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The Breaking of the English Working Class
What has become of the English working class in the twenty-first century?
After a decades-long absence, class is once again central to our understanding of ailing Britain. But what does it mean to be working class today? As Jonas Patrick Marvin shows, questions of class have often been replaced by talk of race and geography. Meanwhile, a collective identity capable of pushing for change has become increasingly weakened and sidelined.
Retelling the story of the working class over the last forty years — from Thatcher’s war against the unions to New Labour neoliberalism – Marvin shows how power and capital have combined to shatter a radical identity into many parts: white, male, northerner, homeowner, immigrant, unemployed, disabled. These fragments are then set in conflict against each other. Blending political analysis with an account of his own experiences of class in London and the rustbelt Midlands, Marvin shows how the working class have been demonised and managed into impotence.
The working class is more than just an identity. As Marvin argues, it embodies a collective will to demand change, one that can — and must — be rekindled.
After a decades-long absence, class is once again central to our understanding of ailing Britain. But what does it mean to be working class today? As Jonas Patrick Marvin shows, questions of class have often been replaced by talk of race and geography. Meanwhile, a collective identity capable of pushing for change has become increasingly weakened and sidelined.
Retelling the story of the working class over the last forty years — from Thatcher’s war against the unions to New Labour neoliberalism – Marvin shows how power and capital have combined to shatter a radical identity into many parts: white, male, northerner, homeowner, immigrant, unemployed, disabled. These fragments are then set in conflict against each other. Blending political analysis with an account of his own experiences of class in London and the rustbelt Midlands, Marvin shows how the working class have been demonised and managed into impotence.
The working class is more than just an identity. As Marvin argues, it embodies a collective will to demand change, one that can — and must — be rekindled.
192 pages, Paperback
Published August 18, 2026
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
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August 22, 2026Nice readable summary answering ‘how did we get into this mess?’ Pulls together lots of disparate threads with some eclectic intellectual resources (from Stuart Hall and Raymond Williams to Joshua Clover/Endnotes and Ruth Wilson Gilmore) which was cool. You could give it an engaged friend or colleague without them being bored or scared off. The opening chapter on Stoke was my favourite and illustrated the general argument in quite concrete terms.
The question of how we get out of this mess (primarily the identity of the ‘we’) is still an open question. If there is a weakness to the book it’s that it doesn’t apply the same holistic social, political, economic understanding of subject formation to new emancipatory subjects that it does to the previous ones. I suppose it’s hard to know where green shoots will spring from in advance, but wish there was more space to expand on the epilogue where it gestures at answering these questions. It was very good at the beginning in outlining the four ‘archetypal’ emancipatory subjects of the twentieth century so wish there was more to this ‘lifeworld’ aspect from a comparative perspective.
Suppose big gap is in what form these new emancipatory subjects that are described in largely sociological terms can be organised in the absence of the richer and deeper ‘lifeworlds’ of industry and the labour movement. Sadly this is a problem with reality rather than the book. Million dollar question!
The question of how we get out of this mess (primarily the identity of the ‘we’) is still an open question. If there is a weakness to the book it’s that it doesn’t apply the same holistic social, political, economic understanding of subject formation to new emancipatory subjects that it does to the previous ones. I suppose it’s hard to know where green shoots will spring from in advance, but wish there was more space to expand on the epilogue where it gestures at answering these questions. It was very good at the beginning in outlining the four ‘archetypal’ emancipatory subjects of the twentieth century so wish there was more to this ‘lifeworld’ aspect from a comparative perspective.
Suppose big gap is in what form these new emancipatory subjects that are described in largely sociological terms can be organised in the absence of the richer and deeper ‘lifeworlds’ of industry and the labour movement. Sadly this is a problem with reality rather than the book. Million dollar question!
Read
August 24, 2026A nice, thoughtful overview of the past few decades that have brought us to our current moment, that has been aptly described by the US-based Communist Caucus as one of "proletarian disorganisation".
To the initiated, much of this history in this book will feel familiar, but Marvin expands well on this to find fresher insights into the consequences of the breaking of the form of working-class organisation that arguably reached a peak in this country in the 1970s. He is particularly in his element when discussing health and the growing spectre of sickness that afflicts contemporary Britain. The early chapter on Stoke is probably my personal highlight, perhaps in part because of its name dropping of various small towns across the county border in Cheshire where I used to play Sunday league football as a kid.
