 Wright’s best-known early contribution to class analysis—his model of “contradictory class locations”—is preoccupied with theorising the class character of “the middle class” within a Marxist framework. The context here is the seeming tension between modern historical developments and the classical Marxist idea of capitalist society as increasingly composed of two hostile camps (capitalists and proletarians) with any third class (the “petit-bourgeoisie”) as “transitional” in nature (on its way to being squeezed out by the other two). That claim about a pervasive tendency towards class polarisation would appear to conflict with the huge growth of professional, managerial, technical, and bureaucratic positions, in both modern corporations and modern states (Wright 1985: 7–9). The resulting “problem of the middle class” raises issues, not only about the accuracy of received Marxist accounts of class structure, but also about the sociological plausibility of their associated accounts of class formation, class consciousness, and class struggle (since these newer groups do not obviously share the interests and attitudes of traditional proletarians).