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NeoMarxist class theory went into significant decline in the decades that followed. This paper begins with a critique of E. O. Wright's 1980s detour via a reworking of central aspects of Marx's class theory. Marx's concepts of formal and real subordination provide the basis for a class analysis of contemporary capitalism.
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Formal and real subordination and the contemporary proletariat
NeoMarxist class theory went into significant decline in the decades that followed. This paper begins with a critique of E. O. Wright's 1980s detour via a reworking of central aspects of Marx's class theory. Marx's concepts of formal and real subordination provide the basis for a class analysis of contemporary capitalism.
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NeoMarxist class theory went into significant decline in the decades that followed. This paper begins with a critique of E. O. Wright's 1980s detour via a reworking of central aspects of Marx's class theory. Marx's concepts of formal and real subordination provide the basis for a class analysis of contemporary capitalism.
Droits d'auteur :
Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
Formats disponibles
Téléchargez comme PDF, TXT ou lisez en ligne sur Scribd
Formal and real subordination and the contemporary proletariat 89
Formal and real subordination and
the contemporary proletariat: Re-coupling Marxist class theory and labour-process analysis David Neilson
Having seemed to offer so much in the 1970s, neo-
Marxist class theory went into significant decline in the decades that followed. This paper begins with a critique of E. O.Wright's 1980s detour via a reworking of central aspects of Marx's class theory. Specifically, Marx's concepts of formal and real subordination provide the basis for a re-coupling of labour-process themes with a class analysis of contemporary capitalism.
Introduction
T raditionally, Marxist class theory defines the
proletariat as 'the class of modern wage labourers, [who] having no means of production of their own, are reduced to selling their labour power in order to live' (Marx & Engels, 1952:40).This definition focusing on 'formal subordination', appended by Engels in a footnote to the 1888 English edition of the Communist Manifesto, became the orthodox view, and is reinforced to the present day by the continuing spread of waged work. However, in the Communist Manifesto prognosis, and as developed further in Capital Volume I, the formal proletariat of wage-dependent workers becomes a circumstantially homogeneous or well-formed 'class-in-itself' encompassing the 'immense majority' only as a result of 'real subordination' driven by industrialisation. The persistence of work and life experiences among the 'proletariat' that diverge significantly from those of really subordinated industrial factory workers raises problems both with the 1888 definition and the Communist Manifesto 90 Capital & Class #91
prognosis. In the 1970s, neo-Marxist scholars became
particularly concerned with the increase in 'middle class' wage-earner positions that were ambiguously located between labour and capital (Poulantzas, 1975; Carchedi, 1975;Wright, 1976). On the one hand, these were waged positions and therefore proletarian; but on the other hand, such 'workers' performed capitalist functions. Erik Olin Wright's concept of'contradictory class locations' became the mainstream neo- Marxist solution. While the original formulation drew explicitly on labour- process theory, Wright's (1985, 1986, 1989) second- generation analysis conflates the class concept with a narrow distributional reading of exploitation that marginalises the themes of work and subordination. Bob Carter (1995: 35) succinctly identifies a corresponding and 'growing divide' between labour-process analysis and class theory:
It is the contention here that the emergence of a revitalized
class analysis during the 1970s represented a crucial development in social theory. The central innovation was the perception of the integral relationship of changes in the labour process to changes in class structure. Subsequently, the increasing separation of these perspectives has left Marxist class theory abstract and formal, a spectator rather than a crucial interpreter of the increasingly rapid changes to work processes. Labour process analysis, on the other hand, has become (over) sensitive to the myriad changes but unable to relate them to wider class theory.
This paper contends that, inconsistent with Marx's own work,
Wright's second-generation analysis has fueled this divide by constructing the field of class theory in ways that systematically remove labour-process themes. Wright's approach is challenged here through a re-examination of Marx's class concept and his thesis of proletarianisation, bringing labour-process themes back into the foreground of an empirically adequate Marxian class theory. Wright's approach is examined first, and provides a critical point of departure for identifying a Marxian class concept and analytical method that can be applied to test Marx's proletarianisation thesis. Next, Marx's lifetime published writings that support the dominant proletarianisation thesis— particularly the Communist Manifesto and Capital, Volume Formal and real subordination and the contemporary proletariat 91
I—are briefly summarised. The thesis is that the spread of
formal and real subordination will generate a well-formed proletariat that encompasses the immense majority. From this basis, a more critical inquiry into the proletarianisation thesis can be undertaken, and this task is begun in the third section of the paper in an examination of the tension within Marx's work itself. Consideration of Marx's overarching intellectual project, and of specific arguments that he touches on, especially in the Grundrisse, significantly qualify the proletarianisation thesis by indicating stages beyond real subordination that imply proletarian diversity and division. Finally, the tools of class analysis developed in the earlier sections, combined with a revised Marxian proletarianisation prognosis, are deployed in order to test Marx's thesis in relation to contemporary forms of proletarian subordination and class division. The distinction between a formal proletariat and a well-formed proletariat is strikingly raised in the contemporary world by the continuing '"embarrassment" of the middle class' (Wright, 1986: 114). However, the investigation of this distinction within the context of neoliberal globalisation and the spread of waged work into the service sector also reveals fragmentation amongst non-middle-class sections of the contemporary proletariat.
