It seems there are 7 social classes now

[Dennis the 'Bloody Peasant']

(I’m an Emergent Service Worker, apparently...which is nice.)

Mike Savage from the London School of Economics and Fiona Devine from the University of Manchester describe their findings from The Great British Class Survey. Their results identify a new model of class with seven classes ranging from the Elite at the top to a 'Precariat' at the bottom.

In January 2011, with the help of BBC Lab UK, we asked the BBC audience to complete a unique questionnaire on different dimensions of class.
We devised a new way of measuring class, which doesn't define class just by the job that you do, but by the different kinds of economic, cultural and social resources or 'capitals' that people possess.
We asked people about their income, the value of their home and savings, which together is known as 'economic capital', their cultural interests and activities, known as 'cultural capital' and the number and status of people they know, which is called 'social capital'.
Amazingly, more than 160,000 of you completed the survey. We now have one of the largest ever studies of class in Great Britain.

The results to date


Our new model includes seven classes.

Elite: This is the most privileged class in Great Britain who have high levels of all three capitals. Their high amount of economic capital sets them apart from everyone else.
Established Middle Class: Members of this class have high levels of all three capitals although not as high as the Elite. They are a gregarious and culturally engaged class.
Technical Middle Class: This is a new, small class with high economic capital but seem less cultural engaged. They have relatively few social contacts and so not as socially disengaged.
New Affluent Workers: This class has medium levels of economic capital and higher levels of cultural and social capital. They are a young and active group.
Emergent Service Workers: This new class has low economic capital but has high levels of 'emerging' cultural capital and high social capital. This group are young and often found in urban areas.
Traditional Working Class: This class scores low on all forms of the three capitals although they are not the poorest group. The average age of this class is older than the others.
Precariat: This is the most deprived class of all with low levels of economic, cultural and social capital. The everyday lives of members of this class are precarious.
Other unique findings



Twentieth-century middle-class and working-class stereotypes are out of date. Only 39% of participants fit into the Established Middle Class and Traditional Working Class categories.


The traditional working class is changing. It's smaller than it was in the past. The new generation are more likely to be Affluent Workers or Emergent Service Workers.
People consume culture in a complicated way. The Technical Middle Class are less culturally engaged while emergent service workers participate in various activities.
The extremes of our class system are very important. The Elite and Precariat often get forgotten with more focus on the middle and working classes. We've discovered detailed findings about them.

More at - http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/0/21970879 (http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/0/21970879)

The Test - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-22000973 (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-22000973)

[Brutus]

I'm affluent working class, apparently.
I think this is a load of bollocks.

[Rurkel]

Can "skills" be called capital? I've seen it, occasionally even on RevLeft, when skilled, highly paid workers (hired labour, not cops or high-level managers) were characterized as possessing a "capital of skills", making them petty-bourgeois or something.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

That would make more than half the working class petite-bourgeois - I mean, it's not as if everyone can pick up a welding or sewing machine and start working as a welder or textile worker. That sounds like a reflex of the bourgeois ideology of "prestigious" jobs more than anything.

Of course, there is the so-called "labour aristocracy", and certain professions are at the boundary of the highest strata of the proletariat and the middle strata.

[RedAnarchist]

I saw this earlier, and my dad is traditional working class (although I wasn't 100% sure of all of his answers) and I am part of the emergent service workers class. I guess most office jobs involving technology will be in that category.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

haha this is such bullshit.

How can someone have 'better' cultural tastes than another? Who decides that??

This isn't really a radical departure from two-class and three-class modelling anyway.

For precariat, read: lumpen-proletariat
For traditional working class, emerging service workers, new affluent workers read: working class
for technical middle class read: petty-bourgeoisie
and the established middle class and elites are the bourgeoisie

[Brutus]

An office worker is still selling his labour to the bourgeoisie, and is no less proletarian than a miner. Unless we are to take the third worldist approach that no worker in the first world is a true proletarian.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

I'm an emergent service worker - "This class group is financially insecure, scoring low for savings and house value, but high for social and cultural factors."

Great, so in other words i'm a raving hipster. Cheers BBC.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

haha this is such bullshit.

How can someone have 'better' cultural tastes than another? Who decides that??

Raving hipsters. Like you.


This isn't really a radical departure from two-class and three-class modelling anyway.

For precariat, read: lumpen-proletariat
For traditional working class, emerging service workers, new affluent workers read: working class
for technical middle class read: petty-bourgeoisie
and the established middle class and elites are the bourgeoisie

Mostly; the "elite" could also be the landowners and certain semifeudal elements, the technical middle class could either be very affluent proletarians or members of the middle strata, and the precariat also includes declassed proletarians, and certain discriminated layers of the proletariat if I have understood the (painfully idiotic) article correctly.

[Danielle Ni Dhighe]

"The Elite...often get forgotten."

Yes, the ruling class, so forgotten. :rolleyes:

[RedAnarchist]

I guess, like the pop science articles you find on such news sites, this is pop politics (to a certain extent) and pop socio-economics.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

"The Elite...often get forgotten."

Yes, the ruling class, so forgotten. :rolleyes:

It's not easy being obscenely affluent and powerful.

[Skyhilist]

I can't say I really agree with the division this "study" encourages amongst workers. But at any rate, I plan on becoming a scientist and have no idea where that would rank on here. Some type of middle class, maybe?

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

I think most scientists constitute a separate stratum similar to the governmental bureaucracy, one of the "middle strata" between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie; though some of them are proletarian.

[Leftsolidarity]

I got "emergent service workers".

This whole "7 classes thing" is completely non-Marxist because classes are based off the relation to the means of production.

[ÑóẊîöʼn]

I'm one of those "Precariat" apparently.

