ABSTRACT
The theory of industrialism has a strong claim to being the most systematically formulated and influential theory of longer-term social structural change developed in the post-war era. Much of John Goldthorpe’s work can be seen as a prolonged debate with the theory, and particularly with its claims that there has been a tendency over time for advanced industrial societies to converge in terms of the organization of work, patterns of social stratification, forms of social conflict and the nature of political institutions. In contrast Goldthorpe has repeatedly stressed the powerful self-maintaining properties of social structures and hence the persistence of major sources of differentiation between societies.
