The “Silent Revolution,” Value Priorities, and the Quality of Life in Britain* ALAN MARSH University of Michigan Inglehart! presents a persuasive thesis to de- scribe “a transformation” in political value pri- orities occurring in Western Europe. He argues that in Europe since 1945 young people have in- creasingly been freed of the urgency of material acquisition by sharply rising industrial affluence. Consequently these younger Europeans are held to be far more sensitive than their elders to the “higher-order” needs predicted by Maslow's! theory of the need-hierarchy of human motiva- tion. They have been freed to demote safety and material needs and concentrate instead upon ful- filling their “belongingness” needs and intellec- tual and aesthetic drives. ‘According to Inglehart, among the political out- comes of this shift in value priorities has been the desertion of their traditional class loyalties by the young middle classes and especially those who hhave had higher education, causing them instead to embrace the ideology and goals of what may in some places be loosely called “the Left” and in others more precisely “the New Left.” They will tend also to support student radicalism and supra- nationalism and generally hold to an articulated set of “postbourgeois” values. Correspondingly, what Lenin described as “embourgeoisification”™ has increasingly led the older skilled workers into an unaccustomed alignment with parties of the Right who appeal more strongly to their “lower- order” needs. Their value priorities remain domi- nated by the need to protect and augment their © A revised version of a paper delivered to the Euro- pean Consortium for Political Research, Mannheim (Germany), April 1973. For helpful_comments and criticism, I am indebted to Angus Campbell, Hugh Berrington, Bernard Blishen, John Utting, and’ all my colleagues in the- Association for the Study of Ad- vanced Industrial Societies but in particular to Ronald Inglehart whose singular forbearance in the face of criticism is a credit to his scholarship. Special thanks are also due to my senior colleagues in the S.S.R.C. Survey Unit—Mark Abrams and John Hall—for my free use of their materials. None of the above is in any way responsible for my errors or my opinions. * Ronald Inglehart, “The Silent Revolution in Eu- rope: Intergenerational Change in Post-Industrial So- cieties,” American Political Science Review, 65 (Dec. 1971), 991-1017. ? Abraham H. Maslow, “A Theory of Human Moti- vation,” Psychological Review, 50 (1943), 370-396; see also Abraham Maslow, Motivation and Personality (New York: Harper & Row, 1954) *V. 1. Lenin, State and’ Revolution (New York International Publishers, 1932). 21 material and physical security whose enjoyment is still a welcome novelty for those who lived through the Depression years and the Second World War. Theirs is an “acquisitive” view of life. Inglehart sought out and identified his two “pure value types” by asking respondents in the five major (pre-enlargement) E.E.C. countries plus Britain to choose two out of four statements representing alternative national goals. Those choosing “maintaining order in the nation” and “fighting rising prices” were assigned to the “ac quisitive” position, and those choosing instead “protecting freedom of speech” and “giving people more say in important political decisions” to the “postbourgeois” position. Inglehart does not appear to take the position that there is anything intrinsically “postbourgeois” about free speech and political participation. These notions have been worn smooth by genera- tions of “liberal” and not-so-liberal politicians, and few indeed would regard them as absolutely unimportant. It is the choice itself that is post- bourgeois: the assignment of greater relative im- portance to freedom and participation over basic material and civil security. The proportion of “pure” “acquisitive” choices compared to “postbourgeois” choices occurring within each age cohort from country to country across Europe gave strong support to Inglehart’s hypothesis that the rise of postbourgeois values is linked fundamentally to the prevailing economic conditions experienced by the members of each national age cohort during their childhood and adolescence. Britain experienced a steady erosion of her prewar economic supremacy in Europe and, consequently, has atypically fewer postbour- geois types among her younger age cohorts whilst retaining an unusually high proportion among her older cohorts. Elsewhere in Europe industrial ad- vance has apparently wrought a real transforma- tion, creating profound intergenerational differ- ences in value priorities; for example, among the under-25s in mainland Europe, postbourgeois types actually outnumber the otherwise dominant “acquisitive” group, and do so most noticeably in countries where economic advance has been most dramatic, Hence the evident signs of intergenera- tional stress, hence the European Student Revolu- tion, hence the growth of the young middle-class New Left, and so on. There is little doubt that Inglehart regards the22 postbourgeois phenomenon as a seminal force in modern radical politics and the postbourgeois (as we may refer to them individually) themselves as the parvenus of political change in postindustrial society. His view seems credible. Indeed, it is at- tractive to press the Maslovian underpinnings of the Silent Revolution thesis further than Inglehart does himself and point out that the industrial