Beyond status signalling: on the primacy of economy and ideology in class formation

Hanno Sauer defines class as socially constructed scarcity generated by competition for status through hard-to-fake intangible signals and concludes that class inequality, although unjust, is practically ineradicable. This reply examines two premises of his account and then proposes an alternative foundation. First, economic resources do not stand on a par with cultural recognition, social contacts, power and prestige, since they constitute a necessary, though not sufficient, precondition of all of these factors. Second, the zero-sum thesis holds only to a limited extent, because intangible status resources can be scaled and divided and because quantitative changes alter the quality of a top position, so that social systems expand and generate new strata. Building on these two results, the reply argues that every ascription of class must be locatable within a matrix of economy and ideology, understood respectively as material resources and as values that cannot be captured in monetary terms. Each of these coordinates is necessary in itself and sufficient only in combination with the other, and all further distinguishing factors find their place within them. Situational changes of status, which Sauer regards as justified, accordingly occur only between positions that lie close together in this matrix. In all of this, the argument proceeds descriptively and does not assess class membership normatively.