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
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
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
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
"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
Lenin. The Development of Capitalism in
Rosa Luxemburg. The Mass Strike, the Party and the
Trade Unions.
An example of a state-sponsored class
composition analysis. In 1967, in the wake of the riots
in
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
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,
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,
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
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
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,
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.
Big
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,
Cliff, Tony, The Employers' Offensive: Productivity Deals and How to
Fight Them, Pluto Press,
Collective Action Notes,
No. 3-4, Fall/Winter 1994,
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,
Gasparazzo,
ill. R. Zamarin, Samona & Savelli,
Informations Correspondance Ouvriere, The
Mass Strike in
Jaschok, Maria, Concubines and Bondservants, Zed Books,
La Cause du Peuple,
Lenin, Vladimir Ilych, The
Development of Capitalism in
Luxemburg,
Mao Tsetung, "Oppose Book Worship", in Selected
Marx, Karl, A Workers' Inquiry,
Freedom Information Service,
Marx, Karl and Engels,
Marx, Karl, "
Mason, Tim, Social Policy in the Third Reich: The Working Class and
the 'National Community', Berg,
Matsui, Yayori, Women's
Mies, Maria, "Feminist Research: Science, Violence and
Responsibility", in M. Mies and V. Shiva, Ecofeminism, Zed Books,
National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, Report: What
Happened? Why Did it Happen? What Can Be Done? Bantam Books,
Potere Operaio di Porto Marghera, Portomarghera/Montedison, Estate '68 , Centro G.
Francovich,
Red Notes: A Dossier of Class Struggle in
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,
Salgado, Sebastiao, Workers: An Archaeology
of the Industrial Age, Phaedon,
Spence, Jo, Putting Myself in the Picture: A Political and Personal
and Photographic Autobiography, Real Comet Press,
Stedman Jones, Gareth, Outcast
Talbot, J.-Ph. (ed.) La Grève à Flins,
Maspero,
Terkel, Studs, Hard Times: An Oral History of the Great Depression,
Tronti, Mario, "Poscritto di Problemi" in Operai e Capitale ,
Einaudi,
"Stadtbericht
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,
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.