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...
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).
Finally, Wright analyzes the role of the underclass: the large group of people who are economically oppressed but technically not exploited because their labor has no value for the capitalist. Wright notes that the underclass are viewed as expendable population by capitalists and may be socially segregated and sanctioned off from society such as through prisons.
Wright's argument effectively illustrates the ways Marxist analyses can be applied to complex modern societies. However, Wright's class analysis is not comprehensive. One weakness of Wright's argument is the lack of attention the author pays to the capitalist classes. They are like ghosts in his analysis, occupying a principle position as the controllers of production but Wright should offer examples of how they wield power and authority. Similarly, Wright only alludes to the petty bourgeois: the middle or even capitalist classes that do not exploit laborers. Another weakness in Wright's argument is his failure to address the ways individuals perpetuate social inequality by deferring to the asymmetrical system of relationships. For example, the author does not question why redistribution of wealth (derived from profit) fails to become a norm other than by implying that human beings thrive on power and authority.