and commercial processes that are taking society toward a postindustrial situation and are facili- tating the growth of postacquisitive values are at the same time unavoidably imposing a set of societal conditions least likely to satisfy the equali- tarian, humanitarian, and naturalistic relations implied in Maslow’s high-order needs. These in- hibitors include the nuclear family as the principal consumer-unit, the growth of an alienative bu- reaucracy, passive media systems, standardized and automated production, and so on—all recog- nizably the bétes-noires of the New Left. The more efficient becomes industrial production, therefore, the more postbourgeois types will appear and the more things they will find offensive in society. Opening up this paradox introduces a sense of ctisis—a dynamic singularly appropriate to the theory's theme of intergenerational stress. Inglehart’s theory casts Britain in an atavistic role. The impression is created that postbourgeois values in Britain are an eccentric response in the face of economic stagnation, the highest inflation rate in Europe, the continuous violence in Northern Ireland, and a stubborn tradition of class-based but moderate politics. The small group of still predominantly young Britons who place these problems of material and civil security aside and accord instead a higher priority to free- dom and participation must surely have theit reasons. Inglehart’s data, resting rather starkly upon value-choices, provide few insights into those reasons but since we know also that post- bourgeois priorities are associated with high social * and economic status, the question then arises: Does the postbourgeois phenomenon really “tap a relatively well integrated and deep- rooted aspect of the respondent's political orienta- tions” and is it “.. . integrated into the indi- vidual’s attitudinal structure—a fact which sug- gests attitudinal stability... , * or is it merely a fashionable and perhaps slightly cynical pose adopted by those (leaving aside the temporary poverty of students) who can personally afford to be less concerned about material security? That anyway is the basic question posed by this article and the attempts to answer it that follow rest upon data culled from a secondary analysis of an ex- perimental survey, completed in November 1971,* “Inglehart, pp. 997, 1001 (my emphasis). °The survey, in its’ primary form, was designed and executed by John Hall and Mark Abrams, respec- The American Political Science Review Vol. 69 which was primarily concerned with developing new measures of subjective estimates of the qual- ity of people's lives. Inglehart’s four value-items were included verbatim in the questionnaire. A sample of 593 respondents all over 16 years of age was obtained from the seven major English urban areas and was found to conform to national parameters for age, sex, educational experience, and social class. Using a ladder-type scale on which “1” represented the respondent's own esti- mate of a least desirable state of affairs or “com- plete dissatisfaction,” and “7” represented a kind of personal utopia’ of “complete satisfaction,” respondents indicated the extent to which they were satisfied first with the quality of their lives overall, and their general standard of living, then with a sequence of what Bradburn (1969)° calls “Domain Satisfactions,” in this case comprising: job, housing, education, marriage, family life, “the district you live in,” leisure, health, religion, and the “quality of democracy in Britain today.” Within each of these domains a series of sub- topics was also rated. Thus under the rubric “District,” ratings were obtained for satisfaction with “transport,” “the way the local police do their job,” “refuse clearance” and so on. These domain ratings were then qualified by similarly calibrated measures of the extent to which re~ spondents felt that each major domain was im- portant in its contribution to the quality of their lives. The questionnaire also probed people's pet- sonal sources of worry and anxiety, their feelings of “happiness,” and self-fulfillment, together with the customary range of classification data. The first finding was to confirm, almost exactly, that the Postbourgeois are as scarce and the Acquisitives are as numerous in Britain as Ingle- hart found them to be; in fact they comprise 7 per cent and 35 per cent’ of the population respec tively. (See Table 1.) It was also expected that the Postbourgeois compared with the Intermediates and especially with the Acquisitives would, like Inglehart's, be younger, richer, and better educated, though the all-important age effect would be a muted one. These expectations were justified. Postbourgeois are younger; 71 per cent are under 44 (44 per cent are under 29) while only 44 per cent of the Ac- quisitives are under 44. They are richer: 27 per tively Senior Research Fellow and Director of the SS.R.C. Survey Unit. For details see: Mark Abrams and John Hall, “The Condition of the British People: Report on a pilot survey using self-rating scales,” Paper read to Social Indicators Conference of British and American S.S.R.C., Ditchley, England, May 1971; and John Hall, “Measuring the Quality of Life Using Sample Surveys,” Paper read to 4th Annual SAINT Conference, Salzburg, Austria, September 1972. “Norman Bradburn, The Siructure of Psychological Well-Being (Chicago: ‘Aldine Press, 1969).1975 The “Silent Revolution” in Britain 23 ‘Table 1. Distribution of “ Acquisitive,”’ ‘‘Intermediate,”” and “‘Postbourgeois"’ Vaues in Britain “Acquisitives” “Intermediates” _““Postbourgeois”” % % %o Inglehart (1970 fieldwork) 36 56 8 (N=1985) Survey Unit (1971 fieldwork) 35 58 7(N=593) cent of our Postbourgeois are numbered among critique that the young make of society, then the professional and managerial classes but only Postbourgeois should manifest. a generalized 13 per cent of the Acquisitives are; and 49 per sense of discontent with the quality of their con- cent of the Postbourgeois have family incomes ex- temporary lives in industrial Britain. The Ac- ceeding 2,500 pounds per annum (42 per cent of _quisitives too might also have cause for complaint the wage-earners among them have personal in- in that, unlike some of their European neighbors, comes exceeding that figure) while only 19 per their clearly articulated material desires remain cent of the Acquisitives command such a high in- only partly fulfilled in Britain. Tables 2(a), (b) and come. They are somewhat better educated: 41 per (c) provide information relevant to these hy- cent of our Postbourgeois received education be- _potheses. yond the former school-leaving age of fifteen The sample as a whole manifests a widespread years but only 24 per cent of the Acquisitives did sense of satisfaction: 26 per cent indicated a So. Probably the most important feature of the maximum level of life satisfaction at the seventh Postbourgeois group was the predominance of point on the scale, while fully 60 per cent indicated young men the group contained. the sixth or fifth points, and only 14 per cent (The Intermediate group—those choosing reported dissatisfaction (ratings of four points or “mixed” value-pairs—tended to fall about half- less). But within this framework of general satis- way between the two “pure” types on the key faction, the Postbourgeois were significantly less demographic variables.) prone to indicate high satisfaction levels. Twice as sefaction wit many Postbourgeois (22 per cent) as Acquisitives ‘The Overall Sense of Satisfaction with Life (11 per cent) Tecorded low satisfaction levels If postbourgeois values are associated with the while indicating that they felt no less entizled to a Table 2A. Distribution by Value Groups of Reported Levels of ‘Overall Life-Satisfaction’’ and (in brackets) Levels of Satisfaction to Which Respondents Feel Entitled “Acquisitives” “Intermediates” —_—_““Postbourgeois” % % % SATISFACTION High (27051) 26 (54) 17 (50) Medium (6,5) 62 (48) 60 (45) 61 (50) Low @.. 11) 4 () 22 (0) ‘Table 2B. Combined Satisfaction Scores for All “Domains” by Value Groups “Acquisitives” “Intermediates” ““Postbourgeois”” % % % SATISFACTION High 26 26 27 Medium 60 56 44 Low 14 18 27 Table 2C. Semantic Differential “Happiness” Scores by Value Groups “Acquisitives” “Intermediates” __““Postbourgeois"* % %o %o “HAPPINESS” High ST 60 42 Medium 31 30 41 Low 12. 10 724 very high level of satisfaction. So too with a com- bined estimate of satisfaction within each of the domains (job, housing, marriage, etc.) listed above, Postbourgeois are twice as likely to ac- cumulate low satisfaction scores. (Table 2 b). The third measure of overall life satisfaction com- prised a twelve-item semantic-differential battery used by respondents to indicate the extent to which they felt their lives were happy or unhappy, boring or interesting, discouraging or hopeful, etc, Again, the Postbourgeois were more likely to accumulate low scores. Thus acceptable support exists for the first hypothesis; Postbourgeois do seem to manifest a generalized sense of discontent. The second hypothesis finds no support: despite Britain's low rate of economic growth, the Ac- quisitives are no more and no less likely to express dissatisfaction than are the majority Intermediate group whose value priorities are less clear. “Domain Satisfaction” The Survey Unit developed seven-point rating scales for ten principal satisfaction domains and these were divided into five key “Material and Security” domains (job, district, accommodation, health, and “overall standard of living”—this latter clearly defined to include “food, furniture, car, recreation, travel opportunities”) and five “higher-order” domains, of which two clearly concerned “belongingness” needs (marital and family relations), two concerned intellectual and idealistic needs (education and the quality of democracy in Britain), and one concerned general creativity: the quality of leisure. Relevant hypotheses may now be addressed directly to the Maslovian assumptions of Ingle- hart's thesis. Clearly, the Postbourgeois would be expected to record higher satisfaction scores, on the average, for the material domains than do the Acquisitives and the Intermediates. Conversely, the Postbourgeois should locate the sense of dis- content they revealed above in a sense of deprioa- The American Political Science Review Vol. 69 tion of theit higher-order needs. Table 3 shows the proportion of each group who recorded dissatis- faction scores (four points or less) for each of the principal domains. There is no support at all for the first hypoth- esis. On the contrary, our Postbourgeois com- pared with the Acquisitives are actually more likely to express dissatisfaction with each of the material and security domains. This is only mar- ginally so in the case of their accommodations and their overall standard of living, but they are very much more likely to be dissatisfied with their disirict’s amenities and