Working-class Groups Research Articles

The French communist party from 1958 to 1978: Crisis and endurance

Despite its constant preaching for collaboration with the socialists, the PCF has failed to pursue this line either during the events of 1968 or during the electoral campaign of 1977/78. This resulted in electoral defeats for both parties, in mutual recriminations and in internal crises. Unlike the PS, the PCF has always succeeded in overcoming its recurrent crises. This stability is due, in our opinion, to the enduring support the communists enjoy among the working class and other groups in French society, whose socio‐economic marginality and problems of identity are reflected in the PCF's ambiguous attitude to France's political system.

The secret state

Behind President Carter's 'human rights' rhetoric lies the reality of dozens of dependent dictatorships in the Third World. Meanwhile, in the developed capitalist nations, whose leaders pride themselves on the liberty enjoyed by their citizens, new measures of social control are being introduced. In Britain the targets of these attacks include the right of citizens to know what is done in their name. The deportation from Britain of Philip Agee and Mark Hosenball and th prosecution, under the Official Secrets Act, of Crispin Aubrey, John Berry and Duncan Campbell have been part of a concerted campaign by the state to stop journalists from writing about matters of which it is determined the public should remain ignorant. By its actions the British state has focussed attention not only on official secrecy but also on the very questions it sought to hide from view — the operations of the CIA in Britain, western Europe and the Third World; the increased size of British security services and their brief to keep political activists under surveillance, and the role of Signal Intelligence (SIGINT), not only in monitoring the communist world, but in eavesdropping on the communications of many Third World countries. E.P. Thompson, the historian, here takes up two aspects thrown up by these cases. First, the secrecy that surrounds the British state and especially those agencies concerned with surveillance and covert actions at home and abroad. Secondly, he takes the left to task for failing to respond on questions of civil liberties and democratic rights in the past decade. Throughout the last two hundred years the liber tarian strand of radical and working-class groups have come together to oppose repeated attempts by the state to curb political rights. This 'nerve of outrage' is in urgent need of re-discovery. In particular, he attacks those on the left who dismiss the need for action on the grounds that all states, all police, all law are bad. And, in doing so, Thompson takes up questions which are relevant not only to Britain but to all liberal democracies.

Positivism and Revolution in Brazil's First Republic: The 1904 Revolt

On November 14, 1904, the eve of the fifteenth anniversary of the founding of the Brazilian Republic, General Silvestre Travassos, leading a corps of several hundred cadets from Rio de Janeiro's military school, fell fatally wounded before the forces loyal to the constitutional government he had pledged to overthrow. His loss came only hours after the uprising had begun, but in those early moments the revolt had already foundered. This brief armed movement climaxed nearly a year of unrest, a month of agitation and almost a week of running clashes between working-class groups and local government forces. Although the revolt continued sporadically for two days more, the death of its leader in the early hours of fighting signalled its failure.

The influence of language training on seriation of 5–6 year old children initially at different levels of descriptive competence

Among explanations of the relation of language to cognitive development Bruner, Olver & Greenfield, 1966) and Piaget (1970) provide a contrast. Bruner has held language to be the major instrument of external influences moulding thought, while Piaget views it as merely one medium which represents developing thought systems. The present work is based on the language training experiment in seriation of Sinclair‐de‐Zwart (1967). Two groups of children comparable in seriation but who were initially at different levels of competence in the appropriate use of the relevant descriptions e.g. bigger/smaller, were trained in this use and then compared for subsequent progress in seriation, immediately and two weeks later. Significant progress followed for experimental subjects which was notably more rapid among those with prior command of the descriptions (middle class children). This advance was eventually equalled by a lower working class group. These results taken together appear to suggest an interactive process uniting speech‐in‐context with cognition.

Dental conditions in high school students, Sydney, 1972

Dental examinations of 1,895 first year students of nine Sydney metropolitan State high schools were carried out in 1972. The schools were chosen from three socio-economic areas representing upper-middle, lower-middle, and working class groups. Minimal differences were shown in the prevalence of dental diseases, treatment needs, and dental practices between the upper-middle and lower-middle socio-economic groups. The working class group showed a higher prevalence of dental caries, gingivitis, and treatment needs and reported different dental health practices from the other groups.

