Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book demonstrates that an understanding of the structure of the capitalist class is a powerful tool for social research, specifically for understanding the emergence of the health care system in the United States. It explains differences in the welfare systems of Britain, Sweden, and the United States. The book also demonstrates members of Belgian working-class communities in Ghent, Brussels, and Liège responded in very different ways to the process of industrialization. It examines the discourse of conflict used in a major industrial action by the cotton spinners of the Ashton-Stalybridge region of England in 1830. The book provides an important point about discourse and active human agents: Actors struggle through discourse, rather than being impelled by its meanings.