No Class

My friend the communist
Holds meetings in his RV
I can't afford his gas
So I'm stuck here watching TV
--Sheryl Crow

Karl Marx is often credited with contributing a theory of class conflict to what we 'know.' But as noted by this author, Marx's (1867) class theory offers weak explanatory and predictive power.

Marx proposed two social classes: the capitalists, or bourgeois, who own plant, property, equipment and other assets for transforming input into output, and the workers, or proletariat, who actually do productive work. Marx posited that as greedy capitalists appropriated more and more weath from the system, workers would become poorer and poorer. At some some point, the 'conflict' created by this wealth divergence would motivate workers to overthrow the capitalistic system.

While I am just now dipping into the details of Marx's writings, his general conceptualization of social classes seemingly fails to account for many empirical phenomena. One obvious problem is how to categorize the large number of self-employed workers--those who both own and work simultaneously.

In Marx's framework, owners of small businesses would be considered capitalists and members of the ruling class. Similarly, celebrities and sports starts earning $millions are lumped into the category of exploited workers. Both of these situations seem counter to creating the 'conflict' that Marx proposes will break the system.

Marx also posited that, over time, free market systems would result in the extermination of middle class--which subsequently positions the context for binary class conflict. Yet, there is reason to believe, and empirical evidence to support, precisely the opposite. As entrepreneurs endeavor to meet new buyer needs thru innovation, wealth creation creates a thriving middle class.

This leads to problems in accounting for the upwardly mobile--a problem that Marx does not apeear to adequately address.

Perhaps most critically, Marx failed to fully define what a 'class' is and how we account for divergences between his conceptions and reality. One would think that a theory of class conflict would need to nail down precisely what a class is. As the author speculates, Marx left this question open ended most likely because he could never make this part of his theory 'work.'

In the land of peer review, such a problem should lead to a 'fatal error' and formal rejection of the theory.

That his theory has gained such broad acceptance among academics, despite its serious flaws, may be telling us something.

Reference

Marx, K. 1867. Das kapital, Vol 1. Hamburg: O. Meissner.