Concepts of Social Stratification

Transcription

1 Concepts of Social Stratification European and American Models Andreas Hess

2 Concepts of Social Stratification

3 Also by Andreas Hess AMERICAN SOCIAL AND POLITICAL THOUGHT A CONCISE INTRODUCTION DIE POLITISCHE SOZIOLOGIE C. WRIGHT MILLS

4 Concepts of Social Stratification European and American Models Andreas Hess Lecturer in Sociology University of Wales, Bangor

5 Andreas Hess 2001 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London W1P 0LP. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The author has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act First published 2001 by PALGRAVE Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS and 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N. Y Companies and representatives throughout the world PALGRAVE is the new global academic imprint of St. Martin s Press LLC Scholarly and Reference Division and Palgrave Publishers Ltd (formerly Macmillan Press Ltd). ISBN X This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Hess, Andreas. Concepts of social stratification : European and American models / Andreas Hess. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN X 1. Social stratification. 2. Social stratification United States. I. Title. HM821.H dc Printed and bound in Great Britain by Antony Rowe Ltd, Chippenham, Wiltshire

6 Contents 1 Introduction: Why Study the Semantics of Social Stratification? 1 2 Karl Marx s Critique of Political Economy 10 3 Max Weber: Political Economy as Sociology 25 4 Emile Durkheim, Georg Simmel and Ferdinand Tönnies: Social Differentiation and Functionalist Sociology 36 5 Alexis de Tocqueville s Political Sociology 50 6 In Dispraise of Economics: Thorstein Veblen 58 7 The City and Human Ecology: the Urban Sociology of the Chicago School (Robert Park and William Burgess) 70 8 The Origins of Cultural and Community Studies: Robert and Helen Lynd s Anatomy of Middletown 79 9 The Political Sociology of C. Wright Mills: an Anatomy of the American Power Structure Dissecting the Fine Distinctions in America s System of Social Stratification: Richard Sennett and Jonathan Cobb Maintaining the Equilibrium of Freedom and Order: Talcott Parsons Resuscitation of Functionalism From Black Nation and Black Bourgeoisie to Urban Underclass the Sociology of African American Communities: W. E. B. Du Bois, Franklin E. Frazier and William J. Wilson Back to the Future: Mike Davis and Erik Olin Wright s Marxist Interpretations of Class Struggle in the US 140 vii

7 viii Contents 14 Tocqueville Revisited: American Exceptionalism in the Political Sociology of Seymour Martin Lipset Epilogue: The Semantics of Social Stratification 168 Bibliography 175 Index 181

8 1 Introduction: Why Study the Semantics of Social Stratification? In his groundbreaking study Das Jahrhundert Verstehen (Understanding the Century) the historian Dan Diner has pointed out that 1989, the year the Berlin Wall came down, must be seen as an event that marked the end of a conflict between a set of competing values those associated with freedom against those associated with equality. The truly global conflict that started with the Russian Revolution in 1917 the modern symbol of the struggle for equality came to an end with the tremendeous events of 1989 (Wolf Lepenies), the contemporary symbol associated with western freedom a freedom which had its origins in the Atlantic Revolution (Diner, 1999: 10). The end of the Cold War must thus not only be seen as the the closing chapter of the major battle of ideas that has marked the 20th century, but also as the beginning of a new epoch, an epoch in which freedom itself has become the major force of production (1999: 78). Locke s observation that in the beginning all the world was America just needed a stealthy twist in history to become true. However, it would be wrong to assume that the late victory of the Atlantic Revolution and the values that are usually associated with it mean the end of societal conflict in general and/or the end of stratified societies and inequality in particular. Nothing could be further from the truth. What has changed, however, is the perception of the complex relationship in which inequality now co-exists with freedom and social order. If this is an appropriate description, then it would indeed be helpful to take a fresh look back from this newly gained observation point in order to find out exactly how the West dealt with 1

9 2 Concepts of Social Stratification inequality and how it managed to preserve freedom and order at the same time. Since it would be an almost impossible task to write the history of social inequality in the West, we necessarily have to be selective and find other ways and methods to achieve our aim. Short of a grand narrative, what could be better than studying some paradigmatic ways in which inequality in the West has been observed and studied by social scientists? It is my hypothesis that this can best be achieved by looking at American society, a society that is truly paradigmatic in the sense that it stands for the Western values of the Atlantic Revolution, freedom and order, but that at the same time had to manage with extreme forms of social inequality. In order to proceed along these lines of reasoning, we will have to be even more selective. As a way of proceeding I suggest investigating the complex relationship between inequality, freedom and order and the way in which it has been perceived and interpreted over time, by looking at the shifting semantics that have been used to describe inequality. It is therefore necessary to explain why a conceptual approach is relevant in this instance, and in order to do so, it is useful to refer to two American sociologists who have thought about the problems associated with conceptual approaches, namely, C. Wright Mills and Jeffrey C. Alexander. In his critique of grand theory i.e. theories that did not seem to be related to empirical evidence and abstracted empiricism such as unstructured atheoretical empirical research C. Wright Mills refers back to classic sociology in order to stress that the classics received their status due to the fact that they did not surrender to the false opposition of theory versus empirical research. Mills argues further that the classics favoured concepts which allowed one to focus on specific societal problems whilst at the same time maintain a sense of society as a whole. Thus, classic sociology never followed the extremes of grand theory or abstracted empiricism. Rather, their use of concepts such as class, status, elite, anomie, etc. introduced a mediating effect: general theory was informed by empirical research while general theory helped to structure and systematise empirical data. In the words of C. Wright Mills: Classic social science neither builds up from microscopic study nor deduces down from conceptual elaboration. Its practitioners