What's really interesting is that this kind of article represents a significant departure from the ridiculous idea that "we're all middle class now" or similar bollocks. Of course it would be too much to expect a Marxist exposition of class, but I suspect that the on-going shitfest that is the global economy makes it impossible to completely ignore the fact that socio-economic classes exist.

Strikes me as a potential opening for revolutionary Marxism to enter.

[bad ideas actualised by alcohol]

I am Elite.

[Q]

I am Elite.

It's spelled as "1337", dear sir http://www.rcsdesign.nl/fbsmileys/wp-content/themes/fb_smileys/images/memes/meme_feel_like_a_sir.jpg

But seriously: This is news? Looks like yet another attempt to assimilate proletarian ideas into the system. Make them harmless. Sod that.

[Pretty Flaco]

precariat represent mothafukas :redstar2000:

[Brutus]

Emergent service workers of the world unite!

[Crux]

So yeah, I'm officially precariat. No surprises there. Born poor, remain poor.

[GiantMonkeyMan]

haha this is such bullshit.

How can someone have 'better' cultural tastes than another? Who decides that??
This is what got me the most. Apparently if I visit the Penis Museum or the Museum of Tractors I've partaken in higher culture than if I socialise at home with my friends. Fucking dumb. The people who made this were part of a right-wing think-tank and it's pretty obvious from their findings.

I'm emergent service worker. Apparently knowing some teachers, academics and nurses who are comrades makes me better off than those scummy precariats.

[Dennis the 'Bloody Peasant']

Here's a lil more BBC chin-stroking about 'class' -

I'm 25. I'm a graduate. I'm a London suburbanite. Next week I'll be unemployed. And I have no savings. So what class am I?
It's often said that the British have a unique obsession with class. Popular culture is riddled with references to it. Foreign visitors struggle to comprehend the complexities of British hierarchy.
It should be an easy question - am I middle class?
I visit museums. I go to the theatre. I watch Danish TV drama Borgen - partly because it's good, and at least a little so I can congratulate myself for watching a show with subtitles.
I'm from a boring, comfortable London suburb. I went to university. And I love "travelling", which I understand to be oh so different to a mere holiday.
But what is class today? An attitude? An accent? Is it what you buy, or what you can buy? Your background or your present?
In the largest ever study of class in the UK, sociologists behind the Great British Class Survey (GBCS) have attempted to develop a more accurate picture of contemporary British society.
Rather than the traditional upper, middle, and working class model, they've suggested seven distinct classes.
There are familiar groups like the "Elite", "Established middle class", and "Traditional working class". But there are also new ones - the "Technical middle class", "Emergent service workers", "New affluent workers", and the "Precariat".
It's a far cry from then Labour deputy leader John Prescott's 1997 declaration that: "We're all middle class now."
"By the 90s, there was a feeling that class labels were no longer important, [that] we were no longer obsessed by class," says Prof Mike Savage, lead sociologist behind the survey.
But the social and economic inequalities highlighted by the financial crisis have reinvigorated British people's obsession with class, says Savage.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-21953364 (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-21953364)

[RedAtheist]

What about unemployed people living on welfare? You can't really class them as part of the precariat, because their existence is not precarious. Their mental stability is.

I think analyses like these are really superficial, in that they don't get to the core features of our society, such as the fact that economic, political and social power are still concentrated in the hands of a small group (which is even smaller than it was in the past.) Instead they overemphasis 'cultural capital', whatever the hell that is. I didn't know you could accumulate profit by (being viewed as) having good taste or prestige. LOL! Sure capitalists have different patterns of consumption to workers, but that's not what makes them capitalists.

Is it just me or do the people who come up with these 'modern' theories of class, sound like they've watched 'Mean Girls' too many times?

[Comrade #138672]

What is the Marxist perspective on social and cultural "capital"? Sociologists tend to use these concepts a lot.

[A Revolutionary Tool]

This is ridiculous. Knowing some people, listening to certain music, and going to sporting events makes me a different class than other people in the same economic boat as me? Oh you don't listen to classical music tisk tisk, these Traditional Working Class people. Unlike those savages I have culture!

[brigadista]

This is ridiculous. Knowing some people, listening to certain music, and going to sporting events makes me a different class than other people in the same economic boat as me? Oh you don't listen to classical music tisk tisk, these Traditional Working Class people. Unlike those savages I have culture!


You are so right - its nonsense - based on salary and stereotyping - so since when do working class people not go to museums or listen to jazz for example as well as play vid games and listen to hip hop

bag of shite !!

[bcbm]

haha this is such bullshit.

How can someone have 'better' cultural tastes than another? Who decides that??


nowhere does the word 'better' appear. the only differentiation is between 'emerging' and 'traditional' cultural activities.


For precariat, read: lumpen-proletariat

no they would be working class too


This is what got me the most. Apparently if I visit the Penis Museum or the Museum of Tractors I've partaken in higher culture than if I socialise at home with my friends.

that isnt really what the survey is suggesting at all


What about unemployed people living on welfare?

they could really be any of the 'working class' categories, depending on what they did before becoming unemployed. probably closer to the 'precariat' though based on no longer having a steady job


I think analyses like these are really superficial, in that they don't get to the core features of our society, such as the fact that economic, political and social power are still concentrated in the hands of a small group (which is even smaller than it was in the past.)

well yeah its the bbc but i think it looks at some things a more traditional view of class overlooks that are interesting, if not especially meaningful to us


I didn't know you could accumulate profit by (being viewed as) having good taste or prestige. LOL! Sure capitalists have different patterns of consumption to workers, but that's not what makes them capitalists.

i dont think that is what it is saying


Oh you don't listen to classical music tisk tisk, these Traditional Working Class people.

actually the survey suggests they do, preferring that to the 'emerging culture' activities like gigs and indie rock