Submitted for the International Conference:

The Working Class: What is it and where is it?

At the Economics Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences
Moscow, 11-12 July 2006

Introduction: The fetishisation of manual labour

It is generally recognised that the character of work has changed considerably during
the 20th Century. The classical Marxist proletariat, manual factory workers, from
being the overwhelming majority, say, 70-80 % of the workforce, are now between
10-20% in advanced capitalist countries. Those members of the workforce who
provide services, especially information processing and delivery services, are now the
majority.1 A sub-group of the ‘information proletariat’ are sometimes called
‘knowledge workers’, that is,  those who jobs require high level of knowledge input
obtained from advanced schooling. They are now about one third of the workforce in
the US, more than twice as numerous as the manual factory proletariat. They are
expected to become at least 40% of the working population, say by, 2010. [1] This
latter group can be considered to be the new core proletariat of a knowledge-based
society. It contains many highly privileged groups such as university teachers and
researchers, and so on, whose level of alienation is, let us say, tolerable, as well as
less privileged technical knowledge workers.  The information proletariat as a whole
includes many highly exploited workers such as those in call-centres and data-input
offices.

See the complete article here:

http://www.labortech.net/pdf/Moscow3.pdf

Haymarket author and BBC Newsnight’s Economics Editor Paul Mason appeared Friday morning, September 24, on Democracy Now! (http://www.democracynow.org/).

Mason on Live Working or Die Fighting: How the Working Class Went Global

The Census Bureau latest report shows that the numbers of Americans living in poverty and without health insurance have skyrocketed. 43.6 million people-about one in seven-lived below the poverty level of $22,000 for a family of four in 2009, pushing the national poverty rate to a fifteen-year high of 14.3 percent. We speak with British journalist Paul Mason about his new book, Live Working or Die Fighting: How the Working Class Went Global.

http://www.democracynow.org/2010/9/24/paul_mason_on__live_working

Mason is the author of:

Live Working or Die Fighting
How the Working Class Went Global
Paul Mason
Haymarket Books
Published: 07/01/2010
978-1-60846-070-0 | $17.00 | Trade Paper
http://www.haymarketbooks.org/pb/Live-Working-or-Die-Fighting

Union workers across the globe need to find new innovative ways of working together to match the increasing global power of multinational corporations, AWU
National Secretary, Paul Howes, said at a meeting in Germany this week.
” There is no doubt in my mind that the future is global unionism.
Unions must respond to the global marketplace
” We live in a global market. Our employers last century may have been home-town bosses – then the more successful
became state or national bosses.
“ But now in the 21st century increasingly across all employment sectors we face global employers, global bosses. Therefore
unions have to match this new reality with global unionism,” Paul Howes said.
“ When you consider the many global companies that we have in common with unions across the world – BlueScope, BHP
Billiton, Alcoa and Exxon for starters –in an era of global labour markets we must find ways of assisting each other, by
working together in campaigning or organising, bargaining and exchanges, so that workers rights will be strengthened.”
Union leaders from five continents meet to create powerful new global union organisation
Paul Howes, a member of the International Metalworkers Federation Executive Committee, is representing Asia-Pacific unions
at a conference aiming to create a new global union organisation representing 55 million manufacturing workers in more than
130 countries.
Union leaders from all five continents are at the conference to underline the role of manufacturing industry as the locomotive of
national economies, the general secretary of the International Metalworkers Federation, Mr Jyrki Raina said.
“ Industry is the backbone for the creation of good quality jobs with decent working conditions, proper training and skills
development, and respect of trade union and workers’ rights.
Australian unions must work on global stage
“ Sustainable industry jobs contribute to social development and better standards of living for citizens.
” Australia has a strong manufacturing and mining base, and Australian unions are an important part of our global union
family,” says IMF general secretary Jyrki Raina.
“ Their strong involvement in this strategic process to create a stronger counterpower to major multinational corporations is
crucial. “
Founding Congress to be held in 2012
The joint task force meeting in Germany aims to bring together three global trade union federations:
the International Metalworkers Federation (IMF);
the International Chemical, Energy and Mine Workers’ Federation (ICEM); and
the International Textile, Garment and Leather Workers’ Federation (ITGLWF) .
The new global union grouping plans to hold its founding congress in 2012.
The IMF represents 25 million workers in 100 countries, ICEM 20 million workers in 128 countries, and ITGLWF 10 million workers in 110 countries. The key areas of
action of the three organisations are trade union networks in multinational companies, trade union rights and campaigns, fighting against precarious work, climate change and
sustainable development, and building stronger unions in developing countries.
© 2010 Australian Workers’ Union
All electoral matter is authorised by Paul Howes, National Secretary
Email: members@awu.net.au
Level 10, 377-383 Sussex Street, Sydney | NSW 2000
Members Hotline: 1300 885 653
The Australian Workers Union: The future is global unionism http://www.awu.net.au/703421_5.html
1 of 1 23-9-2010 14:29

