Neo-liberalism is characterized by a dual dynamic of the privatization of public goods and the fragmentation and flexibilization of the labour market.
According to Wright, capitalism feeds off exploitation, which entails maintaining this concept at the heart of the analysis. Exploitation is a social relation distinct from domination, which cannot be subsumed under the latter.
In a ‘bureaucratic socialist regime’ like the USSR, it is the intelligentsia that is liable to occupy this position. It shares certain advantages with members of the nomenklatura (the bureaucracy of the single party), but it is a class distinct from the latter.
Communities are not formed haphazardly, and if the development of a class culture or identity includes a degree of contingency, it is supplied with ballast by ‘objective’ socio-economic factors.
No doubt the most widespread theory of social classes at present is the constructivist one. Constructivism is a trend in contemporary social science according to which reality – social and/or material – is ‘constructed’ or ‘socially constructed’.
