THE DYING OF CLASS OR OR MARXIST CLASS THEORY?

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Abstract
Following some terminological clarifications, this article assesses the utility of the concept of class, and the Marxist class theory, for the analysis of stratification and conflict in advanced societies. The conclusions support the arguments of Clark and Lipset (1991). What is `dying' (in Clark and Lipset's parlance) are mainly the old industrial classes: the old socio-economic divisions, the old institutional actors representing these divisions, and the old forms of identification cum consciousness that reflected them. This reflects fragmentation of stratification due to proliferation of property ownership, credentialisation and professionalisation, state regulation, consumption orientation, proliferation of `imagined communities', and formation of new political actors. With these processes, and the revolutionary transformations in the ex-Soviet bloc, the theoretical and analytical edifice of Marxism loses much of its ground.

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