International Communist Seminar Brussels, May 2-4, 1998
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The changes in the composition of the working class and the proletariat Jean Pestieau Workers' Party of Belgium -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Summary To say that in the industrialised countries, the working class is disappearing as monopoly capitalism develops, is false. To the contrary, its composition is changing with the development of technologies that incorporate more and more intellectual labour in the production of commodities. The working class is becoming more and more prominent in the services sector. While acknowledging this evolution, the leading role of the industrial proletariat - both in the industrialised countries and in the Third World - must be underscored in terms of its conscientisation, its organisation and its unification of all workers in their fight for socialist revolution. The myth of the end of the working class According to the majority of bourgeois ideologues and to the reformists, today's workers in the industrialised countries are a species on the road to extinction. Capital would no longer need the working class to develop. The Manifesto of the communist party would be a thing of the past, as it claims: "To the extent that the bourgeoisie develops, i.e. capital, also the proletariat develops, the class of modern workers who survive only on the condition that they find employment, and who will find employment only if their labour increases capital." (1) To support their theses, those ideologues refer to the evolution of the distribution of the active population in the three major traditional sectors of the economy: the primary sector: agriculture, forestry and fisheries, the secondary sector or the industrial sector: manufacturing and extraction, electricity, gas and water, construction, the tertiary sector or the services sector: trade, finance, public administration, communications, education, health care,... From Tables I and II (2) it can be learnt that, in the industrialised countries, there is a net growth of the tertiary sector to the detriment of the secondary sector, in the Third World countries, there is a contrasting growth of the industrial and services sectors sto the detriment of agriculture. This suffices for the bourgeois theoreticians to bid the proletariat goodbye: "By generating more than 60% of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and of the employment in the industrialised countries, the tertiary sector is dominating the world economy. (...) The developing countries are still lagging behind, with ony 47% of their GDP and 25% of their employment attributable to the tertiary sector." (3) Before discussing the class content of the tertiary sector, a few preliminary remarks are called for. 1. It is not the tertiary sector that dominates the world economy, but the multinational corporations whose main activity is the production of material goods. Here's an indicative classification (4) comparing the size of some States (GDP) with that of the 10 major multinational corporations* (business volume), in declining order: Indonesia *General Motors Turkey Denmark *Ford South Africa *Toyota *Exxon *Royal Dutch/Shell Norway Poland Portugal *IBM Malaysia Venezuela Pakistan *Unilever *Nestlé *Sony Egypt Nigeria The cumulated size of the two major multinationals is comparable to that of India or the Netherlands; that of the three major MNC's to Russia or Mexico; that of the four major MNC's to Brasil or China; and that of the ten major ones to Great Britain. 2. The advanced capitalist countries concentrate the biggest part of commodity production. In 1993, France and the US had 4 respectively 18.1 million wage earners in the manufacturing industry, on a total active population of 25 respectively 139 million, while Mexico had 850.000 on an active population of 33 million. In the same manufacturing industry, France and the US had 0.2 respectively 1.2 million independent workers as against Mexico's 1.5 million. These three countries are members of the OECD (Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development), by virtue of which they have unified statistics. (5) These figures show the numerical importance of the wage earners in the manufacturing industry for the two industrialised countries (France and the US), where the tertiary sector is the major sector. The comparison with Mexico, one of the most industrialised Third World countries, is self-evident. 3. The development of the tertiary sector cannot hide the cancer that grows with the capitalist system: the increasing gap between the available work force on the world market, and the real existing jobs. (6) The bourgeois ideologues don't see any solution within the capitalist system to absorb the constantly increasing additional work force. In the industrial sector as well as in the services sector, the exploiters notably increase their profits by reducing the permanent work force to a small number of qualified workers, surrounded by temporary, flexible workers. Apart from war, famine and massacres, capitalism has no solution for the problem of employment (see table below): "If the number of unemployed and underemployed are taken into account, almost one billion jobs would have to be created in the next decade. This means that there should be an increase in employment of more than 4% per year in the 1990s, even as it has remained below 3% during the 1980s." (6) available work force (10) world developing countries 1950 1.1 billion 0.8 billion 1980 1.9 billion 1.3 billion 1990 2.3 billion 1.7 billion 2000(estimate) 2.7 billion 2.0 billion 2025(estimate) 3.6 billion 2.8 billion Today, there is practically no capitalist country that is capable of maintaining its level of employment, not even in the countries of East and Southeast Asia, which until a couple of months ago were presented as models. (6) The countries that have been able to maintain their employment level, however low, have done so by lowering the salaries and recurring to part-time jobs. In 1996, the official rate of unemployment in the industrialised countries was 7.7%, and that of Japan was 3.3%. (7) In April 1998, the unemployment rate in the latter country is estimated to be around 6-7%. (8) After the financial krach of 1994, more than one million Mexicans lost their jobs in the course of a few months. (9) The definition of classes is based on the relations of production Lenin defines classes as follows: "Classes are groups of which one can live off the work of the other, can appropriate the labour of the other." (11) "And what are classes in general? It is what it takes for a part of society to appropriate the labour of the other part. If one part of society appropriates all land, there will be a class of landlords and a peasant class. If one part of society owns the factories, the stocks and the capital while the other part has to work in those factories, there will be a class of capitalists and another of proletarians." (12) And he adds: "The notion of class is being formed in struggle and in development. There is no wall to separating one class from the other. There is no Chinese wall between workers and peasants." (13) Applied to the current situation in the industrialised countries: there exists no wall between the wage earners of the industrial sector and those of the services sector. What characterises the capitalist relations of production most, is the fact that the owner of the means of production pays the worker a price that is below the value of the goods he produces, goods that will be exchanged on the market. The difference between the price of his labour and the price produced by it, is the surplus value. The capitalists appropriate the surplus value by means of profits, patents, rent, interests on loans, etc. Not all wage earners of the private sector produce commodities. A large part of the workers in the private services sector sell their labour not to produce commodities, but to allow bank and commercial capital to seize part of the surplus value of the commodity production. In all cases, labour, whether producing commodities or services, is exchanged against capital at a price below the profit that the capitalist gets from the utilisation of this labour. This relation between capital and labour is at the basis of what constitutes the working class, and it dominates the entire capitalist society. Of course not everybody works directly under such relations. An independent artisan, a small peasant, a government employee, a private lawyer, etc. are manifestatinos of other relations of production exist in capitalist society. But these are determined by the capitalist relations of production. From this, it can be deducted that in today's capitalist society, the following have to be distinguished: (a) wage-labour that is being exchanged for capital industrial; this labour produces commodities and with it, surplus value financial and commercial; this labour is necessary for the transfer of surplus value. In the period of monopoly capitalism and multinationals, the distinction between these two types of wage-labour is often minor. (b) wage-labour that is exchanged for an income received from taxes: this is the case mainly of salaried State employees. The salaries and the methods of work are directly determined by the interests of monopoly capitalism. Moreover, the wave of privatisations is reducing the size of this category, adding to category (a). (c) the independent workers: as a result of their living conditions, some of them are close to the bourgeoisie, while others are closer to the workers, namely the peasants, artisans and traders who are linked to the multinationals by means of unequal contracts and who in fact have nothing independent except their name and the idea they have of themselves. (d) the bourgeoisie dominated by the monopoly bourgoisie, in struggle with the working class, that can only win if it is led by the industrial proletariat. Classes are not defined only in relation to production of surplus value An engineer may produce surplus value as a worker in a factory, but generally he doesn't belong to the working class. A government employee or an employee in a shopping centre or a bank may be classified as a worker, based on his social position and on his salary. Lenin has pointed out how to define classes: "Classes are called vast groups of people that can be distinguished by the place they occupy in a historically defined system of social production, by their relation (most of the time fixed and regulated by laws) vis-à-vis the means of production, by their role in the social organisation of labour, thus, by the way of obtaining, and by the size of the social riches they dispose of. Classes are groups of men of which one is able to appropriate the labour of the other, because of the different place they occupy in a determined structure, in the social economy." (14) A fourth criterion must be added: the situation vis-à-vis the State apparatus (15), which is particularly important in order to understand why the repressive forces and the majority of the trade union leaders don't belong to the working class. Starting from