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This article focuses on the role of class analysis in envisioning a better world, in both the past and the present. It critically reflects on class research conducted in the second half of the 20th century in Yugoslavia, and contemporary class research from selected countries of former Yugoslavia, in order to explore the place that class analysis as systemic critique occupied and occupies in a socialist and capitalist context. This approach is informed by Wright's (2015) evaluation of different forms of class analysis through the game metaphor. According to Wright, whereas Marxist class analysis questions "what game to play," Weberian class analysis engages with "the rules of the game" and Durkheimian class analysis examines "moves in the game." Our historical case study of Yugoslav scholarship on class during state socialism illustrates that, despite its role in sanctifying the status quo, class analysis also drew on both Marxism and Weberian inspired life-chances research as tools for systemic critique. On the other hand, our review of post-Yugoslav class research suggests that, currently, class analysis as an instrument for the critique of capitalism is not prominent. Indeed, in contrast to the late Yugoslav period in which sociology engaged class analysis in order to question what game should be played, the post-socialist 1990s and 2000s brought a silencing of Marxist left critique, while sociologists transformed their research into what Wright (2015) would describe as struggles over the rule of the game: problematizing the variety of capitalism that emerged in post-socialism rather than capitalism itself. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Erik Olin Wright's scholarship is often considered to be formed by two entirely disjoint projects represented by his early work on class analysis and his later writings on "real utopias." This essay uses Michael Burawoy's recent formulation of the "two Marxisms" thesis as a foil to argue for the continuities rather than discontinuities in the body of work produced by Wright. More particularly, the critical spirit of the real utopias project infused Wright's work on class analysis from its inception. It is further argued that the limitations Wright encountered in realizing those critical aims directly seeded the search in his later work for institutional design principles and an explicit articulation of normative values that could undergird alternatives to capitalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How do we make sense of the ways in which COVID-19 has developed and been responded to in the United States? How can nondeterminist class analysis help us to understand why the pandemic has impacted the United States so severely compared to other nations? What do these policies and experiences reveal about current capitalist economic and social relations within the United States today? Are there possibilities for interventions through a nonessentialist Marxist analysis and understanding? On a beautiful June afternoon, Rethinking Marxism coeditor Vin Lyon-Callo discussed these questions via zoom with his former professor, long-term RM board member, and host of the quite popular public intervention Economic Update, Richard Wolff (lightly edited for content and clarity). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper presents a critique of the discourse of precarity that assumes that regulated era labor relations in advanced capitalist economies represent the norm, while 'irregular work' represents a historical aberration under capitalist employment. We argue that this approach fails to inform labor theorists in any meaningful way as it conceals the differences in the social relations under which work is performed. The catchall term 'precarious labor' makes it difficult to design policies for specific social groups who are non-homogenous in social relations. We propose a Marxian socio-spatial class framework that gives visibility to three key dimensions: 1) the manner in which surpluses are produced, appropriated, and distributed during the labor process; 2) the spatial component of where work is performed, and 3) the degree of market-orientation. Recognizing on the one hand that precarity will always be a ubiquitous feature of capitalist labor markets, and that there are differences within forms of work depending on the social context and location of work on the other, has a number of benefits for contemporary debates. These include a better appreciation of the multiplicity of processes in which labor participates and generates radically new ways of thinking about anti-capitalist resistance across national boundaries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article addresses polemically, perhaps, the most prominent class analyses today – the occupational and stratification approaches (OSAs) developed by various sociologists and economists. Strongly opposed to the "big class" of conventional Weberian and Marxian typologies, the stratification and occupational models have, unsurprisingly, claimed more realistic grounds. By contrast, key dimensions of social relations such as domination, exploitation and oppression are purposely overlooked. Moreover, the lack of theorization – even marginally regarded, does not take into consideration the qualitative explanatory strength for the analysis of social structure. Alternatively, the underlying optimistic market-oriented belief of the "realistic" class