Proletariat, Labor Aristocracy, & 'First World' Workers

[9]

I’ve heard some wildly different conceptions of who is and isn’t part of the proletariat from various leftists I personally know, but it’s a topic which I very rarely see raised on revleft. So, in spite of the insanely low level of the discussions here lately, I thought I’d raise the issue and see if I can't get some decent responses.

Most leftists I know maintain, more or less, that anyone who has to sell their labor-power on the market to survive is part of the working class.
On the other hand, I’ve met a couple people (generally people who maintain some sort of theory of ‘labor aristocracy’, which I don’t necessarily discount, depending on the version/extent of it) who believe some or all of the workers in imperialist countries who are forced to sell their labor-power on the market are not actually part of the proletariat, but rather, comprise some sort of a middle class between the proletariat and petit-bourgeoisie. The general concept being that the imperialist bourgeoisie buys off much or all of “its” workers with higher wages, benefits, etc. and as a result, some or all of the working class in imperialist countries develops an interest in maintaining imperialism and ceases to be revolutionary. I don’t personally buy this as a general rule, although I think probably it is true about certain professionals, and more generally in the case of active settler states, but with additional factors at play.
Complicating things further, I’ve also met people who believe some workers in the “first world” are proletarian and some aren’t depending on whether they work in industry or in services. I don’t agree with this at all, but I’m curious about the implications of it, particularly as most “first-world” workers are employed in services rather than industry.

So this is what I’m interested in hearing from people – particularly those who subscribe to some version of the ‘labor aristocracy’ theory:
According to you/your organization/your tendency, who comprises the proletariat and on what basis do you determine this?

[Die Neue Zeit]

The real divide, actually, is between productive and unproductive work. On the one side is the modern proletariat. On the other, a myriad of classes and social strata.

[bajo.el.arco.del.sol]

i don't have an organisation or tendency, but my personal take on it is that to ask the question "who is working class?" makes perfect sense in the everyday-language sense of the term class, but not the marxist sense. in everyday language, class is an attribute of individuals. i'm middle class because my mum is a nurse, i'm working class because my dad is a miner, etc. but my understanding of the marxist notion of class is that rather than describing an attribute of individuals, it describes a relation to the means of production. so working class is producing without owning the means of production, the bourgeoisie is owning the means of production without producing, etc. it is a useful abstraction for understanding how production is organised in capitalism, but it will do your head in if you try to use it to assign people to groups.

given that it is an abstraction, you will rarely if ever find individuals fitting these descriptions, particularly in the developed countries. nearly all of us work for a wage, from factory workers, to people with crap retail or office jobs, to senior managers and obscenely paid bankers. most of us work in services; a few actually produce something. are all of these people divorced from the means of production? certainly. do they all have an interest in proletarian revolution, not to mention anti-imperialist revolution? not so much.

and then of course it gets more complicated when we introduce ownership of the means of production into the picture, and start thinking about the developing countries. it's no longer about the bearded guy with the top hat and fat cigar who owns the factory. who owns the means of production under modern capitalism? given that most of it is publicly traded companies, there's an argument to be made that it's the shareholders. most of us would be clear on the question of which side the banker who owns lots of stock is on. but what about the factory worker with a pension? or a savings account? where do you think that interest comes from? institutional investors like banks and pension funds are the main shareholders - so if we, as first world workers, have a bank account that pays interest, that's our little share of ownership of the means of production. don't have a bank account? your government owns means of production on your behalf, and you benefit from that revenue in the form of roads, schools, health care (unless you're american) and all of the other services that first world governments can afford to provide their citizens.

the vast majority of people in developed countries have this combination of working for a wage with all of the alienation and separation from the means of production that implies, while partially owning the means of production that other people in our own country and others use to produce. so am i a capitalist? are you a worker? we could waste hours if not days or weeks devising formulas to calculate how much interest i earn on my savings account and if that's compensated for by my low wages. this is why it makes much more sense as marxists to look at class as a relation rather than an attribute of individuals. so what does this tell us?

