The movie “Parasite” was a hit, but why are so few people interested in class issues in real life? The sociologist Erik Olin Wright has written an illuminating book on the question.
The claim that we live in a class society is hardly contradicted as strongly today as it was during the Cold War. In the social sciences, certainly a bubble of its own, the thesis is now even more of a mainstream view. Since Thomas Frank (“What’s the Matter with Kansas?”), Didier Eribon (“Return to Reims”) in France and Oliver Nachtwey (“The Descent Society”) caused a sensation in America, academic discourse has once again focused on categories such as class and capitalism instead of class and social market economy.