[Marxism] Class structure and class politics (I)

[Ed George <edgeorge@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Class structure and class politics

Darren Williams



In recent years, discussions about political strategy among socialists
in the British state have tended to become fixated on the question of
whether one should work within the Labour party or try to establish an
alternative party of the left. [1] A crucial factor in the arguments put
by both sides in this debate has been class. Those seeking to build a
new socialist party claim that Labour's shift to the right has reopened
the question of the political representation of the working class.
Conversely, those who continue to work within Labour argue that it
retains the allegiance of the majority of politically-conscious workers
- both individually, at the ballot-box, and organisationally, through
trade union affiliation. In their use of the concept of class, however,
both sides tend to rely on assertion and generalisation, rather than
making a coherent argument about class and its influence on politics.
While this debate has been conducted particularly sharply in the British
state - partly because of the near-consensus among socialists during the
Thatcher years that it was necessary to relate to the Labour party -
similar debates are taking place on the left in other countries.

At the same time, the resurgence of youth radicalism and mass popular
protest, around the anti-globalisation and anti-war movements, has
prompted some socialists to look to these newer forces, rather than to
the established organisations of the workers' movement, for the
leadership of a political challenge to capitalism. [2] Whatever the
virtues of these arguments, they are generally presented in terms of
what seems possible and desirable in the present conjuncture, rather
than taking a longer-term strategic perspective. Rarely is there any
acknowledgement that investing one's hopes for social change in the
anti-globalisation movement represents an implicit reconsideration of
the historic status of the working class as the agency of socialist
change.

In this article, I want to argue that there is an urgent need to
re-connect the theoretical examination of class with the political
practice of socialists. We have to take theory seriously - to examine,
openly and critically, the intellectual legacy of past generations and
apply what remains valid to the world as we find it. Only by so doing
can we develop a strategic orientation that will prove adequate to the
present turbulent political situation. In what follows, I will look at
the conception of class in the writings of Marx and Engels and its
development by subsequent writers and attempt to draw out its
contemporary political relevance. I will focus on two questions: _what
do we mean by the working class_; and _what is the significance of the
working class to the prospects for socialism in the twenty-first
century?_


WHY DOES CLASS MATTER?

Some concept of class is, of course, common to many different currents
of social theory as a way of trying to understand the ways in which
societies are structured. There are, however, a number of important
respects in which Marxist class theory differs from most of the others.
First, Marxists see class as determined not by, say, family background
or lifestyle choices, but by one's role in the _production_ of goods and
services - or in the reproduction of the social structures that allow
production to take place.  Second, class is, for Marxists, _relational_,
rather than _gradational_: it is not a matter of placing someone on a
linear scale that measures their possession of certain attributes
(wealth, status, education, for example); it is about relationships
between groups (classes). These relationships are fundamentally unequal
- one class exercises power over another - and, at least potentially,
conflictual, as the subordinate class has an interest in overturning
this state of affairs. As a consequence of this, the Marxist conception
of class is not simply a useful concept for describing and analysing
societies; it has immediate political implications. To acknowledge that
societies are divided along class lines is to be obliged to take up a
political position, either for or against the status quo. To quote
Marx's famous eleventh thesis on Feuerbach, 'The philosophers have only
_interpreted_ the world in various ways; the point is to _change_ it'.
[3]

All this is summed up very pithily at the beginning of _The Communist
Manifesto_, with the famous statement that 'the history of all hitherto
existing societies is the history of class struggles'. In the epoch of
capitalism, such struggles take place, of course, primarily between the
bourgeoisie (or capitalist class) and the proletariat (or working
class). The development of capitalist industry, says the _Manifesto_,
has produced the 'grave-diggers' of the bourgeoisie in the form of the
proletariat. The unique historical role of the working class as the
agent of socialism was, for Marx and Engels, the consequence of its
having both the 'motive' and the 'means' to overthrow capitalism. The
motive was due to workers' subordinate position within the capitalist
mode of production. There are three distinct, but inter-related,
elements to this. First, the economic compulsion to work for the benefit
of an employer, and the consequent surrender of control over one's
labour process, leads to the _alienation_ of the worker from his or her
labour and its product. Marx and Engels (unlike, say, Adam Smith) saw
labour not as an unfortunate necessity but as the core of human
activity, as the means by which people created not just goods and
services, but themselves. To have one's creative capacities completely
subordinated to the dictates of profit is likely to make work a deeply
dissatisfying and even repugnant experience.

The second provocation that capitalism offers to workers is their
increasing impoverishment, at the same time as their labours enrich
their employers. The _Communist Manifesto_ argues that the workers'
miserable, deprived living and working conditions mean that they would
have 'nothing to lose but their chains' in seeking to overthrow
capitalism. In _Capital_, Marx describes a historical tendency for the
increasing 'immiseration' of the working class. As capital accumulates,
a greater proportion of that which is reinvested is used to buy
labour-saving machinery, rather than to pay workers' wages, thereby
creating a pool of surplus labour - a permanent 'industrial reserve
army' - which is available to newer branches of industry whose demand
for labour may currently be increasing. The existence of a surplus
labour force maintains a downward pressure on the overall level of
wages, which means that capitalist accumulation and working class
impoverishment are inextricably linked. [4]