in modern capitalism, production is almost universally carried out by people who do not own the means of production they use to work. most people in developed countries are not engaged in production but in services - and do not own the resources necessary for their work or control their own labour. an increasing amount of production is carried out in developing countries, while ownership of the means of production remain largely in developed countries. most people in developed countries, while working for a wage, benefit from their partial ownership of means of production that they do not themselves use. most people in developing countries are engaged in precarious wage labour, informal economic activities such as petty trade, or smallholder agriculture. people in the last two groups are involved in capitalism through their market links (relations of exchange), but not through their relations of production, while people in the first group are arguably in the worst position of wage labourers globally. their existence allows capitalism to defer crises of realisation in developed countries by creating a separate group of workers who are not needed as consumers, and whose wages can therefore be pushed down without limit. indeed, the demand for cheap consumer goods to supply first world workers requires that wages of the third world workers producing those goods be driven down - hence sweatshops.

that's probably enough of a rant for now! what are you asking when you ask who is and isn't the proletariat? are you trying to understand the organisation of production under modern global capitalism? or are you trying to decide if there is a working class with revolutionary potential in developed countries? or both?

oh, and a few quick points to your questions. 1) all workers in developed countries benefit from both higher wages and cheaper consumer goods than they would be able to enjoy without the exploitation of workers in developing countries. how this affects their revolutionary potential is wide open to debate. 2) your friend who draws a distinction between industrial and service workers is probably sticking to a strict marxist focus on production, and limiting their idea the working class to those who actually produce - which excludes services, and, as you note, most of us in developed countries.

[syndicat]

The labor aristocracy is a myth. Read Charlie Post's critique of that theory here:

http://www.solidarity-us.org/node/128

The difference in standard of living of the working classes of the developed countrries to the third world has to do with (1) historical levels of productivity due to capital accumulation and development of education in these countries over time, and (2) the struggles and organizations of the working classes that have fought to gain some of this increased productivity.

as Post points out only a tiny proportion of total investment by capitalists in the developed countries is in the 3rd world. hence only a tiny segment of their profits come from that source, even if it is true that they gain a higher rate of profit there due to super exploitation.

class is a social power relation between groups of people in social production. It's not just about the "relation to the means of production." Capitalists own the means of production, mostly collectively nowadays thru corporations which pool capital, but this gives them the power to hire the managers and give them their marching orders. The bureaucratic class -- managers, lawyers, judges, top accountants, industrial engineers etc -- are a class intermediate in power between the owners who employ them and the workers who are their subordinates.

the working class consists of those who must sell their time to the employers (if they can) to survive but who do not control other workers, but are highly controlled, subordinate in social production. Marx's distinction between "productive" and "unproductive" labor is completely irrelevant. Workers at a hospital or on the transit system may generate no immediate profit for owners but they are no less part of the working class.

The capitalists are divided into the small employers and the big companies. The small employers are the "old middle class" whereas the bureaucratic class is the "new middle class" (because its existence as a mass group dates from the emergence of the big corporations and growth of the state in the 20th century).

[Die Neue Zeit]

Marx's distinction between "productive" and "unproductive" labor is completely irrelevant. Workers at a hospital or on the transit system may generate no immediate profit for owners but they are no less part of the working class.

It depends how you interpret Marx's take on "productive" and "unproductive" labour. Your examples were considered by him in his draft notes for Volume III, actually.

With that consideration, the distinction is relevant, because it helps define who is the modern proletariat, and who isn't. Self-employed jockeys, cops, lawyers, judges, private security guards, and wholesale retailers aren't proletarians. Unfortunately, housemaids (working directly for homeowners) and factory workers producing exclusively luxury cars and other luxury items aren't proletarians, either.

http://www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/~wpc/reports/unprod3b.pdf

[The latter group still belongs to something which I call "the dispossessed classes," though. It just happens to include proper lumpenproletarians (rank-and-file gangsters and not crime bosses, other illegal workers depending on occupation) and, yes, the very same coordinator class which IMO includes less occupations (mid-level corporate managers, doctors without businesses but with underlings, academics with research staff, etc. but not including lawyers and other unproductives) than the Albert-Hahnel definition you cited (http://www.revleft.com/vb/reinventing-education-replace-t125147/index.html?p=1643913).]

