Alternate Routes: A Journal of Critical Social Research, 33, 17-35 (2023)
Professional Employees’ Transformative Potential:
Labour Aristocracy or New Working Class
D.W. Livingstone1
ABSTRACT: Class forces founded in production relations are basic agents of continuity and change
in all societies today. The main distinction is between those who own means of production and those
they hire to produce goods and services, along with others they hire to coordinate and control the
producers. Of course, these class differences interact with relations based on race, gender, age and
other specific conditions. But those analysts who choose to focus on these factors while either
ignoring class relations or reducing them to cultural distinctions are missing the underlying profit-
driven dynamic of advanced capitalism. The aim of this paper is to identify the basic classes
producing goods and services in advanced capitalism and assess their disposition to progressive
change. If we want to move toward a sustainable equitable future, we need to 'find the horses' to get
us there. Are non-managerial professional employees’ likely candidates?
KEYWORDS: Professional Classes; New Working Class; Oppositional Class Consciousness;
Wealth Effect
Introduction
The neoliberal austerity offensive of the past generation has produced wage stagnation and
reduced social benefits for workers, record profits for global corporate capitalists and extreme
economic inequality. The Great Recession of 2007-8 and the COVID-19 pandemic have only
accentuated these tendencies. At the same time, the many effluents of capitalist industrialization
now pose imminent threats to any sustainable ecosystem. Russia’s recent invasion of Ukraine and
the NATO-aided counter-offensive should remind us all of the massive military and nuclear
destructive capacities of inter-capitalist conflicts. All of these conditions have been well-
documented. The current moment should be provoking concerted efforts by progressive forces
everywhere to identify and act toward realizing a more sustainable equitable future. One element
largely missing in such efforts to date is class analysis of potential transformative forces that could
be involved.
Since Plato, philosophers have aspired to be kings. Technocrats are now occasionally
appointed to head crisis-bound governments. But the much-heralded ‘professional-managerial
class’ (PMC) does not exist. It is largely a figment of the imaginations of various intellectual
apologists for the similarly fictitious ‘post-industrial society’ and ‘knowledge-based economy’
(see Livingstone, Adams and Sawchuk 2021; Camfield 2020). The basic animating notion—
promoted most influentially by Daniel Bell (1973) --is that a new form of production was emerging
in which skilled mental labour would predominate over manual labour, and that knowledge
workers and those who coordinated their labours would become the most influential class, while
manual workers would diminish and business owners would increasingly defer to the technical
wisdom of these experts. The myth was effectively trashed on conceptual and empirical grounds
(see Meiksins 1986).
1 D.W. Livingstone is Professor Emeritus and past Canada Research Chair in Lifelong Learning and Work at the
Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at the University of Toronto. Portions of this article are excerpted from
Livingstone (2023).
18
But it continues to be reproduced even by critical intellectuals who now point to a
“professional class” of technocrats and other knowledge workers whose fixation on objective
scientific facts actually aids global capitalists maintain control of the production system and
impedes genuine progress on climate change (e.g. Huber 2022). As I will document, both
managers and non-managerial professional employees have increased as proportions of the class
structure in advanced capitalism since the 1980s. But shared growth is hardly sufficient reason to
treat them as a coherent class.
This professional-managerial class never happened. Corporate capitalist owners have
gained increasingly concentrated economic and political power in all advanced capitalist
economies. They have hired increasing numbers of managers, many without specialized
professional training but with assured allegiance to their owners and with delegated authority to
coordinate and control the growing numbers of non-managerial professional employees. These
professional employees are the most rapidly increasing part of the class structure of advanced
capitalism. But there is now solid empirical evidence that they have much less control of their jobs
compared to corporate owners and managers, as well as diminishing benefits for their specialized
skills and training. There is no indication that non-managerial professional employees are
becoming part of a new ruling class.
The evidence in this paper will demonstrate the fallacy of the PMC. A more difficult
challenge is overcoming the tendency to treat all those who share professional occupational
training as one big family. They are not. Some professionally trained folks become self-employed
and may eventually become employers. Others may become managers. Most become non-
managerial employees. As owners/employers, managers or non-managerial workers they have
different class interests. A recent book provides ample proof of these class differences among
professionals in general and engineers and nurses in particular (Livingstone el al 2021). The facts
that many folks trained in a given profession tend to join the same professional association and
that most of the research literature on professionals ignores distinct professional classes are not a
sufficient basis to deny their existence. The issue is very relevant for potential political change
because professional employees are now strategically placed knowledge workers designing,
performing, reviewing and adapting the information-based production activities that increasingly
pervade the paid workplaces of advanced capitalism. The capture of their specialized knowledge
(i.e. by burgeoning ‘knowledge management’ offensives) is seen as vital for continuing
profitability and productivity (e.g. Drucker 1998). At the same time, professional employees are
increasingly becoming one of the largest groups of non-managerial workers and joining the labour
movement.
So, the central issue is not to celebrate professionals as part of a PMC rising to dominance
in the ‘knowledge economy’. It is to assess the working conditions of non-managerial professional
employees and consider the extent to which these strategic knowledge workers align themselves
with capitalist class interests or support the class interests of other labouring classes. The real
question in terms of class forces with transformative potential is whether they are more likely to
become a new labour aristocracy or a new working class.
