The “class” perspective might equally have been labeled the “Marxist” perspective because the relations of capitalist accumulation to class struggle have been largely defined by persons calling themselves Marxists. We choose the term “class” because it is a substantive word, like “pluralist” and “managerial,” and refers to a core causal process and set of postulated relationships.

The class home domain

In the class perspective, individual actions and organizational interests must be understood via the societal contradictions inherent in the class relations comprising a mode of production. These contradictions must be specified if one is to understand the history of a society as a whole. The internal laws of development of a mode of production provide the conditions under which certain types of organizations are likely to emerge and flourish whereas others never appear or die. Certain types of individual behavior – personalities, attitudes, and social roles – are similarly encouraged whereas others are not. The paradigmatic questions that identify the home domain are: How does class struggle affect the state and the nature of capitalist development? How is the contradiction between private appropriation and socialized production expressed in the state? How does it lead to crisis, revolution, and societal transformation?