The Rediscovery of the Cash Nexus

Abstract

The focus of debate and research on British class structure has shifted significantly over the past five or ten years. The guiding assumption of much social commentary in the 1950s was the thesis of progressive "classlessness". In company with many other western countries, it was believed, Britain was experiencing a gradual erosion of class-linked inequalities in the conditions of life; a diffusion of power, if not among the population at large, then among a plurality of rival elites representing diverse (but not totally opposed) interests; a steadily closer approximation to a state of affairs in which remaining inequalities neither coincided to produce a recognizable class structure, nor were sufficiently significant to engender divisive social conflict. These were assumptions, not proven facts. The evidence to contradict them, or at least to question their indiscriminate acceptance, was considerable already in the 1950s. But they provided nevertheless the starting point, the commonly accepted premises, of a great deal of social commentary at the time-including that of many professional social scientists.