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 1950’s 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 WeberiansGoldthorpe and Lockwood attempted to test the embourgeiosement theory in a study of semi skilled workers in Luton in the 1960’s • 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 Go;dthorpe 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 1990’s 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 dividedand 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 doesn’t 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