“The ignorant classes are the dangerous classes” (Galbarith). Though it may
appear remote, the quote signifies the proletarian revolution predicted by Marx once they
are no longer ‘ignorant’ of their interests. Karl Marx, the famous sociologist, has used the
concept of class to account for the evolution of society through history till present time.
To evaluate the claim if class indeed exists as the ultimate determining factor for the
dynamics of any society and thus acts as its independent variable, one needs to examine
how far Marx’s theories are still relevant today in contrast to other equally important
theories such as those of Max Weber concerning status and parties, and of Feminists.
Before proceeding further it is important to establish what Marx really meant by
class. For Marx classes are defined in terms of relationship to means of production. One
class, which has access to means of production, is called “bourgeoisie” where as other,
which does not have access to it is called the “proletariat”. Both of them have opposing
interests, as bourgeoisie tries to exploit proletariat by paying them low wages and the
latter tries to get the maximum pay for their work from the former. Although the two
classes can exist in further subgroups such as petty bourgeoisie and lumen proletariat,
these will eventually merge with one or another when a revolution is imminent. For
Marx, the main difference between two is that the bourgeoisie are aware of its goals in
terms of profitability, however this is not the case for the other (Lee and Newby).
Having established the meaning of class, it is now important to ascertain how
relevant is class in present society. The capital structure of the corporate world has
changed significantly since the era of Marx due to the formation of management teams,
which has resulted in devolution of control from the real owners. This is in stark contrast
to bourgeoisie of the Marx’s time, which held both ownership and control. However it is
important to note that this is just a camouflaged perception as the real owners still
eventually have the control because the decision to select the management team lies with
them. Another aspect of the corporate world is that there has been a distribution of
ownership of companies, as it has now become a kind of public property with issue of
shares (Lee and Newby). Despite new form of ownership in forms of shares, family
businesses representing bourgeoisie class, accounts for about 64 percent of US GDP
(“Family business statistics and Family Business Facts”). Also, although there is minority
ownership in business enterprises, it accounts only for 15 % of US businesses and 99
percent of these businesses falls in small category (“Minorities in Business, 2001”).
These statistics indicate that major amount of control still lies with a certain class. This
shows one of the situations where working of society reduces down to concept of class
and thus makes it an independent variable.
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