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Class, status and party in modern Britain: some recent interpretations, marxist and marxisant

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

John H. Goldthorpe
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European Journal of Sociology / Archives Européennes de Sociologie , Volume 13 , Issue 2 , November 1972 , pp. 342 - 372
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Copyright © Archives Européenes de Sociology 1972

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References

* Frankel, H., Capitalist Society and Modern Sociology (London, Lawrence and Wishart, 1970)Google Scholar.

** Blackburn, Robin and Cockburn, Alexander (eds.), The Incompatibles: Trade Union Militancy and the Consensus and Student Power (London, Penguin Books and New Left Review, 1967 and 1969)Google Scholar; Miliband, Ralph and Saville, John (eds.), The Socialist Register 1970 (London, Merlin Press, 1970)Google Scholar; Harris, Nigel and Palmer, John (eds.), World Crisis: Essays in Revolutionary Socialism (London, Hutchinson, 1971)Google Scholar.

*** Hindess, Barry, The Decline of Working Class Politics (London, MacGibbon and Kee, 1971)Google Scholar; Parkin, Frank, Class Inequality and Political Order (London, MacGibbon and Kee, 1971)Google Scholar; Banks, J. A., Marxist Sociology in Action (London, Faber and Faber, 1970)Google Scholar. It should be said that professional social scientists—that is, teachers in University social science departments—also figure prominently among contributors to the New Left Collections, representing about a third of the total number.

(1) See Capitalist Society and Modern Sociology, chs. IV and VII especially, and Blackburn's, Robin essay, The Unequal Society, in The Incompatibles, pp. 15–55Google Scholar. See the latter's A Brief Guide to Bourgeois Ideology in Student Pozver, pp. 163–213. Frankel's attacks on sociology are scattered throughout his book although in fact, as regards Great Britain, the writers whose views he is chiefly concerned to refute are not sociologists at all but rather right-wing Labour politicians and publicists such as John Strachey, C.A.R. Crosland and Doualso glas Jay. At one point, it should be said, Frankel does briefly, and rather incongruously, acknowledge the existence of a radical—though narrowly empirical—tradition in British sociology (p. 71).

(2) Meade, James, Efficiency, Equality and the Ownership of Property (London, Allen and Unwin, 1964)Google Scholar.

(3) For example, Lydall, H. F. and Tipping, D. G., The Distribution of Personal Wealth in Britain, Bulletin of the Oxford Institute of Statistics, 02, 1961, 83–104Google Scholar; Harbury, C. D., Inheritance and the Distribution of Personal Wealth, Economic Journal, LXII (1962), 845–868CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and a series of reports in The Economist during 1966.

(4) See, for example, the footnote references to the first two items cited in n.1 above.

(5) Class Inequality and Political Order, p. 18. Parkin in fact refers to, and quotes, as expressing his own position, the basic theoretical argument on this point to be found in Blau, P. M. and Duncan, O. D., The American Occupational Structure (New York, Wiley, 1967)Google Scholar.

(6) Class Inequality and Political pp. 26–28.

(7) This limitation has been much more evident in academic political science in the last two decades than in an earlier period when the question of whether or not socialism was compatible with constitutionalism had some centrality, notably as a result of the writings of Cole and Laski.

(8) Saville, John, Britain: prospects for the seventies, The Socialist Register, 1970, p. 210Google Scholar. This would also be the position of the ‘old’ Marxist Left (cf. Frankel p. 279) although its expression is often muted on account of the present Communist Party strategy of being prepared to work through the Parliamentary system.

(9) In the collections under consideration here, see especially Foot, Paul, Parliamentary Socialism, in World Crisis, pp. 76–114Google Scholar. An earlier, much longer and more sophisticated treatment is to be found in Perry Anderson's Problems of Socialist Strategy, in Anderson, Perry and Blackburn, Robin (eds.), Towards Socialism (London, Fontana, 1965), pp. 221–290Google Scholar.

