Class composition: Studies of changing relations
between capital and labour.
Global restructuring and the rebuilding of class
power.
by
Ed Emery
It won't do! It won't do! You must investigate! You must not talk
nonsense!" [Mao
Tse-Tung]
*******
Mayday 1995: The TGWU branch at the Ford-Dagenham Assembly Plant vote
explicitly against taking the day off work on Mayday. For fear of being
"in breach of contract". That is how things have changed.
Mayday 1995: A hundred thousand workers march in Turkey to celebrate
Mayday, despite the massive presence of armed Turkish police, who had killed
people on previous marches. That is how things have changed.
Mayday 1995: For our part, we ran up the red flag in the back yard. We
marched with the Turks and Kurds – as usual, just about the only people
marching in London. A few friends round for supper in the evening. To sing the
old songs of struggle and resistance.
But absolutely, categorically not enough. Some of us
are feeling an urgency. A deep-seated wanting. A need to know what is
happening. Because something is stirring, all around.
Twenty years, perhaps, since class power was last
winning. We've lived the years of defeat. Years of impotence. Years of anger.
The rich getting richer and life's been shit for the rest of us. The
foundations of working class power systematically destroyed.
No doubt about it. We've been on the losing side. But
in some vaguely definable way, class power is on the move again. We're picking
ourselves up out of the wreckage. And the question is: how can we regroup
forces, gather strength, mobilise social forces for a project of winning rather
than losing?
The old class forces have been taken apart.
"Decomposed". New class forces are emerging. New configurations. This
is what we call a "new class composition". The new class composition
is more or less a mystery to us (and to capital, and to itself) because it is
still in the process of formation.
Before we can make politics, we have to understand
that class composition. In order to understand that class composition, we have
to study it, analyse it. We do this through a process of inquiry. Hence: No
Politics Without Inquiry.
This paper is an invitation to comrades far and wide
to join us in this process of Inquiry.
Relations between capital and labour have been
radically restructured during the past two decades, in favour of capital.
Labour is being recomposed into new circuits, cycles and patterns of
production. A new class composition is being formed, world-wide. In time, this
class composition will begin to assert its interests – in its own new circuits,
cycles and patterns – of opposition, of struggle. At that point, mere technical
class composition turns into political class composition. It becomes real
power, political power.
The enemy is constantly studying class composition in
order to fracture it, break it, disperse it, permanently dissipate its
strength. We, for our part, study class composition in order to strengthen it,
consolidate it, turn it into a real basis of power.
The old compositions ("smokestack"
industries etc) and their associated bastions of class power (miners, auto
workers, dockers, steel workers etc) have been broken down. New class
compositions (information industries, services etc) are being built up.
Before we can be active in building the class power
of these new compositions, we have to know who they are, where they are, what
are their conditions of work and life, and around what issues, slogans,
struggles they will mobilise during the coming years.
And at the moment we know just about fuck-all.
After the 1994 Conference a group of us in the CSE
set up a "Working Group on Work". Our interest has been in the
changes taking place in work, and in the struggles arising. We have been fairly
excited by our discussions.
Similar work has developed previously in CSE. For
example, in 1976 we had working groups studying aspects of class composition,
in the lead-up to the Labour Process conference. This analytical work was
particularly strong around the motor industry, and led to useful organising
activity in that industry.
CSE Conference might be a useful forum for mobilising
these kinds of collective energies. Part of the purpose of this article is to
suggest that we adopt a "class composition" theme for next year's
Conference, in 1996. If I had to find a title for next year's Conference, I
would propose:
Class composition: Studies of changing relations
between capital and labour. Global restructuring and the rebuilding of class
power.
I am not suggesting that this should be the central
theme of every paper. Merely to say that we might all, each in our own way,
undertake to make small contributions of insights, towards building a pool of
knowledge in these areas.
For the past months I've been reading physics books.
Atoms, particles, astronomy, cosmology, that sort of thing. A new wave of
popularisation in science. Exhilarating to ride this wave. Huge and wonderful
discoveries. Old ways of thought turned on their heads. A lot of nonsense
thrown out of the window. The whole essence of "being human" is being
challenged, redefined.