[bajo.el.arco.del.sol]

syndicat,

i'm not sure i follow your argument. are you saying that workers in developed countries do not benefit from the exploitation of workers in poor countries?

i found this bit of the article (below) quite sensible, but his assertion that these benefits were erased by globalisation could have used a bit of explanation of what he means by that.


Put simply, this means that imperialist investment in the global South benefits all workers in the global North - both highly paid and poorly paid workers. Higher profits and increased investment mean not only more employment and rising wages for "aristocratic" steel, automobile, machine-making, trucking and construction workers, but also for lowly paid clerical, janitorial, garment and food processing workers. As Ernest Mandel put it, "the real 'labor aristocracy' is no longer constituted inside the proletariat of an imperialist country but rather by the proletariat of the imperialist countries as a whole."

And I'm not sure that what seemed to be the article's conclusion - that different wage rates are due to different rates of profit between industries - necessarily contradicts the idea that workers in the first world benefit from imperialist exploitation of workers in developing countries. assuming for the moment that this is strictly true, these higher paid industries tend to be located in rich countries, employing first world workers, while poor countries typically get low-paid, labour intensive industries. And even an equivalent job (say, bus driver) would have vastly different rates of pay between countries, but pretty similar rates of pay within a country but between industries.

I'm also not sure that it's entirely necessary for first world companies to invest directly to make high profits from the exploitation of workers in poor countries. If, say, Gap, hires an Indonesian company to make their clothes in a sweatshop, the cost of labour and therefore production is lower than if they had to pay first world workers (unionised or not) to do it. They can then sell these clothes at a lower price, enabling them to improve the standard of living of first world workers by lowering the ratio of the cost of living to wages rather than raising wages.

p.s. you might want to tell your webmaster that the css doesn't work in chrome - the article appears below the navigation pane instead of next to it.

[therockman]

This is a good thread with some fantastic ideas. The only question I have is about the average worker with a 401k plan that owns stock in his company. Where does that fall into the whole scheme of proletariat and labor?

[syndicat]

With that consideration, the distinction is relevant, because it helps define who is the modern proletariat, and who isn't. Self-employed jockeys, cops, lawyers, judges, private security guards, and wholesale retailers aren't proletarians. Unfortunately, housemaids (working directly for homeowners) and factory workers producing exclusively luxury cars and other luxury items aren't proletarians, either.


Nope. It's completely irrelevant. That's because class is about power over others in social production. Ownership of productive property is one basis of such power, and that is the basis of the capitalist class. But there is another class who have a relative monopoly over decision-making authority and expertise critical to management labor processes and ventures. We can all this the bureaucratic class. This includes middle-managers, lawyers, industrial engineers, doctors, top accountants, etc. Anyone whose work involves defining or controlling the jobs of other workers, and who isn't a capitalist, is in this class. Hence cops, lawyers, judges are in this class.

People who own their own tools and are self-employed but have no employees -- such as a self-employed plumber -- are in a boundary line situation...neither capitalist nor proletarian nor bureaucratic.

People working in industries that produce luxury items for the rich are certainly workers...or part of the bureacuratic class if they're supervisors, etc.

[syndicat]

And I'm not sure that what seemed to be the article's conclusion - that different wage rates are due to different rates of profit between industries - necessarily contradicts the idea that workers in the first world benefit from imperialist exploitation of workers in developing countries.
assuming for the moment that this is strictly true, these higher paid industries tend to be located in rich countries, employing first world workers, while poor countries typically get low-paid, labour intensive industries. And even an equivalent job (say, bus driver) would have vastly different rates of pay between countries, but pretty similar rates of pay within a country but between industries.

Wages and profits are in contradiction. The more workers raise wages, the more profits are lowered. The ability of a firm to pay higher wages is more related to its productivity....amount of revenue generated per worker hour.

