CLASS FORMATION AND CAPITALISM - A 2ND LOOK AT A CLASSIC

Studies of class-formation have long been dominated by an espitemology of absense - the study of the absence of Marx's predicted revolutiona ry class consciousness among the Western working class. Katz-nelson's and Zolberg's path-breaking Working-Class Formation: Nineteenth-centur y Patterns in Western Europe and the United States (1986) posed a majo r challenge to this tradition. Instead of being seen as 'deviant' or ' exceptional', moreover, the individual cases of class formation are an alysed as variations that can only be explained by each nation's patte rn of historical - primarily political-formation. An instant classic, Working-Class Formation has not to date been surpassed by subsequent s tudies. This essay reviews the strenghts and the weaknesses of this cl assic volume, suggesting in the final analysis that it does not quite realize the full extent of its radical implications.