It has become fashionable among contemporary bourgeois historians and sociologists to belittle the role of the working class by claiming that it has been diminished in size and influence. Some even venture as far as declaring that the working class no longer exists. Nothing could be further from the truth. Mick Brooks answered these points in an article that was originally published in November 1996 in the British Socialist Appeal.

The capitalist world enters a period of industrial upswing. Booms alternate with depressions – an organic law of capitalist society. The current boom nowise indicates the establishment of equilibrium in the class structure. A crisis frequently helps the growth of anarchist and reformist moods among the workers. The boom will help fuse the working masses.