10 Introduction 3 try to develop and to deduce concomitantly, in the same process of study, and to do this by means of adequate formulation and reformulation of problems and of their adequate solutions. To practice such a policy is to take up substantive problems in terms appropriate to them; and then, no matter how high the flight of theory, no matter how painstaking the crawl among detail, in the end of each completed act of study, to state the solution in the macroscopic terms of the problem. The classic focus, in short, is on substantive problems. The character of these problems limits and suggests the methods and the conceptions that are used and how they are used. Controversy over different views of methodology and theory is properly carried on in close and continuous relation with substantive problems. (Mills, 1959: 128) Mills explanation of classic sociology stresses the flexibility of concepts, reflecting the tense relationship between theory and empirical research. Mills tried to put such knowledge to use while writing his own trilogy on power in American society. Yet it must be noted that Mills understanding of sociology was also deeply influenced by American Pragmatism. The problem-solving aspects played a central role in Mills notion of the discipline. Such a view is not altogether wrong but it might not be sufficient to understand the continuum of modern social scientific processes particularly not when seen in the light of our question, namely how inequality can co-exist with freedom and order. In his four-volume work entitled Theoretical Logic in Sociology and in his lectures published as Sociological Theory Since World War II, the American sociologist Jeffrey C. Alexander has attempted to describe the interrelation of the social scientific process in a more sophisticated manner. (Alexander, 1982, 1987). Alexander s diagram shows a continuum (see Figure 1.1). One end of the continuous line symbolises factual empirical environment, characterised by specificity. The other end of the line shows the other extreme, metaphysical environment, whose central feature is generality. The stages in-between those two extremes tend to be oriented to either one of the extremes. Methodological considerations for example is closer to empirical environment, while classifications, definitions, concepts and models veer more

11 4 Concepts of Social Stratification Metaphysical environment Theories Facts Empirical environment General Ideological orientations presuppositions. Models Concepts.. Definitions Classifications Laws Complex and simple propositions Correlations Methodological assumptions Observations Figure 1.1 The scientific continuum and its components Source: Alexander 1987: 7. Reprinted with permission of Columbia University Press. towards metaphysical environment. For Alexander s diagram it is necessary to understand sociology as an empirically informed social science. Principal falsification plays a decisive role in it: sociological theory must be open to examination, new empirical evidence and finally, revision. Yet, according to Alexander, sociological theory is also based on ideological and metaphysical presuppositions which are not subject to examination. The problem that then arises is, whether a theorist is aware and self-critical enough to state his metaphysical or ideological assumptions openly. If Alexander s arguments concerning his diagram are correct (and I assume this to be the case), then the question arises of how changes in the empirical environment will be internally represented within that continuum. Also, if it is correct to characterise sociology as a social science principally open to and informed by empirical evidence, but at the same time influenced by ideological and metaphysical presuppositions, then it can be assumed that the tension between theory and the empirical environment is most likely to be represented in the midfield of the continuum that leans slightly to the theoretical side, to definitions, concepts, and models. Why is this the case? To use an explanation inspired by Marx: in being part of the more sluggish superstructure, general theories respond more slowly to change. The tension is rather diverted or delegated to the subordinate level, particularly to concepts. Old, proven, and tested

