ABSTRACT
The concept of class had faded from much social analysis during and because of the Cold War. Rare usages of class occurred as epithets when each side in the Cold War insisted that it had erased class differences while excoriating the other side’s class differences. Wealth and income classifications presupposed notions and measures of private property. A powerful class confronts a powerless class: rulers and the ruled. Power definitions of class also extend to intersperse middle classes, members of society who both take orders from some while giving orders to others. Some property theorists of class simply assumed that altering its distribution would likewise and in some necessary way alter the social distribution of power. Karl Marx’s Capital identifies and analyzes the social process missed by his revolutionary forbears. In Marx’s view, all human communities assign subsets of their populations to perform labor that produces goods and services.
