ABSTRACT
Such an assertion needs to be qualified in two ways. First, it should be noted that conflict or competition between young and old over scarce resources is by no means new. It has been a common theme in historical and anthropological accounts of pre-modern societies as well (see Foner 1984; Williamson and Watts-Roy 1999). But with the evolution of the modern welfare state the form and arena of this conflict have changed. Second, and more importantly for our present concerns, it remains essential to assess the extent of the generational cleavage per se and the extent to which it masks the continued existence of the class cleavage between wealthy and poor (or owners and workers). In other words, to what extent have the new inter-generational conflicts really crowded out traditional intra-generational ones? There are moreover other cleavages that are usually categorized as ‘new’ dimensions of inequality (in distinction to the ‘old’ ones of class), such as those of gender and ethnicity (or ‘race’).