12 Introduction 5 concepts will be maintained but will be filled with new meanings to adapt to change; or, a second alternative and strategy could consist of introducing entirely new concepts sometimes to replace the old ones, but occasionally also to help to refine, and on rare occasions, even used alongside the older concepts. However, even though the emphasis has to be on concepts, it would still be helpful to learn about the theoretical presuppositions that led social scientists to use particular concepts and not others. Labelling approaches, both on the presuppositional and conceptual level, and putting them into boxes has become something of an obsession in the modern social sciences. Enormous lengths have been gone to in making approaches and paradigms used to describe inequality watertight and contradiction-free (Page, 1940; Gordon, 1958; Grimes, 1991; Gilbert and Kahl, 1993). Little has been gained by such efforts. On some occasions it has even prevented social scientists from seeing the wood for the trees. In contrast to such labelling approaches the most important thing about competing paradigms is that they must be understood as continuously changing self-descriptions of complex societies not as eternal truths (Berger, 1989: 48). The historical pluralism of competing paradigms allows us to look at the same phenomenon from various standpoints. They should be interpreted as communicating with each other. Competing and communicating paradigms can not only shed light on changing conditions and changing historical circumstances, but also allow for insights into each competing paradigm s black box. Ideally speaking, a stable use of concepts could thus hint towards persisting structural problems while a change or further conceptual differentition could indicate social change, or important shifts therein. To analyse American society and its social structure along the lines of semantical changes or replacements means understanding where and how these concepts originated. In order to gain clarity, each of the following chapters will start with a brief overview in which the presuppositional assumptions, the models and paradigms, the concepts and the empirical environments of the individual approaches are identified. This schematisation must be understood as a tool for orientation not as a labelling approach. Thus not all steps of Alexander s continuum will be applied as only the major distinctions will be listed and represented. For further guidance, and for readers who might not have an intimate knowledge of the history

13 6 Concepts of Social Stratification of the social sciences, each new approach will also be introduced by a short paragraph in which each thinker and their work will be summarised. Concerning the progression of the argument, we will start with the classics in order to find out how their analysis helped to understand inequality in America, before we proceed to the more contemporary approaches. A critical reading of The Contribution to the Critique of Hegel s Philosophy of Right: Introduction (1844), A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (1859), Das Kapital I (1867), and other writings will help to reconstruct Marx s critique of political economy and his use of concepts such as class, class struggle, and class consciousness. The concepts which Max Weber introduced to sociology stem largely from his most famous studies The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1920) and Economy and Society (1922). It is in these books that Weber developed the idea of the (western) rationalisation process, focusing especially on problems of bureaucracy, charisma, power, class, status, and parties. Emile Durkheim s idea of functional analysis can be most easily identified in his Rules of Sociological Method (1901) and The Division of Labour in Society (1902). It is here that Durkheim proposed distinguishing between primitive and modern societies, mechanical and organic solidarity, and traditional and modern morality. Two other outstanding sociologists, Georg Simmel and Ferdinand Tönnies, contributed to the formation of concepts in sociology. Simmel introduced the idea of conflict and co-operation in social relationships in his Sociology (1908), Tönnies drew the line between community and association/society (in Community and Association, 1935). Alexis de Tocqueville is not usually considered to be a sociological classic; yet to discuss the classics in order to understand America s system of social stratification without referring to his Democracy in America (1838) would leave out the very peculiar and very unique aspects of American society. It was his analysis, which for the first time hinted towards the exceptionalist character of American democracy. After studying the classics and their concepts the next step would then be to look at American social science in order to examine how the classical concepts were either used, replaced, refined, or transformed. A further screening of sociologists would be necessary at

14 Introduction 7 this stage: First, we are looking for sociologists who received a classic education meaning they were trained in sociological theory but at the same time, they must have tried to apply the concepts which stemmed from Europe to the American environment through studying larger or smaller entities of American society. Secondly, a further selection must be made in terms of the historical dimensions of their writing. In the ideal sense every sociologist would cover at least a decade of the development of social stratification in American society. Short of a complete history of social inequality of the United States and its perception, such an approach would still give the observer a sense of continuity. It would also allow one to make cross-references to individual contributors and how they themselves referred to the classics (sometimes openly, at other times just through proximity, and occasionally just through coincidence). Thirdly, the sociologists in question would also have made major contributions to the analysis of American society in terms of identifying American peculiarities and normalities, or in other words they must have studied the genuine interrelatedness of freedom and order in the case of America. The following core of social scientists and their work fulfils the requirements outlined above. They are: Thorstein Veblen s Theory of the Leisure Class (1899), The Instinct of Workmanship and the State of the Industrial Arts (1914), Absentee Ownership and Business Enterprise in Recent Times the Case of America (1923), W.E.B. Du Bois The Philadelphia Negro (1899) and other sociological writings, Robert E. Park et al. s The City (1925), Robert and Helen Lynd s Middletown (1929) and Middletown in Transition (1937), C. Wright Mills White Collar (1951) and The Power Elite (1956), E. Franklin Frazier s Black Bourgeoisie (1957), Talcott Parsons The System of Modern Societies and other related studies (1971), Richard Sennett s and Jonathan Cobb s The Hidden Injuries of Class (1972), William Julius Wilson s The Declining Significance of Race (1980) and The Truly Disadvantaged (1987), Mike Davis Prisoners of the American Dream (1986) and City of Quartz (1990), Erik Olin Wright s Interrogating Inequality (1994) and Class Counts (1997), and Seymour Martin Lipset s The First New Nation (1963), and American Exceptionalism (1996). Again, as with the classics, the sociological concepts used by these social scientists need to be properly identified and situated within