(10) This line of attack in fact co-exists with the former one in the essay by Foot already cited. See also Arblaster, Anthony, Student Militancy and the Collapse of Reformism, The Socialist Register, 1900, pp. 139–164Google Scholar. Although Arblaster rejects the idea of ‘betrayal’ of the Party by rightwing Labour leaders as an explanation of the ‘collapse’, it is still not clear whether he regards this as resulting from the anti-socialist orientation of the party Leadership as a whole, plus the lack of political will of the parliamentary Left (as seems to be the case of pp. 148–150); or from the fact that a reformist road to socialism does not, and cannot exist (as seems to be the case on pp. 157–158).

(11) Parkin, , Class Inequality and Political Order, pp. 103–121Google Scholar. Both Parkin's choice of statistics and his uncritical use of them are open to objections. But it seems very likely that a more discriminating use of the available material would as a matter of fact lead to much the same conclusions as his.

(12) Ibid. pp. 122–128. For a further analysis of the origins and consequences of the splitting apart of welfare policies and attempts to reduce class inequalities, see Kincaid, Jim, The Decline of the Welfare State, in World Crisis, pp. 35–75Google Scholar.

(13) See, e.g. Hamilton, R. F., Affluence and the French Worker in the Fourth Republic (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1967)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and, for Britain, Great, Goldthorpe, John H., Lockwood, David, Bechhofer, Frank and Platt, Jennifer, The Affluent Worker it, the Class Structure (London, Cambridge University Press, 1969)Google Scholar.

(14) Class Inequality and Political Order, pp. 128–136.

(15) Ibid. pp. 183–185. One says this is ‘apparently’ so since at this point Parkin chooses to express himself by implication rather than directly. His most explicit suggestion—“that socialist egalitarianism is not readily compatible with a pluralist political order of the classic western type”—arises out of a discussion of Eastern European stratification systems and reform movements. He goes on to say a little later that “the Social Democrats have committed themselves to a political system which gives rights to the dominant class to prevent wherever possible the redistributton of class advantages. This commitment has proved to be at the expense of traditional socialist goals and principles relating to equality”.

(16) Thus, Hindess argues, “as far as the effects on the rank-and-file are concerned, it is not the fact of oligarchy, or the process of becoming oligarchic that matters, but the specific organisational form that the oligarchic party takes and the greater or lesser extent to which this form of organisation is compatible with the interests and concerns of different sections of the party membership”. The Decline of Working Class Politics, p. 44.

(17) Ibid. ch. V esp. Hindess also notes (pp. 117–118) how this process has been further advanced by the fact that the more populist local leaders once active in working class areas tended to operate in a highly personalised fashion, to the detriment of party organisation in these areas. This then allowed the wards in middle class areas to consolidate their hold over the city party as a whole, and facilitated the eventual replacement of the old-style leaders by a new generation from very different backgrounds. It should be said that in general Hindess'es analyses are based on data from areas and wards and thus—as he points out—what, strictly speaking, is being claimed is the growing dominance of activists from middle class parts of the city. These include some working class individuals but ones whose political concerns seem closer to those of their co-residents than to those of working class people living in predominantly working class areas.

(18) Ibid. pp. 22–23.

(19) Ibid. pp. 171 et sqq. These new developments could, Hindess believes, go in various different directions, radical and ‘participatory’ or authoritarian. Oddly, Hindess has little to say here specifically about the implications for working class industrial action; or, in general, about relations at the local level between the Labour Party and the unions.

(20) Ibid. p. 13. Hindess seeks specifically to ‘relativise’ Michels by claiming (p. 41) that his argument in fact only relates to the impossibility of democratic organisation within a capitalist society and in the case of parties which are not genuinely revolutionary—i.e. which are prepared, like social democratic parties, to follow to some extent the dominant norms and procedures of their capitalist environment.

(21) Ibid. pp. 168–171.

(22) Posing the issue in this way does not, of course, imply that the sociological analyst cannot be concerned with both the subjectively intended meanings of action and their unintended consequences. Problems only arise if these unintended consequences are taken as being guided by some hidden force into specific historical outcomes.

(23) These are chiefly problems—and ones which Hindess recognises—of reconstructing the history of the city party.

(24) A useful critical review is provided by Wolpe, H., Some Problems Concerning. Revolutionary Consciousness, in The Socialist Register 1970, pp. 251–280Google Scholar.

