Now There are Seven – or are there?

[PJShannon]

Following is a discussion on the page titled: Now There are Seven – or are there?.
Below is the discussion so far. Feel free to add your own comments!

[hallblithe]

One of the academics involved in this study believes that the seven classes are not so much at odds with Marxian perspectives and writes more on this here.   He is keen for us to provide feedback.

[ALB]

Professor Mike Savange (one of those behind the new classification)  does indeed seem to be saying something similar to us, i. e. that the real division in present-day society is not between a "middle class" and a "working class" but between an "elite" and the rest:

Quote:

Previous models of class, with their concern around the boundaries between middle and working class are supplanted by three other dynamics which run through our analysis. We can define these as (a) the role of the outliers and especially those at the ‘top end’ of the class structure, (b) boundaries of age and generation, and (c) the redefinition of expertise and technique. Let me address these in turn.We felt that one of our most striking findings from the GBCS is the clear delineation of an ‘elite’. It is rather bemusing that Marxist critics of our work abound, given that our account of contemporary class relations has far more affinities to Marxist theories of capitalism than any other sociological models available (certainly compared to the NS-Sec). If one has to detect the single most important cleavage in Britain today, it is not between ‘middle’ and ‘working’ class, but between a small corporate elite and everybody else.This distinctive elite has not been recently recognised in previous forms of sociological class analysis – though it is certainly manifest in the public imagination. As I have argued, this is due to the preoccupation with the middle reaches of society, which dramatically weakened the capacity to bring the purview of the ‘extreme’ social classes into the purview of class analysis.

Perhaps we've misunderstood him (or rather the publicity surrounding the announcement of the results of the "Great British Class Survey" which downplayed this elite vs the rest aspect) and should be using this point of his to back up our analysis.

[Socialist Party Head Office]

Comment received from a Socialist Party member who is not on this forum:I don’t really understand why Mike Savage feels he deserves credit for identifying a ‘cleavage’ between the rich elite and the rest of us, when it’s bleeding obvious to the rest of us. Instead of clearing up the confusing middle ground the survey introduces yet more categories of middle ground, thus obscuring more than it reveals.

[Ed]

Just as an argument built on a fallacy must always remain a fallacy regardless of whether it's conclusion is factually correct or not. e.g. the socialist party of great britain is a democratic political party because the moon is made of cheese is a correct conclusion but based on fallacious reasoning. So too is any attempt to objectivly define social class. As social classes are merely an idea of how certain people should behave, social constructs, the results will always be founded in ideology regardless of whether some of the conclusions may correlate with our own or not. Marxian class definition, to differentiate between the two commonly referred to as a persons economic class, is based solely on someones relation to the ownership of the means of production it is therefore an objective definition based on material facts and directly opposed to ideological arguments. We should continue to argue against fallacious reasoning and pseudo-scientific conclusions even if they are agreeable to our position. This is the same reason we exclude religious people from the party, right?

[hallblithe]

 Another academic remarks:My own approach to class analysis is clearly more Weberian than yours, in that I see social mobility a key component if classes are to be identified on the basis of occupational categories.  Also, the Bourdieusian approach, which I favor over an orthodox Marxist approach, has a sharp distinction between classes as epistemological and ontological entities. This goes back to the French philosopher Gaston Bachelard, and his notion of epistemological obstacles.  Classes can be identified “on paper” by charting out the capital structures in a multidimensional space of capitals, and by locating the positions within this multidimensional hierarchy. Whether or not these classes also become actual classes, i.e. mobilized groups for struggles, is a different story.  Also, the concept of the middle class, or middle classes as they would say in France, proves to be understood in different ways across Europe. In  Norway, 70% see themselves as part of the middle class, and +/- 25% as a part of the working class. In the UK, which in this respect stands out in the Western Europe, 50% see themselves as a part of the working class. In short, belonging to the same occupational category, e.g. a plater or a mechanic at a shipyard, does not necessarily imply that the class identities also are similar.  This is yet another reason why a favor the Bourdieusian framework to class analysis.  

[ALB]

hallblithe wrote:

Another academic remarks:Classes can be identified “on paper” by charting out the capital structures in a multidimensional space of capitals, and by locating the positions within this multidimensional hierarchy. Whether or not these classes also become actual classes, i.e. mobilized groups for struggles, is a different story. 

I don't know about Bourdieusianism but this sounds a bit like Marx's distinction between a "class in itself" and a "class for itself".

[ALB]

One witty opponent once summed up our definition of the working class as:

Quote:

"everybody's working class apart from the fat controller".

It was a caricature of course but not far off, but the idea seems to catching on that, as the Occupy Movement put it, it's the 99% against the top 1%,Someone who had been to some event left a copy at Head Office of a magazine they had picked up called The Platybus Review (you'll have to ask JohnD who they are). It contained an interview with an American academic called Jodi Dean in which the following question was put to her:

Quote:

Besides sovereignty, the other component in your reformulation of “the dictatorship of the proletariat” as “the sovereignty of the people” is “the people.” Following Hardt and Negri and Badiou, you distance yourself from the classical Marxist notion, elaborated by Lukács, of the proletariat as the “subject” of communism or history. Instead, you “offer the notion of ‘the people as the rest of us,’ the people as a divided and divisive force, as an alternative to some of the other names for the subject of communism—proletariat, multitude, part-of-no-part” (18–19). How does this amendment to the traditional concept of the “subject” of communism or history help to improve Marx’s theory, or at least bring it up to date?

To which she replies:

Quote:

One of the ways it brings Marx’s theory up to date is really pragmatic. When you’re talking to a bunch of people today, almost no one says that he’s a member of “the proletariat.” They may say they’re part of “the people.” (This, even though Marx and Lenin are very clear that “the proletariat” is not an empirical category). The term “proletarianization” is still accurate and useful, however, so I think it’s important to keep that concept and think of “the people” as “the proletarianized people.” For folks in the US, “proletariat” suggests factory labor too strongly. There are many people who don’t feel like they’re proletarians, even as they might recognize their existence as proletarianized, especially today because we’ve lost so many manufacturing jobs. There are so many precarious workers, fragile workers, so many non-workers—widespread unemployment, people who are underemployed. It’s hard for those folks to think of themselves as “the proletariat.” The sense of “the people” as a divided group better encompasses our own time. Frankly, I also think it includes more of the “reserve army” of the unemployed, the Lumpenproletariat that classical communism had mistakenly abandoned.

So it looks as if others have been thinking along our lines (not that we have ever liked or generally  used the term "proletariat": even a hundred years ago almost no-one would have said they're a member of the proletariat).She expresses some other, quite unacceptable views in the interview (after all, she's a Leninist), but the idea that the basic division in society is between the ruling oligarchy and the rest-of-us seems a sound one. Her reformulation of Marx's "dictatorship of the proletariat" as meaning the same as the "sovereignity of the people" seems good too.

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