Class A Simple View

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Class ‐ a simple viewKeith Graham aa Department of Philosophy , University of Bristol , 9 Woodland Rd., Bristol, BS8 1TB,EnglandPublished online: 29 Aug 2008.

To cite this article: Keith Graham (1989) Class ‐ a simple view, Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy, 32:4,419-436, DOI: 10.1080/00201748908602203

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Inquiry, 32, 419-36

Class - A Simple View

Keith Graham -University of Bristol

The aim is to defend the starting-point of Marx's theory of class, which is located ina definition of the working class in the Comm unist Manifesto. It is a definitionsolely in terms of separation from productive resources and a need to sell one'slabour power, and it is closely connected with Marx's thesis that the population incapitalism has a tendency to polarize. That thesis conflicts with the widely-heldbelief in the growth of a large middle class, unaccounted for by Marx. Moreover,recent critics such as Elster, Roemer, and Cohen have argued that this definition

fails even in its own terms. The definition is refurbished so as to withstand theseobjections. But is there any point in using it? Does it serve to pick out theexploited producers as Marx intended? It does, once due attention is given to theidea of the collective worker, which is central in the volume of Capital which Marxhimself published. That idea makes plain that it is an irreducibly corporate entitywhich is productive and subject to exploitation. The structural conditions formembership of that entity remove Marx's view from any simple identification ofworking-class membership with manual or lowly labour.

The aim of this paper is not to defend the whole of Marx's theory of class(whatever that is) but rather its starting-point, against a set of argumentswhich purport to show that it is thoroughly misconceived. The starting-point in question involves a conception of class resting on a definition interms of one's relation to the means of production, and an associated thesisabout the polarized class composition of contemporary society.

The Comm unist Manifesto opens with the declaration that the history ofall hitherto existing society has been the history of class struggles. Itproceeds with a characteriza tion of the struggle in the capitalist era, be tweenthe proletariat, the workers, and the bourgeoisie, the owners of the meansof social production and employers of wage labour. T heir relation is seenas the latest, and last, of a series of oppressive and exploitative relationsbetween classes. Many of the features of this particular relation are specialand specially complex, and one of the central tasks of the magnum opus,Capital will be to lay ba re their natu re.

The antagonistic relation between bourgeoisie and proletariat is destinedto become more acute, and this is summarized in what one might call thepolarization thesis: 'Society as a whole is more and more splitting up into


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two great hostile camps, into two great classes directly facing each other:

bourgeoisie and proletariat' (Marx and Engels [1848, p. 68]). But theantagonism is to be resolved. As more people become separated from themeans of production the p roletariat becomes the majority class; as capitalistindustry throws workers together they learn the lesson of solidarity; andthe resultant growth in political consciousness leads to a political movementto overthrow the existing order of society. Ownership of the means of lifeby a class is replaced by ownership of resources by the whole of society.

Much of this scenario has never taken place. One of the commonestforms of explanation for this - even among those who wish to give asympathetic interpretation of Marx's theories - is that the proletariat asoriginally specified has not grown to be the majority class, there has notbeen the kind of polarization envisaged. In particular Marx's polar theory

allows no place for the middle class which has grown so large in thetwentieth centu ry. Th at conventionally accepted explanation carries its owndifficulties, which are not the focus of this paper.

It is all but impossible to make any uncontentious claims about Marx,and a shorter way with the starting-point would be to contend that itinadequately rep resents his considered position. Th us, it might be pointedout that Marx refers to 'the three [sic] great classes of modern society' inthe famous last chapter of Capital vol. iii, a chapter on 'Classes' which henever finished (indeed, hardly began) (Marx [1894, p. 1025]). Equally, itmay be said that whereas in Marx's abstract writings the polarized starting-point is posited, in his concrete writings on politics and history we areallowed a much richer and more fragmented picture (Wright [1985, p . 7]).

But these points have limited force. For one thing, as Wright correctlynotes, the claimed tendency to polarization is also part of the argument inCapital vol. iii (ibid., p . 8). For ano ther , th e thre e classes in question arewage-labourers, capitalists, and landowners, and it is precisely the latter,third element which tends to disappear into the polarization, rather thanbeing a new, emerging third element as sponsors of the new middle classclaim on its behalf. 1 Finally, we should note that even in his politicalwritings Marx sometimes reasserts the polarization thesis in the midst ofrecognizing the diversity of messy empirical rea lity, as in The Class Strugglesin France, where he describes the insurrection of 22 June 'in which the firstgreat battle was fought between the two great classes which divide modernsociety' (Marx [1850, p. 58]).

