Exploring Working-Class Consciousness: A Critique of the Theory of the ‘Labour-Aristocracy’*

2010 ◽  
Vol 18 (4) ◽  
pp. 3-38 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles Post

AbstractThe notion of the labour-aristocracy is one of the oldest Marxian explanations of working-class conservatism and reformism. Despite its continued appeal to scholars and activists on the Left, there is no single, coherent theory of the labour-aristocracy. While all versions argue working-class conservatism and reformism reflects the politics of a privileged layer of workers who share in ‘monopoly’ super-profits, they differ on the sources of those super-profits: national dominance of the world-market in the nineteenth century (Marx and Engels), imperialist investments in the ‘colonial world’/global South (Lenin and Zinoviev), or corporate monopoly in the twentieth century (Elbaum and Seltzer). The existence of a privileged layer of workers who share monopoly super-profits with the capitalist class cannot be empirically verified. This essay presents evidence that British capital’s dominance of key-branches of global capitalist production in the Victorian period, imperialist investment and corporate market-power can not explain wage-differentials among workers globally or nationally, and that relatively well-paid workers have and continue to play a leading rôle in radical and revolutionary working-class organisations and struggles. An alternative explanation of working-class radicalism, reformism, and conservatism will be the subject of a subsequent essay.

Author(s):  
Samantha Caslin

This chapter examines the development of some of Liverpool’s most significant moral welfare organisations between the late-Victorian period and the end of the First World War. It unpacks the early historical trajectories of the House of Help, the Liverpool Vigilance Association, the Liverpool Catholic Women’s League and the Liverpool Women Police Patrols, and it argues that these organisations continued to view women’s relationship to the city through the lens of Victorian gender ideals. Moreover, the chapter examines how the pioneering and well-intended efforts of these organisations to craft a ‘respectable’ form of public womanhood during the first two decades of the twentieth century were still steeped in presumptions about the immorality of the working class, and working-class women in particular.


2021 ◽  
pp. 71-100
Author(s):  
Jim Powell

This chapter investigates Britain’s cotton supply and usage during the war. It examines all the issues that have been misinterpreted or ignored: cotton imports, bale weights, cotton re-exports, wastage in spinning, raw cotton stocks, stocks of cotton goods, exports of cotton goods and investment in new mills. There was nothing abnormal about the cotton market in 1859–61. Without the war, there would have been no allegation of pre-war over-production, no assertion of the glutting of overseas markets. The chapter offers an alternative explanation of why short-term working, which led to the Lancashire cotton famine, began in October 1862 when there was not yet a scarcity of cotton. The international cotton trade needed a large pipeline of stock. The outbreak of war, followed by the Confederate embargo and the Union blockade, paralysed the world market and caused an abrupt fall in demand. The conclusion is that, for the three main years of the war, British yarn production was at 36 per cent of the market requirement, and that about 4.5 billion lb of raw cotton was denied to Britain in the seven years to the end of 1867.


Author(s):  
Mike McConville ◽  
Luke Marsh

The point at which the liberty of the subject can be subject to interference by force of the law is a critical issue and one reliant on the integrity of judicial oversight. Focusing on the start of the twentieth century, this chapter addresses the discontinuities in the then existing rules relating to the interrogation of suspected persons (embodied by the Judges’ Rules of 1912, whose obscure origins are discussed) and the divergent responses of different police forces to the cautioning and questioning process. From this it explores how the need for closer formal regulation arose and the role of Home Office officials (the very same as those involved in the Adolph Beck case) in drafting the first revision of the Judges’ Rules in 1918 which were to remain in force for almost fifty years. These inapt and inexpertly drafted Rules thereafter laid the foundations for policing regulation in jurisdictions around the world.


Author(s):  
F. Amoretti

Up to 1980, development, which had been defined as nationally managed economic growth, was redefined as “successful participation in the world market” (World Bank, 1980, quoted in McMichael, 2004, p.116). On an economic scale, specialization in the world economy as opposed to replication of economic activities within a national framework emerged as a criterion of “development.” On a political level, redesigning the state on competence and quality of performance in the discharge of functions was upheld, while on an ideological plane, a neo-liberal and globalization project was to the fore. The quite evident failure of development policies in peripheral countries, on the one hand, has contributed to the debate on the need for reform of governing institutions in the world (de Senarcless, 2004); and, on the other, has pushed them, de-legitimized as they are, in the direction of finding new strategies and solutions. In the 1990s, considering their leading role in government reform, international organizations such as the United Nations Organization (UN), the World Bank, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and the World Trade Organization (WTO) classified e-government as a core issue on their agenda. Innovation through information and communication technologies (ICTs) (social and economic advancement among the peoples of the world has become increasingly tied to technology creation, dissemination and utilization) is at the core of the renewed focus on the role of the state and the institutions in this process. Redefining the state—functions, responsibility, powers—as regards world-market priorities and logics, has become a strategic ground for international organization intervention, and ICTs are a strategic tool to achieve these aims.


2000 ◽  
pp. 7-26
Author(s):  
Susan Schulten

In the early twentieth century, Rand McNally held a large share of the commercial market for maps and atlases in the United States. How the company built its reputation as an American cartographic authority—by both accepting and resisting change—is the subject of this essay. Critical to the company’s success was its ability to design materials that reinforced American notions of how the world ought to appear, an indication that the history of cartography is governed not just by technological and scientific advances, but also by a complex interplay between mapmakers and consumers.


