This short article seeks to produce analytical comparisons among Marx, Weber and Bourdieu in the theory of social class. This will proceed with the following sequences. First, it begins by elaborating Marx’s concepts of the social class. Second, Weber’s ideas will be mentioned and explained corresponding to Marx’s in order to reveal their similarities and differences. Third, Bourdieu’s concepts will follow bearing in mind Marx’s and Weber’s. Finally, some analytical responses might occur intermittently throughout this article as an effort of the writer to communicate with ‘them’.
When Marx speaks about class, he is concerned with class struggle as the main, if not the only, resource of social change by which class becomes an analytical tool to comprehend social functions and changes. This class struggle incorporating three main elements (i.e. the means of production, relation of production and the product) is based on economic interest. This struggle, driven by economic interest to have control on the means of production, brings about conflict between the working class and the capitalist. Once the capitalist, the owner of the means of production, has succeeded to take control on the means of production, they automatically become the privileged class. They will use their economic-based class power to control their relations with others in order to support their political, social and cultural interests. Thus, relation to the means of production will not only determine one’s social class or social relation, but it also forms his/her values, norms and religion or social superstructure. In this context, people are designated to a certain social class based on the amount of ownership of means of productions they have regardless of their subjective realities, such as inherited status. Class is determined independently and objectively corresponding to the result of dialectic materialism through an antagonistic, conflictual and exploitative relationship of the human beings called class struggle reflecting an objective social selection. So, the ownership of means of productions is not intrinsically related to the issue of man-to-thing relation, but to the man-to-man relation. One can only determine his/her social relations to others based on the level of access he/she has to the means of production through labor division mechanism that gives rise to the class division.
Increasing exploitation of the dominant class or the capitalist on the proletariat through surplus value expropriation under a capitalistic system pushes the increase of gap between the owner of the means of production and the non-owner. When the two poles are extremely bipolarized, social condition arrives at a point where the working class as the exploited class develops a clear picture of class consciousness that has ability to produce class solidarity. At the same time, an effort to maintain class privilege emerges in the form of class exclusion. By then, the meaning of being in a working class become lived experiences and touches the essence of human beings as species-beings that should have reflected themselves on their own creations. Being exploited through the means of productions by their owners, they become alienated and slaved. These common and shared experiences they have move class struggle from the stage of class-in-itself to a new and powerful stage of class-for-itself. However, common and shared experiences are not enough to realize this transformation; class consciousness and organized political movement must exist in order to be able to make class as an agent of change. Within this bifurcated social system, the state plays an important role on the advantage of the capitalist. They work to protect the economic, political and cultural interests of this dominant capitalist class. This state-capitalist collaboration makes it more difficult for the working class to produce social transformation, especially with a state that is supported by military and has legitimate authority over people. However, Marx believes that in the course of time, stimulated by the working class condition created by the capitalistic system, this traditional class system will be replaced by a class free system or communism.