Przeworski neatly summarizes some of the difficulties in retaining Marx'sstarting-point. He argues that for Marx in 1848 all the relevant con-siderations pertaining to the proletariat fall together: viz. lack of accessto the means of production, engagement in manual labour, productiveemployment, and the experiencing of poverty and degradation. In thosecircumstances, Marx's theorized conception in terms of separation from


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Class - A Sim ple View All

the means of production coincides with our intuitive conception. But the

intervening years between his day and ours involve a break -up of all thesedifferent factors. In consequence , separation from the means of productiondoes not necessarily coincide with being subj'ected to manual labour. It maylead to being placed in many different groups whose status is theoreticallyambiguous (Przeworski [1985, pp. 56-62]).

Clearly the issue here is not merely of academic interest. Whether youthink society is divided into classes, and if so how many and what relationsthey stand in to each other - the answers to these questions will haveprofound implications for the political allegiances which you can hold itreasonable to recommend forming or to engage in yourself. But there is amore specific political implication for Marxism than this. We saw that itwas part of Marx's story that the pro letariat was due to become the majority

class in society. If you believe, as Marx also did, that this class is the onlypractical agency which can be expected to carry out and consolidate asocialist revolution, then you have very strong grounds for working for andwelcoming the introduction of universal suffrage and majority rule. That isprecisely what Marx recom mended.2 But now contrariwise: if the proletariatbegins to shrink, a system of majority rule presents a problem. To theextent that you retain commitment to and advocate class-based politicalaction, you run the risk of being in a permanent minority and thereforebeing condemned always to lose in such a system.

There is, in other words, an implication here for specifically democraticpolitical values. If it is conceded that the proletariat is a minority and alsothat it is the only appro priate agency for making a certain kind of revolution,then this would force abandonment of the comm itment to majority rule ifthere is to be any hope of success along the line of political action basedon collective self-interest. That abandonm ent, indeed, would be com patiblewith the historically most influential version of Marxism - the Leninizedversion. But I have argued elsewhere that the respective attachments todemocratic values of Marx and Lenin are quite different, and that Marxhas a deep commitment to dem ocratic values which is entirely absent fromLenin.3 It is of some consequence, therefore, if it turns out that Marx'scommitment to democratic procedures rests on a conception of class whichitself stands under threat of abandonment.

Implicit in Marx's writings there is a conception of the working class; aseries of substantive theses about it; and also a set of prognoses about itsfuture. Among the substantive theses is the claim that the working class isalone responsible for the production of surplus value. Among the prognoses


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are the claims that working-class consciousness will grow and that political

action based upon that consciousness will occur. Roughly, what I want toargue is that even if the prognoses have been mistaken, this does notthreaten the conception of the working class itself or its importance. Onthe other han d, the falsity of the substantive theses would have that effect,but it is much less obvious that their falsity has been established.

There is one explicit definition of the w orking class to be found in Marx'swritings (though it was put there by Engels). It occurs in a footnote in theComm unist Manifesto:

By proletariat [is meant] the class of modern wage labourers who, having no meansof production of their own, are reduced to selling their labour power in order tolive. (Marx and Engels [1848, p. 67])4

This definition of the p roletariat is buried dee p, and to insist on its import-ance is to incur something of the same social odium as a grave-robber.Both sympathetic and unsympathetic critics engage in lengthy discussionof the question how to construe Ma rx's idea of the working class, and offertheir own amended definitions, without any explicit reference to it.5 Myintention, nevertheless, is to rush in where othe r theorists resolutely refuseto trea d, and to defend Marx's starting-point. This obviously implies accept-ance of a very wide definition of the working class, which will embracemany individuals normally regarded as middle class.

There is, moreover, one form of objection to Marx's view which shouldbe challenged at the outset: w hat one might call the appeal to pre-existingbelief or linguistic habit. This is the sort of objection which implicitly takesthe form 'The w ide definition yields the consequence that A s are m embersof the working class. But we don't ordinarily believe (or say) that A s aremem bers of the working class. There fore the w ide definition is false'. Thatform of argument relies on the supp ressed premise tha t what we ordinarilybelieve or say is true, adequate or otherwise satisfactory. It seems ill-advised to rest a philosophical argumen t on such a contentious assumption,even if there are recen t historical precedents in the subject for doing so (cf.Graham [1977, ch. 2]).