The labour aristocracy thesis has had many variants. The central claim is that a relatively
well-paid highly skilled echelon of wage-earners in advanced capitalist countries has ‘taken the
bribe’. That is, relatively affluent and secure working conditions have made them comfortable with
capitalism and reluctant to do much to support their more downtrodden comrades. Variants of this
thesis have often been resorted to by progressive intellectuals when non-managerial workers have
not met their revolutionary expectations (see Post 2010 for an extensive critical review).
19
Conversely, the new working-class thesis has played up the revolutionary potential of
skilled technical workers in more automated forms of production to gain greater control of their
workplaces and lead revolutionary actions (Mallet 1975). Variants of this thesis taken up with
enthusiasm in the 1960s were first dismissed by empirical researchers (Gallie 1978) and have now
largely devolved into searches for nominees among highly qualified precarious and dissatisfied
gig workers (e.g. Winant 2017).
So, what does relevant empirical evidence tell us today with regard to non-managerial
professional employees, the knowledge workers who are now effectively a main focus of both
labour aristocracy and new working-class theses? In this paper, I will first use the best available
empirical evidence since the early 1990s on G7 and Scandinavian countries to document the main
changes in the class structure of advanced capitalist economies. Then the general working
conditions of non-managerial professional employees will be compared with the upper managers
who some presume to be combining with them into the ‘professional-managerial class’.
Professional employees will also be compared with non-managerial industrial workers, who have
long been regarded as the leading working-class force and with service workers, two groups
typically seen as the traditional working class. Finally, I use survey data on political attitudes to
provide evidence of the extent to which non-managerial professional employees and those in other
class positions express either pro-labour oppositional class consciousness or pro-capital
oppositional consciousness. This will provide some initial estimates of the extent to which these
strategic knowledge workers may be inclined to become a new working class disposed to
progressive political action against capital or, conversely, to become a highly qualified and
relatively affluent contemporary labour aristocracy.
Changing Employment Class Structure of Advanced Capitalism
There is an increasingly convergent view among critical class analysts that the employment
class structure of advanced capitalism is tripartite in character. As noted at the outset, there are
owners of businesses, non-managerial producers of goods and services, as well as managers. To
stay in business, owners are driven by profit imperatives. The non-managerial workers they hire
are driven by the need to gain sufficient benefits to sustain themselves and their families. The
managerial hierarchy is driven by both imperatives, with relative priority linked to where they are
in the hierarchy. More specifically, we can distinguish ten class positions among these three basic
groups in contemporary production relations:
Owners
• Corporate capitalists
• Large employers
• Small employers
• Self-employed
Non-managerial workers
• Professional employees
• Service workers
• Industrial workers
Managerial employees
• Upper managers
• Middle managers
• Supervisors
I have critically reviewed the relevant research literature, defined and documented all these classes
more carefully elsewhere (Livingstone et al 2021; Livingstone 2023). But here I will focus mainly
on professional employees in comparison with other non-managerial workers and with upper
managers, the class groups that the new working-class, labour aristocracy and PMC theses,
respectively, presume as their close allies.
20
Non-managerial workers include industrial workers who produce material goods in
extractive, manufacturing and construction sectors. Second service workers create or deliver a
wide array of sales, business, social and other services. Third, professional employees are
recognized for specialized knowledge and granted some discretionary control to: a) design
production processes for themselves and others; and b) have executed their own work with a
relatively high level of autonomy, but they remain subordinated to employer and managerial
prerogatives.2 Upper managers are delegated by owners to control the overall labour process at
the point of production to ensure profitability, but also contribute their labour to co-ordinate this
process. Under the authority of upper managers, there are middle managers who perform
administrative and accounting staff services, as well as supervisors who control adherence to
production standards by industrial and service workers but may also collaborate directly with them
in aspects of this work. These lower-level managers have not typically been regarded as part of a
presumed PMC and will not be included in the following comparisons.
First, I will summarize some of the main features of this class structure over the past 3
decades, based on the best available comparative data for the G7 and Scandinavian countries. The
most readily available cross-national source of comparative data on recent employment class
structures is the International Labour Office (2015) data set on Key Indicators in the Labour
Market (KILM). The KILM report builds on the census data reported by countries to ILO. The
KILM report relies on internationally comparable criteria derived from statistical standards agreed
by the International Conference of Labour Statisticians. The KILM data provide quite accurate
estimates of employment by status--the numbers of employers, self-employed and employees—in
these countries. Employment by occupation data are also provided, distinguishing managers as
well as professional, service workers and industrial workers in non-managerial occupations.
But there are a few limits to these occupational data. First, occupation does not equate to
class (see Wright 1980). Someone with occupational training as an engineer or nurse could become
an employer, self-employed, a manager or a professional employee, with quite different class
interests. The KILM data provided do not permit extracting employers and self-employed from
the occupational distributions. So, I have taken the numbers of employers and self-employed for
given years in these countries from the employment by status data and expressed the occupational
distributions of managers as well as professional, service workers and industrial workers as
proportions of the residual occupational data when employers and self-employed are removed.
Second, the ‘managers’ occupational data category includes only those with primary formal
managerial occupations and omits many who combine other occupations with some formal
managerial duties. A significant number of lower level managers (i.e. middle managers and
supervisors) are buried in the non-managerial occupational groups.
