entendendo as classes sociais

[Série A Várzea do Carmo, 1979-1980
São Paulo, SP
Raul Garcez.
Pirelli/MASP]



Eis um exemplo das grandes descobertas da sociologia política marxista contemporânea.
Erik Olin Wright publicou no último número da New Left Review o artigo UNDERSTANDING CLASS.

NLR, n. 60 nov./dec. 2009

Ele sustenta, basicamente, que uma nova teoria das classes deve combinar três modelos de análise social: o marxista, o weberiano e as teorias da estratificação social.

Abaixo, a introdução do bruto.

Towards an Integrated Analytical Approach

When I began writing about class in the mid-1970s, I viewed Marxist and positivist social science as foundationally distinct and incommensurable warring paradigms. I argued that Marxism had distinctive epistemological premises and methodological approaches which were fundamentally opposed to those of mainstream social science. In the intervening period I have rethought the underlying logic of my approach to class analysis a number of times. [1] While I continue to work within the Marxist tradition, I no longer conceive of Marxism as a comprehensive paradigm that is inherently incompatible with ‘bourgeois’ sociology. [2]

Having previously argued for the general superiority of Marxist class analysis over its main sociological rivals—especially Weberian approaches and those adopted within mainstream stratification research—I now take the view that these different ways of analysing class can all potentially contribute to a fuller understanding by identifying different causal processes at work in shaping the micro- and macro- aspects of inequality in capitalist societies. The Marxist tradition is a valuable body of ideas because it successfully identifies real mechanisms that matter for a wide range of important problems, but this does not mean it has a monopoly on the capacity to identify such mechanisms. In practice, then, sociological research by Marxists should combine the distinctive Marxist-identified mechanisms with whatever other causal processes seem pertinent to the explanatory task at hand. [3] What might be called a ‘pragmatist realism’ has replaced the ‘grand battle of paradigms’.

For the sake of simplicity, in what follows I will focus on three clusters of causal processes relevant to class analysis, each associated with a different strand of sociological theory. The first identifies classes with the attributes and material life conditions of individuals. The second focuses on the ways in which social positions afford some people control over economic resources while excluding others—defining classes relative to processes of ‘opportunity hoarding’. The third approach conceives of classes as being structured by mechanisms of domination and exploitation, in which economic positions accord some people power over the lives and activities of others. The first is the approach taken in stratification research, the second is the Weberian perspective, and the third is associated with the Marxist tradition.
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