this is a collection of essays on how the concept of class is understood by different thinkers and schools of thought, the merits and demerits of each in various contexts.

marxists understand class in terms of a conflicting relationship, with capitalists exploiting workers. the term "exploitation" doesn't always have a warm connotation, but its use in this context is ambiguous in english and in german (one can exploit any resource), and marx himself at least sometimes was using it in a more clinical way. (the labor theory of value is often invoked here, but there are good reasons to set that to one side: even if it isn't defunct/confused, it is normatively inert.)

even still, there is a normative tinge to marxist analysis of class. one reason marxists recommend it is that when the worker sells their labor to the capitalist a special kind of conflict arises that is acknowledged even by contemporary mainstream economics: the worker controls their own level of effort due to informational asymmetries -- enabling not just shirking but also strikes and (they say) potentially revolutionary change if workers of the world were to unite. marxists want to draw particular attention to the class line demarcated by the ownership of the means of production precisely because it is the ultimate political battle-line as they conceive it, pointing out the special power in the hands of the disadvantaged, the control of effort retained by workers. that is the sense in which marxist class analysis is distinctively normative.

for weberians class is more descriptive, more about explaining the common fate among individuals who share economic interests within a capitalist society. weber had an interest in the spread of instrumental rationality under capitalism. wright explains, "The central difference between Marx’s and Weber’s concept of class, then, is that the Weberian account revolves exclusively around market transactions, whereas the Marxist account also emphasizes the importance of conflict over the performance and appropriation of labor effort that takes place after market exchanges are contracted." if you want to pin a politics on this view of class, you could say weber's point of view is more aligned with management and the owners of capital -- but wright notes that it is also attendant to the fate of workers under capitalism.

we get some discussion of the third large school of thought after marx and weber: durkheim. one illuminating table in the book used the society-as-game metaphor to summarize the three big thinkers on class this way:

[begin quote]
Marxist class analysis is anchored in the problem of what game to play. At the very heart of Marxism as a social theory is the idea of emancipatory alternatives to capitalism. The fundamental point in analyzing class relations and both the individual practices and collective struggles that are linked to those class relations is to understand the nature of oppression within capitalism and the possibility of an emancipatory systemic alternative. The critique of capitalism in terms of exploitation, domination, and alienation is intimately connected to the Marxian concept of class, and the normative vision of a democratic and egalitarian alternative to capitalism is grounded in an account of the transformation of those class relations. Sometimes Marxist class analysis is elaborated in terms of a “grand narrative” about how the internal contradictions of the game of capitalism set in motion a dynamic that both makes the rules unstable and creates a collective agent capable of challenging the game itself; at other times the idea of an alternative is framed more modestly as an immanent possibility with a much more open-ended understanding of the collective agents that might strive to realize the alternative. But in any case it is the connections among class, the critique of capitalism, and emancipatory alternatives that animates Marxist class analysis.

Weberian class analysis is situated especially at the level of the rules of the game. Weber, indeed, only used the term “class” to describe inequalities generated through market interactions. For Weberians, capitalism is the only viable game in town, but its institutional rules can vary a lot. At stake in the variation of rules are the ways markets are organized and regulated and the ways in which players with different market capacities enter into exchange. The “big classes” of Weberian class analysis consist of people who are situated in different ways with respect to the possible capitalist rules of the game: rules governing labor organizing; rules governing the autonomy of capitalists in determining working conditions and employment rights; rules governing monopolies and competitive practices; rules governing access to education and job training; and so on. Some of these rules are created by states, others by firms, and still others by associations of various sorts. The purpose of class analysis, then, is to define the relevant categories of people similarly situated with respect to this variability in the rules of the game.

Durkheimian class analysis takes both capitalism and its specified institutional rules as given and focuses on the moves of players within the game. This is the world of micro-classes and fine-grained occupational differentiation. The interests of professors in research universities are different from those in community colleges, given the rules of the game in academic labor markets and the rules that govern working conditions, pay, and autonomy in these different kinds of institutions. Thus, people in these different micro-classes will develop different identities and make different moves for realizing their interests. Autoworkers, coal miners, truck drivers, and oil rig workers all operate under different labor market conditions, work in industries facing different kinds of sectoral competition and challenges, and have different collective capacities, and thus also face a different set of possible moves to realize their interests. So long as there is no real prospect of challenging the general rules of the game, their interests remain largely distinct and fragmented most of the time.
[end quote]

the other chapters felt more like essays, and i believe some were previously published elsewhere. some interesting bits:

* charles tilly's book durable inequalities and its treatment of class gets a chapter. i will try to read this book soon, as it sounds interesting and provided the framework elizabeth anderson used in her book on racial integration in america i reviewed a couple weeks ago.

* michael mann's multi volume work sources of social power gets a chapter. sounds complicated.

* there is a chapter on aage sorensen's theory of class, which sounds wild and interesting, tho wright is quite critical. sorensen agrees with marx that class lines should be drawn through exploitative relationships, but he thinks talk of the labor theory of value and appropriation of surplus value is bunk. instead he defines exploitation in terms of the extraction of economic rents: returns on assets above what would be obtained under perfectly competitive markets. this was very entertaining to read about, because some of the conclusions are wild: elimination of all exploitation of this kind is according to sorenson himself likely to lead to great misery, since the welfare income would vanish.

* the remainder of the book has some interesting odds and ends on piketty, the precariat class, and a substantial essay on class compromise with some nice charts summarizing some of the story in adam przeworski's capitalism and democracy. ( )