Greek political tradition, who argue that the state creates civil society, rather
than itself being appended to the latter.
Class
In one way or another the idea that social class has a vital impact on politics has
always been held, and has never been denied by political thinkers of any
persuasion. The classical Greek political theorists, for example, were acutely
aware of the need for all social classes to fit neatly into their stations in life, and
Aristotleis often pictured as the champion of a society dominated by the
middle class.
Nowadays there are two main approaches to the political relevance of class.
One isMarxist, while the other is best described as the ‘social science’
approach to class. For a Marxist, class is fundamental to politics, since historical
development is seen as a continuous series of class conflicts culminating in the
final class conflict between theproletariatand thebourgeoisie. As the lowest
of social classes, the proletariat cannot be challenged, after their future victory,
by some other exploited class (none will exist) and therefore a classless
communismwill be the final form of society. Marxism also produces the
simplest and neatest of all class definitions. Classes are defined by their relations
to the means of production. Those who at any time ‘own and control’ the
means of economic production (factories, mines, farms, etc.) are the ruling
class in any society, and those who do not own them are forced to sell their
labour power to those who do. This latter group form the proletariat and are
ruled and exploited by the owners and controllers. There are very great
difficulties in applying satisfactorily this most simple form of Marxist class
analysis, and modern Marxists have devised many subtle and more complex
theories to take account of empirical and theoretical problems. For example,
most of the comfortably off people who would normally be regarded as middle
or upper middle class do not actually own anything except a house and a car,
and most ‘means of production’, such as factories, are owned by publicly-
traded companies of which the bulk of shares are legally owned by institutions
like pension funds, which may even belong to trade unions. For this reason
there has been a tendency to concentrate on the ‘control’ element of the
definition, but even this ignores the role of government.
The alternative treatment of class, which is to be found in the works of non-
Marxist sociologists and political scientists, is stronger on empirical observation
than theoretical formulation. Typically, a social scientist will use a notion of
class which combines elements of socialstatus(often based on unproved
assumptions about the comparative social respect given to different occupa-
tions), wealth and income, and structural aspects of the economic location of
individuals. These definitions of class are made for one overwhelmingly
Class