credibility and must be regarded as resulting from its author's lack of disposing a cognitively valuable notion of economic property as underlying particular economic formations of society, capitalism included From this ownership perspective the so-called commons-peer mode of production constitutes without any doubt, some novel quality within capitalism, as being based on voluntary work and making its product available free of charge. This of course, is at odds with the capitalist, profit-oriented logic. The creator of the term adds a number of arguments for the above contention, as the advantages listed by him in what follows constitute in fact nothing less than ownership benefits. Benkler argues that “this mode has systematic advantages over markets and managerial hierarchies when the object of production is information or culture, and where the capital investment necessary for productioncomputers and communications capabilities-is widely distributed instead of concentrated. In particular, this mode of production is better than firms and markets for two reasons. First, it is better at identifying and assigning human capital to information and cultural production processes. In this regard, peer-production has an advantage in what I call “information opportunity cost.” That is, it loses less information about who the best person for a given job might be than do either of the other two organisational modes. Second, there are substantial increasing returns to allow very larger clusters of potential contributors to interact with very large clusters of information resources in search of new projects and collaboration enterprises. Removing property and contract as the organising principles of collaboration substantially reduces transaction costs involved in allowing these large clusters of potential contributors to review and select which resources to work on, for which projects, and with which collaborators. This results in allocation gains, that increase more than proportionately with the increase in the number of individuals and resources that are part of the system” (Benkler, Nissenbaum 2006). Castells, much like other theorists of “post-industrial society”, “information society”, knowledge society”, Post-modernity” and so forth claims that communication technologies, such as the Internet, allow for decentralization of operations and focusing of control, increasing the effectiveness of networks relative to hierarchical structures. Of business he

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writes, (t) he main shift can be characterized as the shift from vertical bureaucracies to the horizontal corporation” (2000b: 176). The above-mentioned two claims show how slippery and nebulous the concept of network can become; Castells commits rather grave methodological blunder identifying the general notion of structure with its certain historically specific variant in the form of a hierarchically organised capitalist business firm, so vividly portrayed e.g. by Williamson. In point of fact, of course, the notion of structure does not entail any specific definition of how its internal relationships are structured, it only recognises their existence. That Castells is not far from endowing his “networks” with superhuman qualities is shown e.g. by his claim to the effect that “the logic of the network is more powerful than the powers of the network” (quoted in Webster 2002: 104). Some networks, such as that of financial capital, are global in scale. Networks also exist within and between businesses, where the organisational unit has shifted from being capability-oriented (e.g. accounting, human resources, etc). to being project-oriented. Resources-including employees, consultants, and other businesses-are brought together to work on a particular project, then dispersed and reallocated when the task is complete. The ability of an actor in the network-be it a company, individual, government, or other organisation-to participate in the network is determined by the degree to which the node can contribute to the goals of the network. This new environment requires skilled flexible workers: the organisation man gives way to the flexible woman (Castells 2000a: 12). This leads to a binary process of inclusion and exclusion from the network. The people at the bottom are those who, with nothing to offer the network, are excluded. Castells distinguishes the terms “information” and “informational”. He says that information has been an essential component of all societies, whether capitalist or not. In the new “network economy”, information becomes a key factor in economic productivity. Today, for example, the flow of capital into currencies, commodities, and stocks is based upon access to information about relevant topics, from international politics to climate change, weather predictions, and social trends. In that sense, the importance of information in contemporary society is not new. What is new, he claims, is the informational shift to the manipulation of information itself: the “action of knowledge upon knowledge itself” (Castells 2000b: 17) is now the basis to increased productivity. Castells argues that the operation of networks, particularly their ability to include

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or exclude actors on the basis of their ability to contribute to the goals of the network, has individualized labor: “the work process is globally integrated, but labor tends to be locally fragmented” (2000a: 18). The constantly-shifting “variable geometry” of networks individualizes labor. In consequence, the era of industrial-age conflict between productionbased classes ends: individual workers no longer comprise classes, much of the power of the capitalists has shifted to those who manage the networks (for example, the fund manager has greater control than the investors whose money s/he manages), and the class of human capitalists has been replaced by the collective faceless capitalist of the network. Despite the disappearance of capitalists and the proletariat, exploitation and differentiation remain. In Castells’ analysis, labor is fundamentally divided into networked labor, which serves the goals of the network, and switched-off labor, which has nothing to offer the network and in the context of the network economy is non-labor (that is not to say their labor has no value the realm of discarded labor is also the realm of criminal organisations outside the networks; Castells mentions that the networks can make “perverse” use of these masses of people). If Castells approached the latter issue in similar terms as those proposed in the present book, i.e. lumpenwork and lumpenclass, then he would have more difficulty in integrating his claim into his overall notion of societal differentiation as allegedly not class-based. His apparent lack of any precise criteria of class identification leads to other dubious claims. According to Castells, networked labor is itself divided into two groups. Self-programmable labor-such as financial analysts, company officers, journalists-manages information; it is flexible and skilled. Its interests coincide with the goals of the network. Generic labor (including many workers in natural resource, manufacturing, and service industries, also minimum wage and sweatshop labor) is deskilled, interchangeable and disposable; for these people, the goal is simple survival so as not to be relegated to the class of switch-off irrelevant labor. Whether the Spanish sociologist rightly or not attributes the abovementioned characteristics to his “generic” workers is another matter but what is relevant for the present purposes is that he, out of the blue, recognised the existence of the working class (formerly written off as nonexistent) which tends to turn his whole scheme of societal differentiation in the information age upside down. As to the central category of that

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scheme, “Castells includes such a wide diversity of tasks under the rubric of informational labor that it is difficult to accept the interests and values of these workers as a group. Webster provides the examples of journalists, stockbrokers, and surgeons. The relations between these occupations and the information they deal with is anything but consistent, and the group as a whole anything but homogeneous. (Is it level of education? communication? influence?) In fact, it seems that the other groups he mentions-commodity labor, surplus labor, etc. are far more homogeneousin their work and in their common interests-than is informational labor” . It is difficult to ascertain how to reconcile the position discussed above with a rather different perspective, more akin to the elite theory, according to which: The fundamental form of domination in our society is based on the organisational capacity of the dominant elite that goes hand in hand with the capacity to disorganise those groups in society which, while constituting a numerical majority, see their interests partially (if ever) represented only within the framework of the fulfilment of dominant interests (Castells, 1996:415).

Our suspicion as to Castells’ lack of theoretical coherence is in no way dispelled by the remaining parts of his lengthy work. As a matter of fact, the Catalan writer limits himself to a couple of truisms for pronouncing which sociological research is hardly needed. We learn, for instance, that elites live in global cities and help to define certain kinds of new urban space (Castells 1996: 415-7), and they hang around with each other in exclusive resorts such as Davos (Castells 1998:55-356) but we are never told who exactly they are, what roles they have, what characteristics they display, how they gain access to elite positions, etc.

IV.5. Niklas Luhmann’s system approach Castells’ notion of “information society” based on networks with their power to include and exclude is not miles apart from Niklas Luhmann’s notion of “communication society”. Like Castells’, Luhmann’s notion suggests that old, including class, divisions are obsolete, and like the Catalan sociologists, it cannot free itself from thinking along thosedeclaratively discarded-lines. “Luhmann describes pre-modern societies as societies differentiated through stratification, in which an encompassing order follows the restriction of more or less stable social strata. All other

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forms of selectivity get subordinated under this strata-scheme. In contrast, in modern societies societal order is associated with functional differentiation (Luhmann, 1982; Luhmann, 1999; Nassehi, 2004). The logic of connectivity follows generalized symbolic media; such as money in economics, power in politics, belief in religion, truth in science or justice in the legal system. It should be pointed out these notions do not mean strong criteria for authentic belief, justice or truth. As communication media-an idea borrowed from Talcott Parsons, of coursethey are only semantic media used to make possible forms of belief, truth, and justice and so on. These communication media are able, as Luhmann renders it with some caution, both to make improbable forms of connectivity less improbable and to facilitate the emergence of function systems, to use another Luhmann’s term. What is different about Luhmann’s framework is that the relation between interactions and societies is not a relation between different levels (micro and macro), but a relation between different types of social systems instead. Societies are to be regarded not as emergent entities of cumulating interactions but as completely different social systems with their own conditions of reproduction and self-structuring. If it is right that social systems have to cope with their own self-referential and paradoxical structure by structuring their connectivity, then the conditions of this connectivity are categorically different in interactions, societies, and in function systems” (Nassehi 2005). Within Luhmann’s theoretical framework there are four Types of Differentiation: Segmentation, Stratification, Center-Periphery, and Functional Differentiation. It is important to emphasize that these notions-having their source, as they do, in another system theory-this time around by Talcott Parsons-do not, according to Luhmann, mean strong criteria for authentic belief, justice or truth. As communication media “they are only semantic media used to make possible forms of belief, truth, and justice and so on. These communication media are able both to make improbable forms of connectivity less improbable and to facilitate the emergence of function systems, thusly termed by Luhmann. Within his framework, the relation between interactions and societies is not a relation between different levels, a usually conceived-in the form of macro- and micro levels, but a relation between different types of social systems. This purportedly makes more than a notional difference, as societies are to be regarded, according to Luhmann, not as emergent entities of cumulating interactions, as the mainstream would have it, but as completely different social systems with

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their own conditions of reproduction and self-structuring. At this juncture, the reader could be forgiven for having still her doubts regarding to what extent this notion constitutes in fact a true conceptual novelty. By contrast, the German thinker has strong views on that matter; it could be argued that assuming that social systems have to cope with their own self-referential and paradoxical structure by structuring their connectivity, then the conditions of this connectivity are of necessity categorically different in interactions, societies, and in function systems. Concomitantly, within Luhmann’s analytic framework there are four Types of Differentiation: Segmentation, Stratification, Center-Periphery, and Functional Differentiation. According to this taxonomy, bearing strong resemblance to Durkheim’s famous distinction between mechanical and organic solidarity, segmented differentiation divides parts of the system on the basis of the need to fulfil identical functions over and over. For instance, an automobile manufacturer has functionally similar factories for the production of cars at many different locations. Every location is organised in much the same way; each has the same structure and fulfils the same function-producing cars (Ritzer 2007:96).

Stratificatory Differentiation is a vertical differentiation according to rank or status in a system conceived as a hierarchy. Every rank fulfils a particular and distinct function in the system, for instance (and to return to the automobile analogy) the auto vehicle manufacturing company’s president, the plant manager, trickling down to the assembly line worker. In Segmentary Differentiation inequality is an accidental variance and serves no essential function, however, inequality is systemic in the function of Stratified system. A stratified system is more concerned with the higher ranks (president, manager) than it is with the lower ranks (assembly worker) with regard to “influential communication.” However, the ranks are dependent on each other and the social system will collapse unless all ranks realize their functions. This type of system tends to necessitate the lower ranks to initiate conflict in order to shift the influential communication to their level. (Ritzer 2007:97). Center-Periphery Differentiation is a link between Segmentary and Stratificatory, an example is again, automobile firms, may have built factories in other countries, nevertheless the headquarters for the company remains the center ruling, and to whatever extent controlling, the peripheral factories (Ritzer 2007: 98).

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Functional Differentiation is the form that dominates modern society and is also the most complex form of differentiation. All functions within a system become ascribed to a particular unit/location. Again, citing the automobile firm as an example, it may be “functionally differentiated” departmentally, having a production department, administration, accounting, planning, personnel, etc. Functional Differentiation tends to be more flexible than Stratifactory, but just as a stratified system is dependent on all rank, in a Functional system if one part fails to fulfil its task, the whole system will have great difficulty surviving. However, as long as each unit is able to fulfil its separate function, the differentiated units become largely independent; functionally differentiated systems are a complex mixture of interdependence and independence. E.g., the planning division may be dependent on the accounting division for economic data, but so long as the data is accurately compiled[,] the planning division can be ignorant of the methodology involved to collect the data, interdependence yet independence (Ritzer 2007:98).

This is true as far as it goes, nevertheless it appears there is a need for even more detailed distinctions. Less well known than the aforementioned conceptual dichotomy, owing to its historiographic dimension, but still forming a valuable contribution to the sociology of the economy is Durkheim’s discussion regarding cooperation. Co-operation in terms of the French sociologist consists in sharing a common task. If the division is of relatively qualitatively homogeneous tasks, it is a simple division (the division of the first degree), and if tasks are qualitatively different, heterogeneous division of labour is complex and involves specialization (Durkheim 1983:158).

Expanding on this pair of concepts, one could propose a more fine-grained distinction distinction. An inherent component of socio-economic structuralism is the description of CO-OPERATION relationships and the division of labor within the plant, which involves: types of the means (tools, machines, automatic machines) and objects of work; relations of organic Co-operation and heterogeneous Co-operation as conditioned by the characteristics of objects and means of labor. Conditioning of material work by the structure of its means is reflected, among others, in the necessity of a certain number of people to perform a specific job. A single individual cannot cope with a huge log, it can only be lifted in a collective effort of a group of people. Employed at such a task therefore enter into a certain relationship, called a simple co-operation. Thus, a simple cooperation is a combination of the same type of work for the achievement of a specific result in the work process (production, such as for example while digging ditches, picking potatoes, etc..). Thanks to CO-operation

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there is created a new production force which exceeds the arithmetic sum of production capacities of individual labour powers. The unification of efforts of a lot of people enables the implementation of actions unattainable for a single man, such as lifting a significant weight, or such that could be done only in a much longer time. Bricklayers arranged in a series of 20 will transmit a brick on top of scaffolding much faster than it would be done by a single worker running back and forth. Collective work also stimulates the spirit of competition, contributing to the intensification of activity and the capacity of individual participants. In many types of production and work without the Co-operation it could be impossible at all to achieve the desired result or achieve it only partly-for example sheep shearing requires that work starts and finishes at a certain time. Achieving this result in this time depends on the simultaneous use of a numerous labour force. A grower cannot wait indefinitely to gather fruit from trees, and if he or she cannot find a certain number of hands in the specified time, he will have to come to terms with the loss of a substantial portion of his or her crop. Referring to the terminology and category not necessarily used in the same sense-of Weber, Durkheim and Marx, we can distinguish between simple Co-operation (heterogeneous) and simple organic Cooperation. Simple heterogeneous Co-operation occurs when those working exercise their qualitatively homogeneous activities independently. Therefore, the same result can be achieved here in whole or in part by an individual labor or by a few individual direct producers engaged in the job not next to each other, but consecutively. Employment of only one worker to lay the parquet in the flat will extend the period of completion of works, but anyway it will be done. However, in the case of simple organic Cooperation expected outcome may not occur at all without the simultaneous operation of a number of people. Simple organic Co-operation is a necessary condition for the creation of a particular product or useful effect. Time will not compensate for joint collaborative work here. Neither within a minute nor within an hour will a single worker be able to lift a heavy log, which can be handled easily by 10 people. Simple Co-operation may be, however, not only Co-operation in space (synchronic or simultaneous) denoting the simultaneous execution of the same work by a group of individuals working together, but also in time (successive or diachronic), comprising a sequence of consecutive, equal actions of a number of individuals. Such a relay, for instance, is the way the Australian natives hunt the kangaroo. Members of the group replace one another in the activity of hunting the animal, until it is completely exhausted. If a simple co-operation creates a social productive force, the greater production force is created thanks to complex or developed Co-operation, i.e. based on the

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division of labor. It differs from a simple co-operation in which the units perform not the same, but qualitatively different work. In complex Cooperation the division of individual operations between various units allows their simultaneous execution, thus shortening the time required to produce the final product, and in many cases, the mere production of this product. The difference between these two types of Co-operation reflects the distinction -analogous to the above-mentioned one: of heterogeneously developed Co-operation (complex) and organic Co-operation. Heterogeneous developed Co-operation is based on the performance of various technically and directly independent jobs, setting up a certain result. This work could take place simultaneously or consecutively. The first of these cases is called synchronic or simultaneous Co-operation (spatial), the secondsuccessive or diachronic (temporal). An example of Co-operation in space may be the production of watches: the body, clock face, hands, etc. are manufactured by separate workers, and only then all the parts are assembled together into the finished product. Whilst Co-operation in time indicates that the result of one worker is the starting point of the second; however, these works are carried out independently. Plasterers can start their job only after the walls are erected by the masons. Meanwhile, the complex organic Co-operation requires the simultaneous performance of various different but mutually supporting activities. To use an example borrowed from Marx, when one person is paddling, the other is steering, the third is casting a net or is harpooning a fish the fishing yields results that would be impossible without this Co-operation. Developed Cooperation or, in other words, combined by distributing the production process into small components gives specialisation of workers in performing the same actions, which increases the efficiency of their work. Increased operating efficiency, in turn, reduces the time consumed to perform each operation. Saving time is also created by the elimination of loss of time associated with moving from one operation to another. Relations of Co-operation and division of labor are not limited to one type of manual labor associated with handling the principal means of work in order to process the object of labor. The division of labor also takes place between different categories of material workers. The complex relationship of Co-operation, mostly heterogeneous, are entered into mostly by workers carrying out the basic production processes and workers carrying out repairs of work resources, as well as workers supporting auxiliary work resources (plumbers, etc). The work of these two categories of workers ensures efficiency and continuity of the functioning of means of production.

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After this brief, but useful digression we may return to the presentation of Luhmann’s framework-in which code is a way to distinguish elements within a system from those elements not belonging to that system. It is the basic language of a functional system. Examples are truth for the science system, payment for the economic system, legality for the legal system; its purpose is to limit the kinds of permissible communication. According to Luhmann a system will only understand and use its own code, and will not understand nor use the code of another system; there is no way to import the code of one system into another because the systems are closed and can only react to things within their environment (Ritzer 2007:100), which may all be very well at a theoretical level, but in concrete research this kind of assumption appears less useful, if not positively harmful-its extreme holism is simply anti-dialectical, not taking account of a host of the real-world situations where the structures involved would be at best relatively closed. From this standpoint, often criticised Parsons” theory of social system and (general system of action) is a far better approximation of reality, as it posits an incessant boundary exchanges of energy and information between the system and its environment. By positing such an extreme independence of its environment, the German theorist might perhaps secure some advantages for his system, but at the same time he has exposed it to a set of problems fraught with potentially graver consequences. Where the rub lies is in the Risk of Complexity, amenable to an analysis in terms of forms of co-operation named above. For example, in Segmentary differentiation if a segment fails to fulfil its function it does not affect or threaten the larger system. If an auto plant in St. Louis stops production does not threaten the overall system, or the plants in other locations. However, as complexity increases so does the risk of system breakdown. Thus, if a rank structure in a Stratified system fails, it threatens the entire system; likewise, a Center-Periphery system might be threatened if the control measure, or the Center/Headquarters failed; and, last but not least, in a Functionally differentiated system, due to the existence of interdependence despite independence the failure of one unit will cause a problem for the social system, possibly leading to its breakdown. The growth of complexity in one way increases the adaptive ability of a system to cope with its environment, but in another way complexity increases the risk of system breakdown, ending thus up ultimately in a lower adaptive capacity. System theorists have long noticed this problem, postulating as

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its solution the existence of some redundancy or slack in the system. It may well be that it is to this issue that Luhmann refers, stressing that more complex systems do not necessarily exclude less complex systems, in some instances the more complex system may require the existence of the less complex system to function (cf. Ritzer 2007:98-100).

The reader of the above rather abstract discussion is entitled to ask: what is the relationship between differentiation and Modern Social Theory? Luhmann uses the operative distinction between system and environment to determine that society is a complex system which replicates the system/environment distinction to form internal subsystems. Science is among these internally differentiated social systems, and within this system there is the sub-system sociology. Here, in the system sociology, Luhmann finds himself again, an observer observing society. His knowledge of society as an internally differentiated system is a contingent observation made from within one of the specialized function-systems he observes. He concludes, therefore, that any social theory claiming universal status must take this contingency into account. The reader would be forgiven for her puzzlement-after all, at least since the emergence of the sociology of knowledge such truths are a commonplace; what remains controversial, however, is how this social conditioning is being conceived, one important division being here between those who evoke class as a key explanatory variable and those who do not. At any rate, the German theorist seems to furnish his above discovery with far larger importance. In his view, once one uses the basic system/environment distinction, then none of the traditional philosophical or sociological distinctions- transcendental and empirical, subject and object, ideology and science-can eliminate the contingency of enforced selectivity. Thus, Luhmann’s theory of social systems breaks not only with all forms of transcendentalism, but with the philosophy of history as well (Knodt and Rasch 1994). All depends what one understand by the word philosophy in that context. An appreciation or even admiration of the work of Hegel does not entail that one should regard his system as a scientific one. But on the other hand such an uncompromising dismissal of all historiographies may lead to the denial of the need or indeed possibility of discovering any patterns in the flow of historical events. Luhmann is criticized as being self-referential and repetitive, this is because a system is forced to observe society from within society. Systems theory, for its part, reputedly unfolds this paradox with the notion that the

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observer observes society from within a subsystem (in this case: sociology) of a subsystem (science) of the social system. Its descriptions are thus 'society of society” (Luhmann and Ward 2000). This is obvious enough, but is not a bone of contention, which latter is being glossed over owing to such terminological escape routes. The function of the notion of differentiation is that it serves as the point of reference for Luhmann’s assault launched against Grand Theory. Luhmann felt that the society that thematised itself as political society misunderstood itself. It was simply a social system in which a newly differentiated political subsystem had functional primacy. Both this claim and those that follow make it clear that this sophisticated theorist assumes nevertheless what is a crude factorial-surprise, surprise-historiography in which particular factors: economic, political, and so on, come to the fore, thus attaining the societal functional primacy. Thus, Luhmann considers the Marxist approach to an economy based society in which the concept of economic society is understood, as he sees it, to denote a new type of society in which production, and beyond that “a metabolically founded system of needs” replaces politics as the central social process. From another perspective also characteristic of Marxist thought, the term “bourgeois society “is meant to signify that a politically defined ruling segment is now replaced as the dominant stratum by the owners of property. Luhmann’s reservations concerning not only Marxist, but also bourgeois theories of economic society parallel his criticisms of Aristotelian political philosophy as a theory of political society. Both theories make, to his mind, the understandable error of “pars pro toto”, of taking the part for the whole, which in this context means identifying a social subsystem with the whole of society. The error can be traced to the dramatic nature of the emergence of each subsystem and its functional primacy (for a time) in relation to the other spheres of society. Nevertheless, the functional primacy claimed for the economy should not have led to asserting an economic permeation of all spheres of life. The notion of the economy possessing functional primacy is compatible with the well-known circumstance that the political subsystem not only grew increasingly differentiated (from religion, morals, and customs if not from the economy) but also continued to increase in size and internal complexity over the course of the entire capitalist epoch. For “functional primacy need only imply that the internal complexity of a given subsystem is the greatest, and that the new developmental stage of society is characterized by tasks and problems originating primarily in this sphere (Arato and Luhmann 1994).

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To retort, Luhmann’s argument is based on another kind of logical fallacypetitio principii insofar as his assertion concerning the functional primacy simply reflects the latter’s specific definition, which, however, cannot serve to criticise alternative interpretations of the notion, since at least at first blush they are at least equally legitimate as Luhmann’s one. This means that to call those in question, substantive criticisms are needed, and on that score Luhmann’s argument is rather weak and contradictory. It is not at all the same to claim that Marx equated the economy with a whole society, and on the other hand, that Marx viewed the economy as permeating all walks of life. The former is an analytic proposition, i.e. a particular definition which one can either take or reject. The latter contention, by contrast, implies a substantive, synthetic proposition about society and as such it is subject to normal procedures of confirmation and/or falsification, neither of the two is even attempted by the German thinker whereas a robust case can be made for the claim that out of all societal substructures, it is the economic structure that has far and away the greatest quantitative and qualitative impact on the remaining societal structures, as shown, inter alia, by the presence of its products or effects in each and every other societal structure, as well as the inability of the citizens” of a given society to free themselves from that impact, which does not apply to any other structure-one can isolate oneself from the media and other cultural influences, one can even try to escape the long but not ubiquitous political tentacles, but for all practical purposes in each and every moment of one’s life one is, wittingly or not, subject to the influence of the economy-exercised through a plethora of products of the latter that in many cases constitute the prerequisite of one’s sheer existence: food, shelter, and so forth. To outline an important concept of stratification with reference to society as a whole rather than its production subsystem, it is characteristic, among other societies, of “the new commercial society; the 17th and 18th centuries brought about an increasing commercialization and market orientation-first of agriculture (on the base of inherited real estate) and, then, of production (on the base of alienable capital). For the 19th century, from Fourier to Durkheim, the keyword was not culture but solidarity. The industrial revolution and the coming to power of the new Bourgeoisie had replaced the old “natural” order of social estates with a new structure of social classes, depending not upon origin but on career and therefore being visible as contingent. Solidarity was conceived as a kind of moral obligation or, at least, as a binding collective consciousness. But the background assumption remained stratification, now in the form of a class society producing wealth by division of labour and, thereby, multiplying

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vertical and horizontal differences. The concept of society included an injunctive component “that the very name of society implies that it shall not be a mere race, but that its object is to provide for the common good of all” (Luhmann 1997). Thus, Luhmann repeats an earlier identified error of conflating class with stratification. As has been argued earlier, the class structure is anything but a simple gradational system. From this standpoint, paradoxically, it is the feudal estate order that far better meets Luhmann’s criteria. According to Luhmann, the term “bourgeois society” is meant to signify that a politically defined ruling segment is now replaced as the dominant stratum by the owners of property. In fact, however, neither Luhmann’s “political stratum” nor his “owners of property” are properly identified. The former group is actually a social estate, while the latter a social class. Therefore, the entire Luhmann’s argument reported below is based on a misunderstanding: “We may well recognize-he argues-the hardships and the injustice of stratification, but this is no longer the main problem of society. For its scheme of difference and identity is no longer framed by stratificatory (or hierarchical) differentiation. Stratification would mean that we could know the addresses of influential people and the ropes, and that we would be able to change the structure of society by appealing to reason, by critique, by reforming institutions, or by revolution. But this has become more than doubtful. If we look at the huge masses of starving people, deprived of all necessities for a decent human life, without access to any of the function systems, or if we consider all the human bodies, struggling to survive the next day, neither “exploitation” nor 'suppression”-terms that refer again to stratification-are adequate descriptions. It is only by habit and by ideological distortion that we use these terms. But there is nothing to exploit in the favelas; nor are there, at the higher levels of society, actors or dominant groups that use their power to suppress these people. (There are of course individuals, families or groups which, like everyone else, use their networks to their own advantage). “Exploitation” and 'suppression” are outdated mythologies, negative utopias suggesting an easy way out of this situation, e.g. by “revolution” (Luhmann 1997). It is surprising that the thinker distancing himself from individualism should reduce the system of exploitation to precisely individual persons that occasionally engage in what otherwise is a marginal relation, in factaccording to Luhmann-from a no more privileged position than any other

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member of a given society. One can speak of a surprise because for a system theorist, class exploitation constitutes a dream object of inquiry. His attempt at a reduction of the process of production and distribution to surplus value to occasional whims of some crazy moguls is utterly untenable. Nevertheless, in an argument in part converging, by coincidence, with our own contention concerning the relation between stratification and class Luhmann insists instead that the predominant relation is no longer a hierarchical one, but one of inclusion and exclusion; and this relates not to stratification but to functional differentiation. The point is that traditional societies included and excluded persons by accepting or not accepting them in family households, and families (not individuals) were ordered by stratification. Drawing on his mentor’s pattern variable of specificity vs. diffuseness, Luhmann argues that Modern society includes and excludes persons via function systems, but in what for Luhmann is a much more paradoxical way. Function systems presuppose the inclusion of every human being, but, in fact, they exclude persons that do not meet their requirements. Many individuals have to live without certified birth and identity cards, without any school education and without regular work, without access to courts and without the capacity to call the police. One exclusion serves as an excuse for other exclusions. At this level, and only at this level, society is tightly integrated, but in a negative way. And modern values, such as equality and freedom, serve as cover terms to preserve an illusion of innocence-equality as equal opportunity and freedom as allowing for individual (and not societal) attribution. It is one thing to describe modern society as a functionally differentiated system that generates social classes as a useless by-product of the selective operations of its function systems. It is quite another thing to define society as a social system that can change its form of primary internal differentiation. Functional differentiation is a specific historical arrangement that has developed since the late Middle Ages and “was recognized as disruptive only in the second half of the 18th century. One cannot define the concept of society by one of its possible realizations” (Luhmann 1987). Luhmann’s view of exclusion as the contemporary main axis of social division that replaces class divisions typical of past societies is parallel to that of Castells and others analysed in the book which herald the rise of the new age of information or communication, for that matter. However, this view is difficult to sustain. In the same vein, it can be

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argued that, in Luhmann’s style, it is one thing to reject an idea of society as based on a particular type of hierarchy (called stratification), but it is quite another to reject on that basis the relevance of the concept of class to modern society, the key reason being a lack of identity, or indeed affinity of the two concepts in question which in Luhmann’s account are mixed up. It is also a mistake on the part of Luhmann, Castells and others to claim that the axis: exclusion/inclusion overrides the class division. “Concepts such as poverty and social exclusion, which are commonly discussed in social work literature, seem to have replaced social class as pivotal concepts in social work practice. Nevertheless, the study of poverty, oppression and social exclusion, as well as the understanding of gender, ethnic and culture inequity, cannot be detached from the analysis of class dynamics” (Strier 2009). Viewed in these terms, the category of the socially excluded seems incredibly heterogeneous, encompassing individuals of widely diverging ownership positions-both in regard to labour power and the means of production or other means of economic activity. The entire vast zone of what has been earlier called the lumpeneconomy is a case in point, ignoring which one deprives oneself of a cognitive access to what constitutes for many members of the said category the source of livelihood, and by the same token class identification. There is even more to this than that; as has been suggested above, the conflation referred to above goes even further, since Luhmann is inconsistent, to say the least. For it turns out that, contrary to his view discussed above, classes are prominent even in the era of functional differentiation: “functional differentiation presupposes equality and creates inequality. It presupposes equality because it can discriminate only according to special functions (e.g. in schools according to school performance and prospects for further education) and because it operates best if everybody is included on the base of equal opportunity in each functional subsystem (avoidance of exclusions of “marginalidad” and so on). But it creates inequality, because most functional subsystems (particularly the economic and educational subsystems) tend to increase differences, “The whole society tends to proceed in the direction of increased inequality, accumulating differences between classes and between regions without being able to regress into the state of meaningful stratification”. (Luhmann 2011).

What forms Luhmann’s “meaningful stratification” could be the subject of debate, given that at the same the author of this formulation admits that the overall system creates inequalities, and if the latter do not deserve to be

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regarded as stratification, then what does? For it would definitely go too far to presume that, claiming what he has claimed, Luhmann wanted to distance himself from the overall perspective of social stratification, pointing out that what commonly is regarded as a system of stratification is, to all intents and purposes, a class structure. While one cannot suppose that Luhmann’s take on the relation between class and stratum is the same as that defended in the book, there is no denying that our contention formulated above can in fact be derived from the premises of his reasoning. Our analysis of Luhmann’s theory of social differentiation would be incomplete, however, without considering its broader theoretical, or even philosophical, framework. For Luhmann, society does not consist of people. Persons belong to the environment of society. Society is an autopoietic system consisting of communication and nothing else. Furthermore, society can only be adequately understood as world society. Whatever one’s assessment of this bizarre conception (which goes a long way toward disentangling the conundrum of Luhmann’s bizarre holism noted above), it could be argued that banishing people to the environment of society completes the decentralization of the humanist cosmology. Having been evicted from the center of the universe in the Renaissance, deprived of its divine, supernatural origin by being placed in the context of mundane biological evolution by Darwin, and stripped of such hallowed attributes as autonomy and self-control by Freud; Luhmann argues that humanity should now be freed from the bonds of society, which view at first blush appears to be a consistent extension of this trend. Whereas the classical European tradition, with its distinction between humans and animals, ascribed sense, reason, will, consciousness and feelings to humans, the inexorable separation of mental and social systems that Luhmann substitutes for homo socialis implies that society is a distinct emerging order sui generis, which cannot be described in anthropological terms. Society does not have the character of a subject-even in the emphatic transcendental sense, as a condition of the possibility of ultimate underlying ideas or mechanisms of human qualities. One does not have to be an ardent opponent of methodological individualism and concomitant societal nominalism to question Luhmann’s idea. Even in terms of path analysis, it is clear that a social scientist cannot simply interpret such key notions as 'society”, as though there were no established tradition, and even more crucially, everyday practice of Billions of people worldwide of understanding the latter. While Margaret Thatcher could, for her particular political and ideological purposes, claim that there is no such a thing, one

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can reconcile one’s opposition to substituting a hypostases (Greek: hypóstasis) of the societal whole as a subject in its own right for a sensible idea of a societal structure consisting not so much simply of individuals as the latter’s actions, thereby viewing individual human beings as part and parcel of this larger whole composed of a myriad of relations and meta or mega-relations (relations between relations) of which human individuals are, at least indirectly, an integral and necessary element with an acceptance of that relational picture of society. A critique of any kind of personalisation of that or other social structures, for that matter, as posited by the well-known juristic notion of a legal person, for instance, should not blind one to the complex network of inter-relations in which human individuals are necessarily and inherently or organically implicated literally at each and every moment of their life. Let us acquaint ourselves with some of the consequences of Luhmann’s strange axiom or dogma. Society is not an address for human appeals for action, and certainly not a venue for claiming equality and justice in the name of an autonomous subject. Again, Luhmann commits the wellknown fallacy called petitio principii-what he ostensibly infers from hisindependently developed-notion is in actual fact only a logical rather than substantive consequence of his, independent of and prior to any epistemic experience, premises. If the reader suspects that there is even more to the idea mentioned above, she would be vindicated; society is the ultimately attainable communicative reduction that divides the indeterminate from what is determinable, or process able from un-processable complexity, Luhmann, as can be seen, follows in the footsteps of bad German tradition of obtuse and pompous style. Luhmann sets out to trace what he claims to be the increasing distinction between the individual and society. Only after a clear separation has been made between society and humanity, argues Luhmann, it becomes possible to see what belongs to society and what has to be allocated to humanity-which term, note, is a collective one; irreducible to a simple aggregate composed of all human individuals that happen to be alive at a given moment of analysis, as this does not take account of a multitude of relationships tying those individuals to one another. From this perspective, Luhmann’s conceptual victory appears to be a Pyrrhic one. Nevertheless, the German thinker would insist that his “discovery” (?) opens up the possibility of research into humanity, human consciousness and the functioning of the human mind on the basis of empirical-natural measurement. The very wording of this phrase is perplexing, since Luhmann, after all, insists on the separation of social systems (or systems

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of society) and physical systems, which ignores the constant presence of natural objects in the very societal fabric-in the form of multifarious conditions and means of both work and quasi-work. Nevertheless, it is the aforementioned separation that in Luhmann’s view makes it possible to understand clearly the relationships between society and humanity and follow them over their historical course. Both are in this sense autopoietic systems, one operating on the basis of consciousness and the other on the basis of communication. But what is this still leaves open the meaning of the term “society”. Society, in an initial approximation, is, according to Luhmann, the comprehensive social system, including everything that is social, and “aware of nothing social outside itself”, which is a paradoxical formulation, blatantly inconsistent with Luhmann’s earlier criticism of the idea of 'society” as a subject possessing many of the attributes pertaining to what normally are considered as the constituents of the whole in question. For Luhmann instead, everything that is social is identified as communication. Communication “is a genuinely social (and the only jointly social) operation. It is genuinely social in that it presupposes a majority of collaborating systems of consciousness while (for this very reason) it cannot be assigned as a unity to any individual consciousness. Arbitrariness of Luhmann’s choice of exactly this form of action as the only genuinely and jointly social is immediately evident. Co-operation, for instance, meets those criteria just as well. To be sure, co-operation involves communication, which only serves to underscore that society is constructed along dialectical rather than rigid, pigeonholed lines. Meanwhile, Luhmann would stick to his guns, stressing his point still further by asserting that the dependency posited holds also the other way round: “anything practising communication is a society. This involves far-reaching definitions” (Bechmann, Stehr 2009:60), first and foremost-society as communication. Furthermore, “communication is a reality sui generis that can no longer be attributed to something else. Second, communication is the mechanism that constitutes society as an autopoietic system and processes it in these terms. The negation of communication is itself communication, and hence the expression of society. Third, if communication means autopoietic reproduction, this means that society is a self-substitutive order that can only change in itself and through itself. Communication becomes the basic structure of society, where the relationship between communication and society is circular: no communication without society, no society without communication, and this mention about circularity is instructive, as it shows that the former

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claim- couching communication as the basic structure of society is basically an analytical proposition that follows from the sense in which one uses one’s terms, which is another way of saying that as such it says nothing about reality., is simply a stipulative, conventional or persuasive definition. The mention about moving beyond ontology with its supposedly narrow bounds should in principle suspense any questions regarding the substantive nature of communication, which by itself is sufficient to bring to light an unsustainable quality of Luhmann’s modus operandi. If, however, one attempts to tease out the relevant meaning no matter what, the simplest answer is that communication is an operation in precisely the sense that a distinction is made. Communicative acts say nothing about the world, and communication reflects nothing about the world, which is not reflected by communication but rather classified by it. The purpose of communication is to create differences that can then be attached to further communication, forming and stabilising system boundaries. Not necessarily consistent with his understanding of communication as a reality sui genris is its framing by Luhmann not as original, ultimate element, but as a synthesis of processing operations which Luhmann describes as information, transmission and comprehension. Even this simple definition underscores what in point of fact has been clear from the very outset-how premature is any talk about the allegedly post-ontological era; information is by definition about something, and the latter can be also the outer world, thereby questioning Luhmann’s peculiar reduction of ontology to epistemology. For Luhmann, the aforementioned three discriminatory operations are binary in structure, which formulation is surprising, given the theorist’s insistence on differentiation and diversity, here brought down to a series of simple polar opposites. Whether any society operating on such a narrow basis would be able to survive rather than perish due to the fatal deficit of information and all the consequences thereof is extremely doubtful. According to Luhmann, information is selected from shared meaning, a reservoir from which things are selected as relevant for transmission or forgetting. Completing the act of communication is a matter of deciding what is represented or accepted or rejected, not understood. Leaving aside Luhmann’s strange distinctions, which often may suggest that their author took his own notion of exclusion too deep in the heart, one wonders how come Luhmann did not elaborate on his own concept of shared meaning, which in the context of his sociology could lead to interesting consequences-share, namely, by whom? Is it always society in the

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background, or could those pools of meaning be generated by some narrower social units, such as social classes? Leaving such potentially relevant to his own treatment of that key social category issues out of the picture is hardly commendable. Transferred to the social system, information can be seen as external reference, transmission as self-reference and comprehension as a condition for the transfer of the meaning in further communication. The synthesis of these three selections is in Luhmann’s view a self-referential, closed event. On the basis of such considerations Luhmann elucidates what he does understand as the self-constitution of what is social. As noted above, the latter is nothing more than communication, which also implies that it consists of this autopoietic process which has its own inherent dynamic. From this perspective, the environment is only a stimulus, not a real source of information. To this it could be added that regardless in what nominal role in the process of generation of information the environment is being portrayed, what is really important is how the content or referent of information is to be understood. And to this question Luhmann’s conception of self-referential, self-contained circuit of information contributes little, if anything at all. Given those gaps, the following contention is definitely built on sandLuhmann presents as his conclusion from the former statement kind of definition: “Comprehension, accordingly, means a not arbitrary networking of communicative events by the self-referential communication process”. In theory, granting that given operations are not arbitrary opens the way to the ontologisation of what has been earlier-ontologised by the creator of all those ideas, but it should be emphasised that this is just a formal opportunity that the theorist is by any means eager to take advantage of. Anyway, for Luhmann, repeated discussion forms identities that constitute boundaries, which is an extremely controversial claim. Why one should posit that only interpersonal communication is capable of forming salient personality traits and personal identities. This contention reflects very much a specific perspective of the “chattering estates” for whom the paramount tool of their work overrides everything else. But from a broader viewpoint, this perspective can be seen as what it really is-that is, a socially conditioned special perspective and nothing more. Perspective which by the same token ignores an influence of one’s working environment, and class position more generally, has on one’s self-image. Anyhow, society, or rather what had previously been understood as the latter in sociology, Luhmann would have us believe, is now liberated from

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all substantial determinations. It is not a moral unity, not based on consensus or any rational integration (as could be seen also earlier, Luhmann’s primary partner in his sociological dialogue is functionalismthus in the two last instance, he implicitly refers first to Durkheim, and then again to Parsons) (of whatever kind); it is formed solely by ongoing communication. Accordingly it makes no sense to talk of such distinctions as economy/ society or science/society, since politics, economics, and law cannot be regarded as something outside and separate from society, but are “acts of society in their communicative operations’ (Bechmann, Stehr :61). Nobody questions that the economy or the state are parts of society at large, so from this point of view, Luhmann’s insight is no big deal. The problem, however, is how one understands the stuff society, and by extension, those other societal structures are made of. Within most social theories, there are grounds on which to differentiate between, e.g. the economy, polity, and the rest of a given society; exceptions to that rule are provided merely by some types of essentialism and holism or undialectical treatment of the relation between the overall structure and its elements. But Luhmann’s theory is anything but conventional or mainstream. The foregoing material is almost enough to grasp the theoretical foundation of Luhmann’s conception of society. But let us round it off with Luhmann’s own revealing pronouncement: “only the consciousness of individuals is structurally coupled with the autopoiesis of the societal system (Luhmann 1988). Only consciousness can irritate communication in a way that is compatible with the autopoiesis and the operational closure of the social system. All other environmental changes (physical, chemical, biological, e.g. death) can only have destructive effects. Conscious states in the environment of the system have to be presupposed at any moment in time, in every single communicative operation. They have to be presupposed, not only for the time being, but also in the form of a possibility of future communication on the one hand, which links up with what has been said or written before, and, on the other hand, in the form of a past that has already successfully reduced uncertainty and in which individuals have committed themselves to continue communication. This structural coupling of consciousness and society does not determine system states on both sides of the boundary. On the contrary, it presupposes the reciprocal inaccessibility of consciousness for communication and of communication for consciousness. The other side cannot be reached, it can only be imagined; for no system can operate outside of its own boundaries. The structural coupling depends upon

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language as linking device, but there is no super system organising this coupling. Language is not a system. Moreover, this is the only direct coupling that connects the societal system with its outside. Only consciousness can produce the noise necessary for the emergence and evolution of social order. Only conscious operations can perturb the communicative system and create preconditions of sensemaking within this system. Everything else-say, death, fire, earthquakes, climatic shifts, technological catastrophes-can only destroy communication. Such events can, of course, be observed, that is, thematized by the social system, but to do so requires communication and, as its external condition, consciousness. This is trivially true, but it does not entail any of the idealist conclusions that Luhmann believes follow from this observationeven putting aside the contradiction between the above statement and the view of society as communication from which it ought to follow that any disturbance in the processes of communication is by the same token an disturbance in the functioning of a given society, Another contradiction has been already alluded to; one cannot discard any notion of society as a supra-personal subject and at the same time continue to speak as though the latter behaved along such lines, as Luhmann’s repeated phrases suggest, such as “the system observes”, “the system thematises”, and so forth. The said system is no human being, so that this manner of speaking may be at best an unfortunate metaphor but at its worst a blatant case of Whitehead's fallacy of misplaced concreteness. Luhmann, as if responding to those critics who charge him with antihumanism hastens to highlight “The extraordinary importance of individuals with respect to the ongoing reproduction of the societal operation”-that is, however, conceptualised in accord with the peculiar framework discussed above-”is due to their external (environmental), not to their internal (social) status; it is due to their own self-reproduction, to their own “autopoietic” closure as minds and as living bodies. Individuals are not and cannot: be “parts” of society, and it makes no sense to speak of “participation” (if we: remember the medieval connotations of this term). Given this importance of individual reproducing consciousnesses other ecological concerns might be of minor consequence. Individuals, however, are easy to replace, they die anyway and they live in great numbers. According to Luhmann’s so inhumane and anti-humanist point of view that necessarily arousing suspicion as to its motivation, which, it seems, cannot but lie in the desire to provoke, according to the saying “pour epateur le bourgeoisie” we have greater problems with fresh air and fresh water, with oil and with nourishment, with pollution and with the ozone

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layer depletion. Besides, “ecological interrelations are much more complicated than relations between individuals, which are almost exclusively mediated by society itself, i.e. by communication. I cannot go into details, at this point” (1997). It is a pity, of course, that the German sociologist is not willing to elaborate, but even as things stand, his statement goes a long way toward elucidating the specific character of his core assumptions. To view society solely through the prism of communication (although controversially, from the perspective of French structuralists, for example, denying the systemic quality of the basic tool of that communication, i.e. language) and, in the final analysis, consciousness, is to indulge in an outright idealism. Contrary to the German thinker’s assertion that only world society and world processes count, his case proves that national intellectual traditions have still huge relevance; Luhmann is kind of path-dependent on rich German philosophical past whose influence has proved enough, e.g. for Luhmann’s mentor, Parsons during his stay at Heidelberg to mirror later the notion of Hegelian Geist in his own concept of society’s overriding value system.

IV.6. Multitude Let us turn now to still another conception within the same theoretical camp revolving around communication, information and the like. Although the concept of multitude was first used long time ago by Machiavelli and later by Spinoza, it is Hardt and Negri’s recent influential “Empire” that it draws its popularity from. Prominent or not, the concept suffers from serious shortcomings in that it subscribes to an oversimplified polar conception of social differentiation. To tease out this meaning of the concept in question from rather vague formulations we are offered is not an easy task. Negri describes the multitude in his “The Savage Anomaly” as an “unmediated, revolutionary, immanent, and positive collective social subject which can found a “nonmystified” form of democracy” (194). In his more recent writings with Michael Hardt, however, he still does not offer a clear definition, but presents the concept through a series of mediations. In Empire it is mediated by the concept of Empire (the new global constitution that Negri and Hardt describe as a copy of Polybius’s description of Roman government): “New figures of struggle and new subjectivities are produced in the conjecture of events, in the universal nomadism (…) they are not posed

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merely against the imperial system—they are not simply negative forces. They also express, nourish, and develop positively their own constituent projects. (…) This constituent aspect of the movement of the multitude, in its myriad faces, is really the positive terrain of the historical construction of Empire, (…) an antagonistic and creative positivity. The deterritorializing power of the multitude is the productive force that sustains Empire and at the same time the force that calls for and makes necessary its destruction” (Hardt, Negri 2000).