1. Acknowledging the fact that global warming is already occurring with the 10 hottest years on record having happened since 1990, and the massive danger presented by further climate change to human civilisation;

2. Noting the scientific consensus that global warming is caused by human activities which pump carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere;

3. Acknowledging that responsibility for global greenhouse gas emissions has to be understood in the context of historical and existing inequalities in wealth and access to services between industrialised and developing countries, resulting in substantial differentials in per capita emissions;

4. Acknowledging that while responsibility for emissions lies with rich and powerful nations, it is the poorest countries which are the most vulnerable to the effects of climate change through impacts on agriculture, food security, water supplies, weather, health, ecosystems and infrastructure, including transport;

5. Realising that extraordinary weather conditions (droughts, flooding, etc) due to climate change have already destroyed jobs, homes and peoples’ lives, particularly in developing countries, and if little is done, millions of jobs and peoples’ livelihood will be further at risk;

6. Believes therefore that ambitious mitigation action is fundamental if we want to leave our children a sustainable world and a chance for social and development goals to be achieved, and that these actions must be fairly shared and distributed between and within countries;

7. Noting that transport is responsible for 14% of global emissions, with the transport sector accounting for over a quarter of total world energy use, and that private motoring represents more then half of these;

8. Is concerned that transport emissions have increased dramatically over the past 30 years, and are increasing in all regions of the world at a faster rate than any other energy-using sector of the economy; in some countries, rising transport emissions have outweighed the reductions made in other sectors;

9. Considers it essential that people should be encouraged to shift modes away from high-polluting modes of transport and onto more environmentally-friendly forms of transport such as high speed rail;

10. Acknowledging that transport costs have become too low, mainly due to the fact that most transport modes do not cover their external costs and that wages and working conditions have been weakened and undermined during the neo-liberal era of the past 30 years;

11. Aware that emissions from fossil fuels are not only a problem for the environment, but also for the health and safety of transport workers;

12. Noting the conclusions of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), informed by data amassed and reviewed by more than 2,000 scientists, that global warming must be kept within 2 degrees Centigrade above pre-industrial levels to ensure a 50% chance of avoiding catastrophic climate change;

13. Noting that there is a growing body of scientists who maintain that the 2 degrees scenario is itself dangerous given the potential climate impacts on vulnerable countries and communities, and that low lying costal communities in particular therefore will require more radical measures and support;

14. Aware that limiting warming to no more than 2 degrees requires a sharp reduction in the volume of emissions entering our atmosphere, and that steps need to be taken now to achieve a 25-40% cut from 1990-levels by 2020 and a 50-80% cut by 2050;

15. Believes that the market-based solutions of governments and employers have thus far failed to seriously deal with rising emissions, and that addressing the climate crisis will require a far-reaching political and economic transformation driven by alternative social and environmental priorities, including major government driven investments, social and technological innovation and skills development, social protection and trade union involvement;

16. Recognises that not only climate change, but also the policies needed to prevent it, including a shift to low carbon forms of transport, will have an impact on the number of jobs in most transport sectors, particularly in public transport and among those which are engaged in the transport of fossil fuels – although with different effects;

17. Believes that while the urgent adoption of these policies is vital to tackle climate change, the ITF and its affiliates must defend the interests of transport workers by fighting to ensure that these policies are implemented in a way which defends jobs and creates new ones through a process of just transition;

18. Believes that the environmental impact of transport is inseparable from how transport is controlled and organized in the global economy. The greater part of transport needs are not created in the transport sector itself, but are created by demands in other parts of the economy, through existing production and consumption patterns. The growth in transport emissions is thus a result of a transport system geared towards a trade-based model of economic expansion, just-in-time production and the competitive needs of multinational corporations, resulting in negative effects for workers, communities and the environment;

RESOLVES that:

a)      The ITF and its affiliates, on being guided by experts, take a science-based approach to emissions reductions and climate change, and therefore commit themselves to defining and contributing to the major transformations which are required in transport and across society as a whole.

b)      The ITF supports sustainable transport alternatives based on a Reduce-Shift-Improve (RSI) framework which recognises that to achieve emission reductions there will have to be fundamental changes in the current system of globalised production which relies on global supply chains, low transport costs and cheap and increasingly casual labour.

c)      The ITF thus supports initiatives and measures which strengthen democratic control of the economy, curb financial speculation, reorient financial flows towards sustainable developments and re-introduce market regulations as necessary measures to reduce unnecessary transport needs, stop cut-throat competition and plan an integrated and sustainable transport system.

d)      The ITF considers the necessary transition to a low-carbon economy and a sustainable transport system as an opportunity to creating a better society for all – with more equality between countries and people, eradication of poverty, increased democracy, better working conditions and less pressure and stress.

e)      The ITF will insist that developed countries take their historic responsibility for the climate crisis and thus assist developing countries in their transition to sustainable economic development through transformation funds, national control of natural resources and free transfer of technology.