At times, the narrative can feel somewhat like these actions were inevitable, rather than hotly contested (although Marvin makes clear in the conclusion that these developments in capitalism were and are a response to working-class resistance). In this sense, a greater detail on the struggles around these changes would have been helpful, similar to the how many of the macro-changes in British capitalism are explained with precision within the text. I would also differ somewhat in my analysis of the changes during the 1990s - where I think the relationship between the state and trade unions in many senses became closer despite struggles by the rank-and-file for a different direction.
The question of which contemporary subjects able to reconstitute an insurgent socialist movement is an important one. I suspect I differ somewhat from Marvin in how far outside the working-class -as a global class whose leverage by-and-large lies in a large section of its ability to both refuse labour and reshape it in a new direction - that I think the answer to this question lies. However, he is right to focus on how the collapse of world-building cultures within working-class communities has huge consequences for the state of working-class organisation, both in and outside the workplace.
His conclusion hints the real problem we face here: it is not as if the left is absent from these activities (organising the provision of food, support, care, music, culture, etc.) in the present day within our communities and class, but the fact that these isolated activities currently do not result in a wider political movement capable of challenging the state and capital.
When you read the reflections of those who partook in the year-long miners strike of 1984-45, it is clear that that action was possible not just because of those workers' organisation and determination, but also in large part because of the working-class and/or socialist organisational ecology that was able to step in when capital rescinded those resources, to provide the means the reproduction of hundreds of thousands of lives over a prolonged period, even offering a vision of a different society in the process. To put it bluntly, capital by its very nature, is so brutal in its structure, that to come up against it in any meaningful sense, even for just a few days, requires the participation of large numbers of people and an organisational infrastructure that is willing and able to contest the state as a dual power.
Perhaps in our current moment, it is the fact these campaigns and projects that could provide the basis for a socialist world-building within the working-class take place in isolation, outside of a wider mass political movement. Rather than being tied together and made possible through the active contributions of millions of people, they are instead forced to stay alive through institutional means - NGOs structures, funding applications, bureaucratic manoeuvrings - or via the dedication of small groups of activists who will inevitably burnout or be forced to move on. This book then is useful for reminding us how question of how we build the levels of organisation and cultures of mass participation - both in the long term and in our day-to-day struggles - must be at the forefront of our minds.
To the initiated, much of this history in this book will feel familiar, but Marvin expands well on this to find fresher insights into the consequences of the breaking of the form of working-class organisation that arguably reached a peak in this country in the 1970s. He is particularly in his element when discussing health and the growing spectre of sickness that afflicts contemporary Britain. The early chapter on Stoke is probably my personal highlight, perhaps in part because of its name dropping of various small towns across the county border in Cheshire where I used to play Sunday league football as a kid.
At times, the narrative can feel somewhat like these actions were inevitable, rather than hotly contested (although Marvin makes clear in the conclusion that these developments in capitalism were and are a response to working-class resistance). In this sense, a greater detail on the struggles around these changes would have been helpful, similar to the how many of the macro-changes in British capitalism are explained with precision within the text. I would also differ somewhat in my analysis of the changes during the 1990s - where I think the relationship between the state and trade unions in many senses became closer despite struggles by the rank-and-file for a different direction.
The question of which contemporary subjects able to reconstitute an insurgent socialist movement is an important one. I suspect I differ somewhat from Marvin in how far outside the working-class -as a global class whose leverage by-and-large lies in a large section of its ability to both refuse labour and reshape it in a new direction - that I think the answer to this question lies. However, he is right to focus on how the collapse of world-building cultures within working-class communities has huge consequences for the state of working-class organisation, both in and outside the workplace.
His conclusion hints the real problem we face here: it is not as if the left is absent from these activities (organising the provision of food, support, care, music, culture, etc.) in the present day within our communities and class, but the fact that these isolated activities currently do not result in a wider political movement capable of challenging the state and capital.