Well, an unambiguous language was not amongst the greatest merits of Hegelian dialectics as well. Negri, like many other ex-Marxists, or post-Marxists, if you like, rejects class and invokes instead a seemingly altogether different image of social differentiation. But his Marxist background haunts him and finally his Marxist chicken come home to roost. Among other arguments, the following Albert’s criticism, otherwise based, as it does, on a simplistic view of the class structure clearly shows: "Class concepts focus us on the difference between owning factories and selling one’s ability to do work. This difference produces capitalists versus everyone else. The source of this difference has to be eliminated if we are to transcend capitalism. (…) Being one word, multitude presumably refers to essentially one thing. What? Perhaps multitude refers to anyone who could conceivably become a revolutionary in revolutionary times. Albert’s conceptual struggle should surely be appreciated, which does not necessarily entail that his conclusions are to be accepted. He reasons further: “But since that could be anyone at all, the word population would do equally well as a label for that concept. I doubt the whole population is the intended meaning of the concept multitude, though I have heard people use the term that way. Perhaps multitude refers instead to everyone who is a very good prospect to become revolutionary in revolutionary times. But then the word multitude just replaces the two word label, likely revolutionary, and that does not seem very innovative or essential either. I also doubt that that is the intended meaning of the concept multitude, though again, I have heard people use the term that way. Perhaps multitude means, instead, those who by virtue of their economic position are very good prospects to become revolutionary in revolutionary times. Taken in that sense, the concept multitude would replace the old concept proletariat, or even working class. As Michael Hardt himself put it in an interview, [this] is one way in which you might think of our notion of multitude as being very close to a traditional notion of proletariat, that is, the class of all those who produce, once the notion of production itself has

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Chapter IV been sufficiently revised and expanded. “This, I think, is the intended usage. Regrettably, I also think it is the most counterproductive usage. If the term multitude means likely agents of economic and social change, and includes those who produce, I think there is a high likelihood emphasizing it would crowd out giving equal attention to kinship, race, and power based dynamics as to economy based dynamics. I think emphasising multitude would tend to hide that procreation, sexuality, socialization, celebration, identification, adjudication, legislation, and implementation count just as much as production (and for that matter consumption and allocation) in people’s conditions and consciousnesses, and also in igniting or thwarting revolutionary inclinations. Advocates of multitude correctly want to highlight that production affects and is affected by culture, gender, and power so far, so good. But if our method for incorporating that insight impedes our also using central concepts that are specifically rooted in those other domains and not just in thinking about production, not to mention if they impede our using more detailed economic concepts of class and of consumption and allocation, then despite our good intentions our adopting the concept multitude will narrow rather than broaden our focus. To see what I mean, I hope it is sufficient to note that using multitude this way would mirror the impact on the left of the old use of the term proletariat, also meaning revolutionary agent based on being a producer. For example, many activists who used the term proletariat as agent of change, took race very seriously, even considering it of paramount social importance. Nonetheless, the proletariat-based framework led them to understand and think about race in overwhelmingly economic terms. And using proletariat as an organising principle had the same predictable delimiting effect on people’s approach to gender and political power, as well, of course”. This all is by any means self-evident, as the commentator being cited would have us believe. The relationship between class on the one hand and gender, race and the like on the other has been repeatedly illuminated in this book. In a nutshell, there is no opposition between these, although this presupposes a dialectical point of departure, which for many would be difficult to institute. Despite multitude being defined more broadly than proletariat was defined, nonetheless, like the word proletariat, the word multitude identifies a revolutionary agent based on examining economic foundations. “That approach will, I fear, cause people to think that the only or at least the most important way to become revolutionary is by way of economic concerns and attitudes. I thought we transcended that approach thirty years ago.

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Moreover, even if the above danger was avoided, I think elevating the concept multitude would certainly enforce a bi-polar view of economic change. Regarding economy, with multitude guiding our thoughts there will be potential bad guys maybe we will call them capitalists, or emperors, or whatever and there will be potential good guys, the multitude. This is quite like when the conceptualization of economic struggle was capitalists versus the proletariat or versus the working class, with no other economic agents operating. The trouble with a two constituency approach to agents of economic change is that it covers over the existence of the coordinator class and makes it seem that beyond bad capitalist economics there can only follow either more of the same or, instead, good multitude economics. This is quite like orthodox Marxism Leninism’s mentality that there is capitalism and then there is socialism. An economy simply must be one or the other” (2005).

We confine ourselves to calling the reader’s attention to the commentator’s observation of a structural affinity between Hardt and Negri’s notion and a parallel one entertained by the Stalinist distortion of Marxian teachings. In a similar vein, Adams states: “the authors actually seek to move back to a time in which Marxist ideology ruled the vast majority of social movements, when it was still generally believed that economics was the fundamental driving force of world order. The way in which they accomplish this, it seems, is through an often rather imperceptible slippage between the nonlinear, existentialist and subsistentialist concept of the multitude and the linear, progressivist and productivist concept of the proletariat; as a result, the authors reinforce yet another version of the very particularity/universality nexus they claim to oppose as the concept of the proletariat finally comes to over determine the concept of the multitude” (2003).

The notion of immaterial labour has been intended to reflect the informationalisation or computerisation of labour practices in industrial production as well as the analytical, symbolic functions and affective forms of labour in the tertiary (or service) sectors of the economy. The widespread use of computers in the economy is an incontestable fact, which does not mean that its alleged implications, as understood by Negri and Hardt, have the same status or character. They claim, namely, that “when the computer becomes the central tool of production, whether of immaterial or material goods, it becomes the “universal tool” that

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homogenizes labouring processes. In this way, “labour tends toward the position of abstract labour” (Hardt and Negri, 2000: 292). Given a wide diversity of industrial and other business situations that have experienced computerisation in that sense, any mention of homogenisation is manifestly unfounded. Choonara concentrates in his pointed critique also on those aspects of Negri and Hardt’s approach that are akin to ones criticised by us in another “informational” prophet, Manuel Castells. Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri’s first collaboration, Empire, 1 exerted a powerful influence on the anti-capitalist movement, especially on those sections describing themselves as autonomist. In it they argued that capitalism has entered a new historical stage in which the sovereignty of nation-states is withering away in the face of globalisation. A new, global form of sovereignty-Empire-is rising up in its place composed of a series of national and supranational organisms united under a single logic of rule. Multinational corporations and global institutions like the International Monetary Fund or World Trade Organisation preside over this system alongside nation-states. Empire is not based on fixed boundaries or territorial centres of power. Instead power lies “both everywhere and nowhere”. As the aforementioned commentator notes, “accompanying this process, they argued, a new form of production, based on “immaterial labour” is become dominant. Instead of producing things, immaterial labour produces “a service, a cultural product, knowledge or communication”. Such labour is not confined to the workplace. Just as capital spreads smoothly across the globe, so it spreads across the whole of society, seeking to absorb our creative powers: “As labour moves outside the factory walls…the proletariat produces in all its generality everywhere all day long.” This new proletariat includes all those subject to the rule of Empire, not just wage labourers directly employed by capital. Hardt and Negri’s description of Empire was attractive to anyone who accepted the most extreme versions of globalisation theory, without sharing the reactionary conclusions of those who preached them. But the main appeal of the book lay in the claim that a new counter power to Empire was emerging. This counter power multitude- is a collection of distinct individuals acting in common. It seemed to offer a way of describing the forms of resistance on the streets of Seattle in 1999 and at subsequent anti-capitalist mobilisations, while avoiding the language of an

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old left, which was discredited or irrelevant in the eyes of many activists” (Choonara 2005). Choonara stresses, however, that the concept of the multitude outlined by Hardt and Negri is equally problematic. The authors use the term in two senses? To describe all those subject to the power of capital and to describe the counter power capable of overcoming Empire. In the first sense multitude is counter posed to Marx’s idea of the working class: “Working class is fundamentally a restricted concept based on exclusions… The working class is thought to be the primary productive class and directly under the rule of capital, and thus the only subject that can act effectively against capital. The other exploited classes might also struggle against capital but only subordinated to the leadership of the working class. Whether or not this was the case in the past, the concept of the multitude rests of the fact that it is not true today…all forms of labour are today socially productive”.

This contention is based on an ambiguous notion of 'socially productive labour” as reputedly something different from the concomitant Marxian notion. This only confirms our opinion that the term “productive” can be misleading and therefore should be replaced in a given context by the term “material labour”, which does not generate such misunderstandings. 'Social productiveness” could, of course, be understood as simply social usefulness or even, being productive of use values. But again, this is not the same as Marx’s abstract labour, nor does it undermine the latter. Hardt and Negri do not claim, to be sure, that the number of industrial workers has fallen. But they do claim that “in the final decades of the 20th century, industrial labour lost its hegemony and instead “emerged “immaterial labour”. Immaterial labour produces symbols, codes, texts or ideas, or it takes the form of “affective labour” producing and manipulating emotions or feelings. The first form of immaterial labour seems to fit most readily for media or IT workers, while “affective labour” can be applied to “flight attendants and fast food workers”. The authors make two important claims about immaterial labour. They argue that it is hegemonic in the sense that other forms of labour tend to become more like it, and they claim that immaterial labour does not obey the laws of motion of capitalist society developed by Karl Marx in his economic writing. Put crudely, for Marx the value of commodities regardless of whether they are material goods or “immaterial” services reflects the average labour time required to produce them. But for Hardt and Negri the concept of the

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working day as the basic measure of value no longer makes sense: “If production is aimed at solving a problem…or creating an idea or a relationship, work time tends to expand to the entire time of life.” Applying this to an example of an immaterial labourer they use, it implies that workers at McDonald’s spend their leisure time obsessing over how to improve customer satisfaction” (Choonara 2005). This sarcasm is very well founded, just as the critique of the alleged labour-power market trends, submitted also earlier in this work. Whilst noting that the two authors in question also discuss the increasing casualization of jobs, the commentator being discussed reckons that “in doing so they massively overstate the trends that they discuss. There is a tension between the desire of capitalists to force workers into badly paid, less secure work and their need for a stable, skilled and healthy workforce. The core of workers in secure jobs in the developed world has proved remarkably resilient, as has been reminded above”. This is not the end of the story, as there are other problems with their analysis. There is evidence that industrial workers are not just growing numerically, but that they also play an increasingly important role in world production as their productivity grows. The question of developing an industrial base continues to be a central concern of governments and capitalist elites around the world-not least as a prerequisite for them to wage war upon each other. In some areas of the world the service sector, the critic concedes, has grown. But these jobs are not part of a freefloating weightless economy based simply on ideas and concepts. The service sector involves workers like airport baggage handlers, postal workers and call centre workers, who all utilise large amounts of capital in their work and experience much the same stresses and strains of work as industrial workers. “I will consider the sector of the economy that seems to conform most closely to Hardt and Negri’s vision. Citing Eric Raymond’s The Cathedral and the Bazaar, 3 they describe open-source programming, in which the “source code” is distributed copyright-free along with software, as an example: (Non open-source) programmers had thought of their programs (as) pristine cathedrals. (But) when the source code is open…more of its bugs are fixed, and better programs are produced… Raymond calls this, in contrast to the cathedral style, the bazaar method of software development, since a variety of different programmers with different approaches and agendas all contribute collaboratively. As we noted earlier with respect to

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'swarm intelligence”, we are more intelligent together than any one of us is alone. This form of production is supposedly based on individual but cooperating programmers forming networks very similar to Hardt and Negri’s model of the multitude. But the reality is rather different to the one they suggest. The most successful open-source product is the Linux computer operating system. Far from being developed by a network or swarm, its development is centralised through a “core-development team” to whom suggested changes to the source code must be submitted. According to one analyst, only 1,000 people contribute changes to Linux on a regular basis. An even smaller group of 100 programmers contributed 37,000 out of 38,000 recent changes all of whom were paid by their employers to work on the operating system. The main employers willing to release staff to work on Linux include Intel, IBM, Hewlett Packard and other giants. They have a vested interest in competition with Microsoft’s Windows operating system, and have accumulated vast amounts of capital, allowing them to dominate the world market. Nor is it clear that open-source programming produces better software. There is powerful evidence that, unless a high degree of centralisation is imposed, projects tend to develop slowly and to waste time as people work on identical problems. Most projects become fragmented between rival groups or fizzle out as people lose interest. Those that succeed are rapidly absorbed into the capitalist market as a potential source of profit. Even in this sector, capitalists are still driven to extract profits from their workers, to compete with their market rivals and then to accumulate capital in order to increase their competitive edge” (Choonara 2005).

From this perspective, it is also possible to call into question Hardt and Negri’s final argument that “material production…creates the means of life (but) immaterial production, by contrast, including the production of ideas, images, knowledge, communication, cooperation, and affective relations, tends to create not the means of social life but social life itself?. This is an extreme form of idealism turning Marx’s view that “social being determines social consciousness” on its head. It reflects Hardt and Negri’s real aim to replace concrete analysis of the capitalist system with a theory of pure subjectivity in which Empire equals power and the multitude equals creativity. “The weakness of the authors” economic theory means they cannot explain how capitalists are motivated, how capital is divided between different units or the uneven way in which it accumulates. So they offer no analysis of the weak points in the capitalist system or how best to strike at them. If Empire is 'smooth” then all points are equally vulnerable. If a

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This all too well illustrates some of the perils of strong political commitments. While the idea of public, committed sociology or social science may seem appealing, it tends to be based on the failure to grasp that political relevance stems from scientific merits of a given theory and not from the degree of ideological motivation pertaining to their creators. Hardt and Negri argue that the commonalities between different members of the multitude will allow it to come to political conclusions spontaneously in the same way as it comes together to produce ?cooperation, communication, forms of life and social relationships?. The book ends by suggesting the kind of conclusions multitude might reach: “Democracy today takes the form of a subtraction, a flight, and an exodus from sovereignty.” This echoes the calls by autonomists in the anticapitalist movement to create a space free from the rule of capital. There are powerful counter-arguments to this. Our rulers are hardly likely to allow us to create a democratic world free from their control and influence and, even if doing so were possible, it would involve leaving behind the vast productive capacity created by our labour. Hardt and Negri are unconcerned by these arguments. They imply that, once the swarm intelligence of multitude comes round to their conclusion, it will desert Empire, leading to its immediate collapse, give or take a little “defensive violence”. Once free from Empire the multitude will not require the productive forces of capitalism because it is their immaterial labour that creates social life” (Choonara 2005). The critic rightly notes that this seems to be a dangerously complacent view of the challenges that will confront the movement against capitalism and war as it develops. “Of course Marxists should not put up barriers to working with people influenced by Hardt and Negri’s ideas, but we should be clear that the concept of multitude is more than a metaphor for the movement. It is a fundamental attack on idea of the working class as an agent for change, and upon the need for political organisations to fight for a strategy to overthrow our rulers” (Choonara 2005).

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Abstracting from extra-substantive, political considerations, let us comment briefly on Negri’s central notion of immaterial labour, that is, of the informationalisation or computerisation of labour practices in industrial production as well as the analytical, symbolic functions and affective forms of labour in the tertiary (or service) sectors. (cf. Hardt and Negri, 2000: 292).

Hardt and Negri do not dispose of not only adequate economic but also social theory. Such notions as ownership or ownership of labour power are striking by their absence. From the perspective of socio-economic structuralism, the concept of immaterial labour should be dissected to mean pre-material, conceptual labour and work performed by the holders of particularly instrumental labour power, where both terms are understood in accord with the original Parsonian meaning; particularism denoting the type of work where communicative and interactive abilities are preponderant; “instrumentality”, on the other hand, refers to the outward orientation of a given job, which in Parsonian terms interacts with the system’s environment. In short, no big deal, which also refers to the notion of multitude which invokes old divisions rather than constitutes any breakthrough, as its vocal proponents would have it. The autonomists” position, reviewed above, has proved very influentialfor reasons partly illuminated above. So, it seems useful to scrutinise one concrete example of precisely this kind of application.

IV.6.1. Neither value, nor labour In this section we focus on an article by S. Böhm and C. Land (2012), titled “The new “hidden abode”: reflections on value and labour in the new economy”, published in one of the issues of “The Sociological Review”. The content of Böhm and Land’s paper revolves around three Marxist traditions of thought: the labour theory of Value, labour process theory, and, thirdly, Autonomist Marxism. The uninitiated reader may be forgiven for thinking naively that the aforementioned three streams must be close to one another, and correspondingly their differences, if any, are minor. The truth of the matter is, however, the reverse is the case-they, as will be seen, profoundly diverge from one another. Now Böhm and Land are aware only of a few of these differences, and in fact not any amongst those they notice belongs to the set of core differentiating characteristics.

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Now if the preceding has not given the reader the sense of scope and relevance of the above-mentioned paper, these will probably become clear in the course, or as a result of our analysis below. But even at the very outset it will be fair to say that the questions raised in Böhm and Land’s paper, and thus by extension -in the present SECTION, will be of interest by no means merely to those knowledgeable about the relevant theoretical positions of Marxists, neo-Marxists and post-Marxists. For the axis around which the paper under consideration is organised is constituted by the topic of knowledge economy, knowledge-based economy, and other cognate ones such as: information society, network society, cognitive capitalism, etc., and each of those constructs has its ardent adherents, not only in the scholarly community, but also educated public. Thus, regardless of one’s theoretical and ideological persuasion, the present comments below may be of interest to the reader, as it polemically engages WITH not only Böhm and Land, but also a number of important thinkers they discuss. As it will be clear to the reader, such a plan is rather canny on our part, for it enables us to kill two (and potentially even more) birds with one stone. And what is at stake is not even this or that specific scholar, but a couple of substantive issues whose importance for a thoughtful and rational explanation of contemporary society cannot be overestimated. Böhm and Land show, after all, that when a dozen years ago a bunch of theorists called for “a new theory of value, commensurate with the changing political-economic realities of knowledge-based capitalism”, their appeal “was echoed by a host of management gurus, politicians and think tanks” (Böhm and Land 2012). IV.6.1.1. Privileged site or privileged framework? It has been stated above that Böhm and Land’s frame of reference in their paper is constituted by three distinct approaches. Now the thing is, the perspectives concerned are by no means treated on an equal footing. The two authors under consideration do not hide that the main thrust of their argument has been developed through “a sympathetic engagement with the work of Hardt and Negri, Lazaratto, Arvidsson, and others associated with Autonomist Marxism”, which “perspective has done much to examine the changing forms of labour and valorisation in the late 20th and early 21st centuries” (Böhm and Land 2012). By contrast, “by remaining wedded to an analysis of labour that is confined to the employment relationship, Labour Process Theory (LPT) has missed a fundamental shift in the location of value production in contemporary capitalism” (Böhm and Land 2012). And the pair of

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scholars concerned reiterate that they “examine this shift through the work of Autonomist Marxists like Hardt and Negri, Lazaratto and Arvidsson, who offer theoretical leverage to prize open a new “hidden abode” outside employment” (Böhm and Land 2012). But how exactly does this account of value production (to be expanded upon below) compares to two other, also Marxist perspectives? To begin with, the reader is told-in line with the above criticism-that “by restricting their analytical focus to the employment relationship, LPT has been unable to appreciate the full significance of recent capitalist restructuring and is unnecessarily limited in its empirical purview” that fails “to encompass the full range of labour in early 21st century economies” (Böhm and Land 2012). How, in turn, do those purported failings bear on the relation of the perspective under consideration to the labour theory of value? And here the argument gets convoluted. For on the one hand we learn that “LPT follows Marx’s analytical descent into “the hidden abode of production” to find value production and exploitation located in the capitalist employment relationship”, which point is made even clearer in a related context: “At the core of LPT is the idea that capitalist value production takes place principally within the employment relationship so that other forms of activity, even if they produce economic value, are excluded from their analysis” (Böhm and Land 2012). So far, so consistent. How, though, one is to reconcile this account with the following assertion that, otherwise logically, holds that “by rejecting the labour theory of value, LPT has effectively ceded the argument that the labour process is inherently exploitative, thereby weakening the analytical and political ground for focusing on the labour process as a privileged site for the analysis of capitalist social and economic organization” (Böhm and Land 2012). At first glance, one can make an inner contradiction also of Böhm and Land subsequent statement maintaining that “autonomist Marxists also reject the law of value”, but they somehow manage to retain it as, in Böhm and Land” terms, “an ontological and political ground for understanding labour itself”. This means that for them labor is by definition “a value-creating practice”, which, according to Böhm and Land, “has the inestimable advantage of not assuming that all “labour” takes place within the confines of the employment relationship a core

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assumption for most LPT (Böhm, 2006)-and thereby opens up the possibility for an analysis of the labour process to appreciate the full range of capitalist valorisation strategies”. If the contradictory character of the above argument may to some seem still open to debate, far less controversial in that regard is the following section of the exposition being discussed. In opposition to the above praise of autonomist Marxists, they sum up the conclusions of their paper: “By revisiting Marx’s “hidden abode” metaphor in this paper, and suggesting a need to return to a theory of value, […] we have argued that it is only through a clear focus on the production of value that its obfuscation and apparent displacement can effectively be critiqued” (Böhm and Land 2012). In a similar vein, they recall approvingly that “for Marx, the labour process was a privileged site for the analysis of capitalism because it is labour, and only labour, that is capable of producing surplus value. This, to be sure, fits with the evaluation of LPT cited above, but, in turn, badly squares with the programmatic declaration: “This paper suggests that an adequate understanding of the “new economy” necessitates a reconceptualization of the location of value production […] there is a need for an expanded notion of labour and its value creation capacities” (Böhm and Land 2012). IV.4.6.1.2. Value producing labour It is high time to deliver the goods, i.e. to decode the above-mentioned notion of new forms of labour in the context of value creation, which objective will be entirely consistent with Böhm and Land’s favorite theorists, Hardt and Negri (1994: 7), who hold that “the concepts of labor and value mutually imply one another”. Let us begin this discussion, however, with the following statement of purpose put forward by this time round the former pair of authors: “The central purpose of this paper has been […] to lay out the main features of the theoretical and analytical framework needed to conceptualize the contemporary “transformation of the labor process and labor power” (Böhm and Land 2012). Given such an objective, it is crucial to get this analytical framework straight. And the point is, there are some problems here. Referring to labour process theory, they write as follows: “central to this school of thought is the capitalist problematic of converting the potential for labour

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(labour power) into concrete, value producing labour” (Böhm and Land 2012). Now this statement obliterates Marx’s key distinction between concrete and abstract labour. It is only the latter type of labour that produces value, the former one, contrary to Böhm and Land, produces merely use values. Given high theoretical ambitions of the authors concerned objectified in the title of their paper, their lack of clarity as to the meaning of both those central concepts does not bode well for the said ambitious purposes. But, of course, the proof is in the pudding, as they say. The reader, however, should be forewarned that this one is exceptionally big, so those who are slimming are not encouraged. Focusing on their favourites, Böhm and Land recall that “Hardt and Negri put forward the thesis that material production was no longer central to value production and had been subsumed by immaterial production. For them, immaterial labour should be understood as (a) the creation of symbolic values associated with commodities, including knowledge, “affective” or emotional labour in service work, and (b) communicative acts that (re) produce the forms of social organization- one of the most important products of immaterial labour is the potential for further communication through a discursive production of a particular form of social organization that facilitates material production” (Böhm and Land 2012). As will be seen, this is just the beginning of what will turn out to be a long story (or fat pudding, if you like), so that at this point we shall confine ourselves to the limitations from which the above definition suffers. Firstly, it lacks consistency- the purported new form of labour may be couched as the creation of symbolic value associated with commodities. Now amongst the subtypes of that “emotional labour” there is 'service work”, which, by definition, has nothing to do with material goods. This much, it should be mentioned, is admitted by the authors of ”Empire”: “The production of services results in no material and durable good” (Hardt and Negri 2000: 290; also 2004: 108). But the above passage has more remarkable aspects to it. The following argument offers much food for thought, though not necessarily of the kind that would be most welcomed by the authors: “One of the most important products of immaterial labour is the potential for further communication through a discursive production of a particular form of social organization that facilitates material production” (Böhm and Land 2012).

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For the sake of argument let us give the authors the benefit of the doubt and tentatively let us assume that in fact what they call social organisation facilitates material production. This, however, still leaves the argument as a whole open to criticism. The key word here is “facilitates”. If A facilitates, or affects B, this does not mean that it transforms into the latter. In other words, the authors of the above-cited claim have not proved that their newly discovered variety of production is indeed one; all they demonstrated, granted with the above sympathetic presupposition, is that it may impact upon material production, whereas their terminological innovation has reached that status by fate only; their terminological choice failing to be substantiated, at least thus far. Unlike the case discussed above, the following (otherwise cognate) one is prima facie different, at least from the authors’ standpoint inasmuch as they attempt to provide such a justification. In keeping with their line of critique mentioned ABOVE, Böhm and Land warn: ”If LPT is to fully appreciate the political economic changes that the “new economy” has brought to the fore, then it needs to extend its understanding of labour to incorporate the immaterial labour of social reproduction, including consumption and branding” (Böhm and Land 2012). “Immaterial labor produces first and foremost a “social relationship” (a relationship of innovation, production, and consumption). Only if it succeeds in this production does its activity have an economic value. This activity makes immediately apparent something that material production had “hidden”, “(Böhm and Land 2012)., namely, that “labor produces not only commodities, but first and foremost it produces the capital relation” (Lazzarato, 1996:138). Now, there is a grain (or even two) of truth in the above argument-we cannot agree more with the relational approach to the economy and society. This does not mean, though, that its every manifestation is fortunate. Consumption can indeed be conceived of as a social relation, but for quite different reasons than those postulated above. Namely, consumers establish relations with producers of the good they acquired the former being dependent on the latter for the satisfaction they derive from the act of consuming, and bad products can have harmful consequences for the consumers” health, to name but a few indicators of this kind of relation. Otherwise, consumption is akin to the former case in being simultaneously, to borrow a pair of Weberian terms, economically relevant and economically conditioned-on the one hand, consumer demand affects allocation of

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capital and production, on the other hand consumption as-, inter alia, branding, marketing and advertising testify to-is itself shaped by the processes of capital valorisation.

IV.6.1.3. Branding Böhm and Land are fond of using analogies which they commonly employ to justify an imposition of economic labels on non-economic phenomena. Thus, just as above the notion of capital as a relation cannot by itself legitimate their conception of consumption as an economic relation, so in the case of branding they refer to the idea that, in the interplay of the use and exchange value of communication, even consumption functions as a value productive form of labour” (Böhm and Land 2012). The authors complain that “the question of branding remains largely neglected within the sociology of work”. From this author’s perspective, it is not a gap, but a result of rational interdisciplinary division of work- the said question is by no means neglected within a more comprehensive field of economic sociology. A case in point is Joe Podolny’s (1993) status perspective. He defines status as “deference relations”, which means that one actor accepts a social relationship with another. Podolny states that status firms can make more money because their status enables them to charge more for their products or services than firms with less status. With reference to markets where this concept is applied by its advocate, Podolny’s approach boils down to the well-known economic notions of product differentiation and brand. Meanwhile, in accounting for the economic efficacy of consumption Böhm and Land commit –not only in this instance-the fallacy of petitio principii. The premise of their argument: “People are active and creative in their symbolic consumption” is just another way of stating what is purportedly to be deduced from it: “the brand is a crucial site of immaterial labour and social production” from which there is only one step to the final conclusion: “this active, symbolic consumption is itself creative of value” (Böhm and Land 2012). Apart from this chain of Para logical reasoning, the authors more specifically, but not felicitously draw, as in the above argument, on an Autonomist perspective to argue that “[t]he use-values of consumer goods should be conceived as something more than their ability to respond to extra-social needs or desires (coming from the “stomach or the fancy”). Rather, […] these use-values consist mainly in the qualities of goods as

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means of production: their capacity to be deployed within an ongoing immaterial production process by means of which such a common is constructed” (Arvidsson, 2006: 19–20). Both “production” and “means of production” referred to above are cases of over-extended concepts that abound in the paper under consideration. However, giving the authors the benefit of the doubt, it will be fair to take a closer look at the purported product of aforementioned action. Unfortunately, their respective argument is hopelessly circular: “It is through ongoing communication that a “common” social terrain, upon which productive communication can take place, is constituted […]the consumption and circulation of 'signifying complexes” is the cornerstone of social reproduction whereby a common is forged, without which communication and collective action would be impossible” (Böhm and Land 2012). The fact of the matter, however, is, the authors” argument refers to yet another concept whose meaning has not been fully clarified so far. Continuing thus this inquiry, let us consider in more detail the notion of brands. Anticipating our conclusions, it is fair to say that the respective account includes some interesting ideas, but their real theoretical implications largely diverge from those envisaged by Böhm and Land. A note of caution-it should be borne in mind that such common terms as “production”, “work”, “labour”, etc. are here understood in a peculiar fashion. Thus, brands are couched as a form of immaterial commodities. The authors quote one of the leading exponents of Autonomist Marxism: “Arvidsson suggests that the potential for further communication is the reason that consumers buy branded products” (Böhm and Land 2012). “communicability is the substance of the monetary value of the brand . What consumers pay for is access to the communicative potential of the brand […]. The use-value of the brand for the consumer is its value as a means of communicative production” (Arvidsson 2006: 131). Its armoury of so-called “innovative” conceptual tools notwithstanding, the above exposition arouses suspicions that behind its terminological facade nothing more than an old socio-economic theory is hiding, referring to status or prestige goods. Not suggesting that the latter has been perfect (in fact nothing could be further from the truth), the point is, originality of both Arvidsson and his followers” framework becomes implausible. And indeed, the originator of the said framework justifies such suspicions: Citing the common example of a Nike trainer Arvidsson suggests that Nike are able to charge a premium for their trainers, which in terms of

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material performance and cost of production may be entirely indistinguishable from cheaper competitors, because of the meanings associated with the brand. By wearing Nike trainers, a consumer is able to mobilize this meaning as part of their identity work, producing themselves as a social subject in relation to significant others and thereby constituting a community of consumption whose logic transcends the simple moment of consumption” (Böhm and Land 2012). On the one hand the above paragraph corroborates the thesis on convergence of the two aforementioned conceptions, but on the other it contributes some new insights. Böhm and Land however, greatly overplay what is actually just a useful complement to “more traditional critical theoretical readings of media and brand culture” rather than” one of the key analytical and political points distinguishing Arvidsson’s analysis from” (Böhm and Land 2012) the latter. And this exaggeration implies misrepresentation: “For Arvidsson, there is no simple subordination of play and life to the logic of commodity consumption” (Böhm and Land 2012). This insistence on the innovative and distinctive nature of perspective under consideration has become something of an obsession for the pair of authors involved. Meanwhile, both their own and Arvidsson’s statements clearly show the reverse is the case-if taking over and colonising society by capital does not deserve to be called commodification and subordination to the latter, then what does? The aforementioned 'subordination thesis” is immediately followed by a contention of intentionally genuinely, but in actual fact only seemingly distinct significance: “Rather, the logic of capital becomes coterminous with the reproduction of life itself and particularly with cultural reproduction” (Böhm and Land 2012). Arvidsson puts the same trend in slightly other terms: “Capital (in the form of propertied symbols, and signifying complexes: advertising, brands, television series, music and other forms of content) is socialized to the extent of it becoming part of the very environment, the bio-political context in which life is lived. The other side to this equation is that life comes to evolve entirely within capital, that there is no longer any outside” (Arvidsson 2006: 30). Whilst there are several problems with those arguments, their differences compared to the 'subjection thesis” are subtle and insignificant. What is significant, and false, too, however, is the identification of the cultural with the social and even life in general. Furthermore, whilst the prefix “bio” as applied to life is of course natural, the same does not refer

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to the adjective “political”. “Life” purportedly becomes politicised owing to capital annexations, but the relationship between the noun and adjective in question is not articulated. Another phrase worthy of attention, referring presumably to brands, is that of “property symbols”. Now, as their further discussion shows, Böhm and Land-like that proverbial bourgeois in a Moliere's comedy, who is surprised (and delighted, too) to learn that he has been speaking prose all his life without knowing it-are not aware that the relationship of their ruminations to ownership is by no means just a symbolic one. This is clear (unless one fails to see the link between 'surplus extracted by capital” and property relations) from the subsequent step in the chain of reasoning being analysed: “This means that all of “life” potentially becomes “work” as the very production of sociality functions to produce a common from which capital is able to extract a surplus. This flow of value occurs […] at the micro-physical level, moving through the very capillaries of social production” (Böhm and Land 2012). Whilst it is apparent that the two aforementioned notions are inseparably tied to each other, clarity is what exactly is missing about the role of “work” in this context; in fact, the above argument involves the fallacy of non sequitur. It has not been proved that watching TV adverts, or listening to (what?-since the reader is again left in the dark what, if any, genres, are most “capital-intensive”, so to speak) music are to be classed as work or labour, for that matter. Also the term “unpaid labour” used in what follows is ownership-relevant, only that it is hanging in the thin air until it is established beyond question that the activities involved are labour in the first place: “the production of cultural, brand value lies beyond the direct control of its owner or managers. Rather, the reproduction of the cultural values and meanings invested in the brand, and its related communities, is secured by the active labour of those consuming the brand and thereby valorizing the brand and contributing to its value. This labour is “free” in the double sense that it is both relatively autonomous and unpaid” (Arvidsson 2006, 2010; Terranova 2004). Whilst the authors” healthy realism regarding manipulation powers of image, brand, etc. creators is to be welcomed, the other side of the coin, the thesis of creativity of the public is overblown out of all proportions. Myths of autonomous and, to use Weber's term, autocephalous voluntary and benevolent “brand communities” burst like soapy bubbles in confrontation with the mundane realities “A ceaseless barrage of TV and radio advertisements facilitates the formation of consumerist self-images

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that structure people’s wants and desires from the time they learn to speak. […] there exist more television outlets that carry ads. Second, the major networks try to squeeze in more commercials, especially in popular entertainment and sports shows. The TV advertisement volume in the United States has increased from $3.60 billion in 1970 to $50.44 billion in 1999 (Television Bureau of Advertising 2000). Accordingly, advertisement clutter on radio and network television reached new record levels in 2000. ABC and NBC averaged over 15 minutes of commercials per prime time TV hour, not including cutaways for local ads […] These remarkable figures indicate that today’s TV stations and advertisers have more power than ever to transmit consumerist images and values to the viewing public. Third, TV clutter increased as a result of the shift to neoliberal deregulation. In the area of communications, this means that the barriers to commercial exploitation of media and to concentrated media ownership have been relaxed or eliminated (McChesney 2001). The final insight is worth stressing since it highlights again a key role of ownership (largely absent in the paper being analysed, or otherwise necessitating a major operation in the form of eliciting and decoding) relations in shaping policies Böhm and Land are concerned with, thereby immediately depriving those of allegedly free-floating character attributed to them in the paper. The continuation of source material cited above only widen the divergence between reality and musings of the “new immaterialists”: “The 1996 deregulation of the telecommunications industry fundamentally weakened public control over the dissemination of sounds and images in the United States. Recent studies show that American children at age 12 watch an average of 20,000 TV commercials a year, and that 2-year-old toddlers can already develop brand loyalties. It seems obvious that the increasing ability of commercialized television to reach young people contributes to the formation of less communitarian generations (Steger 2002:276). The contrast between this sobering evidence and evident conclusions therefrom on the one side and fuzzy deliberations of those heralding the new era of “immaterial economy on the other could hardly be more striking. It is perhaps this revolutionary framework through which to reinterpret work, the economy and society that accounts for the recourse of its exponents to that big number of logical tricks SHADING OVER INTO fallacies. The following deliberations on the crucial category of value make use of a blameworthy technique consisting in substituting one

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meaning of the same term for another when one sees fit. “Value” as applied to brands is synonymous with “meaning”, whereas in the second case it refers to the labour theory of value, which naturally means that any conclusions drawn in the former context are invalid if moved, without any adjustment, into the latter one. Symptomatically, in the introductory words to this vital exposition (Böhm and Land 2012) the concept of value is used in its broadest sense: 'so, how are we to understand this circulation in relation to the production of value? It turns out that the answer is at hand-Arvidsson argues that what is central in the production of brand value is attention. The predominant locus of value for a brand-based firm is sustained interest in, or attention paid to, the brand. Through this, brand value can be realized as the probability of future consumption. This attention is reproduced throughout life as we relate socially and culturally via brands, investing in them subjectively and contributing to their value for others, thereby generating brand value (Arvidsson 2006). The issue of purported labour involved in this kind of “value generation” has been considered above. The thing is, irrespective of how distant those speculations may be from the real socio-economic world, this does not affect their capacity to generate transferable conclusions. After all, “according to Arvidsson’s analysis, it is this free labour that is at the heart of contemporary capitalist value production. By deploying brands in their production of identity, life-style and community, consumers actively reproduce and extend brands” value as signifying complexes and increase their potential as a use value for others.” (Böhm and Land 2012). The authors apparently do not care that the applicability of such terms as use values” to artificial, manufactured by marketing engineers wants and desires looks like a bitter irony. The result is not surprising: “To the extent that this “free labour” is unpaid, the Marxist “law of value” cannot hold, Arvidsson argues. He asks: if there is no pay for labour, then how could one mobilize such concepts as socially average, or necessary, labour time in order to distinguish necessary and surplus value?” (Böhm and Land 2012). That the aforementioned question is a rhetorical one, is testified to by the rapid answer to the effect that “in times of what Autonomist Marxists call, the “social factory”, we are witnessing a further shift where the “necessary” and “surplus” labour of social reproduction appear indistinguishable. Both occur simultaneously and throughout the full circuit from production to consumption” (Böhm and Land 2012).

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IV.6.1.4. Ethical surplus Not only in this case, however, the authors are inconsistent; effectively of undecided between an “old-time religion” and their new, unmaterialistic creed. Their deliberations revealing this contradiction begin with another problematic contention: “Political entrepreneurship is a matter of accumulating profits (or in any case a surplus), not through the direct exploitation of material labour, but through the exploitation of community, affect and communicative flows” (Arvidsson 2006: 89). The concept of exploitation is, of course, drawn from orthodox Marxism, but its particular application in the above context is rather unorthodox, to say the least. Before an in-depth analysis, note another radical (in the bad sense, for ignoring the long tradition of thought) measure is to dramatically depart from the traditional meaning of the concept of the political, which for thinkers that different as Weber, Marx, Trotsky or Znaniecki (and even early Parsons) should refer to public coercion (monopolised in the hands of the state). Meanwhile, the only dim at that, association to Weber’s framework is to the concept of political capitalism, which notion, however, has little in common with one adopted above. That such misconceptions as one mentioned above cannot but lead to further confusion, what follows brings out: “Arvidsson points to the character of the “political entrepreneur” as the paradigm of productive activity in […] immaterial capitalism. For Lazzarato (2007: 91; 93), this concept highlights the impossibility today of maintaining a distinction between political activity and economic activity. What is produced through activities like networked organizing or brand management is not so much things material artefacts as commodities as social relations, signifying complexes, frames of action and subjectivity. For Lazzarato, this production of meaning and subjectivity is the proper sphere of politics. […] In the current situation subjectivity, communication, consumption and branding are political at precisely the same moment as they are economic” (Böhm and Land 2012).

It can be thus seen that the misconception identified above leads to the obliteration of a key distinction between the political and the economic, and thereby in effect makes it impossible to build a satisfactory theory of society at large. As if pre-empting in part our criticism and perhaps twigging that “new economism” qua homogenisation has gone too far, the authors under

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consideration ask: 'so, if in contemporary capitalism production is primarily concerned with producing political values, then how does this process produce economic value?” (Böhm and Land 2012). Interestingly, the following pseudo-dialectical answer tacitly assumes a more traditional definition of the political: "In relation to branding, Arvidsson suggests that the process is an indirect form of management that cultivates and steers communication through the brand: 'Brands both work as a means of production to be employed in an autonomous process of constructing a common, and as embodiments of a new form of capitalist domination that governs that productive autonomy through particular kinds of empowerments' (Arvidsson 2006: 13–14). It is all very well to say that the process of branding is steered and at the same time autonomous at the grassroots level, but it remains to be demonstrated if such a combination is feasible at all. This is not the end of the story, though, which gets still more convoluted. “This “autonomous process of constructing a common” by “empowered” consumers does not directly produce an economic surplus, but rather an “ethical surplus” (Arvidsson 2006: 13; see also Arvidsson 2009, 2010). Arvidsson takes this concept of an ethical surplus from Arendt (1958) and characterizes it as consisting in “a social relation, a shared meaning, or a sense of belonging, that was not there before” (Arvidsson 2006: 10).

Thinking of this sort epitomises formalism-a style of reasoning based on superficial characteristics, leaving out an in-depth analysis of relevant phenomena being compared. Böhm and Land, following in all likelihood the group of scholars they look for inspiration to, not only in this instance base their thesis on analogies as though an analogy, this skin-deep at that, were to be able by itself validate the term of “ethical surplus”. Whilst, as noted, there is a mismatch between such concepts as “brand” on the one hand and “value”, “utility”, “usefulness”, or what have you on the other, the term “ethical” is out of place in that context to at least the same extent. Interestingly enough, what follows in the argument we are pondering over, is a step back in theoretical terms, as it were: In short, there is a new common produced through these social interactions that give rise to a surplus (collective) subjectivity. If the social interactions constituting this ethical surplus can be managed so as to circulate through a specific commodity form a brand that becomes indispensable to their ongoing

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reproduction then this process will produce an economic surplus for the owner of the brand by augmenting brand equity” (Böhm and Land 2012). The authors again are between rock and the hard place- an idea of commodified interactions managed from above is incongruent with their previous stress on autonomy as pertaining to those very interactions. You cannot have it both ways. Yet, the authors apparently think otherwise: “There are two implications of this analysis. First, brand consumption cannot simply be reduced to passive consumption by the masses. To be effective brand management must pass through an authentic moment of collective subjectivization. Without real libidinal investments, and the ethical surplus thereby produced, there would be no surplus value. The second implication is that the production of value remains essentially a problematic of organization, or rather re-organization. […] the key concern for the entrepreneur is the production of specific forms of social organization. For the political entrepreneur this organization concerns the government of flows beyond the immediate, disciplinary confines of the workplace and market. Perhaps, then, we should consider this as a political economic movement away from what Cooper and Burrell (1988) referred to as the 'organization of production' toward the “production of organisation”? It is precisely by shaping the production of social organization, in all of its messy, affective and libidinal aspects, and steering that production through the semiotic and material circuits of branded commodity consumption, that brand equity and economic surplus value is produced” (Böhm and Land 2012).

IV.6.1.5. Ownership As hinted above, there is a rational kernel to be found in the otherwise flawed argument. Elsewhere in the section its central idea is rendered in more modest terms, but even that previous more extreme formulation makes in effect the same point:” Much of the value of brands derives from the free (in the sense of both unpaid and autonomous) productivity of consumers; the same thing goes for web-portals and knowledge intensive service companies. In these instances, labour is in effect “in a non-place in respect to capital” (Negri 1999: 82) beyond its direct command, and the extraction of surplus value entails some form of appropriation of the fruits of that autonomous productivity (Arvidsson, 2006: 130).

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Indeed, the benefits constituting the substance of the ownership of the factors of economic activity always are, to a lesser or larger extent, gratuitous. It is for that reason the present writer has termed his approach to property “the rent theory”. This theory is, as also hinted above, socio-economic through and through, whereas many problems with which the exponents of the framework under consideration grapple stem from their dependence on the formal-legal approach, whose another manifestation is the following argument: “the Autonomist perspective emphasizes the idea that 'labour”, understood as value-productive activity, has moved outside of the workplace and employment relationship, and so is no longer under the direct control of management. Rather, as Arvidsson, Lazzarato, and Hardt and Negri suggest, labour is increasingly autonomous and “free”. Equally, as we have suggested above, the post-structural “production of organization” literature has been eager to expand the notion of organization beyond the traditional confines of corporations and institutions, highlighting the need to see organization, including work and labour, as part of a wider social process that is indeterminate” (Böhm and Land 2012). From the juristic viewpoint-focusing, as it does, on the notion of legal person, it is indeed difficult, if not impossible to move beyond the narrow confines of the enterprise. But in fact there is nothing “indeterminate” about the fact of capital spreading its tentacles over a much wider social terrain than “traditional confines”, as the authors would have it. In their (and the entire perspective they draw on) case, the chief problem consists not so much of not being able to move beyond the conventional corporate confines, as failing to, identify a host of property relations present both within those traditional organisations and “outside of the workplace and employment relationship” (Böhm and Land 2012).

IV.6.1.6. Knowledge Similarly, it is all very well to hold forth on knowledge until you do not ask a basic question, “what knowledge?”, which immediately shows how under-specified Böhm and Land’s usage is-the concept of knowledge is immensely broad, and one has no idea if in the author’s view, it includes e.g. philosophical or astronomical, not to mention astrological knowledge. In the context of material production the relevant types of knowledge are, e.g., software production, industrial design, etc. This enables us to redefine the concept of “immaterial work” in relation to that context, as the latter

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shows the former’s over-inclusiveness. The concept of “immaterial labour” captures at best some common attributes of a wide variety of work types. But in social research one is interested not only in what is general, common to many different social structures, but equally-in what is specific and distinctive about them. From that perspective the concept of “immaterial work”, or labour, for that matter, is clearly unsatisfactory. In the context under consideration what is of interest after all, is: what is the specific relationship of this kind of work to material production (constituting the frame of reference also in the paper being discussed). Now the most fitting term in this instance is that of “pre-material work”, as it indicates that given types of work constitute essential preconditions of material production, and determines their logically and temporally prior location in relation to material production'" (Böhm and Land 2012). That the above-mentioned suspicions regarding the authors” understanding of knowledge are not groundless, the following paragraph-containing some sweeping assertions on the importance of the work category just criticised-shows: as Hardt and Negri suggest, "communication and the production of organization have become hegemonic in contemporary capitalism" (2004: 145). And the authors of the essay mentioned above go on to argue that: "Regardless of whether immaterial labour quantitatively dominates economic activity, it is the paradigm for work today. For Toyota’s semiautonomous production teams it is the work of social cooperation that is key to production, replacing the material labour exerted on the production line as the main source of value. Even in clothing retail, much of the work is about presenting the correct forms of aesthetic accomplishment, engaging customers, and actively contributing to the cultural content of the commodities on sale. For symbolic analysts, or knowledge workers, operating in communities of practice, the key to value production is not so much the specific knowledge commodity being produced, but the ongoing social interactions that enable a collective process of innovation and learning through the co-production of a collective social identity" (Böhm and Land 2012; Land 2009).