15 8 Concepts of Social Stratification Jeffrey C. Alexander s science continuum. It is expected that the continuity of using classical concepts together with the various shifts in meaning signifies the dialectic of both continuity and departure/difference in and of American society. Continuity would refer to the normality and compatibility of American society with other western societies, while the notion of concepts marked by departure/difference would refer to the unique dimensions of American society, dimensions that cannot be found anywhere else in the West. The following chapters can be read in two ways. First, the focus could be on particular periods; this way each chapter appears almost as an individual snapshot, a diachronic or lateral introspection of specific periods in American history and the way inequality in these particular periods in time have been studied and were understood by social scientists. A second reading or understanding looks more at the entire story that unfolds. Short of a comprehensive history of social inequality, it could still provide a sense of chronological order in that it looks at various stages and processes of an entire historical epoch, that of the origins and the further course of the development of American capitalism and the inequality it created. Without forgetting the importance of the diachronical individual steps, the final discussion refers clearly more to the second reading. It will consist of a broader and more general discussion of the tendencies and patterns observed. Furthermore, it will evaluate the coexistence of uncivil dimensions of class in the context about assumptions of Western civil society in general. It is only in this final discussion that we will come back to the observation of 1989 as marking the beginning of a new epoch. It is this new epoch that invites us to re-think the more general dimensions of bifurcating discourses and its function within western civil society. I would like to take this opportunity to thank the following people for their advice and help: Andrei S. Markovits (Ann Arbor) who, over many years, has been of great help and support; it is to him that I dedicate this book; Dirk Kaesler (Marburg) for renewing my confidence in the sociological profession; Jeffrey C. Alexander (Yale) who provided me with the opportunity to read his latest unpublished manuscript and (in my opinion) magnum opus Possibilities for Justice Civil Society and Its Contradictions and also permitted me to use his deliberations for advancing my own argument; William

16 Introduction 9 Outhwaite (Sussex) and Karl-Heinz Klein-Rusteberg (Essen) both of whom were prepared to listen and offer an appropriate response even when a rather confused argument was put to them; inevitably I would come away with a clearer view of what I was doing. Finally, I would like to thank Diana J. Holubowicz for her editorial work and constant support.

17 2 Karl Marx s Critique of Political Economy General presuppositions and/or theoretical affiliations and influences: historical materialism; German philosophy (G.F.W. Hegel, Ludwig Feuerbach), political economy (Adam Smith, David Ricardo, Jean-Baptiste Say, John Stuart Mill), Charles Darwin. Model/paradigm(s): capitalism (200 years). Concepts: labour power, exploitation, class struggle, classes, class as a social relationship, class consciousness, forces of production, relations of production. Empirical environment(s): Germany, England, France, Russia, USA. Karl Marx ( ) was not a sociologist. Yet modern contemporary sociology would not be the same and certainly at a loss if the contributions of Karl Marx were not to be taken into account. Marx himself did not call his approach sociology but rather critique of political economy (Marx, 1983: ). Critique of Political Economy can have a double meaning. It could mean that one is critical of political economy; thus distancing oneself from the field of criticism, i.e. political economy. Critique of Political Economy could also mean the criticism of society from the standpoint of political economy. Traits of both perspectives can be found in Marx s work. If one reads Marx, the first impression is that he writes primarily about the economic sphere; production, labour, and economic exploitation are the words that appear time and time again and after all: is not Marx s most famous work called Das Kapital? Yet despite the fact that Marx, for the most part, uses this economic language, it does not automatically follow that Marx s thought is purely 10

18 Karl Marx s Critique of Political Economy 11 economic or economistic. In Marx s work we can also find traces that clearly separate him from political economy. In Das Kapital for example, the author points out that in the capitalist economy the commodity is basically the concrete cell form of modern society (1983: 433) and in his Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy he writes that the anatomy of civil society is to be sought in political economy (1983: 159). The fact that Marx insisted on these points, would explain his obsession with economical matters, yet simultaneously, Marx appears to distance himself from political economy by referring to normative aspects outside the field of political economy. The clearest indication that Marx was not a political economist can be found in his Critique of The Gotha Programme where he dissects the German social democrats statement that labour is the source of all value and condemns the social democrats for following the paths of political economy (1983: ). For Marx, labour power is the source of all wealth which means that he is critical, if not to say opposed to the approach of political economy; and additionally that he is obviously promoting his own unique approach to criticise capitalist society. Being both critical of the political economy-approach and a user of the language of political economy, obviously means that there is a deep ambiguity in Marx. In that which follows we shall look at some of the concepts derived from Marx s general approach. But before we deal with Marx s writing on this more concrete level, it should be stressed that the ambiguity to be found in Marx s understanding of the critique of political economy also creates tensions within the concepts of that very critique. Additionally, Marx s writing can be seen developing from philosophy and abstract thinking to the more concrete level of the analysis of the production in capitalist society. The early Economico-Philosophical Manuscripts, for example, are more abstract, while Das Kapital is certainly more concrete (1983: , ). It also has to be stressed here, that the following analysis proceeds in chronological order. Thus it aims at charting the process of Marx s development. This way, it also becomes clearer that Marx reacted to the historical events of his time, and thus his thought is necessarily a product and a result of these times. Marx was born during the aftermath of the French Revolution. Having studied law in Berlin and after having finally received his doctorate, Marx became an editor for the Neue Rheinische Zeitung.

