This book continues the Class Structure of Capitalist Societies series by exploring the place of class among a confluence of factors in shaping people’s lives, loves and lifestyles across three nations. Previous volumes in the series examined the shape, history and cultural expressions of class structures. Now, grappling with themes usually put under the labels of ‘intersectionality’ and ‘work-life balance’ and bridging literatures seldom brought together, this volume uses an innovative mix of statistical techniques to untangle the messy nexus of factors – class, age, gender, race/ethnicity, intimate relations, political context and more – underpinning everyday routines, spaces, possessions, practices, (im)possibilities and self-perceptions in the US, Germany and Sweden. In the process it advances the specific vision of class and social relations developed by Pierre Bourdieu, pursuing the case, above all, that conceptual and methodological progress is necessary to fully recognise and explore the multiplicity of desires, dispositions and demands at play in people’s lives. The volume will be of major interest to scholars of class, culture, gender and family but will appeal to anyone interested in the interplay of identities and pressures implicated in contemporary experiences and inequalities.

This fourth volume of The Class Structure of Capitalist Societies finishes the series by exploring how class infuses people’s past and present efforts to juggle family, work and leisure. Previous volumes in the series have examined the shape, history and cultural expressions of class structures in capitalist societies as well as their typical intersections with gender, race/ ethnicity, family and more. Now, drawing on in depth interviews with men and women from the US, Sweden and Germany, this instalment endeavours to show how class actually ‘works out’ in people’s biographies and circumstances, and how, thereby, it is given singular form in their lives. Key to understanding how class works and how it is singularised, the book demonstrates, is its interplay with pressures and interests tied up with family, paid employment and leisure. New concepts and tools, it argues, are necessary to accommodate this multiplicity and, as a result, explain people’s lives more fully, advance our understanding of class and even progress the capacities of sociology as a discipline. The volume will be of major interest to scholars of class, family, work, gender and culture, but it will also appeal to anyone interested in social theory and the progress of sociology.

This first volume of The Class Structure of Capitalist Societies offers a bold and wide-ranging assessment of the shape and effects of class systems across a diverse range of capitalist nations. Plumbing a trove of data and deploying cutting-edge techniques, it carefully maps the distribution of the key sources of power and documents the major convergences and divergences between market societies old and new. Establishing that the multidimensional vision of class proposed decades ago by Pierre Bourdieu appears to hold good throughout Europe, parts of the wider Western world and Eastern Asia, the book goes on to examine a number of significant themes: the relationship between class and occupation; the intersection of class with gender, religion, geography and age; the correspondences between social position and political attitudes; self-positioning in the class structure; and the extent of belief in meritocracy. For all the striking cross-national commonalities, however, the book unearths consistent variations seemingly linked to distinct politico-economic regimes. This title will appeal to scholars and advanced undergraduate and postgraduate students interested in sociology, politics and demography, and is essential reading for all those interested in social class across the globe. Chapter 3 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

The second volume of The Class Structure of Capitalist Societies maps the distribution of social powers and associated properties and lifestyles in unparalleled detail by examining the results of a brand-new survey delivered in Sweden, Germany and the US. Continuing the cross-national investigation of the shape and effects of class systems across capitalist nations, the analyses in Volume 2 are embedded in a novel sociological theory of international relations, sustained reflections on the relationship between national standing and class structure and extensive reconstruction of the histories of class in each of the three nations studied. The ultimate conclusion, however, is that not only that the fundamental structure of class today the same across the three cases, for all their unique cultural and historical features, but their translation into differences of taste, practice and symbolic violence, always cross-cut by gender, follow highly familiar patterns too. This volume will appeal to scholars and advanced undergraduate and postgraduate students interested in sociology, politics and demography and is essential reading for all those interested in social class across the globe.

