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Class consciousness is an aspect of Marxist theory, referring to the self-awareness of social classes, the capacity to act in its own rational interests, or measuring the extent to which an individual is conscious of the historical tasks their class (or class allegiance) sets for them.
A social class or social stratum is a grouping of people into a set of hierarchical social categories, [1] the most common being the working class, middle class, and upper class. Membership of a social class can for example be dependent on education, wealth, occupation, income, and belonging to a particular subculture or social network. [2]
In modern Western societies, social stratification is defined in terms of three social classes: an upper class, a middle class, and a lower class; in turn, each class can be subdivided into an upper-stratum, a middle-stratum, and a lower stratum. [5]
Mises allowed that class consciousness and the associated class struggle were valid concepts in some circumstances where rigid social castes exist, e.g., when slavery is legal and slaves have a common motive for wanting to end their disadvantaged status relative to other castes, but that class is an arbitrary distinction in capitalist society ...
In other words, a class is a collective of individuals who have a similar relationship with the means of production (as opposed to the more common idea that class is determined by wealth alone, i.e. high class, middle class and poor class). Marx describes several social classes in capitalist societies, including primarily:
Status groups, social classes, and political parties are the constituent concepts of the three-component theory of stratification. Discussion of the relationships among status groups, social class, and political parties occurs in Weber's essay "Class, Status, Party", written before the First World War (1914–18); the first translation into ...
Karl Marx believed that social class is determined by ownership (or non-ownership) of the "means of economic production" - ownership of raw materials, farm land, coal mines, factories, etc. [1] His theory contains the idea of a struggle between two social classes - the Bourgeoisie (the capital owners) and the Proletariat (the non-owner workers).
Fussell argues that social class in the United States is more complex in structure than simply three (upper, middle, and lower) classes.According to Bruce Weber, writing for the New York Times, Fussell divided American society into nine strata — from the idle rich, which he called "the top out-of-sight," to the institutionalized and imprisoned, which he labeled "the bottom out-of-sight."