citekey: wrightDebateClasses1998
aliases: ["Wright (1998) The Debate on Classes"]
title: "The Debate on Classes"
authors: Erik Olin Wright
tags: [literature-note, SocialClass]
year: 1998
publisher: ""
doi:

The Debate on Classes

Key takeaways

content: "@wrightDebateClasses1998" -file:@wrightDebateClasses1998

Reading notes

• Four strategies to deal with the conceptual problem of non-polarised class positions within a logic of polarised class relations (middle classes)
  • 1. the class structure is polarised and the middle class is an ideological illusion
  • 2. the middle class should be viewed as a segment of some other classes
    • basic map of capitalism remains intact but significant internal differentors within classes are added to the analysis of the class structure
  • 3. the middle class is a class in its own right
    • most radically alters the class map of capitalism than the class-segment strategy
  • 4. the positions aggregated under the rubric of 'middle class' are not really a class at all, rather they are locations that are in more than one class 'contradicting class locations within class relations'
• This fourth solution is unsatisfying
  • shifts analysis of class relations from exploitation to domination
  • implicitly regards socialism as the only possible alternative to capitalism
• the marginalisation of exploitation both undermines claims that classes have 'objective' interests and erodes that centrality Marxists have accorded class in Social Theory
• Domination does not in of itself imply any specific interest of antagonism - parents dominate small children but that does not mean they have intrinsically opposed interests to their children
• domination views of class also slit into 'multiple oppressions' whereby class is one of many oppressions rooted in different forms of domination