Explicit or implicit reliance on some assumption like this does occur.Thus, Wright criticized his own earlier attempt to construct a theory ofclass because it yielded results 'which did not correspond to an intuitiveidea of the working class': a range of technical and professional jobs wereleft in that category whereas they 'are usually viewed as middle class '(Wright [1985, p. 45]). Against these comments may be set Marx's affir-mations of the need to challenge current social percep tions; the lament ofthe C omm unist Manifesto that the bourgeoisie 'ha s converted the physician,the lawyer, the priest, the poet, the man of science, into its paid wagelabourers' (Marx and Engels [1848, p. 70]); the description of supervisors


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Class - A Simple View 423

as 'a special kind of wage-labourer' (Marx [1867, p. 450]); the description

of teachers and writers as productive workers (Marx [1867, p. 644] [1933,p. 1044]). Marx's theories are theories for revolutionary change, whichdepend crucially on changing people's ordinary, non-revolutionary per-ceptions of the nature of the society they live in. It is therefore a mark infavour of these theo ries, rather than against them , if their acceptance leadsus to believe and say different things from what we believe and say at themoment.

In any case , there are m ore pressing objections to the wide definition ofthe working class. The re are arguments, from a variety of directions, whichpurport to show that it is ill-conceived even in its own terms. I mentionfour such arguments.

Elster argues that we cannot define class in property terms, i.e. in terms

of degrees of ownership and non-ownership of labour power and means ofproduction, on the grounds that infinite degrees are possible and this wouldlead to an infinite fragm entation of classes; and he calls Marx in aid of hispoint (Elster [1986, p. 143]).

Cohen has argued on a number of occasions that being forced to sellone 's labour power is not a description which successfully picks out anyone,not even people normally taken to be members of the proletariat. Suchpeople are in an objective position no different from, for example, manyimmigrants who arrive penniless but propel themselves up the class hier-archy by a mixture of savings made when they were employed plus bor-rowings, as a result of which they are able to become small shopkeepers(Cohen [1986, pp. 240-1]). It is not true of the immigrants that they are

forced to sell their labour power, so it is not true of others either. Cohenconcedes that such people are collectively unfree, in the sense that not all.of them could escape the condition of selling their labour power. Some areable to do so only on condition that others do not; if all the exits werecrowded then not everyone could get through them. But not all the exitsare crowded, so it is true of people taken severally that they could leavetheir present condition (ibid., pp. 243-4).

Przeworski entertains a similar thought: proletarians do not have to selltheir labour power, rather they choose to. They have a set of goals andresources and they make choices in the light of these. Tha t is what supportshis preferred view that classes are not a given, but rather 'historicallycontingent products of reciprocal actions' (Przeworski [1985, p. 96]). Cer-tain choices are ma de, such as to sell one's labour power, but these are thechoices of individuals who are not antecedently describable as workers.That description becomes apposite only in the light of the choices they firstmake. In tha t ca se, m embership of the working class cannot be defined interms of being forced into a certain relation (Przeworski [1985, pp. 95-97]).


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Roem er objects to the idea that workers are coerced on the grounds th at,

on M arx's premises, workers sell their labour power at its value. 'Coerciveexchange would, on the contra ry, involve one side being forced to exchangeits service for less than its value ' (Roem er [1982, p . 82]), and this leads himto reject the idea that the labour process is at the centre of the Marxiananalysis of exploitation and class (ibid., p . 93).

These arguments, I suggest, force clarification of the original definition,rather than abandonment of it. Let us reformulate it with more nuances,but in a way which I hope retains the central drift:

By p roletariat is meant the modern class of wage- or salary earning peoplewhose lack of ownership of sufficiently significant means of production oftheir own results in their being forced, for a significant period of their lives,to o ffer their labour power for sale, during a significant proportion of thatperiod, if they are to live at an average, reasonable standard of living in theprevailing historical circumstances without engaging in specifiably outlandishor dangerous alternative activities, as well as people who are, in specifiableways, directly dependent for their own livelihood on members of the pro-letariat a s defined.

This refurbished definition clarifies a number of points. It makes plainerthat reference to non-ownership of means of production in the originaldefinition is linked to reference to sale of labour power: the first is causallyresponsible for the second. Hence Marx's theory does not fall foul ofRoemer's admonition that '[i]t is a mistake to elevate the struggle betweenworker and capitalist in the process of production to a more privileged

position . . . than the differential ownership of productive assets' (Roemer[1982, p. 93]). On the contrary, even conceding Roemer's general dem-onstration that exploitation can occur in the complete absence of a labourmarket, Marx's chief preoccupation happens to be w ith a system of societywhere there is such a market and whe re it results precisely from differentialownership of productive assets.

