Working-Class Authoritarianism
A Critique of Lipset
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 5632112 |
|---|---|
| Authors | M Miller (0000-0003-1783-889X), S M Miller (0000-0002-6114-7829), Frank Riessman |
| Year | 1961 |
| Volume | 12 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 263 |
| Publication date | 1961-09-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | British Journal of Sociology (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0007-1315 • E-ISSN: 1468-4446 |
| Publisher | JSTOR (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.2307/587819 |
| OpenAlex | W2325277886 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 28 |
t nHE GRADUAL REALIZATION that extremist and intolerant movements in modern society are more likely to be _ based on the lower classes than on the middle and upper classes has posed a tragic dilemma for those intellectuals of the democratic left who once believed the proletariat necessarily to be a force for liberty, racial eqllality, and social progress.' Thus, Lipset opens the provocative chapter on 'Working-Class Authoritarianism' in his recent book.l Since I9I4, he asserts, workers are no longer 'The backbone of the fight for greater political democracy, religious freedom, minority rights, and international peace . . .' For, 'Both evidence and theory suggest . . . that the lower strata are relatively more authoritarian [than the middle class].' Workers may support economic advance but '.. . the strllggle for freedom is not a simple variant of the economic class strllggle.' Wherever workers have a choice of a simple or more complex alternatives they will choose the former. While Lipset's acute analysis is a corrective of starry-eyed views of a 'noble proletariat', we believe that it is misleading in its conclusion that workers are basically authoritarian.2 Lipset bases his 'authoritarian' interpretation of the worker on evidence drawn from a variety of sources: opinion polls indicating that workers are less prone to see the need for a number of political parties; scales such as the Fascism (F) scale, showing that workers are more authoritarian, intolerant and tough-minded; observations indicating that workers' approach to religion is more intense and chiliastic; voting behaviour illustrating workers' support for extremist political groups. Underlying the Lipset thesis are a number of questionable assumptions. The yardstick or standard of democracy which Lipset employs throughout in evaluating workers' behaviour is particularly congenial to the modern middle-class liberal but it is not the only possible way of conceptualizing democracy. We believe workers' authoritarian tendencies are overestimated while their democratic potential is 1lnder-valued 263
Authoritarianism · Class (philosophy · Democracy · Economics · Epistemology · Political science · Politics · Positive economics · Sociology · Working class · Labor Movements and Unions · Law · Philosophy
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| Unique citing works | 28 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,5 |
| Citation span | 1970 - 2025 (56) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 28 |