Misplaced Pages

#736263

35-535: Scuttlers were members of neighbourhood-based youth gangs (known as scuttling gangs) formed in working class areas of Manchester , Salford , and the surrounding townships during the late 19th century. It is possible to draw parallels with the London street gangs of the 1890s, whose behaviour was labelled hooliganism . The social commentator Alexander Devine attributed the gang culture to lack of parental control, lack of discipline in schools, "base literature" and

70-449: A "slum of hope" from the 1920s and 1930s, members of this class are given hardly any chances of attaining membership of the formal economic structures. Diane Reay stresses the challenges that working-class students can face during the transition to and within higher education, and research intensive universities in particular. One factor can be the university community being perceived as a predominately middle-class social space, creating

105-423: A formal or informal employment contract . These transactions usually occur in a labour market where wages or salaries are market-determined . In exchange for the money paid as wages (usual for short-term work-contracts) or salaries (in permanent employment contracts), the work product generally becomes the undifferentiated property of the employer. A wage labourer is a person whose primary means of income

140-450: A great variety of ways, in which labour is traded and exchanged. The differences show up in the form of: Wage labour has long been compared to slavery. As a result, the term " wage slavery " is often utilised as a pejorative term for wage labour. Similarly, advocates of slavery looked upon the "comparative evils of Slave Society and of Free Society, of slavery to human Masters and slavery to Capital," and proceeded to argue that wage slavery

175-501: A group otherwise referred to as the proletariat . In this sense, the working class includes white and blue-collar workers, manual and menial workers of all types, excluding individuals who derive their livelihood from business ownership or the labour of others. The term, which is primarily used to evoke images of laborers suffering "class disadvantage in spite of their individual effort", can also have racial connotations, applying diverse themes of poverty and implications about whether one

210-470: A key change in these Soviet-style societies has been a new type of proletarianization , often effected by the administratively achieved forced displacement of peasants and rural workers. Since then, four major industrial states have turned towards semi-market-based governance ( China , Laos , Vietnam , Cuba ), and one state has turned inwards into an increasing cycle of poverty and brutalization ( North Korea ). Other states of this sort have collapsed (such as

245-401: A self-identification with the working class group. This subjective approach allows individuals, rather than researchers, to define their own "subjective" and "perceived" social class. Karl Marx defined the working class or proletariat as those individuals who sell their labour power for wages and who do not own the means of production . He argued that they were responsible for creating

280-508: A sense of otherness due to class differences in social norms and knowledge of navigating academia. Working classes in different countries Wage labour Wage labour (also wage labor in American English ), usually referred to as paid work , paid employment , or paid labour , refers to the socioeconomic relationship between a worker and an employer in which the worker sells their labour power under

315-435: A uniform of brass-tipped pointed clogs , bell-bottomed trousers , cut like a sailor's ("bells" that measured fourteen inches round the knee and twenty-one inches round the foot) and "flashy" silk scarves. Their hair was cut short at the back and sides, but they grew long fringes, known as "donkey fringes", that were longer on the left side and plastered down on the forehead over the left eye. Peaked caps were also worn tilted to

350-495: Is a subset of employees who are compensated with wage or salary -based contracts, whose exact membership varies from definition to definition. Members of the working class rely primarily upon earnings from wage labour . Most common definitions of "working class" in use in the United States limit its membership to workers who hold blue-collar and pink-collar jobs, or whose income is insufficiently high to place them in

385-484: Is deserving of aid. In other contexts the term working class refers to a section of society dependent on physical labour , especially when compensated with an hourly wage (for certain types of science, as well as journalistic or political analysis). Working-class occupations can be categorized into four groups: unskilled labourers, artisans, outworkers , and factory workers. Common alternative definitions of Working Class include definition by income level, whereby

SECTION 10

#1732801462737

420-562: Is from the selling of their labour in this way. In modern mixed economies such as those of the OECD countries, it is the most common form of work arrangement. Although most labour is organised as per this structure, the wage work arrangements of CEOs , professional employees, and professional contract workers are sometimes conflated with class assignments , so that "wage labour" is considered to apply only to unskilled, semi-skilled or manual labour . The most common form of wage labour currently

