The Service Class Essay Research Paper The

The Service Class Essay, Research Paper The service class as defined by the Oxford Dictionary of Sociology (Gordon Marshall, 1998) is;?A term first used by the Austro-Marxist Karl Renner to describe employees in Government (Civil Servants), private economic service (Business administrators, managers, technical experts), and social services (?distributors of welfare?. ?Subsequently adopted by the by the British sociologist? John H Goldthorpe, to describe those whose employment relationship is based on a code of service rather than a labour contract, and so involves trust as a key element with autonomy as its corollary??. However it has always been difficult to classify the service class for Marxists, as unlike the proletariats they have skills and expertise.The service class

categorises how high level, non-manual workers (i.e. managers and professionals such as doctors or lawyers) are perceived with regards to their class. Goldthorpe?s service class included the top level of the white-collar middle class. The service class has increased greatly in size and importance over the twentieth century compared to other white-collar services. Goldthorpe?s ?Intergenerational class mobility among men in England and Wales (1972)? showed this, where 14% of fathers had occupied a service class position, nearly twice as many sons (27%) occupied the same positions. His table also said ( A. Giddens, Human Societies 1992) that 73% of those aged 35 and over in the service class had had first jobs in other classes, showing a high proportion of social mobility to be

evident. This Nuffield study (Goldthorpe, Llewellyn and Payne) was contrary to previous studies, which had shown classes to be largely self-recruiting. The demand for highly qualified professionals has meant a great increase in upward social mobility, as sheer numbers needed to fill these positions has left the door open for movement within the classes.?Galbraith thinks that the service class is the new dominant class. He speaks of how previously the land owners were the dominant group, however the rise of capitalism showed that those who owned the capital to be the dominant class, then with industrialisation capital became abundant and so skills and knowledge becomes the dominant resource.? This gave rise to what was termed the ?managerial revolution?, where the separation of

ownership from control enables managers to command vast sums in return for their specialised knowledge. The development of increasingly complex occupational hierarchies occurred in both manufacturing and services, and were accompanied by the rapid growth of? higher education from the 1880s (Devine, Social class in America and Britain, 1997)C Wright Mills stated that the old middle class is now in decline as the entrepreneurs are no longer able to compete with large corporations and their specialisation.The service class brings many problems for classification? of location, Wright, gives a model where he states that the service class is in a contradictory class location between the bourgeoisie and the proletariats (also between the bourgeoisie and the petty bourgeoisie ?and

between the petty bourgeoisie and the working class).Bilton, Bonnett, Jones, Stanworth, Sheard and Webster (Introductory Sociology, 1989) think that non manual workers have been subject to a wholesale downgrading, where there boundary with the working class is actually broken. They note that in 1851 there were only around 60 000 clerks (mostly male) working in mainly professional settings (Banks, solicitors etc.), but by 1981 there was 13 000 000? clerks and associated? office, retail and ?personal service? staff , who consisted of both male and female working particularly in large scale impersonal office blocks, on low pay ??and with little chance of a career, so to what extent can we say that this marginal middle class really ?that different from the working class? Goldthorpe