A Nation of Shopkeepers

For a nation obsessed with class, the British do not generally have a good understanding of it, and the British left is no exception in this regard. In the UK, class is commonly reduced to a crude working class/middle class binary, or else reduced to consumption practices (i.e., it is middle class to drink coffee or eat avocado, etc) rather than being rooted in people’s work, their relationship to capital, their social function within society, and so on.

This show aims to rejuvenate the understanding of class on the British left. In particular, it focuses on the rise of the new petit-bourgeoisie, a class which has grown dramatically due to the huge structural changes which have occurred to the British economy since the seventies. The show introduces different perspectives on understanding social class before exploring how the changing world of work and the rise of property ownership has fundamentally altered the class structure and political ideology of the UK and what this means for socialist organizing.