framework overestimates the role of institutions and economics. Thus, this "Smithian" background unveils a market fetishism as well as a functionalist and naturalized vision of class structure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract The article aims at showing the relevance of understanding the transformations of class composition for strengthening the connection between degrowth and environmental justice (EJ). In particular, I suggest the heterodox line of Autonomist Marxism as enabling factor of such connection. From an ecological perspective, the changing components of the working-class can be grasped by assessing the historical development of the value-nature nexus, and specifically of labour's role within it. In fact, capitalism does not have but rather is an ecological regime. Value creation occurs not upon nature, but through it – that is, within socio-natural relations emerging from the articulation of capital, power and the environment. My basic argument is that in contemporary capitalism conditions of existence and reproduction of society have become key drivers for surplus value production – most notably in carbon trading. Hence, EJ resistances are instances of class struggle and degrowth theoretical elaboration would benefit from incorporating such class-character. In this unprecedented situation, the task of the critique of political economy is not only that of unmasking ruling class' attempts to naturalize capitalism. It also requires resisting to elites' endeavours to directly capitalize nature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We identify an ideology gap in the Marxist EU (European Union) literature, which we then set out to narrow by identifying and analysing core elements of the particularising EU version of the global ideology of feel-good and ethical capitalism through which the EU interpellates certain subaltern classes towards identifying with the deepening and widening of neoliberal governance. We then show, by means of discourse analysis, how ideological state apparatuses (ISAs) secure but also occasionally undermine the ideological bloc of dominant and dominated classes. We conclude by arguing that the ideological dimension of EU foreign policy is becoming increasingly important as the EU's self-ascribed status as a uniquely normative power in world politics offers multiple opportunities for ISAs to obscure the reality of a materially increasingly polarised EU whose internal structure has acquired pronounced imperialist properties during the recent financial crisis. This does not harbour well for international order in Europe and beyond. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Across the last decade we have witnessed a growing wave of resistance across the globe. In this article we argue that it is critical to utilise class analysis to understand contemporary social movements. We maintain that class analysis begins with understanding class as a series of relations and/or processes that condition both the objective and subjective dimensions of class. Following this, we illustrate how sectors of the contemporary working class are in struggle, yet struggle differently, based on their structural location as well as differing nature of their resistance. In taking this approach to class and social movements, we argue that scholars can begin to unmask the central role of capitalism and the attending regimes of accumulation in the current wave of resistance even when they appear disconnected. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The catastrophic consequences of the abuse of authority perpetrated during the first half of the secolo breve have led to globally dimensioned cultural, social and psychological pressures towards the formulation of legal limitations able to prevent repetition of such aberrations. The 'democratic' wind, though undeniably effective in encouraging enhanced appreciation of, and undifferentiated respect for, each individual, has nevertheless proved weaker when required to find an appropriate theoretical and practical repositioning of the authoritative dimension proper to any social relationship, whether at systemic, interpersonal or individual level. The purpose of this inquiry is to encourage updated reflections on the role of the authoritative dimension in social and personal development processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper represents a short overview of development of class analysis in the work of Professor Mladen Lazic. The opening chapter is devoted to the description of the main contours of the debates which took place in the academic community regarding the usability and heuristic richness of the theoretical and conceptual framework of class analysis approach to the way in which modern societies are structured. The overview of the author's class analysis approach begins with the study Waiting for Capitalism, in which it appears in its most complete and most mature form. The developing line of Lazic's class analysis has been divided into three stages: the use of class analysis in examination of the structuring of socialist societies; the analysis of the transitional society of Serbia; and finally, the use of class approach in analysis of contemporary capitalist Serbia. What characterizes all three development stages, and especially approach that is inherent to the analysis of post-socialist transformation, is the complementary use of either stratification approach or elite theory to class analysis.