Yet alienation and immiseration are secondary features of capitalism:
behind both, and at the heart of the system, is _exploitation_. In its
specific Marxian sense, this refers primarily to the extraction by the
capitalist of surplus value created during the labour process. The
worker creates saleable goods or services whose exchange (market) value
exceeds the value of the wage he or she would have to be paid to
maintain his or her own life and living conditions. The latter is
derived from Marx's labour theory of value, which states that
labour-time is the common factor that establishes the respective
exchange-values of different commodities. For any amount of labour-time
that a worker undertakes, s/he is paid a wage equivalent to the combined
labour-time of the various goods and services that s/he needs to consume
to sustain him/her for this period. Yet, the combined value
(labour-time) of the goods _consumed_ is generally smaller than the
value (labour-time) of the goods _produced_. The difference - the
_surplus value_ - is the source of the capitalist's profit. This is
important not primarily for the capitalist's personal consumption, but
for his/her ability to accumulate - to reinvest on an ever-expanding
scale and compete with other capitalists - and the capitalist must
therefore constantly seek to increase the proportion of surplus value
produced by each worker in a given period. [5]

Marx also presents this in terms of the worker putting in _surplus
labour-time_ for the capitalist, over and above the time needed to
create value equivalent to that which the worker consumes. Only those
who produce commodities with an exchange value (and who thereby also
produce surplus value) can be considered _productive_ in terms of the
requirements of capitalism. While other wage-earners (e.g., shop
assistants) also do work that is necessary for the system to function -
for example, by contributing to the realisation of surplus value - they
are unproductive, inasmuch as they do not convert the value invested by
employing them into a greater value. Nevertheless, while surplus value
is extracted only from productive workers, surplus labour-time is
extracted from productive and unproductive workers alike: both (most
Marxists agree) are exploited.

The capitalist's need to intensify the exploitation of the labour force
manifests itself in constant pressure for workers to work harder or
longer. To facilitate this, the capitalist needs to take away from the
worker more and more control over the labour process, breaking down that
process into disconnected segments requiring less thought and skill, and
producing less satisfaction, and thus tending to produce greater
alienation. [6] Moreover, any real increase in workers' wages entails a
corresponding reduction in the rate of profit, and must therefore be
held back; thus, the tendency to immiseration is also ever-present. But
while capitalism thus gives workers good reason to rebel, it also
increases their capacity to overturn the system. There are, again, a
number of aspects to this. First, whereas commodity production in
pre-capitalist (and early capitalist) societies took place in small
workshops or even in the worker's own home, capitalism brings workers
together in unprecedentedly large numbers, in factories, mines and other
large workplaces, where they can be more easily regimented and
controlled, and where economies of scale can be developed.  This,
however, tends to engender on the part of the workers a strong sense of
common experience and identity of interest, which can be turned into
active solidarity in opposition to the employer. The system also
requires that more and more people be turned into proletarians, swelling
the ranks of the working class, which is therefore empowered by its very
size. Finally, a working class revolt against capitalism represents the
most damaging kind of attack on the system: one that comes from within.
Since the whole system is based on the creation by the working class of
value and surplus value, that system will grind to a halt if the workers
en masse withdraw their labour and their consent to their own
exploitation.

The unique social weight and economic position of the working class also
has implications for the type of society it will create. Whereas the
revolutionary movements of previous epochs had brought about the
displacement of one minority ruling class by another, 'the proletarian
movement is the self-conscious, independent movement of the immense
majority'. It 'cannot raise itself up without the whole superincumbent
strata of official society being sprung into the air'. [7] Thus its
revolution must establish, not the dictatorship of a new ruling class,
but a classless society.  While earlier thinkers and movements and had
seen the creation of a socialist society as the task of an enlightened
minority, Marx and Engels were among the first to see the proletariat
alone as being in a position to carry this through. It is driven not
merely by an ethical objection to capitalism, or by sympathy with the
plight of the poor and oppressed, but by its own fundamental material
interests. Moreover, its very place at the centre of capitalism gives it
the leverage to overturn the system. This insight has underpinned the
political strategy of the main currents of the international socialist
movement - both revolutionary and (at least, until recently) reformist.
It represents the main line of demarcation from all alternative
progressive currents (such as the Greens), however radical and
egalitarian in their intent.  While sections of the far left have, from
time to time, invested their hopes in political parties or guerrilla
movements based on the peasantry, in revolutionary students or in
'specially oppressed' groups, no such idea has ultimately supplanted the
widespread acceptance on the socialist left that the working class is
uniquely placed to act as the principal agent of socialist change under
capitalist society.

The above summary draws on comments by Marx and Engels over the course
of their politically active lives. In the course of this period, they
developed and modified their views. The concept of 'alienation', for
example, is more characteristic of Marx's early writings (although he
returned to it while writing the _Grundrisse_ in 1857-58), whereas he
developed his labour theory of value only in the course of his intensive
study of economics in the 1850s and early 1860s. It was often, however,
the actual political events of their lifetimes that caused Marx and
Engels to modify their views - in particular, the many setbacks
experienced by the nascent working class movement. Thus, the rather easy
link between economic causes and political effects suggested by the
_Communist Manifesto_ (admittedly, a work of impassioned propaganda, not
sober analysis) was abandoned in later years as Marx and Engels revised
their prognosis for revolution.  The further developments of the century
and more since their death have thrown up more fundamental challenges to
their theories, however. Their successors have had to answer charges
that their hopes in the working class have been falsified. The working
classes of the advanced capitalist countries have, more often than not,
seemed willing to accept capitalism as a system and to limit their
political demands to reforms within the system. Socio-economic changes
have changed the class structure beyond recognition since the time of
Marx and Engels. The working class that they described - if it still
exists at all - is, we are told, declining in social weight and in its
capacity for political action. I will attempt to address these questions
of class identity and agency in the remainder of this article.

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