Even though Weber agrees with Marx that class is based on the economic interest and change happens through conflictual relationship, they have different concepts on social class. While Marx defines class inequality around the relation of production, Weber, on the other hand, in addition to the class dimension within economic order, adds two non-economic-based dimensions that contribute significantly to the class stratification: status group associated with social order and party or power associated with the political order. The three dimensions are not intrinsically reducible to one another, but they are related closely. Unlike Marx, Weber does not define class around the means and relations of productions only, but he takes it further to include market situation by which class situation is determined through competition. When people have causal common interests and the same chances of life, they are found in the same class situation. This class situation is essentially determined by the property and lack of property. The degree of one’s ability to buy or sells goods or services will increase or decrease his/her life chances. Then, further differentiation among the owners or the non-owners of property will occur based on the differences in the types of properties, skills and services one offers to the market. So, one’s market situation is determined not only by the amount, but also by the type and formation of ownership he/she has. In addition, even though Weber agrees with Marx’s notion of economic interest as an unambiguous factor creating class, he disagrees with Marx about the uniformity of class interest and the universality of collective actions. For Weber, Marx is wrong when he assumes that “the individual may be in error concerning his interests but that the ‘class’ is ‘infallible’ about its interests” (Weber, 2006, p. 42). Class interest, according to Weber, is not as simple as it might be thought as class situation emerges based on communalization that does not basically involve an action between members of an identical class, but it is an action between members of different classes (Weber, 2006). When every individual has his/her own unique situation of class, status and power, social bipolarization and communal actions become more difficult to be achieved. Furthermore, in order to be able to function within these multi resources of differentiation, a society needs legitimate power in the form of authority played by a political institution or state through rational-legal procedure. This kind of authority is held by those who have privileged class, status and power situations. Then, how Weber theorizes social change? Social change, according to him, can only happen when the three areas of stratification (i.e. class, status, and power) are closely correlated and an extreme gap between the owners and the non-owners of the property (i.e. goods, skills, and services) in these three areas simultaneously exists. Once this exists, social change preconditions, such as charismatic leadership and clearly articulated goals and ideologies, are more likely to be met. In this situation, the lower class is more likely to question the legitimate authority of the ruling class. This practice, when it is done collectively, cause class conflict that will lead to social change. This conflict, according to Weber, occurs in a cyclically dialectic process and will not end in communalism as Marx says.
One of the main dilemmas in sociology concerns human action (agency) and social structure. How far do human beings control their life conditions? Or is most of what they do the result of general social forces outside their control? In the context of Marx materialistic approach, how the “objectively structured aggregations of position holders” are transformed “into consciously acting collective agents”? Marxian solution of this problem leans to be utilitarian and cognitivistic by which the working class transcends its dominated status to collective consciousness utilizing its cognitive insight into their objective situation in the structure of social relations (Joppke, p. 56). Bourdieu offers a solution based on the dialectical principle ruling the relationship between the individual and the society, between the objective and subjective moments, between the field and the habitus. However, he calls both the objective and the subjective and the field and the habitus as structures. Thus, he eliminates the existing dualism of the agency and the structure which he describes as “everything is not equally possible or impossible” (Bourdieu, 1986, p. 242). Bourdieu explicates this concept by introducing the concept of habitus mediating between objective conditions (structure) and subjective perceptions (actors) to form the unity of class unconsciously (Joppke, 1986, p. 54). In other words, this habitus functions as a mediator to facilitate the indirect causal link between ‘positions in social space and practices’ (Weininger, 2005, p. 90). Structure of the social world, according to Bourdieu, is the real picture of the distribution of all types of capital that determines chances of life. Restricting all types of capital to a single form that is recognized by economic theory cannot account for the structure and function of the social world and prevent the constitution of a general science of the economy of practices as well (Bourdieu, 1986, p. 242). Thus, Bourdieu develops three types of fundamental capital: economic capital, cultural capital and social capital. The last two are capable to be converted into economic capital through certain mechanisms, such as credentiality and nobility. This concept is similar to the Weber’s concept of status and power that can be supported by one’s class power and vice versa. However, Bourdieu objects the treatment of this contrast between class and status as two types of real unities because they always coexist in the same reality. Therefore, Bourdieu leans to treat this contrast as an analytical convenience. According to Weininger (2005), another reason behind this inclination is Bourdieu’s vision of social collective boundary as a fundamental form of politic conflict, and political and scientific interests cannot be amalgamated in sociology (p. 84). Bourdieu locates economic power, as Marx and Weber do, as the most important factor to determine class position, but Bourdieu introduces symbolic dimensions of the class struggle in the form of class boundaries that is continuously be produced and reproduced by the class members of the dominant class to maintain class distinction from the lower classes and within identical classes. This dialectic process will produce a habitus in a form of system that functions two ways: as a system whereby one organizes his/her own behavior and as a system through which one understands others. This process of functioning occurs in a linguistic market where a dialectic exchange operates in order to enable class replication. This linguistic market determines the price of the linguistic products offered by one’s habitus through its specific system of sanctions and censorship. Thus, each individual who brings his/her own habitus have recognized how much profit he/she can make in the market. This profit level is determined by one’s ability to survive a social change through symbolic relation and struggle utilizing his/her accumulated capital in the linguistic market.
