Books

CLASS, STATUS AND POWER: A READER IN SOCIAL STRATIFICATION. Edited by Reinhard Bendix and Seymour Lipset. The Free Press. Glencoe, Illinois. 725 pp. $6.

Though designed as a college text, this book is so excellently done that it will interest many people outside the academy. Under three major headings (theories of social stratification; studies of the problem in America; research on the problem in other countries) the editors present selections from about sixty authors, ranging from Aristotle to Lloyd Warner. Since it is neither possible nor desirable to deal with each, or many, of the essays in a review, I want to devote most of my space to an article especially prepared for this volume by Bendix and Lipset. Pointing out that the views of Marx and Engels on social class are nowhere succinctly developed by them, the editors offer their own synthesis in an essay entitled “Karl Marx’ Theory of Social Classes.” It is a splendid effor...