I watch these scientists working. They have teams of
researchers. Networks of international contact and cooperation. Extraordinary
machines for observation and analysis. Confidence and enthusiasm. Reaching out
to audiences that are not familiar with their language. Creating new public
languages. And in the process you find them celebrating and documenting the
development of the intellectual history of their discipline.
I am deeply envious.
Once there used to be a "science of class
struggle". After all, class struggle is as available to scientific
analysis as any area of the physical world. But the science of class struggle
got itself a very bad name when it transmuted into "scientific socialism"
and Stalinism.
The science of class struggle never recovered from
that. It had a brief and glorious resurgence in the Italian revolutionary Left,
as scienza operaia ("working-class science"), but the
prevailing anti-scientism of the post-1968 Left sank any notion that the class
struggle could be approached scientifically.
I hold to that idea of a scientific approach.
The miserable debacle of state socialism in the
"communist" world has deprived us of great chunks of our language.
Who are we? What are we? How do we describe ourselves? What is our politics?
To answer the question, I have to start with myself.
At rock bottom I would describe my politics as a committed, militant project
designed to redress inequalities of wealth, resources and power. Trying to do a
little bit every day, in among all the other things that have to be done.
A useful, albeit minimal, definition.
I have a choice of words with which to name this
project. Communism? Socialism? Revolution? Redistribution of wealth? Social
reform? Working-class autonomy? Class war? There is a problem here. These names
are all variously tainted by previous associations.
So at this time I give the project no name.
Except that I believe that we must see it in terms of
war.
War is being waged on us. Class war. (Sometimes
literally, by military means.) We would do well to respond in the language of
war.
The notion of war is less than fashionable nowadays.
Previous generations had less problem with it. The language of communist and
anarchist movements has always had a strong military flavour – not
surprisingly, given that these previous generations had spent some part of
their lives in the trenches.
When I say "respond in the language of
war", I don't mean rushing round killing people. I mean that we begin to
speak (once again) the language of tactics, strategy, fields of battle,
mobilising of forces, application of technologies, and a theory of war.
I find that these elements provide me with the bones
of an operating system. On the one hand, a notion of a "science" of
the class struggle. And on the other, a notion of the class struggle as a
"war" within which we have a part to play. Plus, as a basic
foundation, the conviction that if you're not part of the solution then you're
part of the problem.
You might object to the notion of a somehow
"objective" science.
You might object to the notion of "war" and
its associations of militarism.
You might object to the notion of disembodied
intervention in the body politic.
I agree. All these notions are deeply problematic.
In answer to the objections, I say let us take these
notions and problematise them. Frankly. Enthusiastically. Without fear. Then
see where we go from there.
The purpose of this article is to set before the
reader a proposal for AN INQUIRY. I hope that it might generate small amounts
of discussion, and that practical activity might arise from it.
To this end, we might look briefly at earlier
instances of the Inquiry, to see whether they offer insights regarding method,
content, ways of approaching knowledge etc.
We are not starting from a basis of nothing at all.
Even a minimal glance at the literature makes it clear that the Inquiry has a
strong and substantive intellectual pedigree.
For example: Marx... Lenin... Luxemburg... Mao... Not
to mention the US National Commission on Civil Disorders (1968).
Over the years I have done amounts of work on class
composition analysis. Some of this work has appeared in Common Sense
(translations of Sergio Bologna on "The Historiography of the Mass
Worker" in CS 11 and 12, and his work on "Nazism and the Working
Class", CS 16). During this period books and pamphlets have accumulated on
my shelves.
During the years of defeat my view of my books and
pamphlets has oscillated (daily) between seeing them as a precious historical
resource for the furtherance struggle, and a useless mound of paper taking up
space.
Anyway, in the preparations for this article I went
fishing in my library. I pulled down volumes fat and thin. Dusted them off. To
see what they had to offer, as regards class composition analysis and the
possibilities of a new communist project.
