Table Of ContentPELICAN BOOKS
CLASS IN A CAPITALIST SOCIETY
John Westergaard was born in London in 1927 of Danish parents,
and educated at a secondary school in Denmark and at the London
School of Economics. From 1951 to 1955 he was a research assistant,
on social aspects of town planning and urban development, at
University College, London. He then lectured in sociology at the
London School of Economics from 1956 to 1975 - with a year as a
visiting teacher at Brown University, U.S.A. - and was also associ-
ated during these years with the Centre for Urban Studies at
University College, London. Since 1975 he has been Professor of
Sociological Studies at Sheffield University. In addition he has been
a member of committees of the Social Science Research Council
and the Council for National Academic Awards and is an executive
committee member of the Council for Academic Freedom and
Democracy. Professor Westergaard has researched and published
mainly in the fields of contemporary class structure and of urban
problems.
Henrietta Resler was a research assistant and part-time lecturer
in the School of Sociology at the University of New South Wales,
Australia from 1970 to 1971. She was then a research assistant at
the London School of Economics and part-time lecturer at Brune!
University from 1972 to 1973. In 1974 she was a lecturer in the
Department of Social Administration at the London School of
Economics before she returned to Australia, where she is at present a
lecturer in the School of Sociology, University of New South Wales.
CLASS IN A
CAPITALIST SOCIETY
A Study of Contemporary Britain
JOHN WESTERGAARD
HENRIETTA RESLER
PENGUIN BOOKS
Penguin Bools Ltd, Harmondsworth, Middlesex) England
Penguin Books, 623 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10022, U.S.A.
Penguin Books Australia Ltd, Ringwood, Victoria, Australia
Penguin Books Canada Ltd, 2801 John Street, Markham, Ontario, Canada L3R IB4
Penguin Books (NX.) Ltd, 182-190 Wairau Road, Auckland 10, New Zealand
First published by Heinemann Educational Books 1975
Published in Pelican Books 1976
Reprinted 1977, 1979, 1980
Copyright © John Westergaard and Henrietta Rosier, 1975
All rights reserved
Made and printed in Great Britain
by Richard Clay (The Chaucer Press) Ltd,
Bungay, Suffolk
Set in Monotype Times
Except in the United States of America,
this book is sold subject to the condition
that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise,
be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated
without the publisher's prior consent in any form of
binding or cover other than that in which it is
published and without a similar condition
including this condition being imposed
on the subsequent purchaser
To Mike and Sue,
Wanda, Eric and Inger
Contents
Preface ix
List of tables xiii
Part One: Themes and Issues 1
Part Two: Inequalities of Condition and Security
1 Affluence and inequality 31
2 Trends in income inequality 38
3 Determinants of income inequality 52
4 Taxation and welfare provision 58
5 The labour market: occupational earnings 72
6 Women in the labour market 97
7 Capital: the ownership of property 107
8 Conclusions and implications 118
Part Three: Inequality of Power
1 Power -anonymous, routine and institutionalized 141
2 Private business and ‘managerialism’ 150
3 The state and the public services 171
4 State economic activity and private business 198
5 The state and labour relations 222
6 The state and divisions within business 237
7 Power and pluralism 244
Part Four: Inequalities of Opportunity
1 Social mobility: significance and measurement 279
2 Patterns of social mobility 297
3 Trends of mobility and educational opportunity 314
viii CLASS IN A CAPITALIST SOCIETY
Part Five: Acquiescence and Dissent: Responses to Inequality
1 From class in itself to class for itself: main lines of
division 343
2 The challenge from labour: inhibitions and prospects 381
Index of Subjects 422
Index of Names 428
Preface
The theme of this book is class inequality - its nature and extent in
present-day Britain; its roots; the conflicts and tensions to which it
gives rise, both overt and latent; the prospects of change to which
such conflict inay point. We have drawn on a wide range of sources
in our attempt to map the patterns of class division. But the book is
not, and is not intended to be, a catalogue of facts. Nor could it be so.
Facts themselves can be selected, and put together to make some co-
herent sense, only within a perspective which sets criteria of relevance.
Our perspective is Marxist. And our aim has been to present an
interpretation of the class structure of Britain - as an example of
contemporary Western capitalist societies - which is both Marxist
and anchored in empirical fact.
One difficulty about writing such a book is that the record ofevents
inevitably lags behind the events themselves. The point applies in
one way especially to matters for which statistical documentation is
relevant. We have made considerable use, for example, of statistics
from official sources. But these are generally published well after the
latest dates to which they refer. For the most part, moreover, they
cannot be used simply as they stand, but need a good deal of subse-
quent work to be understood and presented in an appropriate form:
continuous revision to take account of every addition to the record is
not a practical proposition. Where we have drawn on quantitative
material published by government offices at regular intervals, there-
fore, we have in the main been able to trace trends up to around 1971 ;
sometimes not so far, rarely much beyond then. When the sources
are special inquiries, whether undertaken by government dr by others,
we have often had to go further back for the most recent relevant
information. Yet on these scores the lapse of time between events and
publication matters relatively little, since the statistical evidence
