WORKING CLASS IN MODERN BRITAIN

Working Class in Modern Britain

Working Class in Modern Britain

Working class

Working class or proletariat means the group of workers from the industrial revolution provides basically the labour factor in production and in return receives a salary or payment, without individual owners of the means of production. The term is, thus, contrasted capitalist class or social sector that accounts for capital.

In a sociological sense, once vaguer and more restricted also means working class, the working group of industrial employees. This range is the difference from other groups of workers such as farmers, the slaves, the self-employed workers or service employees. This meaning of the term is equivalent to the term "blue collar workers".

The term working class began to be used during the second half of the nineteenth century who first gained prominence in the socio-economic writings of Karl Marx and Frederick Engels. Later, sociologists redefined the term and used it with slightly different senses that have remained in use until today, but evolve in shade and general use. Its use is common within Marxism, anarchism, socialism, communism and syndicalism and is avoided, ignored or marginalized in the terminology of the political right and in the institutional left. The term, working class, is widely used in both sociological and economic studies and in everyday conversation, distinguishing in turn between "blue collar workers" and "white collar workers" to refer to workers and employees respectively (Blackledge 2011, 101).

Social class

Social classes are a common, allocated in relation to the property and the social division of labour. In the social-class structure, society distinguished basic (whose existence follows directly from the ruling in the socio-economic structure of economic relations) and non-core classes (the remnants of the previous classes in the new formation or incipient grades), as well as various segments of society.

The concept of social class began to develop the scientists of England and France in the XVII - XIX centuries. They dealt with such antagonistic social groups, the rich-poor workers - capitalists, owners, non owners. French historians F. Guizot, and O. Thierry showed antagonism of class interests and the inevitability of conflict. British and French political economists A. Smith and D. Ricardo revealed the internal structure of classes. The division into antagonistic (uncompromisingly fighting among themselves), social class was first deployed in the most complete and described by Karl Marx (Draper 1978, 123).

Marxist definition

All the Marxist definition of the class has three main characteristics: Classes are understood not just as the existing "above" or "below" the other classes; they are likely to always define in terms of their social relationships to other classes. Respectively, the names of the classes - not "high", "medium" and "lower" and "capitalists", "workers", "feudal" and "serfs (Sidney 2004, 13)."

Social relationships that define the class, always analyzed primarily in terms of social rather than technical organization of economic relations. Class relations are defined primarily by social relations in the production process, rather than social relations in the process of exchange. But even among Marxists there is no agreement as to ...