The Post-Modern Prince: The Working Class in the 21st Century

The Post-Modern Prince

The Working Class in the 21st Century

By Frank Deppe

[This article originally published in: Fantomas, February 3, 2004 is translated from the German on the World Wide Web, http://www.linksnet.de/artikel.php?id=1135. Frank Deppe is a professor of political science in Marburg, Germany.]

At the beginning of the 21st century, Marxism is not in a good condition. However interest in the realities of social inequality and social exclusion grows as a consequence of the neoliberal policy in global high-tech capitalism. The dynamic of the new social movements also contributes to the thematic shift of public debates since Seattle 1999. Frank Deppe analyzes what the terms class and class struggle mean.

In the transition to the 21st century, the universal and emancipatory claim of the working class movement as a political party, a social union, a cooperative- and a cultural movement has broken to pieces. The traditional working class movement no longer exists. Obviously there are still unions and workers still choose parties defined as “leftist”. Processes of dissolution and regeneration of classes are also fought out in class struggle. But these conflicts are no longer expressed politically as Marxism and Leninism described the relation between the avant-garde party and class. Organizations that still refer to this tradition are hardly articulations of a movement.

The erosion of the classical working class movement occurred in the process of “modernization” of capitalist society. These processes have become more complex. Their conflicts, hierarchies and conditions of rule can no longer be reduced one-dimensionally to class conflicts. The industrial working class has shriveled to a minority fraction of the wage-earning (and unemployed) population. Traditional class milieus in families, factories, districts and routine cultures from sport- and cultural associations or bars have dissolved.

Transitional Questions and Investigative Principles

Does this mean the end of the traditional working class movement that the terms working class and class struggle have no future any more? In the following, I will defend the thesis that we are living in a period of transition to a new capitalist formation in its relation to the structure of modern societies, the system of world politics and the relations between accumulation and political regulation. In this “turbulent” transitional phase, the relative strength between capital and labor has dramatically shifted in favor of capital. The social and political forces championing a non-capitalist society and a radical democratization have been greatly weakened. Their future depends on the way the different factions of the working class and present social movements react to the contradictions of this transitional period and outline an alternative way of social reproduction and democracy.

Let us recall several principles of historical materialism in the analysis of capitalism and the working class movement. For Karl Marx, political economy as the anatomy of middle class society reveals the social or class substance of political, cultural and intellectual phenomena. Therefore he says: “Capital is not a thing but a social relation between persons mediated by things” (Marx, MEW 23). More exactly, capital is not a product, technology or money but the class relation between productive dependent paid labor and the appropriation of surplus labor under specific conditions of the development of productive forces (including the historical development of natural science, technology and the training of workers). Therefore Georg Lukacs describes Marxism as the scientific concept for explaining capitalist society in its totality.

The central contradiction in this permanently changing social relationship is the opposition between the reproduction interests of workers and the exploitation interest of the owner of capital. Capital accumulation stands under the coercive laws of competition because no capitalist survives who falls behind in the development of productive forces and productivity. However the development of productive forces is driven by the class struggle. Capital reacts to successfully implemented union demands (for example, higher wages) with reduction of (relative) wage (piece-labor) costs through rationalization, that is through increased work productivity. As a result, the history of the working class is a dependent variable of capital accumulation and its contradictions. The working classes’ size, inner structure, distribution in the world and relations to other classes are historical-dynamic moments and objective conditions of the process of class formation. These conditions alone do not explain the intensity of class struggles or the organizational conduct of workers.

Concrete Analysis of Concrete Conditions

In the history of the working class movement, different class factions, assume the role of an “avant garde” in unions, political organizations, strike movements and other struggles. These changes can be seen for example in the transition from the “old” union organization based on highly skilled paid workers to the “new unions” that organize the semi-skilled “mass workers” in assembly line mass production. Since the 1995/96 strike in France, the employees and unions of public service have been at the forefront of social and political conflicts.

