p Lenin’s definition of the classes is constantly attacked by modern bourgeois sociologists, who endeavour to prove that both the definition and the Marxist theory of the classes in general are obsolete and that some other characteristics rather than people’s social relation to the means of production, should be used to group them in social divisions.

p Bourgeois sociologists propose quite different criteria, such as the line of business, place of residence, educational standard, having a house telephone, means of transport, outward appearance, etc. for substantiating the division of people into social groups.

p Some authors take several traits, which they arrange as an “index”, as the criterion of belonging to one or another social group. Thus, for example, in the opinion of the American sociologist Lloyd Warner an “index” of the class or stratum is made up of such traits as the occupation, sources of income, place and type of residence. Other authors list cultural standard, participation in social life, religious denomination, moral virtues 370 and even pronunciation among the attributes typifying a stratum. The majority of these attributes are not associated with any class distinctions, but may be typical of people belonging to quite different classes. For instance, neither occupation and source of income, nor the cultural level can characterise the essence of social classes or indicate their place in society, or their historical role, though they may identify a person as belonging to a certain class. None of them in isolation or jointly can, however, characterise the essence of social classes.

p It is easy to see that, while proposing diverse criteria for dividing people into social groups, bourgeois sociologists turn a blind eye to the attributes that really do determine society’s class structure. This is how they try to conceal the class contradictions in capitalist society and reduce them to petty professional and commonplace distinctions among people, thus distracting the working people’s attention from the causes of their being exploited by the owners of the means of production.

p The theory of “social mobility”, widely publicised by bourgeois sociologists, serves the same ends. “Social mobility" means the opportunity for some individuals and groups of people to move from one social status to another. Two types of mobility-horizontal and vertical-are distinguished. The first is associated with changes in people’s social status within the same social stratum, and the second with the individual’s movement up or down the “social ladder”. The 371 worker’s changing a job in one plant for the same job in another is an example of horizontal mobility, while the promotion of a worker to an engineer or an office employee to manager are examples of vertical mobility.

p According to bourgeois sociologists, social mobility, particularly vertical mobility, makes the class structure of society flexible and mobile, thus precluding the class struggle. The latter, they claim, is becoming superfluous since every individual dissatisfied with his social status may change it and move to a higher social category. In contemporary Britain, writes Lord Beaverbrook, for example, “no bar now prevents poverty rising to the heights of wealth and power".  [371•1  “In an open society,” says Joyce Hertzler, “the position of the members of a given stratum or class may be moved up or down during their own lifetimes by their achievement of class role essentials or lack of them. Such a system does not place categorical limitations on the person with respect to his class position. Vertical mobility is not merely permissive; it is a right, and may be quite general.”  [371•2 

p It is true that the individual in capitalist society does have thg formalAight to move from one class to another, from one social group to another, since there is no law to stop him. In reality. however, the worker cannot becpnip 372 (no matter how hard he works and what he may achieve), since the wage he gets is nothing but the value of his labour power sold to the capitalist. No matter how the wage may vary in amount, it is always supposed to reproduce this power and can never turn into capital.

The rare instances when individual proletarians do become bourgeois occur not as a consequence of tendencies typical of the social status of the working class, or as a consequence of objective laws governing the functioning and development of capitalist society, but due to some exceptional circumstances. The social status of the working class and the laws of the capitalist mode of production determine the continuous and extended reproduction of the proletariat, and, at the same time, the aggravation of its contradictions with the bourgeoisie, expressed in the intensification of the class struggle.