Postindustrial class structures arose from consumer affluence and corporate capital
Evidence
Stuart demonstrates how much Hoggartâs book belonged to the opening of a new conjuncture, which would ultimately lead to the emergence of postindustrial class structures, based on corporate capital, money, celebrity, lifestyle, hedonism, and consumption. ⊠Here he traces the debate about affluence back to the 1950s, noting that as early as 1959 the Labour Party leader Hugh Gaitskell questioned whether, as a political force, Labour could possibly survive âthe coming of the car, the telly, the washing machine and the fridge.â â Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 121
Categorization
Category: Factual Claims
- XREF: Connects to Galbraithâs âaffluent societyâ and to the affluence debate that shaped later Thatcherism analyses in part IV.
- SEED: An essay on how consumer culture shifted working-class politics from production to consumption identity.
Related
- Postwar affluence marked a transition to post-industrial class structures, not classlessness (similarity 0.93)
- Deindustrialization transformed consumer culture and the symbolic meaning of possessions decades earlier (similarity 0.86)
- Postwar consumer affluence shook Labourâs class base and fueled revisionist debates (similarity 0.84)
- Hallâs 1958 essay already predicted post-Fordist consumer cultureâs class effects (similarity 0.84)
- Postwar affluence and mass culture threatened Labourâs class base (similarity 0.83)
- Postwar affluence shifted class structures from embedded tiers to consumption-based forms (similarity 0.82)
- Hoggartâs book about class entered the Labour Partyâs affluence debate and electoral politics (similarity 0.80)
Broader Connections
- Corporate capitalism arose from a long decline of entrepreneurial and proletarian phases
#expands(0.60) â Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 162 - Postwar affluence triggered a neoliberal counter-surge rather than classlessness
#qualifies(0.55) â Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 162