The promising future of class analysis: A response to recent critiques

(1992) - John H Goldthorpe, Gordon Marshall

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Abstract

Notes

• Class analysis in our sense has as its central concern the study of relationships

• But a priori there is only attractional and promise. Whether the research programme of class analysis proves worthwhile- is progressive rather than degenerative- must be decided by the results it produces. No assumption of the pre-eminence of class is involved.

• Our conception of class analysis entails no theory of history according to which class conflict serves as the engine of social change

• Class analysis as we understand it implies no theory of class exploitation, according to which all class relations must be necessarily and exclusively antagonistic, and from which the objective basis for a 'critical' economics and sociology can be directly obtained

  • This does not require them to adhere to a labour theory of value, or indeed any other doctrine entailing exploitation as understood in Marxist discourse

  • Nor must they suppose, as it suggests in Sorenson that what is to the advantage of one class must always and entirely be to the disadvantage of another

    • That may be played by 'class compromises' in, for example, labour relations or the development of national political economies and welfare states

• The influence of Marxist theories of exploitation would be surely far less than that of the difference principle as formulated by Rawls (1972)

• The version of class analysis that we would endorse takes in not theory of class based collective action, according to which individuals holding similar positions within the class structure will thereby automatically develop a shared consciousness

• Class analysis as we understand it does not embrace a reductionist theory of political action- according to which such action can be understood simply as the unmediated expression of class relations and the pursuit of structurally given class interests

• Class analysis in our sense may well then appear as a far more limited project, intellectually as well as political than in its Marxist form

• For Marxists, class analysis was the key to the understanding of long term social change: class relations and specifically class conflict provided the engine of this change, and the study of their dynamics was crucial to obtaining the desired cognitive grasp on the movement in history

• However class analysis as a research programme is not only a quite different kind of intellectual undertaking from the class analysis of Marxism but also generates results which give a new perspective on the substantive significance of class relations in contemporary society