Proletarianization in the British Class Structure

Bibliographic Data

ID5632014
AuthorsGordon Marshall, David Rose (0000-0003-3690-9913)
Year1988
Volume39
Issue4
Pages498
Publication date1988-12-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueBritish Journal of Sociology (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0007-1315 • E-ISSN: 1468-4446
PublisherJSTOR (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.2307/590498
OpenAlexW2329791565
LanguageEN
Citations received16

Four different versions of the currently fashionable thesis of proletarianization in the class structure are identified. The central propositions of the argument are then tested empirically with reference to the class mobility experiences of a representative sample of men and women in Britain. An appropriate shift share analysis confirms that, though there are some differences between the sexes, a net upgrading rather than a degrading of the class structure has occurred. On these grounds the thesis of proletarian. . * * * * . . . lZatlOn 1S reJected as lt app les ln t nlS country. Just as the thesis of embourgeoisement formed the lynchpin for debates in class analysis during the affluent years ofthe early 1960s so has the argument about proletarianization of the class structure come to hold centre-stage during the recessionary 1 980s. Although one process is primafacie the inverse of the other there are several close similarities in the arguments themselves. Both were taken up seriously by sociologists after first having been popularized by non-academics or by academics writing in semi-popular format for a non-specialist audience. Both, indeed, were already public issues by the time they entered the arena of sociological discussion. In the former case the various folk-theories were organized about the commonly-held belief that Western societies were witnessing the demise of the class system and emergence of a mass consumer society. Similarly, the harbinger of sociological debates about proletarianization was a popular belief that economic problems in the advanced industrial societies had created a newly-impoverished class of subemployed and unemployed marginal workers and welfare dependents, and a working class whose traditional skills and work-practices had been undermined by the organizational imperatives of standardized and automated production. The British Journal of Sociology Volume XXXIX Number 4 This content downloaded from 157.55.39.116 on Sun, 18 Sep 2016 06:31:29 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms Proletarianization in the British class structure? 499 Because they were rooted in such diffuse and often polemical origins, subsequent sociological discussions of embourgeoisement and proletarianization were generally multifarious and mostly confused, more or less from the outset. It was not until the late 1960s, and the publication of the AfWuent Worker Study, that the theoretical foundations of the embourgeoisement thesis were clarified and its core propositions subjected to systematic empirical scrutiny. A similar adjudication in the ongoing debate about proletarianization has yet to be attempted. The present paper offers a modest contribution towards that end. It reports some of the findings from a recent national survey of class processes in Britain. These seem to the authors to bear directly on the issue of proletarianization and so help to clarify the parameters of the debate. They also suggest that, while there are many matters yet to be resolved, the central premise of the thesis is clearly flawed: the changing British class structure does not reflect a process of so-called . . . pro etarlanlzatlon

Class (philosophy · Political science · Proletarianization · Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science · Social and Cultural Dynamics