The question, of course, is how the individual got to be inthis "social rOle", and how the particular social organisation(with its property-rights and structure of authority)· got to. bethere. And these are historical questions. If we stop history at agiven point, then there are no classes but simply a multitude ofindividuals with a multitude of experiences. But if we watchthese men over an adequate period of social change, we observepatterns in their relationships� their ideas, and their institutions.Class is defined by men as they live their own history, and, in theend, this is its only definition.

But a similar error is committed daily on the other side ofthe ideological divide. In one form, this is a plain negative.Since the crude notion of class attributed to Marx can befaulted without difficulty, it is assumed that any notion ofclass is a pejorative theoretical construct, imposed upon theevidence.It is denied that class has happened at all. In anotherform, and by a curious inversion, it is possible to pass from adynamic to a static view of class. "It"-the working classexists, and can be defined with some accuracy as a componentof the social structure. Class-consciousness, however, is a badthing, invented by displaced intellectuals, since everythingwhich disturbs the harmonious co-existence of groups performing different "social roles" (and which thereby retardseconomic growth) is to be deplored as an "unjustified disturbance-symptom".1 The problem is to determine how best"it" can be conditioned to accept its social role, and how itsgrievances may best be "handled and channelled"

By class I understand an historical phenomenon, unifying anumber of disparate and seemingly unconnected events, bothin the raw material of experience and in consciousness. Iemphasise that it is an historical phenomenon. i: do not seeclass as a "structure", nor ev�n as a " category", but as something which in fact happens (and can be shown to havehappened) in human relationships.