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The authoritarianism of the working class revisited
Author(s) -
MIDDENDORP C. P.,
MELOEN J. D.
Publication year - 1990
Publication title -
european journal of political research
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 3.267
H-Index - 95
eISSN - 1475-6765
pISSN - 0304-4130
DOI - 10.1111/j.1475-6765.1990.tb00232.x
Subject(s) - authoritarianism , wright , conceptualization , social class , class (philosophy) , working class , sociology , positive economics , social psychology , psychology , epistemology , political science , economics , politics , law , philosophy , democracy , computer science , linguistics , programming language
. Dekker and Ester's (1987) position regarding working class authoritarianism, using Wright's (1979, 1985) neo‐marxist class‐conceptualization, is challenged. It is shown in replication that Wright's class concepts are only weakly and non‐linearly related to ‘class‐proxies’such as income, wealth, educational level and subjective social class. Thus there is reason for doubt regarding the validity of Wright's class‐concept, which might be partly responsible for the weak associations found with authoritarianism and authoritarian attitudes. Nevertheless, we found that Dekker and Ester's (1987) hypotheses 1 and 2 cannot be rejected: the working class is somewhat more authoritarian than all other classes combined. We maintain that the well‐known relatively strong relationship between educational level and authoritarianism remains of major theoretical and social relevance.