Berkeley Sociology Lecture 4Class, Exploitation, OppressionTuesday, March 5, 2002The location of Class within the Broad TheoryClass figures centrally within almost every aspect of Marxism. For this reason I like to think ofthe core of Marxism as being Class Analysis: the study of class and its consequences. Class iscentral to the normative vision of radical egalitarianism as classlessness or less classness; class iscentral to the problems of social reproduction; class is central to the dynamics of change.I. A couple of preliminary terminological notes:1. Class as noun and as adjective. Generally I think the word class is better used as an adjectivethan as a noun. Rather than ask: “how many classes are there?”, I think it is better to ask “howmany different kinds of class locations are there within a specific class structure.” Sometimes itis fine to use the noun, but often it is misleading and confusing.2. The basic inventory. The concept of class is really a repertoire or cluster of concepts. It willhelp clarify the agenda for the class to briefly run through these:• class relations: the social relations within which class locations are determined• class locations: the locations filled by individuals within class relations• class structure: the total set of class relations within some unit of analysis: one canspeak of the class structure of a firm, a city, a country, maybe theworld• class interests: the interests of individuals derived from the locations within classstructures. • class formation: the organization of class locations into some kind of collective socialforce capable of collective action• class consciousness: the forms of understanding individuals have of class interests• class practices: the actions individuals take in pursuit of class interests• class struggle: the confrontation of class practices of classes with opposing interestsII. Understanding class relations1. Relations, relations, relationsThere are many different kinds of social relations in a society: gender relations, race relations,friendship relations, class relations. The distinctive thing in a relation is that the meaning of theentities bound together in a relation can only be understood via the character of the relation.Thus: try defining the category “husband” without invoking the category “wife” bound togetherin a relation called “marriage”.Class in the Marxist tradition – and some other traditions – is a relational concept. That is thefirst critical point.Sociology 298 Lecture 4. Class, Exploitation, Oppression 22. What kind of relation is a class relation?Class relations within Marxist class analysis define the rights and powers people have withrespect to the various resources that are used in production. When we say that a capitalist “owns”a factory we are specifying a set of rights and powers of the capitalist over this complex set ofresources. When we say workers “own their labor power” we mean that they have the rights andpowers over this resource and can therefore sell it on a labor market.“Rights and powers” define relations among people, not simply a relation between a person and athing: if I own land I have the power to exclude you from access to it. As a short hand Marxists often say that class relations are defined by the “social relations ofproduction”, but this really means, “by the social relations that define the rights and powerspeople have with respect to the system of production”3. What is it that people in a common location within the social relations of productionhave in common? Or: what do people in a class location have in common?There are two principle ideas here: (1) lived experiences, (2) material interests. Both matter.They are discussed in some detail in The Debate on Classes. I will emphasize material interests,but let me briefly mention lived experiences.3.1 Lived Experiences. By virtue of a persons rights and powers over production resources they are likely to have certainkinds of experiences. If you are propertyless and must sell your labor power to a capitalist youwill have the experiences of looking for a job, being subject to the control of others, being toldwhat to do by a boss, being vulnerable to losing ones job. If you are a capitalist you have to bosspeople around, you face competitive threats from rivals, you take risks in investments, you haveto deal with shirking workers, and so on. Each of these defines a profile of experiences tied tolocations.3.2 Material InterestsThis is a contentious idea. Many people reject the whole concept of “objective materialinterests”, but I think it is not so problematic. The key idea is this: by virtue of the assets you own(your rights & powers), you face particular kinds of opportunities, dilemmas and trade offs intrying to optimize your material welfare. Consider the trade-offs among toil, leisure andconsumption. It is better to be in a position to have a more favorable trade off betweenconsumption and leisure than a less favorable one. Your interests are in improving these trade-offs; what you have to do to accomplish this depends upon your class. That is why it makes senseto say that people in a common class location share common material interests.Sociology 298 Lecture 4. Class, Exploitation, Oppression 3So, people in a class location, by virtue of their relationship to the means of production, sharecommon material interests in this sense.Ending the analysis here, however, would not quite get to the core idea of the specificallyMarxist understanding of class. For this we must move from material interests to the problem ofexploitationIII. ExploitationExploitation is a hotly contested concept. Most sociologists either ignore it or reject it as ameaningful idea. In a footnote in a recent article in the American Journal of Sociology, JohnGoldthorpe says of the concept of exploitation that it is “a word I would myself gladly seedisappear from the sociological lexicon.” He adds, by way of clarification, “Its function inMarxist thought was to allow a fusion of normative and positive claims in a way that I wouldfind unacceptable.” And he concludes: “If invoking exploitation is no more than a way offlagging the presence of structurally opposed class interests that lead to zero-sum conflicts, thenits use is innocuous but scarcely necessary.” (Goldthorpe, 2000: 1574). Many people, I think,would agree with this judgment. Talk of exploitation seems