Class and Common Interest
R.J. Morris begins the second part of our special feature on the Industrial Revolution, asking what were the effects of the Industrial Revolution on class and class consciousness in Britain?
Class is about power. The history of social class is about the way in which men and women gained power over others, about how they used that power, how they maintained that power, and how those 'others' responded. Class is about power in government, in the state, about power over ideas, but above all social class is about power in the relationships which produce and distribute goods and services. Somewhere between 1780 and 1850, the way in which people in Britain experienced and thought about these relationships changed.
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