Popular Conceptions of Mobility

The British working-class has proved a grave disappointment to those people who hoped it would overthrow the inequalities of capitalism and help to usher in the classless society. Far from rejecting the central tenets of a capitalist society, as many early Marxists had anticipated, the working-class in Britain has often been portrayed as supporting these tenets and adhering to principles which are inconsistent with ideas of equality and classlessness. The extent to which the working-class does accept the unequal manner in which scarce resources are distributed in contemporary Britain is of course an empirical question and one which admits of no easy answer. The debate continues on whether such acceptance reflects support for, or merely acquiescence in, social inequality.1 But no special studies are needed to show that the working-class has not opposed the existence of inequality with an intensity sufficient to end inequality, and it is both interesting and important to consider why this should be so. Why has the working-class failed to institute an equal society when it can plausibly be maintained that equality would be of benefit to the working-class? In this paper, I want to examine one particular reason why the working-class in contemporary Britain may be less egalitarian in outlook than anticipated. This is the role played by social mobility in influencing the attitudes of the working-class to inequalities of reward. It has often been argued that extensive movement of people of working-class origins into middle-class positions reduces the opposition of the working-class to inequalities of reward.2 Upward mobility, the argument runs, siphons off those working-class people whose ambitions, if frustrated, might take the form of organizing opposition to the status quo ; it gives the working-class a stake in society by holding out the prospect of upward mobility, if not always to them, then at least to their children; it helps to persuade those among the working-class who are not upwardly mobile that this is their own rather than society's fault; and, finally, it prevents society from dividing into a number of closed and exclusive classes between which there is little contact and much hostility. For all these reasons, social mobility is thought to act as a suppressor of social conflict and to contribute to the process through which the working-class is incorporated into the existing social structure.