CHANGES IN CLASS STRUCTURE
These issues should be examined with a critical framework between Marx and Modern Marxists or Weber and modern Weberian studies.
THE WORKING CLASSES
Marx's ideas that the working class would become homogonized has been challenged in three ways. Embourgeoisement, means that the working class became middle class. This was a 1950's view when rising living standards was accompanied by three conservative election victories. The new middle class were studied by Goldthorpe and Lockwood and they noted that incomes had gone up, but they hadn't changed their attitudes nor been accepted by the existing middle-class. Embourgeoisement was revived in the 80's and '90's when the right won four elections.
A fragmented working class, opposite predicted by Marx. Divisions of gender, ethnicity, skills, job security etc. Not a new idea. Rose in the '60's described an 'ideal type' of working class which included only 25% of manual workers.
The underclass, term used by the press in different ways. US uses it to mean inner-city poor, often black of Spanish speaking. Some British Weberian sociologists have used it to describe ethnic minorities but now it more often describes the benefit dependent living on run-down estates with high levels of unemployment. The left see the underclass in low-paid insecure work. The new right say define them in moral terms and see their inferior culture as a cause of poverty.
THE MIDDLE CLASSES
Proletarianization means that office and other white collar workers are being depressed into the working class. The middle class is a threat to Marxist theories. Proletarianization is caused by worsening pay, the deskilling of office work and more female workers. Lockwook (1958 & 1989) tested the Marxist idea that routine office workers were falsely conscious proletarians. He used Weber\'s distinction between class and status to show that office workers remained better in terms of market situation, work situation and status. The main difference was the greater security enjoyed by office workers. He concluded the gap was narrowing and the clerks were a new middle class.
A Fragmented Middle Class. The gap between the middle and working classes sis no longer so great or even clear. Goldthorpe examined the origins of parents and the life chances of children.
Marxist model is one working class with a reserve army of labour beneath it, and a ruling class. Weberian is a property class, middle below, working below and underclass at the bottom.