19 12 Concepts of Social Stratification He experienced serious censorship in Prussia and as a result moved to France where he contributed to the Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher a collaborative work he edited together with Arnold Ruge (1983: ). It was in the Contribution to the Critique of Hegel s Philosophy of Right: Introduction one of the major contributions to these yearbooks that he first elaborated on the concept of class in a more thorough fashion than can be seen in his then unpublished manuscript (1983: ). In his critique we can therefore find an enthusiastic reception of the political results of the French Revolution; furthermore we can observe an interest in the industrial development in England; and last but not least, Marx continually attempted to come to terms with philosophy, in particular the German idealist philosopher Hegel. Marx begins his critique by stressing the backwardness of German industrial development and its uneven development which was also reflected in its undemocratic politics. Germany begins where France and England are about to end, writes Marx (1983: 119). He saw the development of German philosophy almost as a substitute or compensation for this German backwardness and stressed that In Politics the Germans have thought what other people have done (1983: 119; emphasis in the original). For Marx, German philosophy was so preoccupied with the life of the mind, so lost in abstraction and speculation that it was not able to properly address the problems of its social reality. He realised that a change of that reality was only possible through praxis. Yet Marx also knew that, at times, theory may serve as a practical force. Marx was critical of German idealist philosophy; yet in his Copernican attempt to revolutionise philosophy he never lost sight of the values of the tradition of enlightenment. Marx starts off his analysis of class by referring directly to these moral values. There is no contradiction in Marx referring first to religion for teaching that man is the highest being for man and to deduce later for his own purposes that it is the categorical imperative to overthrow all those conditions in which man is debased, enslaved, abandoned, contemptible being (1983: 119). Still, for Marx, philosophy achieves greater ends. Theory can only become a material force when it serves the radical purpose not for the purpose of the bourgeoisie which would use philosophy solely for its own particular interests but

20 Karl Marx s Critique of Political Economy 13 rather for that of the proletariat, the only class which according to Marx has an interest in universal emancipation. Marx s idea of the universal class in the German context is based on a presupposition of what is likely to happen in Germany through interpreting the French Revolution and its consequences. For Marx the French Revolution merely was a political revolution. He assumes that a part of civil society, a specific class the bourgeoisie emancipates itself, and that it did so because of the peculiar circumstanced in France at the time, i.e. the bourgeoisie could become the mouthpiece of the people due to the fact that they questioned a situation that had become a burden for all. Thus, Marx is correct in saying that in specific circumstances it is possible for a particular group with a particular interest to be the voice of the people at large. In other words: in the French instance the partial emancipation is the basis for universal emancipation (1983: 122). As a result of its backwardness Germany was not in the same position. Yet this backward position could itself be turned into an advantage: through observing France, Germany could go beyond the emancipation which would only benefit a particular class. Marx puts all his hopes in one new class the proletariat which through awareness of its desperate social situation, could become the voice of universal emancipation. In contrast to France then, the struggle would be different: In Germany universal emancipation is the conditio sine qua non of any partial emancipation (1983: 122). Marx was quite aware of the fact that this universal emancipation was based on a presumption, namely that the industrial development that could be observed in England would also take place in Germany. It was also presumed that the working class would represent the overall majority of the population in the near future. To summarise then: in the Contribution to the Critique of Hegel s Philosophy of Right, Marx attempts to translate Hegel s account of the master-slave relationship into the new narrative of class conflict. Marx also makes reference to Hegel in that he sees only two forces contributing modern civil society: bourgeoisie and proletariat the bourgeoisie representing only a particularistic interest and consciousness, the proletariat being the new Messiah of universal emancipation. In the brief preface to his Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy Marx refers directly to his early attempt to reconcile Hegel s

