ABSTRACT
This chapter presents some of the metatheoretical foundations of the conceptual project and explores some main tasks. It describes the concept of class structure within the broader enterprise of class analysis. The chapter discusses the problem of elaborating what it calls a repertoire of class structure concepts that vary along two dimensions: their degree of abstraction and the extent to which they specify class structure at a macro- or microlevel of analysis. It examines the relationship between Weberian and neo-Marxist approaches to class in terms of the problem of generating adequate, concrete, microlevel concepts of class structure. Elaborating a coherent concept of class structure, therefore, is an important conceptual precondition for developing a satisfactory theory of the relationship between class structure, formation, and struggle. The Marxist concept of class structure has traditionally been developed most systematically as a highly abstract macrostructural concept.