455-524: Is only the result of instruction and guidance, does not enter into his very nature; he does not perform it with truly human energies, but merely with mechanical exactness" and so when the labourer works under external control, "we may admire what he does, but we despise what he is." Both the Milgram and Stanford experiments have been found useful in the psychological study of wage-based workplace relations. Additionally, as per anthropologist David Graeber ,

490-514: Is ordinary direct, or "full-time". This is employment in which a free worker sells their labour for an indeterminate time (from a few years to the entire career of the worker), in return for a money-wage or salary and a continuing relationship with the employer which it does not in general offer contractors or other irregular staff. However, wage labour takes many other forms, and explicit as opposed to implicit (i.e. conditioned by local labour and tax law) contracts are not uncommon. Economic history shows

525-532: The Soviet Union ). Since 1960, large-scale proletarianization and enclosure of commons has occurred in the third world , generating new working classes. Additionally, countries such as India have been slowly undergoing social change, expanding the size of the urban working class. The informal working class is a sociological term coined by Mike Davis for a class of over a billion predominantly young urban people who are in no way formally connected to

560-408: The global economy and who try to survive primarily in slums . According to Davis, this class no longer corresponds to the socio-theoretical concepts of a class, from Marx, Max Weber or the theory of modernization . Thereafter, this class developed worldwide from the 1960s, especially in the southern hemisphere. In contrast to previous notions of a class of the lumpen proletariat or the notions of

595-457: The middle class , or both. However, socialists define "working class" to include all workers who fall into this category; thus, this definition can include almost all of the working population of industrialized economies . As with many terms describing social class , working class is defined and used in different ways. One definition used by many socialists is that the working class includes all those who have nothing to sell but their labour,

630-454: The wealth of a society, asserting that the working class physically build bridges, craft furniture, grow food, and nurse children, but do not own land or factories . A sub-section of the proletariat, the lumpenproletariat ( rag-proletariat ), are the extremely poor and unemployed, such as day labourers and homeless people. Marx considered them to be devoid of class consciousness. In Marxist terms wage labourers and those dependent on

665-403: The welfare state are working class, and those who live on accumulated capital are not, and this broad dichotomy defines the class struggle . In The Communist Manifesto , Marx and Friedrich Engels argue that it is the destiny of the working class to displace the capitalist system, with the dictatorship of the proletariat (as opposed to the " dictatorship of the bourgeoisie ") abolishing

700-756: The Bengal Tigers came from the cluster of streets and courts off Bengal Street in Ancoats , the Meadow Lads from Angel Meadow . Most gangs took their names from a local thoroughfare, such as Holland Street, Miles Platting , Grey Mare Lane, Bradford, or Hope Street, Salford. Gang members fought with a variety of weapons, but they all carried knives and wore heavy buckled belts, often decorated with pictures such as serpents, scorpions, hearts pierced with arrows or women's names. The thick leather belts were their most prized possessions and were wrapped tightly around

735-548: The English Working Class , E. P. Thompson argues that the English working class was present at its own creation, and seeks to describe the transformation of pre-modern labouring classes into a modern, politically self-conscious, working class. Starting around 1917, a number of countries became ruled ostensibly in the interests of the working class (see Soviet working class ). Some historians have noted that

SECTION 20

#1732801462737

770-565: The Manchester historian Gary James highlighted that scuttling was the number one unifying activity of young men, and that the creation of St Mark's Football Club was a very serious attempt at diverting the young men of West Gorton into more worthwhile activities. Anna Connell, perceived by many as the founder of St Mark's FC, also helped create men's meetings, a library, and other society improving facilities and clubs. Notes Bibliography Working class The working class

805-518: The capitalist class; and it is for him ... to find a buyer in this capitalist class. — Karl Marx According to Noam Chomsky , analysis of the psychological implications of wage slavery goes back to the Enlightenment era. In his 1791 book On the Limits of State Action , classical liberal thinker Wilhelm von Humboldt explained how "whatever does not spring from a man's free choice, or