Stress in the lives of parasuicides

A study of the nature and extent of the relationship between life stresses and parasuicides (“attempted suicide”) was carried out in Edinburgh. Subjects were 100 male parasuicides equally divided between young (under 25) and old (over 40) and between manual and non-manual groups. A similar number of individually matched controls were also used. Data was gathered on recent life events, hostility, depression and felt dissatisfaction as well as the demographic variables already mentioned. Results indicated that parasuicides had experienced far more life stresses in the year preceeding their act than had the controls and this held true for both young and old, manual and non-manual groups. Further analysis revealed that unpleasant life changing events occurred with greater frequency among the parasuicides than the controls whereas pleasant events occurred with similar frequency in both groups. Two hypotheses concerning the nature of the relationship between life stress and parasuicide were tested by comparing the groups on the frequency of occurrence of events within and beyond their control. It was found that both types of event were more common in the parasuicide than the control group thus giving support to the hypothesis that a high rate of life stress predisposes a person towards parasuicide. Only in the manual working class group was life stress related to hostility and depression, and it was suggested that this may account for some of the differential parasuicide rates between social classes. The same held true, to a lesser extent of young parasuicides as compared to old and again it was noted that young people have the higher parasuicide rates.

Comparison of the factorial structure of oral coding patterns for a middle-class and a working-class group.

The present study was designed to compare the factorial structure of oral coding patterns for a middle-class and a working-class group in terms of a Bernstein derived thesis of greater differentiation and specificity for middle-class subjects because of their ability to manipulate more of the semantic and structural resources of language. Twenty-eight indices of oral coding elaboration were obtained from 40 middle-class and 40 working-class tertiary students. Pearson Product-Moment correlations were obtained and, by using principal components factor analysis, the middle-class matrix yielded nine factors, the working-class matrix eight. By interpretation of the factor patterns and statistical comparisons using Burt's coefficient of congruence, the thesis of greater differentiation and specificity in middle-class code elaboration was sustained.

A Comparative Study of the Questions Asked by Two Groups of Seven Year Old Boys Differing in Social Class

In this study a comparison was made of the questions asked by two groups of seven year old boys differing in social class. This issue arose from the results of comparative studies of answers given by five and seven year old children and their mothers of middle class (MC) and lower working class (LWC) groups, (Robinson and Rackstraw 1972). Answers had been found to differ in line with Bernstein's ideas of the functional differences in speech in LWC and MC language use. It was expected that similar differences would be found in questions. In general the results of this study clearly indicated the expected differences. The LWC boys were weaker semantically and syntactically. These results were discussed in terms of the difference in orientation to language use and its possible influence upon motivation and cognitive development in terms of a Piagetian model, with implications relating to education.

Social class and mental disorder.

This paper reviews the literature on the relationship of social class status to the incidence and prevalence of mental disorder. For purposes of this review, social class is divided into three categories: the ‘affluent’, ‘working class’ and ‘poor’. Mental disorders referred to are: schizophrenia, manic-depressive psychosis, psychoneurosis, diseases of the senium, personality disorders and the combined category ‘mentally ill’. The general conclusion is drawn that the rate of existing mental disorder among the poor is substantially higher than among the affluent or working-class groups. This notwithstanding, low social-class status is held to be unrelated to the incidence of functional psychosis (i.e., schizophrenia and manic-depressive psychosis).

Chile's Democratic Road To Socialism

N NOVEMBER 1970, Marxist socialist Salvador Allende took office as President of Chile, vowing to bring about revolutionary change by working within, and not against, the country's constitutional democratic tradition. Through its skillful use of powerful executive prerogatives, Allende's Popular Unity (UP) government brought a major part of Chile's economy under state control. In addition, it nationalized the country's once foreign-owned copper mines, eliminated its latifundia, and secured important material benefits for popular and working-class groups.

A comparison of the factorial structure of written coding patterns for a middle-class and a working-class group.