Comparable KILM data are available from 1992 to 2016 and beyond. With the above
provisos, basic estimated distributions of main employment classes for G7 and Scandinavian
countries in 1992 and 2016 are summarized in Table 1.
2 See Livingstone (2014) and Livingstone, Adams and Sawchuk (2021) for further discussion and empirical analysis
distinguishing professional employees from professional owners, self-employed professionals and professional
managers. Professional employees are found throughout private and public industrial and service sectors.
21
Table 1 Employment Class Structure, G7 and Scandinavian Countries, (1992) and 2016 (%
of employed labour force)
Country Employers Self-
employed
Managers Professional
employees
Service
workers
Industrial
workers
Canada (6) 5 (8) 11 (9) 7 (23) 31 (25) 23 (28) 24
Denmark (4) 3 (5) 5 (4) (29) 40 (27) 26 (31) 24
Finland (4) 4 (12) 10 (4) 3 (22) 37 (30) 22 (28) 24
France (5) 4 (8) 7 (6) 6 (27) 34 (26) 21 (29) 27
Germany (5) 4 (4) 6 (4) 4 (28) 36 (25) 25 (34) 25
Italy (8) 7 (19) 16 (2) 3 (18) 25 (21) 23 (33) 26
Japan (4) 2 (11) 6 (3) 2 (18) 24 (37) 39 (27) 27
Norway (4) 2 (6) 5 (13) 7 (21) 42 (27) 25 (30) 20
Sweden (4) 4 (8) 6 (4) 5 (30) 42 (25) 23 (29) 20
UK (4) 2 (9) 13 (9) 9 (30) 32 (24) 24 (25) 20
US (4) (5) 4 (8) 10 (29) 34 (28) 27 (26) 23
Source: Livingstone 2023 (estimated from ILO KILM Report, 2015).
These data permit the following general conclusions. The vast majority of those in the employed
labour force are now hired employees. In most of these countries this amounts to over 85 percent
of those employed. Employers and self-employed make up less than 15 percent of the labour force
in most countries, and the self-employed are twice as numerous as employers.
Professional employees are increasing significantly and now make up over 30 percent of the labour
force in nearly all of these countries. Those in skilled trades, machine operators and other manual
occupations (‘industrial workers’) are declining significantly and now make up less than 35 percent
of the labour force in all these countries. Those in clerical, sales and service occupations (‘service
workers’) are also now declining at least slightly in most of these countries and generally make up
under 30 percent of the labour force.Those in definite managerial positions are relatively small
numbers -- but they are supplemented by those in other non-managerial occupations with some
formal managerial or supervisory duties.
The conflating of some lower-level managers with non-managerial occupations is
problematic. Much conventional empirical research continues to confuse employment classes with
occupations. To the immediate point, professional employees who become managers should not
be presumptively conflated with either professional employees per se or with the smaller numbers
of professional employers (Livingstone et al 2021). A series of national labour force surveys
conducted in Canada between 1982 and 2016 permit more accurate class distinctions, as
summarized in Table 2.3
3 The data in most of the following tables is drawn from Livingstone (2023) where there is much further
documentation.
22
Table 2 General Class Distribution, Employed Labour Force, Canada, 1982-2016 (%)
General class
location
Employment class 1982 1998 2004 2010 2016
Owners
Corporate
capitalist/large
employer
>1 >1 >1 >1 >1
Small employer 3 6 6 5 4
Self-employed 13 10 13 12 10
All owners 16 16 19 17 14
Managerial
Upper manager 1 1 2 2 2
Mid/low manager 4 7 10 10 13
Supervisor 4 6 6 6 5
All managerial 9 14 18 18 20
Non-managerial
Professional employee 12 17 18 24 23
Service worker 33 26 22 23 25
Industrial worker 30 27 23 18 18
All non-managerial 75 70 63 65 66
Employed N 1758 873 5570 1192 2881
Source: Livingstone, 2023
Owners, including tiny numbers of corporate capitalists and large employers, small
numbers of small employers and larger numbers of self-employed, all of whom control their own
businesses, have continued to make up around 15 percent of the employed labour force. The
numbers of corporate capitalists and large employers are both too small for accurate estimates of
change with these samples. Corporate capitalists are very tiny in number. Even though the cut-off
limit for ‘large’ employers is as low as having 10 employees in these surveys, they remain at less
than 1 percent of the labour force. These findings are consistent with mounting international
evidence that more national capital assets are being consolidated in fewer hands (Serfati 2014).
The survey evidence does indicate that small employers have remained a consistently small
percentage of the labour force. Small employers continue to generate significant numbers of new
jobs but often with very limited security for either their employees or themselves. The self-
employed have continued to be a more substantial portion of the labour force, around 10 percent,
albeit highly prone to bankruptcy and downward mobility into hired labour posts or
unemployment, and with more limited prospects of becoming successful enough to hire others and
become small employers. Nearly all self-employed remain highly dependent on their own labour,
whether in independent enterprises or increasingly subcontracting to larger firms.
Among non-managerial employees, a decline of manufacturing jobs during this period is a
major consequence of automation and the export of less skilled jobs to less developed countries.
The result has been a reduction of employment of industrial workers in private material goods
producing sectors to less than 20 percent of the employed labour force.
