Capital of the 21st Century: From the Proletariat and Bourgeoisie to the Precariat and the Oligarchic-Bureaucratic Nomenklatura?

Abstract

The article presents the research on the social and class structure of modern society from the positions of the Post-Soviet School of Critical Marxism. It is shown that late capitalism is characterised by the active formation of inter-class and intra-class layers. The article reveals the contradictions of the ‘creative class’. The ‘creative class’ is divided into (1) the people who are employed in the creatosphere and give rise to the phenomena of culture and the creative qualities of human beings and (2) those who ‘creatively’ produce useless goods. Then it is further divided into people employed in the (1) public and (2) commercial sectors. The author introduces the term ‘the socialiat’ to characterise the public-sector workers who comprise a protoclass within the creative class, shows the core and periphery of it, and provide the analysis of the precariat as the alter ego of the socialiat.