The Rise of Professional Society

Harold Perkin is Professor Emeritus of History at Northwestern University, Evanstone, Illinois; Professor Emeritus at Lancaster University and Honorary Professor at Cardiff University. He is author of numerous books including The Origins of English Society 1780-880 (1969), The Age of the Railway (1970) and The Third Revolution (1996).

Introduction to the 2002 edition Preface to the first edition 1 The meaning of professional society 1 Class versus hierarchy 2 Professional rivalries and the state 3 The culmination of the Industrial Revolution 2 The zenith of class society 1 The height of inequality 2 The climacteric of British capitalism 3 The decline of Liberal England 4 The fear of the poor 3 A segregated society 1 The rich and the powerful 2 The riven middle class 3 Lives apart: the remaking of the working class 4 Class society and the professional ideal 1 The professional social ideal 2 Professionalism and property 3 The defence of property 4 The professional ideal and the origins of the welfare state 5 The crisis of class society 1 The aborted pre-war crisis 2 The supreme test of class society 3 The crisis averted 6 A halfway house: society in war and peace 1 The great divide, 1914–18 2 Social change between the wars 3 The old order changeth 4 ‘Money isn’t everything’ 5 Spiralists and burgesses 6 The road from Wigan Pier 7 Towards a corporate society 1 The corporate economy 2 The corporate state 3 The corporate society 8 The triumph of the professional ideal 1 The professional ideal and the decline of the industrial spirit 2 Professionalism and human capital 3 The condescension of professionalism 9 The plateau of professional society 1 The Second World War and the revolution in expectations 2 ‘Most of our people have never had it so good’ 3 The bifurcation of the professional ideal 4 The persistence of class 10 The backlash against professional society 1 Professionalism under fire 2 Rolling back the state? 3 The resurgence of the free market ideology 4 Britain’s economic decline and the political dilemma