Many industries in first world countries are low productivity, low wage (relative to the average in that country) industries. This is a reason there has been such a huge fall in the real wage rate in the USA. For people with only a high school or less education, average real pay rate has fallen 25% since early '70s. Globalization does have something to do with this because higher productivity manufacturing has fled increasingly to some (actually only a handful) third world countries. But the "landlocked" industries that cannot flee, tend often to be low productivity, low wage industries such as restaurants and retail. If globalization thus contributes to lowering wages in first world countries, by forcing workers into competition with low wage countries, how do workers in first world countries benefit from this?



I'm also not sure that it's entirely necessary for first world companies to invest directly to make high profits from the exploitation of workers in poor countries. If, say, Gap, hires an Indonesian company to make their clothes in a sweatshop, the cost of labour and therefore production is lower than if they had to pay first world workers (unionised or not) to do it. They can then sell these clothes at a lower price, enabling them to improve the standard of living of first world workers by lowering the ratio of the cost of living to wages rather than raising wages.


When first world companies contract with third world capitalists, this is the source of a capital flow into the 3rd world countries because these firms can grow...accumulate capital...based on this relationship.

The low prices from exploitation of low wage regions benefits workers only if there is not a compensating fall in their employment prospects and wage rates. Wal-mart is popular among the working class because of its low prices, but the working class in USA needs low prices because their wages have been reduced.

The main thrust of the article was to point out that historically wages have risen in first world countries due to increases in productivity. These increases were due to reinvestment of profits within first world countries. Very little of this profit that increased productivity in first world countries came from expoitation of third world countries. Hence the explanation for the higher standard of living is not in the exploitation of the third world.

[bajo.el.arco.del.sol]

Hence the explanation for the higher standard of living is not in the exploitation of the third world.

Since the pillaging of the colonies didn't make the industrial revolution possible or anything...?

You're saying both that higher wages in the first world are due to higher productivity of workers in rich countries, and that the rich-country workers are stuck with the low productivity industries since a handful of poor countries have taken the high productivity ones. If the cause of higher wages is higher productivity, why do workers in the first world still make so much more than those in developing countries who have "stolen all the american jobs"?

Yes, "real" wages (i.e. wages accounting for inflation) in developed countries have fallen since the 1970s - but the relative cost of consumer goods has fallen due at least partially to increasing use of cheap labour in poor countries. So workers in the rich countries can, in many cases, buy more with those wages. At the very least, the falling (real) cost of living has softened the impact of falling real wages, if not cancelled it out entirely.

It seems that you have the idea that the poor countries are somehow sucking capital out of the rich countries - that they're benefiting from globalisation at the expense of the rich countries. Capital flows from poor countries to rich countries are actually huge, and it's no wonder they're having such a hard time developing. A few years ago for some research I was doing on the 1980s debt crisis, I calculated capital flows between Mexico and the first world during the period where they were receiving massive IMF bailout packages... and it turned out that between remittances from FDI, capital flight, and interest on previous loans, a lot more money was going out than going in. This would be even more pronounced during 'normal' periods when bailout packages aren't coming in.

None of this is to say that workers in the rich countries aren't exploited. But workers in poor countries are typically more exploited, and workers in rich countries do benefit from that.

[blake 3:17]

The labor aristocracy is a myth. Read Charlie Post's critique of that theory here:

I have a lot of respect for Charlie, but I don't buy it. His focus on the material origins of a conservative union structure I don't think pays close enough attention to ideological, political and cultural factors. In some of his other writing on problems of bureaucracy, he seems to just wish it away -- via democratic socialist revolution mind you, so not unsubstantively, but I'm not convinced. I think the pressures of stratification within the class create all sorts of new problems.

There are moments and periods where workers unity is very clearly manifest, and privileged workers in capital intensive industries have gone to bat both for themselves but also in much broader solidarity. I was involved in a private sector regional flying squad, most of whose members worked in heavy industry and were willing to take some risks. 9/11 hit and whole thing fell apart. I'm in Toronto which is one of the most culturally diverse cosmopolitan cities in the world, and they all worked in pretty White Ontario. Within workplaces, white workers had much better security and seniority, which allowed for them to take some risks, but...