Defining class contra Wright
According to Wright, the concept of exploitation
distinguishes Marxist class theory from other class analyses, while oppression diverts class analysis towards non-Marxist Weberian approaches (see Wright, 1986: 116-17; 1989: 4-6, 41, 313). Such a rigid assignment of concepts, reflecting Wright's ideological struggle to validate a Marxist approach against attacks from Weberian class analysts, actually leads him away from Marx's class theory towards an abandonment of power and the conflation of class with exploitation. Wright (1989: 58) adapts Bhaskar's famous realist distinction (1978) between generative mechanisms and events to the relation between class structure and class formation, but fails to apply the distinction to the relation between exploitation and class structure. Rather than viewing class structures as events generated by mechanisms such as exploitation, Wright argues that class is exploitation. As Wright neatly states, class is 'defined in terms of ... exploitation' 92 Capital & Class #91
(Wright, 1989: 42); and later, 'class structure imparts the
essential content of the adjective "class"' (1997:3). For Wright, exploitation is equated with class structure, which, in turn, is equated with class. By conflating class, structure and exploitation, Wright's class theory becomes circular and self- validating, because no concept of class itself can be applied to test the class effects of the exploitation mechanism. Wright's conversion to analytical Marxist economist John Roemer's (1982) narrow reading of exploitation reduces his class concept still further. Exploitation is defined purely in terms of 'inequalities in the distribution of productive assets, or what is usually referred to as property relations' (Wright, 1986:118). Further,Wright accepts Roemer's incredible claim that 'domination within production ... is not a central part of defining class relations ... it is not the actual criterion for class relations' (1986: 119). On this reading, class is reduced to a single distributive criterion derived from a definition of exploitation that is unrelated to power and production. Although the exploitation mechanism is fundamental in Marx's class theory, it is distinguishable from class effects. Following Marx's realist theory, class analysis needs to distinguish between the mechanisms that are purported to generate classes, and classes themselves. The field of class theory is defined here as the identification and explanation of patterns of social unity and difference. A class refers to a collection of people who have unity in their life situation. More fully, a single social class, in an ideal or fully formed sense, refers to a collection of people that has homogeneity of economic circumstance (class-in-itself); shared and communal life experience and identity; a common discourse or 'habitus' (Bourdieu, 1984); and a united political consciousness and propensity to organise and act (class-for- itself). Marx's concept of class, even if not explicitly stated, is consistent with this definition. For Marx, classes are defined according to a commonality of life situation and, at a fully formed stage, involve class refiexivity expressed as a societal project (class consciousness, class-for-itself). Any social class is more or less well formed according to such benchmark criteria. The pattern of classes refers to a societal pattern comprising distinctions and boundaries between and within more or less well formed classes. In order to empirically test a theory of class, such class effects must be separated out from their generative mechanisms, and their relationship explored experimentally Formal and real subordination and the contemporary proletariat 93
using provisional models. A comprehensive investigation
would experiment with a range of mechanisms, including political struggles (Przeworski, 1985), which may all contribute to an explanation of classes and class patterns. An initial task would be to derive a hierarchy of criteria from a full investigation of the class-effect-generating mechanisms proposed by the theory. In this process, stages in the historical unfolding and development of the proposed mechanisms can be differentiated. This method provides the basis from which class maps can be constructed. Marx's theory proposes that of all the mechanisms, exploitative relations of production are the primary generators of class effects. Marx's position is not a conflation of class with exploitation relations, but a claim about their primacy in generating societal class patterns. He argues that, in the capitalist context, the wage-based exploitation relation will spread to more and more social activities, deepen as a result of subsequent real subordination, and ultimately lead to the obliteration of differences in skill, income and lifestyle for the immense majority. The task of empirically exploring this prognosis requires an investigation into whether the historical development of the capitalist forms of primary mechanisms do or do not generate the predicted class effect of the circumstantial homogeneity of the immense majority. Themes of circumstantial homogeneity and class boundaries become problematic during the construction of class maps. At any given historical conjuncture, class maps may comprise less-than-well-formed groups, blurred and overlapping boundaries, and 'classes' within classes. When is a less-than-well-formed grouping that has unclear boundaries (not) a class? And when are boundaries and differences between classes; and when are they within classes? Such matters can be pursued only in a provisional way within the context of a particular theory acting as a research agenda that can be tested in practice. While the adoption and spread of the wage relation provides positive evidence of Marx's argument, it does not of itself imply a well-formed proletariat. Nonetheless, the wage-dependence criterion provisionally identifies the proletariat in its first stage. Other criteria need to be applied in order to test for the existence of proletarian homogeneity. The thesis of this paper is that variations in the forms of the basic mechanisms are likely to have significant class effects among the provisional class of wage-dependent proletarians. 94 Capital & Class #91
Marx's theory of proletarianisation
Marx's theory of class development during the capitalist
epoch centres on the capitalist class project of proletarianisation, defined as the two-stage subordination of labour to capital (Marx, 1976: 1019-38). 'Formal subordination' refers to the process by which people lose their independent means of subsistence, and become compelled as a matter of survival to enter into exploitative wage-labour relations with capital. The concept of formal subordination foregrounds the power dimension of the wage relation as wage dependence, rather than focusing on it as the social mechanism of surplus appropriation under capitalism. Although operating outside of, and in a sense prior to production, formal subordination also entails a coercive workplace discipline, although not one that fully overcomes labour's power, autonomy and resistance within the labour process. The 'real subordination' of labour is achieved only by the machine system that replaces the skill, autonomy and individuality of the worker. The form and intensity of work is driven by the machine system itself, and workers are harnessed to the machine's 'unvarying regularity' (Ure, cited by Marx, 1976: 549), and incorporated 'as its living appendages' (Marx, 1976: 548).Thus, labour's energy becomes completely subsumed by the requirements of capital. Every physical movement, and every moment within the working day, becomes driven by the capitalist machine system. Real subordination identifies a technical production relation that provides the means of capital accumulation; but it is also the means by which labour comes fully under the power of capital. The transfer of power and control to capital renders labour, first through formal subordination, as dependent and exploitable; and second, through real subordination, as dehumanised, deskilled and continuous. While 'exploitation' denotes the process of the appropriation of surplus value as an economic process based in a social structure of private ownership and wage labour, 'subordination' denotes the political technologies that drive this appropriation. Marx's model of subordination is based on a coercive concept of power, in which labour is compelled to sell its labour power as a matter of physical survival, and in which workers' bodies are physically and outwardly controlled in their every detailed movement. Formal and real subordination and the contemporary proletariat 95
Marx's prognosis of the class outcome of this project as a
societal pattern is based on the identification of economic processes that will lead the immense majority of the population to become subject to the subordination process. Marx identifies a number of mechanisms and stages that draw a range of non-proletarian classes and strata into the ranks of the proletariat. The major impetus of this process is the elimination of sources of subsistence other than waged work. Three historical stages to this process, corresponding with the emergence and development of capitalism, can be derived from Marx's work. First, as increased agricultural productivity leads to a requirement for fewer peasants, they are thrown off the land and thus lose their means of subsistence. Second, craft workers and small capitalists lose their means of subsistence as they become marginalised by large-scale industrialisation. In this way, members of these classes are reduced to a situation in which they have nothing to sell but their labour power, and thus are coerced into seeking waged work. As a result of this two-step process of formal subordination, people become wage-dependent proletarians. Third, Marx argues that the increased productivity of labour in any given sector of waged work, driven by the constant revolutionising of the capitalist labour process, throws workers onto the streets while leading to the absolute extension of the wage relation into previously uncommodified social activities. He thus identifies a further stage in the process of formal subordination, which both extends waged work and increases wage dependence by undermining people's will and capacity to independently and directly meet their needs through their own unwaged activity. The extension of formal subordination to the immense majority is driven largely by the competition-driven development and refinement of large-scale capitalist production, such that it embeds its supremacy, eliminates other forms of the labour process, and spreads waged work into more and more activities. The proletariat's antagonistic relation to the alien power of capital is embedded as a deepening process. Furthermore, real subordination leads towards, firstly, 'a tendency to equalize and reduce to an identical level every kind of work that has to be done by the minders of machines'(i976: 545), i.e. 'abstract labour power'; and secondly, to the obliteration of work, skill and lifestyle differences: 'With the development of industry ... [t]he various interests and conditions of life within the ranks of the 96 Capital & Class #91
