Decomposing the Intellectuals' Class Power: Conversion of Cultural Capital to Income, Hungary, 1986

Konrád and Szelényi posed a powerful critique of state socialism with their formulation of the new class theory suggesting that intellectuals were “on the road to class power.” Using a Weberian reading of Bourdieu, we specify empirically one aspect of that critique and examine the statistical effects of cultural capital on income inequalities in Hungary, 1986. While confirming the independent effects of both “education” and “habitus” — potential and realized components of cultural capital — our analysis suggests that certification obtained through formal education is the strongest cultural capital predictor of incomes.