Comment on Goldthorpe

Abstract

John Goldthorpe and Gordon Marshall recently set out a programmatic restatement of the intellectual power and potential of class analysis (Goldthorpe and Marshall 1992), and Goldthorpe has now turned from class analysis to class theory. His aim is to develop an explanatory theory, the value of which can be assessed through empirical research. The context for his theoretical work is the contrast that he has long recognized between the Marxist and the liberal theories of class. These are theories, respectively, of the logic of capitalism and the logic of industrialism (see also Giddens 1976; Scott 1985), and Goldthorpe has consistently taken them as the critical touchstones for the development of his own theoretical and empirical work (Goldthorpe 1964). The two theories, he suggests, have many features in common, and many that set them apart. The crucial feature that they share, however, is, in Goldthorpe's opinion, that they both highlight non-existent processes. Marxist theories of class formation in capitalist societies, he argues, are rendered irrelevant by the failure of a revolutionary working class to emerge. The liberal theory of class decomposition in industrial societies has been undermined by the failure of class relations to wither away. The revolutionary working class and the withering away of class are chimera, and theories that set out to explain them are, of course, of little value. Research findings, Goldthorpe argues, amply demonstrate that the realities of capitalist industrialism run counter to the expectations of Marxist and liberal theories: collective action by self-conscious social classes has been highly restricted, class differentials have persisted, relative mobility chances have remained fairly constant, and class-party linkages have endured. I am not sure that I would go all the way with Goldthorpe in his assessment of Marxist and liberal theories. The problems of these theories are, at the same time, much deeper and less integrally linked to the specific theses that Goldthorpe has identified. Marxist class theory, for example, is concerned with far more than the issue of class formation, and its other tenets do not stand or fall with claims that are made about proletarian class consciousness. Marxist theory is concerned, among other things, with the structure of property ownership and its relation to executive powers, the nature and consequences of skill differentiation, the relationship of economic processes to the exercise of political authority, and so on. In many of