Class and Ownership: Introducing a Differentiation of Classes By “Ownership Skill”

Class continues to be a key concept in understanding capitalist relations and their inequalities. However, current research on the upper echelons of the wealth distribution voices a pressing critique: Although class concepts in their various coleurs depart from a distinction in owners and non-owners of capital, most class concepts are designed with the labor market in mind. As a consequence, the social positioning of non-owners on the labor market and of owners by means of the number of their employees turn into key markers of social class. In order to understand the social stratification of contemporary societies with a high level of wealth inequality and complex wealth structures, however, this approach to ownership is no longer sufficient. In this talk, I introduce a class differentiation that considers various forms of assets including housing, financial assets and business equity. I introduce the concept of “ownership skill”, i.e. the expertise on and strategies of dealing with the risks and structural constraints of owning, and differentiate five ownership classes. This approach is meant to complement existing class differentiations rather then substituting them and aims at offering an analytical tool suitable particularly for the study of the upper echelons of the wealth distribution and a more detailed understanding of wealth inequality. This class differentiation further opens up avenues to explore processes of class-making and the domination of certain classes over others.