Nor does the fact that there can be infinite degrees of ownership resultin an infinite number of class fragmentations, as Elster claims. Rather,there is a non-arbitrary quantitative cut-off point. Without specifying afigure, we can say that there is a point at which someone owns the meansof production in such large measure th at it is no longer necessary for themto enter into a wage-relation if they do not choose to. At that point

they cease to be members of the working class. Because a quantitativeconsideration is built into the definition there will necessarily be borderlinecases, but this is consistent w ith the g reat bulk of cases falling on on e sideor the other.

It also becomes clear that the claim about being forced to sell one'slabour power is an elliptical one. It is not a matter of being forced in an


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absolute sense, but being forced if one has certain ends that are to beachieved in a certain way. Hence it is compatible with being a worker inthis sense that one should be described as choosing to w ork, as Przeworskisuggests. You don't have to offer your labour power for sale: you couldstarve , or rifle through garbage cans, or rob b anks, or live off social security,depending on the precise range of alternatives in your surrounding socialcircumstances. But if you want to live a reasonably normal life then youmust choose to sell your energies in the absence of large enough reservesto enable you to enjoy that condition without doing so.

It might be held tha t C ohen's argument shows that no one is forced evenin this elliptical sense. This may depend partly on how we interpret the'significant period of time' of the refurbished definition. His coun-terexamples may show only that someone can on occasion change their

class membership, rather than that something ceases to be true of themwhile they are still a member of a given class (cf. Reiman [1987]). As wenoted, he recognizes that an important element in the escape from theproletarian condition may be 'savings . . . accumulated, perhaps painfully,while still in the proletarian condition . . .' (Cohen [1986, p. 241]). Butthat suggests that there is a significant period when the escapees have tosell their labour power; only it may eventually come to an end.

Cohen might perhaps reply that such a period would not be sufficientlysignificant, or else that the escapees are proletarians on the eve of theirascent, at which point they are not forced to sell their labour power (cf.ibid., p. 242, n. 6). But that may leave him prey to what is in a sense theoppos ite difficulty. T here is a large failure-rate among new small businesses.

This makes it reasonable to say that a large proportion of the people Cohenhas in mind could temporarily escape the condition of having to sell theirlabour power, but only for a relatively short time, because they would failin business and be ejected back into that condition. In that case it mightstill be true that for a significant period of their lives they had to sell theirlabour power: but that period would be discontinuous, and would becomposed of time both before and after temporary escape. This does notdestroy the validity of Cohen 's argum ent, but it does raise a serious doubtabout it. Certainly it will remain true that some can escape; what is nolonger so obvious is that 'for most proletarians there exists a means ofescape ' (ibid., p. 243) if we are to unde rstand by that a permanent or long-term means of escape.

Notice that this argument does not rely on questioning the acceptabilityof the alternative, petty bourgeois condition, a line of objection whichCohen considers (ibid., pp . 256-9) . It relies rathe r on questioning its long-term a vailability. But the acceptability question can be raised to o, and itundermines not the validity but the importance of Cohen's argument.Suppose, as seems plaus ible, that even if the position of a small shopkeeper


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is formally different from that of som eone selling their labour pow er, the

substantial effect this has on their life pattern is much the same. Forexam ple, they must spend long hours engaged in activity whose nature andcircumstances are not within their own control but are in fact dictated byagencies which own and control much g reater resources. Then all that willbe true is that some can escape being proletarians by becoming formallypetty bourgeois but still remaining in a proletarian-like condition.

Cohen tries to meet this point with two rejoinders: first, that the petty-bourgeois, being 'their own boss', have an autonomy that ought not to bedisparaged, and second that the argument can in any case be couched interms of ascent into the 'higher grade, not-so-petty, bourgeois positions,into which workers also from time to time rise' (ibid., p. 256, n. 34). Butthe questioning of the acceptability of petty-bourgeois conditions does not

constitute a challenge to the value of autonom y: rath er, it expresses doubtsabout whether autonomy really is greater in those conditions, whetherformally different relations do not simply disguise materially similarrelations. Marx makes relevant observations on just that social group inThe Class Struggles in France. No one had fought with more fanaticism forthe salvation of property than the Parisian petty bourgeoisie. 'But thehouses in which they lived were not their property; the shops which theykept were not their property; the goods in which they dealt were not theirproperty' (Marx [1850, p. 65]). On the contrary, their autonomy wasimpaired by their standing in relations of subservience, to the house-owner,the bak er, the capitalist, the manufactu rer, the wholesale deale r. Similarly,the exploitation of peasants may differ in form from that of the indus-

trial proletariat, but the exploiter is still the same, viz. capital (ibid.,p. 117). As for Cohen's second rejoinder, that simply takes us back to theearlier objection, which challenges the inference that a means of escapehas been discerned which is available, even in sensu diviso, to mostproletarians.

