In Search of the Subject of Change

• Author: Emelio Betances
• Published date: 01 January 2019
• Date: 01 January 2019
• DOI: 10.1177/0094582X18781348
• Subject Matter: Book Reviews

LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES, Issue 224, Vol. 46 No. 1, January 2019, 289–292

DOI: 10.1177/0094582X18781348

© 2018 Latin American Perspectives

289

Book Review

In Search of the Subject of Change

by

Emelio Betances

Carlos Julio Báez Evertsz Desigualdad y clases sociales. Madrid: Betania, 2016.

Great books enable us to reflect on the subject matter under study and lead to the

reading of others that expand our understanding and deepen our knowledge. They also

make us think about the state of our profession and the way it has been shaped by open

debates. More important, great works make us revisit issues and theories studied in the

recent past and take a fresh look at topics we thought we understood. This is what the

Dominican-born sociologist Carlos Julio Báez Evertsz delivers in his monumental

Desigualdad y clases sociales, an interesting, timely, and comprehensive critique of theo-

ries of social classes.

The central argument of this book is that class remains pertinent to the analysis of

contemporary societies. Báez reviews the debates in the social sciences on class to dem-

onstrate that bourgeois social scientists have sought to either deny or obscure the cen-

trality of the concept of class to prevent it from shedding light on the process of social

change. While he assesses the works of classic Marxists such as Vladimir Lenin, Rosa

Luxemburg, George Lukacs, and Antonio Gramsci, the central part of his work focuses

on Marx’s ideas on social class and the more recent theories of neo-Marxism, cultural

studies, and postmodernism. Drawing on Marx, the classic Marxists, and the neo-Marx-

ists, he proposes the concept of the collective worker, “the social majority that consti-

tutes an important component of the economically active and inactive population, the

intellectual and manual workers, industry, services, professional, communicators,

teachers at all levels, health and public services, women, precarious workers, unem-

ployed, retired, self-employed, underclass, etc.” (673). In contrast to the neo-Marxists,

he excludes from the concept of the collective worker members of the petty bourgeoisie

or middle class who have managerial or supervisory roles in the global functions of

capital and therefore are in a “contradictory class location” in relation to ownership of

the means of production.

The book opens (Chapters 1 and 2) with an investigation of social inequality, review-

ing the most important works on the subject (Pareto, Piketty, Atkinson, Milanovic, and

others) and warning (72–73) that

the struggle to reduce inequality means touching the interest of the superclass that con-

trols a great portion of the world’s wealth. This is a road paved with obstacles because

demanding equality is, in fact, proposing a radical organization of social relations . . . a

long march with advances and setbacks . . . with conflicts not only between the haves

and have nots but also with those who refuse to accept the changes necessary to redis-

tribute wealth and income.

Emelio Betances is a professor of sociology at Gettysburg College and has been a participating

editor of Latin American Perspectives for over 25 years. He is the author of State and Society in the

Dominican Republic (1995), The Catholic Church and Power Politics in Latin America (2007), and En

busca de la ciudadania: Los movimientos sociales y la democratización en la República dominicana (2016).

781348LAPXXX10.1177/0094582X18781348Latin American PerspectivesBetances / Book Review

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