In this entry, we will discuss different theoretical approaches to classes, empirical and mobility studies on classes, ideological class indoctrination, and the concept of the death of class. For more information on specific classes see the entries Capitalist Class, Middle Class, Underclass, and Working Class.  

                                   Marxist Class Analysis

To understand Marx's analysis of classes, the most important are his conceptions of the theory of value of goods, and the theory of exploitation. The theory of value views the market value of each commodity as the exclusive product of the socially necessary working time for a commodity to be produced and transported. Marx concluded from this that the difference between the wage that a worker receives for work and the price at which goods are sold, obtained by that work, represents the surplus value that the owner of the means of labor appropriates for himself, and to the detriment of the worker. This appropriation of surplus value is the essence of the economic exploitation that is done by the class that possesses the means of labor; while, by the same process, the class that performs the work is being exploited. In capitalism, capitalists are the owners of the means of labor, and the surplus appropriated is their profit, while the workers, who possess only control over their own labor, are exploited. This is the essence of the contradiction in the productive forces under capitalism.

Marx distinguishes between "class in itself" and "class for itself." The class in itself is made up of all individuals who share the same objective attitude toward the means of production. In that sense, in order to define a specific "class in itself", it does not matter whether all those who belong to it are aware that they belong to it and whether they have a feeling that some common interests should emerge from the common position they share. A class for itself arises when there is a spread of a single "class consciousness", i.e. when all or most members of a class become fully aware of common „class interests“ and recognize a common „class enemy“. In addition, members of the class must become aware that only by joint action against class enemies can they achieve „common class goals“, but also take concrete practical measures to achieve class interests through „class struggle“. The relationship between opposing classes is always, in every society and every historical period, a relationship of conflict. These conflicts are sometimes hidden, and sometimes there is a completely open struggle. When there is a complete conflict of classes, there is either a revolutionary reconstruction of society as a whole or a common collapse of the conflicting classes. Marx believed that the class struggle was the basic mover and determinant of complete human history.

Marx’s view of the steps in the process of class formation: class in itself →class interests →common class consciousness→recognition of the class enemy→ common class goals→class strugle→revolutionary change.

Marx's view is that in the capitalist societies of Western Europe in the mid-nineteenth century, there were two key classes in society - the capitalist class, which owns the means of production, and the "proletariat" class, manual workers who own only their own labor. In addition to these two classes, in capitalism, some classes remained from the feudal era, such as aristocratic landowners and peasants, as well as the petty bourgeoisie consisting of merchants, craftsmen, and the like. Apart from them, at the absolute bottom of the social ladder are those whom Marx called the "lumpenproletariat." The Lumpenproletariat corresponds to what Engels called the "reserve army of labor" (see Engels). The capitalist class monopolizes political power and creates laws that protect its (capitalist) property, as well as its class interests, and thus dominates the working class. In this sense, the entire capitalist state and its institutions are only a reflection of the interests of the ruling capitalist class. Marx was very critical of the bureaucracy, which through formalized procedures, secrets, and hierarchies turns the goals of the state into its own goals so that the bureaucracy acts as an imaginary state next to the real state.

In the essay, The Principles of Communism, Friedrich Engels argues that communism is an ideology focused on the conditions for the liberation of the proletariat. The proletariat is a class made up of individuals whose survival depends entirely on their ability to sell their own labor to capitalists. The proletariat did not always exist but appeared with the Industrial Revolution in the second half of the eighteenth century. The development of capitalist competition and the race for profit, the rise of industrial machines, and the associated division of labor have led to a state in which workers have lost all of the already small autonomy they previously had. Many strata are falling into the proletariat - manufacturing workers, agricultural workers, petty bourgeois, craftsmen, etc. The whole society is divided into two great classes - the proletarians who own only their labor and the great capitalists who own almost all the means of production.

The capitalists pay for the work of the proletariat only as much as is sufficient to achieve the minimum of the physical survival of the proletariat. Engels analyzes the key consequences of the development of industrial capitalism. The industrialization and development of international capitalism have led to the fact that the entire planet is connected economically, so the events in the most developed countries have great consequences for all other countries. The industrial capitalists managed to become the dominant class in the most developed countries, replacing the aristocracy and large landowners from the top. The capitalists secured their power by introducing parliamentary democracy (in which they control parliament), legal equality, and free market principles. The proletarian revolution cannot happen in only one developed capitalist country but must happen in all of them at the same time. As the main instruments by which communism will be realized, Engels singles out: the restriction of private property through high taxes and the prohibition of inheritance; gradual expropriation of private capital; abolition of private banks and centralization of control over money and credit; free education for all children, etc.

György Lukács, in History and Class Consciousness (1923) explores themes such as totality, the relationship between subject and object, reification, class consciousness, the dictatorship of the proletariat, the role of the Communist Party, and others. Lukács believes that bourgeois science constantly observes phenomena from the point of view of the individual and that such a view cannot produce knowledge of totality, but only fragmentary knowledge. That is why bourgeois science divides totality into several special sciences. The fragmentation that occurs with the subject is conditioned by the fragmentation of production, the division of labor, and the hierarchical structure of the labor market. It is the logic of capital that creates consciousness, not individual perception or understanding. Lukács intends to create a philosophical basis for the establishment of true revolutionary class consciousness, so he wants to overcome Kant's view according to which it is not possible to achieve objective knowledge of reality. Social and historical facts gain real meaning only when they are integrated into the whole (totality). Only subjects, who are totals themselves, can understand totality, and in modern society, total subjects can only be classes. The category of totality is the essence of the revolutionary principle in science. The ultimate goal of socialism is the attitude toward totality, that is, society understood as a process, through which every aspect of the struggle gains its revolutionary significance. The dialectic of history as a totality realizes its self-consciousness in the class consciousness of the proletariat, while the party is the one that should be the link between people and history. The proletariat is both the subject and the object of history. As such, he understands the real nature of social relations and processes, as well as his own role in them. Marxism is a revolutionary practice through which the individual becomes a subject, not an object of historical processes. The fate of the revolution, in the age of the economic crisis of capitalism, depends on the ideology, that is, the class consciousness of the proletariat itself. The proletariat must become aware of its class consciousness, and that class consciousness is based on the historical task of the working class - the revolutionary struggle and the building of a communist society. The proletariat must not use ideology only as a means of seizing power but as an "internal unity of theory and practice." The revolutionary workers' council should be the means by which the proletariat will overcome the bourgeois character of the party leadership. Such a workers' council should overcome the bourgeois division of power into three branches (executive, legislative, and judicial), but also achieve the unity of economy and politics in proletarian action. The proletariat must be self-critical and ready to fight against the destructive influences of capitalism on its class consciousness. Lukács warns of the danger of hierarchical structure and the cult of personality, phenomena that were present in the communist parties of that period. In addition, the threat to building a true communist party is the passivity and submissive attitude of ordinary party members. Both of these tendencies can lead to the bureaucratization and centralization of communist parties.