Finally, Marx, Weber and Bourdieu have applied dialectic principle in their efforts to understand social structure and change. While Marx has a focus on the conflictual and exploitative dimension of social class, Weber has a focus on the competitive dimension of social class. Departing from both sociologists’ concepts, Bourdieu introduces new insight into social class by eliminating a rigid boundary between structure and agency through a mediating element called habitus. In addition, he introduces symbolic relations, in addition to Marx’s economic relation and Weber’s differential status to understand and analyze social class.
Reading Resources:
Allan, K. (2007). The social lens: An invitation to social and sociological theory. Thousand Oaks: SAGE Publications.
Bourdieu, P. (2006). Cultural reproduction and social reproduction. In David B. Grusky and Szonya Szelenyi, Inequality: Classic readings in race, class, and gender, 257-271.
Bourdieu, P. (1986). The forms of capital. In J.G. Richardson (Ed.), Handbook of theory and research for the sociology of education. New York: Greenwood Press.
-----------------(2006). Distinction: A social critique of the judgment of taste. In David B. Grusky and Szonya Szelenyi, Inequality: Classic readings in race, class, and gender, 287-318.
Joppke, C. (1986). The cultural dimensions of class formation and class struggle: On the social theory of Pierre Bourdieu, Berkeley Journal of Sociology, 31, 53-78.
Koo’s Class Handouts.
Marx, K. (2006). Classes in Capitalism and pre-capitalism. In David B. Grusky and Szonya Szelenyi, Inequality: Classic readings in race, class, and gender, 21-35.
Parkin, F. (1974). Strategies of social closure in class formation. In Frank Parkin (Ed.), The social analysis of class structure. Tavistock Publications, 2-18.
Weber, M. (2006). Class, status, party. In David B. Grusky and Szonya Szelenyi, Inequality: Classic readings in race, class, and gender, 37-53.
Weininger, E. B. (2005). Foundations of Pierre Bourdieu’s class analysis. In Olin Wright (Ed.), Approaches to class analysis. New York: Cambridge University Press, 85-118.
Sphere: Related Content
When Marx speaks about class, he is concerned with class struggle as the main, if not the only, resource of social change by which class becomes an analytical tool to comprehend social functions and changes. This class struggle incorporating three main elements (i.e. the means of production, relation of production and the product) is based on economic interest. This struggle, driven by economic interest to have control on the means of production, brings about conflict between the working class and the capitalist. Once the capitalist, the owner of the means of production, has succeeded to take control on the means of production, they automatically become the privileged class. They will use their economic-based class power to control their relations with others in order to support their political, social and cultural interests. Thus, relation to the means of production will not only determine one’s social class or social relation, but it also forms his/her values, norms and religion or social superstructure. In this context, people are designated to a certain social class based on the amount of ownership of means of productions they have regardless of their subjective realities, such as inherited status. Class is determined independently and objectively corresponding to the result of dialectic materialism through an antagonistic, conflictual and exploitative relationship of the human beings called class struggle reflecting an objective social selection. So, the ownership of means of productions is not intrinsically related to the issue of man-to-thing relation, but to the man-to-man relation. One can only determine his/her social relations to others based on the level of access he/she has to the means of production through labor division mechanism that gives rise to the class division.
