Class in Capitalist Society. A Study of Contemporary Britain PDF
Preview Class in Capitalist Society. A Study of Contemporary Britain
PELICAN BOOKS CLASS IN A CAPITALIST SOCIETY John Westergaard was born in London in 1927 of Danish parents, and educated at a secondary school in Denmark and at the London School of Economics. From 1951 to 1955 he was a research assistant, on social aspects of town planning and urban development, at University College, London. He then lectured in sociology at the London School of Economics from 1956 to 1975 - with a year as a visiting teacher at Brown University, U.S.A. - and was also associ- ated during these years with the Centre for Urban Studies at University College, London. Since 1975 he has been Professor of Sociological Studies at Sheffield University. In addition he has been a member of committees of the Social Science Research Council and the Council for National Academic Awards and is an executive committee member of the Council for Academic Freedom and Democracy. Professor Westergaard has researched and published mainly in the fields of contemporary class structure and of urban problems. Henrietta Resler was a research assistant and part-time lecturer in the School of Sociology at the University of New South Wales, Australia from 1970 to 1971. She was then a research assistant at the London School of Economics and part-time lecturer at Brune! University from 1972 to 1973. In 1974 she was a lecturer in the Department of Social Administration at the London School of Economics before she returned to Australia, where she is at present a lecturer in the School of Sociology, University of New South Wales. CLASS IN A CAPITALIST SOCIETY A Study of Contemporary Britain JOHN WESTERGAARD HENRIETTA RESLER PENGUIN BOOKS Penguin Bools Ltd, Harmondsworth, Middlesex) England Penguin Books, 623 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10022, U.S.A. Penguin Books Australia Ltd, Ringwood, Victoria, Australia Penguin Books Canada Ltd, 2801 John Street, Markham, Ontario, Canada L3R IB4 Penguin Books (NX.) Ltd, 182-190 Wairau Road, Auckland 10, New Zealand First published by Heinemann Educational Books 1975 Published in Pelican Books 1976 Reprinted 1977, 1979, 1980 Copyright © John Westergaard and Henrietta Rosier, 1975 All rights reserved Made and printed in Great Britain by Richard Clay (The Chaucer Press) Ltd, Bungay, Suffolk Set in Monotype Times Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser To Mike and Sue, Wanda, Eric and Inger Contents Preface ix List of tables xiii Part One: Themes and Issues 1 Part Two: Inequalities of Condition and Security 1 Affluence and inequality 31 2 Trends in income inequality 38 3 Determinants of income inequality 52 4 Taxation and welfare provision 58 5 The labour market: occupational earnings 72 6 Women in the labour market 97 7 Capital: the ownership of property 107 8 Conclusions and implications 118 Part Three: Inequality of Power 1 Power -anonymous, routine and institutionalized 141 2 Private business and ‘managerialism’ 150 3 The state and the public services 171 4 State economic activity and private business 198 5 The state and labour relations 222 6 The state and divisions within business 237 7 Power and pluralism 244 Part Four: Inequalities of Opportunity 1 Social mobility: significance and measurement 279 2 Patterns of social mobility 297 3 Trends of mobility and educational opportunity 314 viii CLASS IN A CAPITALIST SOCIETY Part Five: Acquiescence and Dissent: Responses to Inequality 1 From class in itself to class for itself: main lines of division 343 2 The challenge from labour: inhibitions and prospects 381 Index of Subjects 422 Index of Names 428 Preface The theme of this book is class inequality - its nature and extent in present-day Britain; its roots; the conflicts and tensions to which it gives rise, both overt and latent; the prospects of change to which such conflict inay point. We have drawn on a wide range of sources in our attempt to map the patterns of class division. But the book is not, and is not intended to be, a catalogue of facts. Nor could it be so. Facts themselves can be selected, and put together to make some co- herent sense, only within a perspective which sets criteria of relevance. Our perspective is Marxist. And our aim has been to present an interpretation of the class structure of Britain - as an example of contemporary Western capitalist societies - which is both Marxist and anchored in empirical fact. One difficulty about writing such a book is that the record ofevents inevitably lags behind the events themselves. The point applies in one way especially to matters for which statistical documentation is relevant. We have made considerable use, for example, of statistics from official sources. But these are generally published well after the latest dates to which they refer. For the most part, moreover, they cannot be used simply as they stand, but need a good deal of subse- quent work to be understood and presented in an appropriate form: continuous revision to take account of every addition to the record is not a practical proposition. Where we have drawn on quantitative material published by government offices at regular intervals, there- fore, we have in the main been able to trace trends up to around 1971 ; sometimes not so far, rarely much beyond then. When the sources are special inquiries, whether undertaken by government dr by others, we have often had to go further back for the most recent relevant information. Yet on these scores the lapse of time between events and publication matters relatively little, since the statistical evidence
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