Class analyses are both very old and quite new. This essay argues that Marx contributed a new class definition and analysis focused on the production, appropriation, and distribution of surplus labor. Yet, that innovative, new class analysis was lost by being dissolved into either pre-Marxian conceptualizations of class in terms of property and power or later social theories in which class was determined by people's consciousness and self-identifications. In this context, the essay pays special attention to the recent work of E.O. Wright. Class analysis based on the surplus labor definition of class is compared and contrasted with Wright's differently based definition and analysis.
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