Radical Values and Radical Action

This critical note is a response to a paper by Moorhouse and Chamberlain1 which should be regarded as an important contribution to the debate about the nature and degree of relative disaffection of the working class from the existing socio-economic formation. The position expressed in the paper, and which Moorhouse and Chamberlain attempt to support with data from a survey of council house tenants, some of whom were on rent strike, is that previous researchers have underestimated the proportion of workers who hold radical values. Moreover, they maintain that ' . . the main source of radical ideas is the position of workers as workers in capitalist society. The constraints on the lives of the majority remains the deepest, and ever replenished, well of radical responses and ideas'.2 I do not want to question this view as such, although I want to comment upon a corollary of this thesis, that the future potential for working class radical action does not depend upon the intervention of the Labour Party. The authors' argument is essentially with Mann,3 Parkin4 and Goldthorpe et al.5 over this secondary issue and I do not wish to enter this debate as such. Instead I want to comment on what Moorhouse and Chamberlain seem to regard as the unproblematic nature of the relationship between radical values and radical action. This is a particularly important issue in the light of the authors' evident concern with the possibility of sporadic working class militancy developing into 'class based radical action'.6 My comments will centre around these issues. Firstly, I want to suggest that caution should still be exercised in drawing general conclusions about the extent and nature of disaffection from the existing socio-economic formation on the basis of the data presented by Moorhouse and Chamberlain. Secondly, I want to argue that radical values do not automatically support radical action, and following that, thirdly, to suggest that a more detailed examination of the bases of radical action is required

Action (physics) · Epistemology · Sociology · Labor Movements and Unions · Philosophy · Political and Economic history of UK and US · Social Policy and Reform Studies

• The Affluent worker in the class structure

  John H Goldthorpe•The Affluent worker in the class…•1969

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• Class inequality and political order

  Frank Parkin•Class inequality and political…•1971

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• The Social Cohesion of Liberal Democracy

  Michael Mann•Classes, Power, and Conflict•1982

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• The Affluent Worker in the Class Structure

  Gordon Fellman, John H Goldthorpe et al.•American Sociological Review•1971

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• Lower Class Attitudes to Property

  Open Access•H F Moorhouse, C W Chamberlain et al.•Sociology•1974

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