What I found was that, at each major point of crisis
and dislocation in the development of capitalist society, various kinds of
people have instituted mass social inquiries. Their intention has been to
document and research the attitudes and conditions of life of the oppressed
masses.
Studies that ranged from Chinese peasants labouring
under feudal despotism to the Black proletariat of the racist ghettoes of
Newark and Detroit. Studies that took in London housewives and FIAT car
workers. The shifting masses of migrant labour toiling across whole continents
and the collective flux of intellectual labour energies concentrated on the
Internet.
In short, at certain points in history people feel
the urge to ask: Who are we? What is happening? How have things changed? The
need arises for an Inquiry.
It is generally at points of fracture, crisis,
restructuring, dislocation of capitalist development etc that these Inquiries
come about. And the Inquiries are seen as a prelude, a precursor and a precondition
of politics.
We are living such a period right now. And the need
for an Inquiry is urgent. It is not an optional extra. It is fundamental. In
short: No Politics Without Inquiry.
I offer below a small list of some of the material I
found on my shelves. The list does not pretend to be comprehensive. It is
indicative. It indicates the kinds of treasures that are in store when one
begins researching previous exemplars of the Inquiry. Source materials for a
science of class struggle. Method. Content. Theoretical framework.
Epistemological basis.
The class struggle Inquiry is a scientific discipline
unto itself. Related to other disciplines, but with a peculiar fire all its
own. It is extraordinarily exciting to read even a single one of these books.
Ill-considered trifles, a marginal field of human knowledge, lost and buried
chapters from forgotten books, but at the same time the very basis of a
political project. An incitement to action.
It would be good to produce an annotated bibliography
of the Inquiry, together with a commentary on its intellectual history. The
antecedents, the past practices, reflecting on future possibilities. This might
be a project for the coming year. For the moment I shall contain the excitement
sparked by these texts. I offer a few bits and pieces from examples of the
Inquiry as conducted in the past 150 years. Very brief.
The Inquiry has its own typology. It has varieties of
genres, varieties of intention. Some are produced by the state. Others are
produced by political organisations, by way of external intervention. Others
are produced from within the ranks of organised labour. Yet others are the
product of people's observation of their own condition.
Earlier examples include:
In the later years of his life, Marx prepared a
comprehensive questionnaire designed to elicit the conditions of life and work
of the labouring classes. It was republished in Detroit in the early 1970s,
with a view to promoting this kind of militant research in the auto industry.
Here Marx outlines the project:
"Not a single government... has yet ventured to
undertake a serious inquiry into the position of the French working class. But
what a number of investigations have been undertaken into crises –
agricultural, financial, industrial, commercial, political!
"We (shall organise) a far-reaching
investigation into facts and crimes of capitalist exploitation; we shall attempt
to initiate an inquiry of this kind with those poor resources which are now at
our disposal.
"We hope to meet in this work with the support
of all workers in town and country who understand that they alone can describe
with full knowledge the misfortunes from which they suffer, and that only they,
and not saviours sent by Providence, can energetically apply the healing
remedies from the social ills to which they are a prey.
"We also rely upon socialists of all schools
who, being wishful for social reform, must wish for an exact and positive
knowledge of the conditions in which the working class – the class to whom the
future belongs – works and moves." (Marx 1973, p.4)
Inevitably this brings to mind the fifteen pages at
the start of The Communist Manifesto that provide the classic account of
the class composition analysis ("Bourgeois and Proletarians") which
led into the organising project of communism:
"The essential condition for the existence and
for the sway of the bourgeois class is the formation and augmentation of
capital; the condition for capital is wage labour. Wage labour rests
exclusively on competition between the labourers. The advance of industry,
whose involuntary promoter is the bourgeoisie, replaces the isolation of the
labourers, due to competition, by their revolutionary combination, due to
association. The development of modern industry, therefore, cuts from under its
feet the very foundation on which the bourgeoisie produces and appropriates
products. What the bourgeoisie therefore produces, above all, are its own
grave-diggers. Its fall and the victory of the proletariat are equally
inevitable."
