Abstract
Almost a century ago, Georg Simmel speculates, in his Philosophy of Money, about a most invidious and insidious form of social inequality in modern society.
This text was first published as: Stehr, Nico. 1994. “The Culture and Structure of Social Inequality”, International Journal of Group Tensions, 24(4): 361–382. The permission was granted by Springer.
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Notes
- 1.
I am grateful to Herman Strasser for his comments and to the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, Ottawa, Canada for research support.
- 2.
- 3.
For Dahrendorf ([1957] 1959: 247) social classes and therefore class conflict are “present wherever authority is distributed unequally over social positions.” Perhaps gradients in authority or what Comte had called “involuntary authority” relations are a kind of anthropological constant and essential to human conduct. However, in opposition to theses defended by Goldthorpe and Marshall, Dahrendorf ([1957] 1959: 269–270) observes or deduces from his theory of the institutional isolation of industrial conflict, a delimitation of spheres and roles in advanced industrial society linked to the economy with the result that industry in post-capitalist society lost its all-embracing social significance and has to a certain extent been capsuled off from society.” Social roles other than employment position (of industrial workers and likely other occupational groups) gain in significance, thus, the “sector of social behavior which is not immediately determined by occupation is extending steadily” (Dahrendorf [1957] 1959: 273).
- 4.
Compare Gellner’s (1987: 102–104) discussion of the role of wealth in agrarian and early industrial society and in modern society.
- 5.
Differences of lower and higher are then seen as essential to the very phenomenon of social inequality (cf. Kreckel 1983: 6–12). The result at times is a metaphorical overemphasis on matters vertical.
- 6.
Perhaps the most obvious distinction between Marxist and non-Marxist theories of social inequality in industrial society is related to the conceptions of what ought to constitute the central unit of analysis in research and theory concerned with inequalities. Non-Marxist theories of social stratification tend to generalize about inequality based on individual characteristics while Marxist theories prefer social collectivities of the basic unit of social inequality. The individual dimension is then seen as essentially ‘subjective’ by its critics while ‘objective’ units such as social class draw the objection of lacking precisely such a subjective dimension (e.g. Adorno 1969: 13).
- 7.
Another, though less pertinent, commonality of contemporary theories of social inequality is that they share as a boundary individual nation states constitutive of the political limits of industrial society.
- 8.
In 1989, in Canada the proportion of individuals actively employed was 51.8 percent of the total population, in the U.S.A. it was 47.2 percent (117 million of 248 million), in England 47.36 percent (27 million of 57 million) and in (West) Germany 45.16 percent (28 million of 62 million) to mention but a few examples.
- 9.
Schelsky’s (1955: 222) notion of a “nivellierte Mittelstandsgesellschaft” or a leveled middle-class society, to which I intend to refer in this context, is, however, primarily based on the assumption of a process of leveling which resembles a regression toward the mean of inequality although the leveling of inequality Schelsky anticipates is one based mainly on downward rather upward mobility. Parsons (1954: 431, 434), on the other hand, feels compelled to comment, in addition to stressing the paramount importance of occupational status and of occupational earnings, in his description of the system of social inequality in American society using his “Revised analytical approach to the theory of social stratification” that there is “the amount of ‘compression’ of the scale, so far as the income is concerned, which has occurred in about the last generation” and that the traditional bottom of the occupational pyramid is in the course of “almost disappearing”. The American class structure and society will become even more predominantly middle-class than it already is.
- 10.
Galbraith (1957: 85) is of the opinion that the lack of interest in phenomena of social inequality at the time can be attributed, on the one hand, to the fact that the degree of inequality in capitalistic societies, contrary to Marxist expectation, did not increase and, on the other hand, that the societal influence of the wealthy, at least in the United States was less pronounced.
- 11.
Beck (1986: 121–160) has focused on the linear transformation and elevation of material inequality since the decade of the fifties sustaining established relations and concentrations of inequality. His primary focus then is on the extent to which the elevation in the general standard of living has allowed for the dissolution of class-based social conduct or for a further individualization. But his discussion remains transfixed by what might well be reversible material pre-conditions of changes in the life world of individuals.
- 12.
For a discussion of a number of additional relevant elements that are likely part of the same social figuration (which reduce the identity of work and life), for example, the reduction in the hours per year and years per lifetime worked or the substantial rise in occupational income that increase freedom to find and afford opportunities outside of work and decrease the marginal benefits derived from further incremental additions to earned income, see Kern/Schumann (1983).
- 13.