The present study was designed to compare the factorial structure of written coding patterns for a middle-class and a working-class group. Nineteen indices of written code elaboration were correlated for two groups of 40 subjects. The resulting correlation matrices yielded six factors (middle-class) and seven factors (working-class). Four common factors emerged—Syntax, Adverbial Elaboration, Personal Reference and Uncommon Linguistic Forms. The resulting factorial patterns did not support the Bernstein socio-linguistic thesis of greater complexity of coding elaboration for middle-class subjects.

An examination of individual susceptibility to the influence of aggressive film models.

In a previous paper (Kniveton and Stephenson, 1970) we suggested that children with few interests of their own are likely to be more susceptible to the influence of filmed or television models than children with more extensive interests. However, neither we nor any other workers in this field have demonstrated that the tendency to imitate is a consistent behavioural characteristic. In fact, examination of the within-group scores for the subjects in the above-mentioned experiment reveals exceptionally large standard deviations for the amount of time spent imitating. These characterize both middle-class and working-class groups (Kniveton and Stephenson, 1972), although such groups differ consistently in their susceptibility to the filmed model used by the authors.

Residential Desegregation Potential

Abstract Assuming that desegregation is a desirable long-range goal, this paper examines the potential for reasonable progress toward that goal, using data from eleven of the twelve largest metropolitan areas in the U.S. First, a Negro working-class income group is identified as possible candidates for desegregation. Second, suburban housing costs are compared with the ability of ghetto residents to pay. Although present new suburban housing is too expensive for most working-class Negroes, neither costs of existing housing nor current income levels appear as significant restrictions on Negro suburbanization. Furthermore, existing federal housing aids can facilitate construction of suburban low and moderate income housing. Given commitment to use of existing tools, a substantial amount of desegregation can now occur within the existing suburban housing supply.

Responsibility, reciprocity, and social distance in help-giving: An experimental investigation of english social class differences

As a partial replication of an experiment with American male adolescents, an experiment was conducted with 192 white teenage volunteers from the state schools in Oxford, England. The subjects, who came from either bureaucratic middle-class or working-class families, had an opportunity to help a peer after they themselves had received great or little assistance when they were in need of help. This other person was either the same, or not the same, person they had encountered earlier and, supposedly, was from either a middle-class or a working-class background. As in the American study, the help-giving by the bureaucratic middle-class subjects was relatively unaffected by the level of assistance they had received earlier, and these boys were said to display a responsibility orientation. Unlike their American counterparts, however, the Oxford working-class boys tended to exhibit a strong reciprocity orientation in that their help-giving was greatly affected by the level of help they had gotten earlier. These reciprocity tendencies were most pronounced when the person the boys could help came from a different social-class level. It is suggested that the American group possessing the strongest reciprocity orientation (boys from entrepreneurial middle-class families) showed essentially similar behavior. Finally, the work for the dependent person did not parallel liking for him in cither the responsibility-oriented bureaucratic middle-class group or in the reciprocity-oriented working-class group.

Social Class, Linguistic Codes and Grammatical Elements

In a previous paper (Bernstein, 1962) two general types of linguistic code, elaborated and restricted, were proposed. These codes were regarded as functions of different forms of social relationships. The codes were thought to entail qualitatively different verbal planning orientations which control different modes of self-regulation and levels of cognitive behaviour. Social class differences in the use of these codes were expected. Speech samples were obtained and the hesitation phenomena analysed, from a discussion situation involving small groups of middle and working class subjects with varying I.Q. profiles. It was found that the middle-class groups used a shorter phrase length and a longer pause interval than the working-class group. These differences in the hesitation phenomena were sharper when working-class and middle-class groups, matched for intelligence on a group verbal and non-verbal test, were compared. It was considered that the members of the two class groups were oriented to qualitatively different levels of verbal planning which control lexicon and structural selections. The working-class groups were thought to be making selections from a lower level of the linguistic hierarchy; whilst the middle-class subjects irrespective of verbal I.Q. were oriented to making selections from a higher level of the hierarchy. This paper will report the analysis of the speech.

