This book makes a comparative analysis of working-class consciousness in Britain, France, Italy and the United States and seeks to answer the question of whether the working class today is a potentially revolutionary force in the West. In France and Italy class conflict and working-class consciousness have reached a higher level of intensity than in Britain or the United States. Both Marxist and functionalist explanations for this are discussed, special attention being paid to the recent French Marxism of Althusser, Mallet and Touraine. Class consciousness is examined as a dynamic process by analyzing the "explosion of consciousness" which often seems to occur in turbulent strike situations. The author concludes that class conflict is more complex than either group of theorists suggest. Working-class consciousness and the relationship between labor and capital are found to be dualistic and fundamentally unstable. Revolutionary potential is greatest in situations of uneven economic and social development when the capital-labor contradiction may be reinforced by other social conflicts. This means that the Marxist claim that the working-class carries in itself the power to be a class for itself must be rejected.

From terrorism to social inequality and from health care to environmental issues, social problems affect us all. The Encyclopedia will offer an interdisciplinary perspective into these and many other social problems that are a continuing concern in our lives, whether we confront them on a personal, local, regional, national, or global level.

Few themes have been as central to sociology as 'class' and yet class remains a perpetually contested idea. Sociologists disagree not only on how best to define the concept of class but on its general role in social theory and indeed on its continued relevance to the sociological analysis of contemporary society. Some people believe that classes have largely dissolved in contemporary societies; others believe class remains one of the fundamental forms of social inequality and social power. Some see class as a narrow economic phenomenon whilst others adopt an expansive conception that includes cultural dimensions as well as economic conditions. This 2005 book explores the theoretical foundations of six major perspectives of class with each chapter written by an expert in the field. It concludes with a conceptual map of these alternative approaches by posing the question: 'If class is the answer, what is the question?'

Scholars and nonacademics alike have usually assumed that the American working class does not think of itself as a coherent class opposed to the dominant powers in American society-in short, that it is not class conscious. In international perspective, the American working class appears docile and complacent. It has never supported a strong socialist movement; a weak union movement has limited itself to simple wage demands; and class conflict here has rarely threatened to explode into a social revolution. Both radicals and mainstream scholars have explained this American exceptionalism by the conservative psychology of the American worker.This provocative book presents a new vision of the American working class. The American Perception of Class offers a radically new interpretation of American class conflict and criticizes earlier analyses for psychologizing the problem and "blaming the victims" for their subordination. It marshals a great variety of evidence, primarily from national surveys, to demonstrate that, contrary to what almost everybody has assumed, American workers are indeed class conscious. They have not been so beguiled by images of a classless society that they can no longer recognize the divide that separates them from their middle class and corporate bosses; nor have they been swallowed up by an affluent middle class; and they have not been so divided by racial and ethnic loyalties, or gender specific interests that they have forgotten their common class position.Finally, the book suggests a new approach to class conflict in America-one not based on the psychology of the American worker but on the strength of American business and its capacity to overwhelm or redirect any challenge from below. No other working class has faced such a formidable opponent. Author note: Reeve Vanneman is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Maryland at College Park. >P>Lynn Weber Cannon is Associate Director for the Center for Research on Women and Professor of Sociology at Memphis State University.

This is the first time one of the most important of Lukács' early theoretical writings, published in Germany in 1923, has been made available in English. The book consists of a series of essays treating, among other topics, the definition of orthodox Marxism, the question of legality and illegality, Rosa Luxemburg as a Marxist, the changing function of Historic Marxism, class consciousness, and the substantiation and consciousness of the Proletariat. Writing in 1968, on the occasion of the appearance of his collected works, Lukács evaluated the influence of this book as follows: "For the historical effect of History and Class Consciousness and also for the actuality of the present time one problem is of decisive importance: alienation, which is here treated for the first time since Marx as the central question of a revolutionary critique of capitalism, and whose historical as well as methodological origins are deeply rooted in Hegelian dialectic. It goes without saying that the problem was omnipresent. A few years after History and Class Consciousness was published, it was moved into the focus of philosophical discussion by Heidegger in his Being and Time, a place which it maintains to this day largely as a result of the position occupied by Sartre and his followers. The philologic question raised by L. Goldmann, who considered Heidegger's work partly as a polemic reply to my (admittedly unnamed) work, need not be discussed here. It suffices today to say that the problem was in the air, particularly if we analyze its background in detail in order to clarify its effect, the mixture of Marxist and Existentialist thought processes, which prevailed especially in France immediately after the Second World War. In this connection priorities, influences, and so on are not particularly significant. What is important is that the alienation of man was recognized and appreciated as the central problem of the time in which we live, by bourgeois as well as proletarian, by politically rightist and leftist thinkers. Thus, History and Class Consciousness exerted a profound effect in the circles of the youthful intelligentsia."

In Lenin and the Logic of Hegemony, by means of a careful textual and contextual analysis of the writings of Lenin and his Marxist contemporaries, Alan Shandro traces the contours of the ‘(anti-) metaphysical event’ identified by Gramsci in Lenin’s political practice and theory, the emergence of the ‘philosophical fact’ of hegemony. In so doing, he effectively disputes conventional caricatures of Lenin’s role as a political actor and thinker and unearths the underlying parameters of the concept of hegemony in the class struggle. He thereby clarifies the conceptual status of this pervasive but now increasingly elusive notion and the logic of theory and practice at work in it.