Increasing exploitation of the dominant class or the capitalist on the proletariat through surplus value expropriation under a capitalistic system pushes the increase of gap between the owner of the means of production and the non-owner. When the two poles are extremely bipolarized, social condition arrives at a point where the working class as the exploited class develops a clear picture of class consciousness that has ability to produce class solidarity. At the same time, an effort to maintain class privilege emerges in the form of class exclusion. By then, the meaning of being in a working class become lived experiences and touches the essence of human beings as species-beings that should have reflected themselves on their own creations. Being exploited through the means of productions by their owners, they become alienated and slaved. These common and shared experiences they have move class struggle from the stage of class-in-itself to a new and powerful stage of class-for-itself. However, common and shared experiences are not enough to realize this transformation; class consciousness and organized political movement must exist in order to be able to make class as an agent of change. Within this bifurcated social system, the state plays an important role on the advantage of the capitalist. They work to protect the economic, political and cultural interests of this dominant capitalist class. This state-capitalist collaboration makes it more difficult for the working class to produce social transformation, especially with a state that is supported by military and has legitimate authority over people. However, Marx believes that in the course of time, stimulated by the working class condition created by the capitalistic system, this traditional class system will be replaced by a class free system or communism.
Even though Weber agrees with Marx that class is based on the economic interest and change happens through conflictual relationship, they have different concepts on social class. While Marx defines class inequality around the relation of production, Weber, on the other hand, in addition to the class dimension within economic order, adds two non-economic-based dimensions that contribute significantly to the class stratification: status group associated with social order and party or power associated with the political order. The three dimensions are not intrinsically reducible to one another, but they are related closely. Unlike Marx, Weber does not define class around the means and relations of productions only, but he takes it further to include market situation by which class situation is determined through competition. When people have causal common interests and the same chances of life, they are found in the same class situation. This class situation is essentially determined by the property and lack of property. The degree of one’s ability to buy or sells goods or services will increase or decrease his/her life chances. Then, further differentiation among the owners or the non-owners of property will occur based on the differences in the types of properties, skills and services one offers to the market. So, one’s market situation is determined not only by the amount, but also by the type and formation of ownership he/she has. In addition, even though Weber agrees with Marx’s notion of economic interest as an unambiguous factor creating class, he disagrees with Marx about the uniformity of class interest and the universality of collective actions. For Weber, Marx is wrong when he assumes that “the individual may be in error concerning his interests but that the ‘class’ is ‘infallible’ about its interests” (Weber, 2006, p. 42). Class interest, according to Weber, is not as simple as it might be thought as class situation emerges based on communalization that does not basically involve an action between members of an identical class, but it is an action between members of different classes (Weber, 2006). When every individual has his/her own unique situation of class, status and power, social bipolarization and communal actions become more difficult to be achieved. Furthermore, in order to be able to function within these multi resources of differentiation, a society needs legitimate power in the form of authority played by a political institution or state through rational-legal procedure. This kind of authority is held by those who have privileged class, status and power situations. Then, how Weber theorizes social change? Social change, according to him, can only happen when the three areas of stratification (i.e. class, status, and power) are closely correlated and an extreme gap between the owners and the non-owners of the property (i.e. goods, skills, and services) in these three areas simultaneously exists. Once this exists, social change preconditions, such as charismatic leadership and clearly articulated goals and ideologies, are more likely to be met. In this situation, the lower class is more likely to question the legitimate authority of the ruling class. This practice, when it is done collectively, cause class conflict that will lead to social change. This conflict, according to Weber, occurs in a cyclically dialectic process and will not end in communalism as Marx says.