(25) In this respect, the work of David Lockwood has probably been of greatest influence in the British context. See The Blackcoated Worker: a Study in Class Consciousness (London, Allen and Unwin, 1958)Google Scholar and also: Sources of Variation in Working Class Images of Society, Sociological Review, XIV (1966), 249–267Google Scholar.

(26) See Capitalist Society and Modern Sociology, pp. 184–208; and for New Left views, Cliff, Tony, The Class Struggle in Britain, in World Crisis, pp. 225–250Google Scholar, and Blackburn, The Unequal Society.

(27) The phrase is taken from Blackburn, , Brief Guide to Bourgeois Ideology, op. cit. p. 213Google Scholar.

(28) See, e.g., the preliminary findings from a large scale study of white-collar workers reported in Weir, D.T.H. and Mercer, D., Orientations to Work among White-Collar Workers, Proceedings of the Social Science Research Council Conference on Social Stratification and Industrial Relations (London, S.S.R.C., 1969), pp. 112–145Google Scholar; and, in the same collection, Weddeeburn, Dorothy, The Conditions of Employment of Manual and Nonmanual Workers, pp. 4–30Google Scholar; also Wedderburn and Christine Craig, Relative Deprivation in Work, paper presented to the British Association for the Advancement of Science, Section N, 1969; for recent research findings on the sociology of work in advanced industries, see Cotgrove, Stephen, Dunham, Jack and Vamplew, Clive, The Nylon Spinners (London, Allen and Unwin, 1971)Google Scholar; Cotgrove, and Vamplew, , Technology, Class and Politics: the case of the Process Workers, Sociology, VI (1972), 169–185CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Wedderburn, and Crompton, , Workers' Attitudes and Technology (London, Cambridge University Press, 1972)Google Scholar.

(29) Class Inequality and Political Order, pp. 28–34. The idea of growing congruence between class and status is, of course, a usual feature of liberal interpretations of stratification in the context of “the logic of industrialism”. For a critical discussion, see Goldthorpe, John H., Social Stratification in Industrial Society in Halmos, P. (ed.), The Development of Industrial Society (Keele 1964)Google Scholar, Sociological Review Monographs n° 8, pp. 97–122; also Archer, Margaret Scotford and Giner, Salvador, Social Stratification in Europe, in Archer, and Giner, (eds.), Contemporary Europe: Class, Status and Power (London, Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1971), pp. 1–59Google Scholar; Parkin (p. 41 esp.) appears to set far too much store on “occupational prestige” ratings. He remarks that such data tell us nothing about the sources of prestige, only about how its factual distribution is perceived. But there is strong evidence to indicate that what in fact is being perceived is not ‘prestige’ or ‘status’in any sociologically meaningful sense at all but rather something in the nature of the general desirability of occupations in terms chiefly of their associated levels of rewards and qualifications. Thus, a high correlation with income, education, etc. is neither surprising nor informative. See Goldthorpe, and Hope, K., Occupational Grading and Occupational Prestige, in Hope, K. (ed.), The Analysis of Social Mobility: methods and approaches (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1972), pp. 19–79Google Scholar.

(30) For discussion of the relevant issues and detailed case studies, see Prandy, Kenneth, Professional Employees (London, Faber, 1965)Google Scholar, and Blackburn, R. M., Union Character and Social Class (London, Batsford, 1967)Google Scholar; also Blackburn, , Prandy, and Stewart, A., White-Collar Associations:organisational character and employee involvement, Proceedings of the S.S.R.C. Conference on Social Stratification and Industrial Relations, pp. 86–102Google Scholar. Blackburn brings out particularly clearly, in the case of banking, how a problem exists of reconciling the relatively ‘muted’ character of unionism interthat is required to achieve a high level of membership with the militancy necessary to defend and further members'interests as effectively as possible.

(31) Parkin claims that the ‘rough’ and ‘respectable’ distinction is one that pertains to the ‘reputational status’ of particular persons, not to status understood as an attribute of positions and collectivities. But this would seem inaccurate. Studies that have been concerned with this distinction have indicated that it is applied not only, or even primarily, to individuals in an inter personal context but most often to groups of families and usually to ones associated with particular housing areas. Cf. the research reviewed in Klein, J., Samples from English Cultures (London, Routledge, 1965), I, ch. IVCrossRefGoogle Scholar.

