BOOK REVIEW
Martha E. Gimenez
Class Analysis without Marx: A New Trend?
Dalton Conley, Being Black, Living in the Red. Race, Wealth, and
Social Policy in America. Berkeley, CA: University of California
Press, 1999, 209 pages.
Like Oliver and Shapiro who, in their pathbreaking study Black
Wealth/White Wealth (1995), empirically demonstrate the vast asset
gap between blacks and whites and argue that it is impossible to
understand the persistence of racial inequality in the U.S. without
examining black/white differences in wealth ownership, Conley sets
out to establish the need to go beyond the standard SES indicators
(education, occupation and income) if we are to understand the
causes of black/white inequality. It is his goal to develop "a
formal model for the inclusion of assets into statistical models of
socioeconomic attainment and famiy processes, thereby mapping out
the role that wealth inequities play in the larger context of a
cycle of racial inequality" (Conley, 1999: 7). The main hypothesis
guiding his study is that racial inequality in its many aspects
such as, for example, education, household assets, income, family
size, etc. is a direct effect of class and an indirect effect of
race: "it is not race per se that matters directly: what matters
are the wealth levels and class position associated with race in
America" (Conley, 1999: 7). To understand class position, reliance
on the usual SES measures is not sufficient; social scientis need
to take wealth, meaning property, assets, net worth, into account.
In other words, there is a need to "reconceptualize" class (i.e.,
socioeconomic status) by including wealth ownership and the effects
of the inheritance of wealth, thus examining the extent to which
the life chances of one generation are causally affected by the
class position of the parent generation.
To test empirically the theoretical adequacy of these ideas
the author relies on the statistical analysis of data from the
Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) which has been gathered since
1968. The important overall finding of this study is the "reduced
significance" of race and, by implication, the increased
significance of class. The results are unambiguous: "the locus of
black-white inequality lies in the realm of class relations rather
than reflecting racial difference per se" (Conley, 1999: 49). For
example, when black and white students of similar socioeconomic
status are compared, back students do better than whites in high
school graduation rates and in academic grade advancement (Conley,
1999:80). Black-white differences in educational attainment are
not just about race but about SES' "race matters but only
indirectly, through the realm of class inequality" (Conley, 1999:
80). The author also examines the effects of parental assets on
the next generation's employment, family formation, fertility, the
probability of out of wedlock childbearing and marital stability,
concluding that the introduction of measures of household assets in
the anaysis reduces the magnitude of black-white differences in
these respects. Cultural and racial explanations of the plight of
African americans overlook the economic basis of racial inequality.
When blacks and whites of similar individual characteristics,
family backgrounds ad class origins are compared, "racial
differences change significantly in magnitude and sometimes even in
direction" (Conley, 1999: 133). The author is careful, at all
times, to assure the reader that he is not discounting the effects
of race or culture in accounting for some of the differences
between blacks and whites, but urges the examination of the various
ways in which culture and behavior are influenced by the socioeconomic
conditions in which people live. He is also aware of the
enormous problems his analysis poses for policy makers because, if
black-white inequality is not just the result of unequal
opportunities (a matter that could be reddressed with policies like
affirmative action) but the result of a vast racial gap in the net
worth of whites and blacks who share similar education, income and
occupational levels, then the situation is indeed extremely
difficult to resolve. This is why the author dedicates most of the
last chapter to the consideration of possible ways to develop and
implement race-based asset policies, concluding that it would be
impossible, given patterns of racial relations and the ways whites
protect their economic interests at this time, to implement
policies intended to increase black business ownership and home
ownership. Government reparations and strict policies to foster
residential integration, or a tax on wealthto create funds to be
distributed to the asset poor would not only be unlikely to yield
the desired results but would be politically very unlikely to be
seriously considered. He concludes with the suggestion that
policies that encourage the asset poor to be thrifty and save for
thier children's education, with the government's intervention to
make sure those funds are safe and well invested; policies which
allow welfare recipients to work and save and do not force people
to lose all assets to qualify for state aid; and policies intended
to promote homeownership abmong the poor and near poor might elicit
support from both political parties and might be helpful to start
long and arduous process of narrowing the black-white asset gap.
