The New Middle Class and the Labour Process

Abstract

This chapter will explore the debates within the literature on class around what Braverman (1974) called ‘intermediate employees’ and what we call ‘middle groupings’. In particular we will see how these debates conceptualise the labour process dimensions of class relations within the division of labour of advanced capitalist economies. Skill, so central to labour process theory, has also become a focal concern in theories of the class structure which pay attention to the divisive significance of knowledge-based qualifications or credentials. We argue strongly against the assumptions of these theories and in favour of a broad definition of the collective, working class, which contains within it diverse types of wage workers. But our argument is not simply about constructing or defending a model of the class structure. We strongly reject the classificatory myopia of much of the class literature, in particular the competitive wish to identify and categorise groups into closed class positions. We favour stressing the relational nature of class and importance of allowing the structure and context of the network of social relations, within which class identities are formed, to take dominance over the urge to isolate and classify individuals and groups into discrete categories.