(32) The distinction between a ‘mainstream’ and a ‘marginal’ working class has, of course, been established for some time in American sociological literature. For a recent discussion, see Leggett, John C., Class, Race and Labor (New York, Oxford University Press, 1968)Google Scholar. Interestingly enough, American writers of left wing sympathies, such as Leggett, emphasise the heterogeneity of the working class in opposing the idea that American workers are integrated en bloc into the established order. The marginal working class is seen as being still a repository of class consciousness and class-oriented political ideology. But it has to be recognised that on this argument the class conscious labour movement becomes a minority one, often in opposition to mainstream labour, and that, at least in the American case, its degree of class consciousness is questionable. Leggett, in fact, most often speaks of “status group conflict’ and “status group politics”, usefully differentiating the latter from “status politics” in the sense of Bell, (op. cit. pp. 30–31)Google Scholar. Leggett's approach is thus valuable in revealing as a misleading half-truth the frequently made assertion that the concept of status stratification entails a harmonious or ‘consensus’ model of society. To be sure, the notion of status implies some degree of consensus on what symbolises social superiority or inferiority, and in an ideal-typical status order all claims to superiority would be accepted as legitimate and met with deference by those regarded as inferior. But in any actual society this state of perfect integration is only approximated, and, quite apart from individual status striving, possibilities always to a greater or lesser degree exist for conflict between collectivities which are in effect disputing each others' status claims and seeking to improve their own status situa tions even while, of course, ipso facto accepting the principle of a status hierarchy and its ‘ground rules’.

(33) See, for example, Cliff, The Class Struggle in Britain, and Blackburn, The Unequal Society. Frankel, while elsewhere appearing more aware of the complexities of the matter, at one point expressly underwrites Blackburn's position. See Capitalist Society and Modern Sociology, p. 256.

(34) As notably in Wolpe, Some Problems Concerning Revolutionary Consciousness, in which the determination of the ‘response’ to objective conditions is taken not as self-evident and automatic but rather as posing quite fundamental theoretical and practical issues.

(35) See Allen, V. L., The Paradox of Militancy, in The Incompatibles, pp. 241–262 and p. 249 esp.Google Scholar; also, for a fuller statement of his position, Militant Trade Unionism (London, Merlin Press, 1966), pp. 24–30 esp.Google Scholar, from which the second quotation in the text is taken.

(36) See Some Problems Concerning Revolutionary Consciousness, pp. 270–273 and note 12 esp. The notion of “symbolic universe” is to be found in Berger, Peter and Luckmann, Thomas, The Social Construction of Reality (London, Allen Lane, 1967), Part II, ch. 11 espGoogle Scholar. In a very similar sense, one may add, Parkin uses the term ‘system of meaning’, in Class Inequality and Political Order, ch. 111.

(37) See, respectively, Anderson, , Origins of the Present Crisis in Towards Socialism, p. 30Google Scholar, and Parkin, , Class Inequality and Political Order, p. 83Google Scholar.

(38) Mann, Michael, The Social Cohesion of Liberal Democracy, American Sociological Review, XXXV (1970), 423–439CrossRefGoogle Scholar. While Mann agrees that some ‘indoctrination’ occurs, or is at least attempted, he notes that its limits must be carefully recognised. For example, studies of political socialisation via the school indicate that although dominant values are thus generally supported, this is done indirectly rather than directly (e.g. by the playing down of class or other forms of social conflict); and moreover that this socialisation is of very doubtful efficacy so far as any ‘carry over’ into adult life is concerned, when work rather than school becomes the individual's everyday reality.

(39) Class Ineqality and Political Order, ch. 111.

(40) Cf. Mann, The Social Cohesion of Liberal Democracy. But Mann, oddly, regards the notion of pragmatic acceptance as a ‘Marxist’ one (p. 437) and does not distinguish different possible bases of such acceptance, as suggested in the text.

