13. Class

Class has been a topic of debate for centuries. There is no single definition of class, and a person’s class is characterized by a wide range of factors such as their wealth, education, party voting preferences, consumer habits, choice of news outlets, leisure activities, and accent. In its simplest sense, class is a person’s position in society based on their economic power. A person with significant economic power (a factory owner, a banker, a corporate director) has significantly more political power than someone working for an hourly minimum wage.

There are many theories on class, but the most popular remains the three- class structure of Karl Marx:

The upper class (in Hegemony, this is the Capitalist class): Traditionally this was the land-owning aristocracy, but from the mid-nineteenth centu- ry onwards the upper class has been industrialists and capitalists, the rich and powerful who own factories, infrastructure, banks, and the means of production. For Marx, the upper class are traditionalist and are in constant competition with each other while also trying to prevent the lower classes from gaining power. For Marx, this class often deceives the working class into fighting each other and the middle class, to prevent either one from overthrowing the upper class. As the traditional upper class of land-owning nobles still exists but is politically and economically irrelevant today, analysis of this class focuses on capitalists – factory owners, CEOs of corporations, and similarly wealthy people from the upper-middle class (see below).

The middle class: The class of educated professionals, the middle class is vaguely defined but generally describes people with financial and economic security. They live comfortable lives by either selling their professional skills (such as university-trained specialists) or employing people in small businesses. For Marx, this class looks up to the upper class and wants to take their place, while still keeping the lower class in their place. The middle class can be further subdivided into lower-middle class (e.g., office workers), middle-middle class (people with tertiary education, such as accountants, teachers, and medical doctors), and upper-middle class (wealthy business
owners with many employees). The upper-middle class overlaps significantly with the capitalist class.

The working class or “proletariat”: The class of manual workers, the low- er class does not have financial security (e.g., they pay rent instead of a mortgage, they earn an hourly wage instead of an annual salary) and are often not educated beyond legal school requirements. For Marx, this class should seek to bring the entire system down and replace it with a socialist utopia. They will sometimes strategically ally with the middle class, but only temporarily. The working class can be subdivided into skilled (e.g., qualified specialists such as electricians, plumbers, and nurses) and unskilled (e.g., unqualified non-specialists such as waiters, call center operators, fast food service workers). Below the working class is the underclass of permanently unemployed people. Between the working class and underclass is the pre- cariat – people with jobs, but who struggle to survive day-to-day. In the mod- ern West, this class is expanding rapidly.

For Marx, these classes are in constant conflict with one another, and people are aware of their class. This class consciousness is highly debated, but many theorists argue that it exists, and a person’s political beliefs and behavior are determined by their position in the class structure.

Today, the theory has evolved from Karl Marx’s lifetime, and many scholars reject it. There are debates around the “post-working class”, the “precariat”, the extent to which the middle class blends into the capitalist class, and whether people are conscious of (or care about) their class identity in the contemporary world, compared to other identities like religion, gender, or race. Additionally, this dynamic further fuels the “inter-class struggle” as individuals who belong to the same class often have different political views and are competing with one another economically. Nonetheless, Marx’s initial structure still remains the basis for much modern thinking about class.