23
A relative growth of service workers, or ’white collar proletarians’; through most of the
20th century was grounded in increasing recognition by capital of the service sector as the ’new
frontier’ for commodification, as well as the initial difficulty of mechanizing the growing array of
discrete clerical recording and personal sales tasks involved in realizing the profits on the
burgeoning numbers of material goods. Growth of public service workers was also related to
processing general population entitlements for health, education and other state benefits even in
the wake of plant closures and office computerization. But, more recently, automation and
routinization have also led to the rapid rise of self-service (think of the declines of bank tellers,
secretarial pools, travel agents and toll booth collectors) and the export of portable service jobs.
Clerical, sales and service workers have therefore declined somewhat since the 1980s although
still making up around a quarter of the employed labour force. Professional employees roughly
doubled in size to over 20 percent of the employed labour force, consistent with a multitude of
predictions about the centrality of `knowledge workers` in the `new economy`. Professional
employees may now be a larger part of the employed labour force than the declining numbers of
industrial workers.
An absolute growth of managerial positions has been generally predicted in terms of the
need to coordinate and control an increasingly capital- and technology-intensive labor process
(Kenney 1997). Managerial employees actually grew substantially during this period, now making
up about 20 percent of the labour force. Upper managers, who control a plant, branch or division
of an entire organization, have increased in absolute numbers but still make up only 2 percent of
the labour force. Most of the proportionate increase has been in middle management, ‘back office’
administrative functions regulating non-managerial workers and accounting for production output.
Direct supervisors and forepersons still make up about the same proportion of the overall labour
force as previously, so a smaller proportion of management per se is now devoted to direct
supervision. As the managerial hierarchy has expanded, more managers themselves are managed.
In 1982, around a third of all managers had no manager above them to whom they were required
to report; by 2010, the proportion had declined to around 5 percent (Livingstone, Pollock and
Raykov, 2016). This change is mainly reflective of the general inflation of the numbers of middle
managers subordinated to upper managers. It should be noted here that there has been a pervasive
assumption that all levels of managers generally share similar orientations. But given their
different coordinating and controlling roles, significant polarization of their powers has now been
found (Livingstone et al 2021).
So, overall, there have likely been three substantial changes in employment class structure
during this period. First and foremost, professional employees with their more specialized
knowledge have become a much larger part of the non-managerial labour force. Secondly, the
traditional working class of industrial workers and service workers, who mainly provide their
labour without specialized requirements, has declined from a majority to a minority of the entire
employed labour force. Thirdly, middle managers are playing a larger role in regulating production
processes.
Some class analysts might accept the general accuracy of this profile of class structure as
well as these recent structural changes. But there is a popular tendency to stress more a growing
precariousness among non-managerial employees, as well as to portray those in the most
temporary insecure jobs as distinctly more dissatisfied and possibly more predisposed to political
extremism in response to their fears, with some in this ‘precariat’ portrayed as a new working class
to fight for progressive change (e.g. Standing 2011). Two points here. First, there may have been
some increases in proportions of those in part-time jobs during this period. But the most careful
24
estimates of presumed dimensions of precarity confirm that such changes have been marginal at
best and have not significantly altered the employment class structure beyond the general changes
documented above (Ornstein 2021). Secondly, few significant differences in either basic working
conditions or political attitudes have been found between those who are full time or involuntary
part-time in these respective class positions (Livingstone 2023). Workers’ sense of exploitation
undoubtedly varies on many dimensions. But most non-managerial workers in capitalism share the
precarious condition of being free to find another employer or unemployment challenges, as well
as a general relative worsening of wages and working conditions since the onset of neoliberal
austerity. Being full or part-time, regular or temporary, does not appear to alter workers’ sense of
these conditions much—in spite of much huffing and puffing about greater precarity.
Class and Workplace Power
In general, we can expect employers to exercise an overarching prerogative of ownership
in their firms, managers to exercise more limited authority in delegated terms, and non-managerial
employees to be primarily subject to these ownership and managerial powers. A central dimension
of workplace power is the extent of direct involvement in organizational decision-making.
Respondents to the series of Canadian surveys were asked whether they participated in significant
decision making in their organizations either by making decisions by themselves or with others
about such matters as the types of products or services delivered, employee hiring and firing,
budgets, workload, and change in procedure. The extent to which people participate in making
these kinds of decisions-- their organizational decision-making power-- is likely to be very relevant
to the degree to which they can exercise their autonomy and effectively utilize their skills in their
particular jobs. Table 3 summarizes the findings for different general employment classes as well
as the different professional classes in the 2016 national survey.
Table 3 Employment Class by Participation in Organizational Decision-Making, Canada,
2016 (% Yes)
Employment Class General Labour Force* Professionals
% %
Employers 88 100
Self-employed 69 51
Managers 62 50
Professional employees 27 27
Service workers 27 --
Industrial workers 27 --
Total 42 36
Total N 2759 702
Source: Livingstone et al 2021.
* General Labour Force class data include respondents in professional classes (N=702)
As expected, employers generally as well as professional employers are all involved in
significant organizational decision-making--with the exception of a few large employers who
choose to fully delegate to their managers. The self-employed, including self-employed
professionals, would also be expected to be the primary decision-makers in their own businesses,
but some are now reliant on sub-contracts with larger corporations with little further influence.