Thus every period of capitalist development and its national and regional configurations is characterized by a certain relation of the classes – analyzed in a concrete historical way -, their inner structure and specific conditions of the class struggle. Antonio Gramsci spoke of the necessary exploration of the (national, local etc) “terrain” on which the progressive forces of the working class operate. Since all the processes of class formation are always structured by the state, i.e. by the political system and the battles in this system, this role must be understood in the totality of the middle-class capitalist society.

An important conclusion results here. While historical materialism thematicizes the question about the social-economic substance of the political, ideological and cultural superstructure (where class organization is an important element, the analysis of concrete historical processes and struggles must guard against the traps of a mechanistic and reductionist thinking. The social classes are not collective actors that march through the streets with brass bands and wave red flags. Class struggle was never a mere “reflection” of economic and social structures and contradictions. The basic problem of the mediation of the analysis of structures and actions may not be ignored through the miserable philosophical interpretation of the writings of the young Marx according to which the “historical mission of the proletariat” consists in the “abolition” of its own living conditions.

Stations of Transition

What do the structures and dynamics of contemporary capitalism mean for the structure of the working class, the reproduction of contradictions and the resistance of the working class? Among Marxist economists and sociologists, a broad consensus exists concerning the following elements of the “post-Fordism” that arose out of the crisis of Fordism in the late 1960s and 1970s,

The “micro-electronic revolution” has profoundly changed the character of work in the industrial production and service areas. Firstly, an extraordinary enhancement of the productive power of living workers occurs. “Socially necessary working hours” are drastically reduced. The person “appears alongside the production process instead of being its main agent (…). As soon as labor ceases to be the great source of wealth, working hours must cease to be its standard. The exchange value ceases being the measure of practical value” (MEW 42). An enormous rationalization potential exists there for capital exploitation in lowering the costs of production, administration and management. As a result, mass dismissals occur with static or declining growth and/or with the same working hours. On the other side, these gains in productivity are the basis for union demands for reducing working hours.

The micro-electronic revolution transforms the character of paid work and its training: from the production of material goods to the production of information and knowledge. Communication and knowledge production become central prerequisites of material production and globalized financial markets. At the same time the profile and composition of the social workforce changes. Finally, an enormous redistribution of labor occurs from the industrial to the service sector. This redistribution of labor is highly polarized between stable and unstable employment conditions, between activity with high and low training or well-paid and poorly paid jobs.

The change in the structures of information and communication has considerable consequences for the analysis of the super-structure and ideology in modern capitalism. I think of the significance of the Internet and the role of private media that communicates information about the political and social reality for the whole world and constructs pictures and ideas with direct political implications. The “trench warfare” around hegemony – so vital to Gramsci – gains entirely new dimensions.

The classical analyses of imperialism at the beginning of the 20th century always started from the absolute limits of capital accumulation. However the analysis of the structure of accumulation shows that capital accumulation penetrates ever new areas of life, social reproduction and culture and is subject to the commodity- and profit principle: from the Fordist assembly-line mass production of automobiles, the capitalization of trade, services, communication sector and leisure time to the present capitalization of the body through “bio-politics”. These processes are reorganized by an expansion of paid work to new areas.

At the same time the significance of financial capital increases within the global reproduction of capitalism. The pressure to adjust the national systems of corporate governance grows with the growth of finance capitalism. The management systems (and the relational- and power structures between boards of directors and supervisory boards and between self-financing and foreign-financing by banks) and the organization forms of industrial relations (in Germany for example the different systems of “industrial democracy” and “joint-determination”) reflect this pressure.

Wage relations were clearly devalued. Wages fell through rationalization and unemployment and also the shift of financial activities and the politics of governments under pressure. The falling wage rate shows the close connection between changes in the structure of accumulation and changes in the social and political relative strengths between capital and labor in their conflict of interests. The unions have lost considerable power.

