The central concern of this paper is the conceptual interrelationship among “class,” “property,” and “authority”; the context is Dahrendorf's well-known critique of Marx's theory of class, wherein Dahrendorf contends that Marx erroneously specified the determinant of class, in part because of his alleged reliance on organismic analogies. After reviewing certain features of the structure of Marx's theory, the paper examines the foregoing and two related criticisms made by Dahrendorf, and concludes that the latter (1) overlooks crucial characteristics of Marx's theory, (2) engages in confused comparisons of “organism” and “society” in order to support part of his critique, (3) misrepresents Marx's usage of “property,” (4) obfuscates the concept of authority by equating it with domination, and therefore (5) constructs an alleged supersedent to Marx's theory of class that is actually grounded not in class or any other material difference but in the fabric of justifications (“ideologies,” “derivations,” etc.) that are socially provided the material differences.