In his book The State in Capitalist Society (1969), Ralph Miliband challenges the idea that power in capitalist society is divided between a large number of groups fighting among themselves. Instead of this pluralistic view, he advocates and proves the view that the ruling class possesses a great concentration of power and that it has a decisive role in creating ideology and politics. He believes that the ruling class has control over state institutions (police, army, judiciary, central and local government, and state administration) and that through the control of these institutions ruling class maintains its power. The ruling class is made up of those who possess economic power and who use that power to take control over state institutions, in order to maintain that economic power and stabilize capitalist relations. In that sense, people who directly manage state institutions, even when they themselves are not part of the capitalist class, mostly work for the benefit and in the interest of the capitalist class. When politicians and state bureaucrats come from a working-class background, they work in the interest of capitalists because they have accepted the values ​​of the capitalist class and are therefore co-opted into the bourgeoisie. Miliband also studies how this type of ideological legitimization is implemented and especially pays closer attention to the important role marketing has in that process. Marketing spreads ideological legitimization of capitalism in several ways: capitalist corporations use marketing to portray themselves as those who work for the common good, not for their own selfish interests; advertisements associate products with generally accepted positive values ​​and emotions; marketing spreads the ideology of consumerism to the masses.

Stanley Aronwitz approached the problems of class, class relations, and education from Marxist and radical positions, while he approached the problems of science and scientific knowledge from a postmodern viewpoint. In the book False Promises: The Shaping of American Working Class Consciousness (1973), Aronowitz describes how the labor movement in America emerged, in large part, from the trade union movement that was trying to set better standards for workers, and which goal was not to radically reform the capitalist system and take over the control of the means of production. In How Class Works (2003) Aronowitz states that the labor movement in the US still struggles over working conditions, like working hours and overtime pay. But in the class struggle between workers and capitalists, capitalists hold the majority of power and are subjugating the working class by dividing them based on citizenship status, race, and gender. For the labor movement to gain power back, it should forgo divisions and unite to fight for common goals.  

Edward P. Thompson, in Making of the English Working Class (1963), researches the emergence of the working class in England in the period between 1790 and 1830. In the first part of the book, Thompson presents three traditions that influenced the creation of the working class – Methodism, mob rule and popular justice, and ‘Englishman’s birthright’ (various legal guarantees and rights and freedoms). In the second part of the book, he shows how the Industrial Revolution brought declining working conditions and social, political, and religious repression of the working class. In the third and final part of the book, Thompson portrays the responses of the working class to those worsening conditions of life and work. English working class was not simply a “thing” or a structure, but a historical phenomenon created through social relations. The common shared experiences and interests, combined with the class struggle, created the same identity and homogeneous class consciousness in the working class people. Structures and agency played the same part in the constitution of the English working class. 

                          Weber’s Approach to Classes

Max Weber argued that inequalities existed in every society, although they were expressed differently in different societies.  Weber believes that in every society there are three relatively independent dimensions of inequality, that is, stratification: 1) material wealth, 2) status (social reputation), and 3) political power. In modern capitalism, the most significant economic inequalities are manifested through class differences. Weber does not see classes as communities, although they can form the basis for joint action. What makes different individuals members of a certain class is their unique position in the market. Those who have significant ownership of economic goods (real estate, land, livestock, mines, money, luxury goods, etc.) belong to either the rentier class or the entrepreneur class. People who do not have significant property, but only work for others, will be divided into different classes according to the type of profession they perform and the security of employment. In capitalism, the economic success of each individual, and therefore his class position and specific life chances, depends only on success in the market. In Weber's approach to classes, strata that are excluded from market competition (such as slaves) have only status group position, but not class position because each class position depends on market position, and slaves have no relationship with the market.

                          Structural Marxism on Class

Louis Althusser published two books on Marx: For Marx (1969) and Reading Capital (1970). In them, he argues that, in modern capitalism, the most significant economic inequalities are manifested through class differences. Weber does not see classes as communities, although they can form the basis for joint action. What makes different individuals members of a certain class is their unique position in the market. Those who have significant ownership of economic goods (real estate, land, livestock, mines, money, luxury goods, etc.) belong to either the rentier class or the entrepreneur class. People who do not have significant property, but only work for others, will be divided into different classes according to the type of profession they perform and the security of employment. In capitalism, the economic success of each individual, and therefore his class position and specific life chances, depends only on success in the market. In Weber's approach to classes, strata that are excluded from market competition (such as slaves) have only status group position, but not class position because each class position depends on market position, and slaves have no relationship with the market.

Greek-French sociologist Nikos Poulantzas, in his book Political Power and Social Classes (1968) develops the idea of ​​the relative autonomy of the state. Unlike the earlier Marxists, he believes that the (liberal-democratic) state has a broader role than just expressing the class interests of the capitalist class. The state possesses relative autonomy from the individual interests of individual capitalists. As capitalists fight among themselves, the state must secure their general class interests, not side with individual capitalists. Precisely because the state acts as a mediator and arbiter between the various factions of the capitalist class, which gives it autonomous power. Capitalists and other influential classes are creating long-term strategies and alliances that Poulantzas calls "power bloc." The state mediates in all class relations and all aspects of those relations - economic, political, and ideological. The state in capitalism does not rule through repression, but by creating an ideological consensus between the capitalist and other subordinate classes. The state controls workers by isolating them into separate individuals (citizens) and thus producing what he calls the "effect of isolation". This concept refers to the phenomenon that individuals from subordinate classes enter into competitive relationships with other individuals from subordinate classes, or are part of a political faction, and thus remain isolated from the rest of their own class. By mediating and reducing class conflicts, both between and within classes, the state creates long-term stability and the illusion of pluralism. In a debate he led with Ralph Miliband, Poulantzas further developed his arguments about the autonomous role of the state. Poulantzas emphasized that civil servants, regardless of their class, accept a structurally determined role that is related to the professional position they hold within the state apparatus.

Poulantzas develops his class analysis in the book Classes in Contemporary Capitalism (1974). His analysis is based on three premises: 1) classes cannot be defined outside the class struggle, 2) classes denote objective positions in the social division of labor, 3) classes are structurally determined, not only at the economic level but also at the political level and ideological level. At the economic level, Poulantzas considers productive work only one that leads to the relation of exploitation, and in capitalism, it is that work that directly creates surplus value. This is the reason why he includes in the proletariat only workers who directly produce surplus value. At the political level, he separates from the working class all personnel who exercise supervision or management. At the ideological level, he distinguishes between manual and mental work, and on that basis excludes all engineers and technicians from the working class. In his opinion, all employees who perform non-manual work belong to the class of the new petty bourgeoisie. This class has the potential to form an alliance with the capitalist class. Poulantzas believed that the working class was not united, and therefore could not represent the interests of the masses. In the same book, Poulantzas explores the consequences of the rise of transnational capitalism.

In the article "Class in the 21st Century" (2012), Therborn studies the history and future of classes and class struggle. He believes that in the first eighty years of the twentieth century, workers were a force that the state and the ruling class had to take into account, either by making concessions to or by strict control over it. The set of processes led to the breakdown of working-class power: liberalization of capital flows, credit expansion, digital trading and accumulation of capital in pension and insurance funds, and global commodity chains - all this led to an enormous concentration of private capital. Instead of nationalization and regulation, the state began to pursue a policy of privatization and liberalization.

