Classes, Citizenship and Inequality

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The Working Class in Capitalist Countries: Conceptual Traps and Political Opportunity Structures

Helmuth Berking

To write about the quotidian state of the art of the ‘working class’ seems to be a rather prothean, if not wholly, impossible task. Millions of words have been written conceptualising the ‘working’ class. So far, however, no consensus has been reached about the analytical value or the politically mobilising potential of this term. The working class is a relational term at the centre of a universe of discourse, a sub-category of ‘class-analysis’ and ‘stratification theories’, a structural feature and a social relation of modern society, deeply embedded in the production and reproduction of social inequalities. Any attempt at interpreting ...