these criteria, it becomes possible to comprehend why railway workers, postmen, telecommunication and airport workers belong to the working class and why the majority of scientific and intellectual professionals belong to the petit bourgeoisie, vacillating between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. In any case, the working class must not be limited to only the manual workers, as we will explain in detail. The working class in Belgium 1. The example of Belgium is used to concretely analyse the classes. (16) The portion of the active population consisting of wage earners has increased from 78% in 1966 to 83% today. In 1997, 29% of the active population (and 35% of the wage earners) are classified as "labourers", i.e. manual workers, of which 26% are women and 74% are men. The number of manual workers has decreased with 30% between 1974 and 1997, and the number of wage earners in the secondary sector has diminished by 35.5%. In 1997, 62% of the wage earners in the manufacturing industry are manual workers. They comprise 15% of the total of wage earners. They form the industrial proletariat, the core of the working class. Between 1974 and 1995, unemployment has increased from 2% to 13%, while total employment decreased by 1.5%. 2. During the same period, employment of women has increased by 7.5% compared to total employment, while male employment decreased by 9%. It is more beneficial to the bourgeoisie to employ women rather than men, because for equal work the salaries of women are generally lower than those of men, and it is easier to impose a precarious condition and/or part-time jobs on women than on men. Indeed, the female reserve army of labour is considerable: 57% of the unemployed, while women comprise only 43% of the active population. In 1996, 14% of the total of wage earners were part-time, but 30% of women worked part-time, as compared to 3% of the men. It can be estimated that 60% of the woman wage earners belong to the working class, even if the manual workers comprise only 22% of the totality of woman wage earners. 3. In the industrialised countries, the manufacturing industry represents less than a fifth of the demand for lowly qualified labour. (17) In Belgium, the non-qualified workers comprise 11% of the wage earners. Intellectual labour is more and more integrated in the production of commodities. In the 25-29 age bracket, 24% of the population have at the most a certificate of lower secondary education and thus have a much reduced chance of finding a job. 59% have a certificate of higher secondary education or of short-type higher education. It is from these 83% that the younger section of the working class comes from. They are subject to job insecurity, flexible contracts and working conditions, and various forms of marginal jobs. (18) Today, the sector of interim work represents 37% of the entries on the Belgian job market. (19) 4. Between 1963 and 1996, the portion of jobs in the services sector has increased from 47.3% to 69.7%, while that in the secondary sector has decreased from 45.3% to 27.7%. The division in secondary and tertiary sectors doesn't correspond to the Marxist distinction between productive and non-productive sectors, between services that are essential for the production of commodities and those that are not. (20) In the ' services ' sector, the category that has seen the strongest growth is that of services rendered to companies, for the simple reason that a good number of the services which used to be assured by the industrial company itself, are now taken up by specialised companies dependent on the tertiary sector: marketing, management, cleaning and maintenance services, security, computerisation, product development and the conceptualisation of manufacturing procedures. The services section of "transportation, storage and communications" represents 7.4% of the working people. (16) A large part of this section is integral to the commodity producing sector. A good example is that of the American multinational corporation UPS that transports packages mainly for industry - and went on a historical strike in the summer of 1997, for real jobs and against hamburger jobs. Another services section, "financial services, real estate, rental and service activities for companies", represents 10.6% of the employed. Notably, this section comprises the activities of information technology, nowadays essential to any production process. These activities are increasing rapidly and enormously, particularly because of the approaching year 2000, the introduction of the Euro, and the acceleration of the computerisation of all activities of commodity production and services. In Belgium there is currently a need for between 5000 and 20.000 computer specialists of higher educational level. The capitalists are very worried about this situation, not only because it slows down the economic activity, but also because, without a reserve army in the information technology, the salaries are increasing much beyond their liking. Thus, the Ministry of Employment and Labour is linking up with IBM to educate thousands of computer specialists in the shortest possible time in order to avoid such losses of surplus value. (21) The objective is not only to fulfill the demand in the sector, but to form a reserve army as soon as possible. "The development of a ' service economy ' independent of production is fiction. The services sector cannot grow if not in relation with a strong industrial sector. A faster turnover of constant capital (machines and stocks) is, at this moment, one of the main objectives of the