Comment by graemep
1 day ago
Depends who you mean by the elite.
The aristocracy, certainly.
The upper middle class (i.e. professional class - I know other countries define these things differently) that provided the administrators were just good at their jobs and worked hard. Leonard Woolf's autobiography is a great insider view. Histories of the period too.
The upper middle class were decidedly not elite at that time and very much "working class plus"
Still are, arguably. Dependent on earnings rather than wealth.
They did have a lot of privileges, especially when employed in the colonies.
I think we are entering a wierd era where a huge population (baby boomers) are returing with incredible passive wealth compared to any other working class era in history.
This is... a mass elite or more of one that may have ever existed before including the small merchant class of the late 1800s
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You can’t have a bourgeoisie without a mass of petit-bourgeoisie making sure no proletariat ever forgets their class