Politics and Class Analysis

Class continues to be one of the major preoccupations of modern social thought: classes are regarded as major forces that arise out of fundamental structural features of society and have significant social and political consequences. This book offers an account of the main traditions of class analysis, which originated in the thought of Marx and Weber, and subjects their claims to critical attention. It shows that the application of class analysis to the interpretation of politics can be simplistic and misleading because these traditions cannot cope adequately with such problem areas as the "new" middle classes and the position of women.