Introduction

The ideal-type of the traditional worker is developed alongside the debate as to what new characteristics the working class was taking on, so that the comparison can be drawn. Without engaging in a debate as to Weber's meaning of ideal-types whether they are aids to discovery and as such disposable, or the core constructive elements of an abstract science of society one can still assess the contribution such a methodology has made in recent debates on the working class. As early as the 1850s commentators were welcoming the existence of a new' working class respectable, temperate, a member of Co-op and Penny Banks, who would eventually become a class of worker-capitalists who would eliminate the employer by co-operation through the limited liability companies. The bourgeoisie with whom the earlier revisionists sought to associate or integrate the working class was a bourgeoisie of entrepreneurs or semi-autonomous plant managers who exercised economic power.