The Contradictions and Ambiguities within the Theory of Social Class

Abstract

It is a very popular view that the Marxian theory of social class is rather discouraging with respect to its methodological properties. First of all attention is drawn to Marx’s inconsistency: though the theory in question was simple, it was so inadequate that he was forced to change his own dichotomous scheme of a capitalist society to use it in special researchers:

Marx’s model stripped away all status remnants, defining the position of men within capitalist society solely in terms of their relation to the means of production, to the sources of their income. … Property as an objective criterion is indispensable to the understanding of the stratification of capitalist society. Alone, it is inadequate and misleading (Mills (1), p. 107).