| Great changes have taken place in the fields of economy, politics, society and culture in capitalist societies since 1980s. Different scholars have very different understanding of the classes, class structures, class conflicts and class struggles in Western societies under the new situation. Then, what is the class and class structure in contemporary Western societies? What changes have taken place in it? What is the background and reason of such changes? What its future? Is there still a relationship between class and politics? To have a clear understanding of these issues is very important both theoretically and practically for us to insist and develop Marxist theory of class and class structure, to reconsider capitalist societies and their future and to carry out the national policy of reform and opening-up better. As I know, there are few systematic researches in the West and even fewer in China in terms of these issues in recent years. Taken Britain as a case, this dissertation tries to explore these problems rather comprehensively.The reasons that I choose Britain as a case are: First, the class structure in Britain is a good representative of the class structures in capitalist societies. Secondly, Britain remains a monarchical state and the people have deep consciousness and identification of hierarchy associated closely with class. There are many materials on class and class structure in this country which offer a good reference for my study. Thirdly, class has associated with politics very closely. There is still a clear relationship between them in contemporary UK which give us a chance to study the class structure in the perspective of politics. Finally, I have the honor to be a visiting scholar in the Department of Sociology, Social Work and Social Policy Studies at the University of Liverpool from August 2003 to August 2004 which enables me to collect and use many direct materials and communicate with scholars in that department face to face.This dissertation has seven parts. As the first part, the introduction states the importance and reasons of the research, evaluates some basic theoretical issues about class and class structure, suggests my own definition of class and class structure and explores the social-economic background for the change of class and class structure in Britain.There have been three major definitions of class since the time of K. Marx and F. Engels: the Marxist, Weberian, and the functionalist. The traditional Marxists emphasize people's place in social productive system and their relation with productive means. The Weberians consider wealth, occupational status and power as the criterion to divide class, with occupational status as the most important The fuctionalists explain class in terms of its function to the whole society, considering the .class is functional and necessary to meet the society. Influenced by these classical theories of class, some of the contemporary theories of class in the Western emphasize the occupation of non-economic resources, some emphasize the occupational prestige and some emphasize the consumption. This paper considers that the relationship with productive means is the basic criterion in class division, but not the only one. For many years the traditional Marxists ignores other factors such as social division and the difference in income, making Marxist theory of class an "economically determinism". The Weberians recognizes the multiple factors in determing people's class position while devaluates economic factors. I suggests that class refers to the rather stable big groups which have different economic, political and social positions and different ideology and lifestyle because they are different in their places in a certain social-economic system, in their wealth, occupational status, power, work and market situations. Among the many factors, the occupation of wealth is decisive.The scheme of class structure refers to the composition of each class, the relationship in and between classes. I consider that the traditional Marxist scheme cannot reflect the real class structure in contemporary Western societies and has to be revised. E.O.Wright's scheme is a revision of Marxs', but it is too complicated in dividing people into 12 classes and over -emphasizes the role of skill/qualification. In contrast, J. Goldthorpe's scheme is simple and pays enough attention to the division in major classes while ignores the existence of a capitalist class. In this paper, I identified four major classes in contemporary Britain: the capitalist class (upper class), middle class, intermediate class and working class.Class structure is a part of social structure and the significant change of social economy will necessary cause the change in class structure. The globalization and new technology have strong influence on the industrial structure, occupational structure, labor force structure and the structure of income and distribution. They also have strong influence on the class structure:First, as the proportion of employees in service sector is higher than manual employees, the size of working class decreases while the size of middle class increases. Secondly, They have the character of remained manual work changed. This has a direct effect on the inner composition, consciousness and collective action of working class.In terms of the space structure of the labor force, the biggest trend is the special scattering, which makes the community nature of work and life of the working class. This has a negative effect on the formation of their consciousness, the extent of organization and the collective action.The recent trends in the labor market in Britain are: First, the non-standard employment increases; secondly, the unemployment increased until 1990s; thirdly, the inequality increase.Part Two to Part Five discuss capitalist class, middle class, intermediate class and working class*respectively.The capitalist class is called "upper class" in Britain. It is the smallest among the major classes. Although experienced many changes during the past decades, it retains more traditional characteristics. Its does not lose its domination in politics, economy and culture in face of the significant social-economic changes.There is a distinction between the "old upper class" and the "new upper class". The latter includes entrepreneurial capitalist, rentier capitalist, executive capitalist, financial capitalist, management capitalist and transnational capitalist or gloabal capitalist. The characteristic of all the capitalists is that they have huge wealth and capital and have such work situation and market situation that are distinct from those of