Theories of Culture: Class Summary

SUMMARY TEST ON CLASS

INTRODUCTION TO CLASS – LECTURE NOTES (WEEK 13)

- America a classless society?
 The American Dream: “from scraps to riches”, “anybody can become
somebody”
History of Class
- Origins: Industrial Revolution
- Before: ranks and estates
 Ownership of land crucial (inheritance), class was determined at birth
- Property and capital
 Through processes of exchange, class decided through property in
capital instead of land
- Class system: works and capitalists
- Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels
 Emphasis on economy
- Max Weber
 Social class (economic affiliation)
 Status class (non-economic affiliation)
 Party class (political affiliation)
- More recently
 Class, economic and political power

Classes in America
- Upper or capitalist class (1%)
- Upper-middle class (14%)
- Middle class (30%)
- Working class (30%)
- Working poor (13%)
- Poor and homeless/underclass (12%)
Karl Marx (legacy)]
- Neo-Marxism
 Frankfurt School: Adorn, Marcuse (RESEARCH)
- Post-Marxism
 Baudrillard, Jameson Zizek, Habermas
- British Marxists
 William, Eagleton




“The Problem”

, - Central claim
 Class struggle as the driving force of history
- Hegel’s philosophy of history
 Thesis
 Antithesis
 Synthesis
 (RESEARCH)
- Marx class concept as part of a larger philosophy of history
- 3 classes in 19th C. England
 Wage laborers, capitalists, landowners
- 3 forms of income
 Wages, profit, rent

“Two False Approaches”
- Class is not constituted by source of income
- Class is not constituted by quantity of income
“Property and Economic Power”
- Dahrendorf (text!): “The essential condition that determines the mode of
production of an epoch, and that therefore provides the constituent
element of classes as well as the momentum of social change, is property”
- Structure of property
- Ownership of means of production
 In capitalism: private ownership

“Relations of Production, Class Situation, and Political Power”
1. Position in production process determines class
2. Distribution of property determines distribution of power
3. Distribution of property determines culture and ideology

- Dahrendorf:
 “On the different forms of property and the social conditions of
existence a whole superstructure of various and peculiarly formed
sentiments, illusions, modes of thought, and conceptions of life is built”
 “The ruling ideas of a period have always been nothing but the ideas of
the ruling class. . . . In each epoch, the thoughts of the ruling class are
the ruling thoughts; i.e. the class that is the ruling material power of
society is at the same time its ruling intellectual power.”


Superstructu
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Base




In summary

, - Ownership of means of production determines class system
1. Position in production process determines class
2. Distribution of property determines distribution of power
3. Distribution of property determines culture and ideology
“Class Interests”
- What historical force is it that causes the formation of classes?
- From sociology to philosophy of history
- “Classes do not exist in isolation, independent of other classes to which
they are opposed. Individuals form a class only in so far as they are
engaged in a common struggle with another class . . . ; and the common
force that effects class formation is class interest.”
1. Class is relational
2. Class is antagonistic: class struggle
3. Opposing class interests
 Class interests exist prior to class itself!
- Again: dialectical philosophy of history
“Class organization and class struggle”
1. The necessity of political organization
2. The necessity of “theoretical class-consciousness”
“The classless society”
- Class revolution
- “The condition of the liberation of the working class is the abolition of
every class.”
Class in America
- Class as antithetical to the American ethos
 America build by immigrants, who wanted to escape concepts of class
 First sentence of the Declaration of Independence: “All men are created
equal” discards class
- Examples and statistics: class in the US
 89% of the country’s wealth is concentrated among the top 20 %
wealthiest people
- Disappearance of class from public debate
- The “middle class” (MYTH)
- Class and race
Tocqueville
- Equality in America makes class irrelevant
 “In the United States, there is very little difference of rank in civil
society and none at all in political life. . . . American political institutions
bring citizens of all classes into constant contact and force them to
undertake great projects together. People busy in this way have
scarcely any time to consider details of polite behavior and, besides,
have too great an interest in living in harmony to let that stop them.”

, Class in US political life
- Before WWII
 Communism
 Unions
- Changes after WWII: disappearance of class?
- Taft-Hartley Act (1847) (RESEARCH)
- Since 1970s: “concession bargaining” (RESEARCH)

- Michael Zweig: “a systematic, long-term decline in union strength and
workers’ living standards, coupled with a steady increase in profits going to
corporations and wealth going to the capitalists who run them.” (What’s
Class Got to Do With It?)
- Disappearance of traditional Left
- Senator McCarthy, HUAC
The middle class
- Middle class = “most Americans”?
- Middle class as political and ideological concept
- Middle class as deceiving category
 “Middle class Myth”

Class and race in the US
- Race and class: an intricate historical relationship
- Race consciousness trumped class consciousness
- “Whiteness” as a “cross-class alliance”
 White workers and bosses vs. blacks

Conclusions
- The notion of everybody belonging to the middle class in US society is the
backbone of this society, the concept disregards the notion of class
 Middle class as an ideological concept, in political aspect by referring to
the middle class, they seem to refer to every American, which is not in
fact true (see statistics PowerPoint)
 Deceiving category: (most Americans?)
- Distribution of wealth and income in America is extremely unequal
 Comparable to Third-world countries

CLASSIC AND CONTEMPORARY DEFINITIONS OF SOCIAL
CLASS – SEMINAR NOTES

Paul Fussel
- We should be aware that how we think about class is determined by the
class that we are a member of
 Lower class - …
 Middle class – education
 Higher class – property, taste

“Class and Class Conflict in Industrial Society”, Dahrendorf (1959)