with their jobs. The nature of job satisfaction is clearly critical for an “acquisitiveness” dimension; after all, the dissatisfaction that Postbourgeois express may simply reflect their unease in contributing to an acquisitive and competitive society—an unease which would redeem the advanced Maslovian de- velopment imputed to them, despite their concern for other materialist items. This question was tested against a list of statements describing the nature of the respondent's job (e.g., “The work is interesting,” “well-paid,” “the job security is good.") Each respondent indicated the extent to which he held each statement to be true or false for his present (or last) job. The Postbourgeois, compared with the other two groups, were more likely to agree that their jobs were interesting (+10 per cent) and gave them opportunities to “develop my special abili- ties” (+15 per cent) and “to do the things I do best” (+11 per cent). They were significantly less likely to agree that their “job security is good” (=15 per cent), or that their jobs are well paid (13 per cent), are conveniently located (—22 per cent), have convenient hours (—19 per cent), and are conducted in pleasant physical surroundings (19 per cent). These responses suggest that the Postbourgeois, despite their much higher incomes and occupa- tional status, are significantly more prone to ma- Table 3. Distribution of Percentage Dissatisfied with each Life-Domain by Value Groups “Acquisitives” “Intermediates” —_ “Postbourgeois” % % % ‘Accommodation 7 20 24 MATERIAL —_ Job 6 1 36 AND District 9 2 2 SECURITY Overall standard of living 4 29 31 DOMAINS Health 7 7 12 14 a 20 “HIGHER- Education 14 7 %6 ORDER” Marriage 4 3 0 DOMAINS Family Life 8 7 12 Democracy 13 7 361975 terial dissatisfactions and security anxieties than are the Acquisitive group. At this stage of our analysis, the Maslovian pillars of the “Silent Revolution” appear distinctly weakened. We find, on the other hand, some support for our second hypothesis: again compared with the Acquisitives, the Postbourgeois are somewhat more conscious of “higher-order” deprivations in their social surroundings. Although generally better educated, the Postbourgeois expressed greater doubts about its quality and more often felt they had learned the wrong kind of things at school rather than had insufficient time there. Similarly, they are slightly more likely to doubt the quality of their leisure opportunities and their family life. Yet it must be emphasized that those experi- encing these “higher-order” dissatisfaction are only a small minority of both groups; for example, only 12 per cent of the Postbourgeois are actually dissatisfied with their family life. Considering that so many of them must still reside in or have only lately left their parental homes, this figure is more suggestive of domestic tranquility than of inter- generational conflict. The “higher-order” domain that strikingly dis- iminated between the three value groups was: “the quality of democracy in Britain.”” Overall, 36 per cent of the Postbourgeois but only 17 per cent of the Intermediates and 13 per cent of the Ac- quisitives thought the level of democratic expres- sion in Britain was inadequate. In particular, the Postbourgeois focused their anxieties on a lack of tolerance toward minorities and the unresponsive- ness of elected representatives toward the elec- torate. Yet it should again be emphasized that both at the general and the specific levels, dissatis- faction with the democratic processes was limited toa minority of Postbourgeois. The Importance of Domains: Implied Values As Inglehart would surely agree, values are The “Silent Revolution” in Britain 25 about choices. Our respondents were given an interesting choice: They were asked which three items discussed were personally the most impor- tant and the least important in determining their relative life satisfaction. A single index of the importance each value group attached to each domain was calculated by subtracting the propor- tion which in each group assigned the domain to the “least important” category from the propor- tion placing it among the three “most important” domains. Thus complete agreement that a do- main is important will yield for that group a score of +100, and a similar consensus that it is unim- portant will produce a score of —100. Again, the appropriate hypotheses relating Inglehart’s theory to these data are very clear: The “Material and Security” domains should re- ceive positive scores from the Acquisitive group and negative scores (or at least lower positive scores) from the Postbourgeois. Correspondingly, the “higher-order” domains should be considered far more important by the Postbourgeois than by the Acquisitives. The results are given in Table 4. Overall, importance is attached by all respon- dents to marriage, family life, health, their general standard of living, and job, in that order, and relative unimportance was attached mostly to democracy and then to leisure, education, and district, in that order. This does not mean people regarded these latter items as absolutely unim- portant; they merely thought them the least im- portant’ of the domains they were asked to consider. The results are equivocal for the first hypoth- es's, Among the five “Material and Security” do- mains, the Postbourgeois do attach /ess impor- tance to accommodation and (unsurprisingly at their age) to health and attach greater wzimpor- tance to district than do