Current Patterns of Class Stratification in Israel

This chapter presents a class analysis of Israeli society inspired by Marx, Gramsci, and Bourdieu. We suggest that since the transition to neoliberalism, two major class blocs have emerged in Israel: a ruling class comprising global and local capitalists, and a serving professional class, and the popular classes, characterized by their heterogeneity, within which we can distinguish a popular middle class, a skilled working class, and a marginal one. This “new service class” has replaced the upper middle class that served the state and is characterized by its contract with capital. Part of this class is directly contracted with capital owners, steering in economic fields. Others serve capital ends while being employed in senior positions in the public service or the culture field (media and academia) and maintain a tacit contract with capital. The “new service class” forms relations of subalternity with the popular classes, exercising capital’s determining power over them. Yet, these relations do not completely deprive the subaltern of their voice and agency. The popular middle classes are characterized by a “multiple stratification” on an ethnonational, professional, or gender basis and a fierce competition for assets (economic, social, and cultural capital). Ashkenazim, Mizrahim, Arabs, and others are distributed unevenly along the popular classes. These ethnic distinctions might exist tacitly through a distinct “self” and communal “common sense.” Moreover, individuation plays a significant role in processes of class consolidation, paradoxically strengthening them.