Discuss Karl Marx’s perspective on class.

The Concept of Class: Ossowski (1967) proposes that there are three assumptions which are common to all conceptions of class society. They are as follows:

1. Classes are the most comprehensive groups in the social structure. They are differentiated groups in society, but are dependent on each other.

2. In a class, the membership of an individual is relatively present 3. Each class is accorded certain privileges and discriminations that have a bearing on its social status.

Thus, on the basis of social status, privileges, and discriminations, different classes are treated as superior or inferior. Marx identified the privilege of exploiting other men’s labour as the fundamental basis of class differentiation. Again, each class occupies a distinct position in the class hierarchy. The awareness of the place of one’s class in the class is referred to as class-consciousness. The other characteristic of class is social isolation which points to social distance and absence of close social contact between classes.

Two main perspectives have tried to understand the concept of class. One is the nominalist perspective (the American School of Thought) and the other is the realist perspective (the European School of Thought). The nominalist emphasizes social status as the basis of class. However, the realist perspective defines social class as a real ensemble that is determined by material facts and by the collective consciousness of the people.

Denotation of the Term ‘Class’

Sociological theories use the term class in ways (Ossowski, 1967). First is the general sense where each class may be regarded as one of the basic components of the social structure. may be called a class’.

Ossowski says, “Of the two specifying versions of the concept of class…the first shows us a social class as a group in respect of the relations of property … Some caste or estate-systems can at the same time be economic class systems …one can speak of the ‘class’ aspect of caste relation or the ‘estate’ aspect of the class system.”

The class-system is contrasted with group-systems based on an individual’s ascription to a certain group.

The Marxist conception of class involves a collective group of individuals that share similar economic and social relations relative to each other in society. A class is a group with intrinsic tendencies and interests that are different from, and may be opposed to the interests of other groups in society. For example, it is in the labourer’s best interest to maximize wages and benefits and in the capitalist’s best interest to maximize profit at the expense of such, leading to a contradiction within the capitalist system, even if the laborers and capitalists themselves are unaware of these class dichotomies.

For Marx, class involves two factors: =

Objective Factors 

A class shares a common relationship to the means of production. That is, all people in one class make their living in a common way in terms of ownership of the things that produce social goods. A class may own things, own land, own people, be owned, own nothing but their labor. A class will extract tax, produce agriculture, enslave and work others, be enslaved and work, or work for a wage.

Subjective Factors

The members will necessarily have some perception of their similarity and common interest. Marx termed this as class-consciousness. Class- consciousness is not simply an awareness of one’s own class interest (for instance, the maximisation of shareholder value; or, the maximization of the wage with the minimization of the working day), class- consciousness also embodies deeply shared views of how society should be organized legally, culturally, socially and politically. 

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