Social Stratification and Social Mobility
By A. Swaby-Burton, Contributor

AS WE continue on social stratification and social mobility, let me welcome you all back to the CAPE series on Sociology. I do hope your summer vacation was restful and now you are ready to embark on a term full of study, study and more study.

CLASS

All industrial societies today have structures of inequality that reflect unequal economic positions. Crompton (1993) has argued that economic class is defining feature of modern society in contrast to the ascribed status differences that typically characterise non-modern traditional order. The different class structure of today reflects the onset of 'modernity' through which social and economic and political institutions regulate and secure the interest of different social classes. The constant tension and conflicts between classes have been a key factor for social change. Crompton notes,

"In the modern world class-based interests have been the dynamic source of many of the changes and transformations, which have characterised the modern era."

Social classes existed before industrial society, but the economic hierarchies they expressed had much to do with political, religious or hereditary forms of domination, as they were an individual's passport to the system of production. Social classes in the feudal period, for example, were by and large closed! Access to the nobility or the peasantry was determined by birth, though occasionally peasants could escape from feudal bondage to the towns, and rich merchants were sometimes able to purchase titles and estates.

ELEMENTS OF ANY CLASS SYSTEM

Firstly, classes are defined relative to one another as part of a system; classes do not exist in isolation.

Secondly, classes are ranked in a hierarchy order, one on top of each other in terms of superiority and inferiority. Thus, they are vertically ordered.

Thirdly, membership in a class is relatively permanent. This is not to say there is no social mobility up and down the system. However, the majority of persons remain in the class into which they were born.

Fourthly, the existence of a class system implies a system of privileges and discriminations, which are not based on biological criteria such as age or sex.

Lastly, classes have conflicting interests, the interest of one class conflict with the interests of another.

It is also important to note that membership of modern social class is usually less stable and more 'open' than in the old hierarchical systems. There are fewer restrictions on movement between classes. Even within one generation an individual, family or group may rise or fall in the social hierarchy of the class system. This referred to social mobility which may be: Intergenerational.

When someone is in a different class from parents (perhaps because of success in education, or

Intra-generational:

When a person changes social class within their own working life (through promotion or business success).

THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVES

Theories of Social Class ­ Karl Marx

Marx was one of the most influential writers in terms of sociological analysis and social class. His writings form the basis for a significant perspective in Sociology.

Later generations of Marxists (neo-Marxists) have developed his ideas in different ways and so today there is no single Marxist viewpoint. It is, however, clear that Marx attached great importance to economic processes. Every social class must satisfy its material needs, for example, food, shelter, clothing and it does this by harnessing natural resources, producing goods, developing new technologies and establishing a division of labour in the work place; and so people band together to perform these economic tasks so they enter into social class relationships. According to Marx, the early era of primitive communism was reasonably egalitarian because it was based on very simple hunting and gathering techniques. But social class started to emerge as soon as societies developed a more specialised division of labour and introduced private property. So history can be divided into a number of successive 'stages' ( for example ancient slavery, feudalism, capitalism) each stage having a distinct mode of production.

Marx was especially interested in capitalist societies. With their advanced technologies based on steam-power machinery and the factory system. Under capitalism he argued there are two classes those who own the means of production (industrialist capitalists­ 'bourgeoisie' and those who earn their living by
selling their labour to them, the working class ­ proletariat. These classes are defined by their relationship to the means of production.

The relationship between class, according to Marx, is an exploitative one. In feudal society, exploitation took the form of the direct transfer of produce from peasantry to aristocracy. Serfs were compelled to give a certain proportion of their production to their aristocratic masters or had to work a number of days in each month in the lord's field to produce crops that would be consumed by the lord and his retinue. In modern capitalist societies, the source of exploitation, according to Giddens, is less obvious as Marx devotes much attention in trying to clarify its nature. In the course of the working day, Marx reasons, workers produce more than is actually needed by employers to repay the cost of hiring them. This surplus value is the source of profit, which the capitalists are able to put to their own use.

Marx was struck by the inequalities the capitalist system creates. For him, there are two classes in society. Unlike Weber, Marx recognises that class is always the overriding basis of social stratification.

Join me next week as I continue to explore Marx's analysis of Class Conflict.