the Acquisitives. But upon the two key “materialism” items—job and overall standard of living—the Postbourgeois place marginally greater importance than do the Acquisitives. Table 4. Index of Group-Assessed Importance for Life-Satisfaction of Life-Domains by Value Groups “Acquisitives” “Intermediates” —_ “Postbourgeois” % % % Accommodation 6 12 MATERIAL — Job B 20 AND District —24 -31 SECURITY Overall standard of living 32 39 DOMAINS Health 47 » Leisure —47 10 “HIGHER- Education 46 -29 ORDER” Marriage 2 9 DOMAINS Family Life 44 36 Democracy ~48 826 The American Political Science Review Vol. 69 Table 5, Income Deficiency by Value Groups “Acquisitives”” “Intermediates” _ ““Postbourgeois” Ge % Go “How much extra income do you need, per week?” None, D.K. 25 2 28 Up to £4.00 17 17 2 £4.00—£8.00 251 42 al 46 ig) 3! £8,00—£15.00 20 19. 28 More than £15.00 12) 2 3)? 15! 43 So too with our second hypothesis: Among the igher-order” domains, we find the Postbour- geois attach less unimportance to leisure and to education but not sufficiently to outweigh the importance they attach to the material and se- curity domains. They attach as much importance to marriage as do the Acquisitives but slightly less to family life. Again it is the “level of democracy in this country” that successfully demonstrates a divergence of value-determined choices between the two groups. The Acquisitives and the Inter- mediates are equally agreed that, relative to the other domains, democracy is massively unimpor- tant to them. The Postbourgeois are not so sure; 37 per cent of them place “the level of democ- racy" among their three most important domains, compared with only 4 per cent of each of the other two groups, yielding for them a positive impor- tance index’ for democracy of 8, compared with negative values of —48 and —45 for the Acquisi- tives and Intermediates. So Postbourgeois do stand apart from the other two value groups, in this one predictably “idealistic” or “higher- order” value choice. Yet in their other judgments about importance, they espouse a greater concern with materialistic rewards than with such non- material goals as improving their relations with others. In order to quantify their relative concern with material needs respondents were asked to estimate just how much extra income they might need to raise their standard of living so as to have “life without money worries and in comfort.” Table 5 shows that estimates were mainly modest. A quarter of those in the sample, among all three value-groups, considered their present income adequate. But among those who did need addi- tional income, it was the Posrbourgeois who dis- played a greater tendency to ask for higher increments, evidence that British Postbourgeois are actually more acquisitive than the Acquisi- tives. Maslovian Fulfillment and Optimal Anxiety For Maslow,’ the path toward psychic health or “self-actualization” involves a progressive shift of anxiety-foci from basic material and security needs up through social or “belongingness” needs, until the individual confronts his innermost needs to realize his full intellectual and emotional po- tential, however limited or specialized this may be. ‘A key feature of the theory is that anxiety need not be either inhibiting or destructive but that, experienced in healthy doses, it can motivate the individual to meet his felt needs. Indeed, the focus of those need-anxieties will reveal his relative po- sition along the hierarchy. In short, if you know what a person worries about, you know how far he has come toward liberation from basic acquisi- tive strivings, ie. toward what Inglehart has characterized in sociopolitical terms as the post- bourgeois enlightenment. Therefore our respondents were supplied with a list of commonplace worries and asked then to indicate the extent to which they had worried about each during recent weeks. The list was aligned as far as possible with the satisfaction do- mains we had probed earlier, in brief: money, debts, work (or husband’s work), health, dis- trict,* marriage, children, relations with neighbors and friends, and the world situation—listed here in the ascending hierarchical order suggested by Maslow’s theory. It was hypothesized that our Postbourgeois should exhibit lower levels of anxiety than do the * Maslow, 1943. * Whereas our earlier questions concerning “District” were defined for our respondents in terms of material services (i.e., the kind of services chargeable to local taxes) and thus reflected “lower-order” material con- cerns, in the list of anxieties, “Things that go on in your ‘district” were characterized much more by the responsiveness of local authority agencies and the social atmosphere of the area. [t must be admitted, however, that this item carries greater ambiguity than the others used.1975 The “Silent Revolution” in Britain 27 Table 6. Distribution of Anxiety-Levels for each Life-Domain by Value Groups “Acquisitives” ‘To what extent have you worried recently about ... MATERIAL AND SECURITY DOMAINS a) “Not having enough money 2" b) “Financial debts?” ©) “How things are going at your Hi (your husband’s) work?” Med: Lo: 4) “Your health?” Hi: Med: Lo: HIGHER-ORDER DOMAINS e) “Getting along with your Hi husband/wife Med: Lo: £) “Your children?” Hi Med: Lo: 2) “Relations with your Hi: neighbors” Med: Lo: 1h) “Things that happen in your Hi: district "| Med Lo: i) “The world situation?” Hi: Med Lo: Acquisitives about the earlier “Material and Security” items (money, debts and work) and greater levels of anxiety about the “higher-order” items concerned with personal relationships and the local and world situations. Table 6 shows the distribution of anxiety levels for each value- group. It was found that on the three clearly material domains—money, debts, and work—each of our three value groups express identical levels of anxiety. A third of each group worries about “not having enough money,” about a quarter worries about employment, and a smaller proportion about debts. So the first part of the hypothesis must be dismissed: Postbourgeois are no more and no less concerned about material security than are the Acquisitives. This finding challenges “Postbourgeois” “Intermediates” % % %o 32 33 32 35, 31 36 3 36 32 10 13 7 25 22 22 65 65 61 29 26 20 28 31 37 43 43 43 a] 2 7 25 30 22 49 49 68 13 9 u 10 18 7 7 B 2 24 23 26 18 18 ul 52 39 63 12 6 4 14 3 18 74 81 8 13 1B 7 26 31 az 61 56 42 21 22 49 39 39 27 40 39 24 directly the Maslovian assumptions of Inglehart’s theory. In line with earlier experience with the “satisfac- tion” and “importance” dimensions, the value- groups’ “anxiety” responses on the “higher- order" items present an ambiguous picture. Again the three groups show identical anxiety levels on the three “belongingness” items; each group reports uniformly low levels of concern about marital and neighborly relations and a little anxiety about their children.* This finding, too, detracts seriously from the Maslovian as- °Put another way, we find that Acquisitives are, as ‘we might expect, more anxious about material se than about personal relationships but only mar; 50; contrary to expectations, however, precisely the same point applies to the Postbourgeois.28 The American Political Science Review sumptions of Inglehart’s model. Once again it is left to the two “ideological” items in our worry-list to detect a divergence of opinion between the Acquisitive and Postbour- geois groups. The Postbourgeois worry rather more than the Acquisitives about “things that go on in my district” and very substantially more about “the world situation.” This information about the locus of the re- spondents’ anxieties has confirmed the impres- sions built up during the examination of the “satisfaction” and “importance” data and leads toward the following generalized conclusion about the nature of postbourgeois values in Britain: Postbourgeois groups are distinguished from Acquisitives by their relative youth, wealth, and education, and by their concern for ideology. The content of this ideology is likely to be biased toward a liberal and humanitarian disposition. But it seems the British Postbourgeois embraces a mode of ideological thought that is appropriate to his chronological age in addition to, not at the expense of, the materialism approximate to his times and to his social class. Those favorable to Inglehart’s thesis might shrug off these apparently fundamental incon- sistencies by suggesting that the poor performance of the British economy compared with that of her European neighbors has now become so obvious and embarrassing that not even the Postbourgeois can shake themselves free of material concerns when pressed as hard as this questionnaire pressed them to consider what is really and immediately important to them. On the European mainland things may be quite different. Yet this would be tantamount to saying that Inglehart’s “types” are not types at all and that the phenomenon is en- tirely self-contained and has no theoretical gen- eralizability, Maslovian or otherwise. This latter is not the position taken here; after all, some en- couraging confirmation as well as discontinuities with Inglehart’s work were found, enough at least to keep alive the idea that some value change is going on and that it has some meaning. But some hard questions must be asked if Inglehart’s theory is to be elaborated to accom- modate the implications of the findings reported above. For example: what are these young Post- bourgeois doing “‘in the system” anyway? What business have such a relatively high proportion of a group held to be the New Left's real consti- tuency to be working away in professional, managerial, and executive occupations and en- joying the high salaries they do? It is true that Richard Flacks" points to the “radicalization of \ Richard Flacks, Youth and Social Change (Chi- cago: Rand McNally, 1971), pp. 114-117. Vol. 69 educated labor" as a sequel to the student revolt of the late ‘sixties and draws a convincing scenario for the future with young lawyers, doc- tors, and even executives pressing for radical qualitative changes in the behavior of elites and, in particular a shift in style from manipulation to participation. This interpretation too might ac- cord with the idea of a “Silent Revolution” based on shifts in value priorities. It does not however accord very well with our data. This being Britain, not too many of our Postbourgeois attended uni- versities (15 per cent, in fact), so what “radical” views they may hold may not be those we com- monly associate with the student movement. But if they are people who favor a path of Marcusian radical change of society from within—a revolt of the intellectuals—then they could be expected to take a radical stance on some of the personal issues in the questionnaire, especially those con- cerning job satisfaction. The Postbourgeois should feel dissatisfied with the interpersonal aspects of their occupations and to