proletariat become equalised, as machinery obliterates all
distinctions of labour, and nearly everywhere reduces wages to the same low level' (Marx, 1952: 54). Thus Marx outlines a dynamic and mutually reinforcing relationship between formal and real subordination in the ongoing construction and extension of the proletariat. The movement, for an increasing proportion of the population, from formal subordination towards their real subordination, and their resulting circumstantial homogeneity, will occur because of the continuing superiority and viability of large- scale industrialised production systems, and their application to an ever-increasing range of formally proletarianised activities. In most Marxist class analysis to the present, including in Wright's analysis, the wage relation corresponds to the only two genuine social classes of capitalism: the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. However, Marx's account of the proletarianisation process writes out other classes and class fractions only in its analysis of the logic of capital, which, over an extended historical period, proletarianises the immense majority. The pure, two-class society that corresponds with the abstract conflation of classes to essential capitalist social relations of production becomes concrete practice only when the project of proletarianisation has been successfully completed. Class groupings corresponding to the stages of historical development before and during the capitalist era resist the project of proletarianisation. Marx argues that 'the lower middle class, the small manufacturer, the artisan, the peasant, all these fight against the bourgeoisie, to save from extinction their existence as fractions of the middle class' (1952: 57). The proletariat itself is not bom fiilly formed in terms of the homogeneity of its life situation. The formal proletariat is drawn firom different class origins over an extended period of time, while the project of real subordination follows this uneven pattern while also meeting ongoing resistance. Prior to a theoretical point of maturity, as Marx's own historical commentaries also confirm, class patterns will be more complex, classes will be internally divided, and there will be vestiges of non-capitalist social forms. The view that identifies only two pre-given, well-formed classes under capitalism conflates exploitation with class, the abstract with the concrete, and the provisional with the 'real' (cf. Bourdieu, 1987). For Marx, while the abstract Formal and real subordination and the contemporary proletariat 97
foundation is posited as the ultimate historical end point of
capitalist development, it does not equate to capitalist society at any preceding historical conjuncture. In Marx's discourse, the practical conflation of the abstract and the concrete is predicted only as the eventual outcome of the logic of capital, which generates increasingly extensive and intensive proletarianisation.
Marx beyond real subordination
Within Marx's work, there are indications of complex
counter-tendencies to the prognosis that the logic of capital will uniformly proletarianise the class-in-itself conditions of the immense majority. First, work practices under capitalism develop unevenly, and do not all tend uniformly to the same real-subordination end point. Complex and uneven class effects are implied when some areas of work do not reach this stage while other areas go beyond it. In particular, Marx's analysis in the Grundrisse indicates other tendencies beyond uniform real subordination of the immense majority. Second, a class-struggle perspective that includes labour and capital as active makers of history suggests an uneven process of development involving labour's resistance and capital's counter-movement, which, in turn, implies both a more open-ended capitalist dynamic and further diversification of the circumstances of the wage- earning proletariat. In Capital, Volume I, the continuing simplification and subordination of labour to the rhythms of a developing machine system in search of increasing labour productivity implies formal and real subordination for the immense majority. However, this dynamic leads to subsequent developments that complicate this tendency. On the one hand, in the Grundrisse (1973: 704-709) Marx indicates the increasing significance of mental labour in two senses. First, manual tasks become automated and production work becomes devolved to a smaller and smaller set of workers, who become the 'watchmen' and 'regulators' of increasingly automated production systems. Second, raising productivity increasingly depends on 'the state of knowledge', and thus implicitly requires intellectual labour in the form of the generation and technological deployment of knowledge. On the other hand, the long-term effect of increasing productivity 98 Capital & Class #91
in any sector of work is a contracting labour force, not only
as a result of the constancy and intensity of labour's subordination to the rhythms of the machine system, but also as a result of the replacement of manual labour with machines. While real subordination partially suppresses the 'fallible element' of the production process, capital can achieve this goal fully only through eliminating living labour. However, the redundancy of labour is countered by capital's search for new sources of surplus value and labour's search for waged employment, which entails the spread of labour into previously uncommodified areas of social activity. 'One tendency throws workers on to the streets and makes a part of the population redundant, the other absorbs them again and extends wage labour absolutely' (Marx, 1969: 573). Labour's resistance to real subordination leads capital to deploy counter-strategies that further encourage a diversity of work and employment experience. In Capital, Marx briefly considers the theme of capital's counter-movement to labour's resistance. For example, 'As the number of co- operating labourers increases, so too does their resistance to the domination of capital, and with it the necessity for capital to overcome this resistance by counter-pressure' (Marx, Capua/, Volume I: 313, cited in Friedman, 1977: 47). In general, class development in Capital, Volume I is examined only from the vantage point of the economic logic of capital. This focus can be enriched by introducing the political concept of capital's 'project',* and by examining the two-sided, class-struggle nature of that project from the perspective of labour, as well as of that of capital. First, Marx defines the capitalist epoch around a social project to construct a world that reflects the dominant class interests and ethos. Capital is above all a social relation, and its project of accumulation is based on the establishment of specifically capitalist sets of economic rules, social norms and power relations. While the 'logic of capital' is a concept that suggests objective laws of economic motion, which relegate capitalists to being simply bearers of structural imperatives, the concept of the 'project of capital', introduced here, accords capital conscious will and political agency. As bearers, capitalists experience the logic of capital as a coercive mechanism that shouts 'Compete! Accumulate!' As bearers with political agency, capitalists consciously explore ways in which they can bend a resistant workforce to these imperatives through a range of subordination technologies. Formal and real subordination and the contemporary proletariat 99
Both logic and project are determinants of the forms and
divisions of the wage relation and the labour process that impact on the forms of class structure and class struggle. Second, capital is not the only vantage point from which to understand the proletariat. As Lebowitz argues, 'an adequate understanding of capitalism as a whole requires us to recognize explicitly that the capital/wage labour relation is two-sided and that Capital is one-sided insofar as it merely explores the relation from the perspective of capital' (1992: 105). A one-sided focus on the dominant project cannot account for the contours, rhythms and outcomes of the dialectic of class struggle. A two-sided approach to class struggle, on the other hand, would include an account of the impact of the capitalist project on those subject to it, seen from their perspective. In short, Marx's famous claim that 'history ... is the history of class struggle' (1952: 40) needs to be applied in order to find the Marx beyond Capital, Volume I. A two-sided, politicised approach requires an examination of not only capital's project to bend labour to its will, but also of how labour resists and adapts to the project of capital, and the way labour constructs itself according to its differing interests and goals. Only when this second 'side' of the theoretical project is developed can the project of capital be more clearly understood in terms of the dialectical interaction between capital and labour (see Negri, 1989; Witherford, 1994). A two-sided, class-struggle approach recognises that the project of capital to harness the power of labour is met by labour's resistance and movement; and, in turn, by capital's counter-movement. The project of proletarianisation is refashioned and reiterated as a part of the dialectic of contending political and social forces. Class patterns are not simply the product of the dominant economic logic, but are constantly being (re)shaped and (re)defined by political struggle. A historical epoch refers only to the project of the dominant class, and is unlikely to fully characterise historical societies. Actual historical trajectories and outcomes are driven by this open- ended dialectic of class struggle. Therefore, the class structure of capitalism at any particular historical point may involve an indefinite number of classes and class fractions, in complex political struggle with capital and with each other. Beyond the main thrust of Capital, Volume I, Marx implicitly and explicitly indicates a number of tendencies 100 Capital & Class #91
that profoundly complicate the prognosis of a homogeneous
proletariat and a polarised class dichotomy. The logic of capital beyond the experience of real subordination opens up distinctions between knowledge workers, production workers and the unemployed. Furthermore, the spread of waged labour suggests horizontal diversity between sectors of work at different stages of organisational and technological development, while also raising the open question as to whether all sectors of work can be fully industrialised. In addition, the political nature of the project of labour's subordination to the will of capital not only implies the continuing existence of capitalist agents, but also implies the continuing search for new mechanisms for labour's incorporation beyond real subordination. In short, incorporating a fuller perspective of Marx's project than that contained in Capital, Volume I serves to reveal a number of relevant points of departure for examining the forms of structure, subordination and struggle of the contemporary proletariat.