middle class and working class. They also have some distinct sociological features, including that they are dominated by males, they retains some status associated with aristocrat, they are highly integrated and they are over-confidentThe status and power of upper class comes from their ownership and control of productive resources (capital). As the growth of managers and the decentralization of capital*and wealth, the ownership and control of productive resources by capitalists becomes depersonalized since the middle of 20 century. For this reason, it is suggested that there is no longer a united powerful capitalist class, or, there is no clear difference between the capitalist class who has productive resources and the working class who has nothing. Then, has the managers replaced the capitalists? What is the real relationship between them ? Has thedecentralization of capital and wealth made "everyone is capitalist" ? The answer is clearly not. The paper explains it in terms of the relation between capitalist and manager, the democratization of wealth, and the relationship between assets and investments.The "diddle class" discussed in part three is used in its narrow meaning. It refers to the "core" of the middle class in broad meaning and accounts for about forty percent of the population in Britain. In this part, I mainly deal with the growth and development of middle class, its work situation and market situation, its division and its consciousness.The new middle class whose core members are managers, administrators and professionals is distinguished from the old middle class whose core members were self-employed professionals and proprietors of businesses. The difference mainly comes from their relationship with property. The basic nature of the new middle class as a whole is not its occupation of material capital, but of cultural and organizational capitals. Both the old and the new middle classes have two common features: their higher income and higher education. In Britain, the origin of the new middle class can be traced to 19th century, but it is only after the second World War that it grows rapidly. The proportion of managers, administrators and professionals increased from 12.16% in 1911 to 36%in 1997. As the new middle class grows so rapidly, the core members of the old middle class becomes periphery. In terms of the reproduction of class, the trend in 21th century is that as the middle class grows, the proportion that it recruits members from inner will become higher and higher, the size of its core members will grow and it will develop a clearer distinct consciousness and politics.Compared with working class and intermediate class, middle class have better work situation and market situation, while be faced with some predicament: the threshold to enter into middle class becomes higher, some middle class occupations are not true, some of the middle class members are threatened by "proletarianization", and there is an occupational congestion. Therefore they also have many discontents.There are major divisions in middle class: in the levels, the public and private, the professionals and managers and in the lifestyles. Like the disorganization of working class, such divisions in middle class are often regarded as an evidence of the death of class. However, the division in a class is not the division between classes and division does not necessarily means disorganization.The rapid expansion of its size leads to the diversity of its members' social origins, as a result, it has not yet develop a certain and distinct consciousness and politics, and there is not a major political party which claims represents the interest of middle class only. However, we may identify some of its main concerns: First, many of its members are disappointed with Thacherism and turns to Labor Party. Secondly, its radicalism, collectivism and support for the welfare state, meritocracy and economic planning does not require it to sacrifice its own interests for working class. Thirdly, its claims do not make challenges to the basic economic system and the domination of upper class within it Fourth, its major concern is to shape the agendas of all the main political parties and the governments that they formed. Moreover, as the middle class has domination in organizations and cultures, their focus will determine the state's political agendas to a great extent.The "Intermediate Class" discussed in Part Four refers to the social section that is in the middle of working class and middle class and is composed mainly by two groups: the lower non-manuals and the petit bourgeoisie. It is not a true class with developed formation, as its members are very unstable and has no clear and distinct lifestyle, consciousness and politics.The lower non-manuals is a big occupational group dominated by women. It accounts for roughly forty percent of female employees and twenty percent of male employees. Their basic class feature is that they have not been integrated into middle class, nor have been integrated into working class, but have an awkward position in the class structure. In terms of their job's feature, they have some common characteristics which distinguish middle class from working class. But they are quite different from managers and professionals, hi terms of the self-identification, the lower non-manuals used to see themselves higher than working class while some of them call themselves working class. However, as time passed, their advantages in labor market, status and work disappeared. Their identification with working class increased, there are more lower non-manuals see themselves as a part of labor movement and can be mobilized by the Labor party. More and more lower non-manuals and middle class members join the trade union in recent years. The trade union is likely to be a middle class organization, at least to be organized by the middle class. However, the group of lower non-manuals has not yet been completely proletarianized, there remains major differencebetween them and working class.The petit bourgeoisie cored by the self-employed and small propertiers has been an unstable group, whose change has strong influence on the shape of class structure. Marx and Engels discussed petit bourgeoisie in many of their works and their general ideas are that the petit bourgeoisie would have to disappear as capitalism develops. Jin today's Western societies, the petit bourgeoisie in form of self-employment exists substantially while its nature of class remains unclear, as Marx and Engels suggested. In Britain, the petit bourgeoisie remained declined till 1970s and began to increase since 19890s.While being