To begin with, the final sentence of the above paragraph is utterly inconsistent with their list of “directly consumable commodities (knowledge, affect, experience, service etc).” being produced by immaterial labour. More importantly, exaltations over co-operation and its role in the economy amount to kicking at an open door-suffice it to mention Smith, Marx and Durkheim, but the list could be extended at will. .More importantly, this treatment of co-operation as a case of immaterial labour

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on the grounds that it implies symbolic communication is a paralogism; on such a basis the category in question can easily be made an allencompassing one. And indeed, in connection with the above-mentioned hairdressers and prostitutes the authors speak about “production of collective subjectivities and social relations of cooperation” (Böhm and Land 2012), the latter being established between a given service provider and her client, which is, of course, an altogether different case of using the word, and even can suggest an illegitimate over-stretching of its meaning.

IV.6.1.7. Empirics While our analysis has been dominated so far by theoretical and logical considerations, there still remains a question of how the image outlined above matches social reality (though, naturally, analysis can scarcely be pigeonholed, and accordingly, empirical issues involve theoretical questions). As opposed to all sorts of “knowledge-work”, “immaterialwork”, etc. conceptions, “there is evidence that industrial workers are not just growing numerically, but that they also play an increasingly important role in world production as their productivity grows. The question of developing an industrial base continues to be a central concern of governments and capitalist elites around the world, not least as a prerequisite for them to wage war upon each other. In some areas of the world the service sector has grown. But these jobs are not part of a freefloating weightless economy based simply on ideas and concepts. The service sector involves workers like airport baggage handlers, postal workers and call centre workers, who all utilise large amounts of capital in their work and experience the same stresses and strains of work as industrial workers” (Choonara 2005). As their paper shows, the exponents of “immaterial labour” thesis can be quite well-versed with such criticisms: “the postmodern paradigm of networked organizations populated by knowledge workers belies a reality characterized by highly routinized service work where most “growth has occurred not in knowledge work but in the low-paid “donkey work” of serving, guarding, cleaning, waiting and helping in the private health and care services, as well as hospitality services” (Böhm and Land 2012). Instead of facing the issue posed, they choose to evade it and move to another level: “this is to address the question of “labour” once again from within the confines of Marx’s industrial hidden abode: the labour process within an employment relationship. To open our analysis to more fundamental shifts in the production and circulation of value, we should expand our concept of labour to encompass all value-creating practices. This would include even

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those activities that reproduce labour power-for example, education or housework that are normally excluded from traditional Marxist accounts of productive labour the hidden labour of housework and domestic reproduction”“(Böhm and Land 2012). By the same token the authors commit the fallacy of petitio principii-they assume, what has yet to be proven, that those other activities are indeed productive of value. Contrary to what they say, examples given in the aforementioned critical judgement refer not to industrial, but to service work, performed by the hired hands, true, but, again, to discard in this connection “the labour process within an employment relationship” as a source of value in general is based on a double misunderstanding, since, as noted, the claim to which they refer does not include any example of material work, which only has the value-creating capacity, according to the theory involved. Secondly, the other side of their criticism of the LTV, as we know it, is a range of activities in their view generating value. But as this has not been proved, let us consider their examples case by case. One may use such terms as “housework”, but this does not affect the inviolable socio-economic distinction between such activities that bring the means of subsistence and those that do not. In simpler terms, what is sometimes called “non-wage labour” is, as highlighted by the first part of the phrase, no labour at all. On a slightly different note, the fact that a given activity contributes to the (re) production of labour power, as is the case with child bearing and rearing on the one side, and education on the other, does not convert it into an economic action, in particular work. In addition, the claim REGARDING social organisation refers to “communicative acts” and “discursive practices as producing forms of social organisation. This smacks of semiotic idealism, And indeed, Hardt and Negri (who are, of course, perhaps the most famous figures of the intellectual movement with which Böhm and Land largely identify themselves) argue “that “material production … creates the means of life [but] immaterial production, by contrast, including the production of ideas, images, knowledge, communication, cooperation, and affective relations, tends to create not the means of social life but social life itself”. This is an extreme form of idealism- turning Marx’s view that 'social being determines social consciousness” on its head. It reflects Hardt and Negri’s real aim-to replace concrete analysis of the capitalist system with a theory of pure subjectivity” (Choonara 2005). This is not an isolated case of philosophical and related problems present in the paper under consideration.

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Expanding, e.g., on the topic of social organisation, “Immaterial labour in the “new economy” is […] first and foremost the production of social organization. Before commodities can be produced in an employment relationship, circulated in market exchange, and consumed, social relations and subjects must be produced, distributed and organized in such a way as to facilitate the (re) production of capitalism itself. Work and organization are always already linked to a wider network of social relations that cannot be explained by only focusing on what is going on within specific employment contracts and processes, which are themselves just one specific product of these broader processes” (Böhm and Land 2012). This reasoning involves the same kind of fallacy as has been identified above, only that to the power of n, at least potentially. The peculiar notion of immaterial labour and social organisation are plagued by overinclusiveness, thinly masked by such phrases as “wider network of social relations” or “broader processes”. The authors, to be sure, couch the social relations in question as those that are involved in the reproduction of capitalism, but this expedient helps little; conversely, it reveals that apart from failing to distinguish the two ontologically different relationships mentioned above, the authors make an elementary mistake of blurring an important distinction between the mode of production and social formation. It is a commonplace that production processes take place in a broader social context, but this begs the question what exactly comes into the latter and what the relationships of its particular constituents to that production are. That the danger of building over-stretched concepts is not an imaginary one, can be seen from the continuation of Böhm and Land's argument: “The indeterminacy of the industrial capitalist production process was centred upon the wage-effort bargain, and the extraction of absolute and relative surplus value within the employment relationship. For the kinds of immaterial labour that we have been considering in this SECTION, this indeterminacy is more profound as value production and labour are materially bound up with the production of subjectivity, communication and social relations. This pushes the indeterminacy of labour to the point that it can no longer be simply located in “work” as paid employment. Instead, it extends into life itself” (Böhm and Land 2012). This time round the authors have moved well beyond the limits of absurdity, in effect rejecting any distinction between the economy and society, whose unintended-and certainly unwelcomed by the authors-effect is economism, or economic imperialism (needless to say, having little in common with Hardt and Negri’s study). True, however, owing to indeterminacy and ambiguity of their approach, one can perhaps argue

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both ways, and in the footsteps of thinkers otherwise very different i.e. Comte and Parsons treat the economy as just a “special case of general social system”, to borrow the latter theorist’s phrase. Examples given by Böhm and Land of life-world relations allegedly forcing an entrance into work processes are hardly convincing-they are based on further misunderstandings instead. Thus, the purported generalisation holds that “social relations cannot easily be contained within the confines of 'work' conducted within a 'labour process' unless this concept is extended to take into account a range of non-work or “life” activities” (Böhm and Land 2012). To demonstrate their thesis, they point to an example of Sex workers who “have to draw on a range of emotional, aesthetic and social experiences many of which have been gained outside the employment relation in order to please the customer” (Böhm and Land 2012). To begin with, the example is not fit for purpose; the term 'sex labourers” is inaccurate, if only because the category in question is multi-class in character-along with class counterparts of employees it comprises, in colloquial and non-theoretical terms, the selfemployed. Another misrecognition is share by the above case with the following concretisation of the proposition mentioned above, referring to “emotional labour and social experiences, over and beyond that formally required by the job”, which “are necessary for doing a job, such as hairstyling where success depends on establishing and maintaining a clientele through the management of social relationships that often exceed the actual moment of service and exchange” (Böhm and Land 2012). Recall that the aforementioned authors use in their paper the category of labour power. Why do they not make use of it in the above context, it is rather puzzling. The least favourable interpretation would be one stressing that they leave out the above-mentioned concept to bolster their case for the entanglement of economic and social relations in the above sense. Be that as it may, the fact of the matter is, since-as the authors point out themselves-given behaviours (and their corresponding underlying skills) are, if not formally, but actually “necessary for doing the job”, this unequivocally suggest that given characteristics are part and parcel of labour power. For sociologists, it is not formal requirements of a job, but its real content that is pivotal. Because of SPACE limitations, this topic cannot be analysed at more depth and length, but it seems that the most fruitful perspective from which to consider the views put forward in Böhm and Land’s paper, and more broadly-those of the entire school of “cognitive capitalism”, social factory”, “immaterial labour” and akin slogans is based on the sociology

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of knowledge. The spread and expansion of capitalistic market relations have taken unprecedented proportions, as manifested in the language itself-children in some U.S. schools are “incentivised” to read books, and they are also paid money for good grades. Not only human organs, but also children and women's labor (through surrogate motherhood) have become commodities. The theoretical framework/s referred to above may be regarded as a reflection of this capitalist upsurge, but one that has been found wanting both theoretically and substantively. Neither Böhm and Land nor their intellectual mentors dispose of a sophisticated enough apparatus with which to examine all the range of relevant phenomena. Conversely, their interests are, roughly, those of “chattering classes”. But from the standpoint of the silent majority, what is on their agenda is remote from the everyday existential problems of the latter. Adding insult to injury, even within this limited agenda, as amply shown above, the argument meant both to present and validate the key points advanced by the perspective in question is beset with logical errors, contains many inconsistencies as well as theoretical and empirical gaps. Therefore, whilst it may be conceded that the paper in question offers some food for thought, being beset with a range of significant flaws, its central claims facing major problems, it should however be discarded. To return to Castells, he claims that the information age is still a capitalist age (although he suggests the informational mode of development could survive the end of capitalism), but it is post-capitalist. But Castells’ power of persuasion is apparently insufficient as many commentators remain unconvinced. For instance, May, considering work in the information society covers the familiar ground of the growth of the service sector and focuses on the alleged expansion of knowledge work as alleged by commentators such as Handy. The quantitative and qualitative dimensions of this thesis are assessed and found unconvincing due to the persistence, indeed intensification-suggests May-of capitalism. The key continuity is that of property relations, which in the information society mainly concern intellectual property rights. As in the case of earlier forms of capitalism, May argues that the institution of private property operates in the same way for intellectual property as it does for other types of property. May reckons that the class nature of inequality in the information society has been neglected in “mainstream comment”. In Castells’ model, capitalists are no longer the ruling class: their power has been usurped by the networks. The true logic of the system is the logic of the networks.

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Despite the Spanish Internet guru’s fans probable protestations to the contrary, this claim of the prophet of the “information revolution” is anything but revolutionary. Castells himself (as his Marxist background should prompt him, should it not?) ought to know that Marx long ago wrote (quoted in Garnham, 2004: 240).: "The function fulfilled by the capitalist is no more than the function of capital-viz. the valorization of value by absorbing living labor executed consciously and willingly. The capitalist functions only as personified capital, capital as a person, just as the worker is no more than labor personified". both Garnham and Webster point out that the capitalists remain in control. The propertied class has better access to education, and its members are dominant in the top managerial positions which Castells claims are in control of the networks (Webster, 2002: 118). This criticism, however, is not precise enough; in actual fact there is hardly any class contradiction between capitalist managers and proprietors as the former, as is argued in the book, cannot be treated as simply gainfully employed professionals owing to the sheer size of their pay which in fact is composed also, and in many cases primarily of surplus value. “his depiction of the contemporary world is so familiar, even derivative” (Webster 2002: 115). Castell's "propositions about the character of contemporary society seem commonplaces: the increasing importance of information and knowledge, the increasing speed and of financial and other transactions and the consequent destabilization, the growing gap between the knowledge-rich and the knowledge-poor, the sense that we are indeed in a time of social and technological discontinuity. However, this can also be seen as a success in capturing contemporary life". More serious criticisms target Castells “analysis of the role of information, of production, and of the relationship between informational labor and capitalism. These critiques call into question his claim that the present economic and social situation is a new age, rather than a continuation of industrial capitalism. Before turning to the deliberations on classes in the proper sense of the word, let us consider in more detail yet another approach to social stratification that, to be sure, has been briefly mentioned above, but which deserves such closer scrutiny not so much for its theoretical framework as for its rich empirical content, which, it will be seen, is capable of bringing a few surprises.

CHAPTER V THE SOCIAL STRATIFICATION OF YANKEE CITY

What we have in mind is an interesting study of small American community by W. Lloyd Warner. He was a pioneering anthropologist and sociologist noted for applying the techniques of his mother discipline to contemporary America. Warner’s Yankee City study was undoubtedly the most ambitious and sustained examination of an American community ever undertaken. Warner and his team of researchers occupied Newburyport for nearly a decade, conducting exhaustive interviews and surveys. Ultimately, the study produced 5 volumes. However, Warner was treated as a maverick and outsider. Despite his impressive productive and wide range of interests, his work was not popular in his lifetime. An empiricist in an era when the social disciplines were increasingly theoretical, fascinated with economic and social inequality in a time when Americans were eager to deny its significance, and implicitly sceptical of the possibilities of legislating social change at a time when many social scientists were eager to be policy-makers and social engineers, Warner’s focus on uncomfortable subjects made his work unfashionable. Warner’s interest in communities when the social science mainstream was stressing the importance of urbanization, and religion, when the field’s leaders were aggressively secularist, also helped to marginalize his work. Warner was one of the first anthropologists to study relationships in the business world scientifically some salient manifestations of which will show up in our discussion below as well. He was also one of the first who made a systematic and categorical study of the contemporary American community as a whole, taking into account various levels of life-social, religious, ethnic, and business. Warner’s work has found new relevance since his death. His community studies have offered valuable material for scholars investigating social capital, civic engagement, civil society, and the role of religion in public life. Additionally, his studies of class, race, and inequality received new attention by researchers investigating and warning of the deep social

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inequities in American society. It is these merits, and above all, his empiricist bent that in our view makes Warner’s field research so valuable. Warner’s methodology, in which he related people’s social personality to social structure, has influenced modern research in social stratification and social mobility. At the very outset of the book summing up the results of his research Warner leaves no doubt that (it would be interesting to know whether he arrived at this conclusion independently of Weber who developed a similar distinction) 'social class is not the same as economic class. Social class refers to levels which are recognizable in the general behaviour and the social attitudes of the people of the whole community where such levels exist. Although economic factors are of prime importance and are some of the principal determinants of social class, they are insufficient to account for all social-class behavior or for its presence in contemporary America” (1966), thereby locating his approach in the field of stratification rather than class analysis. Still, his definition is not unambiguous, as he acknowledges that “economic factors”, whatever it might mean, are an important determinant of social classes. Warner’s interest in the economic and by the same token class structure is brought to light by his general working hypothesis: “Most of the several hypotheses were subsumed under a general economic interpretation of human behavior in our society. It was believed that the fundamental structure of our society, that which ultimately controls and dominates the thinking and actions of our people, is economic, and that the most vital and far-reaching value systems which motivate Americans are to be ultimately traced to an economic order” (1966:38). Accordingly, it would seem, the above cited definition might be reinterpreted to signify the dependence of stratification on socio-economic classes. Warner even occasionally uses the terminology of socio-economic classes, e.g. he refers to “one of the early New England capitalists interested in building canals and locks in the river [whose] company became the corporate overlord of a great industrial city of the state [and who] helped organise the Atlantic Stage Company, one of the important transportation systems […] and [who] was also concerned with the toll bridge across rivers (1966:49). However, matters are not that simple, as the following contention, revealing Warner’s narrow understanding of his “economic factors” shows: “Informants agreed that certain groups [...] were at the bottom of the social order, yet many of the members of these groups were making an income which was considerably more than that made by people whom our informants placed far higher in the social scale.”

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It seemed evident that other factors contributed to their lower positions. […]The average income of each social class was larger than that of the class beneath it, but the range of income of each class overlapped the range of one or more of the classes below and above it. The lower range of the upper-upper class overlapped the highest end of the range of the lowerlower class.” […]The highest average income for each individual was in the lowerupper class. Each person averaged $2,652.61 and the average income for each family was $6,189.42 in that class. The individuals in the upperupper class received the next highest income: each person averaged $2,133.61, and each family, $6,400.83. The income of the upper-middle class averaged $832.75 per person or $2,887.48 for each family. The incomes of the two upper classes were approximately the same, but that of the upper-middle was considerably smaller than the two upper classes. However, it was much larger than the income of the lower-middle class. The income of the lower-middle class for each person was $449.33 per year and $1,621.69 for a family. The income of the upper-lower class was considerably lower than that of the lower-middle. Each upper-lower person averaged $279.28 per year, and each family, $1,216.02 a year. The lower-lower class received the smallest average income of all classes. Each person in that class averaged $154.47, and each family, $882.71. Other evidences began to accumulate which made it difficult to accept a simple economic hypothesis. […] When we examined the business and industrial world, we discovered that bankers, large manufacturers, and Corporation heads also were not ranked equally but were graded as higher or lower in status. An analysis of comparative wealth and occupational status in relation to all the other factors in the total social participation of the individuals we studied demonstrated that, while occupation and wealth could and did contribute greatly to the rank-status of an individual, they were but two of many factors which decided a man’s ranking in the whole community. For example, a banker was never at the bottom of the society, and none in fact fell below the middle class, but he was not always at the top. Great wealth did not guarantee the highest social position. Something more was necessary.” (Warner 1966:6, 983). Income and wealth are obviously typical variables of social stratification, which proves that our claim was an over-statement; Warner, at least at a definitional level, remains firmly within the bounds of the stratification approach. This is also substantiated by the following definition:” By social class is meant two or more orders of people who are believed to be, and are accordingly ranked by the members of the community, in socially

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superior and inferior positions. Members of a class tend to marry within their own order, but the values of the society permit marriage up and down. A class system also provides that children are born into the same status as their parents. A class society distributes rights and privileges, duties and obligations, unequally among its inferior and superior grades” (Warner 1966:37). His scheme of social stratification, in which form it became known across the social sciences comprises the following categories: Upper-upper class. “Old money.” People who have been born into and raised with wealth; mostly consists of old, noble, or prestigious families (e.g., Vanderbilt, Rockefeller, Hilton). Lower-upper class. “New money.” Individuals who have become rich within their own lifetimes (entrepreneurs, movie stars, as well as some prominent professionals). Upper-middle class. High-salaried professionals (doctors, lawyers, higher rung (were in the corporate market, yet left for a reason such as family time) professors, corporate executives). Lower-middle class. Lower-paid professionals, but not manual laborers (police officers, non-management office workers, small business owners). Upper-lower class. Blue-collar workers and manual laborers. Also known as the “working class.” Lower-lower class. The homeless and permanently unemployed, as well as the “working poor”. His research practice, though, proves to be substantially broader in scope than some of his statements would suggest. There is a certain analogue here to his own methodological principle preferring real behaviours to verbal utterances. And indeed, before an exposition of his taxonomy, Warner presents some basic economic data. About one fourth of the employable population are in the shoe industry. The other principal but smaller economic activities are silverware manufacturing, the building trades, transport, and electric shops. The clamming industry, the only remaining economic activity of the town which depends on the sea, employs about 1 per cent of those who work for a living. The semiskilled workers constitute the largest group (46.19 per cent) in our occupational sample. The workers in the factories compose the great bulk of this group. 5.28 per cent are classifiable as unskilled. 2 The professional,3 proprietary,

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and managerial group comprise a seventh of those economically occupied; wholesale and retail store managers and similar proprietors, 7.92 per cent; clerks and kindred workers, 14.90 per cent; and skilled workers, 11.37 per cent. When the unemployment study was made in 1933, 50.73 per cent of those who were employable had jobs at which they were working, 4 30.61 per cent were employed part-time, and 18.66 per cent were without work. A little over 13 per cent of the total population were recipients of relief”. The above description undoubtedly, albeit imperfectly refers to class analysis. Industrial workers classified according to their skills are owners of various grades of labour power. Warner correctly perceives the class affinity of managers and proprietors, apparent especially in small and medium-sized firms whose proprietors usually are engaged in their management. On the other hand, according to our socio-economic structuralism, recipients of disability and unemployment benefits and pensioners belong to social estates rather than social classes.

V.1. Theory of social estates More broadly, the term “soziale Stünde,” used by both Marx and Weber, is, as a rule, mistranslated into English as “status groups,” or even “status classes.” Meanwhile, the term has an altogether different connotation, and its association with feudalism or the old epoch of the Middle Ages is, rather than a drawback, the merit of the concept, as it allows us to pinpoint such contemporary social groups that bear similarity to their conceptual forebears in important respects. Social estates may be conceived of as based on the relations of non-economic property, as opposed to the relations of economic ownership the socio-economic classes are grounded in. Thus, non-economic property is manifested in various aspects of the social situation of military officers, clergymen, police officers, lawyers, judges, professional politicians etc. Namely and more specifically, the relations of non-economic property appear as definite material and immaterial goods enjoyed by the representatives of particular estates. As will be seen, in plain language our key concept has much in common with such phrases as privileges, perks, special advantages etc. In order better to comprehend the content of the term “non-economic ownership” a list of respective relations is presented below: (1) Appropriation, on a monopolistic basis, of certain lucrative positions in the social division of labour, and thereby the benefits tied to them. The

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monopoly in question is most frequently secured by the regulation of supply of prospective candidates to privileged occupations. A case in point is a variety of professional associations or corporations, acting, as a rule, to bring down or limit the inflow of new lawyers, or physicians, to mention but a few. These professional associations play, in fact, a role of old-time guilds, just as their historical antecedents influence, too, professional practice of their members, including its moral side. A case in point is the early 20th-century extinction of half of the medical schools in the United States, as it resulted from actions intended to serve estate interests by achieving social closure. Analyses reveal closure intentions in the school ratings assigned by the American Medical Association, according to the 1910 Carnegie-sponsored Flexner reportwith predictable effects. Medicine, viewed by many sociologists as a paradigmatic profession (Wilensky 1964; Abbott 1988), paid no better than skilled manual labor in the United States during the latter years of the 19th century (Markowitz and Rosner 1973). Over the first decades of the 20th century, however, physicians” relative income rose to where it stands today— more than four times that of the average worker (Friedman and Kuznets 1945; England 2007). From another angle, physicians in the United States even now earn approximately twice the income of peers in other advanced economies (Angrisano et al. 2007). A study analyzes previously unexploited data to identify the causes of what Brown (1979) characterized as the “most effective tool” in medicine’s collective mobility process: a precipitous drop in the number of medical schools operating in the United States, from 161 in 1900 to just 74 in 1920. The resulting 40% reduction in graduates, over a period in which the U.S. population increased by approximately the same percentage, initiated a systemic constriction in the supply of medical practitioners, currently reflected in a dependence on graduates of medical schools outside of the United States to fill nearly one in four residencies (National Resident Matching Program 2009). among other researchers, Light (2004) concluded that the aforementioned decline had been the result of a 'systematic campaign” by the AMA intended “to reduce physician supply”. Likewise, Larson (1977) attributed the elimination of schools to actions of the American Medical Association, especially its 1906 school inspections and subsequent ratings of schools Other mechanisms employed in that estate action included the state licensing boards” exams, as suggested by Weber’s contention, written contemporaneously, that such tests served as a closure strategy intended “to limit the supply of candidates for these positions and to monopolize them for the holders of educational patents” ([1922] 1978:1000). The AMA appears to have used these exams as a tool for

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reducing the number of, not only holders, but also dispensers, of educational patents. What also applies to the developments concerned is Weber’s observation that a common component of a profession’s closure strategy is the establishment of regulated curricula ([1922] 1978). Evidence supporting closure was found in given researchers” analyses of the AMA’s ratings, which reflected clear biases favouring all-male and high tuition schools, and against black schools and those in states producing physicians at high rates. The ratings also appeared to reflect an intention to achieve occupational closure through alliances with other parties. Our analyses revealed that the AMA favored the traditional sectarians—former competitors, who had joined them to combat upstart medical sects” (Weiss, Miller 2010). And, to come back to the starting point of this argument, Larson (1977) observed that the aforementioned measures were the cause of the dramatic improvement in the average physician's income as well. This possession in the case of many professions takes an even hereditary form. “For almost two years leading up to the November 2000 elections, expectations focused on Vice President Albert Gore Jr. and Texas Governor George W. Bush. Both were the sons of important political families. Their rivalry sparked an immediate interest in the “return of political dynasties”. Gore, an able and hardworking politician, was described as a child of privilege whose public career had begun literally at birth, when his father persuaded the local paper to carry the news on its front page. After twentyfour years of government service Gore had compiled an impressive record. Bush, too, was a talented politician, a two-term governor who had smoothly assumed control of his father’s political network. Yet he suffered even more from the “silver-spoon” label. Following closely in his father’s footsteps without equalling his accomplishments, Bush seemed derivative, uncertain: a bad copy of his father. For many, he was aptly described by a comment aimed at the senior Bush in 1988 by the Texas commissioner of agriculture, Jim Hightower, now a radio personality: “He is a man who was born on third base and thinks he hit a triple”. Many people were offended by the idea that the presidency could be claimed as a birth right, as though it were family property” (Bello 2003). What these and many other estate positions often give is:

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(2) Special social connections, which are transferable into economic advantages. In this context it is pertinent to draw attention to a study, according to which “a lawyer with the right connections-conceptualized in terms of communication networks with colleagues-benefits from better quality work-related information that ultimately translates into higher economic attainment. In addition, a lawyer also benefits from the endorsement by high-status network partners given that a lawyer’s exact performance quality is highly uncertain, even unknowable, from the viewpoint of prospective clients. In other words, the prestige of one’s network alters serves as a market signal to help reduce the information asymmetry confronting prospective buyers. In this way, the process of status transfer by affiliation with prominent others enhances the focal actors” (lawyers”) reputation that, in turn, increases their earnings” (Kim 2013). (3) Access to insider, privileged information. This refers, among others, to the police. Their occupational position gives them a higher salary, social benefits, and some other advantages, which are named below but, frankly speaking, often the chief appeal of the occupation lies in the fact that it creates many opportunities of extra earnings. These, in turn, are linked to the ability to take advantage of the spy ring and information they collect. This information has often very high monetary value, and can be sold to, for example, private detectives, parents of lost children, journalists, owners of vehicles that have been stolen from them by professional thieves, acting, as a rule, on behalf of car dealers, mechanics or smugglers with whom the police often co-operate, as they do with other criminals. (4) The ability to enter into short-term relations of lumpen property. This applies in particular to bribes received in many countries, notably those of immature capitalism by police officers, and bribes and kickbacks obtained by government officials. (5) Appropriation of advantages listed under the previous two items can be facilitated and strengthened by the use of exclusive professional languages, jargons or codes. Among the social estates there are a lot of examples of the use of language or speech in order to create appearances of high knowledge seemingly enjoyed by this or that member of the social estate, whereas put in the plain language it would in all likelihood turn out to be quite comprehensible for the laymen, but it is precisely their ignorance that is the point.

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(6) Privileged access to various consumer goods, new auto models and brands tried by journalists, mobile telephones and notebooks or tablets given to the journalists and politicians, special policy offers submitted by insurance companies. Below the reader can find a couple of concrete examples illustrating both the present item and the subsequent one. “Couturier Fred Hayman, ex-owner of Giorgio Beverly Hills, has paid house calls to stars like Jay Leno and Pat and Vanna to dress them for their T.V. shows. Adrian Khashoggi and Imelda Marcos, as holders of the 1984 dud-venture American Express Black Card, were entitled to private afterhours shopping at posh stores like Neiman Marcus. [...] artists would not be seen dead in the same experiences and settings as their audiences; members of Congress avoid their constituents in anything but the most formal settings. House Speaker Tom Foley pays Jhoon Rhee Tae Kwon Do to send grandmaster Jhoon Rhee himself for regular lessons in the House gym. Music industry lawyer Alan Grubman gets his shoes shined while he sits at his desk. Lobbyists from Burson Marsteller hire messengers at $36 an hour to wait in line for seats at congressional hearings. John Malkovich and Branford Marsalis have their feet massaged by an office-caller at $38 a half hour. Salomon Brothers partners have their own barber on their corridor. Dan Quayle would leave his office to get his hair cut at the Senate barber shop, but he took a dozen Secret Service men with him and emptied out the salon. While at Vanity Fair, Tina Brown got her sensible coif done at home several times a week by a stylist from the pricey Upper East Side salon Ayervais. The important thing is not simply ease and comfort-but distance, distance, distance, from the people with whom ordinary citizens are forced to live their lives. Simple, common experiences, such as reading a newspaper or seeing a play, are turned into singular privileges. John Reed, the chairman of Citibank, actually employs someone to read the newspaper for him and deliver a brief synopsis (washing the newsprint off your hands is such a hassle). And to keep smartly abreast of the theatrical scene, Alec Baldwin sends his personal assistant to view shows for him (in Los Angeles and New York), requiring a detailed synopsis and critique upon return. Important journalists employ research assistants who relieve them of the painful chore of actually reporting their own stories and columns themselves. They are then left with the Olympian task of “news analysis.” But they are also robbed of the sudden insight or lead that the hassle of practicing journalism might provide them.

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Does anyone employ an assistant to think for him? To breathe for him? To cut his own food? Some come close. When being interviewed by Rolling Stone in 1990, thirtysomething heartthrob crooner Daryl Hall stared longingly at a pitcher of water on the table in front of him, until an assistant manager who’d entered the room happened to notice and quickly poured him a glass. Carrie Latt Wiatt, a Hollywood dietician who tells people what to eat and sends them ready-made food, told Vanity Fair that she no longer had John Landis’s business because his meatloaf wasn’t precut. Michael Jackson apparently fed himself but travelled with a personal cook. At a 1990 black-lie gala for Tommy Mattola on the Columbia Pictures lot, Jackson (arriving with several bodyguards and staying for less than one hour) was prepared a special meal by his mystic Sufi chef, who appeared at the table much to the surprise of the other guests- including Mattola, Jay Leno, Gloria Estefan and Sony-USA CEO Mickey Schulhofwho made do with the house fare. Oh, to be David Geffen, and not have to pack one’s belongings, or even concern oneself with luggage, flying from Los Angeles to New York with no bags and merely arranging through an assistant for a new wardrobe to be bought and delivered upon your arrival. White House staffers are powerful enough to travel on Air Force I or II need not put up with checkins, baggage claims or even red lights once they’ve rolled into town; presidential cavalcades roar right through. Even more prestigious are those privileges that, like Tyson’s instant passport, allow for more than mere comfort or luxury and actually put one above the law. It’s easy to slip out of jury duty with a crafty enough excuse, but one would assume that even the mighty have to go downtown to get a driver’s license. Well, maybe not. Katherine Graham used to send a Washington Post police reporter to renew her license. Hollywood mogul Robert Evans boasts that he’s still got enough clout to renew his by merely sending his chauffeur down to the DMV, without taking the driving or eye test. (Some cities are more perk-accommodating than others. No one in Beverly Hills has to stand in line at the DMV, which allows you to make an appointment for your test). Recently Representative Phil Crane and his daughters raised such a ruckus at Washington’s Zei nightclub that a bouncer told the Post, “If he wasn’t” a congressman, I’d have had them arrested.” When the voters go into one of their periodic fits about corruption in Washington, they might occasionally focus on the subtler byways of

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corruption found in hassle-free living rather than the big conflicts of interest. There’s nothing more distancing for a politician than to be divorced from the mundanities of the lives of his constituents. (Ron Brown didn’t pay his help’s Social Security, not because he couldn’t afford it, but because he couldn’t be bothered). And it’s instructive, perhaps, that the most egregious examples of hassle-avoidance are invariably found in the lives of those who don’t have to give a fig about public accountability. Some even buy out of the hassle of decision-making, what to eat at Café des Artistes? According to James B. Stewart’s Den of Thieves, Ivan Boesky used to order eight entrees on the menu, taste them all and then decide. Saudi Prince Bandar bin Sultan, that staunch democrat, was vacationing in Aspen recently and purchased one of every item in stock at the local Banana Republic. But even that effort of civic decision-making was too much of a strain. He wasn’t even in the store. He’d sent an assistant” (Konigsberg 2011). (7) Special, often exclusive participation in various cultural or sporting events. (8) The right to live in official, often luxurious apartments. (9) The ability to take advantage of special recreational centres and facilities. (10) An access to special, exclusive medical services of high standard. (11) The ability to a shorter occupational expenditure of own labour power, be it in the form of longer holidays, or earlier retirement. Items 8 to 11 express, in fact, a positively privileged capacity for reproduction and renewal of one's own labour power. (12) The ability to take advantage of various reliefs and reductions, e.g. in transportation and communication, such as lower internet or cell telephone charges. (13) Distinctive attire available to given social estates: police officers, firemen and customs officials” uniforms, professorial togas, gowns of clergymen. (14) The right to hold definite official titles which refer to professorships, police officers, military officers, lawyers or doctors.

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(15) The right to exercise power and control over the behaviour of other people. This applies, naturally, not only to the police, but also to, for example, the confessor who, within the mechanism of expiation is able to mete out punishments to the believers. (16) The right to command special esteem or respect, which pertains to military officers, court judges, teachers and the academia. It follows that social respect is here understood as necessarily manifested in concrete behaviours. (17) Diplomatic immunity which may take the form of an agreement between sovereign governments to exclude diplomats from local laws, immunity from prosecution (international law), exclusion of governments or their officials from prosecution under international law, judicial immunity, i.e. immunity of a judge or magistrate in the course of their official duties, parliamentary immunity or immunity granted to elected officials during their tenure and in the course of their duties, qualified immunity in the United States, immunity of individuals performing tasks as part of the government’s actions, sovereign immunity, the prevention of lawsuits or prosecution against rulers or governments without their given consent. (18) Copyright or intellectual property relations (scholars, columnists, etc). Particular social estates are characterised by peculiar configurations of the non-economic- property relations listed above. It could be argued, therefore, that the notion in question is theoretically grounded, which more often than not is missing in those conceptions that could be regarded as alternative to our estate approach inasmuch as they overlap with the latter in terms of their subjects. Thus, for instance, two Australian social scientists define their basic concept of political class as “The group of professional politicians” or “those who have gained election to national office in the federal Parliament, or election to one of the six state or two territory assemblies. While this definition covers a large number of people-just over 800, at the present time”-in practice their account focuses on the group of national representatives, who currently number 224” (Borcherd, Zeiss 2003:27). It can be only surmised that the noun “class” has been picked up by the authors as a springboard to its reputedly higher scientific status. Alas, this can only be attained by means of solid analytical work rather than simple

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labelling; and the truth is, the former is missing in their descriptive, empirical approach. Warner’s research allows one to outline not only the map of this particular community’s social structure, but also its history and interrelationships between the elements of that structure, inclusive of conflict. The following case refers precisely to economic and political class struggle which took place in a time when “this town had less than eight thousand inhabitant”, that is, less than a half than the number in Warner’s research time. “When personal property was assessed, several Yankee City merchants reported from one thousand to twelve hundred gallons of wine in their cellars. From colonial times onward antagonism existed between the wealthy cultured towns and the new farming communities, spread along the western frontiers as they moved to the prairie and then to the Far West. The people of Yankee City shared this feeling of hostility. True, merchants and financiers were economically interested in developing the back country. […] This, too, was a great land speculation. But men in the back country were often in debt to those in the cities. Much of their land was owned and controlled by landlords, some in Yankee City. The legislature of area^ T it’s clearly reflected the differences between the two as- Its members from the interior were radical and liberal; those from the sea communities, conservative and often reactionary. During the period following the Revolution, at the time of the Articles of Confederation and later during the deliberations which resulted in the new Constitution, men of the back country were for fiat money; those from the cities stood for 'sound money.” Local histories tell us that Yankee City, like the older cities of the seacoast, enjoyed a larger representation in the state legislative halls in proportion to its population than those in the interior. The dissension between the frontier and the sea towns was brought to a climax and open conflict in Shays” Rebellion. Yankee City sent an entire regiment under command of one of its prominent citizens to put down this insurrection” (Warner 1966:14-6) Warner concerned himself with other types of conflict as well. Tracing back the socio-economic background of the strike that broke out in the shoe industry of Yankee, he wrote: City “the industry in the decades after the Civil War occasioned changes in the social structure of the shoe factory. One of the most important results of the introduction of machinery into shoemaking was the enormous decrease in labor costs. The cost per one hundred pairs was reduced by the machine to well under one-tenth of the costs of 1850, and the average labor cost in 1932, we were told, had dropped to forty cents per pair. Another result was the great potential

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increase in production. For example, an expert hand-laser produced fifty pairs a day; a lasting machine, from three hundred to seven hundred a day. A welt machine is fifty-four times as fast as welt sewing by awl and needle. The introduction of machines into shoemaking converted it from a strictly hand trade to one of the most specialized of machine industries. The position of labor was greatly modified by the technical revolution. The product has changed only in detail, but the process of manufacture has changed from a single skilled trade, carried on by a craftsman from start to finish, to one of two to three thousand operations in greater part done by machine. The security of the workers as craftsmen was threatened by the new developments. The shoe workers did not make the machines they were suddenly forced to operate, and they had no way of predicting what jobs would next be mechanized. The owning group had in the machines an effective weapon to lessen the value of the worker’s craftsmanship. Out of this situation arose the Knights of St. Crispin, active from 1868-72, the most powerful labor organisation known up to that time and probably the most important one previous to the modern labor unions. The Knights were organised to protest against the substitution of many “green hands” for the old-time craftsmen, which was made possible by the new use of machines. It was a violent protest, but its life was short” (Warner 1966:177). It is striking that in entire account the tool kit of stratification is totally missing. Well, that absence should come as no surprise; what should be recommended instead is the theory of economic class, including notion of ownership of labour power. It is clear, for instance, that the changes in the labour force composition caused by mechanisation could most accurately be couched in terms of the replacement of diffuse by detail labour power which is the one described in the following account of “the tendency toward greater and greater division of labor which means that individual are broken into two or more components which are thereafter performed by different individuals. The other trend is toward increasing mechanization of the technological processes, which tends more and more to make the workman perform routine operations. These developments are interrelated and reinforce one another “(Warner 1966:286). In another place Warner comes very close to the concept of labour power when he argues that “This limited application of the term skill is confusing since any technology demand[s] skill in its performance if an operative has some freedom of choice in the manner in which he performs his task.

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Skill is an attribute of a person, but by convention the word is also applied to jobs. The use of the term as an attribute of a job may be confusing. Obviously, a job of itself cannot be skilled. The idea of skill involves its accomplishment; the accomplishment involves an individual. It is the individual who possesses the skill. Strictly speaking, a job cannot even be said to demand skill. The job can be done in some fashion, or at least begun, by an unskilful person. The only definite meaning the term can have in an expression such as “a skilled job” is that the job affords an opportunity for the exercise of skill in its performance. A job is skilled if the person who undertakes it can put his skill to use in its accomplishment” (1966:284). This is a remarkable passage, underscoring-as it does-Warner’s implicit emphasis on the socio-economic notion of labour power rather than on the technical division of labour. Furthermore, the American Social scientist refers implicitly to the theory of ownership of labour power when he proposes the following distinction which in terms of the said theory expresses a difference between operationally universalistic and particularistic labour power (which can be also articulated as the distinction between rule- and performance-oriented labour): “Within limitations, a skilful person chooses what to do, decides how to do it, and then does it dexterously. Selecting and deciding plus dexterity in accomplishment are characteristics of skill. We shall apply the term “high skill” to jobs permitting the exercise of judgment and the making of decisions as well as dexterity of accomplishment-A job is high skilled to the extent that it permits freedom of choice to the worker and necessitates, for its efficient performance, reasoned selection from different modes of action. Further, we shall designate as “low skilled” those jobs of a routine nature in which the worker functions according to a set pattern that is definitely prescribed but may be executed with dexterity. Those jobs which are to a large extent prescribed but which still permit some freedom of choice to the worker we will term “medium skilled” (Warner 1966:285). The above-mentioned notions could make a significant contribution to Warner’s under-theorised account of the industrial transformations accounting for Yankee City workers’ industrial action which is viewed by him, it will be seen, in near-Marxist terms (it only lacks the very term “class struggle) “there appears a new social personality, and an older one begins to take on a new form and assume a new place in the community. The capitalist is born and during the several periods which follow he

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develops into full maturity. Meanwhile the worker loses control and management of his time and skills and becomes subordinate in a hierarchy. There are, thus, distinct and opposing forces set up in the shoemaking system. What is good for one is not necessarily good for the other, but the interdependence of the two opposing groups is still very intimate, powerful, and highly necessary. The tools, the skills, and the places of manufacture belong to the worker; but the materials, the place of assembly, and the market are now possessed by the manager. Striking is possible but extremely difficult and unlikely. In the fourth period, full capitalism has been achieved; the ‘from’ manufacturer is now the owner of the tools, the machines, and the industrial plant; he controls the market. The workers have become sufficiently self-conscious and antagonistic to machines to organise into craft unions. Industrial wars are still might prove difficult to start, although it did occur, because in a small city where most people know each other the owner or manager more often than not knows “his help” and they know him. The close relation between the two often implies greater compatibility and understanding, which cut down the likelihood of conflict. But when strikes do occur the resulting civil strife is likely to be bitter because it is in the confines of the community. In the last period, the capitalist has become the supercapitalist; The workers have forgotten their pride in their separate jobs, dismissed the small differences among themselves, and united in one industrial union with tens and hundreds of thousands of workers throughout the country combining their strength to assert their interests against management. In such a social setting strikes are inevitable.” (Warner 1966:283). Recall that the process of unionisation described by Warner can be theorised as one of collectivisation of labour power, the scope of the former being dependent on the incidence of union membership, which as a bargaining unit may cover even the entire society, as is the case in certain European economies. Warner aptly describes the interplay between technological and social changes, showing that it is far from technological determinism: “Boston became the financial center toward which many of the great families of Salem, Yankee City, and elsewhere migrated. There they reinvested their wealth in the industry of Lowell and similar inland cities that were to supply the needs of the agrarian millions who were rapidly settling the prairie and southern states. Southern cotton increasingly filled the New

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England mills. Yankee manufactured goods, carried westward by Yankee traders, were sold to the pioneers of the great land empire in the West. Mean-while Yankee money was invested in land and other speculations that were part of the migration and settlement of the West. From these investments great fortunes were developed. It is often thought that this change from the mercantile and marine period to that of manufacturing and land trading meant that the old maritime families lost their controls and their place in the society and the economy, and that new people and new families succeeded them. While some great merchants and shipbuilders were ruined and some new families did rise to power and place, the change from sea to land was not accompanied by an entire change of personnel. Rather, many if not most of those who once had power re-invested their money, brains, and energy in their new enterprises and maintained their economic dominance and position” (1966:60). But in another context, referring to quite other socio-economic classes Warner shows in a masterly analysis what effects technological changes have on their labour power: “The attitude of the worker that he is socially integrated with his machine probably tends to change the character of his social relations with other workers during working hours. We further observed that operatives working on machines had far less opportunity to converse with their co-workers than operatives working alongside each other at benches or tables. Even though the spatial distance between operatives may be small, as in the case of the operatives of sewing machines in the stitching department, the exactitude of the demands of the machine precludes conversation while working. As soon as the bel rings for noon hour or at the end of the working day the stitching room reverberates with voices of machine operatives. The operatives of the larger machines in other parts of the factory are sufficiently apart from their co-workers to make conversation impossible. This is in marked contrast to the continual hum of conversation noticeable among all bench or table workers engaged in hand operations. The work of the latter may be in many cases simple and monotonous, but the freedom to converse may relieve much of the strain from the work and make it less exacting. Thus, the noise many machines make and the spatial isolation of workers that is a frequent result of mechanization both contribute to the social isolation of workers during working hours. The effect of this is to prevent social solidarities from developing between workers or to lessen whatever solidarity has formed prior to mechanization. Mechanization is, for this reason and others we shall mention shortly,

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valuable to management as a means of control over workers. While machine processes were adopted by shoe factories primarily to reduce costs and to speed the processing, the machine has other great advantages over the human worker from the managerial point of view: its performance (barring breakdowns) can be predicted with certainty, and a machine presents no problems of a disciplinary nature. The forces which govern human behavior are little known, and the maintenance of productive activity is always more or less problematical when management has to deal with socially integrated groups of workers. Control problems are simplified therefore, on two counts through mechanization: (1) machines are easier to control than human beings and (2) mechanization tends to disrupt the social solidarity of the workers, who thereby become easier to control than they would be if they were able to maintain close social relations during working hours”. In the past, one of more interesting debates within the Marxist camp was concerned with the question of neutrality or “innocence” of the forces of production. Warner’s account is a powerful voice in support of the treatment of productive forces, or more precisely means of production as class-relevant, which as a rule means class-tilted. After all, Warner expressly shows how the machine can serve as an instrument of the class struggle. He goes on to argue that “one of the specific points at which workermanagement relations are most directly affected by mechanization is in the relations between workers and their immediate superiors, the departmental foremen. With the establishment of the set pat-tern of working behavior which results from mechanization, the foreman does not need to be a working boss interested in improving the technical ability of the shoe worker. In the handicraft days journeymen or master shoemakers directed the activities of apprentices and corrected their errors, instructing them in the craft of shoemaking. The foreman of a mechanized department in today’s shoe factory need not have had long training in shoemaking techniques in order to supervise simple mechanized operations. He can be selected by management purely for his ability to enforce a prescribed, set pattern of working behavior. Sometimes men are even taken from other Industries to be foremen in the shoe factories. This new relation between workers and their supervisors accentuates the division of interest between the two groups. Workers today tend to feel, with considerable justification that even their immediate superiors may not understand or care about them. The social situation is quite different from the one that existed when the technological worker’s boss was a man who had always followed the

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same course as his subordinate until, after years of training, he had become a master shoemaker”. What Warner is depicting above, the process of reconfiguring the character of job of the foreman, and thereby his principal, and may be even sole property, e.g. labour power. Type 1 engages himself in directly material work, if the need be, and more broadly his job is predominantly technologically oriented. By contrast, type 2 focuses on the task of supervision and surveillance, which has far more common with the application of various sanctions than with technical help. Warner continues his industrial saga: “Moreover, in the handicraft days every man learning the shoe trade could look forward with justifiable hope to the day when he might be a working boss himself. With the advent of mechanization, however, the changed nature of the relations between worker and foreman has largely destroyed the worker's chances j of getting into the supervisory hierarchy. As a machine operator he has little chance to train himself in the techniques necessary to a modern foreman. Even if he were capable of doing a foreman’s job, he has no opportunity to demonstrate the fact. The modern operative is virtually condemned to seek his security and his working prestige strictly in the working techniques. The machine operator’s chances of enhancing his prestige or his security through his technological ability are very small in the modern shoe factory. Nearly all the machine jobs entail the set pattern of working behavior which characterizes the low-skilled job. Some individual operatives become surprisingly expert at their low-skilled jobs, spurred on to speed by the piece-work basis of pay. But greater proficiency in one mechanized, low-skilled job does not prepare the modern worker to do any other mechanized job. Even if it did, the fact would be of little value to the operative because the job for which he might prepare himself would be another of low skill, offering no greater security, pay, or prestige than before” (Warner 1966:298-9).