(41) In other words, one is led to call into question the tendency, apparent in some versions of New Left thinking, to assume that the ‘objective’ conditions for the formation of revolutionary working class consciousness are more or less realised in modern capitalist society, and that what remains to be achieved is essentially the creation of the appropriate ‘subjective’ conditions through action at the ‘superstructural’ or ‘cultural’ level.

(42) Westergaard, J. H., The Rediscovery of the Cash Nexus, in The Socialist Register 1970, pp. 111–138Google Scholar. The works discussed are Runciman, W. G., Relative Deprivation and Social Justice (London, Routledge, 1966)Google Scholar; McKenzie, R. T. and Silver, A., Angels in Marble: working class conservatives in urban England (London, Heinemann, 1968)Google Scholar; and Goldthorpe et al., The Affluent Worker in the Class Structure, and the two earlier volumes in the Affluent Worker series.

(43) In this connection, one may note that once the Postscript to Westergaard's essay, with its qualifications to his remarks on the Affluent Worker studies, has been taken into account, his stance on “the future of the working class” appears to differ only in questions of degree and the judgement of probabilities from that taken in the final volume of these studies which pace Westergaard, does not represent “a definite shift of interpretation” on the authors' part. See, for instance, the conclusion of their first report on their research findings, The Affluent Worker and the Thesis of Embourgeoisement: some preliminary research findings, Sociology, I (1967), 11–31Google Scholar.

(44) The Rediscovery of the Cash Nexus, p. 133. As he recognises, Westergaard's position is here again very close to that of The Affluent Worker in the Class Structure (see pp. 189–195)—certainly much closer than it is to that of New Left critics of democratic socialism earlier referred to.

(45) In reply, Marxists may assert, correctly, that academic sociological studies of class relations tend similarly to be unintegrated with any wider historical and economic anelysis. But such a tuquoque argument neglects the point that the understanding of societies as what Anderson would call “total historic structures” is part of the Marxist programme, whereas many sociologists would believe that, as a matter either of principle or of present capabilities, such ‘totalising’ knowledge is beyond reach, and that sociological analysis must be carried on within a range of historicial, economic and other ‘givens’.

(46) See Kidron, Michael, Capitalism, latest stage, in World Crisis, pp. 204–221Google Scholar, and also for a fuller, but still disappointingly underdeveloped statement of his position, Western Capitalism Since the War 2 (London, Penguin, 1971)Google Scholar; Cliff, Tony, The Class Struggle in Britain, and also The Employers' Challenge: productivity deals and how to fight them (London, Pluto Press, 1970)Google Scholar; Rowthorn, Bob, Unions and the Economy, in The Incompatibles, pp. 210–227Google Scholar; and Tony Topham, New Types of Bargaining, Ibid. pp. 133–159.

(47) Marxist Sociology in Action, chs 11 and 111.

(48) See Ibid. pp. 21–23, 110–111, 145–148 esp.

(49) Ibid. pp. 178–179.

(50) In this connection, it is interesting to note the arguments recently advanced by Marxist scholars to the effect that in Marx's own work his mature political economy of capitalism is not in fact as closely integrated with the notion of the proletarian mission as is often supposed, See, e.g., Nicolaus, Martin, Proletariat and Middle Class in Marx: Hegelian choreography and the capitalist dialectic, Studies on the Left, 01 1967, 22–49Google Scholar.

(51) Birnbaum, Norman, The Crisis in Marxist Sociology, Social Research, XXXV (1968), 348–380.Google Scholar

(52) Merton, R. K., Social Theory and Social Structure, rev. ed. (Glencoe, Free Press, 1957), p. 99Google Scholar. For an argument in explicit support of this use of Marxism, see Soares, G. A. D., Marxism as a General Sociological Orientation, British Journal of Sociology (1968), 365–374CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

(53) Gouldner, A. W., The Coming Crisis of Western Sociology (London, Heinemann, 1971), pp. 483–484Google Scholar.

(54) Consider, for example, simply the body of research findings and of economic and sociological analysis relating to the classical Marxist theory of class formation and action under a maturing capitalist economy. Can it be seriously supposed that the ‘debate with Parsons’, as conducted, say, by Gouldner on the level of “domain assumptions”, “personal realities” and the like, has been or is ever likely to be of remotely comparable value?