Managers generally and professional managers in particular, as expected, have intermediate levels
of involvement on organizational decisions: less than employers but more than non-managerial
25
employees. The extent of managerial authority can vary greatly from upper managers with power
similar to employers to supervisors with much less. But only about a quarter of professional
employees now indicate any involvement in organizational decision-making, a level comparable
to both service workers and industrial workers. In spite of their specialized skills, professional
employees in general are now less likely to be involved in organizational decisions than most
managerial personnel and no more likely than less formally qualified non-managerial employees.
At least by this measure of workplace power, the indications from this time series of Canadian
surveys suggest that the job control of professional employees has been diminishing in recent
decades, consistent with arguments for the ‘proletarianization of professionals’ (e.g. Oppenheimer
1973).
Further analyses of this time series of national surveys from 1982 to 2016 confirm that
professional employees have been experiencing both increasing levels of underemployment of
their credentials as well as decreasing opportunities to participate in further education to maintain
and upgrade their skills (Livingstone et al 2021). Professional employees previously were favoured
over other non-managerial workers both in terms of lower levels of underemployment given their
scarcer qualifications and in terms of greater chances for further education given their strategic
production value. But the gap has been quickly closing and a ‘reserve army’ of professional
workers grows.
These documented changes in workplace power, underemployment and continuing
learning opportunities all suggest that professional employees are experiencing relatively
worsening working conditions. So what effects if any are these changes having on class
consciousness?
Oppositional Class Consciousness
Most recent studies of class consciousness have focused on questions of class identity or specific
political attitudes. Studies of class identity usually find that people locate themselves in terms of
consumption levels, with growing numbers seeing themselves in the ‘middle classes’, that is
neither rich nor poor—a reasonably accurate estimate for most consumers in advanced capitalist
societies. Most steelworkers for example in the 1980s considered themselves to be middle-class in
terms of wage levels; at the same time, they were among the most progressive groups in terms of
political attitudes (Seccombe and Livingstone 1999). In conceptual terms, three levels of class
consciousness are commonly distinguished (see Mann 1973): class identity; oppositional
consciousness; and hegemonic capitalist or revolutionary labour class consciousness.
• Class identity is awareness of classes and extent of affiliation with a particular class;
• Oppositional consciousness is recognition of conflict of interest with another class or classes; and
• Hegemonic (or revolutionary) consciousness is recognition of a vision of society consistent with
your class interest and commitment to maintain (or realize) this vision.
26
In the wake of major worker and student protests in 1968, particularly in France in May and
in Italy’s ‘hot autumn, there were various inquiries into the higher levels of class consciousness in
advanced capitalist countries.4 Since the 1970s, there have been very few critical studies that have
investigated higher levels of class consciousness and even fewer that have examined connections
between class consciousness and class position (see Livingstone 2023). In the wake of the Great
Recession, continuing neoliberal austerity and the COVID-19 pandemic, it is surely time for more.
Here I will summarize highlights from the rare few relevant empirical studies since that time and
then assess the current relative connections of employment class and household wealth with higher
levels of class consciousness. The main focus will be on oppositional class consciousness.
Oppositional class consciousness in capitalism involves the extent to which the interests of
capital and labour are recognized. The basic interest of capital is in the right to maximize profits.
The basic interest of labour is in the right to strike, to withhold labour for decent benefits. Someone
with clearly pro-capital oppositional consciousness would support profit maximization and also
oppose workers’ unconditional right to strike. Conversely, pro-labour oppositional consciousness
involves opposing profit maximization and unconditionally supporting workers’ right to strike.
Those with more mixed views on these two questions could be seen as holding a contradictory
oppositional consciousness. A coherent oppositional level of class consciousness can be seen as
pivotal for understanding the extent of conflict between class interests. Without a clear sense of
opposed class interests, any vision of an alternative society is more unlikely to be translated into
concerted political action.
The main questions used to estimate opposed class interests in the most recent Canadian labour
force survey and the several prior international and Canadian surveys are:
Rights of capital: “Owners of corporations make gains at the expense of their workers.”
Rights of labour: “During a strike, management should be prohibited by law from hiring workers
to take the place of strikers.”
The merits of these specific questions are certainly open to debate. But they are pretty much the
only game in town for the moment and at least offer suggestive findings. A rare set of cross-
national surveys containing these questions was done in the early 1980s.5 I have conducted a
secondary analysis of the data to generate the estimates of oppositional class consciousness in
Table 4.
4 For representative studies including these ‘higher’ levels of class consciousness, mainly in the late 1960s and 1970s,
see: Touraine (1966); Leggett (1968); Ollman (1972); Hazelrigg (1973); and Moorhouse (1976). For earlier
presentations of my own approach and more extensive literature reviews, see Livingstone (1976, 1985, 1987).
5 These surveys were conducted under the leadership of the late Erik Olin Wright. The data are publicly available. For
further information on the CSCC project data, and access to the data base, interested researchers can contact the
Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan, citing: Wright, Erik Olin. Comparative Project on Class
Structure and Class Consciousness: Core and Country-Specific Files. [distributor], 1992-02-17.
https://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR09323.v1.
https://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR09323.v1
27
Table 4 Oppositional Class Consciousness, Advanced Capitalist Countries, 1980s
Country Pro-capital
(%)
Contradictory
(%)
Pro-labour
(%)
Australia 32 47 22
Canada 15 44 42
Japan 8 45 47
Norway 28 45 28
Sweden 11 34 56
US 23 47 30
Source: Livingstone 2023.