Contemporary forms of the proletariat
The spread of the wage relation to the immense majority is
a central precondition of Marx's prognosis of the simplification and polarisation of class structure under capitalism. The full realisation of the prognosis depends on the uniform application of a standardised machine system to all sectors of work. In historical practice, the projects of subordination have proceeded unevenly across time, space, sector and function. In addition, an interconnected economic and political dynamic indicates limits to the spread of real subordination, as well as new iterations of capital's project that move it unevenly beyond real subordination. Coexisting forms of labour's subordination, new and old, emerge from a complex dialectic between the changing project of capital, expressed in the shift to neoliberalism, and its deeper logic. The neoliberal project of capital
The breakdown of the Fordist accumulation regime, both
nationally and internationally, opened the space for capital's neoliberal counter-revolution. From the Iate-i97os onwards, national neoliberal projects, combined with changes to the Formal and real subordination and the contemporary proletariat
international regulatory framework, have facilitated capital's
international mobility, which has in turn transformed Keynesian welfare national states into competition states (Holloway, 1994; Jessop, 2003; Cerny, 2003). Countries, once again, must seek 'business confidence' (Kalecki, 1943; Gamble, 2001: 131) in order to attract and retain capitalist firms in their respective territories. Capital, on the other hand, internationally segments its operations in order to take advantage of national differentials including different labour- force characteristics, such as price, skills, compliance and flexibility. In contrast with the Fordist era, when capital mobility and competition were constrained within relatively autocentric national accumulation regimes, this framework of'neoliberal globalisation' (Ryner, 1997) undermines wage increases in the regulation of national economies, intensifies competition and segmentation between and within nationally located workforces, and encourages the state's enlistment in the subordination project. In short, competition has become the central regulatory mechanism for subordinating national states and their workforces to the will of capital (Petit, 1999). At the national level, neoliberalising competition states have pursued a range of strategies that have directly facilitated the renewal and deepening of labour's subordination to capital's requirements (King & Wood, 1999). Anti-worker regulation, reduced worker rights, 'workfare' and 'labour- market flexibility' facilitate the construction of flexible, available, compliant, insecure and segmented national workforces (Standing, 1997, 1999). The workfare project renews the work-ethic discourse, intensifies formal subordination, and increases the reserve army of labour and labour-market competition. The project of labour-market flexibility subordinates industrial-relations regulation to market forces, and facilitates the flexibilisation of the wage relation and a multiplicity of divide-and-segment strategies on the parts of capitalist firms (e.g. see Yates, 1998). Combined with the vertical disintegration of company formation expressed as the networked contractualisation of inter-firm and labour-market relations (Sabel, 1995; Dicken, 1998; Castells, 1996: ch. 3), wage-relation flexibility has promoted the growth of old and new class positions. In particular, neoliberalisation has directly facilitated a re- emergence of the petite bourgeoisie and the self-employed (Dale, 1986; Myles, 1994; Gubbay, 2000); the growth of a new middle-class grouping of flexible and contracted 102 Capital & Class #91
professionals or 'proficians' (Standing, 1997); and the
emergence of a 'neo-proletariat' (Gorz, 1982). The specific class effects of the neoliberal project of capital, with brief comparative reference to the Fordist era, will be discussed next. Beyond Fordism, a more comprehensive range of old and new subordination technologies are revealed, which coexist uneasily within an intensely competitive global environment that has facilitated the radical reassertion of capital's power over labour. Changing class effects are discussed first with particular reference to the non-contradictory groupings of the proletariat, and second, with particular reference to the middle class.
Old and new industrial proletariats
Friedman's (1977, 1997) argument that capital pursues
'responsible autonomy' in order to counter resistance arising from 'direct control' orTaylorism provides an important base reference point for examining changing forms of proletarian subordination. Responsible autonomy is examined more specifically in this context as a project whose purpose is to address the ongoing tension between capital's real subordination project to directly control and bend workers' every bodily movement, and capital's need within the more uncertain contemporary 'regime of variety' (Coriat, 1997) to have responsible workers who are versatile, trusted, self- regulating watchmen and regulators of semi-automatic and highly sophisticated production systems. More specifically, this tension is examined in relation to the partial and uneven displacement of the us version of Fordist Taylorism by the Japanese-inspired neo-FordistTaylorist model of global lean production, pioneered by Toyota (Ohno, 1988). Contradictory limits to the continuing success of the subordination strategies of the Fordist era underpin the 1970s crisis of its labour process and accumulation regime (Lipietz, 1988; Glyn, 1990a). The Fordist 'class compromise' (Boyer, 1988) achieved worker consent to real subordination, i.e. US-style Taylorism, by easing formal subordination through the legitimation of union representation, secure employment, social protections and rising living standards (Standing, 1997)- Collectively at least, and in line with the ideology of scientific management, the class compromise gave workers. Formal and real subordination and the contemporary proletariat 103
in common with capitalists, an immediate material interest
in productivity increases. This compromise underpinned stable economic growth not only by ensuring labour's consent to real subordination, but also to the extent that it became institutionalised as a stable macro-corporatist relationship between productivity and wages. But this hegemonic compromise strategy, which was central' to achieving and maintaining stable growth through the 1950s and 1960s, is also central to explaining Fordism's decline into crisis in the 1970s. On the one hand, the power and security conceded to the Fordist industrial working class— a macro version of the welfare-for-trust, responsible- autonomy strategies of large Japanese firms—partly explains the crisis of the Fordist labour process. In particular, full employment, institutionalised bargaining power and entrenched worker expectations were both undermining workplace discipline and driving continuing nominal wage increases, despite declines in the rate of productivity increase (Armstrong et al., 1984; Glyn, 1990b). Inconsistently, on the other hand, productivity decline was a consequence of the relative absence of responsible autonomy in the us model of Fordist Taylorism. Specifically, the transfer of worker knowledge to capital instigated by Taylor's method, applied as a once-only process in the Fordist context, became entrenched as a rigid division of power and function between 'conception and execution' (Braverman, 1974). That is, managerial prerogative was combined with labour's collective subordination to a detailed, deskilled, mindless and rigidly fragmented technical division of labour. This approach discouraged worker commitment to the firm, and ensured that management could not use workers flexibly or as a source of productivity gain. Developments in the capitalist labour process and methods of worker incorporation since the 1970s, while addressing the contradictory limits of the Fordist era, apply a more comprehensive set of contradictory subordination technologies that intensify the long-term tendencies of the capitalist labour process towards labour's deepening subordination. Under Fordism, work was deskilled and real subordin- ation intensified as jobs became 'rigorously determined by the configuration of the machine system' (Aglietta, 1979: 118). Semi-automatic, neo-Fordist production systems, typified by 'Toyotism' (Dohse et al., 1985; Wood, 1993), continue down this path by further suppressing complex tasks 104 Capital & Class #91
