Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Marx was wrong about the working class. He was wrong to think automation would destroy skill; wrong to say the proletariat could not produce an enduring culture within capitalism. They had produced one in Lancashire before he had even graduated from university.

Entering the white-collar layer could be done on merit, not just through family ties and seven-year apprenticeships, as had been the case with the engineers and the spinners – and in certain industries, white-collar work was more open to women.

What nobody foresaw was that this reshaped working class would become educated, radicalized and political. Taylor’s ‘dumb oxen’ would teach themselves to read – not just dime novels but philosophy. The white-collar secretaries and telephonists would become agitators and educators in mass socialist parties.