Many analysts of class consciousness during this period argued—without much direct
evidence--that contradictory class consciousness was prevalent in advanced capitalist societies,
with many workers’ views clouded by a dominant capitalist ideology (see Abercrombie, Hill and
Turner 1982 for critical discussion). The findings for the surveyed countries offer some support
for this thesis. But that argument ignores two other important empirical findings. First,
oppositional labour consciousness was nearly equivalent to or greater than contradictory
consciousness in some countries. Secondly, pro-labour oppositional consciousness was greater
than pro-capital consciousness in most countries. Sweden was the leading case, with a majority
expressing pro-labour consciousness and only a small minority indicating pro-capital
consciousness.
The later series of national surveys conducted only in Canada offers estimates of the more
recent development of oppositional class consciousness. The general findings are summarized in
Table 5.
Table 5 Oppositional Class Consciousness, Canada, 1982-2016
Oppositional
Class consciousness
Year Pro-capital
(%)
Contradictory
(%)
Pro-labour
(%)
1982 15 44 42
2004 12 54 34
2010 13 55 33
2016 10 54 36
Source: Livingstone 2023.
The general pattern of oppositional consciousness has been fairly consistent during this
period. Contradictory consciousness has been most common, with many people either choosing to
pragmatically accept the opposed rights of both capital and labour, or to avoid making a choice on
one or the other. Some researchers have argued that such pragmatic acceptance is pervasive among
subordinated classes (e.g. Mann 1970). But once again this ignores the other basic findings. Pro-
labour oppositional consciousness has remained substantial throughout this period (33 to 42
percent) and much greater than pro-labour oppositional consciousness (10 to 15 percent). The
pertinent issue now is how these patterns of oppositional class consciousness are connected to
employment class positions.
28
Employment Class and Oppositional Class Consciousness
For class in the production relations of advanced capitalism to have prospects for progressive
political significance, there have to be discernible connections between exploited peoples’
grounded experience in these relations and their consciousness of their exploitation. The most
basic assumption here is that non-managerial employees are exploited workers. Therefore, there
should be distinctive connections between these workers’ class locations and their expressions of
opposition to capitalist working conditions. More specifically, there should be positive
associations between non-managerial employee classes and expressions of pro-labour
oppositional class consciousness.
Conversely, there should be positive associations among corporate capitalists, larger
employers and upper managers with pro-capital oppositional class consciousness. Those in more
intermediate class positions—small employers and the self-employed, as well as lower level
managers—should express more mixed variants of these forms of class consciousness. The basic
findings from the rare cross-national surveys in the early 1980s that distinguished employment
classes adequately and also included oppositional consciousness questions are summarized in
Table 6. The focus is on non-managerial employees as well as large employers and upper
managers, and the extent to which they expressed pro-labour versus pro-capital views. The
remainder in each class expressed contradictory consciousness.
Table 6 Class by Oppositional Class Consciousness, Advanced Capitalist Countries, 1980s
(% pro-labour/pro-capital views)
Employment Class U.S. Norway Canada Japan Sweden
Corporate capitalist n/a n/a 0/80 n/a n/a
Large employer 8/50 17/43 9/55 25/38 0/100
Upper manager 15/46 14/47 6/53 * 26/32
Professional employee 36/22 26/27 48/14 49/9 52/12
Service worker 30/17 29/25 41/13 50/5 59/7
Industrial worker 40/13 39/16 54/8 51/9 71/3
Total % 30/23 28/28 42/15 46/8 55/11
Total N 1697 1676 1758 547 1137
Source: Livingstone 2023.
*Japanese upper managers were not distinguished from middle managers in this sample
Corporate capitalists have extremely rarely permitted assessment of their oppositional class
consciousness. But in an exceptional series of Canadian surveys that addressed the relevant
questions, representative samples of corporate executives consistently expressed much higher
levels of pro-capital consciousness than any other class groups, and a total absence of pro-labour
consciousness (Livingstone 2023). This is in keeping with the classic notion of ideological
hegemony (see Livingstone 1976), where the leading fraction of the dominant class inherently
believes in and acts to realize its class interests while other subordinate classes are expected to
express more mixed or contradictory views and are vulnerable to alliances and actions against their
class interests. Consistent with this perspective, large employers and upper managers in most
countries were more likely to express pro-capital views than mixed views and much less likely to
indicate pro-labour sympathies.
29
Patterns of oppositional consciousness among all three groups of non-managerial workers
were quite different than this. While contradictory consciousness was often the most common
view, in almost every instance pro-labour consciousness was greater than pro-capital
consciousness and often far greater. In every case, professional employees were far less likely than
upper managers to indicate pro-capital views. Professional employees were generally much closer
to industrial workers and service workers in their pro-labour views. Sweden was the leading case,
with majorities among all three groups of non-managerial workers expressing pro-labour views
and with very few holding pro-capital views. It is also notable that in the wake of the serious
challenge to the sanctity of profits by a proposed wage-earner fund (the Meidner Plan), large
Swedish employers expressed the strongest unanimity in defence of profits and against strikes.
But the basic point here for my immediate purpose is clear confirmation that non-
managerial workers in general and professional employees in almost every case were more likely
to hold pro-labour views than pro-capital views, indicating substantial awareness of opposed class
interests with capital among the most exploited workers. The sole exception was Norway where a
tradition of use of earnings from public ownership of major corporations--and especially
international profits from North Sea oil since the 1960s--to improve Norwegian workers benefits
complicates views on benefits of profit maximization and thereby weakens pro-labour oppositional
consciousness. This might be seen as a point in favour of the labour aristocracy thesis, but even
here non-managerial workers overall were more likely to express pro-labour than pro-capital
views.
