“Understanding Class,’ by Erik Olin Wright, 2015
If you missed advanced sociology, this book is for you. I was trying to find a book that describes
the specific nature of the class structure in the U.S. and this book only touches on
that. It made clear that a material problem
for revolutionaries in the U.S.
is the complexity of the class system, which has many layers even within
classes, layers that are also partially permeable. This is the material reason why working-class
consciousness is so weak and fragmented here.
Wright calls this problem that of a “contradictory location within class
relations.’
 |
| Version of a Tear Drop Class Diagram, perhaps a bit dated. |
Instead this academic book concentrates on the various sociological
theories around class, but from a Marxist point of view. Wright is a mild-mannered left Social-Democrat
from Madison, Wisconsin and takes on various neo-liberal,
progressive and down-right reactionary theories on understanding class. He includes Piketty, Standing and Weber in
his theory review, then presents his own.
He makes the quite interesting point that capital will undermine its own
long-term profit interests (and is doing so) in the pursuit of complete
domination over labor.
Wright’s overall position is to find a ‘socially positive
compromise’ within capitalism that will benefit workers the most. Think Sweden
or Germany. He also attempts to integrate other theories
of class into a Marxist paradigm – and I don’t think he fails. The Marxist position, in Wright’s
understanding, is the most systemic and encompassing, but he tries to borrow
from other theories that are based on solid evidence. I’m going to describe each chapter in which
Wright challenges in a polite way some more conservative theories on class. You’ve run into people parroting these ideas,
even though they might not know where they come from.
1.
Wright first takes on the grand-daddy of bourgeois
sociology – Max Weber. Essentially Weber
did not believe that the working class was exploited under capitalism. Weber believed that class was exclusively summed
up by status - the market skills and background employees brought to their jobs
in a complex society. You know, ‘cultural capital.’ In essence, workers charge the bosses ‘skill
rents.’ Wright agrees on a lower level
that this is true of aspects of class, but points out that Weber’s formulation
ignores the overall nature of the economy. Weber believed in a ‘rationalized’
economy which required ‘efficient’ employee functioning. This would allow economies to survive. Weber thus endorsed capitalist managers
directing all the work of employees and opposed self-management or cooperatives
or even co-determination. By extension
unions, work councils, labor, socialist or revolutionary parties - all impinge
on Weber’s idea of ‘rationalization.’
Oddly enough, while Weber denounces
the ‘political incentives’ that might exist under socialism, he embraces the
idea that workers under capital must treat labor as ‘an end in itself’ –
another kind of political incentive, i.e. the Protestant work ethic. Weber does understand class position in the
same way as Marx, in its relation to production and influence by materiel forces. Wright insists that the idea of
‘exploitation’ hovers in the background of Weber’s analysis but this looks
dubious. Weber even theorized that slaves were not an exploited class, and if
you can’t see that, you can’t see much.
2. Next
up is Charles Tilly. Tilly’s
jargon-heavy theory is that inequality might affect categories of people by
gender, by ethnicity, by nationality, by language, by religion, by age cohort. But this is only to enable and stabilize
exploitation. Tilly thinks that it is
primarily organizations that construct this exploitative inequality, which
includes corporations, businesses and government entities. It is there you will find the various forms
of inequality – exploitation, opportunity hoarding, hierarchy, ownership. These result in categorical inequality, but
also self-perpetuating social-Darwinian success for that organization. Tilly subsumes identity politics into class
issues and opposes individualist understandings as ‘micro-level’ approaches to
these macro-level problems.
Wright agrees with much of what he
says, as Tilly merges Weberian and Marxist ideas in his theory, but criticizes
him for making identity issues into ‘individualist’ issues when they are not.
3. The third sociologist is a guy named Aege
Sorensen. Sorensen also embraces an exploitation / economic version of class
over the ‘life conditions’ version of class that is the most common. Wright oddly agrees with Sorensen that you
can avoid talking about the labor theory of value when discussing
exploitation. Instead, according to
Sorensen, the key to exploitation is ‘rents.’
Now the discussion gets completely ridiculous. You are thinking Sorensen is going to talk
about landlords or banks gouging apartment dwellers or homeowners; or
high-class French vineyards and corner restaurants selling their wares for a
maximum profit because of their primo real estate location. Noooo!
Sorensen basically believes that workers charge the bosses exorbitant ‘rents’
for their skills - and so the workers exploit the capitalists. Yes, you heard it here.
Sorensen
thinks that unions negotiate ‘solidarity wages’ which gives lower-skill workers
a bonus, to the detriment of every one else.
(Has this guy been in any unions?
It is the high-end workers who get the best deal in contracts…) High minimum wages also gives low-skill
people an edge, as does a welfare state.
