1) capitalist (private ownership of industrial and financial wealth) - large differences in social inequality, esp. Between property owners and all others.
2) socialist (Eastern Europe and Soviet Union)
= emergence of a ?ruling class' or powerful elite concentrating political and economic power
1) how movement to social equality beginning in 1848 has affected social inequality, and how latter affected by modern industry. ; involves inquiry into nature of social classes, initially.
2) comparative analysis of changes in stratification in two principal types of modern industrial societies, and their explanation.
3) confrontation between inequality and equality.
1) non-class inequalities exist, but are subordinate to class inequality.
2) no definite point at which it can be said that equality has been definitively established; reversals are possible; thus eternal vigilance necessary.
1) persistence until late into 19th century of the prominence of landowners, merchants and financiers in British upper class compared to industrialists.
2) persistence of old world noble privileges in British class structure, making it seemingly more rigid than some other countries
3) decline of British capitalism in contrast to emergence of the US and then Japanese capitalism on the world stage.
1) Pre-Civil War equalitarian roots of US class structure, marked by pervasiveness of ownership of the means of production (80% of US working non-slave pop. owned means of production) - a nation of small farmers, small traders, and small craftspeople.
Three reasons for this:
-the equalitarian revolt in War of Independence against hierarchy of European privileges;
-absence of European feudalism tradition; and
-the open frontier presented new opportunities for geographic and social mobility.
2) Consolidation of US class structure after Civil War with emergence of wealthy upper class and the organization of the working class into trade unions.
3) Decline in ownership of means of production: % of active white pop. owning means of production:
early 19th century:80%
1870: 41%
1940: 18% (34)
4) Paradox of persistence of equalitarian ideology on top of an unequal class structure:
1) no sudden expansion in working class (wage earners were 53% in 1870 and 57% in 1940) (35)
2) large expansion in salaried earners (from 7% to 25% between 1870-1940) which made possible structural upward mobility
3) no decline in living standard
4) continual economic growth during much of this period ????
1) Consolidation of class structure in which wealth was concentrated in upper 10,000, and extreme poverty at other end, despite growth of welfare state which ameliorated some of these living conditions.
2) Dominance of capitalist class in modern industrial societies based in three reasons:
-disappearance of personal household servants (caused by great growth in jobs outside home)
-short- versus long-range: most mobility occurs between occupations close together, especially between upper parts of working class and lower parts of middle strata; all studies on elites show very little long-range mobility from working class into elite positions.
-2 implications of mobility for working class:
a) intensifies feelings of individual aspiration and ambition and weakens class solidarity and consciousness;
b) reduces size of working class and increases size of middle strata.
E.g.: Great Britain: manual workers and foremen fell from
1911 81%
1970 63%
1979 54% (p. 42)
a) Internally heterogeneous and differentiated.
B) Weber's status groups often used to describe them, even though ?classes' used;
c) Boundary Problem one of main foci of sociologists, both between middle classes and upper classes, and middle classes and working class.
I) studies show maintenance of boundary between manual and white collar workers:
II) Two types of Marxist analyses of boundary between working and middle:
-proletarianization thesis:
-property: Renner: service class has become propertyless and thus similar to working class
-skill - deskilling of large parts of white collar sector (Braverman) (note: Bottomore is critical of Braverman)
-rejection of proletarianization thesis have emphasized political & social attitudes:
-Poulantzas emphasized political and ideological factors on a par with economic factors;
-Wright emphasizes contradictory class location of middle strata, focusing on professional and managerial employees.
(Note: did Wright or Poulantzas reject proletarianization thesis??)
III) Boundary Between Capitalist and Middle Classes:
-disappearance: Abercrombie and Urry suggest that middle classes (service class) takes on functions of capital (conceptualization, control, reproduction), while capitalist class becomes more similar to service class.
Summary of Bottomore's 3 Thesis on Classes in Modern Capitalist Societies:
Marx's Expectation: Marx thought that after capitalism there would be a classless soceity urshered in by a working class revolt and marked by an absence of private productive property, the foundation of classes in capitalist societies.
Soviet Union as Classless Soceity? Soviet Union, which did not emerge out of modern capitalism, nevertheless saw itself as this kind of socialist, classless society.
Equalitarianism: Soviet Union attacked ?equalitarianism' as ?petty bourgois', and drew a sharp distinction between classlessness and equalitarianism.
Income Inequality: Inequalities in Soviet Union almost as great as in capitalist countries, especially after the incentives program for skilled technicians, scientists, etc. introduced after 1930. Other socialist countries in Eastern Europe showed same trend.
2 Explanations:
Increasing Income Equality:
-some evidence that, after 1956, income inequality in Soviet Union was decreasing in terms of a rise in minimum wages, weakening of piece-rate system, narrowing of skill differentials in wages.