2005 ◽  
Vol 115 (1) ◽  
pp. 23-32 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lez Cooke

In recent years, American television drama series have been celebrated as ‘quality television’ at the expense of their British counterparts, yet in the 1970s and 1980s British television was frequently proclaimed to be ‘the best television in the world’. This article will consider this critical turnaround and argue that, contrary to critical opinion, the last few years have seen the emergence of a ‘new wave’ in British television drama, comparable in its thematic and stylistic importance to the new wave that emerged in British cinema and television in the early 1960s. While the 1960s new wave was distinctive for its championing of a new working-class realism, the recent ‘new wave’ is more heterogeneous, encompassing drama series such as This Life, Cold Feet, The Cops, Queer as Folk, Clocking Off and Shameless. While the subject-matter of these dramas is varied, collectively they share an ambition to ‘reinvent’ British television drama for a new audience and a new cultural moment.


Author(s):  
Tatyana V Markelova

The study tested the semiotic approach to the system of evaluation marks allocated on the basis of pragmatic function. Traditional triad - semantics, syntactics, pragmatics - is accompanied by sigmatech as a branch of semiotics, determining the relationship between sign and object, which has not been properly studied yet. The system of evaluation of signs - function, connotation, pragmem, their functional and semantic differences are described through the prism of the semantic structure of the word influenced by the pragmatic function. Non-standard character of pragmatic mark is denotative-significative, expressing the nature convoluted judgment is focused on the subject of speech and its axiological intentions. The article demonstrates semantic, syntactic and pragmatic nature of Prameny sign evaluation with special feaches of its semiotic nature. Three types of evaluation signs - functions, connotations, pragmem -are compared and the role of pragmem in the system is defined. The leading role of pragmem in the axiological fragment of the linguistic picture of the world is determined.


Author(s):  
N.V DEVDARIANI ◽  
◽  
E.V RUBTSOVA ◽  

This article presents the methodological development of lectures, material which may be used in the study course "Philosophy", "Philosophy of science and technology" and "concepts of modern natural Sciences" (cmns) for students of the Humanities in Russian universities. This lecture on "Philosophical understanding of the concept of "life": biocentricity picture of the world" presents the main approaches to the idea of the modern scientific picture of the world. Such a summary of the lecture material, according to the authors, due to the need to change existing approaches to teaching of specific disciplines. In particular those which involve integrated knowledge from different scientific disciplines and the subject of study which are universal categories and phenomena. It is noted that in the conditions of modern technogenic civilization machineoriented, justified is the issue of revision of existing views about the current ideological approach to the basic concepts, components of a comprehensive scientific picture of the world. In this article, the authors examine biocentricity picture of the world in which the author focuses on the leading role of the life. It is concluded that a comprehensive summary of the lecture material various areas of scientific knowledge, contributes to the formation of metacognitive abilities of students in the course of studying the above disciplines.


2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (4) ◽  
pp. 94-104
Author(s):  
Amina Azizova

The form, typology, essence and causes of the interaction between theater and cinema in the world is one of the priorities in the field, and a number of scientific studies have been conducted on the subject. In world experience, during the development of cinematography, it has been used the help of theatrical figures in overcoming the problems of acting, directing and dramaturgy. The study of theater and cinema as the main types of artistic worldview, in which the relationship between the two independent arts, exchanges of actors, process of interaction, individual characteristics were assessed, and it was considered as a new phenomenon. The article studies issues, causes and factors of influence of the same process in 1920–1930. The interaction of Uzbek theater and cinema, the study of creative ties, see it as a scientific problem has attracted attention in recent years. The article examines the role of Uzbek stage leaders in the development of screen art as a separate process, as well as the phenomenon of interaction between theater and cinema. The author explores a new creative life, a biography of a stage actor in cinema, opened for theater actors on the eve of the twentieth century. The art of filmmaking, which has been fighting for the actor for half a century, studies on facts that have attracted theater performers. Theatrical art has proven to be a model for cinematography in terms of decorating, makeup, music, lighting, and acting. Keywords: theater, actor, cinema, director, genre, image, type, role, phenomenon, screen art, character.


2021 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 44-59
Author(s):  
Eleonora F. Shafranskaya ◽  
Tatyana V. Volokhova

The literary work of the Russian writer Leonid Solovyov (1906-1962) was widely known in the Soviet period of the twentieth century - but only by means of the novel dilogy about Khoja Nasreddin. His other stories and essays were not included in the readers repertoire or the research focus. One of the reasons for this is that the writer was repressed by Stalinist regime due to his allegedly anti-Soviet activities. In the light of modern post-Orientalist studies, Solovyovs prose is relevant as a subcomponent of Russian Orientalism both in general sense and as its Soviet version. The Oriental stories series, which is the subject of this article, has never been the object of scientific research before. The authors of the article are engaged, in a broad sense, in identifying the features of Solovyovs Oriental poetics, and, narrowly, in revealing some patterns of the Central Asian picture of the world. In particular, the portraits of social and professional types, met by Solovyov there in 1920-1930, are presented. Some of them have sunk into oblivion, others can be found today, in the XXI century. Comparative, typological and cultural methods are used in the interdisciplinary context of the article.


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