A Workshop on Class Composition

by Ruhrgebiet, Kolinko

Introduction

Class composition is a central notion in our search for the
possibility of revolution. We are looking for a force that is able to
change society from the bottom up. It is correct, however
general, to say that only the exploited are able to overthrow
exploitation, but how does this process of liberation actually
take place? The perception of the Marxist-Leninists is different
from our experiences: the "working class" is neither a united
object nor do we see the possibility that it just needs a political
party to overcome the class divisions and give a revolutionary
direction to workers' struggles. The analysis of class
composition can help us understand what is determining
workers' struggles, how they can turn into a class movement
and how we can play an active part in this process.The work-shop on class composition can therefore be the
starting-point for a deeper discussion about our "role as
revolutionaries" and our political strategies: where is a deeper
coherence of the "workers' net" of CRO in Bologna, the
"workers' inquiry" of Kolinko in the Ruhr Area, the interventions
in Brighton, the newspaper project of Folkmakt etc.? About
which questions do we have different political assessments and
what possibilities for further co-operation exist?

We want to start with some short points on the relationship
between political practice and the notion of class.

1. The notion of the "role of revolutionaries" has its basis
in a specific notion of class and in a specific relation to
class

In the discussion about the "role of revolutionaries" different
political currents (Leninism, Syndicalism, Council-Communism
etc.) are usually just "compared" to each other. We have to
analyse how different notions of the role of revolutionaries and
their organisation derives from different comprehensions of
class and from a specific historical relation to class struggle.

2. The different communist currents (Leninism,
Council-Communism etc.) have a formal notion of class in
common

In general the different currents grasp "capital" as just a formal
relation of exploitation: the surplus labour-time is appropriated
by private hands or by the state. The actual material process of
exploitation/work is neglected. This formal notion of capital
leads to a formal notion of working-class: a mass of exploited
individuals who have to sell their labour-power due to their
"non-possession" of the means of production. From this similar
notion of working-class different political conclusions are drawn:
the Leninists emphasise the need for a political party that is
able to gather the masses whose only coherence is the formal
similarity of non-possessing. The party has to give a strategical
direction to the spontaneous struggles of the exploited. The
Council-Communists just notice that the mass of exploited
create their own forms of organization in struggle. They neglect
the question of strategy and see their main task as distributing
the experiences of self-organization among the workers.

3. A formal notion of class can neither explain nor support
the self-emancipation of the working-class

The formal notion of exploitation (appropriated surplus
labour-time) can not reveal the possibility of self- emancipation
that workers can develop. As "non-possessors" of means of
production their power can not be explained. The mere fact that
they are all exploited does not create a real coherence between
the individuals. The possibility of self-organization can only be
derived from the fact that workers have a practical relation to
each other and to capital: they are working together in the
process of production and they are part of the social division of
labour. As producers they are not just opposing capital as
formal "wage-labourers", but in their specific practice they are
producing capital. Only arising from this relation can workers'
struggles develop their power. The isolation of workers in single
companies, branches etc. cannot be overcome "artificially" by
taking the similarity of "all being exploited" as the foundation for
an organization. This attempt generally ends up in another
"rank-and-file" union: there will always be the need for an
outside institution if the coherence of the workers is not based
on their actual social co- operation, but just on the "formal
coherence" of exploited wage-labour. Leninism does not realize
this deeper reason for trade-union forms of workers' struggle. It
tackles the problem as a mere question of leadership: is the
external coherence built up by the unions or the communist
party? The criticism of Leninism usually reduces itself to
questioning just the form of this external coherence: it is
"undemocratic", not built by the workers themselves etc. The
left critics very rarely analyse the process of production in terms
of the foundation for the coherence of workers' struggle.
Therefore they tend to just follow the spontaneity of struggles
without realizing or supporting a strategical direction within this.
Why do different political currents develop despite their similar
notion of class?

4. The reason for the different political notions and
practice of Leninism and its left critics are the different
material conditions of exploitation and class struggle they
had to face

Council-Communists and others mainly criticize the patronizing
and undemocratic character of the Leninist Party. We think that
the more profound critique on Leninism consists of the analysis
that the Bolshevik form of party emerged from the specific
material conditions in Russia in the late 19th and early 20th
century. An agrarian society with dispersed and isolated
peasant villages, a high rate of ill iteration and just few zones of
industrialization could only be politically unified by an external
mass-organization. Therefore the most profound critique of the
Council Communist is that this kind of organization was not
useful and appropriate in their historical situation: in the
industrialized regions of Western Europe during the 1920s.
They realized that the factories had already unified the workers
and that the creation of workers' councils during the
revolutionary period 1918-23 was the political answer of the
working class. Today just a few critics of Leninism reflect this
"material core". The critique usually remains on a political level,
not touching the material roots of Leninism and other currents.
Today we have to put the critique on it's feet again by analysing
the changes in the organization of exploitation and of workers'
struggle. That is the precondition for the development of new
political strategies. The notion of class composition can help us
with that.

5. The core of the notion of class composition is the thesis
that there is a close relation between the form of struggle
and the form of production

Workers do not fight together because of the consciousness
that "they are all exploited". Struggles of workers arise from
concrete work-conditions, from actual situations of exploitation.
Workers' struggles take different forms (in the past, in different
regions or sectors etc.), because the concrete labour-process
and therefore the material form of exploitation differs. The mode
of production and the position within the social process of
production determines the form and possibilities of a struggle:
truck-drivers' struggles differ from those of building-workers,
strikes in factories producing for the world-market have different
outcomes than strikes in call centres. In the analysis of the
coherence of the mode of production and workers' struggle we
distinguish between two different notions of class composition:

* the "technical class composition" describes how capital brings
together the work-force; that means the conditions in the
immediate process of production (for instance division of labour
in different departments, detachment from "administration" and
production, use of special machinery) and the form of
re-production (living-community, family-structure etc.)

* the "political class composition" describes how workers turn
the "technical composition" against capital. They take their
coherence as a collective work-force as the starting-point of
their self-organization and use the means of production as
means of struggle. We are still discussing the question of at
which particular point in the process of workers' struggle we
can describe it in terms of "political class composition". One
position uses the term as soon as workers of a single company
or branch organize their struggle out of the conditions of
production. The other position takes as a pre-condition for a
new "political class composition" a wave of workers' struggles
that are unified into a class movement by struggles in central
parts of the social production process (for example in the
60s/70s the focus for the class movement were mainly the
struggles in automobile factories).

In the following passage we want to sketch how specific forms
of production influence the ways, contents and perspectives of
struggles:

a) immediate organization

Whether workers try to find individual or collective solutions for
their problems mainly depends on the way they have to relate
to each other in the daily work-process. When work is mainly
based on individual performances and skills (for instance
handicraft work) dealing with conflicts on an individual basis is
more likely. When the division of labour creates a mutual
dependence between workers the need for a collective action is
more obvious. The potential for self-organization furthermore
depends on the question of whether the work-process enables
the workers to communicate with each other (high degree of co-
operation, concentration of many workers in one work-place or
living-area etc.)

b) immediate power

The foundation for the emergence, the content and prospects of
workers' struggles is the question of whether they can gain
power against capital. That depends on different
circumstances, for instance if workers are concentrating on
points of significant importance for the process of production
and accumulation; if the struggle takes place in a specific
economic situation (for instance boom, lots of orders) or under
a particular composition of capital (for instance high standard of
machinery requires production around the clock) that increases
the dependence on the work-force.

c) political content

"Political consciousness", the consciousness to confront capital
as a class, can not be brought to the workers from outside, but
can only develop in the struggle itself. This developing
consciousness also depends on the practical relation between
the producers and their relation to the means of production. The
specific capitalist mode of production is mass-production based
on division of labour and machinery. Whether workers grasp
exploitation just from a "unionist" point of view as an unfair
distribution of the product or from a "political" point of view as a
social relation of production with it's own laws, depends on the
conditions they have to work under. It is not a question of their
"right or wrong consciousness" as the Leninists would claim,
but the question of whether their exploitation is not only
capitalist in a formal way (free wage-labour) but also in its
material way (hierarchical division of labour, machine-controlled
work-process etc.).

Some examples of how the specific conditions of production
influence the political content of workers' struggle -- and their
relation to capital as a mode of production:

Relation to the wage-form:

In capitalism the wage-relation, appearing as the "individual
exchange of money for work", conceals the fact that capital
exploits the collective labour-power of the workers. A worker
who is hired together with a hundred other workers and who
has to do the same work is more likely to notice that the
"individual contracts" are just a fake than for example a
handicraft worker who "possesses" special skills and therefore
special "work to sell".

Relation to work:

Work in capitalism is abstract. The specific tasks one performs
are not important, but the fact that work adds surplus
labour-time to the product is. A worker who has to do "unskilled"
work together with others will have a different relationship to
work than a specialized worker. The first will actually
experience work as abstract and will be less likely to glorify it
and organize within the boundaries of her or his profession.

Relation to other workers:

A formal notion of class does not reach very far. That reveals
itself when we look at the composition of work-force on the
shop-floor. We could state that foremen, team-leaders or
managers are also "wage-labourers" and therefore exploited,
but nearly every struggle has to enforce itself against these
"little bosses". The (hierarchical) division of labour of the social
production process is the foundation for racist and sexist
divisions within the working class. So on the one hand capital
divides workers, but on the other hand it brings together
workers of every skin-colour, gender, nationality etc. in the
process of production. Whether divisions between workers are
questioned or fortified is generally decided in struggles.
Factories, specific sectors etc. with a "colourful" composition
are especially decisive in this process.

Relation to the means of production:

Capital is the process and result of a mode of production where
the dead labour (machines, work-material) commands the living
work-force. A worker who has to obey the rhythm of the
machines, and who notices that despite the technological
progress his/her situation does not improve, is more likely to
attack capital as a contradictory mode of production. Workers of
a handcraft work-process who are still "masters" of their tools
will more likely see the "boss" as the symbol of exploitation.

Relation to the product:

Workers in spheres of mass-production realize just by working
that the quality of the products plays a secondary role and that it
is all about quantity. Usually one can not relate to the use-value
of the product, because one only sees a small part of the whole
production process and at a stage of the product which has no
use-value yet. A lot of workers are not working on a material
product, but they work under industry- like conditions to perform
"services". We have to discuss how this "immateriality" of the
products impacts on the workers' struggle.

It remains an open question for us how far struggles of
"handicrafts", agricultural workers and other proletarians who
do not work under "industrial" conditions can develop an
anti-capitalist character. It is a decisive question how these
struggles can unite with the struggles of the "industrial
proletariat" despite the different conditions and without external
mediation (like the so-called "Anti-Globalisation" Movement,
"Peoples Global Action", the "Zapatistas" and other
organisations who try to link different "social movements")

d) expansion

Whether struggles can expand themselves also depends on
"spontaneity", the social situation and mere chance. For a
political strategy it is important to analyse the material
foundation of an expansion: what is the relationship between a
single struggle and the social production? Single companies
are, to a greater or lesser extent, connected to the social
division of labour: international production chains, transport,
connections to "scientific work" in universities, connection to the
"service sector" and distribution. So there are different ways a
struggle can effect society, for instance a strike the daily life of a
mass of workers. Do workers who are not immediately engaged
in a strike notice it's outcomes as producers, for instance
because they can not do their work due to missing parts? Do
they notice it as consumers, for instance because they miss
their daily newspaper in the morning? For the expansion of a
struggle it is important that other workers are not just informed
through the media, but that it effects their daily work/life. These
effects show the social dimension of production today and so
they can destroy the notion of "isolated work-places". Also the
social skills that workers acquire in their existence as a
work-force influences their potential to break through the
isolation of their struggle by their own activity: for instance the
knowledge of how to organize and improvise in the chaos of the
production process, the skills to use means of communication,
the experiences and connections of immigrated workers etc.

e) political generalization

In the history of class struggle there has never occurred a
"mass uprising", a simultaneous uprising of the majority. It has
always been small sections of the proletariat (of a single
factory, branch, region etc.) which start the trouble, which push
it forward or which become the symbol or focus of a class
movement. These "cores" are neither founded on "higher
consciousness" nor do they emerge by chance. In the 60s/70s
it was mainly the workers in the automobile factories who
played this role. The automobile sector was the driving force of
the capitalist boom of the previous decades. It absorbed
thousands of workers who came from the different poor regions
to the metropolis. It generalized the experience of workers by
technology and work-organization on an international level. It
was the centre of an international division of labour with
productive connection to nearly every sector. Though the
product was a symbol of an increasing wealth, the only chance
to get a piece of it was by subjecting oneself to the command of
the factory.

In other times and places there have been particular regions
which became the centre of a movement. That was less due to
"tradition" than to their significance in the social process of
production, for instance port- towns, mining regions. In the
centres of development the connection of state and capital can
be noticed more easily (planning of infrastructure,
labour-market policy, special laws etc.) and the global character
of this society is obvious ("foreign investments", migration etc.).
We can take towns like Turin as examples for the 50s/60s or
the Maquilladoras in South America and "Special Development
Zones" in China for today. Also in Europe there a zones of
development (for instance on the west border of Poland, the
region around Dresden, Piemont).

We think that struggles can expand without these "centres", but
often the limitation of strike-movements is due to the fact that
the "centres" were not taking part or have been defeated. So
the question of "generalization" is not really a question of a
"political leadership", but the question of to what extent
struggles can socialize themselves along the lines of the social
production and hit capital at central points.

f) communist tendencies

There are widely differing notions of "communist tendency". On
the one hand the notion that humans have the "human need" for
a better society which they express in their struggles against
exploitation. On the other hand the orthodox notion that the
development of the forces of production will overthrow
capitalism and will make communism possible. Leninism and
most of the "left communist" currents have a very mechanical
notion of the forces of production: development of technology
and the extension of the social division of labour due to the
driving forces of competition. The foundation of communism is
the fact that the increased forces of production are able to
reduce individual work-time. They only deal with the fact that
the forces of production are in the wrong hands, and ignore the
contradiction that the material form of technology (assembly
line), of science (Taylorism) and socialization ("globalisation")
itself is the foundation of capitalist command over the workers.
The dissolution of this contradiction can only take place in a
class movement that both changes the material conditions of
production and "socializes" the forces of production along with
the struggle. Therefore, struggles have to relate to the
contradiction of social possibilities (enormous production of
material wealth, increased productivity) and reality (drudgery
and relative poverty).

A central problem remains the uneven development: the forces
of production do not exist solely as a "stage of the forces of
production" detached from the workers. The state of
technology, the use of science, the degree of social division of
labour is different in every sector, region etc. Workers have to
face different states of development in the work-process, so in
struggles they relate in different ways to the possibilities and
contradictions of the social forces of production. In zones of
underdevelopment (no or few investments, investments in
"labour intensive" exploitation) the "need for communism" will,
above all, express itself in the workers attacking poverty and
labour-intensive production as a consequence of the capitalist
"usage" of the social productivity. In centres of development the
contradiction shows itself in the fact that despite the
"technological progress" and "abundance", life is still ruled by
drudgery and relative poverty. The main question will be from
which points of uneven development struggles can
socialize/globalise themselves as a new "force of production".
Which struggles will be able to express the possibility and hope
for a better form of production due to the material conditions
(state of technology, science, division of labour etc.) they arise
from?

The communist revolution will have to tear down the artificial
existence of "development and underdevelopment". We have to
ask at which points of social production this process will start
and develop power.

It is not easy to find good examples to show the coherence
between the "stage of the forces of production" and the "Utopia"
of class struggles. The revolts in agrarian societies had less a
"social utopia" than the demand to cultivate the land in their own
"anarchical" way. The factory-struggles in Western Europe at
the beginning of the last century developed the socialist hope of
running the factories and therefore the whole society under
workers control. The struggles of the 60/70s expressed the
increasing "scientification" of the production, the increasing
terror of machinery and alienation from work and product. The
distinction of "workers' struggle" and other social movements
dissolved more and more due to the fact that the whole society
(schools, university, town infrastructure) was closer connected
to the "actual process of production". The centres of the
movement (factories, universities) appropriated much of the
"productive possibilities" of a modern society. The increasing
division of labour inside the factory and the assembly line were
used to organize new forms of strikes; squatted factories and
universities became central meeting points, the "new science"
and means of communication were developed by the
movement etc. By doing this the movement itself became more
"productive" and creative and spread the developed "forces of
production" into other parts of society. The movement reflected
the "developed forces of production" in their demands: not
"factory under workers' control", but "automation of the factory"
and wealth for everybody...

6. Class composition expresses the inner coherence and
the tendency of class struggle

The problems above beg the questions of strategy for class
struggle. The strategy can only be derived from the tendencies
of capitalism. In the social process of production capitalism
creates and connects parts of development and
underdevelopment as a reaction to the class contradiction,
which explains the dynamic character of the system. Within
hi-tech factories there exist departments of different
"technological" levels. These factories themselves are
connected to suppliers of different standards of development
right down to the "Third-World" sweat-shop. The different levels
of development are the material foundations for the divisions
and unevenness of class struggle. Workers' struggles which
can generalize themselves along the lines of "uneven
development" lead to the conditions of production becoming
more similar. The struggles of workers in automobile factories in
the 60s-80s had the result that the conditions in the main
factories became similar worldwide including former "zones of
underdevelopment" (Mexico, Brazil etc.): on the level of
technology and also for the workers (similar relation between
wage and product). Capital reacts to the "political class
composition" (the generalization of class struggle) with a
"technical re-composition", with the reproduction of uneven
development on a higher level: regions are "de-industrialized",
in others capital makes the great technological leap forward, old
"core" factories are divided into different units of a production
chain, the production is "globalised" etc. Capital creates new
centres of development which can become new points for the
generalization of future class movements. So the inner
coherence of the coming class movements is anticipated. Their
strategy will not grow detached in the heads of revolutionaries,
but lies within the process of the material development (of
division of labour, machinery etc.) itself.

7. The task of revolutionaries is the analysis of the
capitalist development in order to be able to assess and
show the potentials of class struggles

The special role of revolutionaries can not be explained by a
"political consciousness" which class struggles could not
achieve by themselves. It can only be derived from a general
view and interpretation of the things that actually happen. The
power, the possibilities of self-organization, of expansion and
generalization are set by conditions of production. The task of
revolutionaries is to show the coherence between the material
conditions and practice and the perspective of struggles. The
class movement will take place within the net of development
and underdevelopment. Therefore, we have to show the
connection of different parts of this net and the political reasons
for the inequality. The analysis of the material foundation of
workers' struggle also determines where we should intervene. It
is not sufficient just to follow the "spontaneous" patterns of
struggles and to document them. We have to look for the points
which can be of strategical significance for the future. These
areas do not need to be the "most developed" or the "centres of
accumulation". Often the sectors that connect different levels of
development (transport between different factories, "information
work" between production and distribution) are significant for a
generalization of struggles. For this we need more than just an
informal exchange between our groups, we need an organized
discussion and intervention.

(This post continues in the first Comments box, below.)