The short happy life of the affluent working class: Consumption, debt and Embourgeoisement in the Age of Credit

Abstract

This article reconsiders the debate over the alleged embourgeoisement of the British working classes after Second World War. ‘Bourgeois affluence and proletarian apathy’ examines why members of the New Left concluded that a ‘bourgeois’ proletariat was incapable of revolutionary activity. ‘Washing machines and proletarian persistence’ takes up the midcentury social scientific literature with an eye for the ways in which empirical research falsified key elements of that thesis. ‘Visible consumption and invisible debt’ draws attention to the ways in which both liberal advocates for and Marxist critics of embourgeoisement overemphasized spending and underemphasized debt. Finally, I close by calling attention to some of the anecdotal and empirical evidence that suggests household indebtedness perpetuates working-class dependence upon capital.