This lucid construal of what from the standpoint of the theory of ownership of labour power expounded in the present book is the determination of the impact of labour-power relations upon the inter-class relationships can be a product of only first-hand knowledge of a given industrial environment. The same obviously can be said about the researcher's even more detailed analysis of the various types and grades of labour power held, amongst other classes, by the class of producers of ideal means of work or performers of pre-material, conceptual labour, where the American

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sociologist and anthropologist points also to the risk of dispossession to which owners of detail and particularistic labour power are exposed: “In addition, there is the constant threat to the operative's security that the machine process at which he has attained proficiency may be discontinued in favor of some other process; he has no control over such technological changes. Again, even at best, nothing but a few days” or a few weeks” practice protects a proficient operator in one of the simpler machine jobs from the large group of unqualified workers who seek employment. All of these factors tend to increase the subordination of the individual worker to management; from the management viewpoint they are valuable means of social control over workers. Low-skilled jobs in the factory are not limited to machine jobs. Hand operations, too, through the great division of labor which has taken place in modern shoe manufacturing, have in many cases been split into simple, standardized operations. So far has this division gone that no technological jobs remain, either hand or machine, which by our classification could be rated as higher than medium-skilled; the great bulk of jobs belong definitely in the low-skill category” (Warner 1966:296). He counter poses the Levelling of Technological Jobs characteristic of machine-based processes of production to the hierarchical arrangement of jobs in the days of handicraft shoemaking. The individual's security and prestige increased as he progressed up-ward from job A to job D. The common level of nearly all technological jobs today, showing the breaking up of each old job into several simple ones (division of labor). Modern operatives are nearly all at the same low level of prestige and security because there is little difference in either of these respects between any of the jobs from one job to the next higher in the hierarchy. The lack of connecting the jobs to one another implies that working in one job does not prepare the modern operative to do any other job. […] What, then, has become of technological skill in shoemaking? With the constant demand for better shoes at lower prices there would seem to be need for greater creative effort and manufacturing flexibility than ever before. This would, in turn, suggest that there should be more high-skilled jobs in shoe manufacture than ever before. The answer is that these high-skilled jobs do exist—they may even be of a higher order of skill than master-craftsman jobs in the handicraft days-but they are not to be found in the shoe factories today. They exist in allied industries-the manufacture of shoe machinery, for example. Designers and engineers invent new and cheaper ways to make shoes and design machines to perform the new processes. Since the shoe-factory workers holding high-skilled jobs are a potential threat to management’s control of shoe operatives, inventors apparently are encouraged to break down complex jobs into series of simple, easily

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standardized operations. An important result of their work, therefore, is to eliminate more and more of the skilled jobs from shoemaking, tending to accelerate the levelling of technological jobs in the shoe factory to a common low order of skill. To a lesser extent, research departments in other industries (chemistry is a case in point) also reduce the number of high-skilled jobs in the shoe factories by developing new substances which simplify shoemaking. Designing departments and the skilled jobs in connection with them have been almost eliminated from modern shoe factories. Pattern makers, whose training is obtained outside the shoe factories, take the place of designers in the factory. This change in training opportunities offers a clue, of special significance to the social organisation of modern shoe factories. All high-skilled jobs require special training of the individuals who hold them: the designers of shoemanufacturing machinery, for example, are trained in engineering schools; research chemists have special university training; and pattern makers are trained in schools of design. The operative in the shoe factory, on the contrary, has no opportunity to acquire the training that would fit him to hold any one of these high-skilled jobs. Moreover, since the high-skilled jobs connected with the shoe industry are to be found in separate though allied industries, the technological worker in a shoe factory is barred from aspiring to one of them by the interpolation of two managerial hierarchies between his low- or medium-skilled job and the high-skilled job in another company. The management of the shoe-machinery companies directs the making of machines, and the top management of the shoe-manufacturing companies orders the installation of the mechanical process in the shoe factory. Even the workers in high-skilled jobs, the research men in industries allied to shoemaking, today occupy a position of much greater subordination than that formerly occupied by the master craftsmen in the shoe industry. For, although they have absorbed nearly all of the high technological skill involved in the production of shoes, they have no control over the use of the machines they assist in creating. The machines, new chemical substances, designs for shoes, and all the rest are useless to the inventors until they are sold (or rented) to concerns that manufacture shoes. This transfer from one company to another is carried on between the managerial hierarchies of the two companies; neither the holders of highskilled jobs in the allied industries nor the holders of low- and mediumskilled jobs in the shoe factories have any control over the agreements made between them.

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The gradual elimination of craftsmanship from shoe manufacturing has had far-reaching effects on the type of personnel attracted to technological jobs in the shoe factories, on the type of individuals whom management wants for such jobs, and on the relations between management and worker. The limitations that have been placed on working behavior restrict the worker from making any satisfying use of his individual mental or manual abilities. Workers ambitious for individual betterment are frequently frustrated in the shoe factories of today. This often makes them discontented and critical of superiors. Educated persons particularly are prone to such discontent. Management is aware of this and attempts to overcome the difficulty by discriminating against educated persons who seek technological jobs. Some foremen (who frequently do their own hiring and firing) are conscious of their own discrimination. One of them said: “We don’t want educated workers. Educated workers are no good.” Management wants workers who will do simple unskilled jobs without questioning the authority of superiors. Nevertheless, an effort is still made by management and workers to rank technological jobs in a status hierarchy. Management feels a need for such ranking in order to justify wage differentials in various technological jobs; and operatives cling to the ideology that theirs is a skilled craft. This traditional view of the latter is flattering to self-respect, giving the workers a sense of pseudo-security and prestige. It is an attitude they find hard to relinquish even though reason shows it to be obsolete. The workers’ view of shoemaking as a skilled craft does not entitle them to regard all factory jobs as skilled. Certain jobs only, the modern equivalents of formerly high-skilled jobs, still wear this aura of high prestige among workers, though often the skill differentials have actually diminished to the vanishing point. We found a positive correlation between some of the lowest-skilled jobs and the low pay and low prestige of the jobs. All the jobs in the assembling department and most of those in the packing department, for instance, consisted of the simplest sorts of object handling. Most of such jobs are on a time basis of pay. Hourly earnings for men in both departments (excluding the treers in the finishing department) were about 20 cents per hour below the factory average (for men) of 59.5 cents per hour. Jobs in some other departments, such as leather heeling and most of the finishing, were about average for the factory in complexity and skill and also approximated the factory average in pay. Some jobs, if not actually classifiable as medium-skilled jobs, at least required care on the part of the operative. On them may depend the ultimate fit and wearing qualities of the shoes. One such job was that of

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the channelers in the sole-leather department who cut the channels for the Goodyear stitching operation. The pay of the channelers averaged 39 cents an hour above the factory average for men. Goodyear stitching was another important job, since a poorly stitched shoe will neither fit well nor give good wear. Goodyear stitchers were the highest paid of all factory workers, earning nearly twice the average pay for men. Edge-setting and edge-trimming of soles in the finishing department were jobs which required careful work because the rotating knives and oscillating hot irons used in these operations on nearly finished shoes could easily mar or ruin them. Workers holding these jobs averaged a little over 67 cents an hour, about 8 cents above the factory average for men. These jobs were regarded by workers as the most skilled, and the better-than-average rates of pay reflected, in part, management’s evaluation of the importance of the jobs. It is a striking fact that some of the least skilled jobs in the factory, by our classification as well as by the consensus of workers and management, were paid well above the factory average. This was true of jobs in the soleleather department other than those of the channelers. Although these jobs were repetitive and monotonous, they afforded the workers an opportunity for tremendous speed-up. The sole-leather department, exclusive of channelers, averaged 9 cents per hour more than the factory average for men. Other examples occurred in the stitching department where some of the girls working at extremely simple jobs, such as stamping, earned more than any-one else in the department. Again these were jobs which were capable of great speed-up. Earnings of many of the stitchers, on the other hand, especially fancy stitchers, were low even for women operatives, who averaged in general 20 cents an hour below the average for men. The explanation given for the low pay of stitchers was that styles change so rapidly that the girls could not work up much speed at any one style. Another factor entered here: the speed of stitchers was limited by the tempo of their machines whereas the simpler, higher-paid jobs, like stamping, were often hand operations without mechanical limit on speedup. Then, too, the stitching operations were so varied that management admitted great difficulty in determining proper basis for piece-rates. As a result, there tended to be in this department an inverse relation between complexity of jobs and rates of pay. Some of the lowest-skilled jobs paid the most, and some of the most complex jobs paid the least. According to community and worker traditions, cutters are the aristocrats of the shoe trade. Actually, cutting is not a particularly skilled job in the factory today because skins are well sorted before they are delivered to the cutting room; therefore, the operatives no longer need the thorough knowledge of leather they once had. Nevertheless, cutting is definitely a higher-skilled job than

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most sole-leather operations and com-pares favorably with such highly paid jobs as channelling, Goodyear stitching, and edge-setting and trimming. Despite this fact, cutters averaged in earnings over a cent an hour below the male average. Bases of evaluation other than skill entered into the rate of pay for cutters. The two remaining jobs in a turn-shoe factory which still require some craftsmanship on the part of operatives are “making” and wood-heeling. Makers, particularly, must be proficient with a “greater variety of hand tools and techniques than any other workers” (Warner 1966:292-3). A more proper place for this excellent analysis is in a study on socioeconomic class rather than a book on stratification. For it is only in terms of economic ownership and class that one can frame it theoretically. For starters, Warner's analysis touches two different types of labour power in terms of compensation. Where piece-rate work is performed, wages earned should on average match productivity. Hence, (cf. Goldin 1990:114) this pay system, which sure enough is hardly the most progressive or cutting-edge one, but nevertheless still utilised, constitutes perhaps so clear case of an individual who is paid her marginal product as one can get. The type of labour power that underlies piece-rate work, where one is paid in proportion to what one produces could be thus defined as an achievement-based one; while under time-rate work wages are independent of output and depend on the characteristics of what could be therefore couched as an ascriptive labour power. What Warner shows is the process of deskilling and devaluation of labour power, an aspect underscored also in a much later book by Henry Braverman (1974). It is in the working class” resistance to that process, grounded in the contrast between two modes of production that Warner finds the source of the Yankee City Strike: “We believe that the break in the skill hierarchy contributed importantly to the outbreak of the strike, in particular, to the coming of the union. The crafts which once organised the relations of the industry provided a way of life for the shoe workers for whom it was really grade system. Youngsters served their hard apprenticeships. As neophytes, learned their task; even more importantly were taught to respect the skills they had learned and looked forward to learning. Above all, they acquired respect. This really great system provided a way of life

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for the shoe workers. It ensured an admiration for the older men above them who had acquired the skills and who occupied the proud positions of journeymen and master craftsmen. These youngsters aspired to achieve for themselves a similar high position and respect. Each young man, in direct face-to-face interaction with those above him, imitated and learned a way of life while being highly motivated by the strong desire to escape the irksome limitations of his present low position and to attain the higher place where he would have the satisfaction of making his own decisions and possess the prestige and pay consistent with such great eminence. By the time he had learned how to do the things needed to equip himself for advancement, enough time had passed to mature him sufficiently to act the part of a man. There can be little doubt that age factors as well as those of skill determined the time for advancement. During this preliminary period he learned that he was a craftsman, with a particular place in the whole system, and that there were responsibilities and obligations he had to learn which would give him certain rights and privileges. Thus, while he internalized this behavior and all its values and their many subtleties and learned what he was as a man, he became an inextricable member of the honorable fraternity of those who made, and who knew how to make shoes. In this system, workers and managers were indissolubly interwoven into a common enterprise, with a common set of values. In this system the internal personal structure of workers and managers was made up of very much the same apparatus, and their personalities were reinforced by the social system of shoemaking. In learning to respect the skill of the master craftsman, the apprentice learned to respect himself. He had security in his job, but he had even greater personal security because he had learned how to respect his job. And because he was a member of an age-graded make fraternity made up of other men like himself who had the knowledge and necessary skills to make shoes, he possessed that feeling of absolute freedom and independence and of being autonomous that comes from being in a discipline. He spent his life acquiring virtue, prestige, and respect, learning as he aged and climbed upward, and at the same time teaching those who were younger than he and who aspired to be like him. Slowly this way of life degenerated and the machine took the virtue and respect from the worker, at the same time breaking the skill hierarchy which dominated his occupation. There was no longer a period for young men to learn to respect those in the age grade above them and in so doing

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to become self-respecting workers. The “ladder to the stars” was gone and with it much of the structure of the “American Dream”. When the age-grade structure which organised the make aborigines of Melanesia and North America into a hierarchy of prestige and achievement was broken under the impact of white civilization in many of these societies, the frustrations suffered by those who had once known respect for themselves and others crystallized into aggressive movements or into attempts to abolish the new ways and to retreat into the old and cherished ways of the past. There are many resemblances between what happened to these simple, non-European societies and what happened to the craft hierarchy of Yankee City. The parallel between Yankee City’s age-grade structure and theirs cannot be pushed too far, but certainly the two share obvious characteristics. In the earlier days of the machine, the Knights of St. Crispin was organised and attempted to stop the further introduction of machinery. Most of the members longed for the good old days when there were no machines-hen a trained hand and eye did the whole job. These attempts failed and the organisation collapsed because it was not adaptive and could not stop the inevitable advance of industrial technology. When the whole age-grade structure of craftsmanship had almost entirely collapsed and the American shoe worker was thereby denied his share of the American Dream, he and his kind were ready for any mass movement which would strike at those they charged, in their own minds, with the responsibility for their present unhappy condition. Much of this behavior was not conscious. Much of it was feeling rather than thought, as it had been in the mass movements of the aboriginal Melanesians and North American Indians. It seems certain, however, that American workers, taught from childhood that those who apply themselves to their craft and practice the ethics of the middle class would be rewarded by achievement and success, would rebel and strike back out of sheer frustration when they found out that the American Dream no longer was attainable for them and that the hard facts belied the beautiful words they had been taught. It seems even more likely that the effects of the break in the skill hierarchy were potent forces which contributed their full share to the workers’ striking and the union’s becoming their champion (1966:299-300). The two above-mentioned modes of production are the capitalist one and guild-handicraft one. The latter had at best pre-capitalist character, since, as Warner repeatedly pointed out, its characteristic feature was the

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predetermined upward path of class mobility, e.g. an apprentice knew that the next step in his career is the position of a journeyman who in turn could count on becoming a master craftsman himself. The second feature of that mode of production mitigating the rate of exploitation was its embeddedness in the framework of common property. Putting it differently, this mode of production was based on particularistic relationships between the master and his subordinates. The apprentices and journeymen shared with their master the common fund of consumption, or, in more plain terms, a table, which is termed commensalism. The scope of Warner's historic-economic analysis of the stages in the development of the capitalist mode of production is even wider, as he discusses also the emergence of the corporate capitalist mode of production and its socio-economic effects, including those on the local community. “The vertical extension of managerial hierarchies resulting from the increase in size of individual enterprises. As a shoe manufacturing enterprise expands, either through combination with other manufacturing or distributing organisations or by self-segmentation, the business structure becomes more complex and new grades appear in the hierarchy of jobs. The division of labor in both supervisory and technological jobs is extended, and new administrative positions are created. In the lowest grades of the manufacturing hierarchy the division of labor is carried to such an extent, as we have observed in Yankee City shoe factories, that many of the technological jobs become simple enough to be performed with very little practice by almost anyone. The job of the factory manager is also simplified with the expansion of the enterprise. Whereas the manager of a small independent shoe factory performs two distinct jobs, the manager of a factory which is one of several production units in a larger enterprise has only one job. The former must concern himself not only with the internal organisation and operation of the plant, but also with the whole manifold of relations between the factory and the outside world: he must be in touch with producers of materials and equipment used by his factory, with buyers of shoes, and with investors and bankers who finance the company. The manager of the local production unit of a larger enterprise, on the other hand, need concern himself only with production; the broader administrative duties are performed by a higher executive, or group of executives, at the main office of the company. These higher executive jobs which are created when the enterprise expands are, nevertheless, concerned with broader problems than any

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faced by the manager of a small independent shoe factory. The larger concern must buy materials in greater quantities, frequently in greater variety, and from a larger number of different sources. It has more shoes to sell, perhaps of several grades, each of which must be sold to a different segment of the public. Its problems of financing are larger, requiring wider contacts with sources of financial aid. The higher executive of the large enterprise, therefore, must relate the enterprise to a much larger segment of the total society than does the manager of a small independent shoe factory. For this reason he must have very great freedom of action in performing his job. The combination of shoe factories into larger enterprises, the creation of new superordinate jobs, the increasing freedom of action required by jobs in the higher levels of the hierarchy, and the increase in social distance between operatives and the higher executives” (Warner 1966:303-4). Again Warner refers in the above-cited account to the theory of ownership of labour power; his distinction between the manager of a small shoe factory and the executive of a production unit in the whole chain of command caused either by his former plant being taken over by some larger company or by the former’s organic growth should be viewed in terms of him holding what has been termed here combined labour power, whereas the top executive of a large corporation who does not need this kind of labour power owns its diffuse and at the same time operationally universalistic variety. Warner outlines a truly comprehensive picture of the then system of business organisation and industrial relations pointing to a different kind of change accompanying the emergence of industrial absentee ownership and control: “Along with the vertical extension of the shoe factories has gone another type of extension outside the factory community, which we are calling the horizontal extension. It consists of the organisation of grades in the manufacturing hierarchy across factory and community lines into huge associations, the scope of some of which is industry-wide. Such associations are organized primarily to protect the interests of one grade in the manufacturing hierarchy against the encroachments of other grades. The rapid development in recent years of associations of owners and managers, on the one hand, and of workers, on the other, has gone on concomitantly with the growth of extreme vertical extensions in the shoe business. Manufacturers” associations have been formed without public resistance, but labor unions have been resisted both by management and by some sectors of the general public. This dual development reflects the

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increasing seriousness of the conflict of interests between the different grades which has accompanied the increasing social distance between them. As far as communities like Yankee City are concerned, these associations further decrease the community control over the shoe factories because the head owners of the groups controlling the Yankee City units are outside the community and independent of it. These horizontal associations, like the vertical extension of managerial hierarchies, represent integrations of the shoe industry into the larger society, automatically decreasing their integration with the local community. Horizontal organisations consist of associations formed to protect the working statuses of their individual members. The latter are bound together by reason of their mutuality of interests within the broad industrial hierarchy. Recognition of this mutuality of interests creates a solidarity which, when organised, results in a greater bargaining power for the members of any of these associations within a given factory or a whole industry. Implicit in the logic of such organisations is recognition of the fact that the interrelations in an industry are not comprised solely of the vertical relations of subordination and super ordination” (1966; 316). The whole preceding analysis permits to account for ““the greatest labor demonstration in the history of Yankee City [that] has been witnessed during the present week with the outpouring of workers from every shoe factory in rebellion against starvation wages and in many factories against unsatisfactory conditions. It was evident that the workers had the public with them and they kept a united front so as to be able to demand a just and living wage as a reward for their labor. The vertical extension of the corporate structure of the shoe manufacturing enterprises had pushed the top of the hierarchy into the great metropolis and, in so doing, had brought in outsiders who were “foreigners” “in culture and lacking in understanding, feeling, and prestige for the local workers and for the town itself. This extension of the industrial hierarchy reduced the local men to inferior positions where they were incapable of making decisions and could not initiate actions which would give them the power of leadership for the workers and for the rest of the town. Reducing the local managers to inferior statuses in the factory contributed to their lower social-class ranking in the community and thereby greatly reduced their strength as leaders and men who could form community opinion in times of crisis when the position of management was threatened. They could no longer lead the workers or the community. Because of the inferior position of the managers, those men in the community who would

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have once been their natural allies and who enjoyed top social-class position were now above them and shared none °f their interests, were hostile to them and friendly to the workers. The vertical extension of business introduced owners into the community who had only economic memberships, whereas in the previous period of local control an owner had power and leadership in all of the important institutions. The longing for the idealized past when men had self-respect and security was symbolized in the three dead owners; and these symbols materially aided the workers in defeating management, since the workers and management felt that the present men could not match the “gods” of the past. The workers and man-agers in the shoe industry had lost their sense of worth and mutual loyalty. No longer were they men who had a common way of life in which each did what he had to do and, in so doing, worked for himself and for the well-being of all” (Warner 1966:350). The ardent adversaries of the theory of class Pakulski and Walters, whose views are discussed in a later chapter, counter pose sex to class, which approach can be compared with Warner's exemplary position: “There is no significant difference in the sex ratio of any area except Hill Street, which contains a significantly high proportion of women. Inasmuch as there is in this area a heavy concentration of the upper-upper class, in which women are more numerous than men, part of the disparity can be accounted for on the class basis” (1966:61). Also to contemporaneous to the researcher times refer his comments concerning housing, notable for the use of the term 'stratum” alongside “class”: “what Classes Get What Houses? The house types are disproportionately divided between the several areas, so they are unevenly distributed among the six classes. Large proportions of the upper-upper and lower-upper houses and almost none of the lower-middle, upperlower, and lower-lower are big and in good condition. On the other hand, large sections of the lower-lower and upper-lower houses but none of the upper-upper are small and bad. Statistical measurement gives further support to these conclusions. It shows that houses which are in good or medium repair are of high significance in the three highest classes and of low significance in the three lowest levels. It demonstrates that the intermediate types of houses are favoured by the two middle classes and by no other stratum; that whereas the upper-middle class is significantly high and the lower-middle significantly low for large and good houses, the reverse is true at the other end of the scale of preferred houses, for the upper-middle class is

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significantly low and the lower-middle significantly high for the small and medium houses. Bad housing, whether the place be large, medium, or small, is a characteristic of the lower-lower class but of no other, for the lower-lower group and no other class is significantly high for all three of those types. Moreover, the lower class does live in significantly low numbers in all types of houses which are ln good repair. In brief, as one descends in the class order the type of house becomes smaller and less preferable, and as one ascends the house tends to become larger and better. The upper classes get the better homes; and the lower classes, the poor ones. […]The median value of all real estate increases as the rank of the class increases. For example, 87 per cent of the lower-lower owners held real estate below $3,000; 76 per cent of the upper-lower; 63 per cent of the lower-middle; 38 per cent of the upper-middle; 22 per cent of the lower-upper; and 18 per cent of the upper-upper. More than one half of the three lowest classes of owners fell in this lowest category of ownership. The lower-lower class is last for the proportionate amount of real estate owned at all levels except the lowest where it is first. The upper-upper class leads for the $20,000 classification followed by the lower-upper and upper-middle classes. The lower-upper class ranks first followed by the upper-upper and uppermiddle for the $10,000 and $5,000 categories. The upper-middle class is first and the upper-upper and lower-upper next in the $3,000 to $5,000 bracket. Class and property ownership show definite relationship; nevertheless there are property owners of the highest brackets belonging to the lowest classes, and property owners of the lowest brackets belonging to the highest classes. An exception to this rule is the lower-upper houses [which] have a higher median value than the upper-upper houses. The median value of houses owned and lived in by the upper-upper class was $3,750; the lower-upper, $4,121; the upper-middle, $2,706; the lowermiddle, $1,800; the upper-lower, $1,530; and the lower-lower, $1,202.” (Warner 1966:29, 92). This is but one building block of Warner’s comprehensive picture of social life in the Yankee City community. Warner strives to go beyond a purely empiricist description by putting it in some analytical framework. That framework is the above-mentioned hierarchy of six ranks which he calls classes, sometimes strata. Above we said that he was not interested in establishing the conditioning of his units of social stratification by socioeconomic classes. Well, it is true, but Warner seeks to find out what, if any, correlation there is between social classes as conceived by him and certain socio-economic categories which, not being the economic classes

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in the true meaning of the word, have nevertheless some of their characteristics. The first sentence of the passage quoted below is somewhat misleading, as we shall see: “There is a high correlation between type of occupation and class. If a person is a professional man or a proprietor he tends to be upper or middle class; if he is an unskilled worker he tends to be lower class. However, not all Professional men are upper class and not all workers are lower class. Although clerks tend to be lower-middle class, some of them are upper class and others are lower class. Professional and proprietary occupations and clerks are found throughout the six classes, and that there is a sharp drop in the first classification from the upper-middle to the lower-middle class and from the latter class to the upper-lower stratum. There is also a break in the percentage of clerks from the upper-lower to the lower-lower. There are no skilled or semiskilled workers higher than the upper-middle group. The day laborer, although ranging from lower-lower to lowermiddle, tends to be lower class. Most of the lower-lower class is composed of unskilled or nonskilled workers and the percentage of semiskilled workers steadily drops away through lower-middle to upper-middle and disappears in the two upper classes. On the other hand, most of the upper-upper, lower-upper, and upper-middle occupations are professional and proprietary workers. This occupational group rapidly loses ground to the other categories in the lower-middle and lower-class strata. […]From the viewpoint of occupation, upper-upper-class people cluster overwhelmingly in professional and proprietary positions, over 83 per cent being thus employed. They are most like the lower-upper class in this respect and least like the lowerlower, less than 1 per cent of whom are gainfully occupied in these occupations. Upper-upper people are listed in 0nly one other occupational classification: that of clerks and kindred workers (16.67 per cent). Hence they are the least differentiated occupationally, although the lower-upper class follows them in this. The upper-upper class has no gainfully occupied people who are classified as skilled, semiskilled, or unskilled workers, as against 85 per cent of the lower-lower class so designated. No wholesale or retail dealers are members of the top-most class. The lowerupper class likewise lacks any who are listed as “workers.” The members of the upper-upper class are but slightly represented in the principal industries of the town-shoe and silverware manufacturing-with only 5 per cent in the former and none in the latter, whereas 40 per cent of the lowerlower class are employed in the shoe industry alone. The topmost class has the highest percentage of employable individuals who have never worked,

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being most like the lower-upper in this respect and least like the lowermiddle. When the unemployment census was taken, the community was suffering from the 1930-35 business depression. But the upper class was most favorably placed, since 90 per cent of its employable had jobs, while only 27.57 per cent of the lower-lower were fully employed. No members of either of the two upper classes were on relief, although some of them were penniless. All other classes had a greater or lesser number on relief, topped by the lower-lower among whom one out of three had his name on the relief rolls. The upper-upper families are inferior only to the lower-upper. Class and occupation are closely interrelated, but it is a mistake to classify all professional people at the top of the heap and all workers at the bottom; far too many factors contribute to a person’s social status for such arbitrary ranking to be exact and accurate” (Warner 1966:243). It is all very well for Warner to reject arbitrariness but, as they say, acts speak louder than words his expressions such as “proprietary workers” are arbitrary par excellence. One cannot put in one bag owners of the means of economic activity and owners of sole labour power. But this merely shows that Warner does not command of adequate analytical tools to distinguish occupation from class and to determine the meaning of the latter concept. Anyhow, as is not precluded by logic, from incorrect premises he derives quite sound conclusions in the sense that he sets out to depict the social life of the Yankee City in a very detailed fashion. Seeking to establish what factors account for one’s place in a particular stratum, he takes account of not only standard measures of stratification such as income or wealth but also one’s patterns of expenses, house type, dwelling area, membership in clubs and voluntary associations, manners, patterns of speech, political behaviour, relation to law, family lineage and others. Warner takes great pains to ensure that his picture of social stratification in the Yankee City community does not look arbitrary. He seeks to replicate the way of not only thinking but also of behaviour of the members of that community. This, we must admit, is our own interpretation of his study, going beyond Warner’s own programmatic statements. These refers to the process of collective valuation or assessment, and it is in a sense true that Warner represents a subjective approach to stratification where the pivotal determining factor is human consciousness. This judgment, however, does not take account of the existence of two levels of consciousness: the top or rather superficial, skin-deep level which can be classified as epiphenomenal. It is this kind of consciousness that is more often than not

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grasped in standard sociological surveys, including those conducted as studies of social stratification, in particular based on prestige. For carrying on such surveys no knowledge of a given society or community is required, all what is needed is that an investigator, if it is a proper word in that contest, hand down a number of questionnaires and then collect filled in forms. Compare this procedure with a painstaking study such as one undertaken by Warner. He aims to reach the second one, deeper layer of human motivation concerned with how people act and not with what they say. Warner’s desire to reach the true springs of human conduct is manifested in, inter alia, the following formulation: 'such ranking was frequently unconsciously done and for this reason was often more reliable than a conscious estimate of a man’s status […] our material consisted of [both] observations of the acts of our informants and their verbalizations about their own and other people’s behavior” (1966:165). Indeed, with all the faults of his analytical approach, for both methodological and above all substantive reasons his community research should be ranked as the peak of studies of social stratification. At the same time, rather unexpectedly an analysis of Warner’s outstanding study brings us in a natural way to the topic of class. Warner, willy nilly or deliberately spoke the language of class; it is noteworthy that in economic sociology he would choose such terms as workers, capitalists and the like rather than his upper-middle, lower-lower etc. strata. Such mix of the stratification and class approaches can be indeed found also in other thinkers, including those living in the ancient past. As noted, Warner’s classification of effectively social strata, mistakenly termed classes has been quite influential. While in Warner the aspect we focus on below was probably less important thanks to certain other merits of his approach that, at least in the context of the foregoing exposition, could be played down, which does not hold in the case of some Warnerian followers. In one of such studies the question has arisen: “How Many Classes?” (Davis et al. 1989:65). Note that the argument presented below has some broader relevance. The study in question clearly shows that describing the structure of prestige classes in a community is inevitably problematic. The thing is, the researcher wants to know how many classes there are and where boundaries between them are located but soon discovers that there is little consensus on these matters. One reason, according to a study of a small Southern town by three Warner colleagues, titled “Deep South”, is that the class structure looks different from the

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perspectives of people at different “class” levels (Davis, Gardner, and Gardner 1941). Based on patterns of association and lifestyles, the researchers found six classes among the town’s white population, similar to the Yankee City classes. A comparison between the upper-upper class box and the lower-lower class box reveals large gaps in perceptions. The lower-lowers lump the people in the top three classes into one big class ('society or folks with money”). Similarly, the upper-uppers collapse the two bottom classes into one (“Po1 whites”). People in both classes make more class distinctions at their own level. The labels they use for one another are quite different. For example, the lower-lowers describe the people at the top with phrases suggesting wealth and social pretence, while the upper uppers describe themselves and nearby classes in terms emphasizing inherited position, social prestige, and respectability. Thus from the study concerned some important conclusions about perceptions of social stratification in this Southern town and elsewhere can be drawn. It needs to be noted that the following points on what could be called “the Rashomon effect” (after the film of great Akira Kurosawa in which the unavoidable relativism of perceptions pertaining to different individuals was highlighted) tend to underestimate the differences of perception within classes while illuminating the differences between classes. 1. Number of classes. People at all class levels perceive class differences, but there is disagreement about the number of classes in the community. No class recognizes a structure of six classes, corresponding to the Warnerian classes. Instead, they see four or five. 2. Perception and distance. People make more distinctions among those close to themselves in the hierarchy than among those who are far away. That tendency emerged sharply in the mutual perceptions of the upperuppers and lower-lowers described in Deep South. Coincidence of cleavages. Despite class differences in the number of classes perceived at various levels in the hierarchy, the distinctions actually made by people from different classes coincide. For example, the line that the lower lowers drew between 'society” and the “way-high-ups but not society” was the same as the upper-uppers” distinction between “nice respectable people” and “good people but nobody.” That is, when the researchers asked people about specific families, they found that the

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lower-lowers and upper-uppers placed them in the same one of these two groups. Basis of class distinctions, to keep to the usage adopted by the authors, although the contention that under this terminology social strata hide has been repeatedly made in this book People often agree about where individuals or families belong in the class hierarchy, but not about why they are there. In other words, they form different bases for class distinctions, reflecting certain self-perceived merits of one’s status For example, people at the top understand class position in terms of time; they distinguish between “old” families and “new” families. People in the middle make moral evaluations of how things 'should be.” People in the lower class view the system as a hierarchy of wealth. Thus, the study suggest that people make the finest distinctions regarding those whom they know best and tend to merge others into broader categories. Whether this should lead to such conclusions as those reproduced below, is hardly acceptable: “researchers can take this into consideration and, if they wish, can subdivide a group according to the views of those in and immediately adjacent to it. The task is like that of accommodating for perspective when making a map from aerial photographs” (Gilbert 2011). Whatever metaphors one would like to use to refer to the Rashomon effect, the point is that they represent merely window-dressing for what is actually an arbitrary, subjectivist methodology, which further chapter corroborate as well orientation, race and other issues have changed, and one cannot preclude that.

CHAPTER VI SOCIAL CLASS IN THE PRE-MARXIAN THOUGHT

Let us highlight a few landmarks in this field of social thought. Solon: 638 BC–558 BC), an Athenian statesman is credited with having laid the foundations for Athenian democracy. Solon broadened the financial and social qualifications required for election to public office. The Solonian constitution divided citizens into four political classes defined according to assessable property. That classification might previously have served the state for military or taxation purposes only. The standard unit for this assessment was one medimnos (approximately 12 gallons) of cereals and yet the kind of classification set out below might be considered too simplistic to be historically accurate: Pentacosiomedimni valued at 500 medimnoi of cereals annually. Eligible to serve as Strategoi (Generals) Hippeis valued at 300 medimnoi production annually. Approximating to the mediaeval class of knights, they had enough wealth to equip themselves for the Cavalry Zeugitai valued at a 200 medimnoi production annually. Approximating to the mediaeval class of Yeoman, they had enough wealth to equip themselves for the infantry (Hoplite) Thetes valued 199 medimnoi annually or less manual workers or sharecroppers, they served voluntarily in the role of batman, or as auxiliaries armed for instance with the sling or as rowers in the Navy. According to Aristotle, only the Pentacosiomedimnoi were eligible for election to high office as archons and therefore only they gained admission into the Areopagus. A modern view affords the same privilege to the hippeis. The top three classes were eligible for a variety of lesser posts and only the Thetes were excluded from all public office. Depending on how the historical facts known to us are interpreted, Solon’s constitutional reforms were either a radical anticipation of democratic government, or they merely provided a plutocratic flavour to a stubbornly aristocratic regime, or else the truth lies somewhere between these two extremes.

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Be that as it may, Solon’s taxonomy should be regarded as a mix of what is probably the earliest theory of stratification with a class perspective rather than one of classes pure and simple. Plato, on the other hand, divided the ideal state into three classes: The class of rulers-leaders, that is, administrators of the Republic-should be philosophers, possessors of knowledge, who would be deprived of any private property. Subsequently the class of guardians is defined, who would be responsible for military security, and finally the class of creators, that is, all those involved in “economic life” (Plato1961). In this elitist-egalitarian utopia rulers and soldiers must not hold private property, they should only be subject to the common property so as to avoid conflicts over ownership, and focus only on the state. Slaves and craftsmen must work to maintain the ruling classes. As an ironic commentary, it could be noted that in the real world the class deprived of not necessarily all the property, but first and foremost its elementary form in the shape of their own labour power that was owned by others. Aristotle (384–322 BCE in his Politics (350 BCE: Bk1 Pt 5, Bk 1 Pt 12, Bk1 Pt 13).)), among other topics, justifies slavery: from the hour of their birth, some are marked out for subjection, others for rule. … [T]he lower sort are by nature slaves, and it is better for them as for all inferiors that they should be under the rule of a master. For he who can be, and therefore is, another's and he who participates in rational principle enough to apprehend, but not to have, such a principle, is a slave by nature.

Whereas the lower animals cannot even apprehend a principle; they obey their instincts. And indeed the use made of slaves and of tame animals is not very different; for both with their bodies minister to the needs of life … It is clear, then, that some men are by nature free, and others slaves, and that for these latter slavery is both expedient and right”. If Aristotle’s thought rings strangely in modern ears, it should be first and foremost borne in mind that this philosophical casuistry reflected, in a more sophisticated form, the then common view. Thus, first perspectives on social differentiation were either practical or normative in nature. This practical dimension was also evident in the first scholarly theory of class structure developed by the physiocrats. François

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Quesnay (1694–1774) was the court physician to King Louis XV of France. He believed that trade and industry were not sources of wealth, and instead in his book, “Tableau économique” (1758, Economic Table) argued that agricultural surpluses, by flowing through the economy in the form of rent, wages and purchases were the real economic movers. Firstly, said Quesnay, regulation impedes the flow of income throughout all social classes and therefore economic development. Secondly, taxes on the productive classes, such as farmers, should be reduced in favour of rises for unproductive classes, such as landowners, since their luxurious way of life distorts the income flow. Jacques Turgot (1727–1781) was born in Paris and from an old Norman family. His best known work, Réflexions sur la formation et la distribution des richesses (1766, Reflections on the Formation and Distribution of Wealth) developed Quesnay’s theory that land is the only source of wealth. Turgot viewed society in terms of three classes: the productive agricultural class, the salaried artisan class (classe stipendice) and the landowning class (classe disponible). He argued that only the net product of land should be taxed and advocated the complete freedom of commerce and industry. This privileged position of agriculture was rejected by the classical school of political economy which, in at least that sense was not overtly ideological. Within its framework each social class is defined in relation to the particular form of income that is earned by it. Adam Smith and the other proponents of the classical school thus define three classes: the capitalists (owners of the means of production), who gain profit as income; the workers who receive wages as income; and the landowners, who acquire rent as income (from the renting of their fields to the capitalist farmers). But there is even more to this than that. Adam Smith singled out the class of creators of inventions and improvements or, as we would say, producers of the ideal means of production or performers of conceptual (prematerial) work. In addition, this is in a language that the uninitiated reader, unaware of the identity of the author of the statements in question, would probably have taken for Marxian, regarding the class struggle. An important contribution to class analysis was made by John Stuart Mill. Considering the classical scheme of the three social classes, he pointed out that “this class configuration concerned a form of (developed capitalist)

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society that did not actually exist in every country (or did not manifest itself in every sector of the economy) But although these three sometimes exist as separate classes, dividing the produce among them, they do not necessarily or always so exist. The fact is so much otherwise, that there are only one or two communities in which the complete separation of these classes is the general rule. England and Scotland, with parts of Belgium and Holland, are almost the only countries in the world, where the land, capital, and labour employed in agriculture, are generally the property of separate owners. The ordinary case is, that the same person owns either two of these requisites, or all three (Mill 1902, 145: Book 2, Chap. 3). This thesis led Mill to consider the economic but also, to some extent, the social elements that accounted for the preservation of pre-capitalist or noncapitalist forms such as slavery (Book 2, Chapter 5), independent peasant husbandry (Book 2, Chapter 6 & 7), metayer-agriculture (Book 2, Chapter 8), and the cottier tenure (Book 2, Chapter 9)”(Milios 2000:287). The paramount form of those precapitalist relations that has survived all historical storms largely intact is obviously land ownership, still forming the backbone of the country’s uppermost wealth stratum. The Cavendish family (No. 1 in the UK), which first began to acquire vast tracts of land following the dissolution of the monasteries in the 16th century, and consolidated its wealth and position through marriage within the aristocracy, owns 65,000 acres of land in Britain and another 8,000 in the Republic of Ireland. Their residences include Chatsworth in Derbyshire, which attracts more than half a million paying visitors each year, as well as a number of other estates and several grand houses in central London. The question springs to mind why should this one family, and others like them, own so much land when so many young people cannot afford to buy even a one-bedroomed flat. The immense properties of British aristocrats are all the more striking in a period of prohibitively expensive property prices, when so many first-time buyers are shut out from the housing market altogether; when the would-be home buyers are continually being told that there is a shortage of new houses in the country and of land for building; when asylum-seekers and economic migrants are made to feel unwelcome in our overcrowded towns. The facts are indisputable: the United Kingdom is 60 million acres in size, of which 41 million are designated “agricultural” land, 15 million are “waste” (forests, rivers, mountains and so on) and owned mainly by the Ministry of Defence and the Forestry Commission, and four million are “urban plot”, the land on

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which most of the 60 million people of these islands live. In sum, 69 per cent of the acreage of Britain is owned by 0.6 per cent of the population. Or, more to the point, 158,000 families own 41 million acres of land while 24 million families live on four million acres. In point of fact, Spain (where 70 per cent of the land is owned by 0.2 per cent of the population) is the only other European country in which so much land is concentrated in the hands of so few, if one excludes minicountries such as Luxembourg, Liechtenstein and Monaco. Most tellingly, even in Brazil, where the white elite have ruled with impunity for so long, land is more evenly distributed throughout the general population than it is in Britain. “There is a myth in this country,” says Kevin Cahill, author of the seminal Who Owns Britain (Canongate, 2001), that land is scarce. It is not scarce. There is 41 million acres out there, about one-third of it so uneconomic that it has to be subsidised, hidden behind nothing but a myth. The problem is that there is simply not enough land coming on to the market for housing, which puts fierce pressure on the little land that is available, and thus dramatically inflates its price”. The fact is, “The hereditary landowners have been adept at protecting their interests- making plentiful land look scarce, and being paid from the public purse to keep it that way. The Land Act 1925 requires all land transactions in England and Wales to be registered. Registration is necessary only once a sale has been made; as such, many of the large estates, where ownership passes on through generations of the same family, have not been registered; to date, roughly 35 per cent of land in England and Wales remains unregistered. [...]to add piquancy to the matter, a key reason why “landowners are so resistant to [...] registering just how much land they own, is that they receive huge subsidies, funded by British taxpayers through the European Union, simply for owning designated agricultural land that is frequently unproductive. Subsidy allows landowners to retain very expensive assets, while ensuring that not enough land reaches the market” (Cowley 2004). At the same time, the rest of the citizenry- ordinary homeowners- are squeezed into ever smaller units of land and charged a punitive council tax. “In short, Cahill says, “money is being taken out of your pocket to enhance the assets of the rich, who, in their role of landowners, pay no tax.[...] many of the world's developing nations are dominated

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economically by ethnic elites which comprise a small percentage of the overall population: the Chinese in Indonesia and the Philippines, the Jews in Russia, white settlers in Zimbabwe [...], the Lebanese in West Africa, white people of European origin in Brazil, Venezuela, Ecuador and Peru, the Igbos in Nigeria” (Cowley 2004). It is, inter alia, the aforementioned pattern which suggests that free markets concentrate wealth in the hands of the market-dominant minority. It is arguable that the British aristocracy constitutes such a marketdominant minority: “centuries of inbreeding, to keep the bloodlines “pure”, have created a tribe, a racially distinct sub-group of people who resemble one another, who have the same absurdly affected accents, who go to the same few schools, who protect each other’s interests and who continue to exert their control over the land through the armed forces, the Conservative Party and the media, notably the Daily Telegraph, the country’s bestselling broadsheet newspaper. [...] Landowners of Britain have had it comfortable for far too long, benefiting through quirks of birth from the great land thefts of British history- the Norman Conquest, Henry VIII’s seizure of monastic land, Oliver Cromwell’s capture of church and Crown land and the enclosures of common land from the end of the 17th century up to the mid-19th century. Not only have they excluded ramblers from their vast estates, they have charged the rest of the population for entering their lavish and ostentatious stately homes” (Cowley 2004). As it will be seen, the three-class classification mentioned above, just as some other Smith and Ricardo's achievements influenced what is arguably the most famous theory of class. Before turning to the latter, a few paragraphs need to be devoted to another thinker who influenced Marx, though not necessarily in the area under consideration. Anyway, G. W. F. Hegel postulated that along with the increasing division of labor there also develops class differentiation, reflecting the types of labor or activity taken up by members of each class, which Hegel classifies into the agricultural, acquisitive, and administerial classes. To put it another way, labour undergoes a division as a result of the complexities of the system of production, which is reflected in social class divisions: the agricultural (substantial or immediate) the business (reflecting or formal); and the civil servants (universal).

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The “substantial” agricultural class is based upon family relationships whose capital is in the products of nature, such as the land, and tends to be patriarchal, unreflective, and oriented toward dependence rather than free activity. In contrast to this focus on “immediacy,” the business class is oriented toward work and reflection, e.g., in transforming raw materials for use and exchange, which is a form of mediation of humans to one another. The main activities of the business class are craftsmanship, manufacture, and trade. The third class is the class of civil servants, which Hegel calls the “universal class” because it has the universal interests of society as its concern. Members of this class are relieved from having to labor to support themselves and maintain their livelihood either from private resources such as inheritance or are paid a salary by the state as members of the bureaucracy. These individuals tend to be highly educated and must qualify for appointment to government positions on the basis of merit. This exposition, drawn on ”Philosophie des Rechts” makes it clear that Hegel’s conception does not meet at least one condition imposed on class theories-it does not restrict itself to the economy. At the same time, as we shall see, this does not preclude making use of “estate” as a non-economic entity. But there is even more to Hegel’s framework than this. The executive is comprised of the civil servants proper and the higher advisory officials organized into committees. Civil servants and the members of the executive make up the largest section of the middle class, the class with a highly developed intelligence and consciousness of right. Moreover, “The sovereign working on the middle class at the top, and Corporation-rights working on it at the bottom, are the estates (Stände), which are the classes of society given political recognition in the legislature. The three classes of civil society, the agricultural, the business, and the universal class of civil servants, are each given political voice in the Estates Assembly in accordance with their distinctiveness in the lower spheres of civil life. The legislature is divided into two houses, an upper and lower. The upper house comprises the agricultural estate (including the peasant farmers and landed aristocracy), a class “whose ethical life is natural, whose basis is family life, and, so far as its livelihood is concerned, the possession of land. Its particular members attain their position by birth, just as the monarch does, and, in common with him, they possess a will which rests on itself alone” (305). Landed gentry inherit

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their estates and so owe their position to birth (primogeniture) and thus are free from the exigencies and uncertainties of the life of business and state interference. The relative independence of this class makes it particularly suited for public office as well as a mediating element between the crown and civil society. The second section of the estates, the business class, comprises the “fluctuating and changeable element in civil society” which can enter politics only through its deputies or representatives (unlike the agricultural estate from which members can present themselves to the Estates Assembly in person). Hegel’s thought reflected the specific historical conjecture of Prussia, where feudal classes intermingled with new, bourgeois interests. His system was also an idealisation of the Prussian state, which alone would be sufficient to preclude his adoption by Marx.