It is not yet app arent why we should attach significance to Cohen's ownclaim, that though workers are individually free in the relevant respect theyare no t collectively free. H e suggests that collective unfreedom as such neednot be of any particular concern to us, but that the collective unfreedomspecifically to refrain from selling one's labour power should be, becausethis unfreedom forces workers to subord inate themselves to others (Cohe n[1986, p. 251]). But the whole force of his main argument is that, taken

individually, workers are not forced to do this. The compulsion on them,on his account, is hypothetical in a quite different sense from that containedin the refurbished definition: each individual would be so compelled if allthe available exits were crammed with aspiring small shopkeepers. Butthey are not, so the individuals are not under that compulsion: there issomething else they could do . Accordingly, it is not clear to me why Cohen


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thinks that collective unfreedom matters even here. As I shall try to showsubsequently, significance shou ld be attach ed to what is collectively true ofworkers, but it concerns a different matter and indeed a different sense ofcollectivity from Cohen's.

IllConsider now an obv ious objection. Even if we can sustain my refurbisheddefinition of the proletariat, there is no point in doing so. A concept mustdo some work, it must play some role in increasing our understanding ofsome phenomenon or other. But the concept of the proletariat definedhere does no t. It n o longer serves to pick out the homogeneous group ofwretched, impoverished, exploited beings which Marx had in mind. It willinclude many who live in comfortable conditions and are themselves thebeneficiaries of the prod uctive efforts of others, and it will certainly ther e-fore be of no use in any attempt to reinstate the polarization thesis.

We should begin by noticing, as many com men tators fail to , exactly howimpoverishment is a relative notion for Marx. He offers the analogy of ahouse, which shrinks if a palace springs up beside it: in the same way,the enjoyments of a worker may rise, but their social satisfaction, theirsatisfaction relative to what a capitalist can enjoy, may fall if there is arapid growth in productive capital (M arx [1849, pp . 93-94]). He reinforcesthis in Capital, insisting that 'in propo rtion as capital accum ulates, thesituation of the worker, be his payment high or low, must grow worse'

(Marx [1867, p . 799], italics added ). La ter, he insists that t he na ture of thecapital/wage relation ensures that the wage system is 'a system of slavery,increasing in severity commensurately with the development of the socialproductive forces of labour, irrespective of whether the w orker is then betteror worse paid (Marx [1875, p . 352], italics add ed) . This suggests that M arxdoes not believe that workers must remain at the level of wretchednesswhich he witnessed in nineteenth-century Britain, or that they cannotincrease their material well-being as compared with some earlier time. Itfurther suggests that his reasons for collecting workers under the conceptof a class are m ore closely conn ected w ith their entrapm ent in a set of socialrelations in the course of wealth production.

The distinction between productive and unproductive labour has been a

subject of lengthy debate amongst commentators, and I touch on it hereonly to the extent necessary for making sense of Marx's theory of class.His comments on the subject are anything but clear-cut, occurring mainlyin works which he did not himself see through the press (principallyTheories of Surplus Value an d Capital vols. i and ii). Two cases ap positeto the present discussion are those of commercial distribution and super-


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vision. Are workers in these areas productive or not? On the one hand,we are told tha t the m ere process of commercial exchange is not p roductiveof any value (Marx [1885, pp. 207-8]), that an employee in this sphere 'ishimself part of the faux frais of production' (ibid., p. 209); on the otherthat some costs of circulation - those placed u nder th e heading of storagecosts rather than p ure circulation costs - 'do en ter into the value ofcommodities to a certain extent . . .' (ibid., p. 216), and elsewhere thereis an implication that 'commercial middlemen' belong to 'the productiveclass' (Marx [1905-10: i. 218-19]). In the c ase of supervision, Marx makesa distinction between supervision w hich is necessary in any form of coop-erative labour and that which arises from the antagonism between workerand prop rietor (Marx [1894, p. 507]; cf. Marx [1867, pp . 448-50]), and hesuggests that the second kind belongs, once more, to the 'incidentalexpenses of production' (Marx [1905-10: iii. 505]).