       The Conception of Class in the Neo-Weberian Approach

Stanislav Ossowski, in Class Structure in the Social Consciousness (1957), analyzed three different ways in which social stratification and class structure have been conceptualized in different theoretical and ideological approaches. The first approach to class structure is functional that stresses the complementarity of different classes; the second approach is gradational which views classes in a hierarchical way; the third approach is Marxist that uses the concept of exploitation to present classes as dichotomous systems in which the existence of one class directly depends on the existence of another class (owners versus workers) and emphasizes social antagonisms. The first two approaches are often adopted by the individuals from upper classes, while the antagonistic class scheme is used for the radicalization of lower classes and for attacking the existing social order. Ossowski stressed that the Marxist approach to class structure is inadequate for explaining modern and complex industrial societies. Social hierarchy in those societies depends not only on class exploitation but also on control of authority and means of consumption.

In the book The Blackcoated Worker (1958), David Lockwood, from a neo-Weberian theoretical point of view, states that there was no proletarianization of office workers in Britain. He believes that there are three aspects of the class situation: the market situation, the work situation, and the status situation. The market situation includes wages, job security, and prospects for advancement. The work situation includes social relations at work between employers and subordinate staff, primarily in the context of the scope of supervision. The status situation refers to the level of prestige that some types of employees have in the company. Lockwood concluded that, except in terms of salaries, employees kept most of the advantages in all three aspects of the class situation in relation to skilled manual workers.

Goldthorp developed a sevenfold class scheme for the needs of the Oxford Class Mobility Study, the empirical part of which was conducted in England and Wales in 1972. The results and conclusions of the study were published in the book Social Mobility and Class Structure in Modern Britain (1980). In this book, Goldthorp presents the following class scheme going from the top to the bottom: 1) the most successful professionals, directors, and managers, as well as big capitalists; 2) professionals, middle managers, and managers; 3) routine non-manual employees; 4) smaller owners, farmers and the self-employed; 5) lower technical staff, supervisors of manual workers; 6) skilled manual workers; 7) unskilled and semi-skilled manual workers in industry and agriculture. Several criteria were used in the construction of this scheme: source and level of income, economic security, market situation, as well as the level of autonomy in work. Although Goldthorp took over the market situation from Max Weber as the most important aspect of class position, he did not, unlike Weber, distinguish between owners and non-owners when making his scheme. Goldthorp calls the first two highest classes a service or service class, while members of the third and fifth classes are called an intermediate class. When studying mobility between these classes, a high rate of class mobility was found, higher upward than downward mobility, as well as an increase in the chances of those who come from the working class to leave it.

British sociologist Nicholas Abercrombie, in the book Class, Structure and Knowledge (1980), argues that in modern capitalist societies, the ruling class does not need to impose its ideology on society as a whole, but achieves its goals primarily through coercion and economic power. Members of the working class often actively reject the ideology of the ruling class. Abercrombie and John Urry studied the middle class in Britain in the book Capital, Labor and the Middle Class (1983) and their analysis concluded that there was a polarization of the middle class. Managers and experts are approaching the upper class, while most ordinary "white-collar workers" are approaching the working class. They believe that in the analysis of classes, it is necessary to combine Marxist and Weberian class analysis because both have their advantages. Classes consist, at the same time, of individuals, but also of their class locations. These two authors believe that the middle class of experts and managers is more influential in the United States than in European countries.

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Goldthorp and Robert Erikson developed a “core model” of social mobility that they applied to the study of the situation in several countries. This model of social mobility uses a somewhat modified, sevenfold class scheme previously developed by Goldthorp. The essence of this model, presented in the book The Constant Flux (1992b), is the assumption of the existence of standard patterns of social fluidity, that is, that in all industrialized countries, with a free market, the patterns of social mobility are essentially the same. After a mathematical analysis of data from different countries, they concluded that the model is fully applicable to Britain and France, while it is necessary to make minor adjustments to the model to be applicable to other countries. The authors also conclude that at the end of the twentieth century, the influence of class affiliation on political attitudes decreased, and also that the influence of class relations on the formation of class identities decreased.  

British sociologist Peter Saunders believes that the main social differences in Britain are no longer related to class, but to differences in type and level of consumption. He is a great critic of the British tradition of mobility research, such as studies done by Glass and Goldthorp. In the book, Unequal but Fair ?: A Study of Class Barriers in Britain (1996), Saunders, using data from the National Child Development Study, concludes that there is a real meritocracy in Britain because talented children succeed in life regardless of socioeconomic background. In that sense, it can be said that there is inequality in Britain, but that economic differences are fair because they are based on talent and success. People who receive higher economic rewards are the ones who make the greatest contribution to the development of society. Unequal economic rewards also contribute to motivating those who are most talented to give their best. In his book Social Class and Stratification (1990), Saunders studies the capitalist class in Britain. He believes that several thousand individuals control most of the key financial and administrative decisions, but he sees this group as an influential economic elite, not as the ruling capitalist class. This group of people lacks control over the administration, the media, and the education system, so they cannot be called the ruling class. He believes that the capitalist class has experienced a decline in influence and ownership because a large part of the ownership of shares (company stocks) and land is in the hands of various associations and cooperatives, as well as pension funds, which means that there has been an expansion of ownership.

                             Class in Bourdieu’s Theory

Pierre Bourdieu’s concepts of habitus, field, capital, and distinction are crucial for his analysis of classes. Habitus represents the mental and cognitive structure of every person, which enables people to act in society. Each person internalizes these mental structures by living in society. Habitus gives people rules for understanding, valuing, and classifying all aspects of society. On the other hand, the habitus gives people the ability to act in society, because it creates long-term predispositions to, more or less, instinctively react in a certain situation. Habitus is associated with social class, because individuals, that are in the same class, share a common culture and taste. Habitus is not adopted by simple internalization and acceptance of social norms, but cognitively, through daily action within the field. Habitus is adopted partly on a conscious level and partly on an unconscious level. Actors act pragmatically, but their goals and means, for the most part, are not determined consciously and rationally, but spring from a socially constructed "the feel for the game."

In order to achieve their goals, that is, for their strategies to be successful, individual and collective actors use various forms of capital. There are four types of capital that can be employed within each field (although different types of capital will be more effective in different fields): symbolic capital, cultural capital, economic capital, and social capital. While the notion of economic capital is very close to what economists mean by capital, other forms of capital are specific to Bourdieu's approach. Symbolic capital consists of prestige, status, titles, and reputation. Social capital consists of social networks and personal acquaintances that an individual can use to implement his strategy. A person's cultural capital depends on the amount of knowledge and the ability to use symbolic cultural forms that are associated with the top of the hierarchy within each field. The form of cultural capital to which Bourdieu pays the greatest attention is high art, ie knowledge of classical music, painting, fine literature, and the like. Within the upper class, there is an inverse relationship between the size of economic and cultural capital. To achieve a generational reproduction of class position, those with the most economic capital can achieve reproduction by using only economic capital, while those who do not have enough economic capital need cultural capital to preserve positions within the ruling class.

