Class Structure and Class Mobility

Abstract

The major focus in this chapter is on class, defined in terms of the social relations of production and marketable skills. The Japanese Marxist economists have long been concerned with the analysis of the class structure of modern Japanese society (e.g., Ohashi, 1971) and the development of Japanese capitalism (e.g., Noro, 1930; Yamada, 1934; Hirano, 1967). Several important studies attempted to estimate the class composition of modern and contemporary Japanese society using the Census and survey data (Hara, 1979; Ohashi, 1971; Shoji, 1977, 1982; Steven, 1983). However, none of these studies on class composition discussed the pattern of class mobility; the nature of the data did not allow investigation of the movement of people within the class structure. Furthermore, the study of mobility was often considered ‘bourgeois science’, since mobility is generally viewed by Marxists as a factor which weakens class consciousness and collective action among the working class.