Major Income Distinction between Capitalist and Socialist Countries:
Income in socialist countries mainly earned income;
Income in capitalist countries both earned and unearned income, since part of latter is inherited wealth of uppper class, which had no equivalent in socialist countries.
Aspects of ?Class' System of Soviet Union:
-boundary between manual and non-manual more permeable in Soviet Union than capitalism;
-no classes summary: Classes did not exist in Soviet Union in same sense as in West (Parkin and others) (53)
-versus classes did exist:
a) Dijas: distinguished between ?juridical ownership' and ?effective possession' of means of production; that an exploitative class having ?effective ownership of means of production' did exist, consisting of senior administrative (apparatus of economic planning and manaagement) and party officials. State capitalism.
B) Konrad and Szelenyi: two main classes: redistributors (intellectuals) versus working classes (produces of social surplus wealth); intermediate strata in between.
Bottomore's position: that classes do not exist in the traditional marxist sense there there are no classic owners of the means of production; however, those who possess political power also have effective possession of the means of production; Marx never saw economic classes based on political classes (Carl). Bottomore: "the ?effective possessors of the means of production'... ?are not the dominant or ruling class as a consequence of being, in the first place, the ?owners' of the means of production".
Hilferding: saw Soviet Union as a totalitarian state economy .
Aaron: saw the Soviet Union as headed by a unified elite (combining economy, politics, culture) in contrast to the plurality of elites in the West.
Social Mobility: higher between manual and non-manual occupations in East than West, but this may have resulted from rapid industrialization and the resultant expansion of the intermediate strata of technical, professional and administrative personnel.
Mobility from manual to elite positions was higher in immediate post-revolutionary stage, but decline later on as more of the elite was drawn from white-collar positions in the consolitation of the positions of the intellegentsia closely aligned to the Party.
-no hereditary system in classes in East.
Self-Management in former Yugoslavia: more democratic than Soviet system, but nevertheless had a centralized system of political control.(57-8)
Remaining Sociological Question: How did a system, which began espousing the principles of human liberation, wind up as a totalitarian and repressive political dictatorship?
Possible Answers:
a) ?cult of personality' (Stalin etc.); Bottomore does not see this as an explanation.
b) Weber's charismatic leadership in content of rapid industrialization of a society only in the early stages of industrialization; plus the sudden changes brought on by revolution. All of this accompanied by the centralization of political authority in a few hands inevitably gave rise to a centralized political and economic elite.
Note: at variance with Marx who tended to see politics as the result of class; in state socialism, class and stratification seemed to be the product of elite political decisions as the centralized political authorities had the power to change the system of stratificaton (Ossowski).
Each will follow a somewhat different path, though market capitalism is the general trend:
a) Poland has moved furthest to total integration into capitalist system;
b) former German Democratic Republic will be dominated by West German capital;
c) Hungary will develop more of a human face to capitalism;
d) Yugoslavia may be subjected to national tensions which may slow down the move to a totally self-managed economy, if that is the direction in which some want it to head.
e) Soviet Union: central questions are the introduction of private property-holding in conjunction with collective ownership, and the decentralization of economic decision making to the republics and individual enterprises.
General Conclusion: Future of these societies will exhibit the markings of class inequalities and conflicts, similar to other capitalist countries; the extremes of wealth and poverty will grow; unemployment will increase; food lines will appear, as in Poland, etc.
Class-based versus other social movements: there have been many social movements against inequality, whether based on gender, nation, race, colonialism, etc., but the fundamental one is the one based in class - ie, the movement to eradicate inqualities based on class division of societies. (65). This is the significance of Marx, his analysis of capitalism, and the expectation that a more humane, socialist society would emerge from the revolt of the working class against the ruling class of capitalist societies.
Ruling Class: in nineteenth century, it was easy for Marx to conceive the government as a committee for managing the common affairs of the bourgeoisie as a whole, since only property owners had full political rights (65).
Contrasting Views on Suffrage: Marx was suspicious of suffrage under capitalism in which the working class gets to choose which member of the bourgeoisie misrepresents it for the next four or six years; in contrast, he was much more hopeful of democracy under the Commune in which the working class would elect deputies to represent it in the Commune (with immediate recall rights).
Working-Class Socialist Movement: Socialist or communist parties became influential in much of the world, especially after WWII, and especially in Eastern Europe, USSR, China, and many of the national liberation movements in the third world.
a) Hegemony of a non-Socialist American Capitalism on World Stage.
In 1906, Werner Sombart published Why Is There No Socialism in the United States? Among factors he listed:
Added to this was the fact that American capitalism become dominanat on the world stage after WWII, as in the Marshall Plan to reconstruct Europe, it is no wonder that it acted as a beacon for anti-communist sentiment.
B) Repressive and Authoritarian Nature of Soviet Communism:
This gave socialism a negative connotation in many countries, and made it difficult for socialist and communist parties to gain new recruits.