f)        The ITF support the transition to a green industry policy to achieve the necessary emission reductions and the creation of millions of new socially and environmentally sustainable jobs. This policy must be based on national programmes which link infrastructure investments, procurement policies, local content rules and positive support for domestic manufacturing to underpin the transition to a low-carbon society.

g)      The ITF will never accept that the transition to a low-carbon society takes place through increased unemployment and the undermining of wages and working conditions of transport workers. A just transition therefore has to involve job creation, decent work and quality jobs, a radical redistribution of wealth and social security schemes which safeguard peoples’ livelihood and social and human rights.

h)      ITF industrial sections and structures must work together to define the specific measures required in each transport section for changing the way goods and people are moved around as well as new methods and technologies to promote energy efficiency.

i)        The ITF supports that all transport modes cover their own external costs — including costs which are today paid by society as a whole. This should not, of course, prevent governments from organising collectively financed universal public services. Access to the industry should be tightly regulated. Wages, working conditions and social standards for transport workers should be improved, in order to reduce transport demands which are created as a result of substandard conditions and low costs.

j)        The ITF leads a campaign for the rapid scaling up of good public transport services world-wide, and the development of infrastructure to help counter rampant motorization.

k)      The ITF supports the inclusion of emission reduction targets for international maritime and aviation in a new global agreement, and as a matter of urgency will develop a union position on the proposed measures for developing and implementing these targets. The ITF will continue to play an active role in ICAO and IMO on these questions.

l)        The ITF and its affiliates build alliances with other social and environmental movements at a local, regional and global level to support sustainable transport alternatives and wider transformation.

m)   The ITF continues to participate in and support Global Union initiatives on climate change, including trade union representation at global intergovernmental climate change talks and for measures and solutions which can guarantee a just transition to a low-carbon society.

n)      The Executive Board promote, together with ITF sections, in-depth studies of the impact of climate change, and the policies to tackle it, on employment in the different sectors of transport with a view to identifying:

• The number and type of transport jobs which will be impacted.
• The new jobs which will be created.
• The process by which a just transition can be carried out within the different transport sectors.

o)      The ITF secretariat should:

• represent the joint interests of transport workers to secure a just transition to a sustainable transport system based on secure jobs, good wages and decent working conditions.
• research and develop guidelines and case-studies on how adaptation and mitigation measures might impact on the organisation of work in the transport industry.
• implement a comprehensive education programme on climate change in all ITF regions to raise awareness and build union capacity to respond to climate change.
• build a network of affiliates interested in planning and coordinating union activities on climate change.
• allocate adequate resources for continued work on climate change.

By Sid Shniad
Sunday, December 03, 2006
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Our panel today is called Corporate Media Assault and Developing A Labor Media Strategy. In my view, the issue should be framed as a discussion of the corporate assault on organized labour and the rest of society, and the role that labour media can play in mounting an effective response to that assault.

Thanks to a highly sophisticated, multi-pronged corporate effort, the labour movement is in crisis. How bad is the situation? Really bad. In the U.S. today, the portion of the working population that is represented by unions is at its lowest level since the 1920s. Meanwhile, corporations are rampaging unchecked.

How did we end up in this situation, with working people facing increasingly precarious employment, declining living standards, lack of medical care and inability to organize? To answer that question, we have to look at a bit of history.

After the Second World War, Western governments embraced expansionist Keynesian economic policies in order to avoid a repeat of the Depression of the 1930s. During the resulting economic expansion, which lasted nearly three decades, unemployment remained relatively low. As a result, fear of unemployment – which normally acts as a disciplinary force keeping workers in line – ceased to play its traditional role.

By the late 1960s, a significant number of workers who were dissatisfied with their working conditions and confident of their ability to find employment in the ever-expanding economy, began to exhibit levels of labour militancy and strike activity not seen since the 1930s. This militancy, together with the social spending that had characterized Keynesian policy, combined with rising real wages to threaten corporate profitability. From capital’s perspective, this constituted a major crisis.

In 1973 David Rockefeller, working with Zbigniew Brzezinski and representatives of the Brookings Institution, the Council on Foreign Relations and the Ford Foundation, convened meetings of prominent business figures, academics and politicians to address the crisis. Out of these meetings an organization known as the Trilateral Commission took shape. The Commission, whose membership is comprised of prominent business, political and academic figures, has addressed issues of concern to the corporate establishment ever since.

In 1975 the Commission published a book called The Crisis of Democracy. The book’s authors took up the concerns that were preoccupying big capital. They bemoaned the effects of government spending in the areas of education, welfare, social security, health and hospital care. Expressing the views of the rich and powerful, they blamed the crisis of profitability on what they termed “an excess of democracy.”

Over the past thirty years, the concerns raised in The Crisis of Democracy have been taken up by a variety of right wing think tanks, politicians and institutions. Inspired by this analysis, governments around the world have attacked the Post War welfare state, waging relentless war on society generally and the working class, in particular, by curbing wages, gutting social programs, privatizing government holdings and services, deregulating corporate activity and instituting “free trade” agreements in an overall policy framework that has become known as neoliberalism.