While there is much to recommend in this lavishly praised book
(W. J. Wilson, cited in the back cover, calls it "the best
contribution to the class-race debate in the last twenty years),
because it will hopefully force social scientists to quit their
avoidance of class as an important determinant of patterns of
economic inequality uniformly attributed to race, ethnicity and
gender, there is also much that is disappointing because of the
atheoretical way the author deals with class. As he states at the
outset, in American society (and, I may add, politics) class is a
"dirty word" (Conley, 1999: 3). It is even more controversial if
used in its Marxist meaning, denoting the relationship between
capital and labor, one of the pivotal capitalist contradictions and
sources of social change. But Conley's work is not theoretically
grounded and Marx is only mentioned once, at the bottom of the next
to the last page, together with Adam Smith and Max Weber, as one of
the "founding fathers of the social sciences... (who) were
intimately concerned with property analysis" (Conley, 1999: 151).
Like Oliver and Shapiro, who stressed that "wealth matters" and
presented as a momentous discovery the notion that the crucial
divide in America was that between the owners and the non-owners of
wealth (Oliver and Shapiro, 1995: 67), Conley also emphasizes the
importance of wealth and class, but like them he deals with wealth
and class in purely descriptive, atheoretical and non relational
way. Just like Oliver and Shapiro, who considered that their
analysis did not depend in any theoretical analysis of class and
that the concept itself was important "but not entirely germane to
(their ) purposes (Oliver and Shapiro, 1995: 70), Conley makes a
brief reference to how, "in the jargon of social theory, the
concept of "class" implies fundamental economic cleavages in a
society, such as those between laborers and capitalists, managers
and workers, manual and non-manual employees, skilled and unskilled
workers, or even blue collar and white collar workers" (Conley,
1999: 13). This listing of "cleavages" mixes theoretical and
descriptive, common sense concepts of class. He then proceeds to
argue that standard SES indicators are insufficient and need to be
supplemented with information about the assets (property, stocks,
bonds, savings, etc.) individuals and households own. While it is
indeed possible to attain important reuslts looking at asset
ownership in a purely descriptive way, the analysis of those
results is shaped by the limitations inherent in the lack of a
theoretical understanding of class and class dynamics as key
elements of the capitalist mode production. This is why the author
can conceive of the possibility of "wealth equality," though he
acknowledges that it is impossible to be very optimistic about
changes in that direction, not because of systemic, structural
limitations inherent in the very functioning of the mode of
production but because of the conflict of interest among
individuals that policies designed to narrow the asset gap would
unavoidably generate.
Absent from these books about the importance of wealth is any
consideration of power relations, the relations of exploitation
within which wealth is produced and appropriated, and the effects
of these relations on class dynamics and the class composition of
racial and ethnic population aggregates. This is why I find this
book both timely and dissappointing. Timely because, as we enter
the new millenium and world capitalism exhacerbates class
inequalities everywhere, it is important to have reearch findings
like these that document the pervasive and enduring significance of
class. Disappointing, because it is another instance of the ways
sociology thrives on the use of Marxist theoretical insights while
continuing to add its voice to the chorus that insists that Marx is
dead. I believe that, as inequality deepens and the ripple effects
of the ups and downs of the market bubble affect larger numbers of
people, it will become increasingly fashionable to acknowledge the
significance of class (these days demoted to something called
"classism") and more books like this one are likely to be written.
in the near future. We should welcome these works as important
alternatives to racial, ethnic and gender reductionisms and to the
race, gender class trilogy; more importantly, we should welcome
all efforts to elucidate the historical basis of racial inequality
and the structural limits to the success of policies concerned with
enhancing equal oportunities which nevertheless ignore the role of
household assets in the process of status attainment and overall
life chances of individuals. theoretical criticisms, aside, this
is a book I would highly recommend to teachers of social
stratification and race and ethnic relations and, above all, to
policy makers who need, once in a while, a reality check.
Department of Sociology
University of Colorado at Boulder
Boulder, Colorado 80309