3. The working class today - Maral Jefroudi

Outline of the introduction

The working class today - Maral Jefroudi

What is the working class? The notion of class in Marx and Marxism

Sociological or a political category? “free worker” / wage-labour / explotation/ class antagonism/ class relations class in production/ class in circulation/ class in reproduction/ the middle class?

The changes in the class composition of the working class during the late 20th Century


The putting-out system/ industrial revolution/ taylorism- Fordism/ “the precariat?”

The problem of class consciousness and intersecting identities

Class in itself/ class for itself/ praxis/ class struggle/ organization/ hegemony/

Reading Materials

• Readings: Excerpts from capital Volume 1&2
• Hobsbawm the Age of Revolution
• 1991 world congress part Crisis in the workers' movement and new struggles Europe 1992
• Bourgeois plans and workers’ perspectives, Charlie Post interview
• Excerpts from The Leninist Theory of Organisation (1970) by Ernest Mandel
• Bourgeois ideology and proletarian class consciousness & Proletarian class struggle and proletarian class consciousness