ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that the Marxist project of class analysis generates insurmountable problems. However, it has to be admitted that many Marxist writers have paid serious attention to resolving problems traditionally associated with the class concept. Though Marxism defines classes as agents which possess or are separated from possession of the means of production, the debate on the boundary of the working class is concerned with investigating the additional attributes of separated agents of wage labour. The problem of class determination is especially crucial for Nicos Poulantzas, for whom politics is synonymous with class conflict in a literal sense. However, Erik Olin Wright disputes Poulantzas's use of political and ideological criteria in class determination. The analysis of class structure may indicate possible limits and constraints on forms of political practice by particular agents, but there can be no simple and unproblematic knowledge of political practice from an analysis of class structure.