employers, in order to increase their profit rate. The subcontracting of services and the development of new services are means to accelerate this turnover. By leaving specialised tasks to a services company that assures these tasks for several capitalists together, the productive sector is able to produce in a more profitable way. Thus, the most important development is the following: as a result of the new technologies, the computerisation of numerous components of the production process (of commodities and services), the growing specialisation and subcontracting, production and its allied services have increasingly become entangled, while the distinction between ' material and non-material ' goods has been blurred. Many operations classified as ' services ' are in fact integral components of the production process to which they are linked." (20) 5. The coming together of labourers-employees-government employees. (22) Within the process of commodity production, the development of technology, with a major role for factors such as control and management, has brought about the increase of the part played by intellectual labour. More qualified personnel is being required. For highly computerised processes, production tasks have become control tasks. Nevertheless, all predictions about the impending disappearance of manual labour have been proven wrong, and the robotisation is developing at a much slower pace than initially expected. The factory worker remains the indispensible link in the production of goods and surplus value. He is the spearhead of the working class. The management demands of the worker much more manual and intellectual work, which means a more intense and complex job, in order to produce more surplus value. On one hand, this augments the worker's grip on the course of the production and demands higher qualifications and polyvalent qualities for certain categories of workers. On the other hand, we are witnessing the proletarisation of intellectual tasks. Many tasks that, in the past, were dissociated from production, have now become part of it. According to the Taylorian concept, intellectual labour is composed of standardised elements that are transferred to the computer. In this respect, an ever larger part of the work of an employee ressembles ever more the work at a production chain. The working conditions of the employees ressemble more and more those of the workers directly involved in the production of commodities. Rather than seeing the statute and the salary of the labourer upwardly approaching those of the employee, we are witnessing the reverse: the statute and the salary of the employee are downwardly approaching those of the labourer. What, according to the reformists, would have led to the generalisation of the petit-bourgeois condition, has in fact led to the generalisation of the proletarian conditon. This is not only the case for services linked to production, but it applies to the entirety of the services sector, public as well as private, trading as well as non-profit. All restrictions imposed by the bourgeoisie on the public and non-profit sectors have resulted in rationalisations and in the establishment of 'contracts for autonomous management ' where the imperatives of the market and of profit have completely overtaken the principles of public interest; and have resulted in the progressive elimination of the statute of government employee, which guaranteed job security and retirement benefits a labourer doesn't have. The offensive to privatise the State services and make them subject to profit-making, has contributed a lot to the expansion of the sector of direct capitalist exploitation. The privatisation of the transport and communications sector, the hospitals, education has multiplied the number of wage earners who exchange their labour for private capital instead of for income derived from taxes. Capitalism does not only let wage earners compete among themselves, but even with the machines. It attempts to put the production of services in competition with the production of commodities in order to multiply profits: bank, assurance and government employees against automatic vending machines, teachers against multimedia kits, sanitation personnel against medical kits. As they suffer competition, notably from the machine, all wage earners, intellectuals as well as manual workers, are affected by their condition of being a commodity in the capitalist system, a mouse in the claws of the cat. They become proletarised. But they will put themselves under the leadership of the proletariat of the big companies only if the revolutionary trade-unionists and the communists in general do a good job. The intervention of the communists of the Workers ' Party of Belgium (PTB) and of trade-unionists in the factories of Clabecq, Caterpillar and VW and in the struggle of the teachers and the pupils in 1996 shows the way forward. The same goes for the struggle of the non-profit sector in 1998. To return to Lenin: "The notion of class is being formed in struggle and in development. There is no wall separating one class from the other. (... Marx) insisted on scientific concepts teaching us that a class becomes bigger through class struggle and that it must be helped to mature." (23) "The Manifesto of the communist party" seems to have been written in Brussels only yesterday, to guide our work not only among the workers of the big factories, but also among the wage earners that are becoming proletarised: "As a consequence of the growing competition of the bourgeois between themselves and of the subsequent commercial