There was a revival a few years ago of J Sakai's Settlers: Myth of the White Proletariat, which I think really over estimates the racist nature of North American workers. A refutation of it is here: http://www.newsocialist.org/newsite/index.php?id=101 I think the refutation makes the same mistakes that Post makes.

[syndicat]

me:

Hence the explanation for the higher standard of living is not in the exploitation of the third world.
You:


Since the pillaging of the colonies didn't make the industrial revolution possible or anything...?

You would have to show how that capital flowed into small industrial firms of that era. In fact most of the early industrial firms were small affairs and self-financed to a large extent. I'm sure that the general pool of available capital did help industrial expansion in the 19th century. But as Post shows, if we look at the flow of profits that first world capitalists take out of the third world, both as investors and creditors, it is only a small part of their profit. hence only a small part of the capital invested in industry in the first world countries.



You're saying both that higher wages in the first world are due to higher productivity of workers in rich countries,

You're not paying attention. I said that workers can gain from their increased productivity only to the degree that through struggle and organization they are able to force capitalists to increase what the workers get. The capitalists will not automatically hand over profits to workers. Workers have had to fight to gain an increased standard of living made *possible* by their higher productivity. The rising real wages in the USA in the '50s and '60s happened only because of the massive worker rebellion in the '30s and '40s which forced major concessions on the capitalists.



and that the rich-country workers are stuck with the low productivity industries since a handful of poor countries have taken the high productivity ones.

Not exactly. It also has to do with economic power from various pieces. Consider the IT industry. Design and often manufacture of microchips tends to remain in USA. Assembly moves overseas. Taiwan and Singapore -- two of the more developed third world countries -- now are also manufacturing microchips and overall assembly of entire computers. China gets only manufacture of simple components and elementary assembly. The higher profit operations are retained closer to home as you move up the food chain. The manufacturing industries that tend to remain in the USA are either very high end industries with intense technical content (aircraft, microchips) or sweatshops that pay minimum or subminimum wages.



If the cause of higher wages is higher productivity, why do workers in the first world still make so much more than those in developing countries who have "stolen all the american jobs"?

However, productivity in Mexico at present is about 80 percent of USA but wages are only 12 percent. Wages in Mexico have fallen since WTO due to competition with even lower wage countries like China. A major reason for the disparity at present is repressive labor law, unions that are just thugs for the employers, and the absence of much independent unionism. Current repression of the electrical workers union indicates the PAN government wants to keep things this way.

Because of the role of the American federal state in supporting anti-labor repressive regimes for decades, this is one of the ways that imperialism sustains lower wages in the third world, by making it more difficult for 3rd world workers to increase their standard of living to the level that would be supported by their productivity.

At present Chinese workers are engaged in very widespread, difficult fights to improve wages and conditions...there are 30,000 to 50,000 strikes or protests per year...but they're up against the highly repressive Communist state that has a deal with the foreign capitalists to keep wages low. Their deal is, "You help us develop China, and we'll let you
make profits off of exploiting our workers."



Yes, "real" wages (i.e. wages accounting for inflation) in developed countries have fallen since the 1970s -

Actually much more in the USA than in Europe. And it isn't just due to offshoring of jobs. This accounts for only a small part of the decline in the wage rate. That's because manufacturing is only a small minority of the economy.



but the relative cost of consumer goods has fallen due at least partially to increasing use of cheap labour in poor countries. So workers in the rich countries can, in many cases, buy more with those wages. At the very least, the falling (real) cost of living has softened the impact of falling real wages, if not cancelled it out entirely.

Nope. You are making two mistakes:

(1) Manufacturing is only a small part of the economy and manufacturing costs are only part of what contributes to the cost of living. For example, a major component in increasing difficulty of life in USA (and some European countries) is increasing housing costs. But houses are made here in USA. They aren't imported. And increased costs are not due to higher wages. Since early '70s construction worker wages in USA have fallen 8% on average.