CHAPTER VII MARX’S NOTION OF CLASS

Regarding arguably the most influential class theorist of all time, we may refer to our earlier remarks and focus first of all on a widely held view according to which In Marx the class structure was conceived of as consisting of two polar classes. This view most likely stems from an interpretation of Marx and Engels” probably most influential work, i.e. “The Communist Manifesto”. We have in mind the following passage of the work: The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles. Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guild-master and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended, either in a revolutionary reconstitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes. In the earlier epochs of history, we find almost everywhere a complicated arrangement of society into various orders, a manifold gradation of social rank. In ancient Rome we have patricians, knights, plebeians, slaves; in the Middle Ages, feudal lords, vassals, guild-masters, journeymen, apprentices, serfs; in almost all of these classes, again, subordinate gradations. The modern bourgeois society that has sprouted from the ruins of feudal society has not done away with class antagonisms. It has but established new classes, new conditions of oppression, and new forms of struggle in place of the old ones. Our epoch, the epoch of the bourgeoisie, possesses, however, this distinct feature: it has simplified class antagonisms. Society as a whole is more and more splitting up into two great hostile camps, into two great classes directly facing each other-bourgeoisie and proletariat. (Marx and Engels 1948:473-474) From the serfs of the Middle Ages sprang the chartered

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burghers of the earliest towns. From these burgesses the first elements of the bourgeoisie were developed. The discovery of America, the rounding of the Cape, opened up fresh ground for the rising bourgeoisie. The East-Indian and Chinese markets, the colonisation of America, trade with the colonies, the increase in the means of exchange and in commodities generally, gave to commerce, to navigation, to industry, an impulse never before known, and thereby, to the revolutionary element in the tottering feudal society, a rapid development. The feudal system of industry, in which industrial production was monopolized by closed guilds, now no longer suffices for the growing wants of the new markets. The manufacturing system took its place. The guild-masters were pushed aside by the manufacturing middle class; division of labor between the different corporate guilds vanished in the face of division of labor in each single workshop. Meantime, the markets kept ever growing, the demand ever rising. Even manufacturers no longer sufficed. Thereupon, steam and machinery revolutionized industrial production. The place of manufacture was taken by the giant, MODERN INDUSTRY; the place of the industrial middle class by industrial millionaires, the leaders of the whole industrial armies, the modern bourgeois. While it should be emphasised that even the above famous sentences involve a more complex view of the societal class structure than is commonly thought, let us, for the sake of simplification, accept that this commonly held view referred to above contains a grain of truth. Such an interpretation, however, abstracts from the primarily political and ideological, as distinct from scientific, nature of the document under consideration. Even leaving this circumstance aside, though, the abovementioned view is difficult to sustain in the face of what can be found in other works of both co-authors of “manifesto”. For example, Engels postulated, as a general proposition, that “large-scale agriculture presupposes or creates a class antagonism-slave-owners and slaves, feudal lords and serfs, capitalists and wage-workers-while small-scale agriculture does not necessarily involve class differences between the individuals engaged in agricultural production, and that on the contrary the mere existence of such differences indicates the incipient dissolution of smallholding economy” (1977: ch. I, Part II). In the case of Marx, instructive are in that regard primarily his historical writings in “18th

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Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte” he writes, for example, about “aristocracy of finance, the industrial bourgeoisie, the middle class, and the petty bourgeoisie”. Thus, according to this statement the bourgeois class should be further subdivided. Let us keep in mind this idea, since it will be taken advantage of in our own scheme of the class structure. Nevertheless, there is no denying that Marx did not leave any systematic definition of class. It is perhaps due to too big workload that the scholar of such calibre has left so much of his business unfinished. Unfortunately, this applies, too, to the theory of class. The relevant, nomen omen last chapter of “Capital” (its third volume) is, as is well-known, similar to Schubert's famous symphony. Still, Marx’s claims give rich material for thought. Consider this: The owners merely of labour-power, owners of capital, and land-owners, whose respective sources of income are wages, profit and ground-rent, in other words, wage-labourers, capitalists and land-owners, constitute then three big classes of modern society based upon the capitalist mode of production. In England, modern society is indisputably most highly and classically developed in economic structure. Nevertheless, even here the stratification of classes does not appear in its pure form. Middle and intermediate strata even here obliterate lines of demarcation everywhere (although incomparably less in rural districts than in the cities). However, this is immaterial for our analysis. We have seen that the continual tendency and law of development of the capitalist mode of production is more and more to divorce the means of production from labour, and more and more to concentrate the scattered means of production into large groups, thereby transforming labour into wage-labour and the means of production into capital. And to this tendency, on the other hand, corresponds the independent separation of landed property from capital and labour, or the transformation of all landed property into the form of landed property corresponding to the capitalist mode of production. The first question to be answered is this: What constitutes a class? -and the reply to this follows naturally from the reply to another question, namely: What makes wage-labourers, capitalists and landlords constitute the three great social classes? At first glance-the identity of revenues and sources of revenue. There are three great social groups whose members, the individuals forming them,

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live on wages, profit and ground-rent respectively, on the realisation of their labour-power, their capital, and their landed property. However, from this standpoint, physicians and officials, e.g., would also constitute two classes, for they belong to two distinct social groups, the members of each of these groups receiving their revenue from one and the same source. The same would also be true of the infinite fragmentation of interest and rank into which the division of social labour splits labourers as well as capitalists and landlords-the latter, e.g., into owners of vineyards, farm owners, owners of forests, mine owners and owners of fisheries. (Here the manuscript breaks off). Let us, however, put ourselves in Marx’s shoes and attempt to answer the question which he put to himself. In our view, there can be any doubt that the classes distinguished by the author of “capital” are based on economically understood property relations. As will be discussed shortly, the author of “Economy and Society” looked at what he called economic classes in very similar way, again contrary to common wisdom, which, as a rule, counter poses Weber to Marx. This claim holds up, we hasten to add, in spite of an array of reservations towards Weberian approach, which are listed in the chapter in question. But let us verify our interpretation on one of Marx’s most prominent followers, who, as opposed to his master, left the precise definition of class. We are speaking, naturally, about Vladimir Lenin according to whom: “Classes are large groups of people which differ from each other by the place they occupy in a historically determined system of social production, by their relation (in most cases fixed and formulated in law) to the means of production, by their role in the social organisation of labour and, consequently, by the dimensions and method of acquiring the share of social wealth of which they dispose. Classes are groups of people one of which can appropriate the labour of another owing to the different places they occupy in a definite system of social economy” (1965: 49).

Again, much like as in the case of “The Communist Manifesto”, the concrete shape of Lenin's definition was impacted by the fact that it was formulated in the midst of Russian revolution, and thus the grater body of the text containing it was bound to possess political rather than academic nature. Nevertheless, it contains many valuable ingredients. First and foremost, there can be no denying that for Lenin social classes are grounded in the relations of ownership (which, of course, hide behind

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otherwise rather ambiguous term: “the relation to the means of production”), ones not only clearly distinguished from their legal expression, but also including, which is most important, the ownership of the labour power. This clearly follows both from other, historical and socio-economic works by Lenin, but also from the context of the definition under discussion. Namely, Lenin stresses that for the total abolition of classes to happen, it does not suffice to abolish merely private property in the means of production, as he writes: “It is clear that, in order to achieve the total abolition of classes, not only must the power of the landlord and the capitalist be broken, and their rights of property taken from them, but that EVERY private interest in the means of wealth production must be destroyed. The contrast between hand and brain worker (i.e. the owners of different types of the labour power- note: J. T). must also be ended”. How important is to acknowledge a class-determining character of ownership of not only the means of economic activity but also labour power is shown by the following, rather odd from the perspective of socioeconomic structuralism, statement of E. O. Wright who writes: “Giddens (1973) emphasizes Weber’s argument that “market capacity” is defined not simply by the possession of capital or labor power, but also by the possession of market-relevant skills (see also Parkin, 1971: 18-23). Giddens defines market capacity as “all forms of relevant attributes which individuals may bring to the bargaining encounter (in the market; p. 103). “He then discusses the specific capacities which shape classes in capitalist society (…) When market capacity is extended explicitly to include skills, then the market definitions of class may closely coincide with definitions based on occupational categories, since skill level is one of the basic ways in which occupations are differentiated within the technical division of labor” (1979). Both theorists singularly fail to see that economic ownership is not opposed to market skills, market-relevant skills etc. since skills constitute one of the basic dimensions of labour power which on its part is a key object of economic property. Lenin’s definition has more merits, however. The fact, for example, that he uses the term 'social economy” is, of course, fully consistent with the approach of such classics of the sociology of the economy as Maximilian Weber, which in turn, let us insert our more modest observation, has been also adopted in the present work. Even more valuable is Lenin’s focus on “the system of social production” as it suggests that classes exist also

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outside the sphere of production itself, although not outside the bounds of the economy. We do not, however, dwell on what seems more controversial in Lenin definition, do not wonder whether class exploitation has been conceived of by the author as a necessary or merely secondary and contingent element of the concept of class. This is the case, because, whatever Lenin’s eventual position was, we reject any attempt at the reduction the notion of the class structure to antagonistic classes. As has been emphasised, each class structure, including that of capitalism, includes classes whose status cannot be couched in these bipolar terms. And yet, it is this simplistic reading of Lenin’s definition that is by many identified with the position of the whole current to which Lenin subscribed. To take but one example, E. O. Wright, recognised by many as an authority in the field of class, reckons that “The hallmark of Marxist discussions of class is the emphasis on the concept of exploitation” (1979:14), or, in a different wording, in “an approach to class analysis within the Marxist tradition [...] the central idea is defining the concept of class in terms of processes of exploitation” (Wright 2005:6), which idea, in a slightly modified shape, is also reiterated in another context: “the ingredient that most sharply distinguishes the Marxist conceptualization of class from other traditions is the concept of “exploitation”“ (Wright 2005:5). That said, the reader’s attention may be drawn to the fact that the implication of Lenin definition, including his remark about social classes as “large groups” is taken up below. That is to say, the question of two levels of the conceptualisation of class is addressed. Now, though, following our earlier observation regarding what we consider fruitful components of the definition being discussed, we may define classes as groups of people which differ from each other by the place they occupy in a historically determined system of economic activity (i.e. production, exchange, transport, finance and services). To put it differently, socio-economic classes are differentiated according to their place in the structure of economic property relations. A comment is probably in order-the concept of means of economic activity is broader than the phrase “means of production”, commonly employed in not only Marxist definitions of class. The latter could be, in our view, regarded as “lame” concept, to borrow Leon Petrazycki’s term, or such one which is unduly narrow in relation to its real, empirical referent, Frederic Engels tackled the same issue in his “Anti-Dühring”,

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criticising the view that “exchange or circulation is only a department of production, which comprises all the operations required for the products to reach the ultimate consumer, the consumer proper” 1977, Ch. I, Part II (),by rebuking it on the basis that “by confounding the two essentially different, though also mutually dependent, processes of production and circulation, and unblushingly asserting that the avoidance of this confusion can only ““give rise to confusion”, Herr Dühring merely shows that he either does not know or does not understand the colossal development which precisely circulation has undergone during the last fifty years, as indeed is further borne out by the rest of his book.

CHAPTER VIII MARX AND ENGELS ON THE MIDDLE CLASS

From what have been said on Marx’s general notion of social class, it follows that one should not expect anything like extensive elaboration in the specific case of one specific class whose name has come to constitute a household word. And indeed, there is not any systematic exposition of the concept of the middle class and its theoretical foundation. What we have got instead is a collection of scattered pronouncements on a wide variety of topics, which, most often kind of tangentially only broach the subject of current interest. It inevitably follows that the comments to be reviewed below will have not only fairly varied theoretical status, but also an uneven analytical value in particular instances. Let us begin this review with the well-known Engels” work on “the condition of the Working Class in England”. In the introduction to this work Engels states as follows: “the British Empire, in which at least threefourths of the population belong to the working-class, while the lower middleclass consists only of small shop-keepers, and very few handicraftsmen. Strictly speaking, both examples of explicitly named middle class are couched primarily in occupational terms, which, to be sure, could be turned into class categories, but this would require (absent here) a theoretical background. So, “the lower middle class” appears to be a descriptive term of only tentative theoretical status that in all likelihood would get deconstructed upon closer scrutiny and/or reflection. Nevertheless, this second stage is not forthcoming and the above term appears also in another interesting context that may appear prescient, but this would ignore vastly different circumstances underlying effects similar in some respects to the trends observed today; Engels thus predicts that if “England retained the monopoly of manufactures[...] the commercial crises would continue, and grow more violent, more terrible, with the extension of industry and the multiplication of the proletariat. The proletariat would increase in geometrical proportion, in consequence of the progressive ruin of the lower middle-class and the giant strides with which capital is concentrating itself in the hands of the few” (..).

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Of course, industrial and manufacturing in particular might of Britain is not on the cards at present, although some property transformations indicated may find their counterparts in the present-day U K. A similar remark can be found in “The Communist Manifesto”: “The lower strata of the middle class the small tradespeople, shopkeepers, and retired tradesmen generally, the handicraftsmen and peasants- all these sink gradually into the proletariat” (..). The usage is somewhat troublesome, as the term of stratum has been used here with reference to many contemporary Marxists term class fractions, which does not alter the fact that the authors utilised what is essentially a stratification term, and secondly, that they adopted a more general concept of middle class. It is our contention that this could be regarded as -not the only, after allconcession of Marx and Engels to the idiom of the day; Marx and Engels, who were, after all, not only scholars and researchers, but also activists and leaders of a mass movement, might well have, and actually had, different priorities than those most important to today's academics for whom the lack of a fully-fledged class theory in Marxian writings is a pivotal issue. From a substantive point of view, the most illuminative regarding the aforementioned formulations appears Marx’s claim from “the Critique of the Gotha Programme”, where he counter poses the revolutionary and progressive classes of the bourgeoisie and the proletariat to “the feudal lords and the lower middle class, who desire to maintain all social positions that are the creation of obsolete modes of production” (Marx: 1938), and are in this sense historically reactionary. Engels, too, speaks of the alliance of the capitalist and the working class: “the manufacturing capitalists, from the Chartist opposition, not to Free Trade, but to the transformation of Free Trade into the one vital national question, had learnt, and were learning more and more, that the middle-class can never obtain full social and political power over the nation except by the help of the working-class. Thus a gradual change came over the relations between both classes” (1885). In another historical comparison with feudalism, the phrase “the middleclass society” is, by contrast, being used as a synonym of a bourgeois society: “The centralized state power [...] originates from the days of absolute monarchy, serving nascent middle class society as a mighty weapon in its struggle against feudalism” (Marx 2004). Likewise, in his Inaugural Address of the International Working Men's Association Marx clearly takes the concept of middle class to mean the

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bourgeoisie: “the middle class had predicted, and to their heart's content proved, that any legal restriction of the hours of labor must sound the death knell of British industry, which, vampire like, could but live by sucking blood, and children’s blood, too” (2000). In a similar vein, Marx makes use of the concept under consideration in one of his topical political articles: “The Whigs as well as the Tories, form a fraction of the large landed property of Great Britain. Nay, the oldest, richest and most arrogant portion of English landed property is the very nucleus of the Whig party. What, then, distinguishes them from the Tories? The Whigs are the aristocratic representatives of the bourgeoisie, of the industrial and commercial middle class. Under the condition that the Bourgeoisie should abandon to them, to an oligarchy of aristocratic families, the monopoly of government and the exclusive possession of office, they make to the middle class, and assist it in conquering, all those concessions [...] The Whigs have been these advocates of the British Middle Class, and their governmental monopoly must break down as soon as the landed monopoly of the Tories is broken down. In the same measure as the Middle Class has developed its independent strength, they have shrunk down from a party to a coterie” (1852). In another of Marxian political writings, the concept concerned is treated along the same lines: “under the pretext of raising the working class from its condition of so-called social inferiority, it will be necessary to start by denouncing a whole class of citizens, the class of bosses, entrepreneurs, masters and bourgeois; it will be necessary to rouse workers’ democracy to despise and to hate these unworthy members of the middle class” (Marx 2000). If anything, by dubbing the middle class the ruling class, Engels makes the aforementioned point even more bluntly when he speaks as the author of “Condition of the Working Class” about his intentions “to save the English people from the growing contempt which on the Continent has been the necessary consequence of the brutally selfish policy and general behaviour of your ruling middle-class” (1968). Finally, an analogical treatment shows up in Wilhelm Liebknecht’s report which was to be read by Marx during a session of the Internationale (which ultimately had not taken place because Marx thought his merits figured too prominently in the body of the text); otherwise, though, from

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the correspondence of the both working-class leaders it is clear that Marx approved of the general thrust of the text in question: “the New Rhenish Gazette acquired a great influence, especially amongst the workmen of Rhenish Prussia and Westphalia, where industry is more developed than in any other part of Germany and where consequently the interests of the working and middle class are more opposed to one another. However, immediate practical results could not be achieved, because through the cowardice of the middle classes reaction speedily gained the day. The popular movement was stifled in blood throughout Germany, the New Rhenish Gazette violently suppressed, the leaders of the working classes driven into exile [...] the workmen believed what they were told every day by hundreds of middle-class speakers, by hundreds of middle-class papers. There had been rather a time of prosperity, wages had risen in many branches of industry-in fact there was no special ground for social discontent. Mr. Schulze became a “great man.” Faithful to his mission-at first he acted conscientiously and did not see that he was merely the instrument of the middle class; but since he has taken a “present” of 50,000 Rh,[Reichstaler] from his patrons, he cannot live in this “blessed ignorance” any morefaithful to his mission he preached his gospel of the goose club amongst the workmen and proved to them that their interests were the same as those of the middle class, that the antagonism of Capital and Labour was an English and French invention, and that in every question they had to follow the lead of their capital-possessing brethren” (Liebknecht 1865). But it is not with Marx, but with Engels that in this writer’s opinion we could find the definition that best captures the spirit of what could a historic-materialist theory of class look like if it existed; as he implicitly refers to the middle class as the petty bourgeoisie: “The Proudhonian theory, whose foundations were demolished by Marx’s book, disappeared from the scene after the fall of the Paris Commune. But it is still the great arsenal from which the middle-class radicals and pseudo-socialists of Western Europe procure the phrases with which they lull the workers to sleep. And as the workers of these countries have inherited similar Proudhonist phrases from their predecessors the phraseology of the radicals still strikes a responsive chord among many of them. That is the case in France where the only Proudhonists still in existence are the middle-class radicals or republicans who call themselves Socialists” (1975).

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Marx in one of his comments touching on the topic of middle class is close to Engels’s position, but in fact his notion is far more slippery and absent the benefit of the doubt, one would be inclined to qualify as a “leaping” concept this praise of: “writers in England, whose graphic and eloquent pages have issued to the world more political and social truths than have been uttered by all the professional politicians, publicists and moralists put together, have described every section of the middle class from the “highly genteel” annuitant and fund holder who looks upon all sorts of business as vulgar, to the little shopkeeper and lawyer’s clerk. And how have Dickens and Thackeray, Miss Brontë and Mrs. Gaskell painted them? As full of presumption, affectation, petty tyranny and ignorance; and the civilised world have confirmed their verdict with the damning epigram that it has fixed to this class that “they are servile to those above, and tyrannical to those beneath them’ (1976).

CHAPTER IX A RENT-BASED APPROACH TO ECONOMIC OWNERSHIP

The concept of property or ownership requires clarification. First and fforemost, economic ownership must be distinguished from juristic ownership, which is important, given that this legal treatment of property in fact predominates in the social sciences, influencing concepts of both subject (e.g. the notion of legal person) and object of ownership. An extensive discussion of this distinction is presented in (Tittenbrun 2011a; 2011b). Anyway, thus conceived distinction between legal and economic ownership has nothing in common with the conception, quite popular in certain circles, according to which: Legal ownership is simple enough. It constitutes the various forms of legal title to property in the means of production. The usual form of such ownership in advanced capitalism is stock ownership … economic ownership is the most complex … Bettelheim (1975) defines it as “the power to assign the objects on which it bears (especially the means of production) to specific uses and to dispose of the products obtained through these means of production” (p. 58). Less abstractly, this means control over the flow of resources into production (i.e., investment and accumulation). (Wright 1979, 33)

The above-mentioned notion of legal ownership as something distinct from economic ownership is both common sense and superficial; to own a legal title to a portion of equity capital may or may not express economic ownership of capital or, to be more specific, real, as opposed to nominal, economic ownership of capital. There are a number of specific criteria by which to determine whichever is the case. Firstly, a given shareholding expresses real economic ownership of share capital if it could be transformed into ownership of a factory or other production unit. Secondly, if it yields income permitting its recipient to live without working. In the case of employee shareholders, they are to be classified as owners of capital rather than labour power when (1) their shareholdings

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are worth more than their labour power, and (2) their packages of stock are for them a more important source of the means of subsistence than their wages. Thus, as is easy to see, our view as to what is simple and what is complex is somewhat different from that of Wright. At the root of this difference lies, of course, Wright’s distorted notion of economic ownership. Not only does he considers, after many other Marxist, disposal as an essential ingredient of the latter, but, accordingly, has a confused, if any, view of the relation between the concepts of property and gratuitous benefit, as shown in particular by the following passage, in which the theorist concerned considers the way material resources are distributed within egalitarian families: "children with greater needs receive more resources, and everyone is expected to contribute as best they can to the tasks needed by the family. This is also the way books are distributed in public libraries: you check out what you need, not what you can afford” (Wright 2005:6). The point is that he frames his entire discussion in terms of distribution relations that are conceived of as independent of property relations, which receive no mention in the entire fragment of the text referred to above. The pernicious consequences of Wright’s self- imposed dispossession of what is regarded here as the correct notion of economic property resurface with a vengeance in his tying “radical egalitarianism” attributed by him to “Marxist class analysis” to “the ideal of a “classless” society” (2005:5). It may be taken as a symbol of the overall under-theorisation in the above sense that Wright apparently is not able to handle such classic Marxist concepts as classless society, marking his distance to it by placing it in quotation marks. Now, from the perspective of property theory espoused here, the hallmark of communism as an socio-economic formation more advanced than socialism is what may be defined as the overwhelming primacy of ownership over work, which formulation may be compared with that of Wright, who reckons that it is “power relations that block the actual achievement of egalitarianism” (2005:7). In other words, what constitutes the central attribute of economic ownership, i.e. its independence of one’s work in this type of society comes to be massively heightened to the level of universal abundance of goods. So, the so-called distribution according to needs Wright is talking about is a corollary of communist ownership and it should not be confounded with another principle of distribution, i.e. according to work, which principle is contrariwise, confusingly blended with the former with Wright.

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At the same time, Wright’s approach to ownership should-from our perspective-be described as not simply outright mistaken, but-as mentioned above-inconsistent. Thus, it may well be that later on the theorist changed his mind as far as an understanding of property is concerned, but in such cases this kind of change is commonly explicitly noted. Meanwhile, Wright in his later work deploys what is in fact a notion different than that used in the texts referred to above, but without any comment or commentary, which makes one wonder whether he does see the incongruence of the two notions at all. Anyhow, Wright states that “This obligation to work part of the week on the lord’s land means, in effect, that the lord has property rights in the serf which take the form of the right to use the labor of the serf a certain proportion of the time. This ownership is less absolute than that of the slave owner thus the expression “joint ownership” of the serf by the lord and serf” (2005:10). Whilst at first blush it appears that a different, genuinely economic notion of ownership is at play, this does not mean it is flawless. On the contrary, the conceptual apparatus used in this analysis of the feudal mode of production is rather crude; at any rate not fine-grained enough to render accurately the nature of relations involved Obviously, the concept of property rights in a person is in economic terms pointless, and in the determination of classes it is precisely that economic point of view that is relevant. Actually, the object of ownership in that instance is labour power; viewed from the angle of the agent of material labour, the serf is in part dispossessed of his labour power. It is entirely incomprehensible why the theorist concerned, knowing-as it is revealed below-what the correct approach to the matter is, chooses to stick to the aforementioned at best half-baked, and at worst profoundly misleading treatment Anyway, the fact of the matter is that just a few sentences later, Wright states that “the pivot of this tying to the land is the rights the lord has in the labor of the peasant (or at least the fruits of labor when this takes the form of rents), the content of the class relation really centers on rights and powers over the ownership of labor power” (2005a:11). This, to be sure, still leaves a range of issues unanswered. For instance, the proposition that the peasants “are free to work the rest of the week on land to which they have some kind of customary title” (Wright 2005:10) is again under-specified in respect to the substance of his ownership in the land on which he works; the crux of the matter is not any customary or legal title, but the ability to benefit from the land and own labour. Besides, even the extract on feudalism echoes with reverberations of the concept of property as disposal-when Wright stresses that the ownership of the feudal lord consists in “the right to use the labor of the serf”. Again, the latter is

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merely a precondition of the typical feudal ownership relation, which however does not boil down to the fact that the serf works, or even that he has to work on the lord’s field as the realisation of the relation in question takes place no sooner and only if the landlord appropriates the product of the serf’s surplus labour. Our critical assessment seems to be vindicated by Wright himself, as he cannot maintain a consistent socio-economic stance and obscures the matter by bringing into play the-mistranslated at that-term of allegedly Weberian provenance: “the market system was subordinated to the status order, and it was the status order which most fundamentally determined the advantages and disadvantages of lords and serfs” (2005b:188) First and foremost, the economy and the market are not the same, and secondly, in this explanation property relations are left out. Likewise, in another context Wright lays out what could be a par excellence economic treatment of the capitalist ownership of the means of production, but instead ends up confusing the matter still further: “Consider, for example, the machines in a capitalist factory. In conventional language, these are “owned” by the capitalists who own the business but this does not mean that the capitalists have absolute, complete rights and powers over the use of those machines. They can only set them in motion, for example, if the machines satisfy certain safety and pollution regulations imposed by the state. If the factory exists in a highly unionized social setting, the capitalist may only be able to hire union members to use the machine. In effect, both state regulations of the machines and union restrictions in the labor market mean that some dimensions of the property rights in the machines have been transferred from the capitalist to a collective agency. This means that absolute capitalist property rights in the means of production have been at least partially ‘socialised'“(Wright 2005:12).

This quite extensive passage should, it seems, convince the reader that Wright's conception of property is not a genuinely socio-economic one; his notion of ownership stems in actual fact from one put forward by property rights theory, which has many flaws to it. Thus, it turns out that the praise for an introduction of the notion of ownership of labour power was definitely premature; in the above passage Wright does not make any use of it (as well as of related concept of ownership of jobs), notwithstanding the relevance of both those notions to his analysis of the problem at hand. An opinion could be ventured that from Wright’s perspective any such pronouncements as those mentioned above, concerning the supposed socialisation of the means of production

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probably cannot be adequately substantiated. By contrast, in terms of our own ownership framework, the relation indicated by Wright is implemented through taxation; taxes amount to an ownership share in an underlying resource, and the state acts-in a non-pathological case-as a proxy of society at large, as evidenced by the destination of tax expenditures. That Wright actually does not command of any theory of labour power is evidenced by his proposal to lump together in a single category, couched as a modern-day “proletariat” industrial workers and routine employees (1997), the rationale of such a conceptualisation lying in the fact that both are made up basic salaried workers who possess neither advanced qualifications nor significant hierarchical powers. The former engage in manufacturing and transport tasks; the latter are clerks or sales workers, as well as workers employed in the provision of a variety of personal services. For one, the aforementioned employee classes do function within different modes of economic activity, for which reason everyone used to conventional Marxist definition of class, deploying the concept of the mode of production should be given much food for thought. But this is no more than a first approximation. As has been emphasised, any class can be defined in terms of economic ownership, including ownership of labour power. From the latter viewpoint, as follows, inter alia, from our earlier discussion, there are substantial differences in the type of labour power held by industrial workers and either commercial or service employees, which two latter classes also differ between each other in that regard, the differences in question being conditioned by the nature of working conditions in the particular modes of economic activity in which a given labour power is being put in motion. There are various strong objections to Wright’s well-known proposal in this regard that these two categories should be lumped together in a broad “proletariat”. Dwelling on Wright’s formulation, we, of course, do not overlook that this particular notion is shared by many other sources, such as the famous encyclopaedia cited below: “the working class[...] traditionally consisted of manual workers in the extractive and manufacturing industries. Given the vast expansion of the service sector in the world’s most advanced economies, it has been necessary to broaden this definition to include in the working class those persons who hold lowpaying, low-skilled, nonunionized jobs in such service industries as food service and retail sales. There are considerable differences within the working class, however (Encyclopedia Britannica 2012). The logic of that argument is faulty-from the expansion of services, etc. in modern

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conditions it does not follow that those employed in given sectors need to be included in the category of working class. All the more so that at the end of the definition its author acknowledges the existence of deep differences between what has been prematurely lumped together. Wright's problematic notion of ownership underlies his misplaced fights against various conceptual straw men, as in the following example: “For the managerial revolution proponents to prove their case, therefore, it is not enough to show that stock is widely dispersed. They must show that real economic ownership is in the hands of none-owning, professional managers, i.e., that they actually control the accumulation process as a whole” (Wright 1979, 35). Freiherr von Munchhausen, famous for his book of incredible adventures, told the readers how he pulled himself out of a swamp by tugging on his own hair. Wright’s manner of escaping a self-created conceptual trap bears strong resemblance to Munchhausen’s trick: Class structures may … differ not simply in terms of the relative magnitudes of contradictory locations, but also in the ambiguous locations that exist at the boundaries of the basic class locations. The existence of such ambiguous locations indicates the theoretical limits of a purely structural analysis of classes. Classes are not simply slots within a social structure; they are also organised social forces. The decisive question, then, is how these ambiguous class locations (as well as contradictory locations) become formed into classes; this, in turn, depends on class struggle, not just class structure. (Wright 1979, 49)

This escape hatch is rather awkward, to say the least. The whole point of any class theory worthy of its name is to provide a complete map of a given socio-economic dimension of social life and we hope that our own theory matches such expectations. In addition, it must be pointed out that the benefits inherent in the ownership of the factors of economic activity always are, to a lesser or larger extent, gratuitous. It is precisely for that reason that, referring to the economic notion of rent as an unearned income, our whole approach to property may be called: “the rent theory”. In both accounting for its origin and nature as well as its ubiquity the approach outlined here substantially differs from a popular view, according to which some individuals receive an income that is higher than the competitive market would predict, as this hinges upon heroic assumptions posited by neoclassical economic theory. This income is often referred to as a “rent” because “a component of the payment obtained from using the [individual’s] asset is obtained

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independently of the effort and past actions of the person who has the right to that income (Sørensen, 1996:1338). It is in these terms that Marx proceeds in Capital (Vol. I, ch. 7), using a number of examples from modern capitalism, though it has to be stressed that the basic nature of economic ownership is universal, i.e. present in other economic formations of society as well. This is, incidentally, emphasised by Marx in, amongst others, the following statement: "The soil (and this, economically speaking, includes water) in the virgin state in which it supplies man with necessaries or the means of subsistence ready to hand, exists independently of him, and is the universal subject of human labour. All those things which labour merely separates from immediate connexion with their environment, are subjects of labour spontaneously provided by Nature. Such are fish which we catch and take from their element, water, timber which we fell in the virgin forest, and ores which we extract from their veins" (Marx 1976).

It is true that this extraction of ores, coal, crude oil and other mineral deposits always requires some expenditure of human labour power. But can even the greatest effort of a worker equate with millions of years required for the natural processes to produce these forms of wealth? If the crucial aspect of economic property is apparent in the case of even transhistorically understood work, the more this is the case in the most developed system of production and labour, including exploitation of nature itself, as Marx points out: … "That the productive forces resulting from co-operation and division of labour cost capital nothing. They are natural forces of social labour. So also physical forces, like steam, water, etc., when appropriated to productive processes, cost nothing. But just as a man requires lungs to breathe with, so he requires something that is work of man’s hand, in order to consume physical forces productively. A water-wheel is necessary to exploit the force of water, and a steam-engine to exploit the elasticity of steam. Once discovered, the law of the deviation of the magnetic needle in the field of an electric current, or the law of the magnetisation of iron, around which an electric current circulates, cost never a penny. But the exploitation of these laws for the purposes of telegraphy, etc., necessitates a costly and extensive apparatus. The tool, as we have seen, is not exterminated by the machine. From being a dwarf implement of the human organism, it expands and multiplies into the implement of a mechanism created by man. Capital now sets the labourer to work, not with a manual tool, but with a machine which itself handles the tools. Although, therefore, it is clear at the first glance that, by incorporating both stupendous physical forces, and the natural sciences, with the process of

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production, modern industry raises the productiveness of labour to an extraordinary degree, it is by no means equally clear, that this increased productive force is not, on the other hand, purchased by an increased expenditure of labour" (Marx 1976).

As if proceeding on the basis of the definition given above, Marx illuminates this ownership effect: "Machinery, like every other component of constant capital, creates no new value, but yields up its own value to the product that it serves to beget. In so far as the machine has value, and, in consequence, parts with value to the product, it forms an element in the value of that product. Instead of being cheapened, the product is made dearer in proportion to the value of the machine. And it is clear as noon-day, that machines and systems of machinery, the characteristic instruments of labour of Modern Industry, are incomparably more loaded with value than the implements used in handicrafts and manufactures. [...] the machinery, while always entering as a whole into the labourprocess, enters into the value-begetting process only by bits. It never adds more value than it loses, on an average, by wear and tear. Hence there is a great difference between the value of a machine, and the value transferred in a given time by that machine to the product. The longer the life of the machine in the labour-process, the greater is that difference. It is true, no doubt, as we have already seen, that every instrument of labour enters as a whole into the labour-process, and only piece-meal, proportionally to its average daily loss by wear and tear, into the value-begetting process. But this difference between the instrument as a whole and its daily wear and tear, is much greater in a machine than in a tool, because the machine, being made from more durable material, has a longer life; because its employment, being regulated by strictly scientific laws, allows of greater economy in the wear and tear of its parts, and in the materials it consumes; and lastly, because its field of production is incomparably larger than that of a tool. After making allowance, both in the case of the machine and of the tool, for their average daily cost, that is for the value they transmit to the product by their average daily wear and tear, and for their consumption of auxiliary substance, such as oil, coal, and so on, they each do their work gratuitously, just like the forces furnished by Nature without the help of man. The greater the productive power of the machinery compared with that of the tool, the greater is the extent of its gratuitous service compared with that of the tool. In modern industry man succeeded for the first time in making the product of his past labour work on a large scale gratuitously, like the forces of Nature. (Marx 1976)

In another part of his work, Marx reveals an analogous nature of what will be in the present book termed “material labour”:

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Chapter IX While productive labour is changing the means of production into constituent elements of a new product, their value undergoes a metempsychosis. It deserts the consumed body, to occupy the newly created one. But this transmigration takes place, as it were, behind the back of the labourer. He is unable to add new labour, to create new value, without at the same time preserving old values, and this, because the labour he adds must be of a specific useful kind; and he cannot do work of a useful kind, without employing products as the means of production of a new product, and thereby transferring their value to the new product. The property therefore which labour-power in action, living labour, possesses of preserving value, at the same time that it adds it, is a gift of Nature which costs the labourer nothing, but which is very advantageous to the capitalist inasmuch as it preserves the existing value of his capital. So long as trade is good, the capitalist is too much absorbed in money-grubbing to take notice of this gratuitous gift of labour. A violent interruption of the labour-process by a crisis, makes him sensitively aware of it" (Marx 1976).

Elsewhere in "Capital", Marx draws attention to the socio-economic nature of the relation: capital-labour power, which, as it turns out, brings about similar consequences and which extend far beyond the production of the surplus value, as his best known notion has it: "I assume [...] that the capitalist advances the whole expenses, including the entire remuneration of the labourer” … Though the manufacturer” (i.e., the labourer) “has his wages advanced to him by his master, he in reality costs him no expense, the value of these wages being generally reserved, together with a profit, in the improved value of the subject upon which his labour is bestowed … The labourer is often compelled to make his individual consumption a mere incident of production. In such a case, he supplies himself with necessaries in order to maintain his labour-power, just as coal and water are supplied to the steam-engine and oil to the wheel. His means of consumption, in that case, are the mere means of consumption required by a means of production; his individual consumption is directly productive consumption. This, however, appears to be an abuse not essentially appertaining to capitalist production. The matter takes quite another aspect, when we contemplate, not the single capitalist, and the single labourer, but the capitalist class and the labouring class, not an isolated process of production, but capitalist production in full swing, and on its actual social scale. By converting part of his capital into labour-power, the capitalist augments the value of his entire capital. He kills two birds with one stone. He profits, not only by what he receives

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from, but by what he gives to, the labourer. The capital given in exchange for labour-power is converted into necessaries, by the consumption of which the muscles, nerves, bones, and brains of existing labourers are reproduced, and new labourers are begotten. Within the limits of what is strictly necessary, the individual consumption of the working class is, therefore, the reconversion of the means of subsistence given by capital in exchange for labour-power, into fresh labour-power at the disposal of capital for exploitation. It is the production and reproduction of that means of production so indispensable to the capitalist: the labourer himself. The individual consumption of the labourer, whether it proceed within the workshop or outside it, whether it be part of the process of production or not, forms therefore a factor of the production and reproduction of capital; just as cleaning machinery does, whether it be done while the machinery is working or while it is standing. The fact that the labourer consumes his means of subsistence for his own purposes, and not to please the capitalist, has no bearing on the matter. The consumption of food by a beast of burden is none the less a necessary factor in the process of production, because the beast enjoys what it eats. The maintenance and reproduction of the working class is, and must ever be, a necessary condition to the reproduction of capital. But the capitalist may safely leave its fulfilment to the labourer's instincts of self-preservation and of propagation. All the capitalist cares for, is to reduce the labourer’s individual consumption as far as possible to what is strictly necessary. [...] Hence both the capitalist and his ideological representative, the political economist, consider that part alone of the labourer’s individual consumption to be productive, which is requisite for the perpetuation of the class, and which therefore must take place in order that the capitalist may have labour-power to consume; what the labourer consumes for his own pleasure beyond that part, is unproductive consumption. If the accumulation of capital were to cause a rise of wages and an increase in the labourer’s consumption, unaccompanied by increase in the consumption of labour-power by capital, the additional capital would be consumed unproductively. In reality, the individual consumption of the labourer is unproductive as regards himself, for it reproduces nothing but the needy individual; it is productive to the capitalist and to the State, since it is the production of the power that creates their wealth" (Marx 1976).

IX.1. Ownership of labour power The rent theory of ownership that has been laid out above is also applicable to ownership of labour power, whose existence is in fact one of the key reasons for the inadequacy of the jurisprudential approach. Labour power refers, of course, to all those physical and psychical human qualities that enable one to perform work in general or some specific type of work.

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That an individual owner of his or her labour power may derive gratuitous benefits from this ownership is shown by the following example. Considering the average annual increases in earnings in the USA, Japan, Germany, the UK and Sweden since 1960, in contrast to the idea of increasing wage differentials between countries, a picture emerges of a high degree of wage standardization in manufacturing. The overall differences in wage developments between the countries in 1989-95 are less than half the figures for 1960-1979, and substantially lower than in the 1980s. To an extent the trend towards wage standardization in manufacturing may be explained by reference to the intensified competition between national economies, even though some countries such as the USA are basically producing their goods for the North American markets. What seems to be more important is that wage negotiations in Europe as well as in North America and Asia are increasingly coupled to global wage standards at the level of firms, sectors and nations. "Employers and trade unions use international industrial statistics and trend extrapolations in conjunction with national and local negotiations. Employers as well as trade unions are trying to legitimize their bargaining demands by referring to the situation in other countries. A good illustration of how cross-country comparisons may influence national wage negotiations is provided by the 1999 collective bargaining round in Germany. Employer federations rejected union wage claims based on internationally high wage costs. IG Metall argued that they have a special responsibility as “trend setters” in other European countries. The outcome of these negotiations between IG Metall and the German employers has had a clear impact in terms of setting the negotiation standards for smaller economies such as Sweden whose representatives from the LO were even invited as observers to the negotiations between IG Metall and the German Metal Employers in 1999. In most cases wage standardization of the kind reported above, is a more implicit process. That this kind of standardization may also be formally institutionalized is illustrated by the Belgian “Law of competitiveness” 1997—1998, enacting a legal wage norm based on average wage increases in France, Germany and the Netherlands" (Eironline 1999). Overall, trade unions seem to have become more active than employer federations in terms of adopting strategies aimed at improving cross-national cooperation in wage bargaining issues. However, it is reasonable to assume that the relative importance of European wage bargaining standards will increase with a view to improving national competitiveness. Similar strategies and attempts to set standards for wage negotiations are also to be

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found in the USA (cf. The Bureau of National Affairs 1998). At the level of individual employers it seems that a number of multinational companies are trying to work out joint or similar bargaining objectives in their countries of interest. "At the national level we may observe a high degree of synchronization in hourly earnings within industrial production ever since the 1960s. What appeared as relatively large differences in annual wage increases between some highly developed capitalist economies prior to 1989 reveal at once relatively small differences within countries. Thus far, there are no indications of a qualitative break and a restructuring of wages according to pure market criteria" (Hass & Leiulfsrud 2002).

According to the data, then, a given worker, by virtue of owning particular kind of labour power, that is, collective labour power connected with the fact that he or she belongs to a definite collectivity, defined in union, national or even transnational terms, receives certain benefits in the form of higher or stable wages. What should be especially pointed out in this context is the circumstance that those are extra advantages, i.e. independent of one’s work. To the best of our knowledge, there is only one scholar who, implicitly at that, assumes a somewhat related approach to class as based on economic ownership. His conception is, however, seriously compromised by, amongst other failings, a lack of the concept of labour power, due to which he is able to claim e.g. that “Rents are created by social relationships of ownership of rent-producing assets (with the obvious exceptions of rents on natural abilities” (Sorensen 2000). Meanwhile, natural abilities are part and parcel of labour power just as socially acquired ones. But it is much more to the notion of labour-power ownership than that. Whilst the use of the category of labour power is widespread, notably in Marxian and Marxist writings, the fact remains that neither the former nor the latter unambiguously defines what ownership of it consists in. We ought to explain why, instead of the concept of sale more commonly used by Marxist economists and sociologists, one should prefer the concept of "lease of labour power". Marx, underlining that in the case of labour power we are dealing with a commodity, always emphasizes that this is a peculiar commodity. And in actuality, the peculiarities of that commodity, related to the fact that it is an inseparable part of human personality, are very significant. Any other commodity, for example

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consumer goods purchased in a store, are wholly owned by the purchaser, who may deal with it at will (and, let us add, according to the popular legal notion of property), including for example, destruction, donation, etc. Meanwhile, there is no such a thing in relation to labour which is supposed to be the object of sale, too. It can be utilized only in a certain way: consumed by the owner in the production process or providing services, or more generally by servicing a given type of operating conditions. However, a capitalist cannot, for example, sell his or her worker or otherwise dispose of them. It results from the fact that the latter remains the owner of their labour power, which is reflected among other things in the possibility of its withdrawal, for example by a strike, or changes in the workplace. The relationship between the worker and the owner of the working conditions resembles, in my opinion, the relationship between the owner of the land and the farmer leasing it from the owner who uses the land under cultivation. In addition, the term “lease” rather than “rent” or “hire” has been chosen for important theoretical reasons; the latter concepts refer, in our view, to personal property, e.g. renting a house from someone for her his own use, as opposed to its use in the character of business premises. The direction of occupational mobility is determined by the type of operational labour power. Operational labour power can be divided into three types: intellectual, affective and manual. Each task, and thus occupation is characterised by a particular mix of the above-mentioned three types, e.g. they are jobs where analytical tasks predominate, and others in which interactive, communicative skills are prominent. Generally, people move to such jobs in which their skills can be used. For instance, it is far easier, and thus more likely, to move from sales to advertising in both of which an affective (interactive) labour power is required, than for a construction labourer to find a job in the latter, since his labour power is completely different. As for each job a specific type of operational labour power pertaining to it can be determined, the above-mentioned proposition should possess a substantial explanatory and predictive power. While from our rent perspective the substance of economic ownership is benefit, this is by no means the only take on the latter, as inter alia, the subsequent chapter makes clear.

CHAPTER X WEBERIAN NOTION OF PROPERTY

Weber reserves the term “property” for a particular class of appropriated rights, namely those which survive the individual lifetime, and are inheritable by a particular individual heir or other social unit, whether by testament, or by an automatic rule of succession. If alienable they constitute “free property.” From our theoretical standpoint, Weberian definitions are marked by a degree of arbitrariness. The former property relation suggests some kind of group, family ownership, whilst the latter one, as will be later argued, refers to one of the two essential relations comprising property ownership. However, the adjective “free” does not contribute any new insight to the content of the concept. What is more, none of the above cited sentences include any definition of the concept in question. What is relevant in this context is his claim to the effect that: “it is essential to include the criterion of power of control and disposal (Verfügungsgewalt) in the sociological concept of economic action if for no other reason than that an exchange economy involves a complete network of contractual relationships, each of which originates in a deliberately planned process of acquisition of powers of control and disposal. This, in such an economy, is the principal source of the relation of economic action to the law. But any other type of organization of economic activities would involve some kind of distribution of powers of control and disposal, however different its underlying principles might look like …”.

The term Verfügungsgewalt, of which Weber makes a great deal of use, is of legal origin, implying legally sanctioned powers of control and disposal. This, of course, has (in Henderson and Parsons' view no place in a purely economic conceptual scheme but is essential to a sociological treatment of economic systems. It is another way of saying that "concretely economic action depends on a system of property relations" (Weber 1947).

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Quite apart from any criticisms against Weber’s treatment of property, the above assertion underscoring the role of property relations in the economy is very close to the present author’s view. Another merit of Weber’s approach is the fact that he does not couch the subject discussed in terms of a classification of objects or things. The concrete content of appropriated rights may be anything, tangible or intangible, for which the individual or unit has one or more “uses,” which has “utility.” Moreover, it is not the concrete object, the “thing” as such, tangible or intangible, which is the basis of the interest in appropriation, but the “use” to which it can be put. Correspondingly it is not the “things” which are appropriated, but rights in them. It is by no means impossible for a number of different individuals or units to have appropriated rights in the same concrete thing, such as a certain tract of land, at the same time. The above functional classification of the content of appropriated rights is essential to Weber’s analysis. Thus, let us reiterate, it is this approach in terms of property objects' role in human activities that not only deserves a very positive evaluation, but confirms our earlier interpretation of the concept 'subjective meaning”,” (Tittenbrun 2011a) and, incidentally, parallels an approach particular to the theory of property rights, a critical analysis of which can be found in (Tittenbrun 2011a; 2011b). The foregoing does not imply, as has been hinted at above, that Weberian theory of property is flawless. Criticism should be especially levelled at its underlying contention according to which it is disposal, control, decisionmaking, etc. that constitute the essence of ownership. This is also evidenced by Weber’s account of the socialist economy and, in particular, the condition of the working class under that economic system: "Full socialization would not, ipso facto, destroy the 'expropriation' of the workers unless one were to consider the socialistic state as one enormous producers' co-operative. But even if it were such in principle the average individual would be so remote from the points of controlling decision that he could hardly have a much greater sense of personal participation in the decisions than he does in those of his present 'capitalistic' employers" (Weber 1947).