so that operatives can now supervise a group of machines
(Aglietta, 1979: 126). However, this technological development provides the base firom which a range of different tasks and functions in the daily activities of each production worker can be combined, including machine preparation, regulation and maintenance, as well as quality control and • troubleshooting. This development is consistent with Marx's model of real subordination, in which work is reduced to abstract labour power. Under Toyotism, and in contrast with the rigid differentiation of tasks under Fordism, workers become more substitutable and interchangeable (see Aglietta, 1979: 129; Coriat, 1995: 139). However, more significantly, optimising economies of scope (and scale) in the pursuit of variety and innovation within an environment of complex integrated technology implies greater uncertainty and unpredictability within the labour process, and requires workers to be more mentally involved, self-regulating and committed—i.e. responsibly autonomous. Trust is a key disciplinary device in ensuring that workers channel their mental energies and not just their bodily energies, as under Fordist Taylorism, towards the productivity goals of the firm. To some extent, to invest in the autonomy of workers is in itself to invite them to participate in a relationship of mutual trust. Moreover, in the historical practice of large Japanese firms, trust has been reinforced via various forms of security, welfare and motivational discourses offered up by the company (Dore, 1993). The responsible-autonomy aspect of the lean-production model is consistent with the logic of Taylorism, even though it represents a significant development beyond the rigid model of us-style Taylorism. Taylor's project was to take the knowledge in workers' heads and transform it into a detailed division of labour that directly subordinates and deskills workers. While this only happens once in the us model, thereafter providing the basis for the rigid conception/ execution distinction, it happens repeatedly as an integral part of workers' daily experience in the more innovative Japanese interpretation of Taylorism (Moody: 88). Worker input, both physical and mental, is harnessed to the refinement of a dynamically intensifying 'one best practice' based on the continuing application of 'time and motion' tools (Moody, 1997: 88;Tomaney, 1994: 170). Furthermore, while company welfare schemes were used to shore up worker trust in the company, such a strategy is undermined by the Formal and real subordination and the contemporary proletariat 105
global intensification of inter-firm competition that pushes
companies to pay closer attention to the multiple dimensions of competitiveness, including the reduction of costs (Coriat, 1997)- The other aspect of the global lean-production system, generating numerical flexibility and reduced wages, is the widespread use of subcontracting companies—often located in low-wage, newly industrialising countries—for producing components (Moody, 1997; Coriat, 1997). Workers in subcontracted firms are likely to experience production systems closer to us-style Fordism or earlier, 'bloodier' forms of the machine system, but without the social protections associated with the Fordist era (Lipietz, 1987). Intense formal subordination correlates with strategies of absolute surplus value—implying low wages, long hours, despotic workplace discipline and the ability to hire and fire at will— which at least parallel the experience of the first industrialising capitalist countries in the nineteenth century. This new industrial proletariat is also segmented: from insecure day workers in the 'informal sector' and 'bloody Taylorist' sweatshops, to the relatively better and more stable conditions of permanent workers in more technologically developed industries (Deyo, 1993: ch. 5, ch. 6; Davis, 2004). Lipietz's map (1993,1997) of a 'third international division of labour' identifies an international coexistence of diverging production paradigms in the advanced capitalist world, with 'Kalmarism' or post-Fordism at one pole, and 'neo- Taylorism' at the other. Identified in between them is the 'inconsistent hybrid' of 'Toyotism', which combines within a single production network and society a core, responsibly autonomous production workforce engaged in final assembly; and insecure and directly controlled subcontracted workers engaged in component production. However, the intensification of competition between firms—and between capitalist countries—has pushed all the advanced capitalist countries towards more and more neo-Taylorised and neoliberalised versions of Toyotism. On the one hand, progressive experiments such as Kalmarism in Sweden, new production concepts in Germany, and the Saturn project in the USA have given way to neo-Taylorist/Toyotist production systems (Rehder, 1994; Springer, 1999; Danford et al., 2005). On the other hand, neoliberalisation of the wage relation, implying increased labour-market flexibility and increased formal subordination, facilitates a low-cost, flexible io6 Capital & Class #91
peripheral labour segment while also reducing security for
the core (Standing, 1997, 1999; Burchell et al., 1999). In short, the advanced capitalist world is converging towards neo-Taylorist/neoliberal versions of Toyotism. In the newly industrialising countries, in comparison, formal subordination is more intense, and the forms of real subordination have tended to be pre-Toyotist. A degree of upwards convergence towards the inconsistent hybrid is fostered to the extent that more established newly industrialised countries have moved towards more fully fledged lean-production systems. But this development is countered by the continuing movement of capital to employ low-wage workforces in even newer industrialising countries, in subcontracted component production and light industry (Amsden, 1990; Lo, 1999). The implications of these developments for the class structure of the global industrial proletariat are complex. At a global level, formal proletarianisatioh spreads to incorporate more and more of the world's population. In addition, uneven convergence towards more neoliberalised versions of Toyotism implies a degree of global proletarian homogenisation. Nonetheless, new capitalist industrialisation combined with neoliberal globalisation is linked with the emergence of an international structure of industrial proletarian segmentation, which continues to differentiate the workforces of the advanced capitalist economies from the low-wage workforces of newly industrialising countries. In the advanced countries, furthermore, while the core and its security continue to decline, important differences still remain between core and periphery in terms of work and employment relations. In a parallel way, the new industrial proletariat of the newly industrialising capitalist countries is stratified in terms of degrees and types of subordination. In short, the circumstances of the global proletariat are not uniformly reducible to a common pattern of formal and real subordination. Nonetheless, forms of both formal and real subordination have spread and deepened within the overall global trend towards neoliberalised Toyotism. Post-industrial capitalism, the socialised proletariat, and the neo-proletariat Marx's prognosis of the absolute spread of waged work is also radically confirmed by the formal proletarianisation of a wide range of social activities beyond the industrial factory Formal and real subordination and the contemporary proletariat 107