Kalberg (1992) has noted that the de-coupling of work from social status in modern society or of debates on the place of work in post-industrial society is not necessarily universal but strongly mediated by national, cultural, political and historical milieus. In contemporary Germany, occupational values do not enjoy an elevated status above other social domains (e.g. leisure or the private sphere) while in the United States the hegemony of work remains unchallenged. The result is, Kalberg argues, that the place of work in the United States and Germany differ considerably. It is noteworthy that Kalberg does not refer to the work of Dubin (1992: 123–124), particularly his notion of work as a “central life interest” and the empirical research this has spawned in the last decades showing that the belief in the centrality of work varies considerably by type of occupation (e.g. industrial workers, professionals or managers) and country (e.g. Japan and the United States). Dubin’s (1956) original research in the United States, among industrial workers, found only 24 percent reporting that work was their central life interest (see also Lane 1978; Offe 1983: 50–57 for a discussion of the changing subjective value of work in modern society).
- 14.
This assertion undoubtedly has at least some resemblance with the diminishing marginal utility thesis of economic returns found in Ronald Inglehart’s (e.g. 1987; also Lane 1978) recent discussion of the reasons for the emergence of postmaterialistic values in advanced societies, that is, the significant rise in per capita GDP in advanced societies brings about a decline in any further marginal gains that can be achieved with additional income units. Inglehart’s general observations mainly refer to growing levels of per capita income and the idea that a smaller and smaller proportion of the income is needed to defray the costs of absolutely necessary expenditures. As a result, the priority individuals attach to economic matters should decline as well. Rising income levels are important; however, they may well only constitute one of the conditions for the possibility of the liberation of individuals and households from the labor market and the economy.
- 15.
The broad change in the total wealth or assets of households in industrialized countries in the last three decades in particular can be illustrated in a number of ways. For example, one point to the immense growth, although inflation is not taken into consideration, in aggregate savings on deposit with commercial banks in different countries (this information is not available for all industrialized countries). See Table 15.2.
- 16.
For any audience but particularly for a North American audience and during recessionary times, this is not an easy contention to advance. Not too long ago, a prominent essay in the New York Times diagnosed a decline in middle-class prosperity (Kevin Phillips, “Down and out: Can the middle class rise again?” New York Times Magazine, January 10, 1993). This is an observation anticipated by many months by the voting middle class and politicians in the United States. Rebuilding a sense of prosperity in the middle class is crucial not only to the political fortunes of those who promised greater shares of wealth to the middle class but perhaps the key to the future of American culture. At the same time, the stagnation or even decline in middle-class prosperity in the United States in the 1980s and early 1990s is a useful reminder that developments in the United States do not necessarily signal patterns to be repeated, after a certain lag, in other modern economies. The North American political systems and their economies have not produced widespread levels of prosperity which lead the world. In other words, the thesis to be expounded here does not necessarily apply with particular force to the case of Canada and the United States.
- 17.
One should include here the growing though uncounted number of individuals and households who have made, for a variety of reasons, the self-copious derision to reduce their dependence on the labor market by cutting or drastically changing their consumption patterns and expectations. This group includes the growing number of individuals who retire early: As reported in an article in the Globe and Mail (February 27, 1993, B22), in 1988, “18 percent of Canadians aged 55–64 were pensioners—a considerable jump from the 3 percent in 1969 and even the 8 percent in 1979.”
- 18.
Often much of the wealth data made available is limited to the upper percentiles of the wealth distribution. In addition, information about wealth inequality frequently is plagued by methodological difficulties, for example, with respect to the definition of wealth and/or the unit of analysis, systematic under reporting of assets, sapling problems, and the statistical treatment of wealth data.
- 19.
Despite patterns of high income concentration of household wealth, there has been a gradual decline in this century, at least until the mid-1970s, in wealth inequality and a convergence in the level of wealth differences among industrialized societies for which longitudinal information is available; in those countries, Sweden, the United Kingdom and the United States, “the share of total household wealth held by the top 1 percent of wealth holders declined from 50 in 1920 to 21 percent in 1975 in Sweden. The share of the top 1 percent in Great Britain fell from 61 percent in 1923 to 23 percent in 1974. The decline in wealth inequality in the United States was less dramatic. The share of the top 1 percent of individuals fell from a peak of 38 percent in 1922 to 27 percent in 1956” (Wolff 1991: 128). Although these three countries differ considerably in regard to economic performance, social and political institutions, policy, entitlements etc. the data show a convergence in the level of household wealth inequality. Since the mid-1970s the decline in wealth inequality has been arrested.
- 20.
These have become much more since Gorz (1982) for example initially sketched the emergence of a divided society in post-industrial societies. Lyotard ’s (1989: 10) observation about the division of mankind into two parts, namely “one part confronted with the challenge of complexity; the other with the terrible ancient task of survival”, resonates with the same sentiments.
