Prosperity and Class Consciousness

[Azraella]

I was reading an older physical copy of Das Kapital and in the introduction it made an assertion that I didn't think was neccesarily true, and I wanted to discuss this here on Revleft.



As prosperity grows, "class-consciousness" tends to disappear. Modern capitalist society is in the process of establishing a common denominator for all men irrespective of their social origin, by standardization of living conditionsand of ways ways of life and by creation of equal oppurtunities for all. Marx's theory of the "struggle of classes" is fast becoming obsolete with the equally rapid disappearance of the "proletariat."



I don't really agree with this assertion, in fact I think it is blatantly wrong that prosperity erases the proletariat. Don't get me wrong, I think things are better in plenty of ways, compared to how things were in Marx's time but I don't really think economic prosperity erases class struggle.

So this is what I ask Revleft: what do you think?

(Also, if this is in the wrong section can you please move it to the correct section, mods or admins?)

[helot]

Increased standards of living may reduce class consciousness but it can't erase the inherent conflict between classes. As for erasing the proletariat, that's an impossibility while still maintaining the capitalist mode of production.

I think the problem here is that that introduction implicitly defines the proletariat by income while i'm sure everyone here would define classes by their relationship to the MoP.

[Thirsty Crow]

I don't really agree with this assertion, in fact I think it is blatantly wrong that prosperity erases the proletariat. Of course it is blatantly wrong since the category of "proletariat" is based not on income but rather on the position people occupy in the relations of production - those being the relations between wage labour (dispossessed of the means of subsistence and means of production, therefore, forced to sell our labour power) and capital. Capital can hardly accumulate, and capitalist society can hardly reproduce itself as capitalist society without the class of wage labourers, so we in fact are an indispensable part of the social and economic reality of capitalist reproduction. I assume that the person you quote has a very narrow understanding of the proletariat as manual, blue collar workers whose numbers did indeed shrink at least from the 70s onwards due to factors such as outsourcing and relocation of production, flexibilized international capital flows and techological development. But Marxists have always emphasized that such a narrow definition doesn't correspond to the notion of the relations of production (since for capital it is entirely irrelevant what worers actually do - whether they flip burgers or work in a forge, the point is that we produce surplus value and that we are bound by capital as people dispossessed of the means of production etc).

[Dennis the 'Bloody Peasant']

I agree that prosperity can never fully erase class or make the class struggle obsolete, so long as there is any economic or social inequality. However, I think it can become less prevelant or important to the proletariat. The gradual increase in overall living standards, availability of amenities etc can dwarf any other political considerations ('So what if it's not all equal, I'm OK, you're OK, what does it matter?').

[honest john's firing squad]

If I'm not mistaken, these are the words of Serge L. Levitsky - not Marx or Engels. The validity/accuracy of the subjective interpretations of others is one of the reasons why it's generally recommended to read M&E in their own words, and not prefaced or annotated by a third party.

[honest john's firing squad]

what kind of a fucking moron thinks the proletariat is disappearing, anyway? more and more occupations are getting proletarianised, and the working class now makes up a larger portion of society than ever before.

[jookyle]

What capitalism does, or attempts to do, is create the illusion of equal opportunity for all. That everyone can become rich and become bourgeoisie. The idea is to keep the proletariat from realizing it's the proletariat and leave the class to think it's just bourgeoisie in waiting. So if you get people to believe the illusion, they no longer develop class consciousness or class will.

[Azraella]

I want to thank everyone for contributing to this thread so far.

While I think income disparity is a serious problem with capitalism, I agree that it is a terrible way to measure class because income levels can change rapidly. Class in relation to the means of production is a more accurate way of looking at how class works. So I agree with that.



what kind of a fucking moron thinks the proletariat is disappearing, anyway? more and more occupations are getting proletarianised, and the working class now makes up a larger portion of society than ever before.

Someone who thinks class is a result of income level.



What capitalism does, or attempts to do, is create the illusion of equal opportunity for all. That everyone can become rich and become bourgeoisie. The idea is to keep the proletariat from realizing it's the proletariat and leave the class to think it's just bourgeoisie in waiting. So if you get people to believe the illusion, they no longer develop class consciousness or class will.


There is probably an argument to be made that vertical class mobility exists up to a point at least if we're measuring class based on income rather than control of the means of production.

[honest john's firing squad]

The Following 2 Users Say Thank You to honest john's firing squad For This Useful Post:
Azraella (http://www.revleft.com/vb/member.php?u=60059)
what the hell? and i actually got twice the rep for it too, i am one smooth motherfucker.

[honest john's firing squad]

Someone who thinks class is a result of income level.
There's your problem then. I wouldn't really take an introduction to any "marxist" text by some pro-capitalist moron with a grain of salt.

[Azraella]

There's your problem then. I wouldn't really take an introduction to any "marxist" text by some pro-capitalist moron with a grain of salt.


To be fair, I don't think it was published by Marxists or some other radical revolutionary socialist group and I think it was published during the Cold War* so the intro was probably biased to begin with. I agreed with the other assertions before five to differing extents(I don't feel like retyping all of the assertions):

1. I agreed that the robber barons are being replaced by company boards and a professional managerial class.

2. Yes unions exist, but all a union is, is an expression of the proletariat's power and in some places it is curbed by anti-union laws.

3. Most of the "pro-proletarian" policies in modern states are the result of the proletariat and left getting pissed at how shit works, and yet we have not socialized the means of production.

4. I agree that there has been an increase of living standards over the last 100 years but I don't agree that the proles are defined by income level. I also don't know if stockholding changes class either.

The assertions after the fifth one became nonsensical and became a bit baseless to me. Most socialists do not call social democrats socialist for example, or even neccesarily believe in a violent revolution, and I don't think Marx ever asserted that the proletariat is "eagerly awaiting revolution".