These same forces have also mounted an unrelenting attack on organized labour, employing sophisticated union-busting tactics and putting in place an assortment of legal barriers designed to prevent workers from joining unions or achieving contracts. In the words of a 2000 Human Rights Watch report, “[American] Workers who try to form and join trade unions to bargain with their employers are spied on, harassed, pressured, threatened, suspended, fired, deported or otherwise victimized in reprisal for their exercise of the right to freedom of association.”

Internationally, the neoliberal policies that the Trilateral Commission and other, similar groups began promoting in the 1970s have been institutionalized through organizations like the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the World Trade Organization. All have a common purpose: to ensure that profitability is not jeopardized by the action of organized labour or government pursuit of progressive social policy. How? By redefining the role of government and restructuring the political process to impede governments’ ability to generate progressive social and economic programs.

In my view, the labour movement’s response to the comprehensive attack that capital has mounted over the past 30 years has been grossly inadequate. Organizations like the AFL-CIO have made little or no effort to address the political and economic problems besetting society as a result of neoliberalism and how addressing these problems might influence labour’s response. In the U.S., the AFL and most of its prominent labour critics have largely restricted their response to the crisis that has overtaken organized labour by treating the issue of declining union membership as a technical problem.

Stateside, the highly restricted debate about the crisis besetting the labour movement began when the SEIU released its “Unite to Win” plan for labour’s revitalization. SEIU’s plan focused on merging unions to reduce inter-union competition, improving the use of union resources, and organizing workers in different organizations’ respective core areas.

Neither the SEIU and its allies nor their critics within the AFL-CIO have focused on the political and economic forces that workers are up against and the strategies needed to confront them. The prevailing view treats the decline of unions as a phenomenon that can be adequately addressed by changing the structure of the labour central. Instead of grappling with the wider challenges posed by the neoliberal onslaught, the discussion focuses on whether the AFL-CIO should give dues rebates to unions that focus on organizing and whether the size of the AFL-CIO Executive Council should be larger or smaller. Thanks to labour’s inadequate response, capital has been left free to wage unilateral class struggle.

In my view, the labour movement should be talking about:

• Challenging globalization - both the movement of jobs abroad and the institutionalization of corporate power at the expense of the rest of society
• Confronting rightwing governments that have attacked workers, unions and the rest of society
• Sidestepping institutions like the National Labor Relations Board, which is structured to guarantee that unions’ attempts to organize are frustrated
• Using unorthodox and unconventional means to organize in regions and sectors where unions are weak
• Aligning labour’s efforts with those of the African American, Latino, Asian and immigrant communities
• Fighting racism, sexism, homophobia and other forms of oppression and intolerance that are critical to overcoming divisions within the ranks of workers
• Adopting a political strategy that goes beyond the prevailing focus on providing electoral support to the Democratic Party in order to advance a broader progressive political agenda
• Building concrete forms of mutual support with workers in other countries
• Broadening and deepening democracy within unions.

The last point needs elaborating. In addition to its other shortcomings, the current attempt to address labour’s crisis by adopting a technical approach ignores problems rooted in unions’ internal cultures and structures: their highly restricted, largely formal commitment to internal democracy; their lack of strategic focus; their absence of an inspiring moral vision; and their failure to address the barbarism that is overtaking society at the hands of neoliberalism.

Instead of a discussion of vision and strategy, we see union leaders attacking each other, expending precious time and energy impugning each others’ motives and character. (I have witnessed this personally in the aftermath of the disastrous defeat that the union I work for suffered at the hands of the Telus corporation.)

The labour movement badly needs a debate about its future and its relationship to the broader society. This is a debate to which electronic communications media can make an enormous contribution in the context of prevailing union culture, which tends to squelch thorough-going, honest debate. Ordinary members are not enlisted in free-ranging discussion. Instead, too many labour leaders surround themselves with political allies and staffers whose job it is to screen out bad news and suggestions that challenge prevailing practices. When dissenting views are raised, those who raise them often find themselves isolated and undermined. With many leaders focused on maintaining themselves in office indefinitely and with internal dissent actively suppressed, members who might be interested in making change are ignored or sidelined.

A debate about the future of labour is desperately needed, but it should be a debate which is completely reframed. It should be a debate about a vision for the future of workers and their role in the broader society. It should discuss strategies that might work in the face of the dramatic changes that are sweeping the economy, including the way that work is done and the fact that many people are not working at all. The debate should include a discussion of how to stop the use of working people as cannon fodder in unjust wars and why so many citizens living in wealthy societies find it increasingly difficult to afford basics like housing and health care.

Activists in the labour movement who are proficient in the use of electronic media have an invaluable role to play in stimulating such debate within unions and beyond. But if that is to happen, the users of these media must deploy them in a manner which challenges the status quo mentality that dominates the labour movement today. This means using these media to shed light on unions’ restrictive practices, raising taboo ideological questions, and mobilizing support for elements that are serious about making necessary changes.