21 14 Concepts of Social Stratification understanding of civil society (1983: ). Marx felt it necessary to go a step beyond this. He contends that Hegel s concept of civil society can only be explained with reference to the critique of political economy. Marx s unique approach to the critique of political economy is a model that takes into account conflict and change both leading to historical progress. Central to this model are the material forces of production (1983: 159ff). Each step of the historical development of these forces of production works in parallel with the relations of production the sum of these relations Marx calls the economic structure of society. On top of this basis, or real foundation comes the so-called superstructure : the legal and political forms representing the social consciousness of the time. It would be misleading to label this model as static. In fact, quite the opposite is true: Marx s model incorporates conflict and change, it is in other words dynamic. At a certain point, the development of the relations of production necessarily fall behind the development of the forces of production. One must imagine this as a kind of widening gap: while the forces of production are continuously changing, the same cannot be said for the less dynamic relations of production. In the words of Marx, they become fetters for the material forces. This contradiction, this widening gap, leads to social upheaval. With the French Revolution, according to Marx, society has reached a new quality in terms of a last conflict. For him the struggle of the bourgeoisie represents the last antagonistic form of the social process of production (1983: 161). The short format of the preface to the Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy can lead to misunderstandings. In particular the use of the language of economics makes it difficult not to regard Marx as a political economist. Yet, the way in which he defines and uses the word production for example, is quite distinct from the usual interpretation of the word. When Marx talks about the social production of men, he is clearly referring to a broader understanding of production, one which is not limited solely to economic production. In his German Ideology Marx attempts to define more precisely what he means by material production (1983: ). From man s early stage man distinguishes himself from animal by producing the means of existence. In modern times it is the division of labour which shows how far material production has developed, including a very sophisticated system of different methods employed in agriculture, industry

22 Karl Marx s Critique of Political Economy 15 and commerce. Additionally, new forms of ownership correspond to this division of labour in society. But only at a very late stage in the societal development can a qualitative change of different forms of ownership be observed; Marx cites the difference between commerce and industry as one example. The development of consciousness also stands in close relationship with the development and change of the material conditions. Marx points out that one must understand ideological expression as a reflection of the material conditions of life. Marx uses the allegory of the camera obscura to support his argument. He writes: If in all ideology men and their circumstances appear upside down as in a camera obscura, this phenomenon arises just as much from their historical life-process as the inversion of objects on the retina does from their physical life-process (1983: 169). Marx wanted to stress that one must not take ideological forms of expression of man at face value. Philosophy, law and literature should be interpreted as reflecting the social world, the life-process, the material being. The way Marx deciphers Hegel illustrates his view on ideology: in dissecting his philosophy of right for example, Marx discovers the material conditions of the time. The Manifesto of the Communist Party can be seen as a first attempt to combine the various aspects that Marx discussed in his earlier writings (1983: ). Because the Manifesto is not just addressed to intellectuals but to a wider public, Marx and his co-writer Engels attempt to write in a clear, understandable language. This again serves the purpose of clarifying concepts like class, class struggle, and class consciousness concepts which have been mentioned before but were never properly spelled out. The Manifesto s first chapter begins with the famous statement: The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles (1983: 203). Marx and Engels see the motor of history as a conflict between two opposed camps. The fact that the authors identify two opposed forces patricians and plebeians in the ancient past, bourgeois and proletariat in modern society reminds the reader of the Hegelian legacy in Marx and Engels: Hegel spoke about the conflict between master and slave. Yet from Hegel, Marx and Engels take only the idea of two opposed forces to analyse the form of the conflict. On the concrete level of historical content Marx and Engels see qualitative and quantitative differences, new dimensions which distinguish the present class-conflict from the

23 16 Concepts of Social Stratification past: the ever increasing division of labour, the expanding markets and the changing character of production a production which has turned into an industry. The remainder of the first chapter of the Manifesto reads like a political sociology of the two sides of the classconflict. Since it is obvious that the authors sympathise with the cause of the proletariat, it might come as a surprise to see the authors stressing the revolutionary contributions made by the bourgeoisie in shaping modern history. Marx and Engels consider the bourgeoisie as the dynamic force which cuts off all ties that bind man to natural superiors and which puts an end to the personal dependencies of the feudalistic times; it is constantly trying to revolutionise the means of production and with it, the relations of production. Additionally, the bourgeoisie attempts to break down the national boundaries of production; it is therefore a keen advocate of free trade. The increasing globalising tendencies of production and the world market have yet another effect: they confront the last corner of the world, even the most barbarian with civilisation. There are also other changes which belong to this civilising process, such as the subjugation of the countryside to the town and the city, the improvement of communication levels, and the centralising tendencies in political and economical affairs. Finally, the bourgeoisie, in its attempt to increase production even more and to create even larger markets to sell goods in order to make more profit, also created a force, which, at a later stage, would become its opponent, the grave-digger of the bourgeoisie the working class, the proletariat (1983: ). The unique features of this working class devolves from the fact that human beings who are not in the fortunate position of owning capital or having access to other resources which would help them to make a living must sell their labour power as a commodity to the bourgeois capitalist. As a commodity, wage-labour is treated like any other commodity with all the consequences such as becoming an appendage, an extension of the machine, and to some extent even giving up democratic rights by having to follow orders and commands. Worse still: the more modern industry develops, the more it will suck human beings into the system indiscriminate of differences in age and sex. Furthermore, because of the inherent enlarging tendencies of modern production, the middle class consisting of small tradespeople, shopkeepers, artisans, etc. will slowly be eroded. In the Manifesto Marx and Engels actually predict

