Journal of Class & Culture - Volume 4, Issue 1, 2025

Drawing on Marx’s claim that ‘[t]he ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas’ this editorial explores how the values and norms of the rich and powerful contiue to circulate in contemporary society. It analyses the legitimisation of the neo-liberal political, cultural and economic hegemonic constellation of individualism, competition, compliance and the postmodern rejection of a complex but foundational totality. Arguing that an understanding of how subjectivity and structure exist in a mutual relationship makes possible challenges to a whole range of practices presently responsible for dispositions amenable to incorporation into the present unequal anti-democratic order: an order that demands the denigration, silencing and effective erasure of the concerns and experiences of the working class in order to function.

Many in the United Kingdom are experiencing poverty because of extreme inequality of wealth. However, the dominant political explanation is that poverty is at least partially due to the behaviour and personal deficits of the poorest. Although a feature of neo-liberalism, holding people responsible for their own poverty has a long history as it serves the interests of the wealthiest. Equally longstanding are arguments that refute this individualistic perspective and instead show how poverty is structural, but these are less frequent and visible. Using existing literature, this article provides an analysis of these counterarguments to show common stereotypes of people experiencing poverty are inaccurate and discriminatory. This demonstrates that poverty research is problematic if it suggests, to any extent, that disadvantaged individuals are to blame and therefore it should be viewed as prejudiced. Instead, research should focus on the behaviour, choices and personal deficits of the most privileged such as the greed and selfishness that feeds into economic and social policy. Until it is recognized by academics, policy-makers and the wider public that no person experiencing poverty is to blame, poverty will not be eradicated because policy will continue to be based on the idea that some deserve their underprivileged position.

This photo essay shares the thoughts and observations of a group of volunteers and community activists with All Together in Dignity (ATD) Ireland, who took part in walking interviews. The walks, which were individually curated by each participant, were shared with Joe Whelan, a researcher based in the School of Social Work and Social Policy in Trinity College, the University of Dublin, as part of a study which aimed to interrogate lived experiences and hidden geographies of poverty in the city of Dublin, the capital city of Ireland. Over the course of each walk, the participants, who are all people with lived and continuing experiences of poverty, made sociological observations which they connected to politics and social policy. Participants also took photographs as the walks proceeded. Some of this testimony along with the participant photography is documented in this essay. The essay includes a short reflection from one of the research participants, Andrew, and finishes with a brief discussion.

‘The will to horror’ includes autoethnographic reflections on my experiences as a working-class subject, as well as recollections of my responses to horror cinema. These, alongside philosophical investigations of Karl Marx’s theory of the revolutionary proletariat, aim to advance a new argument about political class formation. I believe that the fears that confront individual workers in a capitalist society negate the workers’ capacity to unite and challenge their subaltern status. To counter these fears, I suggest that we consider and develop an active, oppositional tendency. I name this ‘the will to horror’. Drawing on the horror genre, Marx’s class theory, the dialectical law of the negation of the negation, and my own personal history, I offer a new, politicized version of the will for a radical working class.

Interview with Gregor Gall on his book Mick Lynch: The Making of a Working-Class Hero (Manchester University Press, 2024). Mick Lynch is general secretary of the United Kingdom’s National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers (RMT), seen as one of the most active, high profile and militant of unions. 2022 saw a series of rail industrial actions, the media coverage of which thrust Lynch into the media spotlight. His blunt, reasoned and reasonable, performance and deft handling of TV journalists saw various incidents go viral. Acclaim from some quarters followed and the moniker ‘working-class hero’ was frequently employed online and in mainstream commentary. Gall discusses this nomination of herodom and union leadership drawing on his political biography of Lynch.

Review of: Making Hip Hop Theatre: Beatbox and Elements, Katie Beswick and Conrad Murray (2022)

London: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 240 pp.,

ISBN 978-1-35018-792-4, p/bk, £17.49

Beats and Elements: A Hip Hop Theatre Trilogy, Katie Beswick and Conrad Murray (2022)

London: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 160 pp.,

ISBN 978-1-35027-060-2, p/bk, £11.89

Review of: Kneecap, Rich Peppiatt (dir.) (2024), Ireland and UK: BFI, Fine Point Films, Mother Tongues Films, TG4, Northern Ireland Screen, Coimisiún na Meán, Fís Éireann (Screen Ireland) and Great Point Media

In February 2025, an event at the London School of Economics took place with an invited audience and speakers to discuss class in Britain in 2025. It had been ten years since ‘The Great British Class Survey’ had been undertaken and published, and the small group of academics who had organized the symposium wanted to ask the question and have the debate: is class still relevant as we go into 2025? This short report of the day was written by Dr Lisa McKenzie, one of the organizers and three young people who attended the symposium from Cast: An Alternative Provision School in the former coal mining of Newstead Village.