I do not make these suggestions lightly. There are forces in society, including those within the labour movement, that have a stake in maintaining the status quo. We can anticipate that they will respond to efforts to challenge the status quo with extreme hostility. But we should not allow that to deter us from doing what is necessary to rebuild our institutions and to rescue our society from strangulation at the hands of rampaging corporate capital.

Those who have demonstrated courage in the face of similar adversity can provide us with inspiration for this effort. So in concluding, I would like to recount a story I encountered while vacationing in Spain recently. In the course of my trip, I visited the University of Salamanca, where there is a statue dedicated to Fray Luis de Leon in the courtyard. In 1572, Fray Luis was teaching at the university when he was charged by the Inquisition with distributing a translation he had made of the Song of Songs from Latin to Spanish so that it could be accessible to ordinary people. For this crime, Fray Luis was tortured and imprisoned.

The story has it that when he regained his freedom five years later and returned to his teaching position at the university, Fray Luis resumed his lecture at the point where it had been interrupted by his arrest and remarked “As I was saying …”

I’m not a religious person. Nevertheless, I believe that Fray Luis’s courage and determination in insisting upon people’s right to information unfiltered by Church officials can provide a model for media activists who want to be part of the effort to transform organized labour into a progressive, activist movement capable of rescuing society from the predations of neoliberalism.

This paper was presented originally to the LaborTech 2006 conference at the University of San Francisco, November 18, 2006.

James Petras

While progressives and leftists write about the “crises of capitalism”, manufacturers, petroleum companies, bankers and most other major corporations on both sides of the Atlantic and Pacific coast are chuckling all the way to the bank.

From the first quarter of this year, corporate profits have shot up between twenty to over a hundred percent, (Financial Times August 10, 2010, p. 7).  In fact, corporate profits have risen higher than they were before the onset of the recession in 2008 (Money Morning March 31, 2010).  Contrary to progressive bloggers the rates of profits are rising not falling, particularly among the biggest corporations (Consensus Economics, August 12, 2010).  The buoyancy of corporate profits is directly a result of the deepening crises of the working class, public and private employees and small and medium size enterprises.

With the onset of the recession, big capital shed millions of jobs (one out of four Americans has been unemployed in 2010), secured give backs from the trade union bosses, received tax exemptions, subsidies and virtually interest free loans from local, state and federal governments.

As the recession temporarily bottomed out, big business doubled up production on the remaining labor force, intensifying exploitation (more output per worker) and lowered costs by passing onto the working class a much larger share of health insurance and pension benefits with the compliance of the millionaire trade union officials. The result is that while revenues declined, profits rose and balance sheets improved (Financial Times August 10, 2010).  Paradoxically, the CEO’s used the pretext and rhetoric of “crises” coming from progressive journalists to keep workers from demanding a larger share of the burgeoning profits, aided by the ever growing pool of unemployed and underemployed workers as possible “replacements” (scabs) in the event of industrial action.

The current boom of profits has not benefited all sectors of capitalism:  the windfall has accrued overwhelmingly with the biggest corporations.  In contrast many middle and small enterprises have suffered high rates of bankruptcy and losses, which has made them cheap and easy prey for buyouts for the ‘big fellows’ (Financial Times August 1, 2010).  The crises of middle capital has led to the concentration and centralization of capital and has contributed to the rising rate of profits for the largest corporations.

The failed diagnosis of capitalist crises by the left and progressives has been a perennial problem since the end of World War II, when we were told capitalism was ‘stagnant” and heading for a final collapse.  Recent prophets of the apocalypse saw in the 2008-2009 recession the definitive and total crash of the world capitalist system.  Blinded by Euro-American ethnocentrism, they failed to note that Asian capital never entered the “final crises” and Latin America had a mild and transient version (Financial Times June 9, 2010, p. 9).  The false prophets failed to recognize that different kinds of capitalism are more or less susceptible to crises … and that some variants tend to experience rapid recoveries (Asia-Latin America- Germany) while others (US, England, Southern and Eastern Europe) are more susceptible to anemic and precarious recoveries.

While Exxon-Mobile reaped over 100% growth of profits in 2010 and the auto corporations recorded their biggest profits in recent years, the workers’ wages and living standards declined and state-sector employees suffered harsh cutbacks and massive layoffs. It is clear that the recovery of corporate profit is based on the harshest exploitation of labor and the biggest transfers of public resources to the large private corporations.  The capitalist state, with Democratic President Obama in the lead, has transferred billions to big capital via direct bailouts, virtual interest free loans, tax cuts and by pressuring labor to accept lower wages and health and pension givebacks.  The White House plan for ‘recovery’ has worked beyond expectations – corporate profits have recovered; “only” the vast majority of workers have fallen deeper into crises.

