Everything You Wanted To Know About Class but Were Afraid To Ask: Erik Olin Wright’s Classes

What do we talk about when we talk about class? The terms of debate were set largely by Karl Marx. Yet the classic categories of class, such as “bourgeoisie” and “working class,” though sometimes useful at a general level of analysis, blur or fracture on close inspection. Is class a question of money, power, social status, taste—or some combination of all four? And if class is so complicated, how can we talk about it meaningfully as a force that operates in and helps shape the world? These are the questions motivating Classes, Erik Olin Wright’s landmark study of the nature and meaning of class in advanced capitalist society. Noting the failure of the historic classes to polarize, as Marx predicted, into the “hostile camps” of bourgeoisie and proletariat, Wright argues for the prevalence of what he calls “contradictory class locations,” whereby individuals occupy different social and economic roles simultaneously. Yet the complexity of class, as Wright sees it, by no means deprives it of political potency. But how can “class interests” operate, if people occupy multiple class locations simultaneously? How do social classes form and take shape? Does the landscape of class remain fertile territory for political identity, action, and change?

In this course, we will read Erik Olin Wright’s Classes, alongside antecedent texts by Marx and Max Weber and contemporary interlocutors like Nicos Poulantzas and Robin D.G. Kelley, as we grapple with  theoretical and practical challenges posed by class analysis and class politics. Together, we’ll follow Olin Wright’s assessment of the limits of the classical Marxist theory of classes and the New Left efforts to renew the tradition in the light of 20th-century history. We’ll consider his concept of “contradictory class locations,” intended to address the tensions between class structure and class formation, in particular the “problem” of the middle classes. Finally, we’ll explore the implications of Wright’s ideas in the realm of politics, (re)considering issues such as class consciousness, class ideology, class alliance, reform, and utopia. We will ask: What are the definitional criteria of class? Is it ownership of the means of production, income, occupation, status, authority, domination, exploitation, or something else? What are the different levels of class analysis according to the Marxist tradition? Can we belong to more than one class at once? What is the line dividing the working class and the “middle class”? Is Wright’s concept still relevant in an age of increasing precarity and the rise of the gig economy? What are the limitations of class-based analysis, and to what extent can quantitative methods strengthen it? How can we understand the intersection of class with race and gender? What are the grounds for class alliance? In addition to Wright’s work, this class will draw on works by Marx, Weber, E.P. Thompson, Pierre Bourdieu, André Gorz, Nicos Poulantzas, Claus Offe, Michael Burawoy, C. Wright Mills, Guy Standing, Tithi Bhattacharya, Gianpaolo Baiocchi, and Robin D.G. Kelley, among others.