3 - Neo-marxism

• Asserts culture that creates boundaries between classes and society. Not simply shaped economically.
• Althusser (1971)


  Education transmits the idea that it is a meritocracy, to disguise the reality of the stratification system; that those born ruling class/middle class are much more likely to achieve via academics and the hidden curriculum as the product of bourgeoisie values.
• Repressive state apparatus 


  Dominates the working class through power and violence.
• Ideological state apparatus


  Institutions reinforce the rules of capitalism through the creation and maintenance of ideas which train people to think uncritically about capitalism.
• Frankfurt School


  Group of intellectuals who challenged the rise of Nazis in the 1920s and 30s. Focused on the importance of media and propaganda in influencing attitudes. Media has turned culture into a commodity that can be bought and sold like any manufactured product.
• Cultural Capital


  Children of the ruling and middle classes are ensured class inequality as it is reproduced into the next generation via cultural reproduction.
• Hall (1932-2014)


  Too easy to claim problems of ethnic minorities in society are due to just class and racism. Deeper analyses of structural and cultural causes of black disadvantage is required. He claimed media attention on black young muggers in the 1970s was deliberately designed to draw media and public attention away from the failures of the government and increasing inequality.
• Wright (1978)


  There is now a range of contradictory class locations in capitalist society which are exploiting along one dimension but which are exploited along another. The social order appears to be more of a 'pecking order'. No longer just bourgeoisie, proletariat or petty bourgeoisie.
• Petty Bourgeoisie (Wright)


  Small production with control over means but no labour power and employ no workers.
• Small Employers (Wright)


  Between bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie. Employ others but do their own labour for wage.'
• Semi-autonomous wage earners (Wright)


  Between proletariat and petty bourgeoisie. Some control over how they work and produce but minimal control over means of production like lab researchers.
• Wright (1978)


  There are now 4 degrees of control and 10 classes, based on the notion of exploitation and owners/non-owners.
• Evaluation of Wright:

  • Wright doubts his theory as managers are necessary exploiters due to intra-class divisions.
  • Savage et al questions how a skilled person exploits an unskilled person.
  • Difficult to operationalise in the 1980s as this was closer to domination than exploitation.
  • Edgell argues the schema is too hard to distinguish from Weber but Wright argues his theory is objective.
  • Edgell argues it is not clear why the posession of skill or lack of it should lead to the exploitation of a group by another. May lead to different wage levels but not necessarily exploitation.