and its mass workers. Negri constructs a proletarian unity
and knowledge-based autonomy in the 'socialised proletariat [that occupies] the factory without walls' (Negri, 1989: 204). In contrast, Gorz's (1982) neo-proletariat, which engages in low-skill temporary work on the margins of the 'abolition of work' and in the 'new servant' jobs, now constitutes the majority and spearhead of the proletarian movement. While Negri in particular examines contemporary forms of proletarian subordination and 'decomposition', both writers still tend to offer optimistic political constructions of different parts of the new post-industrial proletariat as representing the unity and vision of the entire proletariat. Nonetheless, each writer's analysis can be interpreted as identifying important cleavages in the contemporary class structure of the proletariat. Negri's conception aggregates Marx's (1973) polyvalent skilled worker with knowledge workers in the fields of communication, information and social reproduction (Negri, 1989: 209). The knowledge- intensive sectors of the post-industrial proletariat that Negri focuses on can be distinguished from the rising neo- proletariat; and Gorz's neo-proletariat, similarly, can be distinguished both from core production workers and from the knowledge-intensive sections of the post-industrial proletariat. For Gorz, the post-industrial phase of capitalism involves the transformation of the Fordist mass working class—the major proletarian agent of the project of the Keynesian welfare state—into an elite minority, on the one hand; and the growth of the neo-proletariat to become the majority in the post- industrial era, on the other. The neo-proletariat is created on the terrain of the abolition of work through automation, the spread of waged labour into new activities, and the flexibilisation and contractualisation of the wage relation driven by neoliberal and capitalist interests. Gorz defines the neo-proletariat as follows: 'The majority of the population now belongs to the post-industrial neo-proletariat which, with no job security or definite class identity, fills the area of probationary, contracted, casual, temporary, and part-time employment' (1982:69). The neo-proletariat is thus basically defined in terms of a flexibilised wage relation that differentiates it from the more secure wage relation characterising the experience of core production workers. The return of unemployment, labour-market flexibility, reduced social protections and workfare policies all io8 Capital & Class #91
contribute to increasing insecurity among wage earners
generally (Standing, 1997,1999; Burchell et al., 1999; Sennet, 1998). However, the new environment has been adapted by firms in order to segment their workforces into a permanent core with relative wage and employment security, including social-wage provisions; and the peripheral neo-proletariat, whose formal subordination is radically intensified by increased wage dependence, employment insecurity and welfare retrenchment. The two conditions of formal subordination—the loss of independent subsistence and the gaining of waged work—increasingly diverge (Przeworski, 1985: 60) in the real time of the neo-proletariat's way of life: thrown onto the streets one week, and employed in waged work the next. The neo-proletariat is the most insecure section of the broader proletariat, because it includes those who are constantly moving between the two states of formal subordination: of either being without work, or employed in temporary work. In short, although not necessarily subordinated by the machine system, the neo-proletariat is intensely subordinated in a formal sense (see Allen, 1996; Theodore, 2003). Within the neo-proletariat itself, however, there are distinctions in the employment relation and in work experiences as well. In terms of the employment relation, first, polarising tendencies undermine the homogeneity of neo-proletarian experience. At one pole, flexi-workers are being reintegrated into a regime of absolute surplus value— low wages and long hours—via a portfolio of part-time and temporary low-paid jobs (Green, 2001; Basso, 2003). At the other pole, the long-term unemployed comprise a relatively permanent neo-proletarian core that, although de- proletarianised by free time, tends to be socially disadvantaged and subject to social exclusion, poverty and vilification (Strandh, 2001; Clasen et al., 1997; Bauman, 1998; Wilson, 1996). Second, neoliberal/capitalist attempts to reconstruct the category of the self-employed through a proliferation of subcontracted employment relations, and through political support for small businesses, challenges the wage-relation- based mechanism of formal subordination and exploitation. Although ambiguously located between the petite bourgeoisie and the neo-proletariat in a formal sense, self-employment can be just a way of returning to early forms of the exploitation of dependent labour (Rainbird, 1991; Linder, 1989). This argument is reinforced by the similar but more desperate Formal and real subordination and the contemporary proletariat 109
employment situation of the 'own-account workers' of the
growing 'informal proletariat' that inhabits the city slums of the developing capitalist world (Davis, 2004). Third, neo-proletarianised work within industrialised production systems can be distinguished from neo- proletarianised work primarily located in the service sector that is not, and is unlikely to become significantly industrialised. On the one hand, within industrialised workplaces in both industrial and service sectors, neo- proletarianised work is likely to correspond with older forms of technology and low-skill jobs. Some neo-proletarianised work is also subject to varying degrees ofTaylorisation, and/ or to new technological means of surveillance and control (Bemie et al., 1998; Parenti, 2003). Overall, the disposability of neo-proletarians (see Barkan, 2000) extends Marx's discussion about filling the pores in the working day in order to increase relative surplus value. In addition, such peripheral workers serve as a filter and disciplinary mechanism for the core workforce. On the other hand, many jobs in the service sector involve customised services to individual clients that are not directly amenable to mass-production techniques. These neo- proletarian forms of work are closely linked to the emergence of new servants in personal services in the hospitality, tourist and domestic sectors, such as tour-guides, bartenders, cooks, house-cleaners, gardeners, childminders, and so on (Gorz, 1994; Myles, 1995). The non-middle-class proletariat can be fractionalised in a number of different ways. Core production workers in the advanced capitalist societies can be distinguished from the new industrial proletariat in the industrialising countries; and the post-industrial neo-proletariat can be distinguished from both the more knowledge-intensive fractions of the post-industrial proletariat and the informal proletariat of the developing capitalist world. These groups are further firagmented by the application of a range of different strategies of subordination that provide even more detailed forms of stratification. Skill, wage and security hierarchies that correspond to differing forms and degrees of subordination are linked to national and international patterns of segmentation in a process that not only undermines solidarity, but also intensifies divisions and competition between segments. Examination of the middle class complicates the class structure of the proletariat still further. no Capital & Class #91
The embarrassment of the middle class
The provisional middle class includes a range of positions
that both fall between and overlap with those of the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. This section takes Wright's analysis as a useful point of departure for examining the class status of the middle class, and for further evaluating Marx's proletarianisation thesis.