Recent approaches to class analysis in advanced capitalism have been largely disconnected from the capitalist labour process. This paper has three basic goals. First, we suggest a composite Marxist model of current class structure grounded in ownership, managerial authority, specialized knowledge and value relations in the capitalist labour process. Secondly, this model is used for an empirical assessment of continuity and change in class structure, based on a series of national surveys in Canada in the period 1982–2010. Thirdly, using the same series of surveys, we use this model of class structure to evaluate the extent to which employment class positions are relevant for understanding shifting expressions of class consciousness. Within the employed labour force in this particular advanced capitalist country, we find a generally declining conventional working class and expanding proportions of managerial and professional employees. Connections between employment class positions and class consciousness can involve complex mediations. Evidence for the persistence of strong hegemonic consciousness among corporate capitalists is provided by an additional unique series of surveys. This persistence contrasts with declining working class identity and increasingly mixed class consciousness among most other employment class positions. However, pro-labour oppositional consciousness is found to dominate among unionized industrial workers and professional employees in the private goods-producing sector, who may be among the most directly exploited workers in value terms in an emergent ‘knowledge economy’. The findings suggest the continuing relevance of pursuing class analyses based on production relations in advanced capitalist economies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Class became virtually a taboo topic in Poland after the fall of the communist system, and a discourse of "normality" took hold. Social scientists and journalists considered new market institutions natural and inescapable and urged people to adapt. Sociologists were more interested in the identity of the new elites than the social consequences of the new capitalism, and a cult of a not-yet-existing "middle class" quickly grew. Inequality and poverty, previously understood as systemic, were now presented as due to individual pathology. That class talk became so marginalized despite the historical robustness of Polish sociology as a discipline is explained by the dominance of a functionalist stratification paradigm, which kept questions relevant to the new system, about emerging class relations and power, from even being raised. Polish sociology thus appeared stuck in the past and in the future--thinking about stratification without power, and imagining an individualist meritocracy as already in effect--but not ready to ask about the class formation and new economic relations of the present. The paucity of class analysis allowed illiberal populist nationalism to grow, blaming economic problems on internal "anti-Polish" enemies. New kinds of class thinking has revived in the new millennium, promoted by a new generation raised in a capitalist society and trained in western universities, and legitimized in part by class analyses of postcommunism by scholars from abroad. Though hobbled, class analysis is making a modest comeback. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The interview that follows revisits some of the theses developed by Alain Badiou concerning the revolts of the Arab Spring in his 2011 book Le Réveil de l'Histoire in light of subsequent events. The interview touches on a number of themes, including the relation between recent revolts and the on-going global economic crisis, and the way the reconfiguration of global value circuits impacts upon both tactical and strategic questions for rioters in Europe, North America and beyond. It also examines the way an analysis of the class composition of those involved in contemporary mass movements offers keys to understanding their failures and successes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Österreichische Zeitschrift für Soziologie is the property of Springer Nature and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

An amalgamation of class structures, or a class hybrid, can be shown to occur in many economic sectors and at many sites. When a producer cooperative hires wageworkers or welcomes outside directors, one can no longer call that enterprise simply communist or capitalist. Such conflicting relations of production confront enterprise directors with a complex array of distribution pressures. Coexisting class structures create unique tensions between managers, merchants, and other revenue recipients. These contradictions can transform the nature of work. Although the concept of the hybrid has been recognized in class analysis, a systematic study of its forms and dynamics has yet to be developed. A theory of hybrid-directed enterprises reveals that communist class structures can be a spontaneous and successful enterprise component, as well as a catalyst for change today. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Within the medieval guild workshop, small masters operated as class hybrids that personified a distinct economic form. Marx's Capital shows how these masters served as a thread stitching together the historical break that transformed Europe into an industrialized capitalist society. Despite their role in this transition, the proliferation of such hybrids has been undertheorized, even though the coexistence of different kinds of class structures is quite possible in today's corporations. Capitalist class structures may combine in the same enterprise with slave, feudal, ancient, or even communist class structures. To further understand such sites, this paper offers a basic class theory of hybrids. An immediate political importance arises from the possibility that collective-based employment may often develop only in a hybrid. As a result, a new theory and politics of transition beyond capitalism emerges. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The paper undertakes the task of elaborating the outline of a normative-functionalist model of social class. Traditional Marxist and Weberian theories of social class both assume that with the emergence of capitalism the social embeddedness of economy dissolves and thereafter it is the capitalist economy that shapes society upon its own image. Hence, these theories imply the necessity of a description and understanding of social structure on the basis of relations of exploitation or of different market chances offered by the capitalist economy. In opposition to these theories, this paper attempts to grasp the structure of modern societies as if the capitalist economy were still embedded in society. The paper is based on the Parsonian thought that all societies institutionalise some balance between equality and inequality and that social stratification contributes to the normative integration of society. According to this view, the institutionalised norms and value standards of equality and inequality prescribe in what respects the members of society should be treated as equal and inequal. If economy is conceptualised as if it were embedded in society, i.e. as if its functioning were subject to the institutionalised norms of equality and inequality, an alternative viewpoint should be chosen to describe the class structure of society. In the course of classification it should be asked which norms of equality and inequality are institutionalised in modern societies and what kind of social groups could be differentiated in accordance. The paper tries to draw up a comprehensive class schema on the basis of this starting point. The theoretical framework applied in the paper places special questions in the centre of class analysis. By analysing the institutionalised norms of equality and inequality and their enforcement in society empirical investigations should find out whether social stratification could fulfil its integrative function or, contrarily, it leads to different social-political conflicts among different groups of society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We compare and contrast two different kinds of Marxism: traditional (orthodox) and overdeterminist. The argument pinpoints key theoretical and political consequences of each kind of Marxism for the history of the Left and for anticapitalist struggle today. Our preference, overdeterminist Marxism, places the elimination of class exploitation (conceived in surplus labor terms) back on the Left's agenda for social change where Marx had placed it. We explain why this overdeterminist focus on reorganizing the production and distribution of the surplus (eliminating exploitation) is different from traditional Marxism's focus rather on eliminating private ownership of the means of production and/or empowering workers. The conclusion suggests why and how overdeterminist Marxism can help to restructure society so as to achieve a new kind of class democracy. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article examines the latest trajectory of class analysis in Australia within the context of criticism against the Marxist approach to class and changes within the capitalist economy and society some claim make Marxist class analysis redundant. It contends that these criticisms significantly misinterpret the Marxist conception of class and miss recent developments with Marxist class analysis. It argues that the evidence presented indicates a broader trend within Marxist scholarship.

The crucial difference between Robinson’s view of the world today and mine has to do with what has been happening in the last 30–50 years. Robinson sees ‘globalization’ as a new stage in capitalism, in which financial institutions are the main mechanisms of capitalist accumulation. I see the same period as one in which capitalist structures have moved so far from equilibrium that they cannot survive. The world-system has entered into a structural crisis and a bifurcation that, in the next 20–40 years, will result in a new world-system (or systems), which may be worse than the current system or much better. In analysing my views, he asserts they are state-centric unlike his. This is incredible, given that the very name of the perspective, world-systems analysis, is used because the basic premise is that social reality occurs within a world-system and not within the states. Robinson’s view is based on a misreading of our concepts of core and periphery. They do not refer to states, but to a relation, in which the crucial difference is the degree of monopolization of the productive process. These processes are located in all states. It is true that the concentration of core-like and peripheral processes is different in different states, which results in a different national politics. But this is a political, not an economic, difference. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article presents abstracts on topics related to history and planning including attitudes towards menstruation in Elizabethan England, sexual fantasy in modern America, and feminism.

Nowtopia identifies a new basis for a shared experience of class. Specifically, the exodus from wage labor on one side, and the embrace of meaningful, freely chosen and “free” (unpaid) work on the other. A product of three decades of decomposition of the working class, nowtopians are different from “drop-outs” in general, or surplus populations that constitute the necessary “outside” to capital, in their conscious withdrawal from capitalist culture and concerted rejection of the value form. In emergent convivial “nowtopian” communities, largely grounded in unpaid practical work which creatively meets needs such as transportation (the bicycling subculture), food (urban gardening/agriculture), and communication (open-source communities), we see a gradual reversal of the extreme atomization of modern life. While facing the threat of corruption via re-integration into the system, this constellation of practices, if taken together, is an elaborate, decentralized, uncoordinated collective research and development effort exploring a potentially post-capitalist, post-petroleum future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this article is to discuss how the notion of class should be conceived in the age of informational capitalism. In a critical concept of class, an exploiting class deprives at least one exploited class of resources, excludes them from ownership and appropriates resources produced by the exploited. Besides the appropriation of economic resources, exploiters also make use of hierarchies and unequal distributions of power and skills. It is argued that an expanded notion of class and exploitation is needed today. This notion of class is connected to the category of knowledge, which is considered as expropriated and exploited commons. Implications for new media are outlined. The notion of the prosumer/produser commodity is elaborated in this context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal of Sociological Research / Sosyoloji ArastIrmalarI Dergisi is the property of Sosyoloji Dernegi and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