That this treatment is mistaken can be most easily shown on a number of specific examples. The circumstance that an executive of a public library makes a concrete decision on where, say, Russian literature should be stored, and which room should accumulate English fiction and poetry and so on and so forth does not, to be sure, transform them into an owner of these resources and the building itself. Similarly, while city authorities

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may take a decision that a definite street must be closed to traffic, it does not renders them private owners of the street involved. The list of such illustrations of our point might be multiplied. What ownership does consist of is clarified in another chapter.

CHAPTER XI WEBERIAN THEORY OF CLASS

Whether, and if so to what extent, the drawbacks of property theory identified above have affected Weberian theory of class needs to be explored. Whilst in its most explicit form it is laid out in the chapter fragments assembled posthumously in "Economy and Society", an additional proof of the importance of the concept for Weber is provided by his early empirical and historical studies in which the analysis of class figures very prominently, most notably in his studies of East Elbian farming labourers, his exploration of the causes of the decline of the Roman Empire and his more general work on the agrarian sociology of ancient civilizations. In his usual manner, Weber introduces an array of interrelated concepts starting from “class status” which: "Applies to the typical probability that (a) Given state of provision with goods, (b) External conditions of life, and (c) Subjective satisfaction or frustration will be possessed by an individual or a group. These probabilities define class status in so far as they are dependent on the kind and extent of control or lack of it which the individual has over goods or services and existing possibilities of their exploitation for the attainment of income or receipts within a given economic order" (Weber 1947).

Thus, note that even as a point of departure, Weber refers to ownership of labour power and the means of production (as an ultimate source of goods mentioned in the definition). Small wonder that an implicit or explicit reference to property relations is found in the remaining definitions introduced by him. So for Weber, a “class” is any group of persons occupying the same class status. He goes on to say that the following types of classes may be distinguished:

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"(a) a class is a “property class” when class status for its members is primarily determined by the differentiation of property holdings; (b) a class is an “acquisition class” when the class situation of its members is primarily determined by their opportunity for the exploitation of services on the market" (Weber 1947).

In order to demonstrate to what extent his theory relies on ownership relations, Weber even declares, in unequivocal terms, that: “The possession of property defines the main class difference.” According to Weber: "The owners of property have a definite advantage, and in some cases a monopoly on, action in the market of commodities and, especially, labor. They have privileged access to the sources of wealth creation, by virtue of ownership and control of the markets". Weber identified a subdivision among property owners based on the means of their wealth creation: Entrepreneurs use wealth in commercial ventures. Rentiers profit by interest on their property, through investments or rent of land. Both forms of ownership yield advantages resulting from the ability to convert property to money. "The property class is defined by the kinds of services individual workers provide in the labour market" (Shortell 2002).

This shows clearly why Wright’s identification of “The most basic anchor of Weber’s own analysis of class as “the question about broad historical variation” is inadequate, misguided even. This is not to deny that Wright has a point in his critique of “many neo-Weberians, particularly those whose empirical concerns are restricted to the analysis of developed capitalist societies”, for whom “the issue of broad historical variation tends to get marginalized” (2005b:188). But his own proposal is far too general to constitute anything like differentia specifica of Weberian approach. Suffice it to point out that for Marx and many other thinkers the issue was also a theoretical priority. Historicity is not so much a premise as an implication of a given approach. And what constitutes the core element of Weberian notion of class is the concept of relations referred to also below-that the identification of the aforementioned classes is property-based is also shown by the examples indicated by Weber himself. Thus, amongst property classes there are landowners, owners of slaves, and other rentiers such as, among others, creditors, holders of securities, and at the opposite pole individuals owned by others, i.e. slaves and serfs, which- in the theoretical language used in this work- translates into a lack of ownership of their own labour power. Similarly, among acquisition classes Weber distinguishes entrepreneurs, including industrialists, merchants, but also labour aristocracy defined on the basis of monopolised

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skills, and on the bottom skilled manual semi and unskilled workers. It is evident that in the case of the latter group they have been stratified according to the quality of their labour power. Likewise, the term “monopolised skills” refers to nothing other than ownership of labour power. "Acquisition classes in a negatively privileged situation are workers of the various principal types. They may be roughly classified as skilled, semiskilled and unskilled. Those negatively privileged with respect to property belong typically to one of the following types: (a) they are themselves objects of ownership; that being, that they are unfree. (b) They are “outcasts” that is 'proletarians' in the sense meant in Antiquity. (c) They are debtor classes and, (d) the 'poor'. In between stand the 'middle' classes. This term includes groups who have all sorts of property, or of marketable abilities through training, who are in a position to draw their support from these sources. Some of them may be 'acquisition' classes. Entrepreneurs are in this category by virtue of essentially positive privileges; proletarians, by virtue of negative privileges" (Weber 1947: 425).

In this connexion as well as the above, independent peasants and craftsmen are to be treated as belonging to the “middle classes”. Mittelklassen«“This category often includes in addition officials, whether they are in public or private employment, the liberal professions, and workers with exceptional monopolistic assets or positions”. It is clear that there are some similarities between the above Weberian definition and at least some of the more theoretically refined treatments to be found in the literature. This by itself, obviously, does not make it valid. Conversely, Weber’s concept sure enough attempts to embrace too muchi.e. its components are not picked up on a unitary basis; it appears that Weber endeavoured to combine elements of two widespread in the socialscientific literature notions: the old and the new middle class. Yet this attempt is not fortunate. What Weber strives to put in one bag are, on the one hand, akin to peasant and petty-bourgeois classes. That is to say, in the latter case the traditional Marxist-but applied by non-Marxists, too – term has been used. Referring to some proprietary classes, distinguished from the bourgeoisie by the fact of not taking advantage of other people’s labour. In other words, the representatives of the classes concerned are not employers themselves, but are, to use perhaps a more conventional term, self-employed. Their double independence-in the sense of being their own

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employers, not depending on anybody’s labour, suggests a definite terminological innovation. This is not so much the issue of Marxist origin of the term as such, but rather a baggage of primarily negative associations both in the social sciences and humanities as in the literature, including drama. And it seems that this historically formed vast front of mighty ammunition makes its control over the public imagery very tight. To be sure, on a general plane such pejorative stereotypes have no place in science, albeit behind each social stereotype lurks always some real fact, which, however, by virtue of its exaggeration divorces itself from this past historical base. Besides, each social class has in its ranks its own measure of angels and devils. A word of caution- social scientists (remember philosopher-kings?) rarely have such an impact on the mass imagery so as to alter concrete images built into it, often over a long span of time. Nevertheless, a proposal may be ventured, drawn on the same Max Weber, to use with reference to the grouping concerned the phrase “autocephalous class”, which captures the aforementioned essential socio-economic coefficients of their mode of functioning. However, this concept may not refer to the peasantry; despite some similarities, the role of agricultural land as their property (referred to by Marx as “the living machine”) sets them apart from any artisans, independent lawyers or doctors. Returning to Weber, he goes on to state: Examples of “social classes” in Weber’s sense are (a) the “working” class as a whole. It approaches this type the more completely mechanized the productive process becomes, (b) The “lower middle” classes.2 (c) The “intelligentsia” without independent property and the persons whose social position is primarily dependent on technical training such as engineers, commercial and other officials, and civil servants. These groups may differ greatly among themselves, in particular according to costs of training, (d) the classes occupying a privileged position through property and education.

This, note, again, is a clear reference to the concept of labour powertreated as the object of economic ownership relations. The above-mentioned definition of class status or situation contains, however, one more interesting aspect connected with a dramatic question put forward by one author who asks: "If even social classes do not have boundaries, then what does? And if sociologists cannot even say what the exact boundaries of a social class

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are—one of the most fundamental of all sociological concepts—then what is the point of sociology?"

He reckons, however, that "one fairly obvious possibility seems to have been overlooked in traditional discussions of this question. This is the idea that sociology might do better, especially when it comes to the statistical analysis of social scientific data, to follow the lead of the natural sciences and try to develop a probability concept of social class. Boundary problems are common in the natural sciences but these can usually be overcome by making use of probability theory. For example, since 1926, when Erwin Schrodinger devised his famous equation, rather than trying to define the precise location of an electron at any particular point in time, modern physics has accepted that it can only know the probable location of any particular electron at a given point in space. [...] the solutions of his equation predict the probability that the electron will be found at each point of space, not, as in classical physics, the precise location of the electron at any instant (in time)" (Smith 2007). The author cited draws then an analogy, which is the most disputable aspect of his view, as it smacks of naturalism: "If the position of the electron in a hydrogen atom can only be determined probabilistically, then why not the position of human individuals in social classes, too? And, if even physics cannot solve the problem of finding the exact location of an electron at any one point in time (and, of course, with a 90 per cent “boundary” there must be a 10 per cent chance at any one time that the electron is not within the predicted area), why then should sociology be required to say exactly where particular human individuals stand in the class structure at any given point in time, especially when one considers that, with the relatively high degree of social mobility in late industrial society, the social space that many individuals occupy in the class structure is likely to change a number of times during their lifetime? And, of course, this objection to class boundaries also has much wider implications for the social sciences generally, since this problem is generic to all social boundaries" (Smith 2007). And he goes on to say: "Perhaps then sociology too might do better to develop some kind of probabilistic concept of social class?

But if all this talk of probability sounds a little bit remote from sociology (why, after all, should sociology 'follow the lead' of the natural sciences,

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even in the area of statistical analysis?) I would argue that this is not the case since there already exists within sociology a classical discussion of just such a probability concept of social class, and this in the work of none other than one of the founders of modern sociology, Max Weber". While, by and large, Weber's theory of class is commendable, it is not the fact that he “defines class situation probabilistically” (Smith 2007) as betraying clear naturalistic leanings that deserves most praise. No such reference should release class theorists from the necessity of precise and unambiguous definitions. In addition, it must be pointed out that Weber’s theory of class includes yet another, much more controversial concept; his definition of 'social class” as “composed of the plurality of class statuses between which an interchange of individuals on a personal basis or in the course of generations is readily possible and typically observable” (Weber 1947). One questionable aspect of this definition is its terminology: are there any grounds to assume that only social mobility is of social character, whilst this characteristic is for some undisclosed reason not to pertain to property relations, although their socio-economic nature can be denied only on the basis of jurisprudential approach, which is, however, unacceptable within the social sciences. More importantly, Weber identifies his social classes on a different basis than the ownership criteria used with reference to the property and commercial classes. This violates a principle of internal coherence and consistency as well as that of formal elegance, which both ought to characterise genuinely scientific theory. There is no denying that in the form of the concept in question Weber raised an important issue of different levels of class analysis. His own solution is, for reasons given above, unsatisfactory, though, which prompted us to put forward an alternative approach to the same question in the form of the notion of mega classes. As suggested elsewhere, this enables us to aggregate historically given classes in a multilevel fashion, taking account of both specificity and commonality marking particular concepts. The procedure in question should not be construed, however, as an instance of Paul Feyrabend’s epistemic principle “anything goes”. What ensures theoretical rigour and coherence of the approach proposed is its analytic underpinning by very strictly defined notion of economic ownership, as it is the latter and only the latter that serves as the common denominator of all the permutations

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and combinations that one embarks on within the space encompassing mega classes and classes proper. In addition, one specific point must be made with reference to the ontology and epistemology of class. What is at issue is an account of classes as “empty places” as neo-Marxists like to say, using a formulation proposed by Simmel (1908). For instance, Erik Olin Wright proclaims that “classes Constitute Positions” (1979:21) and explains: “To say that classes constitute “positions” implies, to use Przeworski’s (1977) apt expression, that there are “empty places” in the social structure which are filled by individuals. The analysis of class must be understood as the analysis primarily of such empty places, and only secondarily of the actual individuals who fill the slots. While questions of social mobility are important in a class analysis, there is a logical priority to understanding the empty places into which individuals are sorted. Poulantzas (1973a) has emphasized this point: “the question of who occupies a given position, i.e., who is, or becomes a bourgeois, proletarian, petty bourgeois, poor peasant, etc., and how and when he does, is subordinate to the first aspect-the reproduction of the actual positions occupied by the social classes (pp. 4950)” In a parallel way, Sorrenson (1991: 72) states: “Classes are 'sets of structural positions”. Not only in this context, by the way, Wright points to the affinity between his view and those of other Marxists, notably such as Poulantzas. We beg to differ in the evaluation of the sign that should be assigned to the aforementioned intellectual closeness. Poulantzas belonged to Louis Althusser’s school that pursued not only structuralist but also a highly formalistic species of Marxism. To view the class structure as a web of slots to be filled by concrete interchangeable individuals whose characteristics are irrelevant to the former is simplistic. As in the present case of industrial capitalists, one is not in a position to predict on the basis of this general definition what specific ownership relations they enter; this must be established on a case-by-case-basis. In addition, Wright and Poulantzas” approach is extremely static, it does not allow to study class dynamics, as is difficult to imagine that one could investigate transformations, let alone struggle of “empty places”. The said approach thus revives a perennial antinomy of structure vs. agency which within the framework of socio-economic structuralism has no raison d’etre. Some further Weberian comments are worthy of mention (since they refer, amongst others, to an important and controversial topic of class struggle),

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and not only for scholarly reasons. Weber argues that “different wages result in different qualities in terms of the standard of living”: Weber did not believe that class interests necessarily led to uniformity in social action. Neither communal nor societal action is the inexorable result of class interest. Weber challenges, here, the Marxian notion of the primarily material basis of social action. He is not denying it outright, but rather introducing an element of unpredictability. Weber did not believe that proletarian revolutionary action would arise as a certain result of structural contradiction. Communal or societal action may develop from a common class situation in certain conditions. Weber believed that the general cultural conditions played a large role in this determination. Intellectuals, in his view, occupy a key position in this regard. Weber argued that the extent of the contrasts between the property owners and the property-less workers must become transparent to the workers in order for collective action around the issue of class to occur. Intellectuals function either to call attention to or explain these contrasts, or, to obscure them. For communal or societal action to take place, the workers must not only recognise the differences in wealth and opportunity, but these differences must be seen as the result of the distribution of property and economic power. If the differences are believed to be a natural characteristic of society, as a given fact, then only occasional and irrational action is possible. Very often, collective action centers on the labor market. Workers seek higher wages, and see this as the goal of their struggle. Most class antagonism, Weber noted, is directed at managers, rather than at owners—stockholders and bankers—because they appear to be have the power to set the price of labor power. (Shortell 2002). Thus, class groups do not constitute communities, according to Weber. It seems, however, that the author of Economy and Society did not fully appreciate circumstances helping common action stemming from concentration of large masses of workers in a single workplace or in workplaces characterised by similar working and industrial conditions, including structural conflict with those who benefit from their toil, be it business owners or top executives. On the other hand, Weber's pointing out of the role of intellectuals relative to the working class resembles, paradoxically, one of the theses of so-called Marxism-Leninism about the class function of the intelligentsia lying in their mission to upgrade working class consciousness from the level of trade-unionist to the

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political, revolutionary dimension. Even more oddly, a parallel view can be found with Bourdieu, who, apart from a couple of elements of his jargon, contributes little of substance to the very thesis in question, as propounded by either Lenin or Gramsci with his organic intellectuals or any other Marxist theoretician dealing with the issue of ideational representatives of notably the working class, although, to be sure, parallel relationships can be encountered in the case of other classes. Anyway, according to the French sociologist, The class attains a particular (“metonymic”) form of “objectified” existence in which the maintenance of its boundaries and the mobilization of its members is continuously managed by a corps of 'specialists”: “[t]he “working class” exists in and through the body of representatives who give it an audible voice and a visible presence, and in and through the belief in its existence which this body of plenipotentiaries succeeds in imposing (Bourdieu 1991:251; cf. also pp. 173-4). Upon scrutiny, Bourdieu’s contribution goes beyond the formal to include an idealistic contention according to which a class reportedly exists only insofar as there exist certain ideas about them created by the group of professional intellectuals (in this regard there is another similarity to Gramsci in whose writings idealistic slippages can also be found). All those criticisms of Weber by no means imply that we concur with those who argue for the supposed superiority of the so-called “new economic sociology” over “old economic sociology.” Well, any science, whether hard or social science, cannot, or at least should not, accept any “calendar theory of truth.” The best examples are many “old” economic sociologists whose theories appear to be much more vital, timely and topical than an overwhelming bulk of their, in chronological terms, younger counterparts.

CHAPTER XII FRANK PARKIN’S CLOSURE THEORY

This chapter deals with another thinker known for his critique of Marx, though his stature is incomparable with that of Weber’s. Frank Parkin’s most known book is titled: “Marxism and Class Theory: A Bourgeois Critique”. The place in the book for Parkin, though, has been chosen on the basis of not his assault on Marx per se but rather his substantive contribution to class theory which, as we shall see, bears a strong resemblance not so much to Marxian conception as to its distorted stereotype. Among other criticisms, Parkin attacks the Marxists” overemphasis on deep levels of structure, at the expense of social actors, and suggests a radical recasting of the theory of class. The well-known dichotomy of structure and agency is the subject of a separate chapter, so at this point let us cite just one piece of evidence demonstrating that not only is traditional notion of socio-economic class not inconsistent with an analysis in terms of agency, but the former constitutes an indispensable tool of the latter it is arguable, namely, that 'social class [to be sure, the concept of the middle class should-and given its concrete definition-can easily be translated into such a language that is being proposed here.] is one important source of models of agency-normative guidelines for how to be a “good” person. Using choice as a prototypically agentic action, 5 studies test the hypotheses that models of agency prevalent in workingclass (WK) contexts reflect a normative preference for similarity to others. Whereas models prevalent in middle-class (MD) contexts reflect a preference for difference from others. Focusing on participants” choices, Studies 1 and 2 showed that participants from WK relative to MD contexts more often chose pens that appeared similar to, rather than different from other pens in the choice set. And more often chose the same images as another participant. Examining participants” responses to others” choices, Studies demonstrated that participants from WK relative to MD contexts liked their chosen pens more when a confederate chose similarly and responded more positively when a friend chose the same car in a hypothetical scenario. Finally, another finding of the Study suggests that car advertisements targeting WK rather than MD consumers more often

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emphasized connection to, rather than differentiation from others, suggesting that models of agency are reflected in pervasive cultural products” (Stevens et al. 2007). So, let us scrutinise Parkin’s own approach to class, held by its author to be superior to the framework of socio-economic class. In his view the supposed reworking of the theory of class shall be achieved by centering theory on the concept of social closure. Parkin draws on Weber’s understanding of closure as the process by which social collectives seek to maximise rewards by restricting access to resources and opportunities to a limited circle of eligible candidates. This entails the singling out of certain social or physical attributes as the justificatory basis of exclusion. Weber suggests that virtually any group attribute race, language, social origin, religion- may be seized upon provided it can be used for “the monopolisation of specific, usually economic opportunities”. This monopolisation is directed against competitors who share some positive or negative characteristic; its purpose is always the closure of social and economic opportunities to outsiders. The nature of these exclusionary practices, and the completeness of social closure, determine the general character of the distributive system (Parkin 1979:44). Parkin goes on to elaborate this concept, by identifying two main types, exclusionary and usurpationary closure. “The distinguishing feature of exclusionary closure is the attempt by one group to secure for itself a privileged position at the expense of some other group through processes of subordination” (Parkin 1979:45). He refers to this metaphorically as the use of power downwards. Usurpationary closure, however, is the use of power upwards, by the groups of subordinates created by the exclusionary closure, aimed at winning a greater share of resources, threatening “to bite into the privileges of legally defined superiors” (Parkin 1979:46). This exactly was intended by Parkin as the most novel aspect of his notion of class that he aimed to define classes in terms of their closure strategies, as opposed to defining class with reference to some structure of positions. The bourgeoisie could be identified, he held, by their reliance on exclusionary closure, as opposed to, say, their ownership of the means of production. Similarly, a subordinate class would be identified by their reliance on usurpationary closure:

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the familiar distinction between bourgeoisie and proletariat, in its classic as well as its modern guise, may be conceived of as an expression of conflict between classes defined not specifically in relation to their place in the productive process but in relation to their prevalent modes of closure, exclusion and usurpation, respectively (Wrong 1980). Regardless of an assessment of originality of Parkin’s approach, which, as we have seen, borrows a lot from Weber, the most paradoxical aspect of it is the circumstance that that ardent critic of Marxism ends up revitalising related to Marxism, albeit in its vulgar variety, a bipolar image of the class hierarchy. We do not recourse to the word 'structure”, because, as has been noted, Parkin “rejects any structural basis to class (such as property relations, bureaucratic authority, or the division of labor) and seeks to ground classes purely in the exclusionary endeavors of human actors. This leads to an entirely circular form of argument in which class relations are seen as providing the bases of power that are mobilized in exclusionary actions, which in turn produce social classes” (Burris 2007).

CHAPTER XIII SOCIAL STRATIFICATION AND SOCIAL CLASS

Regarding the question of the above pair of concepts, one should recall that, in contradistinction to the notion of stratification, the concept of class, contrary to common wisdom, does not imply any hierarchy of rank or position. Conversely, a class structure refers to much more complex and interrelated, and thus irreducible to any simple, ladder-like system. The above-mentioned property of class structure is not captured by the following account in that the latter betrays characteristics of both types of differentiation distinguished: "The most distinctive task of sociology is the structural analysis of various forms of differentiation (such as heterogeneity and inequality), their interrelations, the conditions producing them and changes in them, and their implications for social relations. Heterogeneity or horizontal differentiation refers to the distribution of a population among groups in terms of a nominal parameter. The operational criterion of the degree of heterogeneity in a population is the probability that two randomly chosen persons do not belong to the same group. Inequality or vertical differentiation refers to the status distribution in a population in terms of a graduated parameter. The operational criterion is that the greater the average status distance between all pairs of persons relative to their average status, the greater the inequality. Status-diversity is the graduated-parameter equivalent of heterogeneity. The operational criterion of status-diversity is the probability that two randomly chosen persons do not belong to the same stratum" (Baron 1984). By no means all accounts that grasp the essential quality of stratification theory do by the same token view correctly its relation to class theory. Many problems arise when analysing the Distributional Theory. One problem that compromises it actually being called a theory lies in the fact

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that the supporting evidence proves subjective. The amount of income defining the numerous social “classes” can be, and has been, refuted by numerous scholars (Manders 02/09/05). The Distributional Theory, or the gradation concept of class, as Stolzman and Gamberg depict it “is descriptive, as opposed to analytic…” (107). This descriptive theory succeeds in illustrating the inequality, hierarchy, and stratification of a society, but does not properly define social class. It obscures the true social classes amongst many superfluous stratas by ignoring the difference between the business and corporation owners versus the workers. Stolzman and Gamberg comment, 'stratification analysts, unlike Marxists, characteristically take for granted the productive systems” (120). By overlooking or taking these productive systems for granted, the Distributional Theory continues to conceal the real social classes behind the ambiguous and constantly influx-defining indicator, income. Contrastingly, the Relational Theory of Social Class focuses primarily on the productive system of the society when defining social class. In this theory, two social classes exist: those who own the prevailing productive apparatus and those who do not (Manders 02/09/05). Isaac Balbus elaborates on this two class model, stating, “…two classes defined in a dialectical opposition to each other is the starting point for Marx’s theory of social change… (Stolzman 107). Theorists also express this class dichotomy as the superordinate class versus the subordinate class, the owners versus the producers, or the owners of capital versus the wage laborers. Along with different definitions of social class, the Distributional and Relational Theories also maintain dissimilar descriptions of the “Middle Class”. Many people with faith in the Distributional Theory believe themselves to reside in the middle class. According to the Relational Theory, the term middle class, arising from the days of feudalism, incorporates only a minuscule group of small business owners squeezed in the middle of the owners of the prevailing productive apparatus and the wage laborers (Manders 02/09/05). In the United States 90% of the population fall into the category of the subordinate or working class, while only 1% own the majority of the capital. According to the Relational Theory, the number of actual middle class citizens proves significantly lower than the Distributional Theory would display and accounts for only 9% of the U.S. population (Manders 02/09/05). Similar to the Distributional Theory, the Relational Theory acknowledges stratification and inequality. It does not, however, define class in these

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terms. The Relational Theory views inequality as “one symptom of a more total and through-going relation of exploitation between the two parties at the point of production” (Stolzman 111). Stolzman goes on to pronounce that many functionalists deem inequality as a social necessity to attract qualified personnel for societies” most valuable position and to motivate citizens to carry out their responsibilities (110). Any theory or model that deems suffering, exploitation, and inequality as necessary for the motivation of the people obviously benefits those oppressing and exploiting. For this reason, the Distributional Theory, although not completely comprehensive, would prove quite useful to the owners of the capital by keeping them enriched and, therefore, empowered. This theory obscures the true social classes and keeps the people confused and comfortable enough so they are less likely to question the system and rebel against it. This way of explaining social class keeps the wage laborers scrambling for an insignificant raise or a slight increase on the strata ladder instead of realizing the never-ending enslavement that confines them. Stolzman exposes the obscuring that takes place, claiming, “any given theoretical outlook simultaneously illuminates and obscures certain aspects of reality” (120). This theory illuminates a reality in which the "capitalists can continue to exploit the wage-laborers and hoard the surplus product and capital. The Relational Theory is more comprehensive and more useful for changing this oppressive system versus merely describing it. Due to the Distributional Theory, most members of the subordinate class do not even realize they belong in it" (Manders 02/09/05). Without realizing and reacting to this oppressive reality, the class remains 'structurally alienated from its world-shaping and history-making powers” (Stolzman 116). The Relational Theory succeeds in enlightening people of their location in the class structure and can be used to unite these members. Stolzman points out Marx's belief that “the point of philosophy is not simply to interpret the world, but to change it” (122). This theory helps to explain the reality we live in and also provides possible tools to change and better it" (Jones 2006) This emphasis on a dynamic character of class theory is sure enough sound, reflecting-as it does-the aforementioned more complex nature of class relations compared to statistical relations linking income or other strata.

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The dialectical in that sense class theory is diametrically opposed to the anti-dialectical, or metaphysical character of “general theory of social stratification, where social structures are generally understood as stable, and stratification regimes have in-built sustaining properties, as well as powerful defenders” (Erikson & Jonsson, 1996:67). Well, a good measure of the difference concerned is the fact that in the universe of social stratification there is no counterpart to class struggle; 'strata struggle” is but a bizarre neologism. Whilst the critique by Jones of stratification theory is sound (it, by the way, is in keeping with our earlier observations), his account of class theory is over-simplified. As will be argued extensively below, the theory cannot be reduced to any two-class model, even with some residuum in the middle. Jones fails to see that viewing class theory that way he likens it to stratification theory with its hierarchy of categories and honestly it is the latter that might justifiably claim the title of a more adequate because offering a large number of analytic categories, depiction of societal differentiation. The insistence on the non-hierarchical character of class theories cannot be over-emphasised since even authors of many books on class theory are apparently not aware of it, as an example of Erik Olin Wright shows. He reckons, namely, that “the diverse definitions of class can be analysed in terms of three nested theoretical dimensions: (1) Whether class is fundamentally understood in gradational or in relational terms; (2) if class is understood in relational terms, whether the pivotal aspect of class relations is seen as located in the market or in production; (3) if class relations are primarily located within production, whether production is analysed above all in terms of the technical division of labor, authority relations, or exploitation. These three theoretical dimensions generate five basic types of definitions of class” (1979). We do not dwell here, as this question is clarified elsewhere, on Wright’s reductionist approach to an issue of economic foundations of class relations which by no means cannot be brought down to the three factors mentioned by him. Wright asks “what it is about the organisation of production that forms the basis for the determination of class”, and replies that “Three different ways of understanding the structure of production relations have dominated the analysis of classes within production: production is defined primarily as a system of technical divisions of labor: production is analysed above all as

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a system of authority relations: and, production, insofar as it determines classes, is seen fundamentally as a system of exploitation” (1979), yet in his answer, strangely enough, the notion of property (not to be conflated with exploitation) is missing and, additionally, classes are situated not only within the system of production but also within other economic substructures, as we shall see below. To continue with the ABOVE discussion of the distinction between two basic approaches to societal differentiation, the literature more often than not leaves out an important difference between the two: the two perspectives differ along both the social space and time dimensions. In the latter case, stratification is held to be a universal feature of all human societies, whereas classes are said to be present in only some types of historically existing societies. Regarding that suprahistorical attribute, in a typical formulation, societies [...] always possess some kind of status system which, by its own values, places people in higher or lower positions” (Warner, Meeker, Eels 1960). Social stratification refers to a system by which categories of people in society are ranked in a hierarchy. The rankings apply to social categories of people who share a common characteristic without necessarily interacting or identifying with each other. To what extent that view has become part and parcel of common wisdom, is shown by the following case of the pair of authors who take the just mentioned premise for granted and by the same time, again in accordance with our above observation, conflate strata with classes: 'since stratification refers to hierarchically organised social relationships, stratification theory entails the analysis of structured social inequality in all its aspects: material, social and cultural. However, class analysis, with its focus on material inequality, has dominated stratification theory. Unfortunately, therefore, uncertainties about the state of class analysis and the “cultural turn” within sociology have resulted in a waning interest in stratification generally” (Bottero, Prandy 2003). Even more clearly the aforementioned error is apparent in the following definition which in addition equally mistakenly describes classes as universal: 'social class refers to the hierarchical distinctions between individuals or groups in societies or cultures. Anthropologists, historians, and sociologists identify class as universal, although what determines class will vary widely from one society to another” (New World Encyclopaedia). From the aforementioned fundamental premise it is concluded that in modern Western nations, stratification is broadly organised into three main

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layers: upper class, middle class, and lower class. Each class may be further subdivided into smaller categories (e.g. occupational). This approach closely follows that of W. Lloyd Warner, who made his name by the well-known definition of three social classes: upper, middle, and lower, with each level further divided into upper and lower. In another version “Each class level is divided into three grades, the top one designating those individuals whose position within the class level is strong or high (symbol + +), the middle one including individuals whose position is ordinary or 'solid” (symbol +), and the bottom one for those individuals whose class position is weak (symbol)” (Warner, Meeker, Eels 1960). This basic model has been expanded and modified by other theorists. For instance, historian Paul Fussell developed semi-satirical nine-tier stratification of American so society, published in 1983. Fussell’s model classifies Americans according to the following classes: Top out-of-sight: the super-rich, heirs to huge fortunes Upper Class: rich CEOs, diplomats, people who can afford full-time domestic staff, and some high salaried, prominent professionals (examples include surgeons and some highly-paid types of lawyers); Upper-Middle Class: self-made, well-educated professionals; Middle Class: office workers; High Prole: skilled blue-collar workers; Mid Prole: workers in factories and the service industry; Low Prole: manual labourers; Destitute: the homeless and the disreputable (but still free); Bottom out-of-sight: those incarcerated in prisons and institutions. Fussell no longer recognized a true lower middle class, its members either having advanced into the middle class due to rising requirements of formal education or becoming indistinguishable from the “high proles” or even the “mid proles". (1993). The above model alludes to certain ownership and class criteria, yet in a haphazard manner which does not contribute to its conceptual consistency. Therefore, it e.g. erroneously regards prisoners, i.e. persons deprived of ownership of their labour power as a social class. It is only from the perspective of pan classism than any member of society should belong to a particular class. Meanwhile, from the standpoint of socio-economic structuralism it is not the case, social estates, for example, are to be distinguished from social classes.

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These categories are particular to state-based societies as distinct from, for instance, feudal societies composed mainly of nobility and peasantry. Stratification may also be defined by kinship ties or caste”. This view contains a frequently committed mistake according to which social stratification is a general concept, of which class and caste or estate are subtypes. Meanwhile, it is inconsistent with the position advanced here, by virtue of which all these four concepts refer to distinct social categories, which may be at most subsumed within the category of social differentiation that, from our standpoint, is broader than one of social stratification, as well -by definition-than the class and estate systems, which are varieties of societal differentiation, after all.

CHAPTER XIV CASTE, CLASS AND OWNERSHIP OF LABOUR AND QUASI-LABOUR POWER

Sociological concepts of transmitted and seemingly non-transmitted elements of status allocation processes (commonly called “ascription and achievement”) (Linton, 1936 underpin today's models of status allocation phenomena. In the stratification literature Status allocation refers to the process whereby individual members of the society are distributed into hierarchically ordered positions in stratification structures. The “allocation” terminology came into being as a critique of the 'status attainment” models, to make it clear that the process does not assume free will (Haller, 1982; Kerchkoff, 1976). However, the components and empirical referents of the two models remain unchanged. Inter-generational status transmission processes incorporate both ascription and achievement (see e.g. Haller & Saraiva, 1991). When we compare systems of stratification in different societies, we often refer to two criteria of allocation: one is the relative openness of the system. This aspect is usually associated with the volume of mobility, and the manner in which individuals are sorted or sifted in stratified roles. The other is the degrees of ascription or achievement, the later usually measured through the effects of education. In contrast to the developed Western societies, village India, because of the “caste” system, is usually considered to have a “closed” system of stratification. Similarly, the pattern of status allocation is considered to be entirely “ascriptive” rather than based upon “achievement,” the dominant method of allocation in developed Western societies. To understand better the definitional issues involved, let us examine an excerpt from a typical textbook of sociology which example has this additional merit that it allows one to see what notions are implanted into

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the minds of the broad student population who are, after all, the upcoming generation of policy makers, social science practitioners, social engineers, public opinion moulders and so on: "Social stratification refers to a system by which categories of people in society are ranked in a hierarchy. Sociologists distinguish between two general systems of social stratification based on the degree of social mobility representative of the system. A caste system is a system of social stratification based on ascription. Pure caste systems are 'closed' with no social mobility. Two Illustrations: India and South Africa- the Hindu social system of rural India and racial apartheid in South Africa are used to illustrate caste systems. In such systems three factors underlie the fact that ascription determines virtually everything about a person’s life. First, birth determines one’s occupation. Second, marriage unites people of the same social standing through the rule of endogamy. Representative of industrial societies, class systems are defined as systems of social stratification based on individual achievement. Social categories are not as rigidly defined as in the caste system. Individual ability, promoted by open social mobility, is critical to this system. Other factors characteristic of industrial economies that are central to such a system are high levels of migration to cities, democratic principles, and high immigration rates” (Social Stratification 2010). A number of misunderstandings contained in the above-quoted passage need to be cleared up. The question of linking the notion of social stratification to a hierarchical ranking has been already touched. It is one thing to distinguish between caste and class but on what theoretical grounds this is done, is quite another matter. The entire categorical apparatus used above to distinguish those two respective systems of social differentiation boils down to two Parsonian pattern variables. In the remaining part the account is purely descriptive and faulty at that. Migration can characterise both developed and developing countries, including caste-based ones. Likewise, the picture of India's caste system outlined above is over-simplified; “People are born in various castes and the ritual status that is ascribed to the caste of birth usually remains little changed throughout one’s life-time, irrespective of socioeconomic status. Ritual status is an added dimension of status in India; a dimension that is practically orthogonal to occupational

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status, that is, the extent to which ritual status influences one’s occupation has been subject to theoretical debate and now to empirical test, that it has been found wanting. The older orthodox view makes a deductive fallacy in assuming that all other statuses are derived from ritual status. Nothing could be farther from the truth. In modern times, many castes are abandoning their traditional caste occupations.” [...] the Brahmins are leading this defection. [...] the Jajmani system, which linked castes with occupations, is crumbling under the weight of modern developments in agriculture, and [...] agriculture is not really a caste occupation. By providing newly emerging opportunities for steady work, agricultural occupations remain the source of upward mobility for members of all castes. Therefore, the influence of caste on occupational status allocation in village India- the total effects of caste is rather small. "The total effects of caste were only 0.010 in 1962 and 0.149, mostly indirect effects, through first job, and were far less than the total effects of father's occupation, 0.656 for 1962 and 0.366 for 1977” (Sharda 2004).

To be sure, occupation cannot be equated with class, although elsewhere in the book some approaches to class in occupational terms are discussed at more length. Here, however, the relation between the two orders of social differentiation will be viewed in the reverse, as it were: Meillassoux (1973) drew attention to relations of production within what appear to be caste relations or relations of kinship, reproduction, and status. He tried to show how the relations of Jajmani were actually relations of clientship that depended on exploitation of the labouring classes, and argued that a strong case exists to view caste in the form of varna as class, at least in its genesis in ancient India. The 230 ETHNOLOGY subsequent development of classes accompanied by frequent conquests paved the way for increased fragmentation of society and the rise of endogamous communities or castes in their new form of Jati (Meillassoux 99-103). The move from varna to Jati corresponded with a change from the generalized exploitation of the Asiatic mode of production to the localized exploitation of the feudal mode of production (Gupta 1980; cf. also Jaiswal 2000), since Jati is a precapitalist mode of production (i.e., Indian feudal effect), Thus, the conceptual apparatus employed in the analyses of the relation concerned can be quite sophisticated-notably the distinction between feudalism and what in theoretical terms could be termed the tributary mode of production (since Marxian term “Asiatic” too strongly suggest its geographical connotation, whereas in the actual fact, the system involved has a multicontinental range).

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From such a standpoint, it would be too much to ask for a casteless system in modern India where the introduction of capitalism was not accompanied by an industrial revolution. And where, as a result, pre-capitalist remnants are still prevalent” (Gupta 1980:266). In sum, a key. There are many thousands of Jati within India; they have names and are usually associated with a certain regional or geographic base. Sometimes, members of a caste share a distinctive surname. Castes are endogamous descent groups: most people marry within their own caste, and there are strong social norms against cross-caste marriage. Castes also have a hierarchical dimension. Each Jati claims to be or is viewed by others as being located within a hierarchy of Varna (or generic castes) described in the Hindu scriptures: Brahmin or scholars, Kshatriya or warriors, Vaisyas or traders, and Shudras or cultivators. Below these four is a very large group of people whom those scriptures describe as spiritually impure and defiling. Once known as pariahs and untouchables, members of this lowest stratum, which contains many Jati, are today called Dalits, a term connoting oppressed or ground down. Historically, because Dalits were viewed by higher-caste people as physically and spiritually polluting, they were not allowed to live close to persons of higher caste, or to use the same water supply, or to enter temples. They could not own land or be educated and were excluded from many occupations. Even their presence was polluting; in public places they had to keep physical distance from higher-caste persons. “Many Dalits worked in stigmatized occupations that handled “impure” materials: human waste, dead animals, hides. Tanning, scavenger, sweeper, and cleaning jobs remain distinctively Dalit occupations in modern India” (Centeno, Newman 2010:245).

However, the majority of today's 167 million Dalits work as landless or near-landless laborers in agricultural production or in the lowest-paid kinds of manual labor” (Thorat and Umakant 2004). “They constituted 16.2% of the Indian population in the 2001 census” (Centeno, Newman 2010). To use a concrete example of a leatherworker, “and Hindu law says that working with animal skins makes him unclean, someone to avoid and revile. And his unseemly prosperity is a sin. Who does this Untouchable

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think he is, buying a small plot of land outside the village? Then he dared speak up, to the police and other authorities, demanding to use the new village well. He got what Untouchables deserve. One night, while Maurya was away in a nearby city, eight men from the higher Rajput caste came to his farm. They broke his fences, stole his tractor, beat his wife and daughter, and burned down his house. The message was clear: Stay at the bottom where you belong. [...] Girdharilal Maurya took his family and fled the village [...] It took two years for him to feel safe enough to return — and then only because human rights lawyers took up his case, affording him a thin shield of protection. [...]They live with the rest of their caste on the southern end of the village, downwind of the upper caste families who believe that they must not smell Untouchables. [...] The government refuses to address problems like this business about the well because they say the caste system legally does not exist. Well, look around you. People treat animals better than us. [...] To be born a Hindu in India is to enter the caste system, one of the world’s longest surviving forms of social stratification. Embedded in Indian culture for the past 1,500 years, the caste system follows a basic precept: All men are created unequal. The ranks in Hindu society come from a legend in which the main groupings, or Varna, emerge from a primordial being. From the mouth come the Brahmans-the priests and teachers. From the arms come the Kshatriyas-the rulers and soldiers. From the thighs come the Vaisyas-merchants and traders. From the feet come the Sudraslaborers. Each Varna in turn contains hundreds of hereditary castes and sub caste’s with their own pecking orders. A fifth group describes the people who are achuta, or untouchable. The primordial being does not claim them. Untouchables are outcasts-people considered too impure, too polluted, to rank as worthy beings. Prejudice defines their lives, particularly in the rural areas, where nearly threequarters of India’s people live. Untouchables are shunned, insulted, banned from temples and higher caste homes, made to eat and drink from separate utensils in public places, and, in extreme but not uncommon cases, are raped, burned, lynched, and gunned down.

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The ancient belief system that created the Untouchables overpowers modern law. While India’s constitution forbids caste discrimination and specifically abolishes Untouchability, Hinduism, the religion of 80 percent of India’s population, governs daily life with its hierarchies and rigid social codes. Under its strictures, an Untouchable parent gives birth to an Untouchable child, condemned as unclean from the first breath. Yet Untouchables don’t look different from other India” citizens. Their skin is the same color. They don’t wear rags; they are not covered with sores. They walk the same streets and attend the same schools. [...] But despite outward signs of normalcy, Untouchables may as well wear a scarlet tattoo on their foreheads to advertise their status. “You cannot hide your caste,” insists Sukhadeo Thorat, a faculty member at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi and among the few Untouchables in India with a Ph.D. in economics. “You can try to disguise it, but there are so many ways to slip up. A Hindu will not feel confident developing a social relationship without knowing your background. Within a couple of months, your caste will be revealed.” Family name, village address, body language all deliver clues, but none so much as occupation. Untouchables perform society’s “unclean work”-work that involves physical contact with blood, excrement, and other bodily “defilements” as defined by Hindu law. Untouchables cremate the dead, clean latrines, cut umbilical cords, remove dead animals from the roads, tan hides, and sweep gutters. These jobs, and the status of Untouchability, are passed down for generations. Even the vast number of Untouchables who work at “clean” jobs, mostly low paying farm work for landlords, are considered impure. In an outwardly free society, Untouchables are trapped at the bottom of a system that can’t function without discrimination. Many people would point out that the crudest, most overt forms of discrimination have largely disappeared, the result of sporadic reform movements before and after India’s independence in 1947. It’s true that at least in the public sphere, Untouchables have made progress. [...] The 1950 constitution mandates a quota system that reserves seats in the federal legislature equal to the Untouchable share of the population: 15 percent.

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In legal and administrative parlance Untouchables are now known as the Scheduled Castes. Reserved spots extend to positions in state legislatures, village councils, civil service, and university classrooms. [...] employment in the vast Indian bureaucracy has lifted the living standard for some Untouchables, propelling thousands into the middle class. But for all the laws and regulations on the books, the hard heart of caste remains unmoved. [...] The Hindu caste system has its own instruction manual. The Laws of Manu, compiled at least 2,000 years ago by Brahman priests, prescribes for each varna what to eat, whom to marry, how to earn money, when to fight, how to keep clean, whom to avoid. “Manu is engraved inside every Hindu”,” said Umashankar Tripathy, a Brahman priest, [who...] hews to the words of Manu. He explained that as a Brahman he must uphold the code of purity, the basis for dividing society from top to bottom. “I do not eat meat or drink alcohol. I will not eat vegetables like ginger or onion that are grown in the ground. My mind should be as clean as my clothes.” A proper Brahman should never come in contact with an Untouchable, Tripathy instructed. “A Brahman wouldn’t even touch the feet of Gandhi,” he said, referring to the deified leader of India’s independence. “Gandhi was a Vaisya; Brahmans are superior” (O’Neill 2003). In such a review one may not omit Nepal, which until 2006 was the only Hindu state in the world Nepalese society, it is argued, is divided into castes, religions, and ethnic groups rather than economic classes (Berreman 1979; Sharma 1977). This contention, as even the previous discussion of India shows, is incorrect; one may at best consider which of given forms of social stratification is most salient in a given society, whether or not-as is the case in Nepal-”Hindu customs, values, and traditions are deeply ingrained in society and are nurtured in the various institutions of state as well. Caste constitutes an enduring form of social inequality despite national legislation that outlaws caste discrimination” (Stash and Hannum 2001, 354). “It is an integral part of the social structure and divides people into different ranks and status. Membership in these caste structures is permanent and one cannot move from one caste to the other. It is a social system with strong hierarchies, and those at the top dominate those at the bottom of the social hierarchy. These divisions are

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particularly rigid because one is born into a caste and remains in it until death. In such a static and hierarchical social system, power, status and prestige are vested in those who are fortunate enough to be born in higher castes. The lowest caste is devoid of proper representation and considers itself fortunate if its needs and demands are met by officials who belong to the higher caste”. It has to be added that many aspects of caste hierarchies persist in modern Africa, the aforementioned South Africa’s apartheid being only an extreme manifestation of what are wider encountered processes. “In the Yatenga region in Burkina Faso, it is still common to see people refusing to drink from the same calabash or sil on the same mat as a blacksmith. The attitude towards so-called “caste” people remains. “It stains whole areas of public and political life. “The blacksmiths are the victims of a real apartheid” says Zoiome. “Forced to live apart, they are held in contempt by other people.” This may mean that they cannot marry outside their caste. [...] Penda Mbow, historian at the University of Cheikh Ania Diop in Dakar, Senegal, says: “I am in favour of people marrying for love. But because caste remains so important, [...] I would rather marry someone from my own caste. There will be fewer problems” (New Internationalist 2005). The reason advanced by the aforementioned scholars for why caste (as clientship and relations of kinship within exploitative relations of production) exists in contemporary India, is that capitalist relations require caste relations to reproduce itself in a postcolonial setting. Yet another reason is that caste processes disorganized class formation (Mencher 1975). Social reproduction of capitalism and disorganization of class formation are why caste is not simply an atavism in today’s India. The truth of the matter is that capitalism in India gives rise to the peculiar configuration of class-caste relations. As Omvedt (1992:131) writes, “class and caste are no longer absolutely correlated: economic differentiation has affected almost every caste.” This internal differentiation of castes has meant that virtually all castes, regardless of their rank in the ritual hierarchy, have members in different class positions (agricultural labor, small and middle peasantry, capitalist farmers). It has also meant that whereas capitalist farmers are the least differentiated in terms of caste (being mostly from the upper castes), it is the rural proletarians who are the most differentiated in terms of caste (Omvedt 131). In other words,

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upper castes are diverse in class terms and lower classes are diverse in caste terms. At the same time, there is a kind of overlap of both those orders: suffice it to note that the members of the lowest caste are in 90 per cent landless, and a lot of them are engaged in the informal or lumpeneconomy. But even more significant from the standpoint of socio-economic structuralism is the aforementioned dichotomy's theoretical foundation. The characteristic principle of caste should be translated into strictly analytical terms to mean the lack of ownership of both labour and quasilabour power. More specifically, in the latter case one should speak about some severe limitations of the use of one’s own quasi- labour power rather than a complete dispossession. The author of the textbook is generally right in characterising class systems in opposite terms which should be understood as ownership of labour power pertaining to typical capitalist employees. This should not be taken to mean that the latter are deprived of ascriptive characteristics. On the other hand, his treatment of class as a subtype of stratification is erroneous. The fact that such a view seems fairly widespread suggests that there is indeed a need for clarifying what the distinction between the two respective variants of social differentiation consists of.