24 Karl Marx s Critique of Political Economy 17 that this middle class would join the ranks of the working class. Resulting from these developing tendencies, the proletariat would represent the majority of the working people. It would become and again, Marx and Engels refer to Hegel a truly universal class. Yet, for Marx and Engels the proletariat is not only the universal class in terms of sheer numbers, but also in terms of qualitative differences derived from their material conditions. According to Marx and Engels, the working class has nothing to lose but its chains and a world to win (1983: 241). Why one must ask do Marx and Engels regard and acknowledge the working class as so special? The answer to this question is given by the authors in the chapter on Proletarians and Communists (1983: ). For Marx and Engels the working class sells its labour power as wage labour. Yet, if it is true that labour power is simply being traded like any other commodity on the market, it is equally true to say that labour power is a special commodity and is unique in that it is indivisibly linked to human beings. Human beings sell their unique capacity to an employer who will then use that labour power and who in exchange will pay the labourer a certain amount for his wage labour just enough for the labourer s subsistence. But hiring labour power is unique in that living labour has the capacity to generate more work than the capitalist is willing to pay for. This living labour is being used by the capitalist to make a surplus value a profit which will be used to accumulate capital. Capital is past or dead labour due to the fact that it is nothing but the melted and accumulated form of living labour. To summarise the argument then, capital and here Marx and Engels disagree with classical political economy is not a gain made because the individual is clever, or because he is working harder, but because he uses other people s work to make profit. Capital according to Marx and Engels is socially produced, it is not a personal (but) a social power (1983: 220). This accumulation seems to be a vicious circle. Yet, according to Marx and Engels, there is an opportunity for escape. A social system based on the exploitation of living labour generates its own conflicts conflicts between the forces of production and the relations of production. Additionally and again Marx and Engels are using Hegelian metaphors if the working class becomes conscious of itself, it could also turn into a social force for itself. The social power which is

25 18 Concepts of Social Stratification derived from collective consciousness will eventually generate proletarian class-action directed against the capitalist class. Social upheaval and social revolution would be the consequences. This struggle would quash all conflict between exploiters and the exploited. The result would be a new society free from the conflict between classes. Again Marx and Engels refer to their earlier distinction of living and past or dead labour when stressing that this new society would be one where the present dominates the past, not the past the present as in bourgeois society (1983: 220). A stage will be reached where we shall have an association in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all (1983: 228). Particularly with this last remark the authors make it clear that they see their critique of political economy as serving the cause of moral values stemming from the enlightenment tradition the freedom and development of each individual. The Grundrisse (1983: ) and particularly Capital I (1983: ) must be understood as further attempts to further clarify what has been said so far. These writings are more scientific in discussing methodological implications. The critique of political economy becomes less schematic and is much more concrete and precise in dealing with historical evidence. In the famous introduction to the Grundrisse Marx delineates more precisely what he understands by production. He is aware of the fact that the concept of production in general is a necessary abstraction inasmuch as it really calls attention to and fixes the common element (1983: 377). Marx introduces the Hegelian meaning universality to the concept of production. This move makes it possible to investigate other, more peculiar aspects of political economy which Marx sees as interrelated to production, as members of a totality, differences within a unity distribution, exchange and consumption (1983: 383). Marx takes these concepts stemming from political economy and gives them a new meaning through dissecting them in an almost Hegelian fashion. When he talks about capital in the context of production for example he stresses the historical semantics of the concept. Capital notes Marx, is among other things also an instrument of production, the objectification of past labour. Therefore capital is a universal and perpetual condition of nature (1983: 378). As this example demonstrates, Marx s thought reflects a process: it moves from the most general or universal aspect of production to