Bourdieu believes that each field is a stratified hierarchical system within which there are relations of power and domination. Of all the forms of power and domination, the most important are symbolic power and symbolic violence. All cultural symbols - art, food and clothing patterns, science, religion, language - serve to pursue the interests of those in power. Those at the top of the hierarchy of a field use symbols to preserve, increase and legitimize that power, so such strategies are a source of symbolic power and symbolic violence. Symbolic power and violence have the function of creating and increasing social "distinction". The distinction, conceived in this way, is a separate analytical concept in Bourdieu's approach and is the main theme of his book Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment Taste. Society is filled with the great struggle to create social distinctions, because class struggles are, in essence, struggles to create a symbolic classification of people into distinct classes. Symbolic power and symbolic violence serve to create, legitimize and preserve the distinctions that exist between social classes. When symbolic power succeeds in gaining a monopoly on the legitimacy of power relations and the "distinctions" that exist between classes within a field, then that field begins to have its doxa, that is, common sense, which serves to present power relations and distinctions as natural and self-evident. The goal of those who exercise domination is to, with the help of symbolic power, present the relations of power so legitimate and self-evident that any attempt of resistance by the oppressed is extinguished. That is why self-restraint and self-censorship, imposed on themselves by oppressed actors, are the most effective forms of reproduction of power relations.

Bourdieu sees classes as the product of symbolic self-classification of a particular group, but also of external classification by other groups. A significant and underestimated aspect of class tensions is, in Bourdieu's opinion, the "classification struggle" concerning the symbolic function of everyday cultural consumption and lifestyles. The biggest difference between Bourdieu, on the one hand, and Marxist and Weberian authors, on the other, is that he does not define classes according to their position in relations of production, but defines different classes according to the level of different forms of capital they possess, and how relations between those forms of capital affect the collective and individual practices of members of different classes. Individuals, as members of different classes, use their own capital - of all types - to develop strategies and put them into practice, all to improve or maintain their own position. The success of these strategies for each individual is what Bourdieu calls the "social trajectory" of the individual.

The class habitus of workers is shaped by the internalization of their own class position, and this internalization occurs during early socialization, primarily through the family and the school system. Accordingly, habitus acts as a socialized form of capital. Formal educational qualifications are a particularly important aspect of cultural capital. Habitus, inherent in different classes, is not directly a product of the position of these classes in production relations but is related to the size and composition of different types of capital, which condition the emergence of specific living conditions, thus creating a "class position" for a particular class. The living conditions of some class create a specific class habitus, for that class.

According to Bourdieu, individuals occupy different professional locations within the general system of professions and vocations, and these relationships form a professional structure. Bourdieu’s class scheme classifies all persons, who are in the professional structure, according to the locations they occupy within that professional structure. In that sense, the division of labor by professions represents the structure of objective positions - "locations" that are "occupied" by individuals. Class locations can be positioned over three separate dimensions or axes. The first axis concerns the total capital, primarily economic and cultural, which individuals have at their disposal through their profession. This axis is most important for positioning individuals in a particular class. Industrialists, directors, and university professors have large capital at their disposal, and therefore share the same class location and together form the dominant class. Manual workers do not own any form of capital and together they form a working (dominated) class. In the middle, between these two classes, are technicians, small business owners, and those who perform routine administrative tasks, and they make up the "petty bourgeoisie", or the middle class.

The second axis concerns the differences that exist within the classes, in proportion to the type of capital different factions of the same class have at their disposal. The same class contains different factions, and these factions differ according to the type of capital that individuals in specific locations have at their disposal. Professors and those who control the creation of aesthetic content have great cultural capital, but little economic capital. On the other hand, industrialists have large economic capital, but small cultural capital. The third axis examines the intragenerational and intergenerational mobility of individuals, both between different classes and between factions of the same class. Bourdieu's research showed that there are three basic class locations in France: the dominant class, the middle class, and the working class.

                           Analytical Marxism on Classes

Canadian philosopher Gerald A. Cohen developed an analytical Marxism approach in his book, Karl Marx's Theory of History: A Defence (1978). Cohen sees Marx's historical materialism as a purely technologically deterministic theory, and Cohen wanted to expand on it by introducing the rational actions of humans as a mediating factor between economic relations of production and historical change. 

John Roemer, another exponent of analytical Marxism, developed the theory of exploitation in the book General Theory of Exploitation and Class (1982). Roemer conceives the general theory of economic exploitation, which has its special forms, so there are feudal, socialist, status, neoclassical and Marxist exploitation, which are special cases of the general theory of exploitation. According to Remer, for economic inequality to be a consequence of exploitation, there must be a special causal link between the incomes of different actors, that is, for the rich to exploit the poor, their wealth must be directly caused by the deprivation of the poor. Roemer thus comes to his definition of exploitation: "A group can be considered exploited if there are some hypothetically feasible alternatives in which its members would be better off than in its present situation" (Roemer: 1982). Roemer's theory of exploitation is broader than Marxist's and can be applied to many situations, other than capitalism. Roemer sees the distribution of the means of production as the basis of exploitation because ownership of these means is sufficient to explain the transfer of surplus labor, while different types of assets determine different systems of exploitation. Classes represent positions within social relations of production that are based on property relations that determine patterns of exploitation. In Remer, relations within the production process or within the work process do not enter into the definition of class relations.

American sociologist Erik Olin Wright is one of the main representatives of analytical Marxism. He dedicated his career to returning the Marxist understanding of the phenomenon of classes to the center of scientific study. Wright’s first class scheme, introduced in Class, Crisis, and the State (1978), was greatly influenced by the class analysis of Poulantzas. Wright believes that Pulantzas' class scheme does not meet the criteria of Marxist class analysis because, according to such criteria, the proletariat would make up only 23 to 30 percent of the labor force in the United States in the early 1970s, so the proletariat would be a minority. Wright, in order to solve the problems of classifying social classes, introduces the notion of "contradictory locations within the class structure" as his own solution. There are locations within the class structure that are objectively contradictory in their properties, not only in relation to other classes, but in themselves, and they should be analyzed independently. The three contradictory class locations are: managers and supervisors; employees in semi-autonomous jobs and small employers.

Wright believes that three related processes took place during the development of modern capitalism: the reduction of control over the labor process by direct producers; the establishment of complex hierarchies within capitalist enterprises and bureaucracy; and the differentiation of functions previously performed by capitalists. The last process concerns the separation of three aspects of ownership: possession (control over the production process), economic ownership (control over investments and what is produced), and legal ownership. The consequence of this trend is an increase in the importance of management, but also an increase in the influence of large shareholders over small shareholders. From the analysis of all three processes, Wright derives three dimensions in the relations of production that affect one's class position: control over the means of production; control over other people's labor force, and control over investments and resource allocation. By combining the three dimensions of control in production with the three dimensions of legal status in production (legal ownership of production, legal status of employer, and legal status of employee), Wright constructs his class scheme with 10 classes. Wright believes that there are other contradictory locations in practice, but they are not of major importance for class analysis.

