5.The working class - Uraz

The working class:

Class and the working class according to Marx and marxists

The first part of this presentation will focus on Marx's concept of class. Is class a sociological or political category? Are the contours of the working class defined or in a perpetual state of formation? We will develop concepts such as labor power, exploitation, alienation, productive and unproductive labor, and class antagonisms. In this sequence, we will also address the main debates within marxism concerning class analysis.

The proletariat in revolutionary strategy

The second part will give an overview of the revolutionary role attributed to the proletariat in marxism, starting with the conception of revolution as the self-emancipation of the working class, which signifies a break with previous socialist thought and practice. The formation of class consciousness, the concept of "revolutionary praxis", the general strike, the vanguard party, workers' control and the duality of power will be among the notions addressed in this sequence.

The working class today

The third part looks at the composition of the class today. We'll start with the proletarianization of intellectual labor in late capitalism, and discuss the concepts of precarity, domestic labor and social reproduction. We will also discuss the experiences and possibilities of organization, and the obstacles to it.

Readings:

Extract from: E.P. Thompson. Preface to 'The making of the English working class' :

E.P. Thompson. Preface to the making of the English working class

By class I understand an historical phenomenon unifying a number of disparate and seemingly unconnected events, both in the raw material of experience and in consciousness. I emphasize that it is an historical phenomenon. I do not see class as a "structure", nor even as a "category", but as something which in fact happens (and can be shown to have happened) in human relationships.

The finest meshed sociological net cannot give us a pure specimen of class, any more than it can give us one of deference or of love. The relationship must always be embodied in real people and in a real context. Moreover, we cannot have two distinct classes, each with an independent being, and then bring them into relationship with each other. We cannot have love without lovers, nor deference without squires and labourers. And class happens when some men, as a result of common experiences (inherited or shared), feel and articulate the identity of their interests as between themselves, and as against other men whose interests are different from (and usually opposed to) theirs.

Class-consciousness is the way in which these experiences are handled in cultural terms: embodied in traditions, value systems, ideas, and institutional forms. If the experience appears as determined, class-consciousness does not. We can see a logic in the responses of similar occupational groups undergoing similar experiences, but we cannot predicate any law. Consciousness of class arises in the same way in different times and places, but never in just the same way.

-Ernest Mandel, Historical pedagogy and communication of class consciousness