The relation between the capitalist economy and the state has also changed. The parallelism of national Keynesianism and world market liberalism characteristic of Fordism was broken open. The task of the capitalist state today as a “national competition state” (J. Hirsch) consists in assuring or optimizing the competitiveness of the national “position”. In the course of these changes (that are always a result of political conflicts), the working class is confronted with the erosion of the Fordist class compromise that in the “Golden Age” (1948-1975) rested on the “compromise” between the acknowledgment of capitalism by the reformist working class movement and the acknowledgment of full employment policy and the welfare state by the representatives of organized capital interests. The neoliberal hegemony reflects this change of relative strength in its economic policy of privatization, deregulation, monetarism and supply orientation. In its decisions, the political system recognizes the dominance of the laws of the market over all other spheres of society and politics.

Within world market competition, the “competition state” forces the deregulation of the labor market (“flexibilization”, creation of precarious employment conditions or low-wage sectors), the transformation of welfare state policy of collective protection and collective solidarity in favor of private insurance and individualization along with the dismantling of worker- and union rights in the realm of industrial democracy. Deregulation and privatization also operate in the areas of education and science. These areas are “economized” in that institutions are evaluated according to administrative criteria. Private schools, universities and elite-sponsorships are upgraded and their contents directly subordinated to capital interests.

The capitalism of the present has reached a new stage of internationalization or transnationalization of production and exchange, of mobility of capital, information, money and people (transnational migration). On one hand, the action possibilities of transnational corporations (TNCs) expand considerably with the strategies of global sourcing especially in relation to employees and unions, even if the “exit-option” of capital is occasionally exaggerated. On the other hand, the world market competition is accepted and internalized as a quasi-unchangeable constant of nature since neoliberal policy presents itself as “without alternative”.. Management is strengthened over against employees, works councils and unions whose strategic weakness is reflected in acceptance of the policy of competitive corporatism. The end of the bipolar world of block confrontation intensifies these effects. Lastly, the political class effects produced the financial crises since the end of the 1980s. While the indebtedness crisis generally weakened developing countries in relation to the metropolises, the monetary- and financial crises of recent times (for example the 1997 Asian crisis) affect above all the lower classes.

These developments suggest the necessity of a new imperialism debate. The internationalization of capital only partially impacts the labor markets. Thus the workers of the TNCs and the export industries only represent 10 to 15% of the global working class. The number of migrants has increased 60% since 1965. However their total share in the worldwide working class amounts to less than 5%. That the unions have their center of gravity in the factory, branch and nation state and are still relatively weak internationally also reflects the contradiction between the globalization of the capital movement and the nation-state structure of the labor market.

A New Block of Subordinates

What do these findings mean for a class analysis oriented in Marxism? First of all, the working class has in no way disappeared. Capitalism is still based on exploitation of paid labor and the natural, social and political conditions of the production and appropriation of surplus value. The number of dependent workers nearly doubled between 1970 and 2000 and includes approximately half of the whole world population. This reflects first of all the development in China and other parts of Asia where large parts of the rural population were “made redundant” because of industrialization. In the developed capitalist countries, the shared of paid labor amounts to 90% or more while the number of independent persons increases slightly. This may refer back to the increase of small businesses in the “new economy” and the service sector and to the strategy of “outsourcing”. Many businesses distribute job orders to formally independent persons who de facto are completely dependent on them. At the same time the share of women among the dependent workers rose worldwide from 33% (1970) to 40% (2000). Enormous changes of family structures, women’s attitudes about their work biographies, changes in the educational system and also in the structures of the labor market itself are reflected in these statistics since women are disproportionately employed in low-wage, part-time and informal sectors.

The classical working class movement believed that the quantitative growth of the working class into the numerically strongest class would advance the standardization of working- and living conditions, training and class-consciousness. This notion was always false since the history of class was the permanent restructuring of its inner social structure.

These classes are extremely fragmented today. If Fordism was still characterized by universal standards for mass production and reproduction of labor power, post-Fordism intensifies the divisions between the upper and lower classes and within the working class.

The restructuring and new composition of the working class creates new forms of social inequality within and beyond national borders. A new “block of subordinates” arises that hasn’t yet articulated itself politically as a block because the alternative programs as to neoliberalism are lacking.