It was the fifth one that I was wanting to discuss because it seemed reasonable and believable.

I don't really think prosperity has anything to do with class consciousness, it might mitigate some of the glaringly obvious difference between the bourgeois and proletariat, but on the other hand, proles still have no control over any of the means of production unless you count people who have shares in a company which I am unsure whether to consider them even petty bourgeois or not.

[jookyle]

Well, income level and owning the modes of production go hand in hand. You own the means of production, and to own them, you have to have the money to have them and be able to maintain and grow that money. The people who own capital, especially the people who have owned it for years upon years have done so because they have the finical resources to buy and invest in capital by way of the market.

[Azraella]

Well, income level and owning the modes of production go hand in hand. You own the means of production, and to own them, you have to have the money to have them and be able to maintain and grow that money. The people who own capital, especially the people who have owned it for years upon years have done so because they have the finical resources to buy and invest in capital by way of the market.


Oh certainly. It's frankly impossible for a millionaire to be a working class person for example. My dad worked in a factory for 35 years and never had fabulous riches and he worked his ass off.

[jookyle]

It's really why I think the term "petty bourgeoisie" was needed. I know people who would argue that a football player that makes 20 million a year is just a rich working class person.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

It depends what unit of prosperity we are talking about. If we are talking about the prosperity of a nation as one unit then that is indeed wrong, and runs contrary to Marx's prediction of revolution happening in the developed countries. If it is talking about sub-national prosperity then it makes perfect sense. Though social mobility is illusory as a general concept, there are always people in society who 'get richer', so to speak. I imagine that, as their individual prosperity increases, so their class consciousness subsides.

[bricolage]

it's not really that simple, for example the most militant sectors of the class will often be those in more 'prosperous' situations, having fought for (most likely gone on strike) and won better pay or conditions the idea that it is then possible to fight and win becomes more generalised. furthermore having illustrated their power as workers they have further leverage against bosses and the latter may be less willing to take them on, when it does happen the result dramatically shifts the balance of classes forces to whoever wins. see for example in the UK the effect that the 1974 miners strike had (when they won) and the effect that the 84/85 miners strike had (when they lost).

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

it's not really that simple, for example the most militant sectors of the class will often be those in more 'prosperous' situations, having fought for (most likely gone on strike) and won better pay or conditions the idea that it is then possible to fight and win becomes more generalised. furthermore having illustrated their power as workers they have further leverage against bosses and the latter may be less willing to take them on, when it does happen the result dramatically shifts the balance of classes forces to whoever wins. see for example in the UK the effect that the 1974 miners strike had (when they won) and the effect that the 84/85 miners strike had (when they lost).

I was talking more of when workers become non-workers. I.e someone from a council estate, son of a former miner, becomes a lawyer. Obviously, i'm sure the statistics and an analysis of them will tell you that the effect is not as strong/doesn't exist, within the paradigm of working class pay and conditions.

[bricolage]

I was talking more of when workers become non-workers. I.e someone from a council estate, son of a former miner, becomes a lawyer. Obviously, i'm sure the statistics and an analysis of them will tell you that the effect is not as strong/doesn't exist, within the paradigm of working class pay and conditions.
ok fair enough, yeah there is a big difference between gains coming from individual 'social mobility' versus them coming from collective class victories.

[MajorGeneralPineapple]

You guys need to think globally.

Global capitalism in Marx's day was a very different animal from the global capitalism of today. If it is hard to imagine the average American as "proletariat"---- and it is, particularly when Marx talks about the ever sinking proletariat wage---- we must remember: while the poorest in America might have iphones and Xboxes, who made those things?

I'll give you a hint: capitalism is globally dominant, and right now billions of people live on subsistence wages, and a billion more can't eat every day.

The proletariat certainly has not disappeared. It has grown to gargantuan size, most of us have just been conditioned not to see it.

[Tim Finnegan]

I frankly tend to think that this logic expresses a political investment in the institutions of the Official Left, rather than any empirical examination of class conciousness. Class conciousness is, fundamentally, a matter of class composition: not a state of sagehood, but a conciousness of something, of the working class constituted as a political subject. The official left, in contrast to this, represented the integration of the organised working class into capital, a project by which working class composition is actively degraded, and in which the organised working class becomes the mere left-wing of capital. This is a process which in the social democratic era was achieved through a steady increase in working standard of living which kept workers loyal to the Official Left, a system of bureaucratic patronage, and so the degradation of class composition and the resulting decline in class conciousness corresponds with an increase in material well-being. Unable to undergo the political break with these organisations, the intellectuals of the left determine that the flaw must be in the proletariat themselves, that their increased well-being leads them stupefied and ineffective.

Beneath the posture of theory, it's the same moralising you read in any red-top rag, simplying taking the droning Tory lament that the stupid, overfed proles are unwilling to make sacrifices for some grand, abstract collective identified by the lamenter as the seat of all virtue, simply identifying that collective as "the class" rather than "the nation". It is, not to put too fine a point on it, shit.


(Edit: Although, on second-thoughts, I think I'm misapprehending the tone of the original extract pretty seriously, which is really more of a triumphant reformist strutting than an embittered Old Left Marxism; more Giddens than Milliband, as it were. The historical process I described above is still an accurate enough refutation, but obviously its polemical elements are misdirected.)


It's really why I think the term "petty bourgeoisie" was needed. I know people who would argue that a football player that makes 20 million a year is just a rich working class person.
I would argue that it's why the logic of class as a set of grand, positively-existing blocs needs to be abandoned. Simply adding more of them to the picture is just patching over the cracks of a conception of class which is basically flawed.