This is Part One of my attempt to reframe class politics, and so to reframe politics in general. To bring yourself up to speed, read this entry material:
The idea of “going to work” is, as many of us know, an invention of modernity. For most of human existence, one worked where one lived. The home was the shop was the forge was the farm. People were their labor, lived their labor. It was a function of one’s place in the world.
And then, as Marx and others pointed out, work became a commodity. This is the ontology of the “proletariat” - those who sell their labor. They sell it in terms of time spent performing a task for another’s benefit. They sell it for a wage - a set price, paid regularly, with which the worker purchases the necessities of life. The Proletariat is the modern subsistence class.
All of this is quite obvious, and widely known. What is less well-known is how the majority of people, even in the present day, belong to it. When we discuss “class” today, we typically talk of “working class”, “middle class”, “upper middle class”, and “upper class”. From a Functionalist perspective, which is my own, these are all misleading. Most of us, the majority of us, are workers: we may call our wage a “salary”, divided into bi-monthly or fortnightly payments, which include “benefits” involving health-care, retirement, and other things, but these are differences of detail. A middle-class salaryman is selling his labor to make up for the wealth he doesn’t have, just as much as a longshoreman or steelworker is. He has a few more perks, and a cleaner workplace, but that’s it.
From my perspective, the Proletariat comes in three varieties:
Unskilled. The most basic jobs that one can get with no experience. Often they are Service-oriented: flipping burgers at McDonalds, pouring coffee at Starbucks. You might call them “Name-Tag” workers, or “Red collar” workers. They make minimum wage and accrue zero prestige from their employment. They are one step above a beggar or a welfare ward, who have negative prestige, and are really a separate class altogether.
Skilled. Traditional “Blue-Collar” workers, who command a high wage either from an acquired, valuable skillset or belonging to a powerful union, or both.1 These are less Service-oriented, although I would include any form of skilled repair work in these ranks. Mechanical knowledge has always been a precious commodity.
Corporate Functionaries. This is the “white-collar” workers, the so-called Middle Class. The main distinction between them and the Skilled workers is that they do not work with their hands. Instead, they perform what is largely administrative work, hence the derisive epithet, email jobs. They document and arrange data. They organize abstractions. They don’t actually plan or manage anything, but they work for those that do.
My grandfather was born in 1930 in Brooklyn. His father, who got no further than the sixth grade in school, was a letter carrier and worked for the Pennsylvania Railroad. Solid working-class origins. After finishing high school, chalking on Wall Street, and a stint in the Navy during the Korean War, my grandfather went to work for IBM. He went to night school for a bachelor’s degree in Systems Management, when he wasn’t moonlighting in the local police. As a child of the Depression, he was frugal with money, carefully put excess income into IBM’s generous employee stock purchase program, and when he retired at the end of the 1980’s, was a millionaire, living the life of a suburban squire.
This was the Upward Mobility promised to the American worker in the Postwar era. This was the American Dream that fell upon the GI and Silent Generations like a gift from on high. But very rarely did it actually move people up into the Ruling Class. The Proletariat got shiny new houses and shiny new jobs, but jobs they remained, with all that goes with that.
White-Collar labor still requires employees to be on time at work, to work a set number of hours, to perform according to metrics they have no hand in setting. Above all, the fruits of their labor belong to another, while they are paid a set wage. And most of the time, they have no union to back them up.
Thus the Who. Now, to the What. What are the Legitimate Interests of the Proletariat?
Simply this: that their labors provide them with a living. The Worker has no need more pressing than this, no politics that go beyond it. The great Marxist error was believing that power could be seized by the hungry masses. That isn’t how power works. Power requires a singular vision and a readiness to put all else aside to accomplish that vision. The Proletariat have small use for such abstractions. They have bills to pay.
A properly-organized economy is an economy in which the Proletariat can pay their bills. The modern liberal-progressive often talks about a “living wage”, which is usually framed in terms of higher, especially higher minimum wages. In this as in many, progressives miss the forest for the trees. Money is a fiction, and the real value of it is what it will buy. Arranging a market in which the worker’s wages enable him to buy what he needs and enjoy the rest is the true goal.
