ABSTRACT
This chapter suggests that studies of social class which have dealt with either the Marxian thesis of proletarianisation or the counter-thesis of embourgeoisement may both be seen as hypotheses about downward and upward social mobility respectively. It offers evidence which supports the view that social mobility need not always be a dissociative variable, eroding social class structure. The chapter examines the tendency in sociology to conceive of classes in terms of ideal types — the working class following collective modes of action and the middle class essentially individual modes inimical to collective action. It asserts that while the model may well have been appropriate for D. Lockwood's study of clerical workers, it hardly characterises adequately the core of the middle class. The chapter draws to a specific duality of the social democratic capitalist societies which distinguish them from fascism and state socialism, namely the principles of imperative co-ordination on the one hand and free association on the other.