When you read the reflections of those who partook in the year-long miners strike of 1984-45, it is clear that that action was possible not just because of those workers' organisation and determination, but also in large part because of the working-class and/or socialist organisational ecology that was able to step in when capital rescinded those resources, to provide the means the reproduction of hundreds of thousands of lives over a prolonged period, even offering a vision of a different society in the process. To put it bluntly, capital by its very nature, is so brutal in its structure, that to come up against it in any meaningful sense, even for just a few days, requires the participation of large numbers of people and an organisational infrastructure that is willing and able to contest the state as a dual power.
Perhaps in our current moment, it is the fact these campaigns and projects that could provide the basis for a socialist world-building within the working-class take place in isolation, outside of a wider mass political movement. Rather than being tied together and made possible through the active contributions of millions of people, they are instead forced to stay alive through institutional means - NGOs structures, funding applications, bureaucratic manoeuvrings - or via the dedication of small groups of activists who will inevitably burnout or be forced to move on. This book then is useful for reminding us how question of how we build the levels of organisation and cultures of mass participation - both in the long term and in our day-to-day struggles - must be at the forefront of our minds.
September 1, 2026
4.5
A much needed re-evaluation of the English working class today.
I wouldn't say there is *that* much in this that is especially revelatory (at least for me), but the way Jonas talks about class today and how we got here makes for a fast, astute read.
I am especially drawn to how Jonas talks about his move to Stoke-On-Trent and how in five years he has developed such a detailed portrait of the city. As someone who moved away from an increasingly unaffordable city to where I am now, it resonated with me that tenacity to deliberately engage with the profile of a new place.
Aside from that, Jonas provides a compact, yet comprehensive analysis from the shift of welfare capitalism post-WW2, to the decline of the 1970s to the neoliberal reconfiguration of '(dis)organised abandonment' that defines our working lives today. This is where some parts will be familiar to readers, other details might surprise you too though.
But I find how Jonas proposes a socialist politics of freedom and the 'good life' to be especially important. Jonas is aware of the importance of on the ground mobilisation (via things such as community organising, social spaces, mutual aid, etc.) and the pursuit towards a political socialist movement. Both are required to develop an effective opposition to capitalism against the breaking of the working class.
A much needed re-evaluation of the English working class today.
I wouldn't say there is *that* much in this that is especially revelatory (at least for me), but the way Jonas talks about class today and how we got here makes for a fast, astute read.
I am especially drawn to how Jonas talks about his move to Stoke-On-Trent and how in five years he has developed such a detailed portrait of the city. As someone who moved away from an increasingly unaffordable city to where I am now, it resonated with me that tenacity to deliberately engage with the profile of a new place.
Aside from that, Jonas provides a compact, yet comprehensive analysis from the shift of welfare capitalism post-WW2, to the decline of the 1970s to the neoliberal reconfiguration of '(dis)organised abandonment' that defines our working lives today. This is where some parts will be familiar to readers, other details might surprise you too though.
But I find how Jonas proposes a socialist politics of freedom and the 'good life' to be especially important. Jonas is aware of the importance of on the ground mobilisation (via things such as community organising, social spaces, mutual aid, etc.) and the pursuit towards a political socialist movement. Both are required to develop an effective opposition to capitalism against the breaking of the working class.
Review of advance copy received from Publisher
This book is long overdue. It is a rigorous and in-depth engagement with class in Britain over the last few decades. Despite the massive scope of such a topic, it manages to remain both personable and engaging.
There are so many threads it raises which mark it above many similar engagements with class; the consideration of the spatialisation of class (taking from Neel's Hinterlands and reinvigorating the concept in Britain), the attention to the bodily and health aspects of class over decades (building on Winant's excellent studies in this area too), and finally its conception of 'disorganised abandonment' as a way to articulate the related processes of change. There are so many threads he has opened up for those both thinking and organising in Britain at this moment.
Jonas Patrick Marvin, occasional podcaster and lifelong gooner, will I'm sure continue to build on such work.
There are so many threads it raises which mark it above many similar engagements with class; the consideration of the spatialisation of class (taking from Neel's Hinterlands and reinvigorating the concept in Britain), the attention to the bodily and health aspects of class over decades (building on Winant's excellent studies in this area too), and finally its conception of 'disorganised abandonment' as a way to articulate the related processes of change. There are so many threads he has opened up for those both thinking and organising in Britain at this moment.
Jonas Patrick Marvin, occasional podcaster and lifelong gooner, will I'm sure continue to build on such work.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews