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Ben Little asks can we rework class politics post-New Labour?
Is it strange that as Labour slumps in the polls there has been a flurry of activity on the left around class? The Fabian society held an event last week on the subject, Harriet Harman addressed the issue at the Compass conference and on the 28th of June the journal Soundings ran a day of seminars to interrogate the relationship between class and culture.
I did not attend the first two of these events, but through editing the online debate in the build up to the Soundings seminars and attending on the day, I would argue that there is no coincidence in the timeliness of these discussions.
(Where a name appears in this blog it refers to an article on the Soundings debate website.)
Was it Tony Blair in 1998 or John Prescott the year before who declared "we're all middle class now"? Or both? I am not sure it matters much who it was, but in retrospect the statement seems pretty central to the New Labour identity. If this really was the case in the late 1990s, that Britain could be described as fundamentally classless and governed without a sense of class politics, then credit for this apparent achievement would almost certainly have to go to the preceding years of Conservative government. Edward Fullbrook suggests there might be some truth to that- through the Gini scale used by economists to measure levels of equality - the most equitable government we have had since Thatcher came to power was between 1991 and 1997 under John Major.
But of course that is not what Blair/Prescott meant, the intent of that statement was that New Labour in government was not going to be bound by the discourse of class; in fact, they were going to ignore it and all the consequences for policy that it could entail. By sweeping away the grounding of over a century of leftist intellectual tradition New Labour would be more palatable to a right-wing media, more effective in government and ultimately more electable going forward. It would be naive to suggest that this was not an important tactical move at the time, but 11 years on this fundamental shift in Labour's rhetoric is showing its long-term consequences.
Without the cover of Blair's charisma, the hollowness of this claim to a one class society becomes apparent. The rejection of class reveals an absence at the heart of our government's thinking. Increasingly, New Labour under Brown seems to situate itself intellectually as free market fundamentalism backed up by a bit of technocratic paternalism and cemented with a dollop of meritocratic rhetoric. Without a proper discourse of class in Britain we lack the means to describe our communities, our societies, our four nations. We find it harder to describe relations of (un)employment (Jane Wills), discuss ethnicity and religion(Amir Saeed), understand the new international economy(Liv Sovik), think about gender (Valerie Bryson), or realistically come to terms with inequality (Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett). Lacking an ability to think these issues through in a linked up way we have ended up with impoverished Muslim communities retreating into the dogmatic securities of radical Islam, a white working class turning from Labour to the BNP, young people embracing knife and gun culture as a response to lack of positive opportunities and a total inability to address the disproportionate wealth of the top 1% in society.
Of course, the wrong discourse of class can mask these issues as much as ignore it does. The old Marxist dialectical model is no longer fit for purpose. In the course of the debate the argument was made that the vast majority of us are now in strictly Marxian terms proletariat, we sell our labour and do not own the means of production. This would be an easy position to take and for some of us canonically reassuring, but the reality is more complex. Anyone with an insurance policy, savings or a private pension is complicit in the system of global capital by default.
An alternative Marxism would be to argue that class can best be understood internationally. At the top are the transnational capitalists (Leslie Sklair) providing goods and services for a broadly consumerist North off the back of the labours of a proletariat South. In this scenario the vast majority are technically middle class, through consumption, personal savings and investments we support the banks that provide the capital for those at the top to expand their exploitation of the global south. This is not something new however; such an argument would apply from the very first days of colonialism and taking new and different forms throughout history. It also subsumes the cultural experience of class and localised class systems in a globalised discourse.
Moreover, a sense of class, despite its fall from grace under Blair and Brown, has remained deeply embedded in our culture. In the absence of a strong working class politics cultural oppression has re-emerged with an almost Victorian horror at the indignity of the poor (Heather Nunn and Anita Biressi), and just as "Chav" culture has become a location for ridicule of the working class, so too have the middle classes lost their sense of social responsibility (Andrew Pearmain) as they transmogrify into the conservative middle Britain (Zoe Gannon) of hard-working families struggling for recognition and status in the knowledge economy (Nick Stevenson).
Hierarchies will always take cultural forms, have social consequences and economic outcomes (Jonathan Rutherford). Class is the discourse that gives us the tools to understand these processes. Now more than ever, it is a discourse in flux: it needs rethinking and reworking. We must find new ways to come to terms with issues of status and privilege. We must do this with an awareness of the local, the national and the international, and how they interconnect. We must acknowledge that the experience of class is cultural even if its causes are financial. We must recognise that there are now many different working and middle classes in thrall to an economic elite that seems bound to no nation, accountable to no-one.
These are issues that are yet to be fully addressed, but during the Soundings seminars first steps were taken. We can think through possibilities of a progressive politics of place, whether this is a progressive nationalism to challenge the BNP(Mark Perryman) or along the lines of London Citizens who campaign for a living wage in London; we can start to think about new international solidarities like Women Working Worldwide where the old ones no longer seem to function. The start is there, but the challenge of reworking class after New Labour is massive and only just beginning.
Ben Little, Soundings.
Soundings: Class and Cultures debate
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Comments
on 15 July 2008, 9:00:31 PM
So the dialectic is not imagined. It arises from the relationship of human beings to the world in which they exist.We may, of course, look at the world and attempt to understand its nature and its relationship with the totality of existence. I think, therefore the world is. Metaphysical solipsism is the ultimate reality and we know that the sun goes around the earth, because we can see that it does, or at least I can. Contemplation is a wonderful thing but if we do it for long enough we will starve to death,
So we can't, we need to earn a living. And it is the interaction of people with the world, the shaping of the world to meet our needs, developmentally, which informs our understanding of it, which is reapplied to it. in the materialist dialectic, in a continuous process of 'progress' . We work therefore we are.
on 15 July 2008, 7:56:49 PM
I do actually agree in principle with your point about Engels’ philosophical project to extend an understanding of materialist dialectics to an explanation of physical as well as historical process. So far as Hegel goes you seem to have a very Hegelian view of Hegel, with much of the mysticism and idealism that served ultimately to constrain his own development of philosophy and ideology.
Moving back to the issue of domestic labour, as arose from Dugsie’s posting; I think the relationship is one of alienated labour because a surplus value is clearly extracted. This, I freely admit is ‘augmented’ by the time freed up for the employing middle-class employer/family, to enjoy (and create,) the leisure, status and cultural pursuits they think their own. This, whether or not the more liberal of them think others should enjoy them too. That the employer may have a close and mutually rewarding relationship with the ‘treasure,’ nanny, gardener, or whomever, is relevant. But it is based on the cash nexus ultimately. As I understand it, you are saying that this gives rise to class interests rather than a strictly class identity. A nice distinction, which is arguable if you think that in the social dynamics of (in particular?) subjectively friendly, symbiotic domestic employer/ employee relationships, the negation is in effect negated. The exploitation is there. - inherent in the structure of the relationship between the two parties.
The fact that the sociological group, we are referring to as ‘middle-class’ are in class terms workers themselves and are a strata of the working class adds difficulty and complexity to an understanding of class identity and politics. But what doesn’t?
Again if I correctly understand, you to be saying that these domestic workers cannot be defined as part of the proletariat, what are they? The answer is of course that they are part of the working class. They are arguably part of what the later Marx understood as the Lumpen Proletariat. Whilst both the earlier and the later Marx insisted that the proletariat and the working class were not synonymous (a distinction worth keeping, I suggest,) in contemporary society are proletarianised. If the domestic worker is Tarquin, or is Gemima, doing this work for the experience of it and is but an anguished phone call away from dosh and a car to the family pile if it all goes wrong, I would agree with you. But most domestic employees are not in this position.
Of course, such is society that, employers of domestic labour and their employees are already in an established class position, before they meet. --Such is the driving force bringing them together and thereby re-enforcing and replicating in substance pre existing class relationships.
I agree that we should avoid conflating oppression with exploitation. That distinction might be useful in considering domestic labour in some familial contexts.
on 15 July 2008, 10:56:19 AM
I am not sure why you think I am moaning. I was being light hearted. Your post on the letter to Bloch was a response to a post by somebody other than me. I was being mildly self-deprecating in indicating my disappointment – I was most keen to continue what I thought was turning out to be a very interesting discussion.
Likewise, I am sorry if you thought the term ‘holy scripture’ inappropriate. Again, it was lighthearted. As, I think, was 'Dugsies' reference to 'Lord Marx'. You seemed familiar with the ways of Marxian textual exegesis and thus, I presumed, would ‘get it’. I really do like swapping Marx/Engels references. Here is one: ‘And Criticism so loved the mass that it sent its only begotten son, that all who believe in him may not be lost, but may have Critical life’. See - it is not only I who employs a little spiritual allusion in the playful discussion of important matters.
In any case, I would have thought that my post indicated that I was taking you very seriously, and conducting things with good will. I am sorry that our discussion has yet again degenerated into personalised speculation of my motives and character.
Anyway, it seems to me that we have importantly different conceptions of exploitation in relation to politics. I am not saying that domestic staff or care workers are not right to say that they are ‘exploited’ as a way of talking about their conditions. But it is not the same as the exploitation of a proletariat by a bourgeoisie as Marx understood it: the extraction of profit from alienated labour, in a (properly speaking) dialectical relationship such that the identity of one party is both dependent on and negated by the other. In some contexts, then, patriarchal domestic relations can constitute a dialectical relationship of exploitation and be the, in your terms, ‘class politics’ while what looked like the ‘class politics’ turns out to be an identity politics (in the sense of a promotion or defence of an identity independent of the relationship of exploitation). It is a mistake to conflate 'oppression' with 'exploitation'.
The point is that it is the exploitation that gives rise to the ‘class interests’ rather than the presence of identifiable classes that gives rise to the interests and then the exploitation.
Alan
on 14 July 2008, 11:14:50 PM
"As to your recourse to the term, ‘holy scripture’ "
When you say your prayers to Lord Marx tonight please ask him to bring the revolution forward a bit.
on 14 July 2008, 9:51:28 PM
Moving away from the sociologically middle class and their concerns for a moment, arguably thousands of people who are poorer pensioners, or are poorer recipients of the Care component of DLA, or of the Carriers Allowance are forced into the role of exploiters in order that very basic needs might be met. —Needs far more basic than the economic and status needs of a middle class who are germane to the class and political imperatives that actually own most of the economy, its culture and its society.
In a developed capitalist society, the division between those who own the means of production and those who must self their labour power to live is crystal clear. But that is far from saying that the relationship is simple, or is devoid of complexity and contradiction. What dialectical relationship is? None. —As we would both agree.
Class relationships are always structural. They are obviously social of course. But less obviously, they are also cultural and ideological. Yet it the structural which is deemed most obvious in British society, (talked about, acknowledged, revelled in by some,) and yet is most deigned by the political Right, (which of course includes Labour neo-liberals.)
Race, gender, religion are all vital and significant variables; objectively and subjectively. Arguably social democracy/ reformist socialism, save in its most progressive strands, tended to see these social phenomena as alternatives to an economic, class analysis. But until the conscious abandonment of reformist socialism, race, gender, religion, (and I would add approaches to physical and mental capacity,) were located by Labour in its diffuse, divided, confused, but essentially firm resolution to build a socialist society. Now, all of those things are expressions of identity and consumption. In this context of greater atomisation and the culture of identity politics, fear has also emerged as a distinct variable in its own right. A small example: Last week in Any Questions, Ben Bradshaw tried to conflate the Tory objections to the objections to the 42 Day law, with David Davis’ objections to Civil Partnerships. Clearly fear, (justified or not) is at the root of the 42-day detention proposals. But for Bradshaw, the erosion of what are essentially collective and social Rights explicit in the 42-Day proposals, were set at nought against the individual Rights conferred by Civil Partnership. His arguments were typically those of individualised culture and identity. It was ‘bad’ to oppose 42-Day Detention. ‘Good’ to support Civil Partnerships. For those of us who are socialists and support Civil Partnerships, juxtaposing them to prove a kind of liberalism to defend a quite different and deeply reactionary policy said much about the values and culture of identity politics.
on 14 July 2008, 8:09:45 PM
As to your recourse to the term, ‘holy scripture’ I suppose that is all of a piece with what has been your demeanour on this site. Given your CV, better might have been expected of you. But there we go.
on 14 July 2008, 7:16:52 PM
For a moment I was excited thinking you had replied to me. But actually, I don’t think you are replying to me. I notice that my name dropped off some posts (mine are mostly about interest and exploitation).
As it happens I don’t mind swapping extracts from holy scripture. The Letter to Bloch is one of those that cultural studies people made a lot of use of in the eighties in order to connect their project of ideological analysis and explanation with canonical thought (after all it is Engels, almost but not quite as good as Marx, saying that ‘culture matters’). I am mildly surprised to see you quoting it but that probably just means I read you wrong.
It’s a letter and so limited. You are right to point to its ‘real-world’ context of disputes and schisms internal to the political movement after Marx’s death, an attempt to assert orthodoxy over the younger heretics and all that. But it is also part of Engels’ own philosophical project to extend a version of materialist dialectics to the explanation of physical as well as historical processes.
I have never been quite sure of how to read it – it seems to me an attempt to have the cake and eat it too. He is aware that the transformation of spirit into ‘matter’ maintains too many of the problems of the Hegelian original, and so needs supplement, but is unwilling to do away with Hegelianism altogether. He should be forgiven for that. One has to think from somewhere. And Hegel is like that. Every counter move is always already accounted for. And you can never be ‘a bit’ Hegelian. It’s the whole mystical cake or nothing. But in the end the concept of the dialectic is incompatible with materialism.
In this bit of Engels, a lot hangs on whether one understands ‘production and reproduction of real life’ (and it is ‘of’ real life not ‘in’) in a narrow or general way. If a narrow way, then it may be taken to relate to specific interests such that it says that in historical explanation appeal to a class interest always has priority over any other interest, and even trumps the interest parties thought themselves to have at the time. Then your historical explanation always rests on the covert reintroduction of a teleological claim to which only the properly trained historian has access (i.e. E.P. Thompson’s complaint against it). If taken broadly then it means that there is no history without the reproduction of a social formation as such. But what would ‘interests’ look like at this abstract level? Too broad to be determinant surely, which seems to me to be Engels’ view in the letter (that’s why there is no algorithm of historical explanation). If there is no interest then it cannot function as an explanatory theory of history with the kind of political purchase that communism demands. You’ll have a kind of broad-brush bio-material history that is highly illuminating but necessarily dispenses with any normative conception of ‘interests’.
If you start where Engels was you have to jump one way or the other. It was a dilemma that kept a lot of people busy for quite a long time.
Alan
on 14 July 2008, 6:02:48 PM
“According to the materialist conception of history the determining element in history is ultimately the production and reproduction in real life. More than this neither Marx nor I have ever asserted.
"If therefore somebody twists this into the statement that the economic element is the only determining one, he transforms it into a meaningless, abstract and absurd phrase.
The economic situation is the basis, but the various elements of the superstructure – political forms of the class struggle and its consequences, constitutions established by the victorious class after a successful battle, etc. – forms of law – and then even the reflexes of all these actual struggles in the brains of the combatants: political, legal, philosophical theories, religious ideas and their further development into systems of dogma – also exercise their influence upon the course of the historical struggles and in many cases preponderate in determining their form.
There is an interaction of all these elements in which, amid all the endless host of accidents (i.e., of things and events, whose inner connection is so remote or impossible to prove that we regard it as absent so and can neglect it) the economic movement finally asserts itself as necessary. Otherwise the application of the theory to any period of history one chose would be easier than the solution of a simple equation of the first degree.”
on 14 July 2008, 9:28:22 AM
But what is the interest of this class and from where does its objectivity derive? You say that despite their second homes etc. they are ‘still dependent on their own greater exploitation to live’. How so? Are they not dependent on the exploitation of others?
If ‘class analysis’ is not to be merely a sociology or a kind of cultural butterfly collecting, and if the politics to be derived from it are to be anything other than another cultural politics then we need to show a) a structured relationship of exploitation and b) the theoretical reason why this relationship necessarily leads to an interest - i.e. the presence of a contradiction or the importation of a normative claim and c) the process that leads to the derivation from this of a specifically political consciousness.
On a not-so-side note, do the people in Dugsie’s hypothetical estates have any characteristics other than their incomes and their putative assets? Do they possess genders? And are these constituted in any kind of structured relationship of exploitation? Are they all in work? What if some of them are working unpaid full time as carers therefore with no direct relation to either the means of production or profit? How do you assign an objective class position to such?
Alan
on 14 July 2008, 9:10:56 AM
“I don't see how dialectic can be dispensed with in understanding social causation, difficult though it may be”.
Dialectics is not a theory of causation.
“Marx spoke of the economic being determinant in the last instant”.
No, he didn’t.
on 13 July 2008, 9:53:29 PM
It's essentially about social causation, isn't it ? An empirical example is simply an example based on experience and doesn't, in itself, constitute empiricism. If I was simply attempting to read a situation from apparently self-evident facts, without reference to any theorisation which gave them meaning, as if those facts spoke for themselves, then I would be guilty of empiricism. Conversely, if I looked for causation in an abstract and problematical notion of culture, then I would be guilty of idealism.
I don't see how dialectic can be dispensed with in understanding social causation, difficult though it may be. Marx spoke of the economic being determinant in the last instant. I understand this to mean that there is a recurring tendency for the economic to be determinant. This tendency is not a fully determined process. There is no historicism involved. However, I see no reason to think that the economic is not still central to social development.
The different nature of the modern British economy is more to do with an increase in the organic composition of capital and consequent changes in the international division of labour, than any fundamental change in capitalism. The capitalist mode of production and distribution is the dominant mode in international society, not the only one.
on 13 July 2008, 7:24:29 PM
There is a clear and determined move in Labour neo-liberal circles to invest culture and indeed identify, with greater salience as a counter to the claims of class based economics. Paradoxically, much of the Labour Right, from whence ‘new labour’ comes, was the product and the defenders of a distinctively working class culture. A culture that was at least as likely to be as anti Left, (and particularly anti Marxist,) as it was determined by its own lights to gain economic advancement for its own class, as they perceived it. Indeed, a driving force of anti-Left working class politics in the LP has been a distaste for the elitist culture of the sociologically middle class, whom they saw as too liberal, too airy fairy, (to borrow a scientific term,) and too much given to intellectualism. To the extent that these are prejudices, they inform the alliance that part of the weakened working class Right have formed with those whom they culturally despise, in order to keep Labour on the neo-liberal course: whether or not this asymmetrical coalition continues to describe itself as, ‘new labour.’
With the decline of manufacturing and mining the consequent changes within the economy and within the majority population, have led to an erosion of working class political consciousness. The culture and solidarity of that consciousness (always more than the trade unions and dog racing of bourgeois parody and contempt,) have gone for the most part. Instead a particularly narrow concept of working class identity has been accommodated into the generalised bourgeois culture of atomistic consumption and alienation. I would argue that working class culture was and were it still exists, is, by definition social, broadly based in its content and aspiration; and is collectivist. I suspect that anti Left, and anti-socialist, as many of the Labour Right as drawn from working class and trade union backgrounds are, they never expected that class would be reduced to an aspect of identity politics. But that is what the ‘new labour’ bourgeois have done in collaboration with its middle-class allies. And in return all the working class Labour Right can offer is Tory social justice for the deserving poor; workfare for the undeserving; - and of course the likes of class warriors like Stephen McCabe to act as recruiting sergeants for the Tories at critical moments.
Whilst the two housing estates illustrate the more obvious manifestations of class based economics, they would not necessarily evidence that on either estate workers have to work harder and for longer to maintain their respective standards of living. Work longer, not just in terms of hours per week, but also for a longer working lifetime. On either estate two breadwinners is pretty well the norm to maintain a standard of living relative to the mid 1970s, which is lower now and was maintained typically by the necessity to work fewer hours.
In addition a significant minority of people living on the more expensive estate might have a few shares. They might even have a holiday home in France or the Dales. But they are still dependent on their own greater exploitation to live. They certainly have extra political status in that they will be heard as neo-liberal changes to so called democratic representative bodies and their roles. - Changes which in practice place a premium on the concerns and the votes of those seen to be more inspirational (in neo-liberal terms,) and less wedded to any particular party. At all events, the two classes of capitalist society are each internally stratified and within that stratification they are in conflict. But it is clearly the capitalists’ class who maintain their cohesion and purpose such that they not only retain power, but also thereby determine the ideological and political parameters in which the working class act politically and culturally. In Britain, the relationship of political and cultural dependency of the working class on the capitalist class has always been strong. Never all one way, of course. But always strong.
on 12 July 2008, 4:38:54 PM
Class is a relationship of exploitation between more than one party or group. In your example this would mean the rich estate living off the poorer one (and keeping it poor so that it can stay rich). What you describe is a cultural difference in which economic activity is contained within the culture.
If not conceived in relation to exploitation class becomes just another form of identity politics. Confusion on this point contributed greatly to the undoing of the Labour Party left.
on 12 July 2008, 1:28:35 PM
We have debated many times and in many places over the years. We are now firm friends and more often than not on the same side of an argument. We know each others political positions very well. Inevitably, there some differences between us, but I even have differences with myself. I am a decentred individual, after all.
The discussion here has started to come around to issues of class, which we have talked about many times before. Is class any longer a useful way of thinking about social formations ? Was it ever ? As a lad who left school at 15, I find it very difficult, as you know, to keep up with you intellectuals. So perhaps you will kindly allow me to put a couple of rather simple ideas to you.
If I was to seek out a very large housing estate of the kind which we used to call 'council' estates, now likely to be partly social housing and partly owner occupied. I live on a much smaller version of such an estate myself. And if I was to seek out a large very private estate where prices started say, at £300, 000, even in these days of housing deflation, and went up to say around £1m. If I was then to make some calculation of the relative wealth and incomes of the two estates and discovered that one estate ( guess which ) was much better off than the other, would you say that this provided empirical evidence for the existence of class based on economics, rather than culture ? I mean leaving aside questions about which type of music was most popular on each estate.
If your answer is no, then please give me some indication of the theoretical practice I would need to engage in, if I wanted to either substantiate or refute the existence of economic class in our society.
I haven't got time for the second idea at the moment. I'll keep it up my sleeve .
on 12 July 2008, 10:31:12 AM
You said a lot of things and I can’t respond to everything – in any case I agree with much of what you say about class/labour but would want to take some things little further and add some nuance to the analysis. It seems to me most helpful if I respond to those things so we can take things further together. I also think this will help clarify some of the confusions that exist regarding the respective relationships of progress, compass, LRC etc.
Firstly, you say ‘Labour is committed to expanding the role of the market and related corporate interests, over those of individuals; over those who by their labour power produce the wealth, goods and services of society; and over society itself‘.
Well, ‘yes’, but ‘yes, and…’. With the exception of the reference to individuals this would be a good one-sentence definition of the kind of neo-liberalism that shaped 80’s governments. The Labour governments since 1997 have been completely shaped by that period but have not simply reproduced that ideology. I think it is vital to recognize this – that they innovated within neo-liberalism in ways that libertarians never could. What is distinctive about the new-labour mode of neo-liberalisation has been the expansion of the active role of the state in generating not only the conditions of a certain kind of market activity but the individuals/subjects adapted to it. In part this has been because wealth in contemporary capitalism etc. is not solely (perhaps not primarily) produced by labour power in a traditional sense. Hence new Labour makes its primary object of policy ‘the labourer’ themselves since it finds them too often insufficiently profitable.
Secondly, your response to my question about working class politics.
Here I think there is an important conceptual difference. It is to do with your conjoining of class to politics as if there was a clear and necessary connection between the two. I don’t think that today the sociology of class maps onto a politics of class. I think that you implicitly acknowledge that in your proposition that there is an organized political interest that calls itself ‘the progressive community’ but which is based around no clear sociological class interest (you have it made up of consultants, think tanks, NGO’s etc.). Now I think you are right to identify something here but I think your definition should be broadened out and separated from sociological class.
We’d need to include within it a much broader array of individual and institutional actors that do not form a coherent set but are parts of broader social (and ideological) networks involved in the generation of certain kinds of governmental knowledge and in its implementation (across social domains). This is not a class politics in a traditional sense. It is not motivated by any traditional defined class interest (for the simple reason that the interests of this group are not in a necessarily antagonistic relation with any other (although it is of course in antagonistic relations with others). It is important not to equate any kind of group interest with class interest.
You describe this group as being ‘morally offended by poverty where it can ameliorate it without any redistribution of power; and can place efforts towards that amelioration within those market and labour flexibilities dressed up in the language of ‘social justice.’ Well, yes but not quite. I don’t think it is on the whole morally offended by poverty as such (the abolition of the moral dimension to Labour policy has been a significant part of Blairism obscured by his moralistic mannerisms). It’s objection is more often to do with the ungovernability and unproductiveness of certain places, persons and actions. And it conceives of social justice not as ‘amelioration without redistribution’ but as the outcome of a technocratic activity that ‘empowers’ people to act as free individuals within that market i.e. that recreates them as market subjects and equates that with freedom. Incidentally it is on both of these fronts that Cameron is now making a rival pitch (with a meaningful moral language and a different notion of social justice).
In the Marxist tradition the connection between class and politics came not simply from sociological conditions but specifically from the relationship of exploitation between classes; a relationship which in turn gave those classes contradictory interests. The internationalization of production, the massively increased capacity to extract profit from formally non-productive activities (the ‘subsumption’ of activities within the process of extracting profit) and the expansion of national governmental expenditure and activity (including the incorporation of persons into all encompassing government institutions such as education, health and welfare) transformed things. It relocates relationships of exploitation between first and third world, between us and the external natural world and between the economy and sociality as such. This is one reason why political agitation around development/internationalization, the environment and sociality (e.g. Compass’ proposals to make the idea and value of care central) are important.
It looks to me as if the Soundings conference was about addressing this – and in fact a lot of non-LRC activity on the left is also about working out what the implications of this are for British politics and what such a politics can be like – as well as what sorts of short and long term actions could be taken in response. As you will be aware I do get personally upset when people (gratuitously in my view) take any attempt to think this situation as automatically assimilable to, say, Progress and reject it without tring to understand. There is a vital need to bring different strands of left-thinking together in order to clarify real differences, identify genuine overlaps and to work together on common problems.
I hope that the conversation we have finally begun here will continue and greatly look forward to reading your next response.
on 11 July 2008, 10:14:17 PM
‘a realisation that class can be used, to political ends which are neither progressive, nor in the Labour sense socialist’. What are you referring to here?’
This is sadly perfectly simple: Labour is committed to expanding the role of the market and related corporate interests, over those of individuals; over those who by their labour power produce the wealth, goods and services of society; and over society itself. In these circumstances ‘class’ is reduced a matter of rhetoric. It becomes a marketing tool, a matter of differentiation with the Tories. Progressive purpose gives place to political comodification. From progressive politics, to the ‘progressive’ politics as understood by Compass and Progress. For all of its contradictions and faults LP socialism is about greater democracy, economic and social emancipation and social ownership of the means of production.
‘Secondly, towards the end you condense the politics of class into ‘working class politics’ and then into ‘working class solidarity’. You do that so quickly that I don’t quite follow you. Surely you do not intend to suggest that the only kind of class politics is working class politics – or that new Labour is not a political phenomenon shaped by class interests.’
No. I’m not condensing the politics of class into working class politics. I’m pointing out the relative absence of working class politics expressed in progressive and socialist. The absence of distinctive and coherent working class politics in the LP results in the lack of working class solidarity. In the Labour Party working class politics have not necessarily been socialist, though I would argue that they have been for the greater part. This assumes of course that LP socialism was socialist. With important caveats, I would say that the LP was socialist. One of those caveats concerns a strong strand of the Labour ideology reflected in some parts of the trade unions as they concentrate on the economic demands of their members. Arguably economism is not socialist: but it is most certainly a vital part of working class and Labour Party politics. The LRC, it seems to me, is trying to reunite the various strands of Labour Party socialism- and thereby working class politics. At the moment, large parts of econonomistic Labour, (often dismissed by those who dislike and fear ANY manifestation of working class politics as ‘labourism.’) have thrown in their lot with Labour neo-liberalism. Jonathan Rutherford’s piece before his most recent one, exemplifies this negative view of labourism articulates this fear. In seeking to bring together the socialist and not socialist working class, this must also include workers who are sociologically middle-class.
‘Finally, Paul, you refer to ‘social change prejudicial to the interests of the so-called ‘progressive community.’ Perhaps you could say more about what that social change actually is. Are the interests to which it would be prejudicial class interests?’
The social changes include: the emancipation of a neo-liberal supporting middle-class who have exchanged an often uneasy alliance with fellow workers for places of influence in the array of governing bodies of the notionally voluntary sector, once socially owned services. Add to this the critically enhanced role of market supporting consultants, think tanks, and pressure groups, et al. As you know, ‘progressive’ is Labour party code for an acceptance the neo-liberal settlement on that economy’s own terms. ‘community’ is increasingly the term of choice for those commercial and corporate interests who seek a more friendly image in the increasingly privatised market place of ideas as much as the economy and society. In so fat as the ‘progressive community’ exists, it exists for itself. The solidarity of which it speaks, is the solidarity of its own and the like minded. On its own terms this coalition of self-interest will seek to meet the economistic demands of what it narrowly defines as the ‘working class.’ The ‘progressive community’ is ‘progressive’ only in that it is anti-Tory and that it is individualistically social liberal. (social liberal by its own narrow and self interested lights.) In addition it is morally offended by poverty where it can ameliorate it without any redistribution of power; and can place efforts towards that amelioration within those market and labour flexibilities dressed up in the language of ‘social justice.’
on 11 July 2008, 12:30:50 AM
You said "'class' is just a shorthand for groups that have common self-interest in an economic sense " ... but surely that can't be right. Why would we have needed such shorthand for two centuries when a number would have been so much better. You could so much more easily describe a person on a scale of 1 to 10 in terms of gross or disposable income, couldn't you ?
Surely "class" is an externally enforced culture group. It defines people in terms of where they have come from, and defines artificial barriers that can never be crossed.
"Working class" was the group who came from uneducated parents, who therefore had been unable to acquire the skills and knowledge to do anything by manual, usually unskilled, labour. They therefore earned insufficient to educate their children, who became doomed to remain in the same class.
"Upper class" were those who, by force of arms or royal gift, continued by inheritance, never had to work at all. They were the rich who lived off their control of both capital and income resources. Their class was one entirely of birthright, except ...
... that the "Middle class" were sometimes able to become sufficiently educated that they learned how to make more money than the upper class, and were occasionally allowed to cross the barrier and join that group.
Surely the only meaningful use of the word "class" is to represent these (fairly) clearly defined fences around culture groups. There is no mobility between the groups except in very rare circumstances. It happens that those three classes directly correspond to wealth levels, but it's not the wealth that creates the class, wealth is just a natural consequence of belonging to the class.
Perhaps a fourth class that (briefly) appeared in the 20th century was the "professional class" which tried to distinguish itself from the remainder of the middle class.
I believe those class barriers have all but disappeared. It seems to me that that is the primary reason for the effective disappearance of deference from British society. Very few people care tuppence for peerages or professional qualifications or family background, and of course the old class system could only survive for as long as all of the classes believed in it. The famous Cleese/Barker/Corbett sketch (I look down on him, etc) perfectly characterised the dynamics. Barker was only middle class for as long as Corbett agreed to "look up to him". When Corbett acquired education, and thereby cultural height, the divide between the middle and working class disappeared. And similarly that between middle and upper.
I think that maybe there has been, and still is to some extent, an "Immigrant Class", but that is temporal and (I think) largely self-imposed. Indeed, I might argue against myself that it is impossible to have just one class in an otherwise classless society !
In line with Ben's reply to my post, and acknowledging your own socio-economic groupings, I do agree that there are economically driven interest groups in our society, and a codification of these would be useful shorthand. But class has already been used, and carries connotations (still) which I think are misleading. I offer no alternative term, except to suggest that an acronym of Socio Economic Classification might do except when used in the plural.
on 10 July 2008, 3:01:34 PM
Working population has increased rapidly in that period. The population has not , need has not ."
Thanks for engaging in the debate around the facts, but still slightly selective in your use of statistics. Public sector employment fell by 816,000 to 1998, and then rose by only 680,000 to 2005. If it is a reasonable question to ask whether need rose between 1998 and 2005, surely it is equally fair to ask whether need really fell by that much between 91 and 98?
on 10 July 2008, 2:58:04 PM
on 10 July 2008, 2:56:22 PM
It’s a contrarian point admittedly but it’s a thought .
Niall Ferguson has a good discussion of your quite irrelevant proportion figures. It is better to consider state governed expenditure .I do not have the figs to hand but the picture is less mis-leading. In the context of the NICE years(all fifteen of them) proportion is hardly the point anyway.
On Class and Immobility
I was able to speak to Oliver Letwin recently and he is at the heart of Policy. I have formed the view that the Party are preparing to ask for tax rises to fund a Wisconsin style assault on the underclass problem. The blame for this will be placed on the Brown squander...
Gotta crack on and pay your pensions for you cheerio
on 10 July 2008, 2:32:50 PM
1991 to 1998, PS employment fell every year, with an overall reduction of 816,000 over. From 1998 public sector employment rose every year to 5,846,000 in June 2005.( ONS)... –p---------
Working population has increased rapidly in that period. The population has not , need has not . Include pensions ( no-one else has them) , job security conditions etc. .Outsourcing public private initiatives and all the rest of “State governed expenditure” please include . We have overtaken Germany as a statist country. Labour Polls stand in the mid twenties now so a paid for 20% is not insignificant . Welfare dependents etc are just as important in low turnout inner city seats with small electorates. All that’s left to Labour in the South. You forget subsidised industry. In the NE more state vouchers earned that real money eg. -----p----
Tax credits( clown show delivery )designed to spread dependency up the social classes,. Surprising fact that Thatcher period of large state government is an old misrepresentation . I do not have time but it is as useful a mark as the last Churchill Government (huge state sector proportionally - War ..rebuilding etc.).---p-----------
Clerical and administrative role predominant in the bean counting world has been slashed to nothing in the private sector due to technology in a development the reverse of the unionised security of the PS.-----p---------
Teachers now choice of 70 % of Graduates ( was almost none )..while we tumble down the OECD rankings .Police- queues around the block to join. Overpaid QED .Key worker grants (The rest being superfluous ....) Similarly ,Civil Service is now quite small , mostly outsourced actually huge . Inter-changeability ? Show me , I have known absolutely no-one who has interchanged except women(over represented in Public sector ) after children for easy working conditions sacrificing possibility and risk.---p--------------
Facts are rarely clear and never simple. For example it is common knowledge that Labour have conducted an assault on SME`s . Straw says we have more start ups now than ever . Those are self employed bods who were employed but due to tax changes are now less secure than ever .Its a lie in other words.-------p--------
Propaganda - Guardian is financed by Government advertisements for unnecessary bureaucrats when a web site would do the job just as well for nothing (..and will under Cameron). It pumps out propaganda non stop a does state funded academia and state funded BBC. Unlike its competitors these cannot survive unaided in the market..The left skew the pitch not the right
------p------------
I was chiefly pointing out that it is in the interest of the Labour Party to maintain immobility because those who attain choice independence and property will not vote for the Labour Party. They have done. Labour has a vested interest in poverty of aspiration above all. Young people favour low tax although they are often low paid but they aspire. Labour has to stop this .-p---------------
<b» This is the question Compass never ask and cannot face. What if we were all becoming middle-class .What would the point of the Labour Party be? Look at its fortresses , Glasgow east, life expectancy far below the Gaza strip 58 in some parts after ten years of socialism and redistribution Face up to your dirty secret. You need class. You live on misery
.For those who want to do something about the intractable underclass the choice is clear . More of the same or come on the adventure with the Conservative Party .Ideas energy and belief animate it the vision of one Nation at peace with itself inspires it . I voted for Blair , god I hated it , but it was quite obviously the least worst alternative .You may have misgivings but it is your duty to make a decision for the country from the menu.
There is no a la Carte .
Whose with me ?</b»
on 10 July 2008, 1:28:51 PM
At the bottom of the wealth scale, the low wages and declining standard of living caused by uneven sharing of the proceeds of growth lead to resentment of taxation - money deducted from a payslip being far more visible than the structural factors that keep gross pay suppressed. This resentment is less often directed at public services in general, as this part of the population cannot opt-out (although jealousy between public and private sectors does exist), but instead it opens up a divide between working and non-working poor, which Cameron is positioning himself to exploit.
The class make-up of Britain then becomes:
Non-working and intermittently/insecurely employed - dependent on the state for income and services, or sympathetic to this view
Working & middle classes - supportive of public services, wary about public/private pay, unsympathetic to benefits
Upper-middle & upper - detatched from pubic services and benefits.
Of course, within each group there are people who act in line with their narrow self interest, and those which sympathise with less fortunate groups (whether purely from empathy, or a broader perspective of self-interest regarding the levels of crime, disease they want to encounter in their society).
To my mind, the interesting question is how this picture will evolve in an economic downturn - will the wealthier be forced to reconnect with the welfare state, or will the self interest of every group become more entrenched as they try to protect their standard of living?
on 10 July 2008, 12:51:54 PM
It may be that going forward we don’t identify groups in the same way – indeed I agree that society has diversified to the extent that a simple category of “the middle classes” for instance does not seem to suffice. Distinctions like private/public sector middle class have been proposed (although perhaps not quite like Newmania seems to be suggesting ) notably by Eric Shaw in the course of the debate, but again my instinct is that even that is too simplistic except as a very broad way to look at voting patterns. Tony Blackshaw (see comments on the site) suggested that the language of community might be a better place to start, but again I’m not sure there’s capacity there to address the issues.
It’s a work in progress, but it's critical to find a way to think these things through so that they stop being alienating and give us a way to address the connected nature of so many of these issues.
Newmania: I think the Tory party has a lot of work to do on class as well. I get the feeling that somewhere in the current conservative thinking there’s a return to one-nation toryism, which is very definitely a (19th century) class discourse linking those at the top with those at the bottom and to “hell with the middle because they’ll vote Liberal anyway”. Every time I hear Cameron speak, I think he starts well, puts forward occasionally interesting, occasionally worrying ideas, but is consistently paternalistic. It’s a different paternalism from New Labour, an older one and suffering from an unreconstructed understanding of class. (Thanks Brendan for addressing a bunch of the issues raised here)
Alan: I think that class as a technocratic concern is exactly what has happened in the absence of the recognition of its cultural aspects. By talking not about class, but strictly about poverty on the hand, and merit on the other, it becomes a statistical phenomenon. That’s what makes it so important to address. The argument goes that it is not that we need to rethink class to stop crime or terrorism, but that the current cultural manifestations of these are _partly_ a result of that technocratic approach. Hence because we can’t address it through class (we currently lack the means) other cultural/institutional forms have taken its place.
If you look at where the 7/7 bombers grew up, they lived in the exact same place that the industrial working class of Leeds did, except in the absence of an institutional support network based on class – working men’s clubs, unions, the Labour party – religious institutions have taken that role for the Muslim community. That’s not a bad thing in itself, but they lack the means to improve the economic lot of the area through collective bargaining and political representation etc. It also means that when extremism emerges it takes a very different shape to what it did under the auspices of a collective class culture and politics (which had its own share of potentially violent extremists too).
To your other point, the problem with class politics as traditionally conceived on the left is that it has a lot to say about equality, and less to say about liberty except in the way in which the two interact (liberation from poverty, from class oppression/discrimination etc) and that is something that will need to be thought through. I think we went some way towards addressing that on the day, but beyond citizenship (which is, I agree Zoe, a very promising direction) and place I can’t really give you concrete examples.
on 10 July 2008, 12:33:15 PM
As it happens, your figure is slightly rounded, and in reality, total government expenditure as a % of GDP has increased under Labour, but only from 40.6% in 96/97 to 41.5% in 06/07 - hardly a state growing out of control, and actually well below the level of 44.3% of GDP for 92/93 (all treasury figures).<p»
I don't know if you'll be persuaded, since by your tone it sounds like you have fairly fixed views, but we need to argue based on the figures, rather than versions of reality that you or I are constructing from our beliefs or prejudices.
on 10 July 2008, 12:16:13 PM
Your belief that Labour has been trying to engineer an electoral mandate through what you call the "Public Sector Professional Class" seems add odds with ONS data, which shows public sector employment growing slowly under Labour, but still far below levels under a conservative government in the early nineties. The fact that public sector employment is only in the region of 20% further shows why the idea that the public sector can be bribed to win elections without considering the private sector at all is nonsense.<p»
Furthermore, for your point to be true, the public sector employment market would need to be entirely divorced from the private sector. While there are some occupations that this is more true for (nurses and teachers, for example), in most generic professional areas there is great interchangability between private and public sector roles (an accountant could equally serve at the Town Hall or in the back office of a factory). The connection of the two employment markets ensures arbitrage at least as effective as in most real-world systems - if public sector pay and conditions really were better than the private sector, we would either see private sector wages rising or public sector wages falling to balance demand for the common skill-sets. Again, referring to the data, rather than presenting opinion as fact, it would seem that public and private sector pay are strongly correlated, increasing at very similar rates (see ONS AEI data)
on 09 July 2008, 9:49:16 PM
The Working class structures that had sustained communities , already in trouble were shattered by the removal of fathers and floods of immigration which has quadrupled over he last ten years . The calculation was that people once on the payroll could not escape and in any case would hardly vote for the Conservative Party. A little noticed fact was that 35% of Labour voters consistently put the BNP as their second choice. Since the Ealing result a succession of dog whistles have been blown at this class ( British values) but they have proved considerably less stupid than Labour had hoped and quite reasonable ignored the Damascene conversion of internationalist progressives to their communitarian culture. Obviously this was also a response to the Scottish gerrymandering which was unravelling as well.----------p--------------------
So yes class is very much an issue , class mobility as we know is now lower than in the seventies and has ground to all halt thanks to insane education welfare polices , marginal disincentives to work and the development of information industries .--------------------p-----------------
In a sense the Blairites were right and the panic in Labour was that people were indeed getting richer as the benefits of Capitalism freed by the Thatcher and Major years flowed into ever more pockets . As people began to expect choice and independence they naturally had no further use for the Labour Party. This problem was papered over with witless jargon while the real project was to create class of “Public Sector professionals “ , immigrants and the lower unionised public sector class .This combined with the boundary commission not catching up with the exodus from Labour areas in the inner-city created the illusion of New Labour hegemony when in fact less votes were cast in England for Labour than for the Conservative Party.
-------p-----------------------
Those in Compass who think that New Labour have forgotten class live in a fantasy created for them by leaders who despise their dank vestry socialism as much as the Unions . They are in fact deadly class power brokers whose justification is a kind of mangerilism they admire on the “Post democratic ”continent .Everything they have done has been designed to ossify class creating dependents and state servants to counter the success and wealth which was killing Labour .
In summary ---------p--------------------
Class is real it persists it does so because of the iniquitous misuse of power by perhaps the most disappointing administration this country has ever seen. AS a Conservative I believe in the power of people to change their lives and leave their class. The way forward is Wisconsib style initiatives which , whilst expensive have successfully broken the underclass log jam created by the malignant careerists of New Labour -------------p--------------------.
I invite anyone who sincerely wishes to do something about the Broken Nation to register your protest with courage by voting for David Cameron ..or just sit around dreaming that this morally bankrupt Party can ever be more than parasite on the good people of Britain again.-----------p-------------
Whose with me ?
PS- Zoe ,...oh never mind
on 09 July 2008, 9:37:11 PM
on 09 July 2008, 7:15:39 PM
There are so many sectional and sub-sectional interests in modern society, and all of them based on such a wide variety and differing combinations of elements, that it's impossible to determine how each group's interests might be served.
I do believe that in the traditional use of the word "class", Britain HAS become a classless society. I could be otherwise convinced if someone could list for me and then define what classes exist.
on 09 July 2008, 5:52:44 PM
Secondly, towards the end you condense the politics of class into ‘working class politics’ and then into ‘working class solidarity’. You do that so quickly that I don’t quite follow you. Surely you do not intend to suggest that the only kind of class politics is working class politics – or that new Labour is not a political phenomenon shaped by class interests. But if we don’t want to suggest that then surely we need to do some thinking about the kind of class politics represented by new Labour and how that class politics takes place (and with regard to the debate hosted by Soundings I think the essay by Heather Nunn and Anita Biressi has a lot to say about a neglected aspect of this).
Finally, Paul, you refer to ‘social change prejudicial to the interests of the so-called ‘progressive community.’ Perhaps you could say more about what that social change actually is. Are the interests to which it would be prejudicial class interests?
on 09 July 2008, 5:18:22 PM
on 09 July 2008, 4:00:27 PM
on 09 July 2008, 3:42:40 PM
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