More recent assessments of connections between employment class and oppositional
consciousness need to rely on the later series of Canadian surveys. The basic findings on pro-
labour and pro-capital views are presented in Table 7. Again, the residual in each class expressed
contradictory consciousness.
Table 7 Class by Oppositional Class Consciousness, Canada, 1982-2016
(% pro-labour/pro-capital views)
Employment Class 1982 2004 2010 2016
Corporate capitalist* 0/80 2/64 n/a n/a
Large employer 9/55 11/37 0/25 11/17
Upper manager 6/53 23/33 14/28 17/23
Professional employee 48/14 38/10 40/8 41/8
Service worker 41/13 39/9 27/13 37/7
Industrial worker 54/8 41/11 37/14 49/6
Total % 15/42 13/35 13/33 10/37
Total N 1758 2776 1193 2883
Source: Livingstone 2023.
30
The patterns of oppositional class consciousness among non-managerial workers in Canada
remained quite consistent over this period. Pro-labour views were much greater than pro-capital
views among industrial workers, service workers and professional employees. All were more
likely to recognize their shared exploitation than to accede to the ideological claims of capital.
While direct evidence is lacking since 2000, it is safe to assume that most corporate capitalists still
hold strong pro-capital views. But there has been a notable change among capitals’ closest allies.
Both large employers and upper managers express diminishing support for capital. Their majority
pro-capital views in 1982 have declined to small minorities while mixed and pro-labour views
have increased. This decline appears to be based at least partly on a growing sense among most
employers and managers that corporate profits are increasingly benefitting corporate owners at
their expense as well.
So, the weight of available empirical evidence suggests that professional employees and
upper managers generally have quite different working conditions and forms of oppositional class
consciousness. The evidence should be sufficient to dismiss the fiction of an emergent
‘professional-managerial class’. The further findings that professional employees do increasingly
share working conditions with and consistently express pro-labour oppositional consciousness
similar to industrial workers and service workers provides support for their development as a ‘new
working class’. The remaining issue is whether the more well-paid non-managerial workers,
including professional employees, have ‘bought the bribe’ and become more supportive of
capitalism than other workers.
The Wealth Effect
The 2016 Canadian national labour force survey included a question on net total wealth.
Respondents were asked to estimate the value of their owned house, vehicles and other consumer
durables, cash, checking and savings accounts, stocks and mutual funds, private retirement
accounts, and any other assets, minus their mortgage and any other debts. The sample size is
reduced because people generally are more reluctant to share financial information. Older workers
are more likely to have accumulated more assets while unionized workers benefit from at least
some wage premium. On the other hand, since the 1970s the hired labour force has become much
more burdened by personal debt which has reduced net assets very considerably. In any case, the
basic effects of net wealth on pro-labour oppositional consciousness for key employment classes
are summarized in Table 8.
31
Table 8 Oppositional Class Consciousness by Employment Class and Household Wealth,
Canada, 2016 (% pro-labour oppositional consciousness)
Household
wealth ($)
<20,000 20—
75,000
75-
150,000
150-
500,000
500-1
million
1
million+
All wealth
levels
Class
position
Corporate
capitalist
-- -- -- -- -- 0 0
Large
employer
-- 0 0 0 0 0 0
Upper
manager
-- 0 0 14 50 10 19
Professional
employee
55 39 42 44 36 32 44
Service
worker
39 45 37 41 32 57 40
Industrial
worker
61 44 45 57 52 57 54
Total 48 42 35 38 36 28 40
Source: Livingstone 2023
In assessing the findings in Table 8, we should keep in mind the overall pattern of
oppositional class consciousness in the labour force in 2016 (see Table 5): a small majority with
mixed or contradictory consciousness, over a third with pro-labour consciousness and only around
10 percent with pro-capital consciousness. In terms of specific classes, corporate capitalists--
generally with net assets over a million dollars--continued to express strong pro-capital views with
no pro-labour support in the latest available survey. This only confirms what should be self-
evident. In some contrast, large employers have become more disenchanted with exclusion from
burgeoning corporate profits, but regardless of their level of wealth they are still clear about their
basic class interest in opposing labour’s right to strike. Upper managers are also becoming more
disenchanted with profit exclusion and some with greater asset security may even increased
express support for labour rights. But at most levels of wealth there are still only miniscule pro-
labour views at best among those who have been corporate capital’s closest allies. None of this
should be surprising--aside from glimmers of pro-labour views among some relatively well-off
public sector upper managers.
The findings for effects of wealth on the oppositional consciousness of non-managerial
workers are directly relevant to the labour aristocracy thesis. First, there is virtually no support for
claims that either industrial workers or service workers become more accepting of capitalist
interests as they accrue greater assets. Majorities among both industrial workers with less than
20,000 dollars and those with over a million in net assets express pro-labour oppositional
consciousness. Service workers may be even more likely to express pro-labour consciousness as
they gain greater asset security. It should be kept in mind that much of this asset wealth is in rapidly
escalating housing prices which could collapse equally rapidly. At least in these terms, acquiring
relatively greater assets is not leading the traditional working class to ‘take the bribe’.
