[...] Yet even when critical thinking does contain a class dimension, it is invariably only one factor among others. Thus it will be said that a form of class domination exists, just as forms of male domination or ethnic-racial domination exist, these different forms of domination being placed on the same level. This obviously contravenes the most elementary Marxism. From the standpoint of the latter, socio-economic domination – the confrontation between capital and labour, the commodity form, reification and so on – is not one type of domination among others. In truth, it is not even a type of ‘domination’. It is what underpins all forms of domination and confers on them their specificity in the capitalist regime. It is a logic, which allows us to regard capitalism as a system. Male domination, for example, pre-exists capitalism, but is (according to Marxists) largely reconfigured by the latter.

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’.

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.

Wright has proposed an original solution to this problem, in the form of the concept of ‘contradictory class locations’. According to him, the middle classes do not in themselves constitute a class. The individuals who make them up are located in several social classes at once, whose interests are often contradictory. Cadres (and managers) exemplify this situation. On the one hand, they are employees – that is, they are not owners of the capital or means of production in the firm for which they work. Obviously, it is now common for these particular types of employee to have an interest in their firm’s profits (via stock options, for example), which makes their situation that much more complex. But from the strict standpoint of property relations, they are above all wage-earners. On the other hand, their interests are opposed to those of other employees, because they have power over them within the firm or possess scarce skills which entitle them to sizeable remuneration. These social categories are therefore split. The higher up one goes in the hierarchy of the middle classes – approaching, for example, the CEOs of transnational firms – the more the interests of middle-class employees can be equated with those of capitalists. The lower one descends in that hierarchy, the more their interests resemble those of workers.

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.

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. [...] ‘non-exploitative’ oppression: it can extend to the physical elimination of the oppressed population. Exploitation is a very different phenomenon. The exploiter needs the exploited, since the former’s own material welfare cannot do without the latter’s labour. For this reason, although class massacres can occur, capitalists are to a certain extent compelled to restrain their violence towards workers. That is why the sentence ‘the only good worker is a dead worker’ makes no sense.

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.

Neo-liberalism is characterized by a dual dynamic of the privatization of public goods and the fragmentation and flexibilization of the labour market.