26 Karl Marx s Critique of Political Economy 19 the particulars of distribution and exchange, to the singular concept of consumption and vice versa. In demonstrating the processual character of production, Marx s use of words stemming from political economy turns into its own critique. At the end of the introduction to the Grundrisse, Marx stresses that the capital must be the starting point and the conclusion of the critique of political economy (1983: 392). He perceives of capital as being similar to Hegel s spirit. His analysis of capital resembles therefore Hegel s phenomenology the only difference being that the process is conceived of not as a further development of the spirit, but as a materialistic process. The method that Marx has outlined in his Grundrisse manuscript is applied in Das Kapital. Das Kapital I aims at dissecting the commodity-form of the product of labour. In analysing; the economic cell-form of bourgeois society Marx is again ambiguous about the critique of political economy. One can find various passages where the author is highly critical of political economy but still remains within the realms of political economy particularly entertaining for example is his reference to Robinson Crusoe s experience as the lone producer reflected in classical economy. Yet there are also paragraphs where Marx is truly and convincingly a critic of political economy. In the chapter entitled The Secret of Primitive Accumulation Marx deals with origins and the history of capital (1983: 461 5). Here he distances himself from classical political economy by dissecting what for political economy has become second nature the system of production, distribution, exchange and consumption. To break through the myths of capitalist society one must deal with its underlying anticipations. As Marx explains, classical political economy regards the origins of capitalism primitive accumulation as theology regards original sin: Adam bit the apple, and thereupon sin fell on the human race. Its origin is supposed to be explained when it is told as an anecdote of the past (1983: 462). Similarly there is the story that political economy tells: In times long gone by there were two sorts of people; one, the diligent, intelligent, and, above all, frugal elite; the other, lazy rascals, spending their substance, and more, in riotous living (ibid.). From that early moment onwards the world consisted of the have and the have-nots at least according to political economy. For Marx this does not constitute a credible explanation. By looking at English

27 20 Concepts of Social Stratification history, Marx attempts to explain the black box of political economy. According to the author there had to be certain conditions for capital to evolve. Central for Marx is the expropriation of the agricultural producer, of the peasant, from the soil (1983: 465). Only in England were the conditions ripe: serfdom and the feudal bonds had disappeared; the Glorious Revolution accelerated the ascendancy of the landlord and capitalist appropriator of surplus-value; the systematic robbery of communal land, the small tenant farmer with not enough land, the development of capital or merchant farms, the clearing of estates all contributed to set free the agricultural population as proletarians for manufacturing industry and to introduce capitalistic agriculture (1983: 478). Marx reminds his readers here of the crude, terroristic methods that were part of primitive accumulation. Additionally, he stresses the point that it was in England and nowhere else, that this development could take place. The third point revolves around the fact that capitalism in England first developed in the countryside not in the city. In contrast to an explanation which maintains that capitalism evolved in the city with capital stemming from unequal trade and the exploitation of the colonies, Marx stresses that the emergence of the industrial capitalist and the labourer was rooted in primitive accumulation and from capitalistic agriculture. It was in the early stages of agricultural capitalism that expropriation and exploitation of the labourer could develop. This insistence on the fact that self-earned property is made impossible through capitalism, that capitalistic private property owning the means of production is based on exploitation, clearly sets Marx apart from political economy and rather makes him a critic of political economy. The unresolved contradictions between moral values stemming from the enlightenment tradition which enabled Marx to be critical of political economy, and, on the other side, Marx s critical, yet sympathetic use of political economy to criticise the reality of capitalist society creates tensions particularly when it comes down to understanding and explaining a society which is vastly different from European societies. Marx never fully investigated American society, nor were the developments in the United States of particular concern to his critique. In drawing a comparison between the US and England in particular, it was clear that the US was both exceptional and normal. It was exceptional in that its history opens with a political revolution

28 Karl Marx s Critique of Political Economy 21 and the War of Independence. America freed herself from the motherland and completely therefore from any remnants of the middle ages. Particularly important in this respect was the access to land as opposed to England, where there was a monopoly for the distribution of land. One must also take into account the very different patterns of immigration. In the preface to the Russian edition of the Communist Manifesto Marx notes that immigration in particular helped the US to get ahead in terms of capitalist competition: immigration fitted North America for a gigantic agricultural production. In addition it enabled the United States to exploit its tremendous industrial resources with an energy and on a scale that must shortly break the industrial monopoly of Western Europe, and especially England. Both circumstances react in revolutionary manner upon America itself (1983: 556). In other words: capitalism could develop almost without restriction, because of the peculiar conditions. In that respect, Marx saw America as the purest example of capitalist bourgeois society. Speaking about the modern form of labour he writes in the Grundrisse: Such a state of affairs is most highly developed in the most modern example of bourgeois society the United States. Here, then, the abstraction of the category labour, labour in general, labour unadorned, the starting point of modern economy, is first realised in practice (1983: 389). Marx was so aware of the speed of development in the US that he asked his friend Sorge to provide him with the latest information about California. I should be very much pleased, writes Marx if you could find me something meaty on economic conditions in California California is very important for me because nowhere else has the upheaval most shamelessly caused by capitalist centralisation taken place with such a speed (Marx and Engels, 1953: 126). Yet while Marx was willing to acknowledge the peculiar advanced state of America, he saw nothing extraordinary about the US in general. He regarded the US as another capitalist country only purer in its appearance. On 5 December, 1878 the Chicago Tribune published an interview with Karl Marx, that had been conducted some days earlier. The interviewer was deeply impressed by the knowledge of the man he had to interview. During my conversations, writes the reporter I was struck with his intimacy with American questions, which have been uppermost during the past twenty years (1953: 64). The report