Concept
Social class
Overview
A social class or social stratum is a grouping of people into a set of hierarchical social categories, the most common ones being: the working class, the middle class and the upper class. Membership of a social class is commonly considered dependent on education, wealth, occupation, income, and belonging to a particular subculture or social network.
Class is a subject of analysis for sociologists, political scientists, anthropologists and social historians. The term has a wide range of sometimes conflicting meanings, and there is no broad consensus on a definition of class. Some people argue that due to social mobility, class boundaries do not exist. In common parlance, the term social class is usually synonymous with socioeconomic class, defined as "people having the same social, economic, cultural, political or educational status", such as the working class, or "an emerging professional class". However, academics distinguish social class from socioeconomic status, using the former to refer to one's relatively stable cultural background and the latter to refer to one's current social and economic situation which is consequently more changeable over time.
The precise measurements of what determines social class in society have varied over time. Karl Marx defined class by one's relationship to the means of production (their relations of production). His understanding of classes in modern capitalist society is that the proletariat work but do not own the means of production, and the bourgeoisie, those who invest and live off the surplus generated by the proletariat's operation of the means of production, do not work at all. This contrasts with the view of the sociologist Max Weber, who contrasted class as determined by economic position, with social status (Stand) which is determined by social prestige rather than just relations of production. The term class is etymologically derived from the Latin classis, which was used by census takers to categorize citizens by wealth in order to determine military service obligations.
In the late 18th century, the term class began to replace classifications such as estates, rank and orders as the primary means of organizing society into hierarchical divisions. This corresponded to a general decrease in significance ascribed to hereditary characteristics and increase in the significance of wealth and income as indicators of position in the social hierarchy.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Possible passages
Found by search and not yet checked by a person; they may only mention the idea in passing.
In bourgeois society living labor is but a means to increase accumulated labor. In Communist society accumulated labor is but a means to widen, to enrich, to promote the existence of the laborer. In bourgeois society, therefore, the past dominates the present; in Communist society, the present dominates the past. In bourgeois society capital is independent and has individuality, while the living person is dependent…
Karl Marx, Manifesto of the Communist Party
States what Social class is; the author is tied to Social class in the knowledge graph.
The warrior-class attains a perfect separation from classes devoted to the cultivation of the soil or other occupations regarded as servile. And there arises a priesthood that is defined in its rank, its functions, its privileges. This sharpness of definition, growing both greater and more variously exemplified as societies advance to maturity, is extremest in those that have reached their full development or are…
Herbert Spencer, First Principles
States what Social class is.
Epictetus, on the other hand, neither hopes nor allows his best treasure to be given him—he possesses it already, holds it bravely in his hand, and defies the world to take it away from him. Christianity was devised for another class of ancient slaves, for those who had a weak will and weak reason—that is to say, for the majority of slaves.
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, The Dawn of Day
Opens on Social class; names Social class.
Philosophers who discussed Social class
- Pierre Bourdieu
- Bell hooks
- Intellectual
- Opium of the people
- György Lukács
- Peter Kropotkin
- Paulo Freire
- Constantin Rădulescu-Motru
- Alexandre Kojève
- Yamaga Sokō
Related ideas
- Feminist theory
- Family
- Pierre Bourdieu
- French Revolution
- Social stratification
- Anarchism
- Private property
- Jean-Jacques Rousseau
- Karl Marx
- Latin America
- Sociology
- Marxism
- Culture
- Wealth
- Max Weber
- Irony
- Psychology
- Medical doctor
- Welfare spending
- Race (human categorization)
- Roman Republic
- Socialism
- State (polity)
- Nobility
Opposing perspectives
- Racism
- Relations of production
- Bourgeoisie
- Cultural identity
- Representative democracy
- Crime
- Social structure
- Dialect
- Cultural determinism
Place in the tradition
Part of Aesthetics.