[Marxism] What does the modern working class really look like? was:: [Re: DISILLUSIONED WITH MARXMAILers!]

[Einde O'Callaghan <einde@xxxxxx>]

Haines Brown schrieb:
<snip>
> 
> You say that these professionals are paid what "amounts to a
> wage". And you say their wages are not high as is supposed, and their
> labor is indeed exploited. I believe you are on shaky ground on all
> three points.
> 
> 1. I presume a "wage" is what you are paid for your labor time (as an
>    input factor in someone else's production, who then appropriates the
>    resulting surplus value); while a "salary" is a contract for the
>    sale of a good or service created by yourself (your outputs), and so
>    in principle is an equitable exchange, but often cranked up to
>    an artificially higher level by professional associations that
>    restrict access to professions, etc. If you don't care for my
>    definition, you need to offer an alternative, for I believe my own
>    is fairly standard.

Your definition may be standard - but it's got little to do with Marxist 
categories. Whether you sell your labour by the nanosecond, by the 
second, by the minute, by the hour, by the day, by the week, by the 
month or by the year is irrelevant for whether it should be considered 
wage or not.

And your suggestion that the difference between a salary and a wage is 
that a salary is "in principle ... an equitable exchange" also has 
little to do with Marxism. Indeed Marx shows clearly  that the secret of 
the relationship between capital and labour is precisely that the 
relationship is equitable in capitalist terms - in  general, the 
capitalist buys wage labour at its value, i.e. the amount of value 
required to reproduce labour in the historically defined circumstances.

In my opinion the current difference between a wage and a salary is 
minuscule for the majority of people. When I was working in Britain the 
effective difference was that when I had a manual job I got paid a wage 
once a week or once every two weeks and when I worked in an office I got 
paid a salary which was paid on a monthly basis. One other minor 
difference was that if I was being paid a wage I had to sign a document 
agreeing to be paid by cheque, whereas when I was paid a salary I didn't 
- something to do with the 19th century Truck Acts. and BTW I also got 
paid overtime at a notional hourly rate when I was earning a salary!

Here in German where I live and work now blue-collar workers are paid a 
"Lohn" (wage) and white-collar workers are paid a "Gehalt" (salary) - 
but other than the name there doesn't seem to be any practical 
difference - both are paid on a monthly basis and both are associated 
with a specific hourly rate and overtime is paid (at least officially) 
at the rates agreed in the national or regional wage agreements.

In Germany the service workers union ver.di with 2.359 million members 
(2005 figures) competes in size with the traditionally largest union, 
the IGMetall (engineering workers) 2.376 million members (2005 figures) 
- both represent blue-collar and white-collar workers.

I feel taht your categorisation of people into working clyass and petty 
bourgeois has more to do with impressionism than with any acquaintance 
with Marxist material on proletarianisation of the intermediate classes, 
  however you m ight care to define them. the proletarianisation of 
white collar work was already far advanced 30 years ago when Harry 
Braverman published "Labor and Monopoly Capital" and it has taken 
further great strides since then.

That within certain professions including many white-collar jobs there 
is the possibility for an elite to climb the career ladder and become 
senior managers, comnsiultants etc. who get paid considerably more than 
the costs of reproduction of their labour power, i.e. participate in the 
exploitation of the rest of us as members of what might be termed the 
"new middle classes", does not detract from the fact that most of the 
people in these professions and jobs, i.e. the people on the lower 
rungs, will never reach these exalted heights and will thus remain part 
of the exploited collective worker.

we shouldn't forget that the members of capitalist class derive their 
share of the collective surplus value not just from those workers 
involved in the immediate production of goods (and increasingly 
services) but from the vast number of workers in other jobs which are 
necessary for the reproduction and maintenance of labour power 
(teachers, doctors, nurses, etc.) AND from the vast number of workers 
involved in ensuring the realisation of surplus value, i.e. bank 
employees, insurance clerks, people in import/export firms, civil 
servants etc. - all of these are people who have to sell their labour 
power in order to be able to survive - and precisely this mass is the 
working class in modern capitalism.

I must also say that I feel that it is mistaken to lable all 
self-employed as somehow petty bourgeois. Perhaps this is because I am 
self-employed - not by choice, but due to circumstances. I'm a langauge 
teacher involved in adult education and professional training. Virtually 
none of the language schools and training schools here in eastern 
Germany employ full-time language teachers, so I'm officially for tax 
purposes a self-employed person selling a service. In reality I'm more 
like a day labourer constantly on the look out for new opportunities to 
sell my "service" - indeed I'm in a less stable situation than a day 
labourer - I get paid by the hour for the hours I work. I get paid 
slightly more per hour than an employed teacher, but I have less hours 
and then I have to pay for my own health insurance, for any future 
pension I'd like to get and if I can't find work I'm not entitled to any 
unemployment benefits even though I pay my taxes just like anybody else.

So what does that make me? A member of an intermediate class - or a 
member of teh worki9ng class with a slightly different contractual 
relationship with my exploiters in bourgeois legal terms?

One last comment - you're view seems to be largely coloured by your 
position in America, where trade union membership outside certain 
industries and perhaps local government is virtually non-exitent, if I 
understand the situation correctly.

here in Eruope the situation is different - even if trade unionism has 
taken a battering in teh last 25 or 30 years. Trade unionism, trade 
union militancy and even strikes are not unusual in Europe even among 
people you've excluded from the working class. Here in Germany we've had 
strikes by hospital doctors about wages and working conditions - e.g. 
72-hour weekend shifts (if you're going to have an accident in germany 
don't have it on a Sunday evening - the doctor will be even groggier 
than you). In Britain I understand that university lecturers (the 
equivalent of many American professors) are threatening strike action. 
In Britain and Germany we've had strikes by bank employees and local 
government employees and in Britain there are often strikes by civil 
servants, indeed the one of the civil servants unions is among the most 
radical and even has open revolutionary socialists elected to its 
national executive.

I've gone on for too long and this hasn't been too focused but I do 
feeel that you have to familiarise yourself with both the Marxist 
tradition and with modern Marxist analyses of class development before 
you can contribute mre than surface impressions to this important 
discussion. The working class today no longer consists solely of "horny 
handed sons (and some daughters) of toil" if it ever did (which I doubt 
very much).

Einde O'Callaghan

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