ABSTRACT
In this paper my aim is to respond to a variety of arguments concerning “the service class” that have been advanced since the time I took over the concept from Renner (1953), via Dahrendorf (1959, 1964), for use in analyses of class structure and mobility (Goldthorpe 1982, Goldthorpe et al. 1987). Most of these arguments were developed with reference, critical or otherwise, to my work, and most are at least rehearsed in contributions to this collection, even if in some instances their fullest presentation is to be found elsewhere.