Wright determines the class position of individuals who do not participate directly in production relations by their class interests. Wright treats the position of housewife in the context of a family class situation. Students take a pre-class position, that is, their position depends, above all, on their future class position after gaining employment, rather than on their family background. Retirees take a post-class position and are bound by the trajectory of the class positions they have held during their careers. The position of the temporarily unemployed depends on their previous and potential future class positions, while the permanently unemployed belong to the marginal segment of the working class. Employees in the political and ideological apparatus are positioned according to their own attitude towards fundamental political and ideological interests, and not according to economic interests. Wright places members of the political and ideological apparatus in three classes: 1) bourgeois positions - those who create politics and ideology in the highest positions in the state, churches, universities, etc.; 2) contradictory locations - those who implement political decisions and spread ideology (e.g. street police officers and high school teachers); 3) proletarian positions - individuals who are completely excluded from the creation and implementation of politics and ideology (e.g. a cleaner in a police station). Wright continues with a theoretical analysis of the relationship between class structure and class struggle and introduces the notion of "class capacity" - the capacity of a class to pursue its own interests. He distinguishes between the structural capacities of the class, which depend on the structural development of capitalist societies, and the organizational capacities of the class, which represent the conscious organization of individuals to achieve their class interests, throughout, more or less, formal forms of organization (unions, labor collectives, strike committees).

In his second scheme, which he presented for the first time in his book Classes (1985), Wright divided the contradictory class situation into two types: 1) contradictory class locations within one form of production and 2) contradictory class locations between several forms of production. He believes that the main criterion for social relations of production, which are the basis for determining classes, is the unity of appropriation relations and domination relations. Based on this, Wright concludes that contradictory locations exist within the same form of production, but not between different forms of production; there are only heterogeneous or dual locations between them. In his second class scheme, Wright shifts the focus from studying the relationship of domination to studying the relationship of exploitation. He argues that class concepts based on domination tend to slip into an approach of "diverse subordination" in the study of social relations. In such approaches, it is considered that every subordination is based on a different form of domination - sexual, racial, national, or economic - none of which has primacy. Class subordination thus becomes only one of many subordinations and its centrality in social and historical analysis is lost. Dominance, in itself, does not mean that the actors will have conflicting interests, while the concept of exploitation fully encompasses the conflicting material interests of the actors.

In operationalizing the concept of exploitation, Wright introduces a distinction between economic exploitation and economic oppression. In the case of exploitation, the wealth of the exploiting class directly depends on the work of the exploited class, while in the case of economic oppression, certain groups of people are excluded from the production relationship. In addition, Wright introduces "organization" as the fourth type of productive asset. The organization, as a coordinated cooperation between producers in a complex division of labor, represents a production resource in itself. In current capitalism, this resource is controlled by managers and capitalists. According to Wright, for bureaucracy (including political and economic leaders), authority is not a resource in itself, but the organization is a resource controlled by a hierarchy of authority. Organizational resources are the basis for exploitation because ordinary workers would be in a better position if the management of companies would be democratized. The peculiarity of this type of resource is that the organization cannot be the subject of legal ownership or ownership relations. The newly formed class scheme has 12 class positions, employers are divided into three classes, while employees are divided into nine classes formed by crossing two axes of ownership of assets: the axis of ownership of skills/qualifications and the axis of ownership of organizational assets. In the new scheme, managers are ranked only by qualifications, not by the amount of organizational resources they control. The supervisors in the new scheme are divided into three classes, while in the previous one they formed a single class. The class of technocrats and semi-self-employed is now omitted and partially replaced by the class of non-manager experts. The proletariat, which used to be one class, is divided into two classes according to qualifications.

Aage Sørensen developed his theoretical approach to classes. He sees classes are structural positions within social relations in the market, especially the labor market. Class locations are related to specific interests, and these interests are antagonistic. These interests can influence the formation of class consciousness, and that consciousness can lead to action, which can take the form of class struggle. His theory of classes studies changes in social structure, so it can be used to produce a theory of history. In his theory, classes are not arranged hierarchically, as sets of ever higher positions. Sørensen believes that any theory that seeks to explain the differences in income of different classes must meet three conditions: 1) it has to see classes as sets of "empty locations" that are filled by individuals; 2) it has to explain differences in earnings by members of different classes; 3) its theoretical predictions have to be able to be empirically tested through measurable variables. Sørensen emphasizes that real class privileges stem from the structural effects of classes on inequality. Structural effects of class inequality affect the change of social structure, because, privileges or deprivations associated with class location, create antagonistic interests. Antagonistic interests, because of these advantages, affect the emergence of conflict and change the social structure.

Sørensen introduces the concept of "rent" as the basis for understanding classes. He studies how the structural effects of rents affect the formation of classes and class interests. Rent, in Sørensen's theory, is a source of extra income, and it is a consequence of differences in the distribution of certain resources in society. Resources that represent the source of rent are: ownership of capital and land, possession of technology, possession of specific skills, monopoly position, etc. The existence of rent forms the basis of exploitation, and classes are formed as structural locations (occupied by individuals), which are exploited or exploit others through rent. The exact number of basic class positions in some societies will depend on the specific social, economic, and historical circumstances in that society. If these structural positions are more permanent and greatly affect the life chances of individuals, then class interests will be formed, which can create class consciousness and class struggle. Guarding and seeking rent are the basic forms of class struggle. Sørensen sees the solution to the problem of exploitation in the elimination of rent in a perfect market system in which there would be essential equality of opportunity. Such a society would, in essence, be a classless society, because the distribution of wealth would be such to create equality of all structural positions throughout the life of an individual.

         Runciman’s Concept of Stratification and Classes

Walter Runciman, in his book Relative Deprivation and Social Justice (1966), uses historical and survey data to show how the feelings of social justice and class consciousness, that individuals have, are relative rather than an absolute category. He believes that no spontaneous development of class consciousness will lead to a class action, which would enable the realization of such social justice. In the article "How Many Classes Are There in Contemporary British Society" (1990), Runciman introduces a modified approach to stratification. He starts from the assumption that every class structure is composed of a set of roles. Each person has several different roles, but only employees have work roles, which are the most important. Classes represent groups of close roles that are grouped in relation to the economic power that those roles have in the institutional processes of production, distribution, and exchange. Economic power has three types of sources: ownership of the means of production, control over the work or process of production, and skills, qualifications, and abilities that enable employment. Belonging to a class, for each individual, is determined by a combination of these three factors of economic power. Finally, Runciman concludes that there are seven classes in Britain: 1) upper, 2) upper middle, 3) middle-middle, 4) lower middle, 5) skilled working class, 6) unskilled working class, and 7) subclass. The most significant difference, compared to similar class schemes of other authors, is the inclusion of a subclass in the class scheme. He sees the subclass as a group that does not have any of the three sources of economic power. Since this fact excludes them from the labor market, they are completely dependent on social assistance. Most of them belong to ethnic minorities or are single mothers, but their dependence on social assistance classifies them into a subclass, not ethnicity or gender.

