Classes

Erik Olin Wright

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'Class' and 'classes' are terms that are used with promiscuity in the social sciences, yet their precise meaning is rarely explored with great rigour or care, and, in fact, the meaning varies according to the theoretical background of the person using the term. Even Marxist social theory, which builds its explanatory framework around the concept of class, has, all too often, failed to systematically disarticulate and interrogate the nature of the term. Erik Olin Wright's research constitutes an ongoing project, which dates back to the 1970s, to address these gaps and weaknesses in the Marxist account, at both the theoretical and the empirical levels. In Classes, Wright presents a complete reformulation of the Marxist concept of social class, one which seeks to bridge the gap between abstract structural accounts and the description of class actors in particular historical situations. Moving beyond the argument developed in his classic Class, Crisis and the State, Wright draws on John Roemer's work on the theory of exploitation to construct an audacious new general framework for thinking about class which he then subjects to statistically-based analysis.

Book Details

Publisher: Verso
Publish Date: Apr 18th, 2023
Pages: 352
Language: English
Edition: undefined - undefined
Dimensions: 8.27in - 5.57in - 0.86in - 0.71lb
EAN: 9781804290484
Categories: • Political• Political Ideologies - Communism, Post-Communism & Socialism• Sociology - Social Theory

About the Author

Erik Olin Wright (1947-2019) was Vilas Distinguished Professor of Sociology at the University of Wisconsin and former president of the American Sociological Association. He authored many books, including Classes, Interrogating Inequality, Class Counts, Deepening Democracy (with Archon Fung), and Envisioning Real Utopias.

Praise for this book

"The most impressive book on class I have read in some years."--Michael Mann, Contemporary Sociology

"An empirically supported reformulation of class theory that achieves exemplary standards of critique, complexity and clarity."--Claus Offe

"Erik Olin Wright's Classes is almost certain to be the most important book on social classes this decade ... The book presents a major breakthrough in the conceptualization of class relations ... and it will be required reading for all macro-sociologists."--American Journal of Sociology