The progressives’ failed predictions of capitalism’s demise are a result of their underestimation of the extent to which the White House and Congress would plunder the public treasury to resuscitate capital.  They underestimated the degree to which capital had been freed to shift the entire burden of profit recovery onto the backs of labor. In that regard, progressive rhetoric about “labor resistance” and the “trade union movement” reflected a lack of understanding that there has been virtually no resistance to the roll back of social and money wages because there is no labor organization.  What passes for it is totally ossified and at the service of the Democratic Party’s Wall Street advocates in the White House.

What the current unequal and uneven impact of the capitalist system tells us is that capitalists can overcome crises only by heightening exploitation and rolling back decades of “social gains”.  The current process of profit recovery, however, is highly precarious because it is based on exploiting current inventories, low interest rates and cutting labor costs (Financial Times August 10, 2010, p 7).  It is not based on dynamic new private investments and increased productive capacity.  In other words, these are “windfall gains” – not profits derived from increased sales revenues and expanding consumer markets.  How could they be – if wages are declining and unemployment/underemployment/and lost labor is over 22%?  Clearly, this short-term profit boom, based on political and social advantages and privileged power, is not sustainable. There are limits to the massive layoffs of public employees and production gains from the intensified exploitation of labor … something has to give. One thing is certain: The capitalist system will not fall or be replaced because of its internal rot or “contradictions”.

Doing – in-Against-and-Beyond Labour

John Holloway

(1)

At the heart of the social movements of recent years, at least in their more radical variants, is a drive against the logic of capitalist society. The so-called social movements are not organised as parties: their aim is not to take state power. The goal is rather to reverse the movement of a society gone mad, systematically mad. The movements say in effect “No, we refuse to go in that direction, we refuse to accept the mad logic of the capitalist system, we shall go in a different direction, or in different directions.”

The anti-capitalist movements of recent years give a new meaning to revolution. Revolution is no longer about taking power, but about breaking the insane dynamic that is embedded in the social cohesion of capitalism. The only way of thinking of this is as a movement from the particular, as the puncturing of that cohesion, as the creation of cracks in the texture of capitalist social relations, spaces or moments of refusal-and-creation. Revolution, then, becomes the creation, expansion, multiplication and confluence of these cracks.(1)

How do we conceptualise this sort of revolution? By going back to a category that was of central importance for Marx, but has been almost completely forgotten by his followers. This is the dual character of labour, the distinction between abstract and concrete labour.

The social cohesion of capitalism against which we revolt is constituted by abstract labour: not by money, not by value, but by the activity that generates the value and money forms, namely abstract labour. To crack the social cohesion of capitalism is to confront the cohesive force of abstract labour with a different sort of activity, an activity that does not fit in to abstract labour, that is not wholly contained within abstract labour.

(2)

This is not a dry theoretical point, for the starting point for considering the relationship between abstract and concrete labour is and must be rage, the scream. This is empirically true: that is actually where we start from. And also, rage is key to theory. It is rage which turns complaint into critique because it reminds us all the time that we do not fit, that we are not exhausted in that which we criticise. Rage is the voice of non-identity, of that which does not fit. The criticism of capitalism is absolutely boring if it is not critique ad hominem: if we do not open the categories and try to understand them, not just as fetishised expressions of human creative power, but as categories into which we do not fit, categories from which we overflow. Our creativity is contained and not contained in the social forms that negate it. The form is never adequate to the content. The content misfits the form: that is our rage, and that is our hope. This is crucial theoretically and

politically.

(3)

In recent years, it has become more common to cite Marx’s key statement in the opening pages of Capital. “this point [the two-fold nature of the labour contained in commodities] is the pivot on which a clear comprehension of Political Economy turns” (1867/1965:41). After the publication of the first volume, he wrote to Engels (Marx, 1867/1987:407): “The best points in my book are: 1) the two-fold character of labour, according to whether it is expressed as use value or exchange value. (All understanding of the facts depends upon this. It is emphasised immediately in the first chapter).”

It is important to emphasise this statement, against the Marxist tradition which buried it for so long, and with quite extraordinary success. It is important to emphasise it because it takes us to the core of Marx’s critique ad hominem, understanding the world in terms of human action and its contradictions. The two-fold nature of labour refers to abstract and concrete or useful labour. Concrete labour, according to Marx, is the activity that exists in any form of society, the activity that is necessary for human reproduction. Arguably, Marx was mistaken in referring to this as labour, since labour as an activity distinct from other activities is not common to all societies, so it seems more accurate to speak of concrete doing rather than concrete labour. In capitalist society, concrete doing (what Marx calls concrete labour) exists in the historically specific form of abstract labour. Concrete labours are brought into relation with other concrete labours through a process which

abstracts from their concrete characteristics, a process of quantitative commensuration effected normally through the medium of money, and this process of abstraction rebounds upon the concrete labour transforming it into an activity abstracted from (or alienated from) the person performing the activity.