One of the main dilemmas in sociology concerns human action (agency) and social structure. How far do human beings control their life conditions? Or is most of what they do the result of general social forces outside their control? In the context of Marx materialistic approach, how the “objectively structured aggregations of position holders” are transformed “into consciously acting collective agents”? Marxian solution of this problem leans to be utilitarian and cognitivistic by which the working class transcends its dominated status to collective consciousness utilizing its cognitive insight into their objective situation in the structure of social relations (Joppke, p. 56). Bourdieu offers a solution based on the dialectical principle ruling the relationship between the individual and the society, between the objective and subjective moments, between the field and the habitus. However, he calls both the objective and the subjective and the field and the habitus as structures. Thus, he eliminates the existing dualism of the agency and the structure which he describes as “everything is not equally possible or impossible” (Bourdieu, 1986, p. 242). Bourdieu explicates this concept by introducing the concept of habitus mediating between objective conditions (structure) and subjective perceptions (actors) to form the unity of class unconsciously (Joppke, 1986, p. 54). In other words, this habitus functions as a mediator to facilitate the indirect causal link between ‘positions in social space and practices’ (Weininger, 2005, p. 90). Structure of the social world, according to Bourdieu, is the real picture of the distribution of all types of capital that determines chances of life. Restricting all types of capital to a single form that is recognized by economic theory cannot account for the structure and function of the social world and prevent the constitution of a general science of the economy of practices as well (Bourdieu, 1986, p. 242). Thus, Bourdieu develops three types of fundamental capital: economic capital, cultural capital and social capital. The last two are capable to be converted into economic capital through certain mechanisms, such as credentiality and nobility. This concept is similar to the Weber’s concept of status and power that can be supported by one’s class power and vice versa. However, Bourdieu objects the treatment of this contrast between class and status as two types of real unities because they always coexist in the same reality. Therefore, Bourdieu leans to treat this contrast as an analytical convenience. According to Weininger (2005), another reason behind this inclination is Bourdieu’s vision of social collective boundary as a fundamental form of politic conflict, and political and scientific interests cannot be amalgamated in sociology (p. 84). Bourdieu locates economic power, as Marx and Weber do, as the most important factor to determine class position, but Bourdieu introduces symbolic dimensions of the class struggle in the form of class boundaries that is continuously be produced and reproduced by the class members of the dominant class to maintain class distinction from the lower classes and within identical classes. This dialectic process will produce a habitus in a form of system that functions two ways: as a system whereby one organizes his/her own behavior and as a system through which one understands others. This process of functioning occurs in a linguistic market where a dialectic exchange operates in order to enable class replication. This linguistic market determines the price of the linguistic products offered by one’s habitus through its specific system of sanctions and censorship. Thus, each individual who brings his/her own habitus have recognized how much profit he/she can make in the market. This profit level is determined by one’s ability to survive a social change through symbolic relation and struggle utilizing his/her accumulated capital in the linguistic market.
Finally, Marx, Weber and Bourdieu have applied dialectic principle in their efforts to understand social structure and change. While Marx has a focus on the conflictual and exploitative dimension of social class, Weber has a focus on the competitive dimension of social class. Departing from both sociologists’ concepts, Bourdieu introduces new insight into social class by eliminating a rigid boundary between structure and agency through a mediating element called habitus. In addition, he introduces symbolic relations, in addition to Marx’s economic relation and Weber’s differential status to understand and analyze social class.
Reading Resources:
Allan, K. (2007). The social lens: An invitation to social and sociological theory. Thousand Oaks: SAGE Publications.
Bourdieu, P. (2006). Cultural reproduction and social reproduction. In David B. Grusky and Szonya Szelenyi, Inequality: Classic readings in race, class, and gender, 257-271.
Bourdieu, P. (1986). The forms of capital. In J.G. Richardson (Ed.), Handbook of theory and research for the sociology of education. New York: Greenwood Press.
-----------------(2006). Distinction: A social critique of the judgment of taste. In David B. Grusky and Szonya Szelenyi, Inequality: Classic readings in race, class, and gender, 287-318.
Joppke, C. (1986). The cultural dimensions of class formation and class struggle: On the social theory of Pierre Bourdieu, Berkeley Journal of Sociology, 31, 53-78.
Koo’s Class Handouts.
Marx, K. (2006). Classes in Capitalism and pre-capitalism. In David B. Grusky and Szonya Szelenyi, Inequality: Classic readings in race, class, and gender, 21-35.
Parkin, F. (1974). Strategies of social closure in class formation. In Frank Parkin (Ed.), The social analysis of class structure. Tavistock Publications, 2-18.
Weber, M. (2006). Class, status, party. In David B. Grusky and Szonya Szelenyi, Inequality: Classic readings in race, class, and gender, 37-53.
Weininger, E. B. (2005). Foundations of Pierre Bourdieu’s class analysis. In Olin Wright (Ed.), Approaches to class analysis. New York: Cambridge University Press, 85-118.
1 comments:
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