 The concept of class is central to the Marxist tradition. Of course, many non-Marxist thinkers—including Ricardo, Weber, Durkheim, and Bourdieu—also utilise some idea of class, but it is typically conceptualised differently, and allocated a less important role in their social theory. For Marxists, class is standardly defined in an “objective” manner, and designates the social position occupied by individuals within a network of relations of production. Indeed, an objective account is necessary if certain Marxist claims about the ways in which class conditions and shapes “consciousness, culture, or politics” are to be sustained (G. Cohen 1978: 73). And class, so understood, typically plays a crucial explanatory part in Marxist accounts of, variously: the character of, and development between, historical epochs; the institutional form, and behaviour, of the state; and many of the beliefs, and actions, of individual and collective agents.