And, in among all this, we also have to consider
Engels' The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844, the
precursor of Charles Booth's Life and Labour of the People of London
(1902) and Henry Mayhew's London Labour and the London Poor (1861). Not
to mention, in our own time, Gareth Stedman Jones' Outcast London: A Study
in the Relationship Between Classes in Victorian Society (1971).
Lenin. The Development of Capitalism in Russia
(1898). A huge work – the bibliography alone runs to some 500 titles, begged,
borrowed and perused both in prison and on the road into exile. Three years of
work to provide the analytical grounding of the Bolshevik project. Detailed
work on the composition of the labouring classes in Russia. And the potential
for politics: "The increase in the number of peasants thrown into the
ranks of the industrial and rural proletariat... The population of this
'corner' – ie the proletariat, is, in the literal sense of the word, the
vanguard of the whole mass of toilers and exploited."
Rosa Luxemburg. The Mass Strike, the Party and the
Trade Unions. Rosa, released from prison and recuperating in Finland. Extending
the analysis of the proletariat and its real movements and interests. "We
have attempted... to sketch the history of the mass strike in Russia in a few
strokes. Even a fleeting glance at this history shows us a picture... Instead
of the rigid and hollow scheme of an arid political action carried out by the
decision of the highest committees and furnished with a plan and panorama, we
see a bit of pulsating life of flesh and blood, which cannot be cut out of the
large frame of the revolution but is connected with all parts of the revolution
by a thousand veins." (Luxemburg 1970, p. 43)
An example of a state-sponsored class composition
analysis. In 1967, in the wake of the riots in Newark, Detroit and other
cities, President Johnson instituted a commission of social inquiry, whose
report was published under the title "What Happened? Why Did It Happen?
What Can Be Done?" This documented in large detail the experience of the
Black proletariat living in the urban ghettoes. A comprehensive analysis of the
newly-formed class composition that had rioted in the streets. A state
initiative. Framed in a rhetoric of social reform and repressive control. Over
600 pages, in the popular edition.
Its Introduction reads: "...An extraordinary
document. We are not likely to get a better view of socially directed violence
– what underlies it, what sets it off, how it runs its course, what follows.
There are novels here, hidden in the Commission's understated prose; there are
a thousand doctoral theses germinating in its statistics, its interviews, its
anecdotes and 'profiles'." The report represents a beginning "on a
task that beggars any other planned social evolution known to human
history". (National Advisory Commission 1978, p. ix)
[From our side, the Report had its counterpart in the
seminal Regulating the Poor: The Functions of Public Welfare by Fox
Piven and Cloward, which uses a similar class composition approach to document
the imposition of social control in both the New Deal (1930s) and the Great
Society Programme (1960s). The state project unmasked.]
"No Investigation, No Right to Speak.
Unless you have investigated a problem, you will be deprived of the right to
speak on it. Isn't that too harsh? Not in the least. When you have not probed
into a problem, into the present facts and its past history, and know nothing
of its essentials, whatever you say about it will undoubtedly be nonsense.
Talking nonsense solves no problems, as everyone knows, so why is it unjust to
deprive you of the right to speak? Quite a few comrades always keep their eyes
shut and talk nonsense, and for a Communist that is disgraceful. How can a
Communist keep his eyes shut and talk nonsense?
It won't do!
It won't do!
You must investigate!
You must not talk nonsense!"
To all this we have to add the mass of documentation
produced by the Italian revolutionary Left movement throughout the period of
the 1960s-80s. Detailed, committed, militant research and analysis of the
everyday conditions of living labour. And here was a departure. This is not the
"denunciatory" style of Marx's "far-reaching investigation into
facts and crimes of capitalist exploitation". Rather, the analysis is part
and parcel of an everyday, capillary process of militant intervention and
organisation. Leafletting, meeting, discussion, reworking of analysis,
consolidation at new levels. Here we have the work of Quaderni Rossi, Potere
Operaio, Autonomia , Lotta Continua etc. Buried, for the most
part, in Italian-language texts that are too rarely translated.
And while we're at it, why stop at the printed word?