acknowledge, albeit, grudgingly, the rewards they were receiving. On the contrary, compared with the other two groups they were much more confident that they were well suited to their higher status occupations and were fulfilling themselves, but they were distinctly less happy about their security of tenure and the amount of money they were being paid. While Inglehart also notes that his Postbourgeois tended to have higher economic expectations, he implies that they merely expect to be carried along by generally rising living standards, criticizing as they go. This is not the same thing as laying claim to an even greater share of the national cake. It simply is not very seemly for embryonic postin- dustrial revolutionaries to fret so much about material security. We would expect something quite different. If it were true, as claimed, that such people can actually be identified by their preference for liberal ideals at the expense of ma- terial security, trends in attitude should appear quite opposite from those observed above. One way to break out from this near-circul: confusion would be to hold that there is a cruci difference between public and private values. Inglehart’s forced-choice question clearly cot cerns national goals—priorities which are ulti- mately decided by the political and administrative processes of the nation. Values that one deems to be desirable for the political community and for the conduct of national affairs need not be those cone embraces for the conduct of one’s own af- fairs. People who are shocked by untruthfulness, cynicism, or fiscal dishonesty among politicians and administrators do not necessarily condemn these traits so vehemently in private individuals and may even practice less than complete probity themselves. Similarly, we should not be too sur-1975 prised if people should demand freedom and par- ticipation for the nation and cash and security for themselves. But this pleasingly simple resolution of the dilemma raised in this paper has from Inglehart’s point of view a crucial deficiency: it again leads us away from Maslow. The theory of motivation proposed by Maslow is a theory of individual thought and behavior. His hierarchical pathway toward the desirable condition of psychological fulfillment, toward the achievement of a well- rounded and complete human condition, is to be trodden by each individual in his own way. Maslow points the way to sel/-actualization, not national actualization. Although, in an ideal state, the second might conceivably follow from the first, in Maslovian terms British Postbourgeois are “out of order.” They have “higher-order” public values and “lower-order” private values to an extent that is simply not consistent with Maslow’s theoretical framework nor with the use Inglehart has made of it. The link that Inglehart provides between Maslow’s theory and his own data is his assertion that the Acquisitiveness dimension is“. . . inte- grated into the individual's attitudinal structure.” Tt was suggested above that this leap from the measurement of mass political (i.e., “public”) values to assertions concerning highly individual factors cannot be made in the absence of detailed evidence of individual feeling states. Using data which, it must freely be admitted, are only mar- ginally less fragile than Inglehart’s original forced- choice items, and attempting to put flesh on his skeletal find, “Postbourgeois Man,” we have de- lineated an individual whose character, among British examples, is very different from that which Inglehart has promised. Those choosing the post- bourgeois value alternatives have not been lifted by postindustrial affluence into some enlightened state of nonmaterial egalitarianism; it is even pos- sible that they choose as they do simply because, as individuals, they can afford to acquire a liberal or even a radical disposition. Why they should do so is not after all likely to be explained by an appeal to Maslow’s theory of motivation; Post- bourgeois are as conscious as anyone else that they have to eat. Nevertheless, the view is re- tained here that the phenomenon is still worth explaining. Inglehart has demonstrated that it is associated with a tendency for people to vote against their apparent class interests and we have familiar evidence that whereas in the sample as a whole there is a direct linear relationship between higher socioeconomic status and higher satisfac- tion of all kinds," this does not hold for the Post- bourgeois—which is very curious. What follows * See Abrams and Hall. The “Silent Revolution” in Britain 29 is a brief attempt to suggest a theoretical frame- work which may accommodate Inglehart’s thesis and our own observations while preserving the essential notion that the phenomenon reflects mass value-change and has important implica- tions for political change in the future. In the ab- sence of further data, these suggestions remain speculative. We would retain the notion of motivation as a theoretical construct. This may seem surprising, but the sources of motivation we should point to are much more straightforward than the subtle ramifications of Maslow’s hierarchy; we believe that the Postbourgeois responses may be taken at their face value. Consider first a simple proposi: tion concerning the importance of image-differ- entiation between one generation and that which precedes it. Western culture now places a high premium upon the fact of youth. This was not always so. Yet the high earning power of young people—especially the educated middle-class— early imposes an outwardly close resemblance be- tween the consumption patterns and life-styles of this group and those of the preceding generation. Few young people feel comfortable appearing to be just like their parents. Whereas young skilled workers may be satisfied that they can achieve a successful age-differentiation through differences in taste, the better educated young middle-class people who predominate among the Postbour- geois will try to escape more profoundly from identification with their parents’ generation by re- jecting the very basis of that identification. So they reject their parents’ easy acceptance of ma- terial priorities and stridently assert alternative basic rights like freedom and participation. This hypothesis might then be extended to in- clude the more important notion of intergenera- tional status discrepancy. The use of status dis crepancy to explain the motives behind political attitudes and behavior has a long and honorable history. Bagehot? was puzzled about why it was the great capitalists of his time who were pressing for Parliamentary reform, and quotes Burke on the first East India Company men who were Jacobins to a man because“. . . they did not feel their present importance equal to their great wealth.” In eighteenth-century France, the Jaco- bin cause drew support from a very similar source. Barber describes how the bourgeois of routier origins, baulked by the entrenched power of the noblesse de robe, espoused egalitarian senti- ments because they rightly anticipated personal advantages if social mobility in French society as "Walter Bagehot, The English Constitution (Lon- don: Chapman and Hall, 1867). ” Elinor G. Barber, The Bourgeoisie in 18th Century France (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1955), pp. 141-146.30 a whole were increased, In a very different con- text, Bailey" describes how a caste which occupies a lowly position in the Hindu hierarchy but which has nevertheless managed to exploit its position to acquire much more wealth than higher castes (eg,, the Distillers Caste before the Indian Prohi- bition Acts early in this century) will elevate their ritual and hence their social status not by ostenta- tious disposal of wealth, but by quite the reverse; they do so by exaggerated public displays of piety and abstemiousness. In other words, discrepancies between crude material power and social status tend to be adjusted where possible in the language of the normative value system. Thus Runciman notes that the working-class men (or more likely, women) who vote Conservative and who tend to think of themselves as. “middle-class” are ex- pressing a subjectively held difference in social status between themselves and “the traditional proletarian.” So given the evidence that many young and especially young middle-class profes- sional people experience status deprivation at the hands of the preceding generation, what is it about the public espousal of postbourgeois values that might adjust this discrepancy in their favor? ‘A part of the answer may be found if one ac- cepts the assertion that Western culture also places a high premium upon worldly intellectual- ism. In common with youthfulness, this too was not always so. Among middle-class Europeans, this quality of applied intellectual freemindedness “B, G. Bailey, Caste and the Economic Frontier (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1957), pp. 188-191. W. G, Runciman, Relative Deprivation and Social Justice (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1966), p, 184; (also Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1966) The American Political Science Review Vol. 69 is popularly associated, rightly or wrongly, with an adherence to a set of nonmaterialist, liberal humanitarian, or radical reformist views. Because social interaction among humans is rarely an exercise in formal logic, a reasonably articulate utterance of radical views can attract to its ad- herents the desired reputation for intellectualism. Such a reputation is likely to be highly coveted by younger members of the middle classes. By ap- pearing to speak against their class interests they may also acquire a reputation for altruism at the same time. These are powerful psychological gains and should not be underestimated. Such gains would certainly ameliorate the sense of power-frustration experienced by many young middle-class Europeans who are excluded from the exercise of real power and from positions of high social respect by what seems to them (prob- ably rightly) to be a mere lack of seniority. This speculation is supported by the high proportion 34 per cent) of young men among the Postbour- geois compared with the Acquisitives (8 per cent). More reliable support for the foregoing specula- tions would lead to a rather different interpreta- tion from that put forward by Inglehart in ex- plaining the Postbourgeois priority for “freedom and participation” and their “dissatisfaction with democracy.” I am indebted to Hugh Berrington'® for this and the earlier quotation inspired by Bagehot and Burke which suggests that the expres- sion of such views by the Postbourgeois—given their dissatisfaction with their material rewards— may reflect little more than their urge to hasten the day when the existing elites have been ousted by themselves. “Hugh Berrington, Professor of Politics, University of Newcastle, England, written communication, 1973.