- 21.
The limited visibility of wealth in social science during the seventies and the eighties is at least partly related to the critique of and deep seated resentment by social critics, in same countries, toward wealth and their bad conscience to live off well of what is being criticized.
- 22.
The wealth concept used by Statistics Canada excludes important personal assets such as equity in pension funds, insurance policies, the value of collectibles and consumer goods and entitlements. What is counted in the survey as a component of wealth includes the equity in the home, cash, saving deposits, certificates, bonds, stocks, registered savings plans, equity in a business, farm or profession and these figures then reduce the indebtedness to arrive at total wealth. As the report states, “there is reason to believe that large wealth holdings may have been underestimated in the survey” because of the characteristics of the survey method alone (Statistics Canada 1986: 83); for example, refusal rates are higher among higher income families and individuals. The number of respondents (family units) in the 1984 survey of Statistics Canada (1986) is approximately 14.000. Of all the family units sampled approximately 72 percent supplied data on which the wealth estimates are biased.
- 23.
Although the author of the comparative study of the development of wealth in Canada observes that one is struck by how little change there has been over the period 1970–1984 in the relative distribution and composition of wealth and how dramatic the growth in overall wealth was at the same time (Oja 1987: 7), virtually no further attention is paid to the latter development in her analysis.
- 24.
What these developments do not imply is that identifiable and systematically (economically) disadvantaged groups or a distinct underclass simply vanish. As a matter of fact , the handicaps experienced by such an underclass multiply.
- 25.
It might be suggested that the views about the role of knowledge in social inequality elaborated so far resonate strongly with observations made in the sixties and seventies about the growing affluence, even a saturation of material needs, the sectoral shift in employment and resulting change in attitudes and values, what Inglehart (1971, 1977) called the ‘silent’ revolution , toward concerns away from the bare, material necessities of life toward ‘postmaterialist’ values and goals. The political agenda and the basis for political conflict changes, as does politics. But the demand for material goods really has not diminished with increasing affluence and declining scarcity and, as I already observed, the development of the service sector is best examined once disaggregated. Finally, Inglehart’s (1987: 1289) approach to the “diminishing marginal utility of economic determinism” is, it seems to me, primarily functionalist, that is, directed toward an examination of these consequences of the declining returns from economic development such as life expectancy, economic equality or political preferences.
- 26.
In a somewhat different context, Lyotard ([1979] 1984: 18–19) describes the enabling social features of knowledge in a rather similar sense. Lyotard explicates the function of knowledge in postmodern society and emphasizes that knowledge is by no means limited to scientific, that is, instrumental knowledge. On the contrary, knowledge refers to a much more general and “extensive array of competence-building measures and it is the only form embodied in a subject constituted by the various areas of competence composing it.”
- 27.
My focus resonates with that of Amartya Sen who concentrates on an examination of spaces of functioning or on the capability to achieve functioning as his focal variable for a normative analysis of inequality structures. The notion of capabilities of course is very broad indeed, as is the idea of knowledge as a general resource in the formation of inequality structures, and it therefore may suffer in the eyes of critics who prefer a less inclusive concept. Nonetheless, the capabilities approach differs, as Sen (1992: 6) observes, quite substantially “from the more traditional approaches to equality , involving a concentration on such variables as income, wealth, or happiness […]. In particular, judging equality and efficiency in terms of capability to achieve differs from the standard utilitarian approaches as well as from other welfarist formulations”. The utilitarian and the welfarist perspectives employ a much more restrictive and narrow calculus of inequality.
- 28.
If one proposes to retain, especially against those perspectives arguing that class location has declined in significance in recent decades as a source of ideological consciousness, the notion of a (subjective) “class consciousness” as relevant for modern society, it would follow that the formation and retention of such class consciousness should perhaps be more effected by factors other than solely the material status of individuals and households (cf. Evans 1992 for an empirical critique of a narrow conception of factors linked to class consciousness in Great Britain).
- 29.
In the United States, the social location of many of these activities can be found in what Drucker (1989: 187) calls the ‘third’ sector of non-profit, non-governmental, “human change” institutions. The third sector is actually the “country’s largest employer, though neither its workforce nor the output it produces show up in the statistics. One out of every two adult Americans—total of 90 million people—are estimated to work as volunteers in the third sector” (Drucker 1989: 197).
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Stehr, N. (2018). The Culture and Structure of Social Inequality. In: Adolf, M. (eds) Nico Stehr: Pioneer in the Theory of Society and Knowledge. Pioneers in Arts, Humanities, Science, Engineering, Practice, vol 16. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-76995-0_15
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