Wright's model
Wright's (1976) original formulation of contradictory class
locations identifies the rise of a set of intermediate waged positions between capital and labour, as a consequence of the separation of capitalist ownership and management that occurred with the growth of large firms on the one hand, and the Taylorist separation of conception and execution (Braverman, 1974) on the other. A hierarchy of salaried middle managers performs a range of capitalist functions—such as accounting and administration—that were previously combined in the individual capitalist entrepreneur. More specifically, a class of wage-worker managers is created as part of this delegation of capitalist function, but also as a result of the Taylorist project of the real subordination of labour, which requires managers to implement and coordinate that project. In Wright's second-generation formulation (Wright, 1985, 1986, 1989), the labour-process dimension is removed by the defining of exploitation purely in terms of inequalities in the distribution of productive assets. Exploited and exploiter positions are evidenced according to a method that contrasts an ideal non-exploitative income level (roughly operationalised as a per-capita share of total assets, or the median income) with actual incomes. Middle-class strata are classified along two axes: along one according to the 'net positions' of 'exploiter', 'neither exploiter or exploited', and 'exploited'^ and along the other according to different types of 'property assets', including 'organization assets' (managers) and 'skill assets' (experts) (Wright, 1986). While the former axis seems to violate the basic idea of contradictory class locations, the latter distinction, presented in terms of different types of exploitation, has an implicit occupational dimension. Formal and real subordination and the contemporary proletariat
Consistent through both phases of his writing is Wright's
view that:
the positions aggregated under the rubric 'middle class'
are not really in a class at all. Rather, they should be viewed as locations which are simultaneously in more than one class, positions which I have characterized as 'contradictory class relations within class relations' [or] ... more precisely, contradictory locations within exploitation relations. (1986: 115, 128)
Only the essential classes of the dominant mode of production
are assumed from the outset to be real classes, while the middle class comprises a hybrid collection of contradictory class characteristics with no class character of its own. As if in some delicate balancing act Wright holds onto the orthodox Marxist view that capitalism generates only two mutually defining classes in antagonistic relation, and accounts for the existence of other positions that fit neither and both class positions at the same time, while simultaneously claiming to remove vestiges of the 'Weberian' influence. Nonetheless, a second, contradictory line of argument in Wright's work indicates that the middle class could be viewed as a real class because of'the distinctiveness of [its] location within exploitation relations' (1986: 126).
An alternative analysis
The broader terrain of the middle class can be investigated
by applying criteria of class identification associated with both the bourgeoisie and the proletariat: business ownership and capital function, on the one hand, and formal subordin- ation and real subordination on the other. In general, the combination of these criteria, each of which also can be differentiated, serves to distinguish between middle-class strata. Much of the middle class is formally proletarian, in that it receives wages and does not own businesses. The features of the middle class that distinguish it from non-middle fractions of the proletariat, however, are the semi- autonomous forms of labour associated with professional status, and/or its function as an agent of capital. The criterion of capital agency identifies managers and engineers who implement rather than being subject to projects of labour's "2 Capital & Class #91
real subordination; and it also includes people such as
teachers, journalists and economists, who perform the ideological functions of capital. The 'professional project' (Macdonald, 1995), encompassing a range of old and new occupational fields, some of which overlap with capital agency, continues to resist both formal and real subordination by maintaining professional control and autonomy. Professionals tend to have a level of income and security that eases formal subordination by providing the likelihood of high levels of personal assets and independent income. The existence of the middle class is compatible with the Communist Manifesto's prognosis before the theoretical point of capitalism's maturity. However, it is hard to see how this point will ever completely be reached. First, Taylorism generates managers and engineers who oversee the project of labour's real subordination. The move towards more automated systems reinforces the centrality of engineers and technicians (Sabel, 1995), while the changing forms of capital's project will continue to require professional human- resource managers. Additionally, capital's 'hired prize- fighters' appear to be permanent, if for no other reason than that the projects of capital require ideological agents. In short, integral to large-scale capitalism and the broader societal projects of capital are professionals who perform its necessary technical and ideological functions. Second, the professional project, in general, politically resists proletarianisation. Members of professions attempt to define and control the knowledge, practices, size and boundaries of their professions, while excluding and de- legitimating competing forms of knowledge and occupational practice (Freidson, 1994). Professionals resist the Taylorist project of the transfer of knowledge and power and, through their control of the field of knowledge and the labour supply, maintain high income security as well. Doctors, dentists, lawyers, accountants and academics, and more recently managers, engineers and journalists, are examples of participants in the professional project. In addition, a number of new professions have become more prominent in the present phase of capitalism, and their members include designers, researchers, public-relations specialists and professional sportspeople. People working in a number of trades—e.g. as plumbers, carpenters, electricians, mechanics and hairdressers—can also have this professional character to some degree. Formal and real subordination and the contemporary proletariat
Third, the increasing centrality of innovation and
advanced technology to contemporary capitalism implies the continuing knowledge intensification of labour (Hodgson, 1999). Such developments include the ongoing existence and growth of semi-autonomous and knowledge-intensive occupations—from engineering and management to research, science and academia—that will remain substantially different from the work of the Taylorised industrial proletariat, even though their tendency towards proletarianisation seems likely to continue. Also, trades and professions that involve customised services continue to resist the mass industrial logic of real subordination. This relatively permanent, core middle class as sketched out above has work and employment relations that distinguish it from both the non-middle-class proletariat and the bourgeoisie. However, variations on this characterisation reveal both proletarianising and 'bourgeoisifying' tendencies. In terms of the former, aspects of some professional work can be proletarianised through a detailed division of labour that separates out the low- skill aspects of the profession, producing associated effects in terms of subordination. For example, some white-collar workers perform delegated, routine administrative functions of capital within the real subordination context of a semi- Taylorised paradigm, and receive low wages that indicate formal subordination (Braverman, 1974; Crompton & Jones, 1984; Baldry, 1998). In short, proletarianising tendencies apply to the routine, subsidiary and less skilled parts of professions and capitalist functions. Nonetheless, many non-Taylorised waged professionals are themselves subject to a range of governance technologies, which, in the absence of mechanisms for achieving formal and real subordination, seek to secure their responsible autonomy through projects intended to align their subjectivity with the goals of the firm (Miller & Rose, 1990; Heisig, 1995). Additionally, in the current era, proleta-rianisation strategies applied to professional fields, especially in the public sector, have become more likely as a result of neoliberalisation, which promotes greater managerial prerogative, increased employment insecurity, segmentation and state restructuring (Krause, 1996; Smyth, 1995). Investment in higher education by the newly industrialising countries, and the consequent increase in a professional labour supply that is cheap and globally available online, also encourages the proletarian- "4 Capital & Class #91
isation of various professional occupations in the advanced
