Class

Status is social honour or prestige, expressed in a distinctive style of life, in restrictions on association, and in whom one may marry and eat with. Status groups are communities in a way classes are not, and caste is a status order in this sense, which is why Weber's scheme fits India better than Marx's.

Party is organised power: associations formed to influence collective decisions, which may be based on class, on status, or on neither.

The three vary independently, and that is the point. A person may rank high on one and low on another, which is exactly the situation described in the worked example in [Caste].

Class in India

The classical class categories were built on European industrial society and fit India imperfectly, because a large part of the workforce is in agriculture and in informal employment, where the categories of employer and employee are blurred: a person may be simultaneously a marginal cultivator, a wage labourer and a petty trader within one year.

The categories usually employed for India are worth naming.

In the countryside: large landowners; substantial cultivators; small and marginal cultivators; tenants and sharecroppers; and agricultural labourers, many of them landless. Land is the principal determinant of class here, and this is why land reform was understood as a class question.

In the towns: industrialists and large business; the professional and managerial middle class; a lower middle class of clerical, sales and small business occupations; the organised sector working class, which is a small proportion of all workers and enjoys statutory protections; and the vast informal or unorganised sector, which comprises the great majority of Indian workers and is characterised by absence of written contracts, of security, of social security and, in practice, of the protection of labour legislation.

The informal sector is the single most important fact about class in India and the one an answer must name. A stratification analysis that describes only the organised workforce describes a minority.

The middle class has expanded substantially since 1991, and is more accurately described as several strata with very different incomes and securities than as one class. Its growth is treated in [Liberalization and Globalization].

Caste and class compared

This is the comparison most frequently set.

The relation between the two in India: they overlap without coinciding, as [Caste] sets out. The historically disabled castes are disproportionately poor, so the correlation is real; but individuals and households diverge from it in both directions, and it is the divergences that generate much of the social friction.

Criticism of class analysis

1. Boundaries are indeterminate. Where the working class ends and the middle class begins cannot be settled, and different criteria produce different lines.
2. Class consciousness is weak. Marx's expectation that the proletariat would become a class for itself has not generally been realised, and explanations of why are contested.
3. Polarisation did not occur. The intermediate groups grew rather than disappearing, which is the most serious empirical objection to Marx's prediction.
4. Other divisions cut across it, and in India caste, religion, region, language and gender are frequently more salient than class in organising collective action.
5. The categories fit informal economies badly, which is the Indian problem named above.
6. Consumption and status now do work that occupation did. In a society where identity is expressed through consumption, as [Post Modernism] argues, position may be signalled by what a person buys rather than by what they do.

A worked example

A schoolteacher in a small town earns a modest and secure salary, has a pension, and holds a qualification that gives them a definite market situation. On Weber's scheme: middle position on class, high on status locally, no party.

A construction worker in Mumbai earns more in a good month than the teacher, and nothing in a bad one; has no contract, no security and no pension; and is not covered in practice by labour legislation. Higher income at times, far lower class position, because class is about market situation and life chances rather than about this month's earnings.

A small landowner owns two acres, works them, and hires labour at harvest. Employer and worker at once, which is the category problem Indian class analysis faces.

The example makes the chapter's argument. Income alone does not identify class; what identifies it is security, property, the marketability of a skill and the resulting life chances, and on that measure the construction worker with a good month is far below the teacher. This is also why statistical work on Indian inequality that ranks households by monthly consumption alone can mislead.

Quick revision

1. A class is a stratum sharing an economic position and therefore life chances; based on achievement, permitting mobility, and not ritually sanctioned.
2. Marx: class is defined by the relation to the means of production; bourgeoisie and proletariat; class in itself and class for itself; class consciousness and false consciousness; predicted polarisation.
3. Weber: three independent dimensions, class (market situation), status (social honour, and caste belongs here), party (organised power). Skill and qualification divide the propertyless into different classes.
4. India: rural classes defined by land; urban classes including a small organised sector and a vast informal sector, which is the central fact.
5. Caste against class: birth against economic position, ascription against achievement, closed against open, compulsory endogamy against none, sharp boundaries against fluid ones, religious sanction against economic sanction.
6. Criticism: indeterminate boundaries, weak class consciousness, polarisation did not occur, other divisions cut across it, categories fit informal economies badly, and consumption now signals position.

Test yourself

1. Define social class and distinguish Marx's account from Weber's. A class is a stratum of persons sharing a similar economic position and therefore similar life chances. Marx defines class solely by the relation to the means of production, dividing capitalist society into owners and those who must sell their labour power, and treats the relation as exploitative. Weber accepts the economic basis but distinguishes three separable dimensions: class as market situation, status as social honour, and party as organised power, and holds that among the propertyless differences of skill and qualification create genuinely different classes.

2. Explain class in itself and class for itself. A class in itself is a group of people who objectively share the same relation to the means of production, whether or not they are aware of it. A class for itself is one that has become conscious of that shared position and of the opposition of its interests to another class, and has organised to act on it. Class consciousness is the transition between them, and false consciousness is the condition in which members of a class hold beliefs serving the interests of another class.

3. Compare caste and class on six points. Basis, birth and ritual status against economic position; determination, ascription against achievement; mobility, effectively closed with only group mobility by Sanskritisation against open in principle to individuals; marriage, compulsory endogamy against no rule; boundaries, sharp and recognised against fluid and disputed; and sanction, religious and customary against purely economic.

4. Why do European class categories fit India imperfectly? Because a very large part of the workforce is in agriculture and in informal employment, where the categories of employer and employee blur: a household may be simultaneously cultivating a marginal holding, working for wages and trading in a single year. The organised sector, to which written contracts, security and effective labour protection apply, is a small proportion of all workers, so an analysis built on it describes a minority, and the informal sector is the central fact any account of Indian class must address.

5. Why is income by itself a poor measure of class? Because class is a matter of market situation and life chances rather than of current earnings. A construction worker may earn more in a good month than a schoolteacher while lacking a contract, security, a pension and the effective protection of labour law, so their life chances are far worse. Property, the marketability of a qualification and security of employment determine class position, which is why ranking households by monthly consumption alone can misdescribe the structure it purports to measure.