Objective Stratification

In a caste or castelike society, the “upper” groups control the criteria for ranking and successfully impose their standards upon the whole society. In an open class-society, on the other hand, there is no single accepted standard; each group or stratum tends to have its own perspective. Presumably those who in their own eyes are “upper class” will always attempt to set the scale for the entire population, but in a highly mobile, competitive system there may be considerable and effective disagreement. Differently located strata will emphasize different criteria of ranking. Thus, in our own society the upwardly mobile middle classes tend to stress competitive occupational achievement and “respectability,” whereas the newly arrived members of the upper strata emphasize wealth, and the established upper-upper groups give disproportionate weight to lineage (“purity”) and to certain symbols of secure status. If a society is to function, of course, there must be some minimal consensus as to the criteria for the social distribution of rewards and for the assignation of prestige rankings. However, as the United States demonstrates, there is room for much variability and inconsistency in the criteria for determining class membership in a complex open-class society. By “American” ideals, position should be based upon personal qualities and achievements. With one important exception to be discussed later – that of discrimination against minority groups – it is held that such society is and should be one in which the individual is free to move into those positions in the society that he has earned by ability, skill, effort, and moral worth. He is supposed to rise or fall according to his own merits; his position is determined by what he is and does or can do as individual. In its logically developed form, this conception of the stratification process becomes an internally consistent scheme that satisfactorily explains and justifies the entire system. It runs as follows:

1. This is a society of equality of opportunity and free, competitive placement. (“Anyone who has it in him can get ahead.”)

2. Hence, success is solely a matter of individual merit.

3. Hence, those who are at the top deserve to be there, and those at the bottom are there because of lack of talent or effort: it is “their own fault.”

4. Thus, the placement of individuals could not be otherwise without violating the value of individual achievement.

It takes no great acumen to see that actual equality of opportunity does not exist for a very great many individuals; nor is it difficult to show that inherited position, social “connections,” and a variety of circumstances essentially irrelevant to strictly personal qualities and achievements help place individuals in the stratification order. The more difficult and significant task is to go behind these rather obvious “discrepancies” and analyze the specific interplay of different institutional principles that operate in the stratification system.

We know that there are marked differentials in the distribution of scarce values. Few people live on an “average” income: most incomes are above or below average. Between this top level and the bottom strata there are great differences in total life-situation in terms of medical care and health, food, clothing, shelter, education, recreation, and general access to the comforts of life in our culture.

At the same time, we have a highly differentiated occupational structure. The proportion of occupations that are poorly paid, heavy, hot, dirty, and of low prestige has decreased; the expanding occupations are those which ordinarily have been thought to be more desirable and of higher rank. The role of differentials in wealth and income in our stratification system is complex and varies greatly in different occupations and communities. Wealth serves as the base for supporting a style of life considered to symbolize class position, and people with money attempt to buy the symbols thought to index high status. The proverbial conspicuous consumption of the newly rich is merely a salient instance of the purchased badges of rank. Wealth, furthermore, gives its possessor greater educational, occupational, and general cultural opportunity. In the race for achievement, those who start without wealth have difficult hurdles to clear before they can reach competitive equality with their more favored rivals. In addition, wealth is very frequently interpreted in our society as an index of achievement: he has money, therefore he must be successful, and to be successful he must have achieved something. Wealth, as the most universal and easily recognized mark of occupational success, has thus been a convenient symbol of achievement.

However, attempts to use wealth as the sole criterion of stratification set up powerful counterstrains. Much wealth is known to have been acquired by morally disapproved means; much wealth is inherited or acquired in other ways that can hardly be regarded as “achievement. ”In a dynamic and violently oscillating economy, there are such rapid changes in the income and wealth of large number of individuals that widespread doubt is created as to the correlation of wealth with achievement or personal qualities. Finally, the occupational structure is so complex that income or wealth clearly does not form a single scale for evaluation of movie stars, business executives, ministers, athletes, university scientists, and so on indefinitely. In some occupations, especially the salaried professions, it is not even supposed that income is a measure of the “worth” of a man’s contributions; salary is supposed to be only token recognition and of a magnitude adequate to the style of life expected of a certain occupational status. Nevertheless, both income or wealth and occupation are important criteria of status.

There are other social effects of economic stratification in our society. Economically “upper-class” persons can most easily secure an education. Persons in the lower income and occupational strata read less, travel less, are less active in political affairs. Their social horizons are constricted. So far as the evidence goes, furthermore, it consistently shows that mortality and morbidity rates vary inversely with income. Sickness and health, death and life, are thus to an appreciable degree functions of economic position.

Objective evidence of stratification is to be found not only in the differences in occupation and income but also in the great differentials of authority and power. The growth of large, centralized economic and political associations has meant the emergence of hierarchical organizations of sweeping power; in these structures it is possible for a few individuals to exercise quite comprehensive authority over large numbers of employees, union members, or citizens of the state. The military services, of course, provide the outstanding examples.

Finally, although the data are scanty and unsystematic, there are many converging indications that immunities and disabilities in the face of the law and penal system are correlated with caste and class position. The system of discipline is often adjusted to favor the upper-class.

In short, detailed study of stratification considered as a distribution of objective privileges clearly demonstrates the presence in a society of marked differentials in wealth and income and in social participation, authority and power, education, health, safety, and legal protection. This kind of stratification, then is a reality.