Lecture 14 Sociology 621 March 10, 2008 BASIC CONCEPTS OF CLASS FORMATION I. Stating the Problem 1. Structures and People It is sometimes thought that the study of class structure revolves strictly around positions, whereas the analysis of class formation and class struggle centers on people, on the actual practices of real individuals confronting the world. This is not an adequate way of drawing the distinction. Both analyses revolve around people, but viewed from different vantage points. The analysis of class structures views individuals as incumbents of relationally defined positions; the analysis of class formation views them as participants in collective actions. One of the central objectives of class analysis, then, is to understand is how individuals-as-incumbents in positions are organized, disorganized and reorganized into individuals-as-participants in struggle. This is the process of class formation. 2. Potentials for constructing class formations: class structures define three kinds of people So far, our main preoccupation has centered on the class structure side of this process. The crucial way in which class structure bears on the problem of class formation is by defining a terrain of material interests upon which collective actors are formed. More specifically, for all people, the objective, material interests defined by the class structure determines three potential categories of actors: a) People who share the same class-based material interests as their own (i.e. who face the same trade-offs and strategies: have to do the same things to improve material welfare) b) People who have antagonistic material interests to their’s, and c) People whose class interests may not be identical, but who nevertheless may have sufficiently overlapping interests to form the basis of class coalitions. Class structures thus determine: • one’s potential friends, • one’s potential enemies and • one’s potential allies: Havens Center poster: “Class consciousness is knowing what side of the fence you are on; Class analysis is knowing who’s there with you”Lecture 14. Class Formation: Basic Concepts 23. The Core Interest Logics of class formation In a simple polarized conception of class structure there are two kinds of interests/formation processes: 1. the interests of the oppressed in collectively organizing. Basically the thesis is something like: all things being equal, the more oppressed is a group, the more likely it is that it will organize for collective resistance to its oppression. 2. the interests of the oppressor in preventing collective organizing by the oppressed. The core thesis is something like this: the more the interests of oppressors are threatened by challenges, the more they will attempt to repress collective organization of the oppressed. These generates two foundational causal relations: The interests of oppressed/exploited classes ÿ oppositional class formation; The interests of dominant/exploiting classes ÿ repressive class formation. While this is a simplification, this does capture the central thrust of most historical arguments about class struggles and class formation. Now, these aspects are, in a way, the transparent issues: no one can doubt that interests & repression shape profoundly collective action. The map of interests in the class structure analysis thus generates a map of potential collective formations, and these potential class formations, in turn, help explain potentials for struggles. This causal process can be represented as follows: class formation class structure class struggle transforms limitsLecture 14. Class Formation: Basic Concepts 3II. Why Interests alone cannot explain class formations If knowing such potentials was sufficient to predict the patterns of actual struggles, then the analysis of class formation would be a simple affair. This is not, however, the case. The diagram we have just looked at indicates that class structures imposes limits on class formations and struggles – i.e. it makes some more likely than others -- but it does not determine specific class formations or struggles. An analysis of interests, no matter how refined, is never adequate to explain struggle. Several reasons for this are particularly important. 1. Consciousness. 2. Contradictory Interests. 3. Multidimensionality of Interests: class/nonclass interests. 4. Collective Action Dilemmas. 5. The Problem of Class Capacities/power. 1. Consciousness. Actors may not have clear understandings of their interests. As we shall see in our discussion of ideology, the relationship between subjectively understood interests and objectively determined interests is always problematic. Even if we can unambiguously define objective class interests, therefore, they will at best explain tendencies towards particular forms of struggle, not actual struggles. 2. Contradictory Interests. Even if all actors had perfectly clear understandings of their interests, the existence of “contradictory locations within class relations” means that many people in class structures have objectively contradictory or inconsistent class interests. This in turn implies that, quite apart from any subjective factors, there is an objective indeterminacy in the direction of participation of people from such locations in class struggles. This indeterminacy comes from the fact that the role of the “middle classes” in class struggle necessarily involves the formation of class alliances in which the coalitional parties make certain compromises of class interests in order to cooperate with each other. Given the complexity of the configurations of interests involved, there are nearly always multiple possible formable alliances of this sort. Which, if any, of these possible alliances in fact gets formed, therefore, is not ordained by the class structure itself, but depends upon a variety of political and ideological factors. This again means that it is impossible to read off class struggles and class formation from class structure. 3. Multidimensionality of Interests: class/nonclass interests. The interests of individuals -- whether we understand those as “objective” or simply “subjective” interests -- are generally not restricted to class interests. Individuals may have ethnic interests, national interests, regional interests, occupational interests, gender interests, and so on, all of which can