Author: Adrián Piva
Processes of class structuring and social stratification in Argentina (1955 - 2010)
The aim of the paper is to make a first approach to the study of the transformation of evolution trends of structural class relations and social stratification processes in Argentina since 1976. For this we will make a comparison between trends of evolution of significant dimensions for both processes between 1955 - 1975 and 1976 - 2016 from national censuses of population and economic censuses.
We understand the class as a social relationship that, through the salary relationship, confronts people as character masks of capital and labour, that is, as specimens of class. It is, at this level of analysis, an objective social relationship (independent of the consciousness, identity and will of the people) and antagonistic. Capitalist development tends to increasingly confront individuals as class specimens. And as individuals, their social conditions of existence are presented them as "structure", a functional context that is autonomous and endowed with objectivity. In this sense, we are talking about structural class relations.
However, simultaneously, the capital / labor contradiction unequally go through individuals, producing processes of social differentiation that sociology tended to identify through differential life opportunities of individuals determined by their market situation. Such processes of differentiation configure maps of social stratification.
The distinction becomes relevant insofar as both processes are the basis of class formation / class disorganization processes in the struggles for the definition of the field of social confrontation, determining structural capacities and structural restrictions for collective action by workers.
Our hypothesis is that the capitalist offensive and restructuring process initiated in 1976 produced a profound transformation of the trends of evolution of the structural relations of class and the processes of social stratification. These transformations are characterized by the acceleration of the processes of structuring relations between people as objective class relations and by the simultaneous heterogeneization of workers through processes of social stratification.