Class and Verbal Disputes

On Class “Primacy”: The Anatomy of a Verbal Dispute in Sociological Theory

Abstract: Questions concerning the relative importance of class to collective action have been more or less central to sociological theory since Marx. I analyze a recent iteration of the perennial debate over “class reductionism” in order to better understand why questions of class’s “primacy” persist and why they have been, and likely will continue to be, fruitless. In particular, such questions cannot be resolved unless the parties to these disputes are talking about the same explanans and explanandum, but this is what is usually not the case. I argue this confusion in part stems from an unacknowledged substantive disagreement over the likelihood of socialism among scholars that compounds methodological and theoretical issues with assessing relative causal importance. In turn, I urge a pragmatic approach to class analysis that clearly specifies explananda and explanans across specific cases and largely abandons the language of “primacy”.