ABSTRACT
Within the Marxist tradition of class analysis, class divisions are defined primarily in terms of the linkage between property relations and exploitation. If the main purpose of an analysis is to explore the basic differences between the class structures of feudalism and capitalism, an analysis which revolved entirely around the relationship between capitalists and workers might be adequate. Upper managers, and especially Chief Executive Officers in large corporations will be very closely tied to the capitalist class, while the class character of lower level supervisor jobs will be much closer to that of the working class. Many people have both direct and mediated class locations. Within a Marxist framework, the feature of the relationship of people to economic resources which is at the core of class analysis is “exploitation”. The exploitation-centered class analysis implies that classes can exist in nonmarket societies, whereas Weberian class analysis explicitly restricts the relevance of class to markets.