Factions of the wage-earning middle class and “aristocratic” skilled worker sectors with high training, relatively secure jobs and incomes are at the top. The sector of communication- and knowledge production has gained importance quantitatively and qualitatively. Its employees practice the lifestyle and individualization philosophy of the middle class and often support neoliberal policy, open themselves to the “new social movements” (feminism, ecology) and invigorate green parties.

A second faction includes the industrial core of the traditional working class. Although it has lost social status and political weight, this faction still has relatively strong unions, a relatively stable employment in some countries and inclines to a conservative “corporatist” policy.

A third faction consists of poorly paid employees often working part-time in the lower segments of the service area. Many of them are migrants from Eastern Europe, Africa, Latin America or Asia. The majority are women. This segment of a new “service proletariat” has increased most strongly.

Lastly, a permanently jobless or under-employed “underclass” forms worldwide. This “underclass” is neither an “industrial reserve army” (since it hardly has a change of breaking through the exclusion from the official labor market) nor a classical “lumpen-proletariat” (since it is historically a product of the welfare state of the 1960s).

Awkward Contradictions

The factions of this block of subordinates are distributed unequally over the world between metropolises and peripheries and also between global cities, traditional-industrial, rural and the newly industrialized regions of the “new economy”. Mere wage-earning capacity is completely inadequate as a distinction because social position is primarily determined through the marks of gender and ethnicity. The fragmentation tendencies strengthen the erosion of traditional class-consciousness and stabilize neoliberal rule through racism and sexism. Simultaneously the contradictions of global capitalism produce new forms of resistance everywhere in the world. The intellectual critique of neoliberalism has also intensified. The themes of this conflict change and correspond to the specific conditions within global capitalism: protests of landless farmers in Brazil, the rebellion in Chiapas, resistance of small farmers against the privatization of access to water in Peru, union strikes in western Europe and South Korea, global mass demonstrations against war and the danger of war. Five groups of contradictions can be identified where protest and resistance concentrate.

The contradiction between big capital and democracy is emphasized in the attacks on the WTO, the World Bank, the IMF, the OECD and the EU.

The contradiction between the intensification of labor and exploitation and poverty through economic and financial crises is manifest in the growing resistance of the unions in the US and Western Europe.

A third group of contradictions is connected with the intensification of the crisis of social reproduction that first strikes women and their labor in the informal or subsistence economy, household and raising of children.

A fourth group of contradictions concerns the transnational corporations in the food- and pharmaceutical industries. What is involved is not only food but a “bio-policy” that aims at the human body itself through genetic manipulation and experiments with embryos. This problematic played an important role in the demonstrations against the WTO and the OECD.

The mass movements against the war policy of the US since September 11, 2001 articulate a fifth group of contradictions.

Early Warning Systems and Critical Intellectuals

The anti-globalization movements are “early warning systems” of future social, political, economic, ecological and cultural conflicts in which the working class will be indispensable. These conflicts concentrate on questions of democracy, participation and national sovereignty. They concern the role of international organization and the struggle around preventing an imperial hegemony and the distribution and redistribution of wealth, information, knowledge, health, and access to drinking water, fresh air and other natural resources. Re-embedding of the economy in institutions of social and political control requires freezing the extension of goods production (“commodification”), deregulation and privatization. Democracy needs a wide sector of “de-commodification” (that is, access to public goods of high-quality for everyone) and a broad “de-commodified” labor market in the areas of education, the sciences, health, the infrastructure and so forth.

Inspired by Machiavelli’s reflections on the “Prince” (1513), Gramsci described the Leninist party at the beginning of the 20th century as the “modern prince” whose “organic intellectuals should organize workers and farmers on the national plane into the block of subordinates and raise the hegemony question. A “post-modern principle” can no longer copy the organizations of the classical working class movement but must organize as a complex network structure. Its most important function consists in creating alliances between very different powers and movements by creating awareness about the inner connection of conflicts that seem separate on first view. Critical intellectuals may play an even greater role than Gramsci. Their task of articulating self-awareness of these new global alliances of social, political and cultural forces can only be successfully accomplished in the progressive development of information and communication technologies…