1950s Britain debated whether affluence had erased working-class identity
Evidence
It is often said that there are no working classes in England now, that a “bloodless revolution” has taken place which has so reduced social differences that already most of us inhabit an almost flat plain, the plain of the lower middleto middle-classes.… We are likely to be struck by the extent to which working-class people have improved their lot, acquired more power and more possessions … no longer feel themselves members of “the lower orders.” — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 156
Categorization
- XREF: connects to: Commercialization-era cultural change drove Labour’s 1950s revisionist debates; Postwar consumer affluence shook Labour’s class base and fueled revisionist debates — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 154; New Labour’s aspirational consumer strategies had roots in 1950s debates about affluence (+4 more)
- yield-rescued: below the book’s yield-target cutoff, included anyway for connecting to: Commercialization-era cultural change drove Labour’s 1950s revisionist debates; Postwar consumer affluence shook Labour’s class base and fueled revisionist debates — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 154; New Labour’s aspirational consumer strategies had roots in 1950s debates about affluence (+4 more)
Broader Connections
- Postwar consumer affluence shook Labour’s class base and fueled revisionist debates
#expands(0.95) — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 154 - Postwar affluence triggered a neoliberal counter-surge rather than classlessness
#complicates(0.75)