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Is the Marxian concept of class a useful explanatory tool for understanding inequalities in West European societies? One of the main problems in providing an answer to the above question is that, there appears to be no single, definitive Marxian concept of class. Marx and Engels, within one page of the Manifesto of the Communist Party, identify - 'a bourgeois class', which they subdivide into the manufacturing bourgeoisie or 'industrial capitalists', and 'the other portions of the bourgeoisie, the landlord, the shopkeeper, the pawnbroker etc.,' (1848/1978:479). Also, within the same page, they describe, 'a class of labourers' or 'proletarians', as well as, 'The lower strata of the middle class - the small tradespeople, shopkeepers, and retired tradesmen generally, ........' (my italics). Later, in Capital Vol.III (edited by Engels), only three major classes are listed, 'The owners merely of labour-power, owners of capital, and land-owners, whose respective sources of income are wages, profit and ground rent, in other...

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