840-547: The earliest wage labour contracts we know about were in fact contracts for the rental of chattel slaves (usually the owner would receive a share of the money, and the slave, another, with which to maintain their living expenses.) Such arrangements, according to Graeber, were quite common in New World slavery as well, whether in the United States or Brazil. C. L. R. James argued in The Black Jacobins that most of

875-452: The late 18th century, under the influence of the Enlightenment , European society was in a state of change, and this change could not be reconciled with the idea of a changeless God-created social order. Wealthy members of these societies created ideologies which blamed many of the problems of working-class people on their morals and ethics (i.e. excessive consumption of alcohol, perceived laziness and inability to save money). In The Making of

910-416: The left to display the fringe. The scuttlers' girlfriends also had a distinctive style of dress consisting of clogs, shawl, and a vertically striped skirt. A scuttler is a lad, usually between the ages of 14 and 18, or even 19, and scuttling consists of the fighting of two opposed bands of youths, who are armed with various weapons. Scuttling gangs were territorial fighting gangs, as reflected in their names;

945-564: The monotony of life in Manchester's slums. Gangs were formed throughout the slums of central Manchester, in the townships of Bradford , Gorton and Openshaw to the east and in Salford, to the west of the city. Gang conflicts erupted in Manchester in the early 1870s and went on sporadically for 30 years, declining in frequency and severity by the late 1890s. Scuttlers distinguished themselves from other young men in working-class neighbourhoods by their distinctive clothing. They generally wore

980-478: The same social unit , a third estate of people who were neither aristocrats nor church officials. Similar hierarchies existed outside Europe in other pre-industrial societies . The social position of these labouring classes was viewed as ordained by natural law and common religious belief. This social position was contested, particularly by peasants, for example during the German Peasants' War . In

1015-461: The social relationships underpinning the class system before then developing into a communist society in which "the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all." In feudal Europe, the working class as such did not exist in large numbers. Instead, most people were part of the labouring class, a group made up of different professions, trades and occupations. A lawyer, craftsman and peasant were all considered to be part of

1050-436: The techniques of human organisation employed on factory workers during the industrial revolution were first developed on slave plantations. For Marxists, labour-as-commodity, which is how they regard wage labour, provides a fundamental point of attack against capitalism. "It can be persuasively argued," noted one concerned philosopher, "that the conception of the worker's labour as a commodity confirms Marx's stigmatisation of

1085-477: The turn of the century the gangs had all but died out owing to some of the worst slums having been cleared, the setting up of Working Lads' Clubs (such as Salford Lads' Club ) to engage the working youths in more peaceful activities, the spread of street football and the advent of the cinema. One initiative to provide an alternative to gang warfare resulted in the formation of St Marks (West Gorton) Football Club, which later became Manchester City FC . In 1997

Scuttlers - Misplaced Pages Continue

1120-464: The wage system of private capitalism as 'wage-slavery;' that is, as an instrument of the capitalist's for reducing the worker's condition to that of a slave, if not below it." That this objection is fundamental follows immediately from Marx's conclusion that wage labour is the very foundation of capitalism: "Without a class dependent on wages , the moment individuals confront each other as free persons, there can be no production of surplus value ; without

1155-524: The working class is contrasted with a middle class on the basis of access to economic resources, education , cultural interests, and other goods and services, and the "white working class" has been "loosely defined" by the New York Times as comprising white people without college degrees. Researchers in Australia have suggested that working class status should be defined subjectively as

1190-678: The wrist at the onset of a "scuttle", so that the buckle could be used to strike at opponents. The use of knives and belts was designed to maim and disfigure rather than to kill. Some of the clashes between rival gangs involved large numbers; the Gorton Reporter described one such instance in May 1879 as involving more than 500 people. Scuttling reached a peak in 1890–91; it was said that by 1890 more youths were held in Strangeways Prison for scuttling than for any other offence. By

1225-458: Was actually worse than chattel slavery . Slavery apologists like George Fitzhugh contended that workers only accepted wage labour with the passage of time, as they became "familiarized and inattentive to the infected social atmosphere they continually inhale[d]". The slave, together with his labour-power, was sold to his owner once for all.... The [wage] labourer, on the other hand, sells his very self, and that by fractions.... He [belongs] to

#736263