Dan Evans’ book is good for theorising the various conundrums we have been witnessing on the ground. I still highly recommend reading this work, because the basic framework it lays out and its diagnosis of the left’s failures are spot on. This analysis is much more helpful than a purely cultural or a rigidly economic one, as it allows us to get to grips with divisions in the workplace and society and the comlex relationships of power involved. However, as is often true with political and sociological topics, some of its analysis didn't work for me and at times it felt a bit repetitive whilst barely covering other things it mentioned. Dan Evans knows his readers are probably members of the ‘new’ petty bourgeoisie (he remarks that he has spent most of his adult life among them).

For all the importance of the second-wave feminist and anti-racist critiques of the archetypal socialist agent as cloth cap-wearing miners or steelworkers, it is now clear that the trade union ‘Broad Left’ of the postwar decades was a vital defensive bulwark of the working class whose absence is sorely felt.In many ways we already recognise this NPB membership base; we often talk about the problem of us ‘recruiting our mates’ instead of talking to other workers and proactively trying to form unions in our workplaces. Don’t forget: you can now sign up to our free weekly Substack newsletter to get news, features, interviews and reviews delivered direct to your inbox. The right-wing discourse of ‘metropolitan elites’ – often an antisemitic dog whistle – was effectively deconstructed by Runnymede Trust director Omar Khan, who pointedly asked: ‘Why aren’t the ethnic minority and migrant people who live in tower blocks and experience disproportionate levels of child poverty (rising to 59 per cent for Bangladeshi children) viewed as working class? Relying on a structuralist Marxist framework, leaning heavily on the work of Poulantzas, they propose that neoliberalism has changed the class structure from one that was relatively simple, with a large working class, small middle and small ruling class; to one that is far more complex, with a bloated intermediate class and a more heterogeneous ruling class. In Britain the intellectual retreat from class was spearheaded by those post-Marxist trends, with which Sivanandan had sparred, who derided the Miners’ Strike whilst expressing ‘barely concealed admiration’ for the neoliberal counterrevolution and ‘the celerity of the “New Times” of which it was an expression.

Working class habitus is never simply an ‘artefact of elite domination’, but neither is it ever an entirely self-authored lifeworld. Evans believes the left should revisit classical libertarian concern for individual freedoms, like free speech, and ditch the politics of privilege he suggests has produced ‘unhinged modes of human interaction’.I'll admit, I don't read much Marxist literature, and it will take study for me to fully understand this book. Yet, far from disappearing, structural changes to the global economy under neoliberalism have instead grown the petty bourgeoisie, and the individualist values associated with it have been popularized by a society which fetishizes "aspiration", home ownership and entrepreneurship. Moving on from the inadequate binary of workers and bosses, he turns to the Greco-French Marxist sociologist Nicos Poulantzas’s analysis of class fractions.

Both sides had a point, but it highlighted the collective left’s unease about class and a wider cultural rift in British society. And if we are all working class, Evans points out, ‘there is no need to work to build class alliances. is suspect at a time when there is a coordinated assault on trans rights being carried through under the veneer of a politics of ‘reasonableness’ and ‘common sense’. In the 1970s, the concept was elaborated into a permanent neo-Gramscian strategy known as ‘Eurocommunism’ – of which Poulantzas was a prominent but heterodox theorist. This rise of solo self-employment echoes a large shift in the economy of the UK and Europe towards small capital and micro-businesses (companies with 1-9 employees).However, I did observe some shortcomings that limited the usefulness of Evans’s framework: namely, the lack of consideration for the *global* class structure, without which any analysis of class falls short. To be sure, “the left” is used loosely in common parlance, on the assumption that any audience on social media or in person is likely to understand what we mean. He also lambasts the left’s preoccupation with social issues/representation, its pro EU tendencies, and its blanket support of authoritarian Covid measures.