Having this Legitimate Interest means the Working Class may seek it by means that are effective. This includes collective bargaining, boycotts, strikes, and any other form of non-violence. These are all Tactics of Negotiation, and no more or less legitimate than any the bosses use. Economic and social pressure are all weapons that the ruling classes will use to further their interests, so too may non-ruling classes. Whatever is settled upon, is agreed upon, is legal and legitimate. Don’t like it? Try again later. Nothing of money is set in stone.
Note that I do not say “Any Means Necessary”. As written before, legitimate interests are subject to compromise. Other classes also have legitimate interests, and these may fall into conflict. My chief goal in writing these is to dispense with Manichean, millenarian politics. We are trying to make a whole society, not a tornado of bloodthirsty revolutionary impulses. Everyone must give in order for this to work.
And so long as the proletariat feel they are not doing all the giving, they will usually be content. The other great Marxist mistake was assuming that the Bourgeoisie were incapable of giving anything. My early 90’s edition of The Communist Manifesto opens with a preface, written by an ex-Soviet journalist named Vladimir Pozner that points this out quite bluntly:
There were many things Marx did not foresee, among them, the ability of the capitalist system to reform itself by incorporating a whole series of socialistic elements — such as paid vacation, worker compensation, social security — measures specifically designed to help the poor. However, let it be said that all of these measures and a host of others were never a given, they were all the resutl of a continued struggle on the part of the working people; blood was shed, many were killed, many more thrown in jail before the ruling classes realized it was in their interest to grant these rights, that it was either that or a revolt. Most of those measures came into being as a result of the Russian Revolution, which was initially Socialist in character. It frightened the daylights out of the capitalist world: Better to give the workers something rather than to risk an uprising. That was a flexible response Marx had not anticipated.
-Vladimir Pozner, “Introduction to The Communist Manifesto”, 1992 Bantam Classic edition, pgs. xx-xxi
There is much to dispute with this, such as the contention that the Russian Revolution deserves credit for “most” of the Progressive Labor reforms that had a long history in the Western Democracies, and the already-stale contention, sprinkled all over this piece, that the Soviet Union wasn’t Real Socialism.2 But it does establish that even a Communist can recognize how capitalists can be flexible, regardless of ideology. Being flexible beyond narrow-interest ideology is the goal here.
So, while unions can be useful, necessary even, they do not merit their self-conception as the perpetual Hero riding in to stop Snidley Rockefeller from tying The Working Man to the railroad track. They are merely human trade institutions, as subject as any other to greed, malfeasance, corruption, and petty politicking. We all know this. We are interested in giving humans opportunities to thrive, not playing out Gilded Age melodramas. Not even Communists care for them anymore.
Because the Proletariat perceive Work as a means of subsistence, they will naturally gravitate towards pursuing the most amount of pay for the smallest amount of work. This is natural and to be expected. But it cannot be given its head absolutely, or else it creates a negative feedback loop that destroys the source of income. The workers gain nothing when the plant closes.
The second Legitimate Interest of the Proletariat is that aforementioned Upward Mobility, the opportunity to build wealth. For the worker, this is generally achieved by the process of Advancing to Management. The McDonald’s worker can become a Store Manager, or even a Franchise Owner given the right breaks. The Skilled mechanic can start his own shop. The Functionary can attain Middle Management. These involves taking a greater share of the company’s profits, of living less by one’s own work than by managing the work of others. They involve becoming Bourgeois. Because Class is functional, class status must remain fluid.
In Conclusion:
The Proletariat constitute the majority of the people, according to a Functionalist understanding; in includes the white collar middle class.
The First Legitimate Interest of the Proletariat is a wage enabling them to live.
The Second Legitimate Interest is the opportunity to rise.
Next: The Yeomanry
The history of the Teamsters Union in America is the history of how powerful unskilled labor can be when it organizes strongly enough and operates on the nation’s vital transportation networks.
On the plus side, he doesn’t attempt to revive the myth of the Good Tsar Lenin; he accuses Lenin of instituting State Capitalism and lays at Lenin’s feet the responsibility for all the grotesqueries the Soviet Union produced.
The lucidity and coherence of your thoughts are going to land you an express ticket to the reeducation camps. You can't just be going around, explaining shit in terms that regular people understand. 'Splainin is for experts, and they have their special 'Splainin Language that makes sure no one comprehends anything, ever.
Snark aside, where would you situate drafting, as a profession?
I like where you are going with this. Can't wait to read Yeoman. 👏👏🔥