John Urry - Capital, Labour and the Middle Classes (RLE Social Theory)

ROUTLEDGE LIBRARY EDITIONS: SOCIAL THEORY

Volume 7

CAPITAL, LABOUR AND THE MIDDLE CLASSES

CAPITAL, LABOUR AND THE MIDDLE CLASSES

NICHOLAS ABERCROMBIE AND JOHN URRY

First published in 1983

This edition first published in 2015

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1983 Nicholas Abercrombie and John Urry

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ISBN: 978-0-415-72731-0 (Set)

eISBN: 978-1-315-76997-4 (Set)

ISBN: 978-1-138-78223-5 (Volume 7)

eISBN: 978-1-315-76374-3 (Volume 7)

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Capital, Labour and the Middle Classes

NICHOLAS ABERCROMBIE JOHN URRY

Nicholas Abercrombie and John Urry, 1983
This book is copyright under the Berne Convention. No reproduction without permission. All rights reserved.

George Allen & Unwin (Publishers) Ltd,
40 Museum Street, London WC1A 1LU, UK

George Allen & Unwin (Publishers) Ltd,
Park Lane, Hemel Hempstead, Herts HP2 4TE, UK

Allen & Unwin, Inc.,
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George Allen & Unwin Australia Pty Ltd,
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First published in 1983

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Abercrombie, Nicholas

Capital, labour and the middle classes. (Controversies in sociology; 15)

Bibliography: p.

Includes index.

1. Middle classes. 2. Proletariat 3. Social classes.

I. Urry, John. II. Title III. Series.

HT684.A23 1983 305.55 83-3830

ISBN 0-04-301145-4

ISBN 0-04-301146-2 Pbk

Set in 10 on 11 point Times by Red Lion Setters, London, WC1 and printed in Great Britain by Billing and Sons Ltd, London and Worcester

We are very grateful to Stephen Hill, Roger King, Scott Lash, John Trevitt and Alan Warde for their comments on earlier drafts of this book, and to the Sociology Department at Lancaster University for more general encouragement and inspiration. We are also indebted to Maeve Conolly, Wendy Francis and Heather Salt for struggling and re-struggling with the manuscript and eventually turning it into typescript.

We are also grateful to the following for permission to reprint tabular material: Macmillan Publishers Ltd., for , reprinted from J. Gershuny, After Industrial Society.

In this book we shall consider how to analyse one of the most intractable issues in contemporary sociology: what is the class position of that class or classes which is or are in some sense intermediate between labour and capital? We shall survey most of the major recent contributions to such an analysis in the first part of the book; and in the second we shall discuss certain issues raised by this literature in further detail. We do not presume to solve all of these issues here but we do think that we make certain advances in three areas: first, in analysing the differentiation between what we will term the service class and deskilled white-collar workers; secondly, in considering the crucial significance of knowledge, science and education for the constitution of such classes; and thirdly, in investigating some of the important social effects of the development of such classes in modern capitalism. Overall, we believe that classes are to be viewed as entities possessing causal powers and that sociological investigation has to examine the interdependence between these different social forces which possess such powers. We think that much class analysis, which involves the classification of individuals and groups, is relatively less important than analysing the forms of interdependence and struggle, both between classes and between other distinctive social forces considering, in other words, the respective causal powers of the entities under investigation.

We shall also argue that there is something distinctive about the middle classes within contemporary capitalism and that it is therefore incorrect to treat the contemporary middle classes as direct descendants of the eighteenth- or nineteenth-century variants. Thus, when the Rev. Thomas Gisborne first employed the term in 1785 he used it to refer to the propertied and largely entrepreneurial class located between landowners on the one hand, and urban-industrial workers and agricultural labourers on the other, in a society undergoing transition (Bradley, 1975). Modern day uses of the middle class vary considerably (see we shall in fact suggest that neither of the important middle classes is strictly speaking in the middle, and only one is to be viewed as a class.

THE CHANGING COMPOSITION OF WHITE-COLLAR OCCUPATIONS

The phenomenon that has provoked sociological interest in the middle classes has been the growth of white-collar occupations (see Table 1.1). The most noticeable shift in the period 191171 was the steep decline in classes 57 (manual workers) and the growth of foremen and the three white-collar categories clerks, employers and managers, and professionals. Over the years 191171, classes 57 lost over 21 per cent of the total employed population, made up of 6.5 per cent to professionals, over 2 per cent to managers and employers, 9 per cent to clerks, and over 2.5 per cent to foremen. The white-collar categories themselves did not all gain equally. The higher professional group more than tripled in size, managers rather more than doubled, while the size of the employer group declined. The rate of growth of white-collar occupations also varied over time. The growth in the clerical grade, for example, was at its highest in the years 191121, while the higher professional category increased most quickly between 1951 and 1971 (see Routh, 1980, p. 8).

For both men and women there was a shift out of manual work into white-collar occupations. However, the movement out of manual work was greater for women (30 per cent) than for men (16 per cent). Significantly, for women, clerical work was disproportionately the recipient of the outflow from manual work; indeed, the proportion of men employed as clerks hardly increased between 1911 and 1971. As far as the other categories of non-manual work are concerned, the increase in male managers, and higher and lower professionals, was considerably greater than for their female equivalents.