We could include song. Woody Guthrie, singing the lives and times of the
migrant workers of Dust Bowl USA. Alan Lomax, collecting blues and prison work
songs. Pete Seeger and Bob Reiser with their Carry It On: A History in Song
and Picture of the Working Men and Women of America: "Beware! This is
a book of history. With songs and pictures, we try to tell how the working
people of this country – women and men; old and young; people of various skin
shades, various religions, languages, and national backgrounds – have tried to
better their own lives and work towards a world of peace, freedom, jobs, and
justice for all."
And photography. For example, Sebastiao Salgado's
incredible Workers: An Archaeology of the Industrial Age, which he
defines as a work of "militant photography".
And Jo Spence, in Putting Myself in the Picture,
where, among other things, she charts the process (a labour process, in the
arena of reproduction) of her own death from cancer. Bringing the Inquiry right
home into the front room, into the family:
"Photography can only attempt certain things
compared with other media, but its radicality lies in the fact that we can
produce, possess and circulate snapshots by ourselves, for ourselves and among
ourselves. It is there... that the future of photography lies for me. If we
truly want to democratise how meanings are produced in images... we could start
by telling our stories in different ways..."
A note on the problematic stance of the observer.
See, for example "Feminist Critiques of Science" in Women, the
Environment and Sustainable Development, ed. Braidotti et al., Zed Books,
London 1994, pp. 29-58.
A note on the role of "gaze" in the history
of colonialism – and the dangers of its assumptions. Telling article by Raymond
Corbey on Ethnographic Showcases in the age of colonialism (in The
Decolonization of Imagination, ed. Pieterse, Zed Books, London 1994).
A note to the effect that, of course, despite the
title of this paper, we are not talking about a "Workers' Inquiry".
The definition of "work" and "work" is precisely what is
problematised in our project. Furthermore, class compositions are created by a
vast multiplicity of factors of which "work", however defined, is
only one. Finding a suitably comprehensive name for this "inquiry
project" is not easy.
A note to the effect that The Inquiry is under way in
various locations in Europe today. The importance of being part of this
project. The importance of knowing languages, the importance of translation...!
As follows:
Paris comrades' account of the events of March 1994
in France (my paper for CSE '94)
The German comrades' attempt to organise a
conference, around the journals Wildcat/Zirkular, and the various
conferences they have organised in recent years.
The Conricerca conference in Turin, November 1994. (Inchiesta,
conricerca, comunicazione diretta ieri e oggi. Per una coscienza sociale e un
intervento politico di base)
A final note to the effect that we might, all of us,
make a personal habit of documenting the small details of changing class
composition in our own areas (and their political implications). From those
small seeds larger trees may grow.
Alquati, Romano, Fiat: Punto medio nel ciclo
internazionale ("FIAT: Mid-Point in the International Cycle"), in
Sulla FIAT e Altri Scritti , Feltrinelli, Milan 1975.
Balestrini, Nanni, Nous Voulons Tout, trans.
P. Budillon, Editions du Seuil, Paris 1971. Translation of the novel Vogliamo
Tutto.
Behrens, Elizabeth, "Workers' Struggles under
National Socialism", trans. Peter Martin, in Common Sense 10, May
1991, pp. 49-57.
Berlin-Brandenburg Building Workers' Newsletter, No. 1, Berlin August 1994.
Big Flame, Italy 1969-70: New Tactics and
Organisation, London, 1971.
Bologna, Sergio, "The Chemical Plan",
unpublished translation, Red Notes, from "Il Piano Chimico", Quaderni
Piacentini no. 48-9, 1973, pp. 40-56.
Bologna, Sergio, The Theory and History of the
Mass Worker in Italy, trans. Peter Martin, Common Sense 11, October
1991, pp. 16-30.
Braidotti, R., Charkiewicz, E., Hausler, S.,
Wieringa, S., "Feminist Critiques of Science" in Women, the
Environment and Sustainable Development, Zed Books, London 1994.
Cliff, Tony, The Employers' Offensive:
Productivity Deals and How to Fight Them, Pluto Press, London 1972.
