Erik Olin Wright Shows How

Erik Olin Wright shows how a simple Weberian analysis of the middle class cannot account for either exploitation or class conflict. Instead, Wright proposes a finer stratification of the middle class itself: to reveal layers that illustrate causal relationships between actors in control of the means of production and actors not in control. Weber focuses mainly on class strata in capitalistic societies too, which is why Wright suggests a broader analysis. Societies that are not capitalistic will show similar sociological phenomenon, including exploitation and intra-class antagonism. The term "middle class" is overly simplistic, argues Wright.

Furthermore, the Weberian "life chances model" alone cannot account for power relations within any society. Life chances, or opportunities, do matter. However, the principle of life chances can be enhanced when understood in light of the principle of exploitation. Similarly, power relations in society must be defined and explained in terms of the principle of exploitation. The most extreme example of how the principle of exploitation manifests in different social situations is slavery. However, Wright illustrates how any worker whose labor is required to sustain production and whose labor is paid by capitalistic surplus is by definition being exploited. The exploitation relationship works two ways. The owners of the means of production actually depend on the workers as much as they believe they depend on the capitalists for wages. Without workers, a factory would shut down; a market economy would collapse.

The simplistic definition of "middle classes" does not adequately address the exploitation relationships that pervade capitalistic societies, claims Wright. Within the employee population, two features define class consciousness, class conflict, and class formation. These two features include relationship to or possession of authority; and the possession of specialized skills or expertise. Wright shows how these two factors help redefine the middle class, dividing it into strata based on where an actor or a group falls on the class continuum. For example, an unskilled laborer and a specialized engineer would occupy nearly opposite ends of the continuum.

Wright acknowledges that exclusion and especially "asymmetrical exclusion" of the exploited from access to productive resources is in itself a key factor (p. 141). However, the author steps up the Weberian argument to show that the exploited classes are asymmetrically excluded from access to resources as well as social power. This is the key way that Wright resolves the problem of the "middle classes" in contemporary societies.

Adding the Marxist dimensions of class-based antagonism and exploitation to the argument allows Wright to extend the traditional Marxist formula to more complex social organizations. Wright goes beyond the tripartite class divisions (capitalists, workers, and petty bourgeois) because it is too difficult to actually locate the middle class within that simplistic framework. A neo-Marxist, Wright offers a rich analysis and social commentary that takes into account the current capitalistic and neo-liberal economic structures such as those that promote professional managerial positions.

The manager can be emboldened with authority as well as with specialized skills; or the manager may possess neither. Therefore, managers cannot be considered as a static or uniform social class. A floor manager at a production plant has far less authority or expertise than a project manager in the corporate office. With increased authority comes increased social power, and with increased social power also comes higher wages. Those higher wages, coupled with the increase in authority and power, confer on senior management a particular role in the capitalist society. Thus, Wright describes managers as "a privileged appropriation location within exploitation relations," (p. 147). The floor manager or supervisor occupies a far less privileged appropriation location within exploitation relations. He or she is more powerful and earns more than the unskilled laborer being supervised on the floor. In fact, the supervisor has sanctioned authority over the laborers. However, the floor manager is farther down the corporate ladder than senior-level counterparts. Wright notes that supervisors and managers occupy contradictory locations within class relations too, because they are simultaneously in the capitalist class (in possession of some social power and closer to the means of production) and the working class (receiving wages in accordance with surplus production and its market value). The truly powerful capitalist class who exerts authority over both managers and laborers exacts what Wright calls "loyalty rent" from managers (p. 147). As a manager rises up the corporate ladder, he or she relishes social power and authority over others. That power and authority becomes a key to enforcing loyalty, either to a particular capitalist enterprise. The manager earns higher wages by becoming more entrenched within the company. As Wright describes it, "higher earnings involve a redistribution of part of the social surplus to managers in order to build their loyalty to the organization," (p. 147).

In addition to authority, skills and expertise are also essential in defining the subtle strata within the middle classes. Possession of skills equals a privileged appropriation location within exploitation relations, as much as authority does. Instead of loyalty rent, however, a skilled employee pays skill rent. Skills earn wages and also confer power. The capitalist is lost without highly skilled members of an organization. Both loyal managers and a set of highly skilled workers are required to sustain a capitalist organization. Managers and highly skilled workers may both earn substantial paychecks but can nevertheless be considered part of the middle classes, as they are removed from the source of production.

To show that wages and even work alone cannot define class, Wright alludes to the masses of people not in the labor force at all: children, the disabled, and the elderly, for example. Their links to class structures exist because of jobs they might hold (which most directly pinpoint class locations) and more importantly, through kinship ties. Being born into a wealthy family confers one type of class designation; working in a factory confers another. A person may well occupy both spaces at once: what Wright refers to as "mediated class locations," (p. 152).