32
The findings for professional employees are not quite so clear. The majority of professional
employees with very little net wealth express pro-labour oppositional consciousness. These are
mainly younger professionals who are underemployed with large debt burdens. Professional
employees who have been able to gain some net assets with highly specialized individual skills
may be somewhat less likely to hold pro-labour views. But pro-labour consciousness remains
much more common than pro-capital views among professional employees at all levels of wealth
including those with over a million in net assets. In common with other non-managerial workers,
few professional employees at any wealth level express pro-capital views. There is no significant
indication here that professional employees who have accrued more net assets are becoming more
sympathetic to capitalism. Their general patterns of oppositional class consciousness are much
more similar to those of industrial and service workers than to ‘big capital’ and upper management.
At least on the available evidence from the Canadian case, professional employees are not
becoming labour aristocrats. Their working conditions and views are converging with other non-
managerial workers and they could well be considered as a new working class.
According to further analyses of these survey data, there are also important effects of race
and union status on oppositional class consciousness. Black workers, who are more likely to be
oppressed/discriminated against in their workplaces, are also more likely to express pro-labour
consciousness, with the strongest expression among Black industrial workers (74 percent)
compared to white workers (50 percent). Union effects are not quite as strong but majorities of
industrial workers, service workers and professional employees who are unionized all express pro-
labour views. Finally, a word about findings on revolutionary class consciousness, as analyzed in
detail in the related book (Livingstone 2023). Both hegemonic capitalist consciousness and
revolutionary labour consciousness--the highest forms of class consciousness--are expressed by
small proportions of the labour force. But professional employees are now just as likely as
industrial workers to express revolutionary labour consciousness.
Conclusions
On the basis of this investigation, I draw the following conclusions. Non-managerial
professional employees are now the most substantial increasing part of the employment class
structure in advanced capitalism. Professional employees share both working conditions and extent
of progressive class consciousness with industrial workers and service workers, and all three sorts
of non-managerial workers sense their exploitation in capitalist production relations to similar
extent.Professional employees are quite distinct from upper managers in both working conditions
and class consciousness, and they are not part of the false amalgam ‘professional-managerial class’
that some pundits have concocted. There is little support for the labour aristocracy thesis often
used to rationalize labour quiescence. Professional employees and other non-managerial workers
who have accrued more net wealth are about as likely as workers with less net assets to express
pro-labour oppositional class consciousness.
The rejection of the labour aristocracy thesis is consistent with most of the careful historical
research on progressive labour movements. As John Kelley (1988 p 165) observed: ‘Historically,
the most class conscious and militant sections of the working class have often been those whose
earnings, job security and status placed them in a position of relative privilege relative to many of
their fellow workers’. Charlie Post (2010, 33) more recently concurs: “…relatively well-paid and
securely employed workers…tend to be concentrated in large, capital-intensive workplaces that
are often central to the capitalist economy. These workers have considerable social power when
they act collectively. Strikes in these industries have a much greater impact on the economy than
33
workers in smaller, less capital-intensive workplaces (garment, office-cleaning, etc.) Workers in
such industries are also often the first targets of capitalist restructuring in periods of falling profits
and sharpened competition.” Finally, these workers often have a greater commitment to the
collective defence and improvement of their jobs than the lower-paid.
Professional employees are now among the most highly skilled, relatively well-paid non-
managerial workers in advanced capitalism and with comparable oppositional class consciousness
to industrial workers. Over the past century, democratic national transitions have clearly been more
likely to take place when opposition to the incumbent regime has been led by industrial workers
(Dahlum et al 2019). Whatever political alliances emerge to lead grassroots transition, one thing
is quite likely. Representatives of non-managerial hired labour--Marx's proletariat--will be
centrally involved. In current terms this includes industrial workers, service workers and
professional employees. The core of capitalism's ‘working class’ has changed markedly since the
Industrial Revolution. But these are the people who are now most directly exploited by capital to
generate the profits to reproduce this economic system. They have often been divided on bases of
race, gender, education and urban-rural grounds but they have remained consistently those with
the most oppositional labour class consciousness.
Further analysis suggests that professional employees are now also just as likely as
industrial workers to be among the smaller numbers who express revolutionary labour
consciousness needed to lead democratic transitions. (Livingstone 2023). Professional employees
may not be likely to give themselves ‘working class’ identities. But most workers now see
themselves in the middle of the class structure and this has not prevented either industrial
steelworkers or professional nurses from developing among the highest levels of pro-labour
oppositional consciousness (Seccombe and Livingstone 1999; Livingstone et al 2021; Livingstone
2023). In addition, professional employees are now among the most highly organized workers and
they are increasingly represented in professional unions within national labour congresses.
More empirical research is certainly needed to confirm and deepen the findings presented
here. Similar comparative studies could now quickly be conducted in many countries with current
survey technologies through partnerships of progressive labour and social organizations with
qualified sympathetic researchers. (The design information and data for the present study are easily
publicly available6). Such studies are infinitely easier to do now than when the elderly Marx tried
in 1880 with French workers (Marx 1938). But the available direct evidence suggests that
professional employees are becoming a new working class ready to play a central activist role in
the labour movement of the 21st century to respond to the imminent existential threats of capitalism
and to aid in leading transition to a sustainable equitable future.
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