ABSTRACT
Class structure describes or analyses the class composition of Great Britain and of other Western Societies from a variety of points of view, and at different stages of development; and they are concerned largely, but by no means exclusively, with the economic aspects of class. Communism far from abolishing classes, has introduced a new class structure in place of the old: American capitalism, it is argued, rests on a system of class exploitation within which wealth has largely ousted other criteria of class. Classes, at any rate as they exist in Western countries today and as they have existed in the West for a long time past, are not sharply definable groups whose precise numbers can be determined by gathering in enough information about every individual. According to Marxist doctrine class is not merely a social reality but the great social reality which transcends all others and constitutes the great moving force in history.
