Marxist

• Westergaard & Resler

  • There was little evidence of class divisions in British society disappearing and suggested that such inequalities could only be understood as a result of the capitalist system.
• Harry Braverman

  • many middle class workers have been deskilled. For example, the skills of clerical workers and even professionals have been programmed into machines or broken down into simple tasks that can be performed by less skilled workers.
  • This reduces the control that these workers have over work processes and allows employers to pay them lower wages
• Bourdieu – cultural tastes play a part in creating boundaries between social classes. He argues that the bourgeoisie use their cultural capital to maintain their class position.
• Castles and Kosack – Explain that workers have not united and become class conscious because the bourgeoisie use techniques to ‘divide and rule’. For example, they promote racism and sexism to put the workers against each other, which distracts them from their real enemy, the bourgeoisie.