Introduction

In recent years historians and other social scientists have widely questioned the continued relevance of social class - as historical relationship, as sociological category, as philosophical concept, and in terms of its enduring political significance.

The success of the British Conservative Party since 1979, combined with the weaknesses and failures of the Labour movement, have led historians and social scientists to reconsider the general nature of connections between the social and the political and the specific relations between the working class and socialist and Labour politics.

This collection of essays is a multi-disciplinary critique of the new revisionism, which demonstrates the continued vitality and promise of non-reductionist and non-determinist modes of class analysis.