CHAPTER XV ANOTHER BBC’S SURVEY OFFSHOOT

While the BBC-sponsored survey and resultant study of Savage et al. has been analysed in the respective earlier section in the book, course of this discussion several pointed criticisms advanced by Harriett Bradley have been cited. (2014) The aforementioned researcher does not confine herself, though, to a critical analysis alone, as she endeavours to outline an alternative class typology, which merits mention. As opposed to Savage et al., she does not draw on Bourdieu, which from the viewpoint of this author should be regarded as a merit and a manifestation less than impressive ardour to jump on the bandwagon (given that for reasons explicable in terms of the sociology of knowledge rather than epistemology). This does not necessarily mean that Bradley’s selfidentification of her schema, consisting of three, possibly four, classes, as developed “within the Marxo-Weberian tradition” should be accepted without reservation. To be sure, the broad claim which is to refer to all the classes distinguished: “These classes are defined by their position within the arrangements of the economy” (Bradley 2014) does not pose any problem in that regard, as indeed for both classics social classes were part and parcel of the economy. But this is just a bare minimum, and the further we go, the more issues show up. Overall, the list encompasses”the elite, the middle class, the working class, these broad groupings being sub-divided into a number of fractions. The precariat (the latest successor to a class previously distinguished as the lumpenproletariat, the reserve army of labour, the underclass or the labour surplus class) might be seen as distinctive enough to constitute a fourth class, or alternatively as being the most disadvantaged fraction of the working class” (Bradley 2014). Even this introductory formulation brings to light a few problems.The approach tothe precariat is disturbing; the author suggests that each of the alternative approaches listed is somehow equivalent, not attempting to indicate the best one or rank those definitions, which would also compel some kind of conceptual justification, which at present is missing. To be frank, the conceptualisation of other categories does fare little better.

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It is difficult to judge whether the very term “elite”, which also in its other guises has aroused serious reservations has made a faulty definition. “The elite class are defined primarily by their possession of wealth (in terms of land, property, shares and investments, ownership of companies), although they may also earn high salaries (as politicians, for example). Among the elite one can distinguish a subset, often referred to as the 'super-rich”. Stephen Ackroyd (2012) has researched extensively into this group of people, whom he estimates as 0.01 per cent of the population (as opposed to the 1% made famous by the Occupy slogan). The importance of this group outweighs its size, however; these are the movers and shakers of global neoliberal capital. As Ackroyd emphasises, they are themselves a global class, having wealth, properties and investments based in a number of countries and being themselves often deracinated and Internationally mobile in the way described by Bauman (2000). London is an important sphere of operation for the super-rich” Considering that what has been announced at the outset was a class rather than strata classification, the aforementioned definition resembles more the latter than the former; the relation to capital of that purported class is very unclear, and “wealth”, 'superrich”, etc. have their roots in the stratification vocabulary. The stratisfactory character of the subsequent concept of the middle classes is all the more evident. Worse still, the author cannot maintain a unitary line of criteria, offering an incoherent mess instead. Thus, the reader is told that “though they may possess wealth (housing and shares)”which would liken them to the elite, it fully turns out that the middle classes “are defined by income”, and thus a different criterion than in the case of the first class. “They are high-level wage-earners, who command their earnings on the base of qualifications, skills and appropriately valued experience. The most advantaged fraction of the middle class are the traditional professionals (doctors, lawyers, engineers) and the managerial elite: in fact, Goldthorpe’s service class. Less advantaged are the lower-middle classes, qualified but less well-paid, such as nurses, council workers and technicians. It may also be possible to identify a middle-middle class of highly educated, less rewarded professions: teachers, social workers and computer specialists. Some of the students in the Paired Peers study from this kind of background identified this as the 'squeezed middle”. They saw their parents as neither poor nor rich: they were not eligible for bursaries, but their parents struggled to help them with fees and loans”. Besides, the initial assumption regarding class as an economic concept has gone with the

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wind; neither social workers, nor teachers or nurses, with some exceptions, concerning those employed in the private establishments, do not engage in any economic activities, and the importance of this observation goes beyond the present context, as it points to the essential gap in the conceptual apparatus of the theorist under consideration. To distinguish private clinics from public hospitals, for instance, the notion of ownership is needed, and there are no indications whatsoever that Bradley is willing to deploy or aware of the relevance of the notion concerned for her argument. And this, needless to say, puts a big question mark over her putative association to Marx and Weber. The next example does not alter the situation, although it concerns “the working class, defined by both Marx and Weber as those who have nothing to sell but their labour. It consists both of the lower-paid wageearners, distinguished by lack of higher educational qualifications, although they may have NVQs or other forms of certification, and also those who have labour to sell but nobody to buy it: those dependent on benefits. The working class is smaller than it used to be, partly because of the shift to services, partly because of the upgrading of the occupational structure in the post-war decades and the concomitant expansion of higher education. It is perhaps the most transformed of the classes. There are various discernible fractions within it: a relatively affluent and aspirant upper-working class, including skilled manual workers and the growing ranks of “white van men” (redundant factory workers and mechanics who have utilised their skills in self-employment) a feminised middle grouping of low-paid workers in retail, care and leisure services; and an unemployed or underemployed benefit-dependent group.” (Bradley 2014). Unfortunately, there is no cue given why a specific group has been named a fraction instead of a fully-fledged class, not to mention the basic criterion for the working class, which, as argued earlier, is INADEQUATE. Workers do not sell their labour, but lease out their labour power. And this makes a lot of theoretical difference. The possible class membership of students is also unclear in light of Bradley’s statement; in fact, they may belong to social estates or classes-in case wage or salary constitutes the main source of livelihood for a given student. And finally, the aforementioned precariat, whose class distinctiveness is justified by Bradley in an original fashion-”we may conceptualise the “precariat” as a separate class, since it is a heterogeneous group which contains highly educated folk as well as the very low-skilled (I contest the view of Savage et al. that the precariat is distinguished by lack of all capitals): armies of temps, cleaners, classroom assistants and hourly paid

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lecturers, call-centre workers, fruit-pickers, bar and restaurant staff. The precariat is defined by its marginal and insecure relation to employment, in and out of various types of temporary and part-time work and inferior contracts; its ranks contain young people, including students and “graduates without employment”, migrant workers, minority ethnic workers, women and men recently made redundant. It is not itself new, as indicated above, but its constitution is new, with the addition of skilled and well-educated workers who suffer from the policies of austerity and neoliberal globalism” (Bradley 2014). Discontents of neoliberalism and globalisation are beyond question, but it is another matter whether this kind of factors should constitute the backbone of a class definition. But even more importantly, Bradley does not clarify why the socio-economic heterogeneity should be an argument for the existence of that heterogeneous class; another perplexing aspect of Bradley's discussion is, apparently drawn from otherwise criticised by her treatment based on Bourdieusian capitals. In a nutshell, Bradley appears far more convincing as a critic than as creator of a credible alternative to the framework with which she, in most cases rightly, takes issue. And while many would like to stand on the arms of the giants of the past, this is easier said than done.

CHAPTER XVI RALPH DAHRENDORF’S CONFLICT THEORY OF SOCIAL DIFFERENTIATION

Some of the notions mentioned above such as control or bipolar hierarchy are also present in Dahrendorf’s theory (1959). We deliberately do not place in the heading any reference to either class or stratification, since in the case of the German sociologist, as will be argued, we are dealing with a mixed system having some properties of both alternative approaches. Darendorf’s starting point is that neither structural functionalism nor Marxism alone provides an acceptable perspective on advanced society. He claims that structural functionalists neglects to the realities of social conflict and that Marx defined class too narrowly and in a historicallyspecific context. Furthermore, he believes that traditional Marxism ignores consensus and integration in modern social structures. There are a number of serious problems with those statements. Firstly, the said division of social theories into integration and conflict ones, or, in another wording, statics and dynamics, equilibrium and change etc. fails to take account of the fundamental fact that each structural theory contains at least implicitly a theory of change and the reverse is also true there can be no theory of change which would not refer at least tacitly to a definite conception of structure. If one defines a structure and identifies within it a set of core components, one by the same token points to the most likely source of a qualitative change of that structural whole. And, similarly, you cannot speak about change without assuming what is subject to that change. Dahrendorf’s characterisation is thus unfair, Parsons” structuralfunctional theory of social system, even ignoring, at the moment, his writings on evolution of societies, includes a better or worse theory of social change. Likewise, Marx’s theory of conflict and development is inextricably interwoven with his detailed conception of the structure and functioning of a society undergoing given transformations. Secondly, Dahrendorf commits an error which is, to be sure, frequent, but this fact does by no means justify him-as will be argued in more detail below.

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A bipolar conception of class is indeed over-simplified, but it is doubtful whether it could be attributed to Marx. The question of scientific fairness may be important, but what is crucial from the perspective of Dahrendorf’s own analytical framework is that he adopts the very approach he criticises and declaratively rejects. Be that as it may, Dahrendorf combines elements from both of these perspectives to develop his own theory concerning class conflict in post capitalist society, as it is dubbed in his work. Dahrendorf claims that capitalism has undergone major changes since Marx initially developed his theory on class conflict. This new system of capitalism, which he identifies as post capitalism, is characterised by diverse class structure and a fluid system of power relations. Thus, it involves a much more complex system of inequality. Dahrendorf contends that post capitalist society that has institutionalized class conflict into state and economic spheres. For example, class conflict has been habituated through unions, collective bargaining, the court system, and legislative debate. In effect, the severe class strife typical of Marx’s time is no longer relevant. Dahrendorf believed, however, that Marx’s theory could be updated to reflect modern society. He rejects Marx’s two class system as too simplistic and overly focused on property ownership. Due to the rise of the joint stock company, ownership does not necessarily reflect control of economic production in modern society. Instead of describing the fundamental differences of class in terms of property, Dahrendorf argues that we must “replace the possession, or non-possession, of effective private property by the exercise of, or exclusion from, authority as the criterion of class formation: “By social class shall be understood such organised or unorganised collectivities of individuals as share manifest or latent interests arising from and related to the authority structure of imperatively coordinated associations. It follows from the definitions of latent and manifest interests that social classes are always conflict groups” (Dahrendorf 1959:238).

According to Dahrendorf, Marx's notion of class is justifiable because in his time capitalism was dominated by owner-managed firms where ownership and authority were concentrated in the same hands. In contemporary economy, however, the most representative form of business organisation is a joint-stock company with dispersed share ownership. In this situation control over the means of production is

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wielded by professional managers, and not by legal owners. This shows, in Dahrendorf’s opinion, that the priority order of ownership and power should be reversed, it is no longer, as in Marx’s time, that ownership entails authority, but, contrariwise, property is subordinated to authority, is its special case. It may be added that Dahrendorf is merely the best known proponent of this view which is shared, inter alia, by such neo-Weberians as Parkin (1979:46) and Giddens (1981:60) who treat exploitation as but a subspecies of the more general phenomenon of domination. As is argued extensively in the book, this view of ownership or control is false. Or more precisely, even if one accepts that property equates power or control, it does not alter the fact that this property yields income which calls for an adequate term. In other words, Dahrendorf’s solution would amount in this case just to a semantic issue. In addition, his treatment of hired managers as allegedly having anything common with ownership of capital is empirically and theoretically misplaced. It does not take consideration of a variety of equity-based forms of executive compensation, including stock options, and even more critically, of the size of their pay which for this very reason, cannot be viewed as simply pay for work, salary reflecting their productive contribution or whatever. A simple comparison of executive earnings with shareholders” incomes in the form of dividends and/or capital gains on the one hand and, say, army commanders whose job is, if anything, more stressful and responsible than one of a corporate manager will show that the former comprise a large surplus over what can be counted as their earned compensation. Where do such surpluses come from? The only answer possible is that from the same source as owners” profits, that is, from the surplus value. Piketty and Saez found that in 1970 the top ten corporate CEOs earned about forty-nine times as much as the average wage earner. By 2000, the ratio had reached the astronomical level of 2,173 to 1. There is no way one could justify disparities that size; to be sure, from certain claims of economists or other champions of the managerial class it would follow that the rank-and-file workers constitute the heavy burden for their employing companies, and accordingly their managers often seem to be concerned with reductions of their workforce. Yes, stockholders also appear to like cost savings of that sort. But imagine that each and every corporate management managed to make large redundancies, so large in fact that the number of employees in each of those firms dropped to zero. While such a situation may be thought of-as a thought experiment, it is unworkable in the real world; who would produce the surplus value on

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which all classes and estates depend, in one form or the other, for their livelihood? To pre-empt an eventual argument that their pay reflects equally high value that corporate executives create for their shareholders, the truth is, “the rate of growth of executive pay has also outstripped the rate of growth of profits. For example, between the periods 1993–1995 and 2001–2003, the ratio of total compensation to the top-five executives of public companies to those companies” total earnings increased from 4.8 percent to 10.3 percent. Despite the decline in the average well-being of people in the bottom 90 percent of the population, because the population grew by approximately 30 percent, this group probably still received about 30 per-some economics of class 1920 monthly review/July-august 2006 cent of the increase in the GDP. In addition, the GDP does not exactly equal the income figures of the Internal Revenue Service, but the figures are close enough to conclude that the top 10 percent of the population received the lion's share of all economic growth between 1970 and 2000” (Perelman 2002). Indeed, even on the basis of conventional economic analysis, the specific ownership, and thereby class character of top corporate executives can be demonstrated. Research points to exercised stock options and bonuses as playing the crucial role in the explosive income growth of corporate elites in recent years (which by the same token accounts also for the increase in incomes of the upper 1.0 per cent, or some fraction of the latter magnitude). The juxtaposition of those two categories is not coincidental; Between 1989 and 2010, compensation of chief executive officers grew from 1.14 to 2.06 times that of the incomes of the top 0.1 percent households, the metric Kaplan (2012b) employs to measure CEO pay relative to that of other 2 In 2007, according to the Capital IQ database, there were 38,824 executives in publicly held firms. There were 9,692 in the top 0.1 of wage earners, a group whose average W-2 earnings were $4,400,028. Using Mishel, Bivens, Gould, and Shierholz (2012) estimates of top 0.1 wages, the executive wages comprised 13.3 of total top 0.1 percent wages. One can gauge the bias of including executives in the denominator by noting that the ratio of executive wages to all top 0.1 percent wages in 2007 was 2.14 but the ratio of executive wages to nonexecutive wages was 2.32. The reader could be forgiven for being impressed by those figures, all the more that are cannot but be underestimated, owing, inter alia, to the absence of information on the number and compensation of executives in privately held firms; the IRS reports there were nearly 15,000 corporate tax returns in 2007 of firms with assets exceeding $250 million, indicating there are many more executives of large firms than just those in publicly held firms.

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“CEO pay relative to top 0.1 percent wage earners grew even more, from 2.55 to 4.70, in that same time frame, a rise (2.15) equal to the pay of more than two very high earners. The log ratio of CEO relative pay grew roughly 60 log points from 1989 to 2010 using either top household income or wage earners as the comparison” (Bivens, Mishel 2013:70).

Moreover, “CEO pay relative to top 0.1 percent wage earners grew even more, from 2.55 to 4.70, in that same time frame, a rise (2.15) equal to the pay of more than two very high earners. The log ratio of CEO relative pay grew roughly 60 log points from 1989 to 2010 using either top household income or wage earners as the comparison” (Bivens, Mishel 2013:70).

Kaplan’s (2012b:14) ratio of CEO pay to top household incomes in 2010 (2.06) was nearly double the historical average, 1.11, a gain roughly equivalent to the total income of a top 0.1 percent household. CEO pay relative to top wage earners in 2010 was 4.70 in 2010, 1.62 higher than the historical average (a gain of 1.5 high wage earners). From another angle, the increase in the logged CEO pay premium since 1979, and particularly since 1989, was far in excess of the rise in the college–high school wage premium which is widely and appropriately considered to have substantially grown. Furthermore, CEO compensation rose 15 percent between 2010 and 2012”. (Bivens, Mishel 2013:70). Strictly speaking, many of the terms utilised above are not appropriate descriptors of the type of economic relations in which top corporate executives are engaged, as in particular they might suggest that what is at stake is an income earned on a par with other wage-earners. In fact, nothing could be further from the truth. Thus, Kruse, Blasi, and Freeman (2011) note that in 2006 roughly $65.1 billion in what they misleadingly term labor compensation was (if the CEO and the janitor are considered under one and the same rubric, then such a category serves only to cloud the key socio-economic divisions) actually the result of exercised stock options, while Jaquette, Knittel, and Russo (2003) have estimated that total 'spread income” (the exercise of nonqualified stock options) was $126 billion in 2000, and was even $78 billion in 2001, following the stock market decline, which are truly mindboggling sums. Largely on the basis of the pivotal role of Stock options and bonuses in the compensation of high-level corporate executives, Bebchuk and Fried (2004) conclude that top executive pay is to a great extent the result of rent-extraction. One of their arguments points out that a

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well-designed contract for executive pay should offer rewards based on relative performance. For example, an executive for a company in an industry where stock prices are down across the board should be rewarded for performing less poorly than others, while an executive who runs a company in which the stock price is up, but up by less than every other firm in the industry, should not be rewarded. Meanwhile, real-world compensation arrangements for chief executive officers are typically “camouflaged” to look like they are the result of contractual arrangements that reward relative performance, but generally they by any means are performance-related. The said camouflage could be illustrated by the twin practices of hiring of compensation consultants and the construction of “peer groups” to benchmark top executive salaries. While Taken at its face value, benchmarking to insure that managers” pay is not excessive looks like a rational corporate practice, the truth is that these consultants and peergroup constructions are commonly used, conversely, to justify inflated corporate pay. Bizjack, Lemmon, and Nguyen (2011), for example, find ample evidence that “peer groups are constructed in a manner that biases compensation upward.” Another example of such camouflage or stratagem is construction of stock options-an instrument that could be consistent with aligning manager and shareholder interests-that largely reward the luck of whether the stock market rises or falls, rather than specific performance. Bertrand and Mullainathan (2001), for instance, have found that the pay for luck is actually as large as pay for performance, which they interpret as evidence in support of the aforementioned rent-extraction hypothesis for pay of chief executive officers. By way of another illustration, Bebchuk and Fried (2010) note that 'standard pay arrangements have commonly failed to restrict the use of financial instruments that can weaken or eliminate entirely the incentive effects of equity-based instruments awarded as part of compensation arrangements.” They note that in a study by Schwab and Thomas (2006) of 375 employment contracts governing pay of chief executive officers, not a single one restricted hedging away the risk of the option grants. Yet another piece of evidence that the U.S. class-biased corporate governance has allowed the class of corporate executives to receive inefficiently high pay is the high ratio of the pay of US chief executive officers relative to their international peers. Fernandes, Ferreira, Matos, and Murphy (2012) show US compensation for chief executive officers in 2006 to be twice

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that of other advanced nations at both the median and mean. A survey by Towers Perrin, a consulting firm, e.g., shows US CEO compensation was triple that of other advanced nations in 2003, up from 2.1 times foreign CEO compensation in 1988 (Mishel, Bernstein, and Allegretto 2004, table 2.47). Towers Perrin also reports that US CEO compensation was 44 times that of the average worker whereas the non-US ratio was 19. The case that incentives for rent-shifting have changed is completely unambiguous. From the late 1960s into the mid-1980s, in particular, top federal marginal income tax rates fell substantially. For example, the top marginal income tax rate was above 70 percent in 1970, but had fallen to 28 percent in 1986. Those extremely high marginal income tax rates in previous decades mainly applied to the upper slice of the top 1 percent of the income distribution-but as we have argued, the rise in incomes for that group is a major factor in increasing the share of income going to the top 1 percent. The incentive effect of lower marginal tax rates could well affect top incomes if they are significantly composed of rents. For example, in the model of Bebchuk and Fried (2004), well-placed individuals who have some ability to shift rents will balance the costs and benefits of exerting more influence to boost their own incomes, where 3 This measure of compensation uses realized value of options rather than the estimated value of options granted. Estimated pay (using options granted rather than options realized) actually fell 4 percent between 2010 and 2012. Kaplan (2012b:22) argues that realized pay is the preferred measure of performance: “Critics confuse estimated pay-what the boards give to the CEOs as estimated pay-and realized pay. The key question is whether CEOs who perform better earn more in realized pay.” [...] we focus on Kaplan’s preferred measure of “realized” pay, but the qualitative pattern is much the same if looking at “estimated” pay over the entire time period. Josh Bivens and Lawrence Mishel 71one of the costs is whether they encounter an “outrage constraint.” Lower marginal tax rates at top income levels will provide a greater incentive for well-placed individuals at that income level to spend more energy on rent-shifting. Piketty, Saez, and Stantcheva (2012) have shown that the link between falling marginal rates and higher pre-tax top 1 percent shares is significant both in time series data for the US as well as across countries. In their paper in this symposium, Alvarado, Atkinson, Piketty, and Saez discuss these issues.

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Policy and Institutional Changes beyond the Top 1 Percent We have been arguing so far mostly within a framework amendable to microeconomistsat least microeconomists of the broad-minded and institutionalist varietypositing that developments within specific sectors and occupational labor markets have boosted the ability of well-placed groups to redistribute rents their way. However, the levers of rent-shifting can include both changes that shift bargaining power to those at the top of income distribution generally and changes that subvert the bargaining power of those at the bottom and middle. In Mishel, Bivens, Gould, and Shierholz (2012), we document the ways in which a range of policy developments over the last generation have disproportionately damaged the wage prospects of low- and moderatewage workers, including the declining real value of the minimum wage and the failure to update labor law to provide a level playing field in the face of growing employer hostility to union organizing efforts. Indeed, many of these policy changes were intentional and pursued with much greater vigor in the last generation than the previous one (Hacker and Pierson 2010). There is considerable evidence that these kinds of institutional changes can shift rents.4 Too often the assumption is that policy variables like the real value of the minimum wage cannot be relevant to top 1 percent incomes as they are, by definition, nonbinding on high wages. Yet one person’s income is another person’s cost. If a declining value of the minimum wage, or increased effectiveness in blocking union organizing, keeps wages in check at, say, Walmart, then it is hardly a shock that this could well lead to higher pay for corporate managers and higher returns to Walmart shareholders (for example, Draca, Machin, and Van Reenen, 2011, offer evidence that in the UK, higher minimum wages reduce firm profitability-but with no significant impact on employment). 4 Many studies, while not focusing on the top 1 percent, are strongly consistent with the interpretation that institutional changes can shift economic rents, which in turn can affect the level of inequality. For example, studies of the minimum wage line by DiNardo, Fortin, and Lemeiux (1996), Lee (1999), and Autor, Manning, and Smith (2010) have identified strong effects of the minimum wage in driving “lower-tail” inequality, while numerous other studies like Card and Krueger (1995), Allegretto, Dube, and Reich (2011), and Manning (2003) have not found

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employment losses following these increases in the minimum wage. The combination of these results strongly suggests that the primary effect of minimum wage increases is to redistribute economic rents, rather than to affect employment levels. Levy and Temin (2007) have identified the breakdown of a range of rentshifting institutions, which they shorthand “The Treaty of Detroit,” as driving inequality between the top (roughly 90th percentile) and middle of the wage and income distribution. Further, it is likely that the role of globalization-a mixture of exogenous and policy-induced changes-also looms large. Textbook Stolper–Samuelson models explicitly show (at least in the older textbooks!) that trade openness can increase capital incomes and reduce labor compensation in rich countries like the United States. Rodrik (1999) and Jayadev (2007) have similarly noted that capital account openness, which is largely a policy choice, could well tilt bargaining power away from workers and towards capital-owners, resulting in higher capital shares not just in developed countries (the standard Stolper–Samuelson result) but in developing countries as well-a nonstandard result that has shown up strongly in the data. By putting a brake on top 1 Percent on the basis of his assumptions, Dahrendorf argues that society can be split up into the “command class” and the “obey class” and class conflict should refer to situations of struggle between those with authority and those without. However, there are several problems with that notion. Firstly, Dahrendorf claims that all conflicts only involve two contending parties. This view of conflict appears too simplistic to apply to any advanced society, the very same inaccuracy Dahrendorf accuses Marx of. Furthermore, on the base of Dahrendorf’s theoretical premises, one can in fact distinguish innumerable classes. For Dahrendorf classes are present in each so-called imperatively-co-ordinated group, be it an non-professional theatrical troupe, football club or a business corporation. In each such case one can discern two opposed groups: superiors and the subordinated. Needless to say, this leads to rather odd conclusions. From his definition of social class, if we see all authority relations as class relations, it follows that a conflict between parent and child, for instance, is a class conflict. Besides, he fails to establish the difference between authority resulting from truly legitimate power and authority stemming from a situation where a subordinate is regularly obedient to a superior for other reasons.

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This lack of distinction even more multiplies based on those authority relations social classes, thus allowing for an infinite number of classes, which in turn removes significant meaning from the concept of class. There is more to this than that, though. Now if all the members of the former groups were to be included in the broad societal ruling class, it does not end the matter. For an awkward question arises: should all without exception members of the so-called command classes in each of a variety of imperatively co-ordinated associations be included in the overall societal command class? This raises doubts as almost each such individual may belong to another group, this time in the character of a subordinate. This must mean that Dahrendorf’s supposedly cohesive societal superior class extinguishes. But let us suppose that, for the sake of argument, all such persons of a binary and inconsistent-from the standpoint of the conflict theory of class-membership are excluded from the picture. This does not salvage Dahrendorf’s theory either. For one must ask what social non-trivial characteristics and interests have in common, say, company presidents, prime ministers, heads of tasks groups, university chairpersons, orchestra conductors, heads of a multitude of non-governmental organisations, mafia godfathers and so forth. An answer is again straightforward: nothing. Thus, we must conclude that an attempt to construct an overarching class of authority holders on Dahrendorf’s analytical grounds has failed. It is not only because the German theorist views his units of social differentiations in hierarchical terms that we do hesitate to refer to them as classes. For Dahrendorf adopts another assumption incompatible with ones underlying class theories. He claims, namely, in full accord, to be sure, with his own framework of reference that his conflict classes are historically universal. And finally, his conflict classes are not exclusively economic groupings, as in either classic Marxian or Weberian theory. And the circumstance that they can be found throughout society likens his approach to that of stratification. And this is true despite his (or given the situation, his supporters and followers”) likely protestations to the contrary, as in Dahrendorf’s opinion the concept of stratum is static, whereas the concept of class is dynamic. This is a typical half-truth. It is the case, to be sure, that social strata, being analytical categories and not real entities cannot create social groups in the same sense that social classes (and social estates, for that matter, more of which later) due to their common socio-economic position in the structure of property relations and common interests stemming from it can. But this statement hardly refers to his own superficial units misleadingly termed social classes. As a matter of fact, Dahrendorf’s theory of social differentiation bears the closest resemblance to elite theory, which will form the subject matter of a

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later chapter. It is within the framework of that theory that one finds a dichotomous division of population into the ruling elite, sometimes termed also ruling class (e.g. by Mosca), and the rest or masses subject to that overarching authority. The above critique does not mean playing down on our part the relevance of power or authority relations. On the contrary, it will be seen that they have a guaranteed place within our own scheme of social differentiation without (hopefully), however, disadvantageous consequences of Dahrendorf’s approach. Namely, Proposition 3 of our theory of labour power ownership, comprising around 20 such theorems, holds that: lower horizontal socialization of the labour power (technical autonomy in the work process) is combined with a lower vertical sociation (authority autonomy, independent place in the hierarchy of command). Connectedly, a few words should be devoted to another theorist whose approach is similar to that of Dahrendorf in two crucial respects: both in the choice of the specific foundation of class and in a heterogeneous quality of a classificatory scheme built on that basis, i.e. related to stratification theory. “Lenski adopts a similar position to Dahrendorf, although he tends to pursue a more eclectic usage of “class,” including a variety of other dimensions besides authority. Lenski (1966) first defines class broadly as “an aggregation of persons in a society who stand in a similar position with respect to some form of power, privilege, or prestige (Lenski 1966:75). He then goes on to say that “if our goal is to answer the question “who gets what and why?”... Power classes must be our chief concern,” where power class is defined as “an aggregation of persons in a society who stand in a similar position” (Wright 1979). Wright rightly notes that “authority definitions of class tend to see authority itself as a unidimensional relation of domination/subordination within a given organisation. No systematic theoretical distinctions are made concerning the object of authority. What matters is having authority or power; little is said about how it is used. Conceptions of class in terms of authority relations thus tend to emphasize the form of class relations over the content of those relations. Finally, because of this formal character of the conception of class, authority definitions generally do not provide a sustained account of why social conflict should be structured around authority relations. Implicitly,

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one of two arguments is usually made. Either it is assumed that human beings somehow have an intrinsic drive for power for its own sake, and thus the division between the powerful and the powerless intrinsically constitutes the basis for social cleavage; or it is argued that power and authority enable the powerful to appropriate various kinds of resources, and that as a result the powerless will attempt to gain power for instrumental reasons. The evidence for the first of these assumptions is particularly weak. People may have an intrinsic drive to control their own lives, but there is little evidence that most people have a basic need or drive to control other people's lives. In any event, empirically most struggles over power are struggles over the use of power, not simply the fact of power. The second assumption is thus more plausible. But in order for it to provide a sound basis for an explanation of the relationship of authority to social conflict, it is necessary to develop a systematic theory of the relationship between authority and the appropriation of resources. Most discussions of authority lack such an account” (1979). Given the above criticism, it might appear somewhat surprising that the American sociologist introduces the concept criticised by him to his own definition of class. The explanation of that puzzle lies in Wright’s hope that his approach avoids the drawbacks identified above. He states: “Classes, in these terms, are most pivotally defined by the relations of appropriation of the surplus product and secondarily defined by the relations of control over the technical division of labor and relations of authority” (1979:18). This approach has come to constitute much more than merely a transient trait of Wright’s perspective, as evidenced, inter alia, by “the“ elaboration of the concept of class in terms of exploitation and domination” in a later work, in which he also makes a more general case for “a concept of class rooted in the linkage between social relations of production on the one hand and exploitation and domination on the other [that in his view] should be of sociological interest” (2005:28). However, the above definition is in effect akin to Dahrendorf’s conflict approach. Adding authority to exploitation as an additional dimension of class relations does not go beyond the bipolar view of the class structure as composed of antagonistic classes which, for reasons discussed in a multisided manner in this book is untenable; what is more, this new conceptual addition even strengthens this view as relations of authority are inherently hierarchic. In addition, originality of Wright’s position is problematic not only owing to its affinity to that adopted by Dahrendorf, but also because Wright (1979, 1985) obtains class categories by cross-

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classifying property with authority in the manner earlier proposed by Ossowski (1963). Wright’s reductionism has been noticed by other writers as well: “By conflating class, structure and exploitation, Wright’s class theory becomes circular and self-validating, because no concept of class itself can be applied to test the class effects of the exploitation mechanism. The view that identifies only two pre-given, well-formed classes under capitalism conflates exploitation with class, the abstract with the concrete, and the provisional with the “real”. […] For Marx, while the abstract foundation is posited as the ultimate historical end point of capitalist development, it does not equate to capitalist society at any preceding historical conjuncture. In Marx’s discourse, the practical conflation of the abstract and the concrete is predicted only as the eventual outcome of the logic of capital, which generates increasingly extensive and intensive proletarianisation. [...] Within Marx’s work, there are indications of complex countertendencies to the prognosis that the logic of capital will uniformly proletarianise the class-in-itself conditions of the immense majority. First, work practices under capitalism develop unevenly, and do not all tend uniformly to the same real-subordination end point. Complex and uneven class effects are implied when some areas of work do not reach this stage while other areas go beyond it. In particular, Marx’s analysis in the Grundrisse indicates other tendencies beyond uniform real subordination of the immense majority. Second, a class-struggle perspective that includes labour and capital as active makers of history suggests an uneven process of development involving labour’s resistance and capital’s counter-movement, which, in turn, implies both a more open-ended capitalist dynamic and further diversification of the circumstances of the wage-earning proletariat.” (Nielson 2005).

While in his later writings Wright attempts, at least in part, to attenuate his previous position, these efforts-owing to some more general failings of his approach-do not go far enough and are neither consistent nor systematic. Thus, he-which in fact self-criticism is by no means couched in those terms, as though a theoretical U-turn were small potatoes, to be taken for granted: “no questions asked- says that “this polarized image is also misleading, for in concrete societies located in time and space class relations are never this simple. One of the tasks of class analysis is to give precision to complexity and explore its ramifications” (Wright 2005:12).

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Granted, this contention is true as far as it goes, but the proof of the pudding is in its eating, and the kind of empirical illustrations Wright provides amount to anecdotal references rather anything like systematic proof. Thus, Wright’s best examples of the pattern according to which “in most societies a variety of different kinds of class relations coexist and are linked together in various ways are slave class relations in the American South before the Civil War, Certain kinds of sharecropping in the United States in the early twentieth century, or statist class relations in today’s advanced capitalist societies, albeit-it may be noted at spot-not even hint at what concretely the latter class relation should involve is offered; the truth of the matter is, the aforementioned exemplification speaks more to the weak spots in his approach than anything like strong sides-what is striking by its absence in Wright’s remarks is any reference to ownership, as though it would not be evident that his illustrative cases concern diverse modes of economic activity and, by the same token, diverse ownership structures. But there is the rub in that Wright has problems conceptualising ownership and its relationship to class, as has been shown above. This diagnosis is borne out by Wright’s other statements, e.g. the following one in which he argues that If articulation of different class relations refers to a situation in which distinct class relations exist in distinct units of production and then interact through external relations, interpenetration of different class relations is a situation in which within a single unit of production the distribution of rights and powers over assets combines aspects of two distinct types of class relations [... which] is still complexity in the form of class relations, not some other sort of social relation, since the social relations in question are still constituted by the unequal rights and powers of people over economically relevant assets” (2005:14). Thus, Wright is insistent that his conceptualisation touches only class as distinct from property relations, either failing to see their inextricable linkage or being unable to draw any analytic lessons from the latter-which, at the end of the day, amounts to much the same outcome What sort of outcome? Confusing, to say the least, and even logically suspect, as the following proposition clearly shows: “within the Marxist tradition, it is important not to lose sight of the fact that “class locations” designate the social positions occupied by individuals within a particular kind of social relation, class relations” (Wright 2005:15), which is based on an error termed ignotum per ignotum-one must not define “class location” by “class relations”. This criticism holds up even if Wright’s broad notion of social relations has much to be said for it: “The concept of social relation being used here does not imply rational choice theory or reductionist versions of methodological individualism” (2005:15).

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It is also for the aforementioned reason that Wright’s second argument for the complexity of real-world class structures to the effect that the rights and powers people can have with respect to a given resource are actually complex bundles of rights”(2005:12) serves mostly to highlight Wright’s dependence upon property rights theory and fails to contribute anything of substance to the issue it is targeted at, the underlying reason being that the seemingly multisided and “ecumenical” notion pertaining to property right theory is of problem-generating rather than problem-solving variety. Suffice it to ask how ownership should be treated in not that rare, after all, cases when the said property rights are partitioned among a wider group of people, as is typically the case, e.g. in modern corporations. To answer this question one must either pic one of the relations involved as one that stands out for this or that reason or resort to some other arbitrary option, neither of those solutions being satisfactory, though. Similarly, a related problem of multiclass location has been handled by Wright in not exactly revelatory manner, by the same token confirming that class analysis can hardly afford its lack of tying to economic ownership: “Individuals can hold two jobs which are differently located within social relations of production: a person can be a manager or a worker in a firm and self-employed in a second job. Such a person in effect is simultaneously in two class locations. A factory worker who moonlights as a self-employed carpenter is located within class relations in a more complex way than one who does not. Furthermore, some people within working-class locations within a capitalist firm may also own stocks (either in the firm in which they work or in other firms), and thus occupy, if only to a limited extent, a capitalist location as well. Workers in a firm with a real Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP) do not thereby cease to be in working-class locations within the class relations of capitalism”, but they are no longer merely in those locations: they are simultaneously in two class locations” (Wright 2005:13). If that discussion was meant to demonstrate the potency of own theoretical approach, it-at least to our mind-reveals the reverse-after all, what the Wright offers is a bare empiricist description, lacking any theoretical interpretation. What is more, knowing the theorist’s tool kit, it is safe to say that all indications are that this is no accidental, but final state of affairs. By contrast, having at one’s disposal a theory of socio-economic ownership with its concomitant notions of real and nominal ownership of capital, to name but a few, one is able, on a theoretical basis, argue whether and to what extent a worker who is simultaneously a shareholder is a capitalist; the same applies to the proprietary implications of ESOps

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and similar programmes. Likewise, in the event of holding two jobs, it is fully possible to decide non-arbitrarily what the class position of the individual in question is, using the yardstick of importance of particular sources of income. Furthermore, this procedure should and could be implemented without obliterating what peculiar features there are to such economic relations as the aforementioned moonlighting. Resting, as we do, on the theory of socio-economic ownership, that identification may be effected without a recourse to any such terminological inventions as Wright’s “contradictory class locations”. He explains his “conception of the middle class” as follows: “Managers and supervisors occupy a contradictory location between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. 2. Semiautonomous employees who retain relatively high levels of control over their immediate labor process occupy a contradictory location between the working class and the petty bourgeoisie. 3. Small employers occupy a contradictory location between the bourgeoisie and the petty bourgeoisie” (1979:27).

Our notions of ownership of capital and labour power permit as precise class identification of those categories as you can get. Wright’s term suggest, and rightly so, that a foreman is close to a worker in class terms. Our rendering of this affinity, though, is completely different. Insofar as he or she performs material labour, he or she is subject to capitalist exploitation since his/her labour produces surplus value. On the other hand, more complex and thus higher valued labour power entails a distinct class position. The latter consideration to an even greater extent applies to the mid-level managers. This class division connected to their more complex labour power is, as it turns out, reflected in the managers” awareness, albeit sometimes in not an altogether straightforward manner, as the following example drawn from construction shows: “You can’t really term it [site management] as earning your money. I always think to earn your money you’ve got to work hard for it. I don’t consider this to be work, I don’t know if that makes any kind of sense but I think work, I would relate it to physical work you know. This is just the lighter end isn’t it, really. You really get paid extortionately for doing no real work, but you’re paid for your knowledge aren’t you. It’s a strange thing to say, but using your brain isn’t really working I think” (Thiel 2007).

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Managers, technicians and engineers pose a serious problem also for other Marxist class theorists. This problem arises, it may be surmised, because for someone who is accustomed to an old scheme of two antagonistic classes it may be difficult how to determine the class location of those groups. At first glance, because they are, just as workers, employees, one should classify them as a part of the working class. That classification, it is easy to see, would be over-simplified, and overlooking many socio-economic differences between the categories in question. Hence, barring such unsatisfactory solutions as “the new working class”, most writers look for other approaches to the issue. For Carchedi (1977), the criterion that divides wage and salary earners into working-class and new-middle-class components is the distinction between what he calls the “function of the collective worker” and the “global function of capital.” The former is defined by Carchedi as “the production of use-values within a complex and differentiated labor process”; the latter is defined as “the control and surveillance of the labor process”—a form of control that Carchedi interprets as essential to the expropriation of surplus value and not merely a technical condition of production. Workers and the new middle class are alike in that both are separated from ownership of the means of production; however, the latter are distinguished from the working class by their participation (in varying degrees) in the global function of capital-that is, by their exercise of supervisory authority. Now this solution cannot be deemed satisfactory either, if only because corporate executives are by no means excluded from ownership of capital; quite the contrary, the upper, but also increasingly middle echelons of the managerial staff own substantial portfolios of stock. On the other hand, it is problematic whether, which is discussed elsewhere, managers can be en bloc considered as contributing nothing to use value of commodities. Should it be the case, we guess, they would not hold their jobs for long. In Poulantzas (1975) theory the working class is distinguished from the new middle class (or what he calls the “new petty bourgeoisie”) by three criteria. In addition to the basic economic criterion of class position (which he defines as the distinction between productive and unproductive labor), Poulantzas maintains that political and ideological relations also enter into the structural determination of class. By political and ideological relations he means those relations which secure the reproduction of the dominant mode of exploitation. At the political level this is accomplished through the relations of supervision and authority within the capitalist enterprise,

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which Poulantzas, like Carchedi, interprets as involving not just the technical coordination of labor but also the enforcement of capitalist domination over workers. This places managers and supervisors in an antagonistic relation to the working class. At the ideological level Poulantzas identifies the basic class relation as the division between mental and manual labor, which he claims reinforces the subordination of workers to capital by excluding them from the 'secret knowledge” of production. As the bearers of this relation of ideological domination, professionals, technicians, and other mental workers are classified as part of the new petty bourgeoisie along with managers and supervisors. Poulantzas” terminological choice is, if anything, even worse than “the middle class”, or “the new middle class”, for that matter. There is very little in common between a foreman, and a technologist on the one hand and, say, a watchmaker or any other representative of the broad category of self-employed or, in the terms of socio-economic structuralism, the autocephalous class. To add insult to injury, there are problems with the specific definition of productive and unproductive and, similarly, manual and mental labour. In Wright’s (1978a) original theory of contradictory class locations (which has been already mentioned above, but in order to make our review of representative theoretical positions as complete as possible, we venture to repeat certain points) class positions are defined by a combination of three criteria: control over investment capital, control over the physical means of production, and control over labor. Among wage and salary earners, this yields three types of class locations. The working class is defined as that group which occupies a subordinate position (no control) on all three of these dimensions. Managers and supervisors occupy a contradictory class location in that, like workers, they are excluded from control over investments, but unlike workers they exercise a degree of control over the physical means of production and over the labor of others. 'Semiautonomous workers’ (essentially non-supervisory professionals and technicians) occupy a distinct contradictory class location. Like workers they are excluded from control over both investment capital and the labor of others, but unlike workers, they retain a degree of control over their immediate physical means of production and over their own direct activity within the labor process. Burris offers a much to-the-point summary characterisation of the three theories concerned:

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What characterises all of these theories is the tendency for relations of exploitation to be displaced by relations of domination and subordination, at least insofar as the definition of the new middle class is concerned. Weberians such as Parkin (1979) have interpreted this as a tacit admission by contemporary Marxists of the superiority of Weberian theory. Whether or not this conclusion follows, it is certainly true that the increased importance these theorists attach to authority relations does not square easily with some of the traditional arguments for the superiority of Marxist class analysis. As it has been put by Frederic Engels, “force only protects exploitation, but does not cause it; that the relation between capital and wage-labour is the basis of his exploitation, and that this was brought about by purely economic causes and not at all by means of force” (1977, Ch. I, Part II). For instance, Marxists often criticize Weberian and other non-Marxist conceptions of class for their gradational nature. This, they argue, generates an indeterminate plurality of positions with no meaningful boundaries between classes as discrete social groups. Yet criteria such as the exercise of supervisory authority, control over the physical means of production, or autonomy in the labor process are also matters of degree. Virtually all workers retain some minimal control over their own labor or their immediate instruments of production. At what point then does the level of control become sufficient to exclude them from the working class? Second, Marxists often claim as a virtue of their theory that it yields an unambiguous asymmetry of material interests from which one can deduce probable patterns of political opposition. This is arguably true for the concept of exploitation, but it is less clear that relations of domination and subordination entail any necessary asymmetry of interests. A plausible case can perhaps be made that the domination of managers over workers is asymmetrical in this sense. Whether the 'semi-autonomy” or 'secret knowledge” of non-supervisory professionals means that their interests are inherently opposed to those of workers lacking such authority is much more questionable. Finally, […] to the extent that Marxists integrate relations of domination into their definition of class, it becomes increasingly difficult to defend either the general primacy of economic relations over political and ideological relations or the more specific claim of the primacy of class over none-class forms of domination. This is especially true when, as is the case in all three theories examined above, differences in authority take

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precedence over similarities of economic characteristics in defining the boundaries between classes. It should be noted that one of the three theorists examined above has concluded that the problems associated with incorporating domination into the Marxist conception of class are so great that such efforts should be abandoned. In his recent writings, Wright (1985) has rejected his earlier theory of contradictory class locations and proposed an alternative way of conceptualizing the class position of salaried managers and professionals. As we shall see […] however, this has resulted merely in the substitution of one form of convergence with Weberian theory for another. […]It is on the basis of Roemer’s work that Erik Olin Wright has sought to reconceptualize the class position of salaried managers and professionals. Wright (1985) now argues that class is exclusively a relationship of exploitation, rather than a complex unity of exploitation and domination relations. The dominant form of exploitation in capitalist society is that based on the private ownership of the means of production, but there are also subsidiary forms of exploitation that derive from the unequal distribution of other productive assets. One such asset is skills-especially those whose supply is artificially restricted through credentialist mechanisms. A second is what Wright calls “organisation assets,” by which he means control over the conditions for the coordination of labor. Within this framework, salaried managers and professionals are distinguished from the working class by their disproportionate share of one or the other (or both) of these subsidiary assets. Such differentials in skill and organisation assets, Wright argues, enable them (via the mechanism of market exchange) to exploit the labor of other workers, even as they themselves are exploit[ed] by capitalists. Whether this reconceptualization, to which we come back later, successfully exorcizes the concept of domination from the Marxist definition of class is an open question, given that by Wright’s own admission the “ownership” of “organisation assets” is rather difficult to distinguish from the exercise of hierarchical authority. But even accepting this distinction, it is clear that Wright has closed one door to Weberianism only by opening another: He has eliminated domination from the definition of class only by elevating the importance of market relations. Wright (1985: 107-108) defends the Marxist pedigree of his new theory by arguing that Weberians treat market relations from a culturalist standpoint (i.e., in terms of the meaning systems that shape social action), whereas he conceptualizes market relations from a materialist standpoint (i.e., in terms of objective patterns of exploitation that exist independently of the subjective states of actors). There are several problems with that assertion. The distinction employed by Wright is crude, not to say distant from traditional Marxist

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epistemological categories. The latter include idealism, which in its subjective variety far better fits the purpose of Wright. Except that in the case of Weber such a label would be misplaced; as is argued extensively elsewhere (Tittenbrun 2011a), Weber himself as a researcher made little use of his notorious “interpretive” methodology. Leaving aside Weber and his methodology Wright’s point brings to mind the well-known adage: He who lives by the sword shall die by the sword, which applies in the sense that arguably the very introduction of such concepts as 'skills” and “credentials” into the definition of class inserts nothing other as culturalist elements into the heart of analysis, as both Marxists and Weberians have argued that what passes for 'skill” in a given society or what is certified by credentials is very much a social construction and hence in that sense dependent upon the subjective states of actors (Bowles and Gintis, 1976; Larson, 1977; Collins, 1979). (Burris 2007:81-85). Our aim is not a defence of Wright whose views receive their own portion of criticism on the pages of the present work, but simply scientific fairness; the fact that in different national context there may be some differences regarding what objective physical and mental abilities are accorded higher or lower ranks on the scale of skills does not negate the objective existence of the underlying personality traits; if the latter were not there, any “cultural” or 'social construction” could not have possibly taken place.

