labour aristocracy
labour aristocracyA concept developed by Friedrich Engels to designate an upper section of the working class which was in receipt of higher wages and hence liable to be bribed into a surrender of its class interests. The money for this payment was, in Lenin's interpretation of the argument, held to come from imperialist profits.
The major discussion of the concept has been in relation to the development of class relations in Victorian and Edwardian Britain (the so-called ‘labour aristocracy debate’ of the 1970s). Among other things, the principal protagonists (who included sociologists of class and culture) disputed the definition of the concept itself; the role of this stratum in promoting working-class militancy and quiescence; standards of living in the immediate aftermath of the Industrial Revolution; conditions of employment, authority in...
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