                         Empirical Research on Class

Lloyd Warner applyed an anthropological method to research American society. The first such research was conducted in the late 1930s in a small town in the state of Massachusetts (that city is known by the nickname given to it by Warner - Yankee City), using interviews, surveys, observations, and document collection methods. Warner hypothesized that the role that kinship plays in tribal society, in modern society, is taken over by social stratification because stratification affects economic relations, sense of identity and belonging to a community, value systems, and forms of solidarity. He was primarily interested in status stratification, which determines the level of privilege, specific rights, and duties of members of a certain class and their patterns of living. The results of the research are presented in the book The Status System of a Modern Community, 2 vols. (1941, 1942). In the city where he conducted his research, Warner identified six specific classes: upper-upper, lower-upper, upper-middle, lower-middle, upper-lower, and lower-lower. The upper-upper class consisted of "patrician aristocrats", the richest families who possessed wealth for generations; they possessed specific patterns of social interaction and behavior, and they lived in the biggest houses and the best part of the city. The lower-upper class was made of families that experienced upward economic mobility and were sometimes richer than some upper-upper class families, but because their wealth was considered "new", those families did not have the same social reputation. In some other cities, where there is greater upward and downward economic mobility, these two classes formed a single class. The upper-middle class consisted of families who had a small family business, or individuals who were employed as highly-paid professionals. This class formed the basis of political and civic participation in the community. The lower-middle class of owners of small private businesses and highly skilled workers and the upper-lower class, made of skilled workers, made up the majority of the population and had a large dose of inter-class solidarity. The lower class consisted of unskilled workers living in poverty. Warner discovered another type of stratification in the "city of the Yankees", and that was ethnic and racial stratification. Whites and blacks formed two separate "castes," and that caste division intersected class divisions diagonally, and decisively influenced patterns of interaction. Later, Warner studied the patterns of mobility in the United States, the largest companies and their leaders, religion, and educational opportunities.

John Goldthorp, Lockwood, Frank Bechhofer, and Jennifer Platt conducted a large-scale study from 1963 to 1964 to test the hypothesis of a "bourgeoisization" of the working class. that is, whether wealthy manual workers are becoming more and more like the middle class. The research was conducted in British city of Luton, and workers from three large companies were interviewed. The results of this research were published in the book The Affluent Worker in the Class Structure (1968-1969), which was published in three volumes. Although most of the surveyed workers had high salaries, even higher than some members of the white collar, the original thesis was not proven. Differences like market situation, the possibility of career advancement, attitude towards work, social attitudes, and political affiliation continued to separate "rich" workers from members of the middle class who had similar salaries. This study also concludes that administrative staff workers are in a position between the working class and the middle class.

                                        Class and Race

In The Decline of the Significance of Race (1978), William Julius Wilson examines the importance of class affiliation and social mobility for racial relations in America. He concludes that African-Americans, who belong to the middle and upper classes, i.e., those who have graduated from college and are employed in highly paid professions, have resources for upward socio-economic mobility, while African-Americans who belong to the lower class do not have such resources. The African-American Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s diminished the importance of race and enabled the creation of a large African-American middle class, so in the late 1970s, class affiliation affected life chances more than race.

In the book The Truly Disadvantaged (1987), Wilson re-emphasizes the importance of race for the life chances of African Americans and presents data on the highly vulnerable position of urban poor African Americans. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, African Americans began to move from the rural south to the industrialized north of the United States. Lacking qualifications, they performed the worst industrial jobs and had no chance of advancing. Their poverty and physical isolation in the ghettos led to an increase in white prejudice, which further worsened the position of African Americans. A further deterioration in the situation of a large number of African Americans occurred in the early 1960s, due to several structural factors. The decrease in the number of well-paid jobs in the manufacturing sector in cities, and at the same time the increase in low-paid service jobs, contributed to the reduction of employment, but also to the reduction of real wages of those who were employed. This led to impoverishment, so there was an increase in crime among the male population, as well as an increase in the number of people sentenced to prison terms. The consequence of that was an increased number of single-parent families, in which only the mother was present.

On the other hand, African-Americans, who managed to finish college and find good jobs, left poor urban neighborhoods and thus, even more, increased the poverty of those neighborhoods. By creating a spatial and socio-economic distance between poor and middle-class or rich African-Americans, the social isolation of the former has been significantly increased, as the possibility of their upward class mobility has been drastically reduced. Impoverished urban neighborhoods did not have enough money for schools, so the quality of education dropped significantly. All of these factors contributed, not caused, to the development of a culture of poverty among African Americans that internalized feelings of despair and fatalism. Wilson believes that white Americans, partially consciously, socio-economically endangered poor African Americans, and that this was a reaction of whites dissatisfied with the success achieved by African Americans who became members of the middle and upper class. To more clearly define all these aspects of the urban poverty of African Americans, Wilson introduces the term "subclass" to emphasize the extreme socio-economic marginalization of this population, although he later rejected the term because of the negative connotations it received. Wilson re-examines urban poverty in When Work Disappears (1996) and provides a wealth of qualitative data on the lives of the urban poor.

       Intergenerational and Intragenerational Class Mobility

Intergenerational class mobility refers to changes in class membership between different generations of one family. If parents were in a class of manual workers, while their daughter or son is in upper class that would represent the case of upward intergenerational class mobility. Intragenerational class mobility refers to class membership changes that happen in an individual’s life over his or her carrier.  

Seymour Martin Lipset and Reinhard Bendix co-authored books Class, Status and Power: Social Stratification in Comparative Perspective (1953) and Social Mobility in Industrial Society (1959). In those books authors present the results of comparative studies of class and mobility in multiple countries. Analyzing intergenerational mobility between father and son in the USA, Japan, Denmark, Germany, France, Great Britain, Italy, Sweden, and Switzerland, the authors concluded that mobility between manual and non-manual occupations (in both directions) in all countries is about 30 percent. They believe that similar percentages of mobility do not automatically mean the existence of "equal opportunities" in all of these countries. They also concluded that the real chances for upward mobility in the United States are less than the social perception of those chances was.

David Glass led a large-scale field survey conducted in 1949, which aimed to determine intergenerational status mobility. The results of this research are presented in the book Social Mobility in Britain (1954a). Prior to the research, all professions were divided into seven status levels: 1) experts and senior management, 2) managers and executive directors, 3) inspectors, supervisors and non-manual workers of higher level, 4) inspectors, supervisors, and non-manual workers of the lower level, 5) skilled manual workers, 6) semi-skilled manual workers, 7) unskilled manual workers. The results showed that there was no increase in mobility in Britain in the first half of the 20th century. Although two-thirds of the respondents were in a different status category, compared to the one in which their fathers were, the number of those who progressed was the same as those who fell behind in relation to the status of a father. The highest mobility is shown at the middle-status levels. Policy measures aimed at establishing equal opportunities in education and employment in Britain have not been successful, as inequalities in economic and status resources persist. Glass championed for the introduction of measures that will assure real equality of opportunities.

