Near the end of the third and final volume of his masterpiece, Capital, Karl Marx raises an important issue. He writes, “The question to be answered next is: ‘What makes a class?’” Marx had much to say about social class, but he never answered his own question very clearly. The book ends a few lines later with a cryptic note from his long time collaborator, Friedrich Engels: “At this point the manuscript breaks off. —F.E.” Since then countless people have tried to clarify what Marx thought about class. One of the most productive efforts has been sustained by the sociologist Erik Olin Wright. He continues to argue persuasively that class relations constitute a fundamentally powerful force in world history.
From the perspective of “analytical Marxism,” Wright argues that the goals of socialism are both compatible with rigorous empirical sociological research and plausible. In recent writing, he has actively...