This book, first published in 1986, presents a radical challenge to socialist orthodoxy, subjecting a key component of that orthodoxy – Marxism – to sustained criticism. Les Johnston argues that Marxism cannot provide the foundations for a rigorous socialist theory or an effective socialist politics. A fundamental element of this criticism is the suggestion that the problem of ‘reductionism’ which has preoccupied Marxists is a red herring. Marxism’s problem is not its reductionism but its theoretical incoherence. Marxism is not ‘deterministic’, for there is invariably an indeterminate relationship between the materialism it invokes and the forms of politics it adopts. However, materialism is an obstacle to socialist theory. The contradictions and failures of Marxist class analysis suggest that the class concept is inadequate to the demands that socialists continue to place on it. It is not merely class which is problematic, however, but the conception of political interests which is associated with it. Even recent Marxist ‘revisionists’ who dispense with class primacy are unwilling to come to terms with the question of how socialist political interests are constituted. Socialist theory has to recognise the varied forces and interests on ‘the left’, and an effective socialism will have to be a pluralistic one. This means there can be no general theory of socialism, since a pluralistic socialism has to be able to adjust to varying social conditions.

The interpreter of Marx's writings faces the task of reconciling, on the one hand, Marx's frequent explicit condemnations and criticisms of morality and, on the other, the obvious way in which his world-view reflects substantive moral judgments. In this book R. G. Peffer tackles the challenges of finding in Marx's work an implicit moral theory, of answering claims that Marxism is incompatible with morality, and of developing the outlines of an adequate Marxist moral and social theory. Peffer analyzes the moral components of Marx's thought and considers all the major interpretations of his moral perspective; he concludes that Marx is a mixed deontologist who is most committed to a maximum system of equal freedoms, both positive and negative. He then utilizes contemporary metaethical theory to show that Marxism is compatible with morality in general and with the concepts of justice and rights in particular. Peffer proposes a radically egalitarian theory of social justice (which subsumes Marx's own moral theory) and a minimal set of Marxist empirical theses, which together entail the Marxist's basic normative political positions. This book demonstrates that contemporary analytic political philosophy is invaluable for coming to terms with Marxism and that it is only Marx's less abstract empirical theories about classes and class struggle, the dysfunctions of capitalism, and the possibility of creating democratic, self-managing postcapitalist societies that are needed for the development of an adequate Marxist moral and social theory. Originally published in 1990. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

First published in 1977. This book considers the nature of industrial society, contemporary capitalism and the impact of political ideas on social structure. These ideas are discussed by reference to the impact of social democracy on the structure of capitalist society in a comparative analysis of Britain and Sweden — including an interview survey of industrial workers socio-political attitudes. The study is concluded by a general discussion of the role of social democracy in capitalist society. It is argued that the development of social democracy generates ‘strains’ which, in the long term, question the legitimacy of capitalism among industrial manual workers.

The book covers the research on economic inequality, including the social construction of racial categories, the uneven and stalled gender revolution, and the role of new educational forms and institutions in generating both equality and inequality.

Class and status are both foundational themes in the study of sociology. John Scott brings together the central theoretical contributions to the debate on class and status as aspects of stratification. Using a selection of seminal pieces and commentaries on the classics, it raises central issues, for example the distinction between class and status, which are then examined by leading authorities.

As the sun rises on China and sets on America, the world holds its breath. China, the USA and Capitalism's Last Crusade looks at the rise of China and the decline of the USA but from a different angle. William Briggs argues that this struggle for economic supremacy is being played out against a much bigger backdrop; the decline of the economic structure of capitalism. In this sense, the decline of the USA is portrayed as that larger economic decline in microcosm. Briggs examines the relationship between state and capital, of how capitalism came to dominate the world, and of the historical, political and economic rise of both the USA and China. He shows that the struggle between the two nations has little to do with cultural, historical, demographic, political or ideological differences, but with what they have in common. Despite the portrayal of China as being ‘socialist' it functions as a capitalist economy in the globalised capitalist world. While its journey to capitalism may have differed, the end point is the same and this is why there is such animosity, such conflict, such acrimony between the two states.