(2) You assume that any reduction in costs to capitalists from third world manufacture will be passed on to consumers. Now, why would that be? Why wouldn't the capitalists just scarf up the reduced costs in pure profit? They will reduce prices to consumers only to the degree they are forced to by competition. And most of the major consumer industries in the USA are highly concentrated, not competitive. For example, four retail giants sell 60% of all garments in the USA.



It seems that you have the idea that the poor countries are somehow sucking capital out of the rich countries - that they're benefiting from globalisation at the expense of the rich countries. Capital flows from poor countries to rich countries are actually huge, and it's no wonder they're having such a hard time developing. A few years ago for some research I was doing on the 1980s debt crisis, I calculated capital flows between Mexico and the first world during the period where they were receiving massive IMF bailout packages... and it turned out that between remittances from FDI, capital flight, and interest on previous loans, a lot more money was going out than going in. This would be even more pronounced during 'normal' periods when bailout packages aren't coming in.

I didn't say that. Due to the balance of power between countries, the first world capitalists will be able to scarf up the lion's share of profits made in the third world, through interest for loans or through the market power of massive firms facing many small producers (as in agriculture) or from direct investment. But the point to Post's article is that it shows that these profits accrued by the first world capitalists from the third world are only a small part of their profits. The great majority of their profits come from first world countries.



None of this is to say that workers in the rich countries aren't exploited. But workers in poor countries are typically more exploited, and workers in rich countries do benefit from that.

As Post's article shows, they benefit only to a minor degree. You've not shown that Post is wrong in this claim.

[Die Neue Zeit]

That's because class is about power over others in social production. Ownership of productive property is one basis of such power, and that is the basis of the capitalist class. But there is another class who have a relative monopoly over decision-making authority and expertise critical to management labor processes and ventures.

Remember my old threads on class relations? ;)

http://www.revleft.com/vb/has-capitalism-really-t65831/index3.html (somewhat mathematical)
http://www.revleft.com/vb/simplification-class-relationsi-t73419/index.html (article)

I don't use the Communist Manifesto's definition of class (relationship to the MOP per se), but the definition of class used in Marx's Capital works (final works plus drafts and notes).

"Nevertheless, the foundation behind Marx’s class analysis, production [as a process], should be used as the starting point in analyzing modern class relations."

On the other hand, you're using too much of Weber's take on class.

[syndicat]

you're using too much of Weber's take on class.

No i'm not. I start from the social relations of production. These are power relations. Capital for example is a power relation. It is the power to go out into markets for factors of production and acquire what you need to make commodities...hire managers and workers, rent or buy land, buildings, equipment, and then your firm owns the product which you can seel on consumer and producer commodity markets. It is essential to capitalism that capitalists hire workers to work for them, hence that the capital relation is the capital/wage labor relation.

There is no such class as the "lumpenproletariat." The poor are simply that part of the working class who have little money or are suffering structural unemployment. Typically this is becaue they are working only part time, casually and/or for low wages.

People who are engaged in illegal activities like drug dealing are engaged in businesses. There are both owners (capitaliists) and employees.

The point to class analysis is to be able to explain things, such as why we can expect certain kinds of alliances and not others, why certain groups have so much more income than others, why certain groups are inclined to be sympathetic to a certain kind of politics etc. If it can't explain anything what's the value?

Your analysis also fails to even pick out one of the major classes, the class that includes middle managers, lawyers, industrial engineers, accountants, HR experts, judges, cops. This is the bureaucratic or "coordinator" class (as Michael Albert & Robin Hahnel call it). See "A Ticket to Ride" by Albert & Hahnel in "Between Labor & Capital".

This coordinator or bureaucratic class is a subordinate class within corporate capitalism...it is sometimes called the "new middle class" to differentiate from the declining class of small employers (the "old middle class"). They have a different basis of their prospects in life, that is, a different basis of their class position. But an important feature of the bureaucratic class is that it does not need to be a class subordinate to capitalists. This was shown by the Communist regimes where the bureaucratic class was the ruling class.