There are, moreover, independent difficulties in identifying those indi-viduals who produce surplus value. For example, Roemer defines asexploited som eone w ho cannot buy with their revenue goods with as muchvalue as the value of the labour they contributed in their productiveactivities (cf. Roemer [1982, p. 96]). Although that is a clear definition itwill not ena ble us to identify w ho, in concrete circumstances, is exploited.Elster correctly observes tha t it would be a horrendously complex businessto draw the line between someone who is in this sense exploited andsomeone who is not (Elster [1986, pp. 143-4]). Here is one reason why.Even in the simplest case, in order to know how much value was added toa commodity by a given labourer w e should need to separate tha t labo urer'scontribution from two other factors: the quantity of value transferred tothe commodity from the means of production which the present laboureruses, and the value of the commodity before that labourer began to workon it (Marx [1867, pp. 293-4]). The calculation of the commodity's valueat that earlier stage would depend on the same considerations, and so onright back to the stage when the raw materials making up the commoditywere mined from the earth. Even at that point the same recursive problemwould arise: calculation of how much value was added to the raw materialspecifically by the labourer would depend on how much value was trans-ferred to it from the instrume nts used to m ine it, and so on. A ll this, quiteapart from the fact that the actual price of the commodity at any stagewould be no more than a guide to its value, given Marx's assumption thatprice and value diverge (ibid., p. 196).

Now it is tempting to cut short all these difficulties, about who isproductive and w hether they produce a surplus over what they receive inpaym ent, by pointing out th at in several places Marx distinguishes betweenthose workers who are productive and those who are not; that, in otherwords, for him it is possible to be a worker without being productive. H e


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productive labour to occur. How does this come about? Everything hingeson the idea of the collective worker.

This idea is first introduced in Capital implicitly in the discussion ofcooperation. The starting-point of capitalist production, we are told, bothhistorically and conce ptually, is the ga thering of a large num ber of w orkersin one place (Marx [1867, p. 439]). But their combined expenditure ofenergy brings about a crucial change. Just as the offensive power of asquadron is essentially different from the sum of offensive powers of theindividual soldiers, so the social force c reated w hen many hands cooperatediffers from the sum total of mechanical forces exerted by individualworkers. A new productive power is created here which is an intrinsicallycollective one (ibid., p. 443). The collective worker is then referred toexplicitly in the case of ma nufac ture, as being formed from the combinationof many specialized workers (ibid., p. 464), and it is made clear that theexcellence then displayed by the collective worke r occurs at the expense ofthe individual wo rkers: the ir imperfections o r one-sidedness , resulting fromspecialization, become virtues and many-sided excellence for it (ibid., pp.468-9). 'In manufacture, the social productive power of the collectiveworker, hence of capital, is enriched through the impoverishment of theworker in individual productive power' (ibid., p. 483).

Subsequently, Marx draws out the implications of this shift. In the caseof one individual working on an object, for example, there is no separatesupervisory role, no distinction between mental and physical labour,whereas in the case of the collective worker specialization requires thatthere should b e. M ost important for ou r purposes, there is an accompanyingshift in the conc eption of productive labour when we come to the collectiveworker.The product is transformed from the direct product of the individual producer intoa social product, the joint product of a collective labourer, i.e. a combination ofworkers, each of whom stands at a different distance from the actual manipulationof the object of labour. (Ibid., p . 643)

In consequence, there is a progressive extension of the concept of theproductive labourer.

In order to work productively, it is no longer necessary for the individual himselfto put his hand to the object; it is sufficient for him to be an organ of the collectivelabourer, and to perform any one of its subordinate functions. (Ibid., pp. 643—4)

The definition of productive activity in terms of manipulation of material'is derived from the nature of material production itself, and it remainscorrect for the collective labourer considered as a whole. But it no longerholds good for each member taken individually' (ibid., p. 644; cf. Marx[1905-10: i. 411-12 ]).

Crucially, Marx goes on to argue that capitalism primarily involves not


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the production of commodities but the production of surplus value (Marx[1867, p. 644]), and that too changes the range of those who might beregarded as productive.

The only worker who is productive is one who produces surplus-value for thecapitalist, or in other words contributes towards the self-valorization of capital.(Marx [1867, p. 644]; cf. Marx [1905-10: i. 156-7])

And he gives as an example of such production of surplus value, the caseof a schoolteacher who works himself into the ground to enrich the ownerof the school (Marx [1867, p. 644]; cf. Marx [1905-10: i. 292]).6

Six interesting points emerge from these observations. First, in themeasure that the image of a lone individual, working on a portion of rawmaterial and transforming it, is inapposite as an image of modern, large-scale production, it becomes not merely difficult in practice but mis-conceived in principle to attempt to calculate whether an individual is a netproducer of surplus value. Abstract models, as in Roemer's arguments,notwithstanding, there is no criterion we could adopt which would enableus to decide in a concrete case whether an individual was a net exploiteror exploitee. Marx makes the point that what distinguishes the division oflabour in manufacture is '[t]he fact that the specialized worker producesno commodities. It is only the common product of all the specializedworkers that becomes a commodity' (Marx [1867, p. 475]), and he quotesThomas Hodgskin with approval: 'There is no longer anything which wecan call the natural reward of individual labour. Each labourer producesonly some part of a whole, and each part, having no value or utility in

itself, there is nothing on which the labourer can seize, and say: It is myproduct, this I will keep to myself (ibid., p. 475, n. 34).7

