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 ------------------
Display software: ArchTracker © Malgosia Askanas, 2000-2005