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Ded ranks, flung up by the capitalist wheel of fortune, while established names sink without trace. One reason for this is that wealth and property under capitalism asbume a multiplicity of forms, all liable to fluctuation and decline. Landed, industrial, commercial, and finance property each tend to have a different social foundation, so making it difficult for any group based upon one type of property to prevent the rise of new groups based upon a different type. This is a condition markedly different from agrarian societ¡r in which land is virtually the only form of productive wealth, thereby enabling the same families to monopolize power over long periods of time.

The duty of the state would úe to set up conditions to ensure that class succession went to the gifted and déserving, on the grounds that only this of ineq-uality has any proipect of capturing the affection of-system alr the people, incluáing the réasi rewarded. This moral programme opposes itseù not only to ãr collectivist criteria of closure but also to the socialist alternative of the classless society with its_implicit promise of doing away with closure in all its many guises. "Àer,sible in exclusionary closvre per se, provided that it is grounded in a genuine and uncom_ promising individualism and not in the spurioris version that masks the ignoble purpose of class reproduction.

Alternative forms of closure to cultural or productive rt capital may be just as effective in bringing about class formation and rt political domination. Two obvious examples here would be the il exclusionary powers exercised by the communist party apparatus in socialist states, and the legally supported exclusion oi bhcks by whitesrrnder theapørtheid system. It would be stretching the concept beyond all recognition to suggest that communist part¡r membership or a white skin should also be treated as forms of prôpeity by rrirtue oÌ 59 l Social closure as exclusion Marxism and class theory their 'owners'.