File spoon-archives/marxism.archive/marxism_1994/marxism.Jul12-Aug17.94, message 72


Date: Fri, 22 Jul 1994 09:27:05 +1100
From: Rick.Kuhn-AT-anu.edu.au (Rick Kuhn)
Subject: Re: class



Alex Trotter asked about the contemporary significance of the industrial 
proletariat.

Marx regarded the working class as the agency for acheiving socialism 
because 1) is suffers the effects of capitalism and therefore has a material 
interest in its overthrow.
2) it has tremendous potential power, as the producer of the bulk of social 
wealth
3) capitalism forces workers to defend their interests collectively (the 
level of generalisation of this collective defence of course varies from 
very local solidarities (between even individual workers) through trade 
unionism to revolutionary organisation and action.

The marxist conception of the working class is that it is a social group 
whose only means of making a living is by selling its ability to work 
(labour power), to those who control means of production (mainly 
capitalists). When Marx wrote virtually all such people were industrial 
proletarians or pre-industrial craftsfolk. Today we can  identifies wage 
workers who have little or no control over their work well beyond the 
manufacturing sector. The vast majority of service sector workers are part 
of the working class if we use the same kind of conception of class 
relations as Marx and Engels did. There are intermediate layers between 
managerial capitalists and paper factory workers - supervisors and middle 
managers - but they are far from constituting a majority of white collar 
workers.

Since WWII the composition of the world workforce has undergone a further 
proletarianisation (in the main many peasants have become workers). There 
are still a lot of peasants out there, but even in the countries with the 
largest peasantries, China and India, there are large  working classes. In 
Indonesia too, with its population of 200+ million, a working classof around 
40 million hasbeen created by capital accumulation sponsored by the military 
regime and has begun to flex its muscles. And it is not only industrial 
workers in Indonesia (or for that matter, South Korea, Australia, the USA, 
Germany etc) which has engaged in strike action, but also white collar workers.

Rick
_________________________________________________
Rick Kuhn                           Department of Political Science (Arts)
phone +61 6 249-3851                    Australian National University
fax   +61 6 249-5054                                      Canberra ACT 0200
internet: Rick.Kuhn-AT-anu.edu.au                                       Australia




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