CHAPTER XVII EXPLOITATION IN ANALYTICAL MARXISM

In another book Wright put forth a slightly different theory which, as we shall see, is debatable as well, albeit not necessarily for reasons given by Nielson, according to whom “Wright’s conversion to analytical Marxist economist John Roemer’s (1982) narrow reading of exploitation reduces his class concept still further. Exploitation is defined purely in terms of “inequalities in the distribution of productive assets, or what is usually referred to as property relations” (Wright, 1986: 118). Further, Wright accepts Roemer’s incredible claim that “domination within production is not a central part of defining class relations it is not the actual criterion for class relations” (1986: 119). On this reading, class is reduced to a single distributive criterion derived from a definition of exploitation that is unrelated to power and production) (2005). In light of our previous comments, it is certainly not the non-inclusion of domination or power into the definition of class that should be regarded as its most serious failing. Wright belonged to the so-called September Group of analytical Marxists whose other prominent members were: G. A. Cohen, John Roemer Jon Elster, Adam Przeworski, Philippe van Parijs, and Robert-Jan van der Veen. The group was characterized, in the words of David Miller by “clear and rigorous thinking about questions that are usually blanketed by ideological fog” (1986). Such ritualistic incantations belong to a long list of means by which to boost self-confidence and motivation, which for any scholarly 'start-up” are of vital importance-albeit their substantive validity is quite another matter. At any event these high expectations were tied to the employment of techniques drawn from analytical philosophy, rational choice and game theory. Did those resources prove adequate to dispel the said intellectual fog? In an attempt to derive the essential sources of inequality as an alternative means to define exploitation the critical issue is how to distinguish fundamental from contingent sources of social advantage. Wright (1985)

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argued that there were three fundamental kinds of assets: property, organisation and skill, which immediately arouses suspicion that it would be difficult to draw the aforementioned distinction when the conceptual tool kit is to that extent homogenised-putting on an equal footing something what at first blush looks like ownership (in general? of capital?), and the ownership of labour power-hiding behind 'skill”, and, again, despite protestations to the contrary, authority-which is what for all practical purposes “organisation” means. Nevertheless, the framework discussed posits that exploitation may take place in all those three cases. Namely, those without the relevant assets (the property less, organisational subordinates, and the unskilled) would be better off in relationships where those assets did not exist. This is sufficient for them to be subject to exploitation. Still, the proponent of the approach under consideration would argue that this allows some kind of a distinction between outcomes generated by exploitative assets, and those caused more contingently. For instance, since someone’s good health does not entail another’s bad health (and hence that someone in bad health would not necessarily be better off by changing the health of the person in good health), it might be contended that “health status” does not constitute an asset in the way that property, skill and organisation do. Moreover, this is true, it can be claimed, even though there is a clear association between health and life chances. Health may be a resource, but this is different from the generative powers of relational class “assets”. However, it does not take anything like a profound reflection to realise that this distinction is not easy to operate in practice. The resource of health, to go back to the example above, may not be a zero sum, but it is a relative state. The employment prospects of those in bad health would be improved if those in good health were not in the labour market. Likewise, health expenditures, whether made by the state or private employers, will often have a rival aspect to them-my health situation, or even life expectancy will be higher, if less money is earmarked for the needs of others, which definitely makes them worse off. Overall, all resources have a relational element and can be linked to processes of social closure, so generating forms of inequality. In all such cases they cannot be unequivocally distinguished from assets. And at the other end of the spectrum there appears a symmetrical problem, it is far from clear that the assets distinguished by Wright have always a direct relational or exploitative nature. Wright (1985) follows the tradition of social closure theory-inspired by Weber and developed in particular by Collins in defining skill assets as a means of closing entry to occupations, but as he admits himself, it is by no means clear that this directly involves the exploitation of those without such credentials.

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There might remain a subtle difference between non-relational resources and relational assets. Relational assets might be said to depend on a particular configuration of social relationships between those benefiting and those disadvantaged, leading to the possibility of direct contestation between the parties themselves over the terms of the relationship. Nonrelational resources, by contrast, might not be dependent on this kind of direct relationship where those without such resources are not likely to call the resource itself into question. By way of illustration, the unhealthy are unlikely to demand the end of good health. Overall, even granted this distinction may be tenable in principle, it also does not appear very practical. Consider the distinction, along these lines, between the resource of being able to drive, and the asset of being a righthander. In contemporary capitalism, knowing how to drive is a significant resource: One is more likely to have job opportunities and access to various leisure and social activities if one can drive. However, there is no reason, in principle, why everyone could not learn to drive, thus turning the skill in question in an element of one’s labour and quasi-labour power. This at first sight appears different from the ascribed characteristics of right and left-handedness, which more directly sets one group against another (lefthanders can only with great difficulty, if at all, become right-handers). It is well known that left-handers have a higher mortality rate than righthanders, and this association can probably be explained by the difficulties of left-handers in dealing with right-handed “technologies”, or more broadly, living in the right-handed world However, despite this being due to the operation of relational assets, it is not clear that any differences of sociological importance flow from this: there are no signs that left-handers are likely to call their relationship with right-handers into any more question than non-drivers do compared to drivers. And sure enough, the same applies to many, but not to all, demographic variables-the red-haired do not engage in anything like a class struggle with the blond-haired, for instance, albeit the relevance of demographic factors is dependent upon their social mediation, and thus is not subject to any easy generalisation; one’s sex, or-in societal terms-gender is far more important socially than one’s height. To make matters worse, in Wright’s writings (from the period under consideration, let it be clear, as from a bird’s eye point of view it would be easy to show a substantial variation of his views), he does not present just one, but in fact more perspectives on exploitation. Before proceeding to

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their discussion, by way of wholesale assessment it could be stated that Wright’s approach is not exactly consistent or coherent, which, needless to stress, is hardly a virtue. Anyway, one of its underpinnings is provided by neoclassical exploitation theory that is typically dated to Pigou’s 1920 work, “The Economics of Welfare” (EW). In addition, Joan Robinson’s “The Economics of Imperfect Competition” (EIC), published in 1933, is recognised as the key subsequent reference, which suggests that the two works can be considered jointly, albeit without blurring their divergent properties. To be frank, it is rather perplexing, to say the least, to encounter in a work commonly, including by its author, considered as Marxist in nature, what is through and through the conventional neoclassical economic framework, superseding in this role Marxian theory, which, for a Marxist, at least once would be a bold proposition, but judging from the fact of precious little reaction to that aspect of Wright’s approach, perhaps “the Times They Are A-Changin”, too. Be that as it may, Exploitation of labour, according to Pigou, occurs when workers are paid less than the value of their marginal net products to employers (Pigou 1920, p.512), and, along the same lines, Robinson says that: “a group of workers are being exploited when their wage is less than the marginal physical product that they are producing, valued at the price at which it is being sold” (1933:283). The possibility of reverse exploitation (workers exploiting employers) is not mentioned by Robinson whose approach is thus broadly consistent with Pigou’s emphasis on the exploitation of labour in EW, although the latter does refer, if only in passing, to the possibility of reverse exploitation. In addition, Robinsonian treatment is more general insofar as it envisages the possibility of exploitation as a result of imperfect competition in either the product market or the input market, while the Pigovian model applies to a specific situation; namely, that of workers acting in combination in the factor market against employers. Moreover, Robinson’s deductive model provides clearly deterministic solutions to wage outcomes in other than perfectly competitive markets, as against the Pigovian treatment, in which bargaining, and thus class struggle figures much more prominently, allowing for a range of indeterminateness in wages when free competition does not prevail. According to Robinson, in the case of imperfection in the output market (but no imperfection in the input market), the marginal revenue product of labour may be set equal to the wage but marginal revenue is less than

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price. Hence exploitation exists because the wage paid is less than the value of the marginal product (or price times the marginal product). Increasing wages is not the solution to the problem of exploitation. It would result in unemployment and exploitation at the higher wage. The only remedy available is the control of prices or removing the source of market imperfection. The removal of imperfections in the output market as a result of the state intervention may eliminate exploitation but at the same time reduce the wage paid to workers, as the price of output will have fallen and marginal physical product may fall. Workers will be paid the value of their marginal product, but that wage may be lower than the former exploitative wage. This is not the only paradox or contradiction to which neoclassical approach to wages does lead. In the case of an imperfectly competitive input market, the supply of labour is not perfectly elastic, the extreme case being that of monopsony. Again, the employment of labour will occur at a point where the marginal cost of labour is equal to marginal revenue product. But the wage set will equal the (lower) supply price of the amount of labour employed, as the marginal cost curve will deviate from the average cost curve. Again, eliminating the imperfection in the input market may remove the exploitation of labour. An imposed minimum wage or the application of trade union power may also eliminate this cause of exploitative wages. There is available some kind of empirical evidence of Robinson’s treatment of exploitation under imperfect competition. Three British economists argue that because of labour market frictions, the supply of labour to a firm does not fall instantaneously to zero if an employer cuts wages. This gives employer some monopsony power, which further implies that “in the absence of trade unions, minimum wages and efficiency wage considerations a profit-maximising employer will set a wage below the marginal revenue product of labour so that workers are, to use the terminology of Hicks and Pigou, exploited”. Their paper presents a method for computing the rate of exploitation, which is then applied to a data set on workers in residential homes for the elderly on England’s sunshine coast, the key result being that, on average, firms pay workers about 15% less than their marginal product (Machin et al. 1993). As part of a more general critique of the neoclassical method, Robinson later highlighted weak spots detected in the framework adopted in EIC, remaining committed, however, to what she regarded as the strong points of the book (Robinson 1964, 1969) namely, that, within the orthodox framework, she had shown that the exploitation of labour is endemic

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within modern economies as a result of the prevalence of monopolistic and monopolistic elements (Robinson 1969, p.XII) and there is an important role in cases of monopolistic exploitation for trade unions to raise wages to bring the labour market more closely into line with the competitive ideal (Robinson 1964:243). Whilst Joan Robinson in her later career moved closer to Marxism, she sure enough cannot be labelled as a fully-fledged Marxist. It is, therefore, interesting to compare her, rooted in orthodox neoclassical economics, after all, expressly pro-working-class conclusions, with the class significance of the treatment offered by the leading Marxist theorist. All in all, Pigouvian exploitation has been used in economics to refer to a production process in which some factor of production is paid less than its marginal revenue product (Pigou 1920; Bronfenbrenner 1971; Persky and Tsang 1974). In the case of labour that is of interest here, the marginal revenue product refers to the revenue that is obtained from the sale of the additional product that is produced as the result of additional hours worked (after taking into account the quantities of the other inputs that are used in the production process). The “value of what is produced by labor,” on a per-unit basis, is then defined as the increment in total output value that accrues by employing another unit of labor, holding constant the other factors of production by way of the multivariate production function. Pigouvian exploitation occurs to the extent that the wage for a given group of workers is less than its marginal revenue product. While the former typically results in higher revenues and profits for capitalists, the expropriated surplus may also to some extent accrue to elite workers or some other parties. The Pigouvian exploitation of labor can be expressed as the percentage difference between the marginal revenue product of labor and its wage (i.e., the income that labor receives for additional hours of work). Although Wright’s analysis of the capitalist firm does not, to be sure, copy the Pigouvian one, yet he maintains the fundamental backbone of the latter, framing the underpayment of workers as the source of profits (Wright 1997:18). According to Wright, Workers (as a broad class category) are underpaid insofar as their wages are less than the value of their labor. Assuming the latter refers to the value of the marginal product of labor, it follows that Wright accepts the microeconomic notion of Pigouvian exploitation, implying that capitalists increase their profits by reducing their labor costs below the value that is produced by labor. This

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exploitation process is thus the flip side of the continuous underpayment of workers. Although, however, Pigouvian exploitation as the regular underpayment of workers is clearly present in Wright's discourse, his treatment is analytically incomplete in that he does not define the value of labor, the obvious corollary being he is not in a position to pin down the point when employees” wages are less than the value that they produce, which is another way of saying that Wright's concept of exploitation cannot be operationalized, which further entails that his claims concerning exploitation processes cannot be empirically verified. Small wonder, therefore, that exploitation is absent from the empirical analyses of Wright (1997) despite being hailed as a pivotally important concept in the introductory chapter. The deficiency concerned, encapsulating-as it does-the aforementioned class bias, has its roots in the approach to ownership, including labour power, about which Wright is rather ambivalent, The thing is that approaching wages in terms of the “value of labor” one automatically wittingly or not, takes a viewpoint of the capital, as the said value is the value that a factor acquires for capital, whereas the notion of value of labor power redirects one’s attention on the worker, his material and nonmaterial needs and thus requirements for the reproduction of his or her life process. A further aspect of the class orientation implied by the focus on the efficient execution of the work task alone is that it prompts the segmentation of employees along a hierarchy of “productivities” whose status is not so much ontological as ideological, serving to legitimise wage differentials. Meanwhile, to counter the criticism of the failure to define the value of labour it might be suggested that, as in Wright’s neo-Marxist approach all value is by definition produced by labour, (which shows, by the way, that the supposed eradication of the labour theory of value has not been complete) there is no need to develop any specific theory of the value of labor. However, even the above paragraph shows to what extent Wright became entangled in his own contradictions. Thus, it turns out that any escape routes supposed to be opened thanks to the rejection of LTV are by any means open, and the problematics allegedly disposed of comes back with a vengeance, as Wright is haunted by knotty issues regarding value of labour, i.e. exactly those he wanted to get rid of by abandoning the

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labouristic theory of value. His own discussion of “class locations” suggests that some employees who possess expert skills and/or managerial authority should receive higher wages even in the absence of exploitation. A clearer statement regarding the value of labor is therefore necessary to ascertain the extent to which the situation of expert managers, non-skilled managers, and experts is marked by non-exploitative wage inequalities, as compared to workers. That is, one should add, if this particular position of Wright is treated as a point of reference; the reservation is necessary, given Wright’s habit of switching to a new position with almost every new publication. Thus, in this instance Wright (1985) argued that employees who are in professional and managerial occupations exploit other workers because the former groups possess 'skill/credential assets” and “organization assets” (Wright 1985:75-88). Somewhat later, however, Wright (1997) abandoned this view, maintaining instead that these sources of bargaining power are not sufficient to enable professional and managerial employees to become the exploiting classes themselves after all, and they are able only to reduce the level of exploitation that they themselves endure from capitalists. Professionals and managers “may simply be less exploited than other employees” (Wright 1997:21). Hopefully, the author will be excused for reiterating his refrain, but it is difficult not to indicate, again, Wright’s faulty property theory as being responsible for this mess; in socioeconomic terms, sure enough, notably top corporate managers constitute a capitalist class, even aside their shareholdings-their multi-digit pay higher than the remuneration of individuals whose burden of professional responsibility is at least the same, as is the case for an army commander, a state governor, or, last but not least, the chief executive of the entire nation, cannot but be composed for the most part of rents. Hence, equally unsatisfactory is another approach of Wright to the issue of class status of managers (2008:109) in which he sketches out a general picture of the American class structure at the beginning of the 21st century”, placing “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”. This treatment (which, frankly, resembles stratification approaches), to be sure, only implicitly calls attention to the class specificity of given class locations, to use Wright’s term, but at the same time at best blurs and at worst confusingly shifts the boundary line between the latter and the bourgeoisie proper. Meanwhile, managers should not be separated from the capitalist class, since they epitomise its modern model embodiment,

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though on the other hand stand out by virtue of their executive responsibilities (whereas a model rentier would perform no work) none of those particulars has been illuminated by Wright. Taking exception to Wright’s point is one issue, but what merits the reader’s special attention is a veritable U-turn on the part of the theorist concerned accomplished over a fairly short span of time. Furthermore, the latter only exemplifies a broader pattern -the state of flux in which Wright’s views appear to be, by virtue of which any attempt to pin down the actual Wright’s message is rather like chasing the vanishing point (because constantly on the move) on the horizon. And this is not the end of the story, as Wright’s repudiation of the labor theory of value leaves open the possibility that value is also produced by factors of production other than labour. That this is not only potential possibility, is shown by Wright’s programmatic statement (1997:10) that refers to the reproduction costs of all of the “inputs of production” (i.e., there is more than one input). The said statement reads as follows: “The expression “appropriation of the fruits of labor” refers to the appropriation of that which labor produces. It does not imply that the value of those products is exclusively determined by labor effort, as claimed in the labor theory of value. All that is being claimed here is that a surplus is appropriated a surplus beyond what is needed to reproduce all of the inputs of production and that this surplus is produced through labor effort, but not that the appropriate metric for the surplus is labor time [italics in original].” What lies at the root of Wright’s analytical problems could be described as his desperate attempt to wear many hats-he wants to somehow preserve his Marxist credentials, but absent the labour theory of value, to be replaced by more modern and “cool” microeconomic theory. But there exists, unfortunately for Wright, something like the logic of scientific argument, within which if one said A, and what follows logically is B, there is no escape route-the logic is merciless. To put it another way, it is all very well for Wright to kick out Marxian theory of value, but the consequences of that move proved to be more serious than he probably had thought. Nature abhors a vacuum, as is generally known, and the replacement created more problems than it solved. If one accepts the neoclassical frame of reference, one needs to explain the role of capital, as well as other, non-labour factors of production, customarily distinguished

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in microeconomics, in the production of value and how much remuneration for what textbook economics couches as the renting of capital may be considered non-exploitative (because labor is not the only input of production). The above discussion suggests that what is missing in Wright’s analysis is a thorough consideration of the production process, including a theory of productivity and its factors. Again, Wright must feel terribly disappointed, as his personal brave eradication of the labour theory of value from his tool kit instead of paving the way to the promised land of a cure for all sociological ills-if this seems to be an overstatement, consider the claim of Wright’s mentor, Arthur Stinchcombe, cited approvingly in one of the books of the former: 'sociology has only one independent variable, class” (Stinchcombe 1975). Meanwhile, Wright is unable to provide neither empirical evidence nor specific theoretical justification for his claims, so that the latter in effect hang in the air, as the thinker deduces from his understanding of Marxian teachings the axiom that the capitalist firm is exploitative by nature and, secondly, that -at least in one version of his position-exploitation can only occur between capitalists and workers (rather than between different groups of workers or between different groups of capitalists). These assumptions are obviously consistent with the Marxist tradition but they lack the theoretical foundation of the labor theory of value because Wright has explicitly discarded it. Meanwhile, none of Wright’s three definitional criteria of exploitation necessitates that exploitation should be restricted to the antagonism between capitalists and workers. As a result, Wright’s account of shirking as one of the “capacities for resistance” that workers use to counter capitalist exploitation (Wright, 2002:850) lacks any credible theoretical underpinning, the researcher simply declares by fiat that this is so, without anything like due consideration of alternative conceptualisations. Again, from the point of view of the present author, the best such framework is offered by the theory of labour power. Shirking involves the appropriation of working time (undergirded by the lumpen-labour power) that in terms of the employment contract constitutes the property of the capitalist. This relation, however, should not be conflated with exploitation. Because this would imply a bizarre and untenable procedure of turning anything that occurs between the worker and the owner of the means of production into

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an embodiment of exploitation. Such a danger appears owing to the poverty of one’s conceptual apparatus, in particular its section regarding ownership. The fact that the capitalist may receive a lower mass of profit does not alter the circumstance that by the latter he after all, benefits, and any vision of the worker exploiting himself is too weird to be taken seriously. From this perspective one cannot subscribe to the view outlined below, indicating instead that what is at issue is the transfer of value, and thus an ownership benefit accruing to the holder of lumpen-labour power. Yet this relation is not an exploitative relation not the figure of the capitalist is missing in the entire picture; the criterion is substantive rather than formalassuming, as in all likelihood is the case, that the aforementioned benefit constitutes a relatively small portion of the wage earned by our worker, she cannot possibly be an exploiter, since she is not the subject of the relation: capital-labour power. To forestall any objections to the association of exploitation with capital, it should be reiterated that the concept of capital could be rendered as the relation of private ownership based on other people’s labour, which in turn constitutes the definition of exploitation. However, this approach by any means predetermines any specific occupation as eligible for being an exploiter or the other end of the equation, for that matter. Had the size of the said benefit qualify as the real ownership of capital, the incumbent of the same role, i.e. a given employee, could enter into the relation of exploitation Sakamoto and Liu (2006:7)”argue that shirking on the part of some workers forces other workers to work harder and lowers the firm’s output and hence revenues. Given that the wages of shirking workers are usually not fully penalized for their lower work effort or else they would have no incentive to shirk they are, in effect, exploiting workers who do not shirk”. The aforementioned two researchers, not without reason, criticise Wright for the paucity of empirical evidence for his claims, but frankly, they themselves sin in that regard insofar as their contention about the absence of any financial penalties to be applied toward “the shirkers” is purely speculative. Which does not detract from the pertinence of their criticism to the effect that “without a definition of economic value or a model of the production process, Wright’s reference to shirking as a source of resistance to capitalist exploitation is primarily ideological rather than analytical” (Sakamoto, Liu 2006:7). The negative part of forming a new neo- or post-Marxian framework, free of any associations with the allegedly discredited labour theory of value has been childishly easy, but the crucial constructive part of the task,

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consisting in developing a new, supposedly superior theory of value to fill the analytical void has proved to be unspeakably more challenging. To expand on the earlier criticism, let us scrutinise Wright’s approach in light of the praise written by the author of the preface to one of his books: “the book’s most important contribution, however, is that it attempts for the first time to test Marxist theory empirically, with modern econometric techniques”. (Wright 1979: XIX).

Let us look from the viewpoint of its empirical grounding, first at Wright’s (2000) discussion, drawing on Sorensen (2000), and containing another mode of conceptualising exploitation. The reason why exploitation is lower among these “privileged appropriation locations” is because employees with scarce skills earn a 'skill rent” while employees with managerial authority earn a “loyalty rent” (Wright, 1997: 21-22). As explained by Wright (2000: 1568-1569), the “employment rent” is thus a wage premium workers are able to get because of their ability to resist capitalist attempts at extracting labor effort. Rather than seeing employment rents as a form of exploitation by workers it is thus more appropriate to see them as the outcome of resistance to exploitation by workers.” Presumably, expert managers are the least exploited because they possess both scarce skills as well as authority that enable this group to obtain both a 'skill rent” and a “loyalty rent” (while conversely workers are the most exploited as they receive neither). Wright argues that employees who are in professional and managerial occupations exploit other workers because the former groups possess 'skill/credential assets” and “organization assets” (Wright 1985:75-88). Later, however, Wright (1997) abandons this view and then claims that these sources of bargaining power are not sufficient to enable professional and managerial workers to engage in exploitation but only reduce the level of exploitation that they themselves endure from capitalists. Professionals and managers “may simply be less exploited than other employees” (Wright 1997:21). Wright thus argues that what he couches as the employment rents obtained by managers, experts, and expert managers (i.e., the “loyalty rent” and 'skill rent” mentioned earlier) should not be viewed as being exploitative but instead must be conceived of “as the outcome of resistance to exploitation by workers.” In other words, Wright’s opinion is that the employment rents obtained by some managers, experts, and expert

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managers merely mitigate but not eliminate the Pigouvian exploitation that these employees themselves endure. Moreover, one of Wright’s reservations toward Sorensen’s (2000) approach implies the tacit supposition that these wage premiums eat into capitalists” profits rather than wages of their fellow workers Oddly enough, Wright does not attempt to pay even lip service to the empirical evidence for the said pattern. Meanwhile, this evidence is available; research finds that higher profits tend to be associated with higher (not lower) average wages across industries even after controlling for other related factors (Allen, 1995; Blanchflower, Oswald, & Sanfey, 1996; Dickens & Katz, 1987; Hodson & England, 1986; Kalacheck & Raines, 1976; Katz & Summers, 1989; Kumar, 1972; Pugel, 1980; Rapping, 1967; Slichter, 1950 [Kumar, 1972, Pugel, 1980, Rapping, 1967, Slichter, 1950]). Similarly, a later study found that, after controlling for measures of human capital, the compensation of white-collar workers tend to be significantly higher in firms with higher equity returns (Bronars & Famulari, 2001). This suggests that managers, experts, and expert managers are paid for not by lower profits (as implied by Wright’s analysis), but by the higher prices faced by consumers (as, e.g. Galbraith’s model of the modern oligopoly would have it) and/or the lower wages of employees with less bargaining power. It is important to note that the exploitation of the latter group may occur not only within a given industry or firm, but across them as well as was traditionally argued in the dual economy literature (e.g.Hodson, 1983; Sakamoto & Chen, 1991). By way of summary let us point out that Wright could be rebuked not only for his neglect of empirical evidence but also lack of theoretical selfknowledge; he distances himself from Sorensen’s conception of rents, failing to notice that it is in actual fact consonant with his own definition of exploitation. Alternatively, he may well be aware of the aforementioned affinity, but in such a case, whence Wright’s disapproval of Sorensen’s analysis? It is hard to avoid the conclusion that it does not stem from substantive differences concerning the definition of exploitation but from Wright’s ideological, aprioristic stance with which the Sorensen’s notion of rents is apparently at variance That That the cardinal sin of Wright’s analysis of class and related issues may be its speculative nature is even more clearly revealed by some further research. Sakamoto and Liu (2006:38) note that “regarding Wright’s views about the payment of professionals and managers, their results for Taiwan are inconsistent with his predictions”. As noted above, according to Wright (1985), professionals and managers are overpaid (i.e., engage in exploitation) while they are said to be underpaid (i.e., are themselves

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exploited) according to Wright (1997). Meanwhile, the findings for Taiwan are inconsistent with both of these diametrically contrasting propositions, as from their standpoint professionals and managers are paid, at least on average in the manufacturing sector, according to their marginal revenue products. These two classes are neither exploited nor exploiters in the Taiwanese manufacturing sector. In addition, Sakamoto and Liu (2006:28) call into question Wright’s (1997) view of contemporary capitalism according to which essentially all private firms engage in “extractive exploitation” (whereby the owners of the means of production boost their profits by underpaying their workforce), as in light of their data “this type of capital-labor outcome represents 37.9% of Taiwanese manufacturing firms”. Although -they explain-this percentage is substantial and it is the modal outcome, 37.9% is nevertheless not all firms and it is not even a majority. While-they therefore sum up-the results do show that exploitation in the manufacturing sector is fairly extensive in that a majority of firms (i.e., 62.5%) are exploitative (i.e., engaged in either “extractive exploitation” or “exploitative mismanagement”), “exploitative mismanagement” represents a sizeable component. On that basis they infer that “when workers are being exploited but their firms” profits are not above the market level, workers may feel less inclined to press for higher wages due to the presumption that their firms lack the “ability to pay”. For this reason, this type of exploitative capital-labor outcome may be more prevalent than might be anticipated by theories of overt class conflict (Wright 2000b). The study reported above suggests that Managers, professionals, older workers, and employees with seniority appear to be able to avoid Pigouvian exploitation, whereas, by contrast, blue-collar workers, female employees, and workers in the unorganized general-manufacturing industry seem to be the major sources of the expropriated wages that enhance the capitalists” exploitative gain. On the basis of their findings Sakamoto and Liu (2006) are in a position to challenge Wright (1997) who-as they point outcontends, on the basis of Marxist presupposition, that all workers must be exploited in capitalism, our findings suggest that this traditional Marxist solution to the “problem of the middle class” may be too simplistic for the Taiwanese manufacturing sector. [...] The results of the study in question also indicate that, in addition to classes such as blue-collar workers, women as a demographic group are exploited in the labor force. Net of the class structure, women’s wages are systematically less than their productivity. Capitalists should therefore be motivated to hire women, and

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indeed, 50% of the workers in our sample are female in an industrial sector that is disproportionately blue-collar”. It is also worthy of mention that in light of the Taiwan study standard microeconomic assumptions are even less accurate, as “textbook equilibrium” represents only 5.1% of firms. And the latter finding should give both the two researchers concerned and all others working in this field some food for thought. To be sure, we have not registered our reservations toward the very neoclassical foundation of argumentation developed whether by proponents or opponents of specific propositions under consideration. This refraining from critique was merely temporary, though, as, to begin with, the basic building block of neoclassical labour economics resembles a Platonic form rather than a scientific notion. The former is grounded, after all, in the notion of perfect competition, and thereby price-taking firm behaviour in which employers hire labour up to the point where real wages are equal to marginal products. As pointed out by the pair of economist, “this assumption lacks justification, particularly because it is obvious that the real world is not at all well represented by a Walrasian economy with price-taking firms throughout” (CloseFlaschel, Greiner 2012) “the typical assumption of the Further, one could point to the so-called efficiency wage literature, which in fact represents a kind of institutional approach to the market, points out that productivity is not clearly measurable or definable for at least some types of workers (Liu, Sakamoto 2005). More broadly, all kinds of market imperfections drive a wedge between what forms in fact two distinct series of incongruent variables; in particular, The supposed relationship between workers’ marginal productivity and wages cannot obtain if the firm discriminates against women, ethnic minorities, etc., which is a common practice, at least in the U. S., as is evidenced by a survey according to which “Nearly 60% of the study sample (N=5585) reported job discrimination (race, nationality, sex, or age) between 1979 and 1982” (Coputo 2002). A related criticism concentrates on the function fulfilled by the premise linking marginal product and wage, boiling down to “the scientific” justification of differentiating wages according to one’s contribution to production. But the scientific status of that proposition is highly problematic, if not utterly untenable. Think of those-increasingly rare in modern conditionssituations in which such an individual contribution is perceptible and measurable. in an economy in which the great bulk of production requires some form of collective work, whose essential component at that is

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constituted by the relations of co-operation (cf. Gleicher 1983), it is fair to say that the said link 'serves only a disciplinary role in promoting greater intensity of work and legitimizing class division” (De Angelis 1996:31). In a similar vein, another economist highlights the economic and class function of marginalism: “the theory relies entirely at the microeconomic level on understanding the interaction of given individuals and their labor with given quantities of capital and given quantities of technology; the income earned by each factor equal to its marginal product. This implies, practically speaking, that the income of labor (wages) is equal to the marginal productivity of the unit of labor the infamous theory which essentially in a Panglossian exercise of benevolence declares that everyone by definition earns the wages they deserve, since wages are held to equal the extra productivity the laborer adds to the firm. Not earning enough? Should have been more productive! Now this theory does not appeal very much to anyone except the bestearning wage earners, who can pride themselves on their innate superiority, all the more since the technology being given there is not much a worker can do to improve their productivity in the workplace, except perhaps work more intensely or longer hours” (Krul 2010).

XVII.1. The labour theory of value But let us, in accord with our earlier promises, kind of put the above critique of marginalism in brackets and make our job as difficult as possible, i.e. give the theory contested above the benefit of the doubt. It should be perhaps made clear at the outset that whilst one can speak of rival theories of value, it is, though, largely thing of the past; now academic economics tends to deny the need for such a theory. All one needs, they say, is a theory of price. We shall see, however, that prices cannot be explained without recourse to the concept of value. Marginal utility modified labor theories of value in mainstream economics by adding the concepts of marginality (the tendency of the consumer to substitute one product for another in the marketplace and for producers to substitute one commodity for another in the production of goods and services) and diminishing utility to the original labor theory. Thus, under marginal utility, the first unit of production of a good or service yields more than the second or subsequent units. This may cause a reduction of the price of the subsequent units, but the units continue to reflect the total

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value of the labor that was used to produce the subsequent units. (Wikipedia entry-“Labor Theory of Value”). And indeed, it can be proved that there is no contradiction between those, usually treated as alternative, approaches. The LTV does not claim that the entire costs of a commodity is equal to what economists would call labour costs. It is essential to understand that labor costs refers only to the value of the assigned labour force, using more mainstream language, or in Marxian terminology-labour power. Now, the point is that there exists an important difference between the value of the labour power and the labour value of a commodity. This distinction has been made by Marx himself, to be sure, albeit it is worthy of mention that some non-Marxist economists such as John Bates Clark and Irving Fisher made a parallel distinction as well. A worker, according to Marx, sells, and from our perspective- leases out his labour power against wages. The labour value, however, is a different animal, depending upon given production conditions and is not the subject of the labour contract. The analytical problem consists in showing that "the cost of a unit of a commodity, its marginal cost, dC/dQ, is equal to its labour value converted into monetary units" (Hagendorf 2009). The labour theory of value asserts that the labour value of a commodity, thus a certain quantity of labour units, multiplied by the wage rate, w, is equal to the marginal cost of the commodity. The multiplication with the wage rate is necessary, in order to ensure the equality of the dimensions. The labour value of a unit of a commodity has the dimension labour units per piece whereas the marginal cost has the dimension money per piece. The dimension of the wage rate is money per labour unit. So the product of labour value with the wage rate has the dimension money per piece. w * labour value = marginal cost. At this point it is already possible to find a solution intuitively. "If marginal cost, dC/dQ, is the adequate expression for the costs of a unit of a commodity, then this means that dC is the cost, which result from the additional production of a unit of the commodity, dQ. In analogy to this we can conclude that įL represents the quantity of additional labour units, which are needed for the production of an additional unit of the commodity įQ. [...] The marginal labour value, įL/įQ, represents the socially necessary labour for the production of a commodity.[...]

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In addition, profit maximization under conditions of perfect competition requires that the price of the commodity, p, and equals marginal cost: dC P=— dQ The proof for the validity of the labour theory of value results immediately, since we receive the desired solution now by substitution: įL dC w

—=—

į0 dO. (Hagendorf 2009). Having addressed this, allegedly damaging to the LTV, case of its purported theoretical alternative, we must deal with a certain famous criticism toward Marx’s theory; for albeit a range of potential flaws to be found in the ltv is surely wider, the truth of the matter is that all the other criticism pale into insignificance in comparison with the so-called transformation problem. An error allegedly committed by the author of “Capital” is regarded as standing in the way of utilisation of the LTV within modern scholarship. Marx’s solution to what has become known as the “transformation problem”—the shift from the analysis of “values” in the first volume of Capital to the analysis of “prices” in the third. For Marx the value of a commodity reflects the amount of “living labour” expended by workers in its creation, plus the amount of “dead labour”-past labour crystallised in the instruments of production, raw materials, etc.-used up in its production. The value can be measured as a sum of money reflecting the 'socially necessary labour time” required to produce the commodity. Here 'socially necessary” refers to the labour time required under normal conditions with the average prevalent skill and intensity. The capitalist has to purchase the dead labour, and makes no profit from this. The living labour, on the other hand, has a double value. The capitalist receives a day’s labour, but only has to pay enough, in the form of a day’s wages, for the reproduction of the labour power. Because the wage merely reflects the amount of value needed to get the worker back to work, and raise the next generation of workers, it will tend to be less than

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the new value the worker creates. The remaining hours create 'surplus value' for the capitalist, and this is the basis of profit. The rate of profit is the ratio of surplus value to the total capital advanced in wages and inputs of dead labour. Marx provides this basic account in the first volume of Capital. Here he is considering “capital in general”. He abstracts from the effect of competition between different capitals or the coexistence of different sectors of the economy. This allows him to locate the origin of surplus value in the exploitation at the heart of the capitalist production process. In the third volume of Capital he goes beyond the concept of capital in general and considers capitalism as a concrete system where there are “many capitals”; to do this he must integrate the sphere of “production” with the sphere of “exchange”. On the basis of the analysis of value in the first volume of Capital each industry would have a different “rate of profit”, because each uses a different ratio of living and dead labour (different “organic compositions of capital”, as Marx put it). But in capitalism as it actually exists, profit rates tend to equalise across economies. Marx argues that capital flows between sectors, from those with low rates of profit to those with high ones, as capitalists seek to maximise their profitability. Those goods in sectors with a high rate of profit will be produced in greater quantities, lowering their prices, while those in sectors with a low rate of profit will become scarce and their prices will rise. Over time these changes in price will tend to equalise profit rates between sectors. This process is the “transformation” of values into what Marx called “prices of production”. According to this analysis, prices of production are a more complicated expression of value. The surplus value created across the whole economy is reallocated to different capitalists in such a way as to form a “general rate of profit”. Marx showed that, from the point of view of the capitalists, this process seems to happen the other way round. In calculating the price of their goods, capitalists look at their input costs (their “costs of production”) and then mark up the price according to the general rate of profit multiplied by the capital invested. It appears as if the capitalist simply receives from society a share of total profit reflecting their investment. Because prices of production are, in Marx’s analysis, simply a complex form assumed by value, a number of “aggregate equalities” must hold. The

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total price of the outputs of an economy must equal the total value of the outputs, and total profit must equal the total surplus value produced. Marx’s account has proved remarkably controversial. In particular, papers by Ladislaus Bortkiewicz from 1906-7 (1949), and similar accounts that have followed, sought to prove that “Marx’s account produces a difference between input and output prices, and that this difference leads to “internal contradiction”—specifically, to a spurious disruption of the production process” as inputs and outputs fail to match up. Having taken this step, “Bortkiewicz “corrected” Marx’s account” with a solution that 'severed values and prices into two discordant systems” (1949:46). Kliman (2007) shows that there are two fundamental problems with approaches such as Bortkiewicz’s. First, like most interpretations of Capital, Bortkiewicz’s is what Kliman calls a “dual system interpretation”. In chapter nine of the third volume of Capital Marx gives numeric examples to illustrate his transformation. But in these examples he does not appear to apply this transformation to the cost of the inputs into production that the capitalist purchases. In the same chapter Marx comments, “We had originally assumed that the cost price of a commodity equalled the value of the commodities consumed in its production. But for the buyer the price of production of a specific commodity is its cost price, and may thus pass as cost price into the prices of other commodities. Since the price of production may differ from the value of a commodity, it follows that the cost price of a commodity containing this price of production of another commodity may also stand above or below that portion of its total value derived from the value of the means of production consumed by it.” Dual-system interpreters conclude from this passage that the values of inputs must also be transformed into prices to complete the transformation process, leading to two separate systems. One influential version of this is the “New Interpretation”, which emerged in the 1980s. This account attempts to reconnect the value and price systems through wages—which are held to be equal in the two systems. Both the traditional dual-system accounts and the New Interpretation are flawed according to Kliman because “cost prices and capital advances differ across value and price systems. There are consequently two distinct and unequal general rates of profit as well, and the remaining aggregate equalities cannot hold true, contrary to what Marx concluded” (2007:33).

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Kliman argues for a single-system interpretation. Such interpretations also emerged in the 1980s. They offer an alternative solution to the problems posed by Marx’s shift from value to price in Capital. The inputs into production (wages, raw materials, machinery, and so on) are always values, rather than prices. But they are not the values required to produce these things, they are the values the capitalist must advance to purchase them. And, “to acquire the needed means of production…the firm needs to buy them at their actual price—not at their value” (p.34). So the value advanced to purchase an input is its “price of production”. Kliman provides textual evidence to show that this is a possible interpretation of Marx’s writings. However, the evidence is hardly decisive either way. Kliman’s case rests heavily on whether his interpretation allows a consistent account of Capital, which seems to be the case, although his critique of what has come to constitute kind of new orthodoxy is compelling as well. There is a second problem with Bortkiewicz and most of those who have followed him. Bortkiewicz assumes that the values of commodities when they are treated as inputs into a cycle of production are the same as their values when they leave the same cycle as outputs. Kliman (2007) refers to this as 'simultaneous valuation”, and he rejects it in favour of “temporal valuation”. Kliman’s point is simple: you can’t produce anything using inputs that have not yet been produced! The value that must be advanced to obtain the inputs in a given period depends on the output price in the previous period. Kliman gives a number of compelling examples to justify this claim. One of the most straightforward is to consider the entire economy as being based on the production of corn, which is itself grown from corn seed (corn is both the input and output). Kliman shows through a simple calculation that if a drought means that ten bushels of corn were planted but only nine were harvested, the living labour put in by the farmers must, by the simultaneous interpretation, be negative (equal to minus one bushel worth of labour). Absurd results such as this are avoided if it is assumed that prices of outputs and inputs do not have to match in a given cycle. In the example cited, the price of corn rises after the drought. Kliman also shows that simultaneous valuation leads directly to what he calls “physicalism”. If inputs and outputs have the same value for a given commodity, then, whatever the intention of the author (and many claim to reject physicalism), the physical quantities of outputs, rather than the labour embodied within the outputs, are all that matters.

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Kliman’s shift to temporal valuation immediately undermines Bortkiewicz’s argument. Bortkiewicz bases his critique on a 'simple reproduction” model, in which the same physical quantities of goods are produced in each cycle of production. Here the input and output values can be made to match up, so, for example, there is always sufficient demand for wage goods to match the output of the sector producing wage goods. Once values are transformed to prices, supply and demand no longer match and reproduction cannot continue. But Kliman can simply construct a second cycle such that the supply in the first cycle matches demand in the second cycle. Once this is combined with the idea that prices of production of outputs are the values advanced to purchase inputs (the single-system approach) it can be shown that Marx’s aggregate equalities still hold-price is seen to be complex expression of value, and total profit equals total surplus value. The dual-system interpretations that Kliman scrutinises do not maintain these equalities. Kliman’s solution will look counter-intuitive to anyone more familiar with dual-system interpretations-the total value of inputs and outputs changes between cycles (and this is not simply a question of quantities of money; the amounts equally represent labour time), even though the physical output and production methods are identical in each cycle. But, counter intuitive solutions are not always wrong, and Kliman’s treatment is a far cry from the easy dismissals of Marx common among the economic and political orthodoxy. As has been noted earlier, Marxism is then often reduced to a merely ethical claim about capitalism, or it is reduced to a set of political statements about inequality and distribution, which can in principle be solved by any honest social-democratic politician. It is exactly notions like the supposed inconsistency due to the “transformation problem”, taught to any student who still receives training in history of economics at all, that makes such an attitude as prevalent as it is harmful When capitalists measure their rates of profit they are comparing the surplus value they get from running plant and machinery with what they spent on acquiring it at some point in the past-not what it would cost to replace it today… [The rate of profit] necessarily implies a comparison of current surplus value with the prior capitalist investment from which it flows. Economists generally, do exactly what should not be done. The “rates of profit” they compute and put forward as evidence are nothing

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other than ratios of current surplus value to what it would cost to replace plant and machinery today-figments of the simultaneist imagination. (Although government agencies supply the data, they nowhere sanction taking one figure, dividing it by the other, and christening the result “the rate of profit”). According to the alternative treatment, referred to above, rate of profit figures, on the other hand, are ratios of current surplus value to what was actually spent to acquire the plant and machinery in the past (net of depreciation). What has come to constitute the orthodox treatment, on the other hand, values advanced capital at its current cost (also known as replacement cost) rather than at its historical cost. In other words, the denominators of their rates of profit measure the amount of money that would be needed at the end of the current year to replace all of the capital assets, rather than the actual sums of money that were expended in order to acquire these assets originally. Mainstream Marxist and Sraffian (neo-Ricardian) economists have long embraced equilibrium modelling and what Steedman (1977:217) called the “physical quantities approach” to valuation and profitability. This approach compels one to measure the rate of profit in current-cost terms. So the historical-cost rate of profit is dismissed simply because one would violate the methodological norms of equilibrium economics and physicalism if one were to use it to assess movements in profitability. And since the reclamation of the LTFRP against the Okishio theorem requires repudiation of current-cost valuation, the LTFRP (single system based on historic evaluation) must also be dismissed, despite the fact that the theorem has been disproved, in order to protect these methodological norms. One cannot think of another plausible way of explaining why, although Dumenil and Levy (2005) study a great variety of measures of Static-equilibrium prices are constant prices. Therefore, in a static equilibrium, the prices at which capital goods were acquired are the prices at which they can now be replaced. And when prices are constant, the only remaining determinants of the rate of profit are physical quantities. Thus, the replacement-cost or current-cost “rate of profit” is an essentially physical rate, not to mention even more striking fact that it is a hypothetical magnitude only. The rate of profit, capital investments are valued at their current cost in every single one of these measures.

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The current-cost rate of profit is simply not a rate of profit in the normal sense of the term. First of all, the current-cost “rate of profit” is not what businesses and investors seek to maximize. They base their investment decisions on measures of profitability such as the internal rate of return and net present value. Whereas the current-cost “rate of profit” values current investment expenditures and future receipts simultaneously, using a single set of prices, these measures use current prices to value current investment expenditures, but use expected future prices to compute future receipts. Secondly, the current-cost “rate of profit” fails to accurately measure businesses” and investors” actual rates of return, their profits as a percentage of the original amount invested. The discrepancy can be very large. Imagine, for instance, an investment that would generate a constant revenue stream over a very long time, if the price of the product produced by means of the investment remained constant. If, however, the price rises or falls by a constant percentage per period, it is easy to show that the actual rate of return rA and the current-cost “rate of profit” rCC, are related as follows: rA= (1+ $rCC + /& where j$ is the per-period percentage change in the product’s price (in decimal form). 22 Thus if rRC = 10% (i.e., 0.10) but the price of the product falls by 2% per period (i.e., # = -0.02), then /is 7.8%. 22 Denote the amount invested as and the per-period revenue stream if the product’s price remained constant as R. Then, applying the standard internal rate of return formula, we have I = Ra | -^r± and = RY\\\\ j If the number of periods n is large, then !=lll+rcc0 t and RY ^ « R\\\\ lll+rcc0 \\\\l + rA) Rh f-—W1 » Rb-FF-t and RY ^- « R\\\\ -.—— Since the two right-hand Flll+rCC