Introduction

Karl Marx’s great contribution was to identify the role played by the means through which production was organized. For him, different modes of production generated different mechanisms that both created and then sustained inequality. Irrespective of the many defects in his analysis, his key point is surely correct – that the emergence of capitalism in the 18th century fundamentally changed the mechanisms by which social inequality developed. Inequality is sustained by different factors now, some of which were the consequences of public policy, while others were the result of social and economic change. Britain’s income inequality is amongst the highest in Europe, as well as being higher than Canada’s though lower than that in the United States. The relative demise of social status as the mainspring of social inequality within the white population was arguably the most significant change in British society after about 1970.