Institutions, culture and the moral economy : the reconfiguration of class in theory and politics

This review essay draws on a discussion of the three books by Svallfors, Munck, and Milner to reflect on the continuing salience of class and Marxist analysis in the wake of neoliberalism, postmodernism, and post-Marxism. The essay explores the possibilities for a radicalization of the "moral economy" in the Anglophone nations, reversing the erosion of collectivist institutions. While claims of the "death of class" and the irrelevance of Marxism may be unsustainable, political issues such as working class conservatism require a radical re-examination of Marxist understandings of class in relation to gender, race, and ethnicity.