complicated in terms of occupational types, the petit bourgeoisie has many common demographical features: First, males dominated, accounting for 71.73% in 2003. Secondly, fewer young people. Thirdly, high level of racial equalization. Fourth, high rate of inter-generational continuity. In regards of class consciousness and politics, conservativeness is their biggest feature.The petit bourgeoisie plays an important role in the contemporary class structure. Petit bourgeoisie, especially the self-employed, have been the honest supporters of the Conservative Party. They also play an ideological role by their very presence.The working class discussed in Part Five is composed mainly by manual workers, accounting for about forty percent of male employees and thirty percent of female employees. Many major changes have taken place in the size, composition, organization, work and market situations of the working class since late 20th century. In terms of occupational composition, workers in industry decrease while those in service increase, blue-collar workers decrease while while-collar workers increase.A general feature of the working class in Britain is that it is experiencing a process of disorganization. This is much more evident in Britain, because First, Britain has fewer control over economic life than most other Western countries do; secondly, the reform of trade union and labor relationship reinforced by the government in 1980s and 1990s makes the employers more powerful; thirdly, as employment shifts substantially from public to private sector, manual jobs in public sector decreased rapidly; the unemployment rate kept rather high from 1970s to 1990.As to the causes of the disorganization, the shrink of the size is not the most importantThe basic reason is that most of manual workers are not only no longer trade union members, but also are not likely to organize trade union. The trade union as a traditionally working class organization has to a great extent lose its appeal to manual workers. In this meaning, the working class has lost the trade union and lost the Labor Party in 1990s as it became the New Labor Party. Moreover, the workers' clubs and other leisure associations has to some extent been replaced by TV and commercial leisure, the workplace and neighborhood no longer exist. These have also contributed to the disorganization of the working class.Since late 20th century, the term of "underclass" has been used by many Western scholars to refer the people who are at the bottom of social stratum and are very vulnerable. In present-day Britain, the so-called "underclass" mainly includes two groups of people: the state dependents and the very poor. However, these people do not form a demographic entity with distinct Hfe chance, do not have distinct work and market situations, nor have distinct consciousness and politics. Therefore, there is not a single "underclass'. In fact, they are the lower part of the working class. The basic reason for these groups to appear is not individual, but is institutional, is the economic reorganization that leads to the disorganization of the working class. However, the "underclass" is a real future possibility in Britain.Part Six deals with the relationship between social mobility and class structure. The general characteristic of social mobility in Britain is that upward mobility is more than downward mobility and short-range mobility is more than long-range mobility. Social mobility leads to the exchange of members of social classes and to the blurring of the distinction between classes and the change of class structure. Social mobility is not completely equitable. Different class has different mobility. It is determined not only by education, but also by class status and social capital. The general for the major classes is that the upper class will keep stable and recruits mainly from itself; middle class has the risk of downward mobility and recruits from itself more and more; working class has better chance of upward mobility and recruits from itself less and less.Social mobility will be affected by three factors, they are the vacancy and type of job in labor market, the availability to these vacancies and the number of qualified people. The long tendency of mobility in Britain from 1970s to 1990s is the expansion of middle class and the shrink of working class. However, it is expected that in the not far future, the working classwill be stabilized with a smaller size and the middle class will be stabilized too.Different class has different rate of mobility. This both reflects and stabilizes the class difference. Educational qualification, intelligence and rational choice may offer some explanations of such difference, but these are not the decisive causes. Marxist theory of class reproduction provides the best answer.As conclusion, the last part deals with the relationship between social class and politics in modern Britain. In the history, political party as the representative of class has had close relation with certain class and formed different class-political party alignment. Today, although the alignment becomes loose as class distinction becomes blurred, there is clear relations between class and political party. Class remains the major foundation of politics and has decisive effect on political formation.There are five trends in the relationship between class and politics in Britain after the Second World War: the support for the Labor Party declined till 1997; the support for the Conservative Party kept stabilized; the voters' partisanship declined; the possibility that voters vote for the party associated with their class declined; politics has become a new middle class career.As the alignment of class and politics losses, politics is losing its class base. However, there is no other alternative shat can replace class as the foundation of politics and class remains the best predictor of politics.The change of class and its structure will cause the change of politics. Now in Britain there is a stronger upper class, an expanded middle class and a working class in disorganization. The specific consciousness and politics of middle class is forming, the disorganization of working class is likely to continue, the upper class may or may not keep strong and powerful. For the future class structure and the relationship between class and politics, the most important is that as middle class becomes a more stable and bigger demographic entity, their consciousness and politics will become more distinguished from others' and they will play a much more important role in the political life in Britain.
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