(4)

It is thus the abstraction of our activity into abstract labour that constitutes the social cohesion of capitalist society. This is an important advance on the concept of alienated labour developed in the 1844 manuscripts: capitalist labour is not only an activity alienated from us, but it is this alienation or abstraction that constitutes the social nexus in capitalism. The key to understanding the cohesion (and functioning) of capitalist society is not money or value, but that which constitutes value and money, namely abstract labour. In other words we create the society that is destroying us, and that is what makes us think that we can stop making it.

Abstract labour as a form of activity did not always exist. It is a historically specific form of concrete doing that is established as the socially dominant form through the historical process generally referred to as primitive accumulation. The metamorphosis of human activity into abstract labour is not restricted to the workplace but involves the reorganisation of all aspects of human sociality: crucially, the objectification of nature, the homogenisation of time, the dimorphisation of sexuality, the separation of the political from the economic and the constitution of the state, and so on.

(5)

If we say that revolution is the breaking of the social cohesion of capitalism and that that cohesion is constituted by abstract labour, the question then is how we understand the solidity of that cohesion. In other words, how opaque is the social form of abstract labour? Or, rephrasing the same question in other words, is primitive accumulation to be understood simply as a historical phase that preceded capitalism? If we say (as Postone (1996) does) that labour is the central fetish of capitalist society, then how do we understand that fetish?

Marx, in the passage quoted above, refers to the dual character of labour as the key to an understanding of political economy. He does not refer just to abstract labour but to the dual character of labour as abstract and concrete labour, and yet the commentaries that focus on this point concentrate almost exclusively on abstract labour, assuming that concrete labour (concrete doing) is unproblematic since it is entirely subsumed within abstract labour, and can simply be discussed as productivity. This implies that primitive accumulation is to be understood as a historical phase that was completed in the past, effectively establishing abstract labour as the dominant form of concrete labour, thus separating the constitution of capitalism from its existence. It implies the understanding of form and content as a relation of identity in which content is completely subordinated to form until the moment of revolution. This establishes a clear separation between the past (in which concrete

doing existed independent of its abstraction) and the present (in which doing is entirely subsumed within its form), effectively enclosing the analysis of the relation between concrete doing and abstract labour within the homogenous concept of time that is itself a moment of abstract labour. This takes us inevitably to a view of capital as a relation of domination (rather than a contested relation of struggle) and therefore to a view of revolution as something that would have to come from outside the capital relation (from the Party, for example).

However, it is not adequate to understand the relation between abstract labour and concrete doing as one of domination. Rather, abstract labour is a constant struggle to contain concrete doing, to subject our daily activity to the logic of capital. Concrete doing exists not just in but also against and beyond abstract labour, in constant revolt against abstract labour. This is not to say that there is some transhistorical entity called concrete doing, but that in capitalist society concrete doing is constituted by its misfitting, by its non-identity with abstract labour, by its opposition to and overflowing from abstract labour.

This means that there can be no clear separation between the constitution and the existence of the capitalist social relations. It is not the case that capitalist social relations were first constituted in the period of primitive accumulation or the transition from feudalism, and that then they simply exist as closed social relations. If concrete doing constantly rebels against and overflows beyond abstract labour, if (in other words) our attempt to live like humans constantly clashes with and ruptures the logic of capitalist cohesion, then this means that the existence of capitalist social relations depends on their constant reconstitution, and that therefore primitive accumulation is not just an episode in the past. If capitalism exists today, it is because we constitute it today, not because it was constituted two or three hundred years ago. If this is so, then the question of revolution is radically transformed. It is not: how do we abolish capitalism? But rather, how do we cease

to reconstitute capitalism, how do we stop creating capitalism? The answer is clear (but not easy): by ceasing to allow the daily transformation of our doing, our concrete activity, into abstract labour, by developing an activity that does not recreate capitalist social relations, an activity that does not fit in with the logic of the social cohesion of capitalism.

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This might seem absurd, were it not for the fact that the revolt of concrete doing against abstract labour is all around us. Sometimes it takes dramatic proportions when a group like the Zapatistas says “no, we will not act according to the logic of capital, we shall do what we consider important at the rhythm that we consider appropriate.” But of course it does not have to be on such a large scale: the revolt of doing against abstract labour and the determinations and rhythms that it imposes upon us is deeply rooted in our everyday lives. Pannekoek said of the workplace that “every shop, every enterprise, even outside of times of sharp conflict, of strikes and wage reductions, is the scene of a constant silent war, of a perpetual struggle, of pressure and counter-pressure” (2005:5).(2) But it is not just in the workplace: life itself is a constant struggle to break through the connections forged by abstract labour to create other sorts of social relations: when we refuse to go to

work so that we can stay and play with the children, when we read (or write) an article like this, when we choose to do something not because it will bring us money but just because we enjoy it or consider it important. All the time we oppose use value to value, concrete doing to abstract labour. It is from these revolts of everyday existence, and not from the struggles of activists or parties that we must pose the question of the possibility of ceasing to create capitalism and creating a different sort of society.