countries. In terms of a tendency towards 'bourgeoisification', there are two major ways in which professionals and capitalist agents can be directly identifiable as non-contradictory members of the bourgeoisie. First, some professionals are either self-employed or own and control their own companies; and indeed, self-employed work and small businesses have been contractually and politically promoted by the neoliberal project. In particular, there has been a growth in highly qualified professionals or 'proficians' who have their own consultancy companies, and who enter into project contracts with large companies (Standing, 1997,1999; Sabel, 1995). More generally, self-employed professionals and tradespeople can become capitalists as they expand their businesses, employing waged employees to directly perform the core work of the profession, or to engage in subsidiary tasks. Second, high-level managers or the company executives of large firms perform the primary executive functions of capital, and have salaries that enable them to become significant owners of capital. The middle class has a complex structure, encompassing positions that are directly contradictory; positions that tend either towards the proletariat or the bourgeoisie; and positions that have a unique character different from both the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. A self-employed professional with a median income (neither exploiter nor exploited, in Wright's model) could be viewed as representing an ideal typical and distinctive middle-class position that has neither proletarian nor capitalist dimensions. However, much of the provisional middle class has ambiguous and overlapping boundaries with either the proletariat or the bourgeoisie, while some groups more unambiguously tend towards proletarian and bourgeois class positions. The middle class is thus stratified into groups that infiltrate the entire class structure. In addition, at a micro level, Grusky and Sorensen (1998) argue that well- formed middle-class occupations can be defined as 'disaggregate classes' that have clear boundaries, entail class identity, and exhibit agency in the pursuit of strategic interests in relation to the capitalist project and to other disaggregate class actors. Such occupational integrity can be linked both to competition within an occupational field, and stratification across the middle class. Formal and real subordination and the contemporary proletariat 115
In summary, the middle class is a hierarchical and
heterogeneous collection of disaggregate classes. However, the middle bulk of occupational groupings—albeit with blurred boundaries, continuing divisions and often contradictory class influences—can be provisionally viewed as an aggregate class that has a similar experience of work as professional experts, and is linked to similar levels and types of income, education, lifestyle and habitus. Nonetheless, some middle-class positions have been and continue to be proletarianised, while other positions are linked to full membership of the capitalist class. Although the project to proletarianise middle-class occupations continues, Marx's prognosis of the 'de-occupationalisation' of work is challenged by limits to the project and logic of real subordination. In sum, the proletarianisation of the middle class is frustrated by the renewed viability of small and medium-sized businesses—a viability linked to the subcontractual structure of contemporary ownership of capitalist firms, capital's ongoing need for delegated agents, limitations to the industrialisation of some forms of work, and the persistence of professional occupations that more or less successfully continue to resist the capitalist project of subordination.
Concluding remarks
Wright conflates class with exploitation, while Marx
differentiates the forces that generate classes from classes themselves. Wright remains locked into an abstract, two- class model, even though Marx distinguishes abstract and concrete models of class development under capitalism. In contrast with Wright's analytical Marxist class theory, which removes history, power and the labour process, Marx's class analysis focuses on power and the labour process, and the logic of their development in future capitalist history. For Marx, a social class is based on its homogeneity of life situation. The formally subordinated proletariat is thus a provisional class. Only when other circumstantial distinctions are obliterated does the proletariat become a fully formed class-in-itself. Furthermore, only when capitalist development eliminates or marginalises all other social classes will the societal pattern of classes concretely conform to the essential abstraction of Marx's two-class II6 Capital & Class #91
model. This historical prognosis is complicated by a more
two-sided and politicised class-struggle perspective, by the continuing function of middle-class agents of capital, by the ongoing survival of the professional project, by inherent limits to the project of real subordination, and by the uneven multiplicity of old and new forms of proletarian subordination and fragmentation. Different forms, degrees and combinations of subordination and incorporation both reflect and construct the uneven diversity of proletarian experience in ways that do not accord with a proletariat defined as a homogeneous class with a common life situation. In the current era of global neoliberalism, Marx's proletarianisation thesis is radically cotifirmed by the spreading and deepening of formal subordination into more and more social activities in the advanced capitalist societies, and by ongoing proletarianisation in the industrialising capitalist societies. However, an exatnination of the different forms and degrees of subordination reveals not only a more complex internal division of the proletariat than that predicted by the proletarianisation thesis, but also a more complex and dynamic understanding of the subordination project of capital. For those firactions of labour that have limited strategic power relative to capital, old and new forms of coercive subordination are reinvented in the contemporary era. In some situations, however, the coercive approach is not viable. First, the imposition of the Taylorist version of real subordination in post-Second-World- War conditions, in which labour had con-siderable political power, was achieved only by a class com-promise that eased formal subordination. In short, acceptance of the real subordination of Fordist mass production was exchanged for increasing wages and security. Second, collective resistance to real subordination and the present need to 'mine the gold in the workers' heads' indicate the rationale for responsible- autonomy strategies. Third, the persistence of various kinds of semi-autonomous labour also necessitates responsible- autonomy strategies in order to align subjectivity with the goals of the firm. In sum, the coercive forms of subordination that outwardly control the physical bodies of workers can be distinguished from hegemonic forms of incorporation that inwardly control workers' hearts and minds in order to win consent and commitment (Gramsci, 1972; Burawoy, 1985). Negri's analysis of the contemporary post-industrial proletariat continues Gramsci's theme of the 'interiorisation' (Hardt & Negri, 2000) of proletarian subordination. Negri Formal and real subordination and the contemporary proletariat 117
identifies new mechanisms of subordination, more powerful
and insidious than Marx's real subordination, which not only control the bodies and programme the minds of proletarians, but as part of a process of class 'decomposition' also divide, isolate and eliminate them. Marx's work does touch on themes beyond 'control'. However, Negri's approach points towards a view of subordination that corresponds with the shift from Marx's focus on industrial capitalism—in which the project is centrally about machine control of the body— towards information capitalism, in which the project also includes mind management, underpinned by the new information and communication technologies. Certainly, future research on the theme of subordination and class structure would need to investigate more thoroughly the extent and consequences of this shift. This paper has focused class theory on Marx's concepts of formal and real subordination. It represents an attempt, inspired by Bob Carter (1995), to bring labour process and labour-market themes back into the foreground of Marxist class theory. An adequately developed class theory, however, would require, a fuller examination of changing forms of subordination beyond Marx's two-step model. In addition, a much wider range of criteria—including agents and not just structures, and including criteria beyond production and economic relations that generate class effects—need to be examined. Likewise, a more fully developed Marxist class analysis would need to construct class maps including information on the numerical sizes of the different groupings that comprise the proletariat, as well as more directly confronting the problem of the proliferation of ambiguous class positions. Finally, Marxist class theory needs to reconsider its political analysis in the light of the diversity of proletarian experience. Marx, in the Communist Manifesto, rightly stressed that 'communists [should] point out and bring to the front the common interests of the entire proletariat' (1952: 61). However, the construction of the contemporary proletariat in ways that obscure the problem of proletarian diversity can- also be counter-productive. The identification of circumstantial variation is a necessary precondition for the development of a fuller class analysis, capable of considering the potential societal projects and the actual forms of political consciousness of different proletarian groupings—and capable of considering, too, the strategic ii8 Capital & Class #91
question of how to use this knowledge in order to construct
a global, counter-hegemonic proletarian movement.
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