6 - Making, Unmaking, Remaking: Working-Class Forces in Formation

Summary

The emergence of working classes

What I need to discuss in greater detail, for the purposes of this book, is working- class formation. After all, the key theoretical argument put forward in it for the analysis of strikes is that they facilitate working- class formation. So far, I have not addressed this issue.

In this context, it is worth turning to Althusser, who argues that there are roughly two different conceptions of working- class formation, which differ in terms of their sequencing. Following him, the first is what can be called a ‘reformist’ conception:

Let us take a simple example, and suppose that we are dealing with just two classes. For reformists these classes exist before the class struggle, a bit like two football teams exist, separately, before the match. Each class exists in its own camp, lives according to its particular conditions of existence. One class may be exploiting another, but for reformism that is not the same thing as class struggle. One day the two classes come up against one another and come into conflict. It is only then that the class struggle begins. They begin a hand- to- hand battle, the battle becomes acute, and finally the exploited class defeats its enemy (that is revolution), or loses (that is counter- revolution). However you turn the thing around, you will always find the same idea here: the classes exist before the class struggle, independently of the class struggle. The class struggle only exists afterwards. (Althusser, 1976: 49)

In my terminology, this conception is based on the following causal chain:

(a) Class locations → (b) class formation → (c) class forces → (d) class struggle

If we accept Althusser's metaphor, what we are seeing is an ‘association football’ conception of class relations: Capitalism can be seen as a game in which there are two teams, both proudly wearing their colours and trying to defeat each other. It is clear for each and every player on the field where its boundaries lie; what the rules of the game are; which side they belong to and who their opponent is; and how they are supposed to contribute, as individuals, to the efforts of their teams.