Despite above barriers, socialist parties continued to grow in Influence, especially during the 1980s in Europe. This was accompanied by two other trends:
Note: Bottomore seems quite optimistic about the influence of socialist parties in Europe, both in the European Parliament and in individual countries by end of 1980s. He gives little hint of the right-wing movement of the 1990s and end of 1980s. (70)
Bottomore argues that, since 19th century, politics and political parties have been class based:
a) Conservative and Liberal parties have favoured policies promoting private accumulation of wealth, little state intervention in the economy, especially in form of welfare state, other than a minimal level, and a taxation system that favoured the rich.
B) Socialist, Social-Democratic and Labour Parties: have favoured state intervention, both to regulate the economy and to promote welfare policies, and a taxation system that is progressive (ie, higher rates for the rich).
a) Professional Managers: argument that no single class, like a business-centered ruling class, can any longer control the polities of the state, both because of the complexities of the state bureauracies and because of the complexities of the bourgeoisie; argument that a ?class' of professional managers is now in charge of the state.
Bottomore rejects the argument on the grounds that:
Answer:
all this gives it a great deal of self-consciousness
-weakness of working class opposition, especially its reformist labour parties in power
-middle classes - great heterogeneity, making it a weak political actor; has never constituted a major government for any length of time in any country; but their political fluctuations has been one source of instability in capitalist state policies.
-groups within middle classes have been active politically, all the way from fascism (small shopkeepers) to new social movements, such as green and peace and feminist.
- effect on working class politics:
-political support: no working class political party can stay in power for long without the support of significant sections of the middle classes
-status: class politics may have declined due to the status emphasis of the middle classes
Political Changes in Eastern Europe and ex-communist countries:(79-)
2 major forms of conflict from mid-19th century to mid-20th century:
2 relationships between these:
East-West Cold War Conflict After WWII: Implications for Class Conflict (86-)
Reasons for post-war success of capitalism up to 1980s:
Reasons for Problems in Capitalism in post-1980s Era:
-future development of working class will affect socialist politics:
Differing conditions of class organizations in working and capitalist classes: - capitalist class consciousness has always been easier to manage than working class consciousness -- conditions of hegemony, small class size, and great resources have always made capitalist class organizations and the solidification of consciousness much easier to facilitate than working class organizations and consciousness. (90)
Key Question: Future and Content of Socialist Consciousness: -- esp because some deny the existence of objective working class interests and consciousness.
Critics of Working Class Interests: Either that objective working class interests and thus consciousness does not exist (Hindess), or that there are only Bourgeois intellengtsia sources of working class socialist ideology (Lenin and others).
Bottomore 3 points in rejecting critics:
Continuing Questions About Socialism After 1989:
- in ex-socialist countries -- many view socialist ideology negatively, and want to restore capitalism as quickly as possible, especially in Poland
- in capitalist west -- no clear what socialism means, especially with abandonment of public ownership goals by socialist and labour parties.
Middle Class Politics:
-new? although feminist, green, peace, movements are called ?new', movements have existed since Chartism in the 19th century.
-non-class? although the new social movements are seen as not based in class, many of them get their leadership and adherents from the middle classes
-labour movement is the oldest and most stable of all social movements.
-Touraine propounds a theory of social movements based in action and a non-marxist definition of class based on domination and subordination.
Marxism:(98)
-transition from capitalism to socialism doctrine challenged by transition from socialism to capitalism in eastern Europle; this doctrine perhaps should be abandoned.
-most valuable part of marxism should be retained - ie analysis of social relations of capitalist society itself.
2 circumstances confronting such analysis:(99)
1- uncertainties in working class politics due to continued strength of capitalist class and influence of non-class based social movements; socialization of the economy: state involvement in almost all aspects of economy.
2-challenge in analysis of eastern europe as it moves towards capitalism (different in each country; mixed economies in some cases; in other cases a more pure market capitalism), plus strength of nationalist sentiments.
-political and ideological differences between classes less sharp now as working class socialist parties weaken their support for social ownership and planned economies, and of any goal of a radical transition to socialism. Capitalism with a human face seems to be the platform of most socialist parties.
Rethinking of socialism is now on the agenda.(109) especially the mix between market capitalism and public ownership and intervention.
1) "rise of new elites committed to rationality and efficiency in production and administration, and subscribing wholeheartedly to the doctrines of technological progress and unlimited economic growth"
2) "growth of radical movements which directly oppose the technocratic and bureaucratic character of modern industrial soceities and advocate ?participation' and ?community' as alternatives to the authoritarianisms and elitism implied in the conception of a society directed by experts"
3) "the emergence of regional and nationalism movements"
4) at other pole, "growth of movements to create supranational communities" (EEC).(109)
(These are non-marxist types of politics; non-class based?).
Future presents us with a confusion of images.
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