Social class

Social class describes the relationships between people in hierarchical societies or cultures. While anthropologists, historians and sociologists identify class as a social structure emerging from pre-history, the idea of social class entered the English lexicon about the 1770s. Social classes with more power usually subordinate classes with less power. Social classes with a great deal of power are usually viewed as an elite, at least by their own societies.

Further reading

• The Social Analysis of Three Early 19th century French liberals: Say, Comte, and Dunoyer by Mark Weinburg, Journal of Libertarian Studies, 2 no. 1 (1978): 45-63.
• Classical Liberal Exploitation Theory (PDF file) By Ralph Raico.
• Classical Liberal Roots of Marxist Class Analysis (MP3 audio file), lecture by Ralph Raico.
• Charles Dunoyer And The Theory Of Industrialism and Comte And Dunoyer After The 1830 Revolution: The Impact Of Their Ideas in The Radical Liberalism Of Charles Comte And Charles Dunoyer by David M. Hart.
• Marxist and Austrian Class Analysis (PDF) by Hans-Hermann Hoppe
• The Communist Manifesto, Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, 1848. (The key statement of class conflict as the driver of historical change.)
• "Class, Status and Party", Max Weber, in e.g. Gerth, Hans and C. Wright Mills, From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology, New York, Oxford University Press, 1958. (Weber's key statement of the multiple nature of stratification.)
• Classes (London: Verso, 1985), The Debate on Classes (London: Verso, 1990), Class Counts: Comparative Studies in Class Analysis (Cambridge University Press, 1997), all by Erik Olin Wright. (A US sociologist who attempts to reformulate Marx's theory of class to fit modern society.)
• G. de Ste Croix, "Class in Marx's Conception of History, Ancient and Modern", in: New Left Review, no. 146, 1984, pp. 94-111 (good study of Marx's concept)
• The Constant Flux: a study of class mobility in industrial societies, Robert Erikson and John Goldthorpe, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1992. (An important analysis of social mobility in a neo-Weberian perspective.)
• The Hidden Injuries of Class, Richard Sennett and Jonathan Cobb, New York, Vintage, 1972 (classic study of the subjective experience of class)
• The Death of Class, Jan Pakulski and Malcolm Waters, London, Sage. 1996. (A somewhat postmodern rejection of the relevance of class for modern societies.)
• Consumer's Republic, Lizabeth Cohen, Knopf, 2003, hardcover, 576 pages, ISBN 0375407502. (An analysis of the working out of class in the United States.)
• Rethinking Cultural and Economic Capital - Jan Rupp
• Social Class in America: A Manual of Procedure for the Measurement of Social Status. By William Lloyd Warner, Kenneth Eells, and Marchia Meeker. Science Research Associates: Chicago, 1949.
• Class (a painfully accurate guide through the American status system), Paul Fussell, 1983. LC Catalog card number: 83-12637. ISBN 0-345-31816-1