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Unit 5: Forms of Social Stratification

office-holders. A few low status caste groups like mails also rose to become rich peasants. Several Notes
factors including the spread of canal irrigation, co-operatives, legislations, favourable political
milieu, etc. brought about socio-economic and political transformation of the peasantry having
implications for change in the rural as well as the urban social stratification (Chithelen, 1985).
The Indian Bourgeoisie/Capitalist Class

The bourgeoisie/capitalist class is characterized by the following features (Hamilton and
Hirszowicz, 1987) :
(i) concentration and private ownership of the means of production;
(ii) a free market for the sale and purchase of commodities and services;
(iii) formally free labour sold in the market as a commodity;
(iv) the pursuit of profits by entrepreneurs for wages; and
(v) the division of society into two opposed and antagonistic classes as a consequence of the
exploitation and alienation of the labour from the means of production.
The property-owning, entrepreneurial, capitalist-employer has emerged from a variety of sources
including the decline of the feudal system. Along with the bourgeoisie the capitalist system has
produced a working class. Marx’s theory of the capitalist society is the theory of the commodity-
producing society. Worker is treated as a commodity (Bottomore,1985). Though Marx refers to
bour–geoisie and the proletariat as the main antagonistic classes, he realizes the transition of
society and the emergent role of the intermediate stratum situated between the workers and the
industrial capitalists. He also realizes the increasing role of the managerial and ministerial classes
and trade unions as a result of the transition from capitalism to socialism.
There is differentiation between and within the bourgeoisie, the petty-bourgeoisie and the working
class. Class inequality is not simply ‘economistic’. However, economic groupings in the form of
classes and domination of one class over the other are found in all societies whether they are
industrially more advanced or less advanced (Giddens,1987; Godelier, 1978). Capitalist society
has undergone the following changes over a period of its long journey (Hamilton and Hirszowicz,
1987) :
1. Capital and industry are today controlled by professional salaried management due to growth
of large joint-stock enterprises.
2. The class structure has diversified. Middle classes have grown enormously, particularly in the
developing countries like India due to the new state apparatus.
3. The material standards of workers have improved considerably all over the world.
4. Power of the working class has enhanced greatly due to trade unions, civil liberty movements
and democratization.
Planning in India, prior to her independence, aimed at over-throw of the colonial state structure
and its replacement by an independent indigenous capitalist state structure (Mukherjee, 1978).
The big capitalists, a large number of small traders and merchants actively supported the national
movement opposing thereby the colonialist mercantilism and capitalism (Chandra etal., 1988).
The Indian capitalist class had the following features :
1. The Indian capitalists had largely an independent capital base and did not act as junior partners
of foreign capital or as compradors.
2. The capitalist class on the whole was not tied up in a subservient position with pro-imperialist
feudal interests, either economically or politically.
3. It grew rapidly between 1914 and 1947, a period close to India’s independence.
Rudolph and Rudolph (1987), among other features of the Indian State, list ‘the marginality of
class politics’ as a major development in the post-1947 period. Capital and labour play a marginal

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