Ralf Dahrendorf studied social conflicts, classes, and relations of authority and power. In his book Class and Class Conflict in Industrial Society (1957), he concludes that the manual working class was going through the process of increased stratification. The differences in wages, prestige, and job security between unskilled and semi-skilled, on the one hand, and skilled manual workers, on the other, were constantly increasing. This stratification led to a decrease in solidarity within the working class and the emergence of different interests, as skilled workers struggle to maintain their better position. The stratification of the working class and the increase of intergenerational mobility lead to a decline in class solidarity and a reduction in class conflicts in society. He believed that the development of trade unions and negotiating and arbitration bodies between workers and employers would lead to the development of industrial democracy and the reduction of class conflicts.

            Ideological Indoctrination of Lower Classes

Marx argued that the relations of production in capitalism create a specific type of social superstructure that aims to preserve the reproduction of such relations of production. Hence, in addition to direct political control, the capitalist class creates an ideology that aims to justify and legitimize existing relations of production and capitalist exploitation and domination. The capitalist class, with its ideology that uses the ideas of equality and freedom, achieves to disguise, to other members of society, the basis of exploitation and domination on which that class rests. However, equality, freedom, and civil rights are an illusion, because the worker is neither free nor equal to the capitalist. The worker is not free, because he is forced to work for the capitalist in order to survive. The worker is not equal either, because all political power and ideological narrative are created, and held by the capitalist class. That is why Marx sees ideology as a „false consciousness“, that is, a false image of society and the world. Marx believes that capitalist control over political power and ideological narrative will not be able to prevent the collapse of the capitalist system when the contradictions within the social base become too great.

One of the key consequences of the capitalist relations of production and the ideology that defends them is what Marx calls "alienation." Alienation occurs when workers in capitalism begin to view the things they produce as foreign objects. They see goods as something foreign to them and that has the power to control people. „Productive labor“ is the primary and most important human activity, in which people truly express their own being. When people give up the products of their labor to place them on the market as goods, they then lose a part of themselves. Workers are alienated not only from the things they produce but also from the whole system - economic flows and impersonal market forces of supply and demand, as well as from the ruling ideology and institutions that support capitalist domination. Eventually, workers become alienated from themselves. Religion is one of the main examples of human alienation and, as a value and as an institutional system, it plays a crucial role in protecting and justifying capitalist domination. Marx believes that "man makes religion, religion does not create man." People attribute their own powers to supra-empirical forces and thus become alienated from themselves. Since religion is the most important source of alienation, people must abolish religion and religious illusions and myths, so they can become truly free.

Italian philosopher Antonio Gramsci is known for his concept of "cultural hegemony". The ruling class in capitalist societies does not rule only through force and repression but imposes its own ideological system, which defends the interests of the ruling class, and other subordinate classes. This imposed value system is what Gramsci calls "cultural hegemony." Hegemony is a synthesis of political, intellectual, and moral leadership within the ruling class. This leadership justifies its interests by creating an image of the world that presents those interests and the economic and political relations that sustain those interests as positive for the entire population. When other classes (which Gramsci calls "subaltern") accept such a picture of the world as normal and common sense, or even better, as the only possible one, then those classes become integrated into that ruling cultural hegemony. The capitalist class integrates subaltern classes in two ways. On the one hand, it gives them small concessions - workers' rights, allows the work of trade unions, creates a social security system, and the like. On the other hand, the state and civil society create institutions and organizations - educational institutions, the press, churches, and civil associations - that promote this cultural hegemony. In addition, the state creates institutions - police, army, prisons, psychiatric institutions - that carry out repressive measures against those who do not accept hegemony. The capitalist class also has its independent ways of achieving obedience, through the realization of control and punishment in the workplace itself, but also through employment itself, because most workers without capitalist employment cannot even survive. Subaltern classes, to realize their interests, must consciously and purposefully create their own intellectuals, activists, and theorists, to successfully fight against the hegemony of the capitalist class. The proletariat must bring into civil society its own values ​​and culture, which will work not only for the interests of the working class but for the interests of universal socialism. In that way, they will force the whole society, and finally, the traditional intellectuals, to actively accept the validity and historical necessity of the new hegemony and achieve the ultimate goal - the creation of socialist hegemony.

Althusser developed a theory of ideology, in which ideology functions “without history”, by providing people the framework to establish lived relationships within the social reality in which they are located. Ideology locates subjects in the system of relationships that is necessary for the maintenance of unequal class relations. Ideology molds individual identities that are functional to the propagation of the capitalist system of exploitation. Hence, ideology is not a philosophical illusion but a lived practice of everyday life. “Ideological state apparatuses” (legal system, family, school, church, communications, political parties) are predominantly responsible for those practices because they are supported by, and give support to those practices, so to ensure the undisturbed functioning of the capitalist system.

In his book Manufacturing of Consent (1979), Michael Burawoy examines the ways in which directors and managers in companies obtain consent from workers, that is, how they manage to persuade them to cooperate with management. Management in companies gives up strict control over workers and the work process, so workers have the impression that they have greater rights, so their dissatisfaction is reduced. The consent of workers to exploitation, despite oppression and low wages, is also created by manipulating and inciting conflict between the workers themselves.

Swedish sociologist Göran Therborn"s book What Does the Ruling Class do When it Rules?: State Apparatuses and State Power under Feudalism, Capitalism and Socialism (1978) uses the categories of systems analysis to give a Marxist understanding of state power and the state apparatus. In the process, he constructed a systematic typology of differences between the feudal, capitalist, and socialist states. In the last parts of the book, he studies the history of the strategies that the workers' parties implemented to achieve socialism. In analyzing the strategies that the ruling class pursues in capitalism in order to rule, he concluded that the ruling class uses mostly state apparatus and economic exploitation and domination as ruling strategies, rather than ideology. His next book, The Ideology of Power and the Power of Ideology (1980) represents a further development of the ideas of the previous one, and in it, much more attention is paid to the issue of ideology. Therborn understands ideology very broadly, viewing it as an unconscious psychodynamic process that shapes consciousness and gives meaning to individuals and social groups through the symbolic order of language codes.

In Touraine's theoretical model, class relations encompass both economic relations of production and relations of rule and domination. The ruling class (capitalists, managers, technocrats, political elite) establishes power and domination over the "people's class". In his book The Post-Industrial Society (1969), Touraine states that the second half of the twentieth century saw the development of a post-industrial society, which he called a "programmed" society. In post-industrial societies, the focus is shifting from the production of goods to the production of information. The development of the welfare state abolished the autonomy of the economic sphere because more and more economic decisions are made by the centralized state bureaucracy. It is this centralization and bureaucratization of economic policy that has contributed to post-industrial societies becoming programmed. The creation and dissemination of information is becoming most important for society and the economy, so universities are taking on the most important role in creating and shaping a new type of society and its elite. The centralized power of the state tends to control both the economy and public opinion and thus endangers the power of collective actors and the democratic order. In industrial society, the main representatives of the ruling class were the capitalists, and the main representatives of the popular class were the workers, so class conflicts were characterized by a conflict between workers and capitalists. In postmodern society, the most important representatives of the ruling class are politicians, bureaucrats, and managers, and the main force of resistance to the ruling class is no longer workers and the labor movement, but new social movements - environmental, student, anti-nuclear, feminist and the like.