crises, salaries are becoming more and more unstable; the constant and ever faster perfectioning of the machine renders the condition of the worker ever more precarious; the individual conflicts between the worker and the bourgeois acquire more and more the caracter of a conflict between two classes (...). The existence of the bourgeois class and its domination have as essential condition the accumulation of riches in the hands of individuals, the formation of capital and its growth; and the condition for the existence of capital, is wage-labour. Wage-labour is exclusively based on the competition between workers. The progress of industry, of which the bourgeoisie is the agent, albeit beyond its own will and without resistance, replaces the isolation of the workers resulting from their competition, with their revolutionary union by association (...). More than anything, the bourgeoisie produces its own gravediggers." (24) The working class is international On a world scale, the growth of commodity production is so much faster than the growth of jobs, while the growth of jobs is so much slower than the increase of the available work force (25), that "the development of big industry is eliminating from under the feet of the bourgeoisie, the ground itself on which it has established its system of production and appropriation" (26). "The bourgeois system has become too restricted to contain the riches within it." (27) Indeed, "in 1990, there were at least 35.000 transnational companies with more than 150.000 branches abroad. On the 22 million people they employ abroad, almost 7 million are directly employed in the developing countries, or less than 1% of the active population of the latter. We should add to this an equal number of people that work for them as suppliers or renderers of services." (25) In the industrialised countries, the multinationals are engendering unemployment and inferior statutes. In the Third World, they are organising underdevelopment in a devious manner, exploiting to the hilt less than 2% of the active population and putting the other 98% into agony. In the formerly socialist countries, they are acting the same way. The multinationals and the world capitalist system will dig their own graves on the condition that the communists unite, in the process uniting the international proletariat. Table I (2) - Structure of the active population (%) Agriculture Industry Services 1975 1996 1975 1996 1975 1996 United States 4.1 2.8 30.6 23.9 65.3 73.3 Japan 12.7 5.5 35.9 33.3 51.5 61.2 Germany 6.8 3.3 45.4 37.5 47.8 59.1 France 10.3 4.6 38.6 25.9 51.1 69.5 United Kingdom 2.8 2.0 40.4 27.3 56.8 70.3 Belgium 4.7 2.6 49.4 27.7 45.9 69.7 Turkey 58.7 44.8 19.4 22.2 22.0 33.0 Mexico 40.3 24.7 26.6 21.3 33.1 54.0 Brasil 37.9 27.4 24.3 20.7 37.8 51.9 Nigeria 69.6 37.7 11.1 7.5 19.4 54.8 Russia 16.1 35.6 48.3 India 70.7 61.6 12.9 17.1 16.4 21.3 China 76.3 56.4 12.1 22.4 11.7 21.2 Table II (2) - Structure of the BIP (%) Agriculture Industry Services 1975 1996 1975 1996 1975 1996 United States 3.3 1.7 32.9 26.1 63.8 72.1 Japan 5.5 2.1 42.4 38.2 52.1 59.6 Germany 2.8 1.0 44.1 32.3 53.1 66.7 France 4.8 2.3 35.4 25.8 59.8 71.9 United Kingdom 2.7 2.0 41.0 31.6 56.3 66.3 Belgium 2.8 1.9 37.1 30.1 60.1 68.0 Turkey 35.8 17.1 14.7 30.7 49.5 52.2 Mexico 10.8 5.4 29.9 26.3 59.3 68.3 Brasil 12.1 12.8 40.2 38.4 47.7 48.8 Nigeria 31.7 28.2 28.5 53.3 39.8 18.5 Russia 7.5 39.7 52.8 India 40.5 30.3 23.7 28.9 35.8 40.9 China 32.0 20.5 42.8 48.0 25.2 31.5 References (1) Le Manifeste du Parti communiste, Etudes Marxistes 41/98, EPO (Bruxelles); chap.1, p.103. (2) L'Etat du Monde, Edition 1998, La Découverte (Paris). (3) Rapport mondial sur le développement humain 1993, PNUD, Economica (Paris); p.46. (4) Rapport mondial sur le développement humain 1997, PNUD, Economica (Paris); p.102, 220-221, 242. (5) La base de données STAN de l'OCDE pour l'analyse de l'industrie 1975-1994, Edition 1995 (Paris); p.126-127, 226, 348-349. Stastistiques des structures industrielles 1994, Edition 1996, OCDE (Paris); p.266-267, 120, 219. Voir réf.(2) et (4). (6) Voir réf.(3); p.41-47. (7) World Economic Outlook, October 1997, International Monetary Fund (Washington); p.171. (8) Eco-Soir, Le Soir (Bruxelles), 24 avril 1998; p.2. (9) Voir réf.(4); p.97. (10) The World. A Third World Guide 1995/96; p.28. (11) Lénine, "7ème Congrès des Soviets de Russie", section 4, Volume 30; p.256. (12) Lénine, "Les tâches des unions de la jeunesse", Volume 31; p.302. (13) Lénine, "Discours au 3ème Congrès des syndicats de Russie", Volume 30; p.525. (14) Lénine, "La grande initiative", Volume 29; p.425. (15) Jo Cottenier et Kris Hertogen, "Le temps travaille pour nous. Militant syndical dans les années 90", EPO (Bruxelles), 1991; p.255. (16) "Statistiques sociales. Enquête sur les forces de travail, Année 1997", Institut national de statistique (Bruxelles). "La population active en Belgique", "1. Le pays - Situation au 30 juin 1995", "2. Récapitulatif depuis 1970", Ministère fédéral de l'emploi et du travail, mai 1997 (Bruxelles). (17) Voir réf.(4); p.99. (18) Voir réf.(15); p.184 (19) Le Soir (Bruxelles), 11-13.04.98; p.15. (20) Voir réf.(15); p.180-182. (21) Le Soir (Bruxelles), 4-5.04.98; p.15. (22) Voir réf. (15); p.182. (23) Lénine, Volume 30; p. 525-526. (24) Voir réf.(1); p.105 et 108. (25) Voir réf.(3); p.38 à 41. (26) Voir réf.(1); p.108. (27) Voir réf.(1); p.103. http://www.wpb.be/icm/98en/98en06.html This message has been scanned for malware by SurfControl plc. www.surfcontrol.com _______________________________________________ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis