> A very substantial number of wage earning workers with
> no investment income are conservative. Union
> households are different but there the key variable is
> obviously union membership.
>
> And (Doug, correct me if I am wrong), but liberal
> politics is very strongly correlated education
> regardless of the source of income.
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I'm not sure what we're arguing about, Andie.
I don't dispute that many workers are conservative. There have always been large numbers of workers with traditional values who vote for conservative rather than liberal or left-wing parties in electoral democracies. I've noted only that they a) tend to be located more in the rural areas than cities, b) are more prevalent in certain historical circumstances than others - ie. during periods of relative stability and growth, and in imperialist countries where jingoism, militarism, and racism are widespread, and c) are distributed through all income levels and occupational groups - industrial, clerical, technical, and professional.
I doubt if there is a consistent historical pattern showing that less educated workers are more conservative and more educated workers are more liberal, as you suggest above. My impression is actually the opposite - even in the US; that the more highly paid professional and administrative salary earners (education and income are correlated) tend more towards the Republicans, and lower-paid and less educated workers tend to vote Democratic. Historically, and for obvious reasons, the less privileged have favoured social reform more than the more privileged, including within the working class.
But generalization can be difficult. In expanding sectors and occupations where employment and job security are strong, workers tend to be more optimistic and welcoming of change. In declining sectors and occupations, where unemployment is widespread and growing, workers are frequently resentful and fearful of change. As a rule, rising industries demand a more highly skilled workforce than declining ones, so it is easy to see how there could be the appearance - but only the appearance - that the level of education, rather than economic circumstance, is the key variable explaining political behaviour.
It is difficult to disentangle the two, but when trying to understand under what conditions masses of people become politically active, I continue to look first to changes in their material conditions of existence - usually abrupt ones involving their physical security or their job security - rather than to advances in the scale and level of mass education. In fact, the spread of mass higher education in the postwar period has not seen an advance in mass political consciousness and political action. The long period of postwar peace and economic security enjoyed by the postwar generation, quite unlike that experienced by the working class generations which preceded it, have had a conservatizing effect, notwithstanding that the general level of education is higher. According to your logic, one would expect to see otherwise.
I initially joined this thread only in response to the suggestion that the new postwar layer of professional and administrative workers was somehow not part of the working class, but outside of it. The discussion seems to have widened from there.
But I will refrain in future from suggesting that History has rendered any verdicts. :)