Perspectives on Stratification

As sociologists have examined the subject of strat­ification, they have engaged in heated debates and reached varying conclusions. No theorist stressed the significance of class for society—and for social change—more strongly than Karl Marx did. Marx viewed class differentiation as the cru­cial determinant of social, economic, and political inequality. By contrast, Max Weber questioned Marx's emphasis on the overriding importance of the economic sector and argued that stratification should be viewed as a multidimensional phenom­enon.

Karl Marx's View of Class Differentiation Soci­ologist Leonard Beeghley (1978:1) aptly noted that "Karl Marx was both a revolutionary and a social scientist." Marx was concerned with stratifi­cation in all types of human societies, beginning with primitive agricultural tribes and continuing into feudalism. But his main focus was on the ef­fects of class on all aspects of nineteenth-century Europe. Marx focused on the plight of the work­ing class and felt it imperative to work for changes in the class structure of society.

In Marx's view, social relations during any pe­riod of history depend on who controls the pri­mary mode of economic production. His analysis centered on how the relationships between vari­ous groups were shaped by differential access to scarce resources. Thus, under the estate system, most production was agricultural, and the land was owned by the nobility. Peasants had little choice but to work according to terms dictated by those who owned land.

Using this type of analysis, Marx examined so­cial relations within capitalism —an economic sys­tem in which the means of production are largely private hands and the main incentive for eco­nomic activity is the accumulation of profits (D. Rosenberg, 1986a:32). Marx focused on the two classes that began to emerge as the estate system declined—the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. The bourgeoisie, or capitalist class, owns the means of production, such as factories and ma­chinery, while the proletariat is the working class. In capitalist societies, the bourgeois maximize profit in competition with other firms. In the process, they exploit workers, who must ex­change their labor for subsistence wages.

According to Marx, exploitation of the prole­tariat will inevitably lead to the destruction of the capitalist system. But, for this to occur, the work­ing class must first develop class consciousness —a subjective awareness held by members of a class regarding their common vested interests and the need for collective political action to bring about social change. Workers must often overcome what Marx termed false consciousness, or an atti­tude held by members of a class that does not accurately reflect its objective position. A worker with false consciousness may feel that he or she is being treated fairly by the bourgeoisie or may adopt an individualistic viewpoint toward capital­ist exploitation ("/ am being exploited by my boss"). By contrast, the class-conscious worker realizes that all workers are being exploited by the bourgeoisie and have a common stake in rev­olution (Vanneman and Cannon, 1987).

For Karl Marx, the development of class con­sciousness is part of a collective process whereby the proletariat comes to identify the bourgeoisie as the source of its oppression. Through the guidance of revolutionary leaders, the working class will become committed to class struggle. Ul­timately, the proletariat will overthrow the rule of the bourgeoisie and the government (which Marx saw as representing the interests of capitalists). In his rather Utopian view, classes and oppression will cease to exist in the post revolutionary work­ers' state.

Thus far, however, a classless society has not been established in any of the nations described politically as "communist." Strictly speaking, using a very limited Marxian definition of class, the Soviet Union has eliminated the existence of classes. The state, rather than a wealthy capitalist class, owns the means of production.

Where Marxist revolutions have taken place, as in the Soviet Union, the People's Republic of China, and Cuba, it has been primarily large landowners and feudalistic ruling elites—rather than industrial capitalists—who have been over­thrown. Contemporary Marxist theorists such as Paul Baran (1960:5-9) contend that the absence of revolutionary class struggle in developed na­tions, such as the United States, Great Britain, and West Germany, results from exploitation of less developed nations. These theorists argue that the poor nations of the world have been kept poor so that western capitalists can amass large profits, "buy off" the industrial proletariat within their own borders, and prevent workers from rebelling.

Many of Marx's predictions regarding the fu­ture of capitalism have not been borne out. Marx failed to anticipate the emergency of labor un­ions, whose power in collective bargaining weak­ens the stranglehold that capitalists maintain over workers. Moreover, as contemporary conflict the­orists note, he did not foresee the extent to which the political liberties present in western democra­cies and the relative prosperity achieved by the working and middle classes could contribute to false consciousness. Many persons have come to view themselves as individuals striving for im­provement within "free" societies with substantial mobility—rather than as members of social classes facing a collective fate. Despite these limi­tations, the Marxist approach to the study of class is useful in stressing the importance of stratifica­tion as a determinant of social behavior and insti­tutions (C. Anderson, 1974; Cornfield, 1986; Sennett and Cobb, 1973). Max Weber's View of Stratification Unlike Karl Marx, Max Weber insisted that no single charac­teristic (such as class) totally defines a person's position within the stratification system. Instead, writing in 1916, he identified three analytically distinct components of stratification: class, status, and power (Gerth and Mills, 1958).

Weber used the term class to refer to persons who share a similar level of wealth and income. For example, certain American workers provide the sole financial support for their families through jobs which pay the federal minimum wage. According to Weber's definition, these wage earners constitute a class, because they share the same economic position and fate.

While Weber agreed with Marx that the eco­nomic dimension of class was an important ele­ment of stratification, he argued that the actions of individuals and groups could not be under­stood solely in economic terms. Weber used the term status group to refer to people who share the same prestige or lifestyle, independent of their class position. In his analysis, status is a cultural dimension that involves the ranking of groups in terms of the degree of prestige they possess. An individual gains status through membership in a desirable group, such as the medical profession. Weber further suggested that status is subjec­tively determined by people's lifestyles and there­fore can diverge from economic class standing. A successful pickpocket may be in the same income class as a college professor. Yet the thief is widely regarded as a member of a low-status group, while the professor holds high status within our culture.

Status considerations influence our routine, everyday behavior more than we realize. In a re­vealing experiment, researchers had a 31-year-old man walk across the street while the nearby traffic signal flashed "Wait!" In one situation the man wore soiled clothes to simulate a low-status person, while in another he wore a neat, stylish suit. Unsuspecting pedestrians were much more likely to imitate the well-dressed man—by cross­ing the street against the signal—than they were the man in dirty clothing. Apparently, even the outward trappings associated with high status are enough to influence people's behavior (Lefkowitz et al., 1955).

For Weber, the third major component of strat­ification, power, reflects a political dimension. Power is the ability to exercise one's will over oth­ers. In the United States, power stems from mem­bership in particularly influential groups, such as corporate boards of trustees, government bodies, and interest groups. For example, sociologist Peter Freitag (1975) found that over three fourths of all cabinet members of the United States in the period 1897 to 1973 had served as either an officer or a lawyer for a large corpora­tion.

In Weber's view, then, each of us has not one rank in society but three. A person's position in a stratification system reflects some combination of his or her class, status, and power. Each factor influences the other two, and in fact the rankings on these three dimensions tend to coincide. Thus, John F. Kennedy came from an extremely wealthy family, attended exclusive preparatory schools, graduated from Harvard University, and went on to become president of the United States. Like Kennedy, many Americans from affluent backgrounds achieve impressive status and power.

At the same time, these dimensions of stratifi­cation may operate somewhat independently in determining a person's position. A widely pub­lished poet may achieve high status while earning a relatively modest income. Successful profes­sional athletes have little power, but enjoy a rela­tively high position in terms of class and status. In order to understand the workings of a culture more fully, sociologists must carefully evaluate the ways in which it distributes its most valued rewards, including wealth and income, status, and power (Duberman, 1976:35—40; Gerth and Mills, 1958:180-195).

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