The Working Class

1
The Working Class

• www.educationforum.co.uk

2
Life Chances and Culture

• Low wages, less job security, harsher conditions,
  less autonomy, poorer life chances, lower life
  expectancy.
• Some sociologists e.g. Lockwood suggest that such
  an experience creates a distinctive working class
  sub culture (norms values) in opposition to
  societal norms and values
• Lockwood called this sub culture proletarian
  traditionalism

3
Features of Proletarian Traditionalism

• Belief in collectivism not individualism
• Living for the moment unable to defer
  gratification
• Fatalism (attitude to life)
• Class loyalty and strong trade union
  identification see class and politics as them
  and us
• Collective leisure activities work and leisure
  very distinct
• Patriarchical family structures segregated
  conjugal roles male head of household
• A sub culture in direct opposition to middle
  class aspirational individualism

4
What has happened to the Working class in the
last 40 years?

• Global economic change has seen western countries
  deindustrilaise loss of primary and secondary
  industries loss of traditional working class
  jobs
• 45 decrease in manual jobs
• 45 increase in service sector jobs
• Traditional working class under threat some
  have fallen off the hierarchy altogether and
  become underclass others have moved into the
  service sector and achieved some social mobility

5
Embourgeiosement

• Put forward by Right wing theorists in the 1950s
  as an explanation for changes in working class
  Zweig, Kerr, Bernard
• Claimed that the new workers in service sector
  were actually bourgeois middle class in
  values and attitudeds as well as income
• Britain was becoming a nations of aspirational
  individualists collectivist and socialist ideas
  were either dying or dead

6
Affluent Worker Thesis

• Two Weberians Goldthorpe and Lockwood attempted
  to test the embourgeiosement theory in a study of
  semi skilled workers in Luton in the 1960s
• They concluded
• New workers had higher wages than traditional
  working class
• Still had inferior conditions and market
  situation compared to middle class
• Were less likely to identify with trade unions
  but still had a collectivist attitude
• Their collectivism was instrumental rather than
  solidaristic they believed in taking collective
  action to improve their pay and conditions rather
  than out of belief or principle
• Affluent workers leisure had become privatised
  and home centred
• They still voted labour but instrumentally rather
  than out of principled commitment
• Godthorpe and Lockwood claimed there was a new
  privatised and instrumentalist working class in
  the stratification system located between the
  traditional working class and the middle class

7
More Recent Studies

• Devine returned to Luton in the 1990s to examine
  what had happened to the affluent workers
• Reached similar conclusions to Goldthorpe and
  Lockwood but noted that some of these affluent
  workers were now voting Conservative

8
Theoretical Perspectives on Working Class Marxism

• Early Marxism predicted an increasingly conscious
  working class. Workers immiserised by the
  profit system longer hours, harsher conditions,
  low pay would eventually force the working class
  to wake up to or become conscious of their
  position within capitalism
• They would start with violence and protest but
  eventually become aware of the need to be
  political active and revolutionary
• Objective class consciousness would result in a
  Revolution to abolish capitalism and replace it
  with communism

9
Weberians (Goldthorpe and Lockwood)

• Divisions within working class limits the nature
  and extent of class consciousness
• Affluent worker studies show traditional working
  class values either in decline or changing
• Working class as a whole is divided and
  disempowered

10
Neo Marxist (Gramsci, Althusser, Blackburn and
Mann

• Working class still exploited and capable of
  flashes of consciousness BUT shows
  inconsistencies and contradictions in their views
  because of the ideological power of the
  bourgeoisie.
• Mass media, religion, education combine to
  confuse and undermine class consciousness
• Severe exploitation has been exported to
  developing countries by global capitalism
  working class is globally divided

11
The Underclass

• New Right theorists produced a cultural theory to
  explain the phenomenon of the underclass
• Charles Murray the underclass is defined by
  its own behaviours and choices
• Never employed and doesnt want to work
• Dependent on benefits undermines functionality of
  stratification system by getting something for
  nothing
• Criminal and deviant
• Rejects societies values/norms
• Dysfunctional socialises new generation into
  its own values
• Single parent and highly dysfunctional households
• The NR see the solution to the underclass to be
  reducing benefits, making work pay reducing the
  role of the State to reduce dependency

12
Criticisms

• Structuralists like Marxists point out the
  structural causes of poverty and unemployment
  lack of jobs not personal choice
• Giddens identifies the economic causes of the
  underclass in the growth of a secondary labour
  market of low skill, temp, short term ,casual,
  zero hours employment employers use immigrants,
  women and illegal's because they are cheaper and
  more easily exploited
• Marxists call the Underclass the
  lumpenproletariat and claim it is functional
  for capitalism. A reserve army of workers can be
  called on at any time to break strikes or drive
  down wages