Toward a Historical Sociology of Working-Class Formation

Following the enormous international expansion of labor history, comparative approaches have been developed to systematize and explain the peculiarities of national patterns of working-class formation. One of the most fully elaborated recent approaches in this area is the collective investigation by Ira Katznelson, Aristide Zolberg, and associates (1986). Conceptually, this approach follows Jürgen Kocka's Weberian-Marxist class model in reducing E. P. Thompson's cultural Marxist class notion to only one analytical level amongst others. I argue that this approach is limited its failure to adequately integrate the cultural and moral bases of working-class formation in relation to the legitimacy of the social order. I exemplify this criticism, first, by referring to the strength of Thompson's interpretative method in The Making of the English Working Class; second, by indicating some weaknesses of Jürgen Kocka's analytical method in his recent social history of the German working class; and third, by suggesting some comparative cultural hypotheses for explaining the different English and German patterns of working-class formation.