                                       The Death of Class

In social sciences, since the 1950s, there have been a great deal of attempts to declare class, as an analytically useful concept, obsolete. One of the first who made this claim was Robert Nisbet in his article “The Decline and Fall of Social Class” (1959). Nisbet argues that the concept of class was useful (at the time he was writing) for historical and ethnographic analysis and that in the US and other developed Western societies class is useless for understanding either wealth, power, or social status. The main reasons for the concept of class to lose its usefulness are processes of democratization, which led to political equality, and the historical rise of the living standard for all, which led to equalization of patterns of consumption. In the late 1980s and 1990s, this line of reasoning intensified. Robert Holton, in his article “Has class analysis a future? Max Weber and the challenge of liberalism to Gemeinschaftlich accounts of class” (1989), uses Ferdinand Tönnies’ concepts of Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft to ascertain which of those two concepts better explain class in the contemporary context of developed economies. He concludes that class resembles the Gesellschaft more and offers two main arguments. The first argument concerns three parallel processes: the growth of the service industry, the erosion of traditional manual vocations (miners, sailors, etc.), and the widening of home ownership in the population. The second argument relates to the erosion of class voting and membership in left parties, the downfall of trade unions, and the growth of new social movements. All those processes lessened the importance of class as a source of identification and collective behavior. He argues that the Weberian concept of class is the best for understanding class in modern times.

The same year that Holton published his article, Ray Pahl published the article “Is the emperor naked? Some Questions on the Aadequacy of Sociological Theory” (1989), which makes similar claims. Pahl argues that class as a concept became useless to sociology and gives six reasons for that. The first two reasons are that the theoretical model that proposes that class structure creates class consciousness, which further brings class action, cannot explain modern revolutions from the top, or why that causal chain makes more impact on the powerless classes. The third reason refers to the problem that champions of the class approach were never able to determine the exact number of classes. The fourth reason relates to Pahl’s assertion that the class approach promotes circular causal explanation – socio-economic conditions produce classes, and classes, in turn, produce socio-economic conditions. The fact that consumer patterns don't reflect class affiliation is the fifth reason. The Sixth reason is the claim that class identity in politics is abating, while consumer interests become more important for political action for the majority of people.

Terry Nicholls Clark and Seymour Martin Lipset argue, in their article “Are Social Classes Dying?” (1991), that classes are part of traditional hierarchy, based on economic, status, and power differences. But, in modern developed societies those hierarcies are losening its importance, and it is most visable in three areas – politics, economy and family. I the area of politics class voting is becoming less important, as ordinary people care more about individualism, selfactualization, consumerism, and life style then about ideology and class struggle. All that is a product of the rise of wealth and spending power of majority of people. In the area of economy, centralized hierarchical structure of production is breaking up, while, at the same time, middle class is widening, making the class structure looking more like a diamond then like a pyramid. In the third area, influence of family as a base of class reproduction is declining.   

Jan Pakulski, in the article „The dying of class or of Marxist class theory“ (1993), and Malcolm Waters, in the article “Succession in the stratification system: A contribution to the ‘death of class debate” (1994), further pushed the debate about the death of class. A few years after those articles they (Pakulski and Waters) wrote together the book The Death of Class (1996). The authors believe that modern societies are transformed to much, in relation to the earlier ones, that they can no longer be considered class societies. The key processes that have led to such changes are: globalization, changes in the economy, new technologies, and political changes. Globalization has led to a new international division of labor, which has led to the disappearance of many traditional workers' occupations. The decline in manual labor, especially in the mining and steel industries, the growth of the service sector, and the emergence of flexible and fragmented labor markets are leading to a decline in the importance of the working class. Globalization has also reduced the ability of states to make political and economic decisions independently. In addition, unlike earlier periods, the increase in geographical mobility has now led to a decline in the importance of family and family background as the main source of class reproduction.

In such circumstances, the political, social, and economic importance of the class declines. In modern societies, "status conventionalism" prevails instead of class. With this phrase, the authors want to denote the newly created situation, that is, the situation in which inequalities in modern society are the product of the existence of different status groups, which differ from each other, primarily in prestige and different spending styles. Classes are no longer the main basis of the social identity of individuals, and therefore no longer the basis of their political and social behavior. Today's society is primarily a consumer society dominated by "status consumption". Dominant differences between status groups are in the domain of spending, and what distinguishes the "subclass", and what separates it most from other groups, is the inability to participate in status spending. The differences in status spending, and the prestige it brings, are the source of the main form of social stratification in the new age - status stratification.

Books and articles:

Abercrombie. Class, Structure and Knowledge: Problems of Sociology of Knowing (1980);

Ahrne. Class and Social Organization in Finland (1989);

    -     „Class and Society: A Critique of John Goldthorp's Model of Social Classes“, in Clark, J. (ur.) John H. Goldthorp: Consensus and Controversy (1990);

Althusser, Louis. Lenin and Philosophy, and Other Essays (1971);

     -     For Marx    / Pour Marx (2006, in French 1965a);

     -     Reading Capital (2016, in French 1965b);

Anderson, P.Arguments within English Marxism (1980);

Anderson, Margaret and Patricia Hill Collins. Race, Class, and Gender: An Anthology (2005);

Balibar. Race, Nation, Classe (1988);

Baltzell E. Digby. Philadelphia Gentlemen: The Making of a National Upper Class (1958);

    -    The Protestant Establishment: Aristocracy and Caste in America (1964);

Baritz, Loren, The Good Life: The Meaning of Success for the American Middle Class (1982);

Barrett. Women’s Oppression Today: The Imagination in Theory: Culture, Writing, Words, and Things (1980);

Bauman. Memories of Class (1982);

Beck, U. Risk Society (1992);

Beeghley, Leonard. The Structure of Social Stratification in the United States (2004);

Bell. The Coming of Post-Industrial Society (1973);

Bendix, R. & S.M. Lipset (Eds.). Class, Status and Power (1953);

Bernard. Social Problems at Midcentury: Role, Status, and Stress in a Context of Abundance (1957);

Bernstein. Class, Codes and Control, 4 Vols. (1971, 1973, 1976, 1990);

Blackburn, R.M. "A New System of Classes: But What Are They and Do We Need Them?", in Work, Employment, & Society (1998);

Blau, Peter M., and Otis Dudley Duncan. The American Occupational Structure (1967);

    -     Exchange and Power in Social Life (1964);

Bourdieu, Pierre. Reproduction in Education, Society and Culture (1977, in French 1970);

    -     Outline of a Theory of Practice (1977, in French 1972);

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