Collective Action Notes, No. 3-4, Fall/Winter 1994, Balto,
Maryland.
Durham Miners' Gala Programme, Eighty-Third Annual
Gala, 16 July 1966, Durham Miners' Association, Durham, 1966.
Ford Workers' Group ("The Combine"), The
Ford Workers' Bulletin, Issues 1-4, 1983-8.
Fox Piven, F. and Cloward, R.A., Regulating the
Poor: The Functions of Public Welfare, Tavistock, London 1972.
Gasparazzo, ill. R. Zamarin, Samona & Savelli, Rome 1972.
Informations Correspondance Ouvriere, The Mass
Strike in France, May-June 1968 in Root and Branch: The Rise of the
Workers' Movement, Fawcett Crest, Greenwich Conn., 1975.
Jaschok, Maria, Concubines and Bondservants,
Zed Books, London 1988.
La Cause du Peuple, Turin '69: La Greve du
Guerrilla, Paris 1969.
Lenin, Vladimir Ilych, The Development of
Capitalism in Russia, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1967, pp. 587-615.
Luxemburg, Rosa, The Mass Strike, Young
Socialist Press, Ceylon, 1970.
Mao Tsetung, "Oppose Book Worship", in Selected
Readings, Foreign Languages Press, Peking, 1971, pp. 40-50.
Marx, Karl, A Workers' Inquiry, Freedom
Information Service, Detroit 1973.
Marx, Karl and Engels, Frederick, Manifesto of the
Communist Party, Foreign Language Press, Peking, 1970. Section 1:
"Bourgeois and Proletarians", pp. 30-46.
Marx, Karl, "Germany: Revolution and
Counter-Revolution", in Karl Marx: Selected Works, Co-operative
Publishing Society, Moscow, 1935, pp. 39-80.
Mason, Tim, Social Policy in the Third Reich: The
Working Class and the 'National Community', Berg, Providence and Oxford,
1991.
Matsui, Yayori, Women's Asia, Zed Books,
London 1989.
Mies, Maria, "Feminist Research: Science,
Violence and Responsibility", in M. Mies and V. Shiva, Ecofeminism,
Zed Books, London 1993, pp. 36-54.
National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, Report:
What Happened? Why Did it Happen? What Can Be Done? Bantam Books, New York
1968.
Potere Operaio di Porto Marghera, Portomarghera/Montedison,
Estate '68 , Centro G. Francovich, Firenze, 1968.
Red Notes: A Dossier of Class Struggle in Britain
and Abroad: 1974, Red Notes, London 1974.
Report of a Court of Inquiry into the Causes and
Circumstances of a Dispute Between the Ford Motor Company... and Members of the
Trade Unions... ("Jack Report"), HMSO Cmnd 1999, London 1963.
Salgado, Sebastiao, Workers: An Archaeology of the
Industrial Age, Phaedon, London 1993.
Spence, Jo, Putting Myself in the Picture: A
Political and Personal and Photographic Autobiography, Real Comet Press,
Seattle, 1988.
Stedman Jones, Gareth, Outcast London,
Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1971.
Talbot, J.-Ph. (ed.) La Grève à Flins,
Maspero, Paris 1968.
Terkel, Studs, Hard Times: An Oral History of the
Great Depression, Allen Lane, London 1970.
Tronti, Mario, "Poscritto di Problemi" in Operai
e Capitale , Einaudi, Torino 1971. Translated as "Workers and
Capital" in CSE Pamphlets No. 1: The Labour Process and Class
Strategies, Stage 1, London 1976.
"Stadtbericht Berlin", in Zirkular
no. 13, Hamburg, March 1995.
Various authors, Lotte di Classe in Francia,
in Il Tallone del Cavaliere, No. Unico, Milano/Padova 1994.
Watson, Bill, Counter-Planning on the Shop Floor,
Little A Press, London n.d. Reprinted from Radical America Vol. 5, no.
3.
[This paper began life as an article for Common
Sense. Rather freehand, not hugely rigorous. Part of its purpose was to
propose a "class composition" theme for future research work.]
London
1 May 1995