As a result, all these effects create a ‘rent’ paid by the capitalists
and petit-bourgeois to workers, who become ‘an exploiting class.’ Essentially Sorensen turns society on its
head.
Wright points out that all of these
‘rents’ are actually mitigations of capitalist and rentier exploitation. Sorensen
bases his ideas on a world of ‘perfect competition’ which does not exist. Additionally, people can be oppressed without
being directly exploited – like the unemployed, indigenous people or other
excess populations who are not needed for any economic role. As Wright sardonically says, racists said
‘the only good Indian is a dead Indian’ but the bourgeoisie doesn’t say, ‘the
only good worker is a dead worker.’ (Unless
they are on strike in South
Africa…)
4. Michael Mann is the next up. Mann doesn’t
believe that classes exist unless they act ‘for themselves.’ He does away with the concept of the Marxist
category of class ‘in itself’ - or even analyzing classes as they exist - unless
they form into social forces and class actors.
To Wright, class locations, relations and structures are still
important, while Mann thinks that this version of class analysis is only ‘on
paper.’ Mann theorizes that only when a
class expresses ideological, political, military or economic power does it
really count or exist. Mann then oddly describes
the ‘self-action’ of the American middle class / petit-bourgeois in the 20th
century – professionals, small business men and corporate managers – and calls them
class actors. Marx said that ‘history
was the history of class struggle.’ Mann
thinks that this struggle came out of nothing.
5. The next are two theorists, David Grusky
and Kim Weeden, who believe that the only way to look at class is through job
occupations or what you could generously call ‘micro-classes.’ They have come
up with more than 126 job occupations that supposedly explain class society. Wright puts them in the micro-level
sociological camp of Emile Durkheim, and thanks them for their meticulous
empirical research. If you wanted a
sociology of class that was limited to lifestyle, taste and social attitudes,
their research might be useful. This is
what Sarah Palin understands class to be.
Wright compares them to a level of game theory. Marxists question ‘what game to play.’ Institutional theorists question ‘what rules
to use’ in the already chosen game. And
situational theorists like Grusky/Weeden look at the moves to use within the
rules of the fixed game. As Wright says,
“It is the class analysis for the era of triumphant neo-liberalism.”
6. Thomas Piketty is next. Wright nods to the importance of his massive
work on inequality, “Capital.” Wright points out one main disagreement,
as others have done, that Piketty does not describe what capital actually
is. Piketty says one of the great
sources of inequality is the super-salaries of corporate managers, and calls
this ‘labor.’ Yet those wages are not
from ‘labor’ but from their power positions running capitalist firms, basically
gorging on the firms’ profits. Or as the
jab goes, ‘having their hand in the till, not on the tiller.’ Piketty also confuses home ownership with
‘capital,’ which are two different kinds of assets. These are examples of Piketty
confusing different sources into a generic ‘capital.’
7. Next up are two theorists, Jan Pakulski and
Malcolm Waters, who argue that class does not exist in the U.S., as ‘social
classes are dissolving.’ This in spite of all the empirical evidence to the
contrary. This is a familiar argument
made by Republicans and many Democrats, and Wright takes it apart.
8. Next is Guy Standing. He is the lead theorist of the ‘precariat,’ –
the marginally unemployed, migrants and denizens who have few legal rights and
educated temp or ‘gig’ workers. Standing
calls all these a separate class from the working class. Needless to say, Wright easily dispenses with
this formulation (along with Standing’s other odd ‘class’ definitions) by
showing that the material interests of the precariat and proletariat are close
– hence they are not separate classes, but different layers within one class.
Wright thinks for the ‘foreseeable future” (how long is
that…) socialism is an impossibility. So
as an alternative he creates various game theory graphs describing ‘positive’
and ‘negative’ social compromises within capitalism. He promotes union co-determination, cooperatives,
ESOPs and union-based ‘solidarity funds,’ while advocating policies to redirect
financial investment and for governments to build productive local
economies. In this context, Wright thinks the Swedish/German
model of social compromise benefits both capital and the working class the most.
Wright admits that the years between WWII and the advent of
neo-liberalism (1945 to 1975) might be a ‘blip’ in the historical record of capital,
but soldiers on anyway. He also admits
that the social-democratic model, even in Europe,
is under attack from neo-liberalism and decaying swiftly due to financial and
social conditions. This however does not
shake Wright from his political perspective.
“Capital in the 21st Century” by Piketty
reviewed in two segments below. “The
Precariat” by Standing is also reviewed.
Other valuable books reviewed are: “Annihilation of Caste,” “Understanding
Class,” “The Servant Economy,” “Rich People Things,” “The
Liberal Class,” “In & Out of the Working Class,” “Behind the
Kitchen Door” and “Class Lives.”
And I bought it at Mayday Books!
Red Frog
January 30, 2016
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