Читать книгу Wealth - Yuval Elmelech - Страница 22

A main focus of the early sociological works—which, as mentioned, were written during a period of increasing economic inequality—was concern about the concentration of private property and wealth into the hands of a few. Private property occupies a central position in Marx’s writings on class structure, but Marx’s emphasis on production relations has unavoidably led to a conception of property according to which property consists almost exclusively of the means of production. Drawing on the Marxist tradition, Wright (1997) asserts that control over the means of production enables the capitalist class to appropriate the labor efforts of the propertyless working class; excluding workers from access to productive property—the “exclusion principle”—enables the owners of the means of production to reap economic advantages by appropriating the labor effort of the workers—the “appropriation principle” (see Wright 1997: 10; 2005).

Having to rely on the only commodity they possess and can exchange in the market—their labor effort—propertyless workers are exceptionally vulnerable to exploitation. Low wages that yield surplus value for the owners of the means of production further inhibit the working class’s prospects of asset ownership and wealth accumulation, which in turn produces greater class polarization. It is not surprising that the growing concentration of property and wealth ownership led Marx to consider private property the leading culprit of class inequality:

You are horrified at our intending to do away with private property. But in your existing society, private property is already done away with for nine-tenths of the population; its existence for the few is solely due to its non-existence in the hands of those nine-tenths. (Marx and Engels [1948] 2017: 74)

Thorstein Veblen, an economist best known for his work on the theory of the leisure class, offers an explanation for the concentration of wealth that shifts the emphasis from production relations and economic class to consumption processes and social status. According to this narrative, in an affluent “private property society,” where basic economic needs are met and financial security is no longer a strong incentive for wealth accumulation, social status emerges as a key motive for wealth accumulation. Under these circumstances, wealth accumulation takes the form of competition over the material comfort of life (Veblen 1899). This competition, known as pecuniary emulation, has raised the level of what is commonly perceived as the “conventional standard of wealth.” Under these circumstances of affluence and pecuniary emulation, members of the privileged class, suitably called the leisure class, are engaged in non-industrial occupations and are involved in the “non-productive consumption of time.” Not only does wealth accumulation in such cases entail the detachment of wealth from productive labor, but conspicuous consumption and the social status associated with a command over economic resources is also greatest for those whose wealth has been inherited rather than built up through effort and merit. Thus, inherited wealth “presently becomes even more honorific than wealth acquired by the possessor’s own effort” (Veblen 1899: 29). The dramatic turn in narratives of wealth creation and inequality from the purely economic sphere of production and exploitation to the sphere of consumption, idleness, and the display of wealth as part of pecuniary emulation unveils the relative dimension of wealth inequality and affirms the potential impact of the leisure class on the consumption patterns of other classes (see Hirsch 1976; Frank 2011).

Ownership of material property represents an important component of Weber’s analysis of class formation. Weber’s definition of social class evolved with time, but the highly cited and quoted definition found in his essay “Class, status, party” demonstrates his clear and succinct vision of property and class formation:

We may speak of a “class” when (1) a number of people have in common a specific causal component of their life chances, insofar as (2) this component is represented exclusively by economic interests in the possession of goods and opportunities for income, and (3) is represented under the conditions of the commodity or labor markets. [These points refer to “class situation.”] (Weber 1958: 181)

Three observations about this definition are warranted. First, ownership of material property is an important component of class distinction, a point clearly stated in Weber’s conclusion: “‘property’ and ‘lack of property’ are, therefore, the basic categories of all class situations” (Weber 1958: 181). Second, economic resources are valuable only in the context of exchange in the market (Breen 2005). Third, the reference to property and its exchange in the (commodity) market as a source of income captures Weber’s multidimensional view of class, which expands the binary distinction between the propertied and the propertyless and further differentiates classes on the basis of the composition of the assets that people hold. Specifically, Weber identifies two general categories of property: “wealth,” which describes household possessions that are part of household consumption, and “capital,” which refers to productive assets used for acquiring more property and for generating income (Schweitzer 1980: 22; see also Curtis 1968). Among the non-propertied, class differentiation is based on skills, employment status, and property: “Only persons who are completely unskilled, without property and dependent on employment without regular occupation, are in a strictly identical class situation.” For property owners on the other hand, the type and allocation of assets—and the income these assets generate—demarcate class position and life chances. Members of the “positively privileged” propertied class, for example, are identified as persons who control private property and “typically live from property income” (Weber 2014: 175).

Another contribution of Weber’s multidimensional theory of stratification is the distinction he made between economic resources and social status. Unlike social classes, which are based on economic activity and determine “life chances,” status groups are classified according to consumption and differentiations in “life style”: through the consumption of distinct goods and services, property ownership determines social affiliation on the basis of differences in lifestyle—a criterion that creates “status groups” (Weber 1958). While conceptually, classes and status groups represent distinct dimensions of stratification, there is a strong relationship in capitalist societies between economic and social hierarchies (Coser 1977: 229). As Weber (1958: 165) writes, “[t]he social order is of course conditioned by the economic order to a high degree, and in its turn reacts upon it.” The sociologist Anthony Giddens has emphasized that the social and economic orders are linked via private property: “Possession of property is ... a major determinant of class situation and also provides the basis for following a definite ‘style of life’” (Giddens 2014: 185). Crucially, it is social closure and the exclusion of others from access to private property that produce and maintain the boundaries of social groups (Weber 1978: 43–46).