In this paper I seek to establish that a widely held criticism of postmodern Marxism – that it is morally relativist and does not offer a basis for a systematic analysis of capitalism – is not warranted. I provide a systematic review of the postmodern Marxist literature in three distinct areas – value theory, class analysis of the household and state, and class justice – and I draw on these contributions to show that postmodern Marxism offers new insights into problems of concern to Marxian theorists. I argue, further, that it provides the normative grounds for a class politics that is open to new alliances and new strategies for engaging in class struggle. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I want to argue here against capitalist exploitation and for communism as an alternative class structure of production. To that end, I utilize the particular kind of class analysis that appears often in Rethinking Marxism to answer the title's question. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fishing economies are typically represented as pre-capitalist and as a barrier to capital accumulation rather than as an alternative economy with its own potentials. Privatization (and capitalism) appears logical and inevitable because “there is no alternative” described or given. The class analysis presented here focuses on questions of property and subjectivity and describes fishing as a non-capitalist and community-based economy consonant with both a tradition of common property and an image of “fishermen” as independent and interested in fairness and equity. While the latter is associated with a neoliberal subject aligned with the capitalist economy, a class analysis of fishing repositions “fishermen” as community subjects aligned with a community economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses health care change with respect to the transformation of the social order within Poland and transnationally. It considers the implications for health care equality and the understanding of citizenship, of a process of health care reform which constitutes part of a transition involving the formation of new power asymmetries based on poverty and wealth. Drawing on qualitative research carried out in Nowa Huta, the article shows how health care change has contributed to poverty and how the introduction of liberal democracy has been accompanied by the perception of a loss of health rights.The article questions the language of citizenship which underpins the aspiration for health equality in the EU, and indicates the implications of the occlusion of the politico-economic effects of capitalism in citizenship discourse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Industrielle Beziehungen is the property of Rainer Hampp Verlag and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Abstract: While theories of global capitalism have added a new dimension to our understanding of the dynamics of the modern world, a ‘globalisation’ approach to the transformation of the state socialist societies is relatively underdeveloped. This paper studies the role of international and global factors under state socialism and the world system in the pre-1989 period. The paper considers traditional Marxist approaches to the transition to capitalism and criticises the model of state capitalism as well as the world system approach. In contrast, social actors (the ‘acquisition’ and ‘administrative’ social strata and the global political elite)are identified as playing a major role in the fall of state socialism, and were a nascent capitalist class. The transformation of state socialism, it is contended, had the character of a revolution rather than a shift between different types of capitalism. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This essay argues that one way of understanding Gramsci today is as an organic intellectual of a class of managerial cadre which develops in advanced capitalism. With the growth of monopolistic structures and a deepening state role in capitalist society, a separate class of mediating functionaries emerges, entrusted with managerial tasks in running the economy and the state. The problems of conquering power from the perspective of this ‘new middle class’ that concerned Gramsci, were also those of the neo‐Machiavellian thinkers, Mosca, Michels, Pareto and Sorel around the turn of the twentieth century. From opposed political angles, they and Gramsci shared the concern with occupying the centre ground and mediate the extremes in a complex society. Today’s Gramscianism appeals to the same set of concerns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Stephen Resnick and Richard Wolff's recent book, Class Theory and History: Capitalism and Communism in the USSR , goes beyond an “application” of their class analysis to change our understanding of fundamental class concepts. In their analysis of the former Soviet Union's class processes, especially the existence of a distinct form of the capitalist class process in which value is administered, they destabilize long held assumptions about the necessary conditions of existence of capitalist appropriation of surplus labor time. They also continue to provide elements of new historical conceptions of collectivity that are sorely needed. This book is crucial for all who care about how categories of thought intersect with readings of history. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Shows that the radical displacement of class analysis in contemporary theoretical narratives and the concomitant decentering of capitalism, the anointing of "difference" as a primary explanatory construct, and the "culturalization" of politics, have had detrimental effects on "left" theory and practice. Reconceptualization of "difference"; Limitations of "difference" and "representational" politics; Contemporary class conditions under global capitalism.

Appalachian poverty has typically been interpreted as the result of either persistent economic isolation or, conversely, absentee corporate capitalist exploitation. Instead, by stressing the interplay of slave-based manufacturing and commerce, and the self-exploitation and exploitation of family labor in subsistence farming, we locate the social origins of Appalachian poverty in the indigenous development of the mountain economy prior to the advent of capitalist industrialization. By examining the interplay of markets, cultural norms, and the local state in nineteenth-century Clay County, Kentucky, we picture the diversity and complexity of non-capitalist class processes in Appalachia prior to the modern era of coal mining and show how these contributed to the pattern of dependent capitalist development and poverty for which the region is well-known. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]