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Not only is there a constant revolt of concrete against abstract labour, but there is now a crisis of abstract labour. Abstract labour cannot be understood as something stable: its rhythms are shaped by socially necessary labour time. Since abstract labour is value-producing labour and value production is determined by socially necessary labour time, there is a constant redefinition of abstract labour: abstract labour is a constant compulsion to go faster, faster, faster. Abstract labour constantly undermines its own existence: an activity that produced value a hundred (or ten, or five) years ago no longer produces value today. Abstraction becomes a more and more exigent process, and it becomes harder and harder for people to keep pace with it: more and more of us misfit, and more and more of us consciously revolt against abstract labour. Abstraction becomes an ever greater pressure, but at the same time it becomes a more and more inadequate form of organising human activity:

abstraction is not able to channel effectively the activities of a large part of humanity.

The dynamic of abstraction comes up increasingly against a resistance that splits open the apparently unitary concept of labour and poses the struggle against abstract labour at the centre of anti-capitalist struggle. Anti-capitalist struggle becomes the assertion of a different way of doing, a different way of living; or rather, the simple assertion of a different way of doing (I want to spend time with my friends, with my children, I want to be a good teacher, carpenter, doctor and work at a slower pace, I want to cultivate my garden) becomes converted into anti-capitalist struggle. The survival of capital depends on its ability to impose (and constantly redefine) abstract labour. The survival of humanity depends on our ability to stop performing abstract labour and do something sensible instead. Humanity is simply the struggle of doing against labour.

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It is in the context of the crisis of abstract labour that the discussion of abstract labour acquires importance. It is important, that is, if we focus not just on abstract labour, but on the dual character of labour, the antagonism between doing and labour. If we focus just on abstract labour and forget concrete doing, then we just develop a more sophisticated picture of capitalist domination, of how capitalism works. Our problem, however, is not to understand how capitalism works but to stop creating and recreating it. And that means strengthening doing in its struggle against labour.

It is not theory that brings about the splitting of the unitary concept of labour. The splitting of the unitary concept has been the result of struggle. It is a multitude of struggles, large and small, that have made it clear that it makes little sense to speak just of “labour”, that we have to open up “labour” and see that the category conceals the constant tension-antagonism between concrete doing (doing what we want, what we consider necessary or enjoyable) and abstract labour (value-producing, capital-producing labour). It is struggle that splits open the category, but theoretical reflection (understood as a moment of struggle) has an important role to play in keeping the distinction open.

This is important at the moment when there are so many pressures to close the category, to forget about the antagonism the category conceals, to dismiss the notion that there could be some form of activity other than abstract labour as silly, romantic, irresponsible. In capitalist society, access to the means of production and survival usually depends upon our converting our activity, our doing, into labour in the service of capital, abstract labour. We are now at a moment in all the world in which capital is unable to convert the activity of millions and millions of people (especially young people) into labour, other than on a very precarious basis. Given that exclusion from labour is generally associated with material poverty, do we now say to capital “please give us more employment, please convert our doing into labour, we will happily labour faster-faster-faster”? This is the position of the trade unions and many left political parties, as it must be, for they are organisations

based on abstract labour, on the suppression of the distinction between labour and doing. Or do we say “no, we cannot go that way (and we do not ask anything of capital). We know that the logic of faster-faster-faster will lead to ever bigger crises, and we know that, if it continues, it will probably destroy human existence altogether. For this reason we see crisis and unemployment and precariousness as a stimulus to strengthen other forms of doing, to strengthen the struggle of doing against labour.” There is no easy answer here, and no pure solution, because our material survival depends, for most of us, on subordinating our activity to some degree to the logic of abstraction. But it is essential to keep the distinction open and find ways forward, to strengthen the insubmission of doing to labour, to extend the rupture of labour by doing. That is the only way in which we can stop reproducing the system that is killing us.

John Holloway is a Professor in the Instituto de Ciencias Sociales y Humanidades of the Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla in Mexico. His publications include Crack Capitalism (Pluto, 2010), Change the World Without Taking Power (Pluto, 2005), Zapatista! Reinventing Revolution in Mexico (co-editor, Pluto, 1998) and Global Capital, National State and the Politics of Money (co-editor, Palgrave Macmillan, 1994).

Notes:

(1) For a development of this argument, see my forthcoming book, Crack Capitalism.

(2) I take the quote from Shukaitis (2009:15).

References:

Holloway, John (2010) Crack Capitalism (London: Pluto Press)

Marx, Karl (1867/1965), Capital, Vol. 1 (Moscow: Progress Publishers)

Marx, Karl (1867/1987), ‘Letter of Marx to Engels, 24.8.1867′, in Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels, Collected Works vol. 42 (London: Lawrence & Wishart), p. 407

Pannekoek, Anton (2005) Workers’ Councils (Oakland: AK Press)

Postone, Moishe (1996) Time, Labour, and Social Domination: A reinterpretation of Marx’s critical theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press)

Shukaitis, Stevphen (2009) Imaginal Machines: Autonomy and Self-Organisation in the Revolutions of Everyday Life (New York: Autonomedia)