Class Hybrids: From Medieval Europe to Silicon Valley

Abstract

Within the medieval guild workshop, small masters operated as class hybrids that personified a distinct economic form. Marx's Capital shows how these masters served as a thread stitching together the historical break that transformed Europe into an industrialized capitalist society. Despite their role in this transition, the proliferation of such hybrids has been undertheorized, even though the coexistence of different kinds of class structures is quite possible in today's corporations. Capitalist class structures may combine in the same enterprise with slave, feudal, ancient, or even communist class structures. To further understand such sites, this paper offers a basic class theory of hybrids. An immediate political importance arises from the possibility that collective-based employment may often develop only in a hybrid. As a result, a new theory and politics of transition beyond capitalism emerges.