Language and Social Class

tT HAS BEEN suggested in earlier papers that associated with the | organization of particular social groups are distinct forms of spoken lanXguage.l Linguistic differences, other than dialect, occur in the normal social environment and status groups may be distinguished by their forms of speech. This diffierence is most marked where the gap between the socioeconomic levels is very great. There have been many studies of children aimed at measuring this diffierence. It is suggested that the measurable interstatus diffierences in language facility result from entirely different modes of speech found within the middle-class and the lower working-class. It is proposed that the two distinct forms of language use arise because the organization of the two social strata is such that diffierent emphases are placed on language potential. Once this emphasis or stress is placed, then the resulting forms of language use progressively orient the speakers to distinct and different types of relationships to objects and persons, irrespective of the level of measured intelligence. The role intelligence plays is to enable the speaker to exploit more successfully the possibilities symbolized by the socially determined forms of language use. There are exceptions to this linguistic determinism which arise under special limiting physiological and psychological conditioIts. It is suggested that the typical, dominant speech mode of the middle-class is one where speech becomes an object of special perceptual activity and a 'theoretical attitude' is developed towards the structural possibilities of sentence organization. This speech mode facilitates the verbal elaboration of subjective intent, sensitivity to the implications of separateness and diffierence, and points to the possibilities inherent in a complex conceptual hierarchy for the organization of experience. It is further suggested that this is not the case for members of the lower working-class. The latter are limited to a form of language use, which, although allowing for a vast range of possibilities, provides a speech form which discourages the speaker from verbally elaborating subjective intent and progressively orients the user to descriptive, rather than abstract, concepts. A study was designed to show that the two speech modes are related to diSerent statlus groups and, more importantly, to show that the orientation of the two linguistic structures is independent of non-verbal intelligence test scores. It was predicted for the working-class group that the langllage scores would be severely depressed in relation to the scores in the higher ranges of a non-verbal measure of intelligence. The design of the study was as follows. Two extreme social groups were

The Role of the Fabian Society in British Affairs

The Fabian Society's recent diamond jubilee celebration in London, delayed two years by the war, has centered widespread attention upon the accomplishments credited to the unusual group of socialists which laid the somewhat uncertain beginnings of Fabianism in 1884, and nurtured it to the present state of influence in British affairs.' The founding fathers included Sidney and Beatrice Webb, ardent political scientists; George Bernard Shaw, equally entranced with the writing of dramas and the discussion of social injustices; Annie Besant, actively engaged in the organization of women workers; Graham Wallas, stimulating lecturer and teacher; and a number of other middle-class persons who endowed British socialism with a characteristic non-Marxian pattern. Actually, the Fabian Society drew its initial impetus from an American, Thomas Davidson, who was visiting England in the eighties and trying to arouse interest in social problems. Davidson's socialism was ethical and individual rather than economic and political. After his return to the United States the group founded by him split into two sections, one, the Fellowship of the New Life, quickly vanishing from the scene, while the other, although composed of fewer than 40 members, emerged with little trace of Davidson's influence as the Fabian Society. The name chosen for the society was that of Fabius Cunctator, a Roman general noted for his delaying action. The motivating force behind Fabianism has emphasized that its main mission lies more in ideas than in organization. In pursuit of this ideal, the society has tried to evolve practical proposals for the reformation of blatant economic, political, and social maladies along broad socialist lines, and to encourage persons in key government positions to secure implementation of the more valuable suggestions. Fabians since the turn of the century have believed in permeation in making Britain socialist, by concentrating an adequate number of persons in important positions in vital fields and by urging all citizens to study the principles of socialism and to propose their general adoption. Although at the time of its inception two rival socialist organizations existed in London, both professing, in contrast to the Fabian Society, to be working-class groups, Fabianism succeeded because it devoted its efforts to middle-class persons in order that they might plan socialist units for all classes. At the same time, it accepted rather than superseded the existing political organizations which it intended to imbue with the socialist conception of human society. It professed no belief in class-war slogans, aiming to secure gradual and general acceptance of