This work demonstrates that social class is as important now to the understanding of twentieth century industrial societies as it was in the first years of the century. Gordon Marshall's argument is informed by issues pertaining to the relationship between social stratification and social order. Specific issues include: the debate about the unit of class composition; the question of meritocracy; the relationship between class and gender; cross-national similarities and differences in mobility regimes; proletarianization, distributional struggles, collective identities, and the nature of the 'underclass' in advanced societies. The British experience is examined in relation to that of the United states, the former communist countries of eastern Europe and Scandinavia, and used to make more general points about class itself and how sociologists might most useful pursue class analysis in the future. Suspicious of grand theory and sceptical of the historicism of the left and right, the author matches testable propositions to appropriate empirical data.