Second, in so far as we can ascribe the epithet 'productive' to a numberof individuals, it is not in virtue of some specific common characteristicwhich they possess or some specific common activity which they carry out.Rather, it is their combination into a unit which can itself be described asproductive that allows derivative ascription of that epithet to them. Thecollective worker constitutes a collective in the sense which I have articu-lated elsewhere: certain powers are attributable to it which could not beattributed to its constituent parts, and the significance of those constituentsin the context of the collective can be brought out only by an ineliminablereference to it.8 A worker's productiveness consists in their contributing

positively to the collective s production of surplus value .Third, the grounds on which to make such derivative attributions toindividuals are clearly and explicitly removed from any crude idea of manuallabour. It is one's position in a system, the fact of making a contributionto it, of performing any of the subordinate tasks of the collective, whichqualify one for the epithet.9 Elsewhere Marx associates himself with the


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group of people who make up the overall collective labourer is beset withmany familiar difficulties. Przeworski fairly notes that we do not knowexactly what kinds of labour are necessary to keep capitalism going as asystem, and we should resist the temptation to 'jump into the abyss offunctionalism' in that version which sees everything that happens as ne-cessary for reproducing capitalist relations (Przeworski [1985, p. 85]).Relatedly, it may be felt that there must be some people who are unpro-ductive even in the most extended sense, but yet who may still fit thedescription of the refurbished definition. There is also the argument thatsome capitalists will be part of the collective lab ourer, viz. those who chooseto work and therefore may contribute to the production of surplus value,though precisely because they choose to do so they will fall outside thescope of that definition.

I suggested we could view Marx as providing us with a definition of theworking class, a set of substantive theses and a set of prognoses about it.When we do prop er justice to the substantive thesis about production whichMarx asserts, we discover that it is, to say the least, a highly theorizedclaim. It is the claim that a particular, complex theoretical entity, thecollective worker, is uniquely responsible for the carrying but of a theor-etically-defined task, the production of surplus value.

Now that claim may be completely wrong. We may wish to reject the

existence of the entity or the task which it is supposed to carry out. Wemay, indeed, wish to reject the whole concept of value without which atheory of surplus value would have no place . Or we may wish to agree tha tthere is such a thing as the collective labourer and there is such a thing assurplus value, but depart from Marx's story about how they relate to eachother. But no one could plausibly argue that, by taking a glance around atthe contemporary world, we can see that it is obvious that he was wrongin this theoretical claim. And in that case, no one could argue that hisoriginal concept of th e working class is discredited on th e grounds that thissubstantive thesis abou t the working class is obviously no t true. The re maywell be work for that original concept to do, and it would take a lot moretheoretical argument to establish whether that is so or not.

It remains to stress the modesty of the thesis advanced in this paper. Ihave attem pted to show tha t M arx offers a viable means of identifying theworking class by means of the refurbished definition, and tha t the substan-tive theoretical claim which he makes about the class as so defined is atleast not obviously false. Much more would need to be done to establishthat we have here the makings of a theory of class which is acceptable. In


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particular, it would need to be shown that a plausible theory of interests

can be built on these foundations and it would need to be shown why classconsciousness has not developed in accordance with this conception ofclass. These are further tasks for another occasion. What I hope to haveshown on this occasion is that at least there is a distinctive view of classimplicit in Marx which rises to the level of being worth consideration.10

N O T E S

1 But what about the passage in Theories of Surplus Value where Marx criticizes R icardofor ignoring 'the constantly growing number of the m iddle classes, those w ho stand betweenthe workman on the one hand and the capitalist and landlord on the other' and 'maintainthemselves to an ever increasing extent directly out of revenue ' (M arx [1905-10: ii. 573])?That passage seems to me simply inconsistent with Marx's dominant view, especially inthe light of the conception of productive labour elaborated below in sections III and IV.

2 'All previous historical movements were movements of minorities or in the interest ofminorities. The proletarian movement is the self-conscious, independ ent movement of theimmense majority, in the interest of the immense majority' (Marx and Engels [1848, p.78]). Hence the first step in the revolution is to 'win the battle of democracy' (ibid., p.86). Compare Marx's support for the aims of the Chartists, and his linking this to thepossibility of emancipation and non-violent revolution (Graham [1986a, pp. 181-4]).

3 See esp. Graham (1986a, pp. 221-30).4 This passage was added by Engels to the 1888 English edition. So far as I am aware Marx

himself nowhere offers as explicit a definition as this, but the definition is consistent withthe rest of the jointly-authored text of the Manifesto and, I should argue, consistentwith quasi-definitional statements made by Marx elsewhere, e.g. ' P roletar ian must beunderstood to mean, economically speaking, nothing other than wage-labourer , the manwho produces and valorizes capital , and is thrown onto th e street as soon as he becomessuperfluous to the need for valorization possessed by Monsieur Capital . . . (Marx[1867, p. 764, n. 1]). He also stresses the importance of being compelled to sell one'slabour power (ibid., p. 272).

5 This is true, for example, of both Miliband (1977) and Parkin (1979). Przeworski is anexception. He calls attention to E ngels's definition and Kautsky's subsequent echoing ofit, though only in order to point out that m any who would normally be regarded and wouldregard themselves as m iddle class fall u nder it (Przeworski [1985, p. 57]).

6 In opposing the idea that schoolteachers are productive Mandel argues that it is a basicthesis of Capital that 'there can be no production without (concrete) labour, no concretelabour without appropriation and transformation of material objects' (Mandel [1978, p.43]), and he asks 'What is the immaterial good produced by a wage-earning teacher. . .?' (ibid., p. 43, n. 48). However, what Marx says towards the end of the passage towhich Mandel refers is that the labour process, considered in abstraction from particularsocial circumstances and forms 'is purposeful activity aimed at the production of use-values (Marx [1867, p. 2 90], italics add ed). It might be thought that this supports M andel'sreading, since Marx introduces a comm odity as 'an external object, a thing . . .' and saysit is the usefulness of a thing which makes it a use-value (ibid ., pp . 125-6). But it is preciselymy point that these formulations, introduced right at the beginning of Capital, aresubsequently modified. This must be true, since what turns out later for Marx to be the

most important comm odity, labour power, is not a thing. And the teacher produces surplusvalue precisely by producing that commodity: labour power in various more developed orspecialized forms. That is the immaterial (though embodied) good which teachers produce.

7 Once again, th ere a re tensions in Marx's own com ments. He certainly allows identificationin principle of an individual's contribution, at least to the extent of speaking of total surplusvalue being equal to the surplus value provided by one worker multiplied by the numberof workers employed (Marx [1867, pp. 41 7-18]). On the other hand, he suggests that 'the


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labour which is set in motion by the total capital of a society, day in, day out, may beregarded as a single working day' (ibid., p. 422; cf. ibid., p. 294).

8 I elaborate on this idea of a collective in Graham (1986a) and Graham (1986b). In anutshell, collectives in my sense are identified by reference to irreducibly collective powersof action. In contras t, Cohen identifies collective unfreedom as existing where performanceof an action by all members of a group is impossible, and throughout his discussion therelevant agents are individual human beings (Cohen [1986, p. 248]). There are reasons forconcentrating on irreducibly collective actions. For example, Cohen correctly points outthat no individual proletarian could be free to overthrow capitalism even when theproletariat is so free (ibid., p. 249). But that is because overthrowing capitalism is anirreducibly collective action.

The freedom of collectives qua collectives is important, among other reasons, for theimpact it can have on the freedom of individuals. The freedom of individuals can increaseor decrease significantly, depending on how collective entities decide to act. For furtherargument, see Graham (1988, pp. 7-14).

9 I here depart from Miliband's interpretation of Marx's claim that one labours productivelyif one performs one of the subordinate functions of the collective labourer. Milibandconstrues this as indicating subordination to other individual labourers, and he produces

a corresponding conception of the working class which is confined to those at the lowerend of the income scale and 'scale of regard' (Miliband [1977, p. 24]). Given that Marx'sown comments clearly identify those individuals in superordinate positions as themselveslabourers, my suggestion is that the position of subordination in Marx's comment is beingcontrasted not with the position of other individuals but with the position of the collectivelabourer itself. Taken in that way, any individual worker is subordinate.

10 For extremely helpful comments I thank David Archa rd, G. A . Cohen and Adam Morton.

R F R N S

Cohen , G. A. 1986. 'The Structure of Proletarian Unfreedom ', in J. Roemer (e d.), AnalyticalMarxism. Cambridge: Cambridge University P ress, 237-59.

Elster, J. 1986. 'Three Challenges to Class', in J. Roemer (ed.), Analytical Marxism.Cambridge: Cambridge University P ress, 141-61.

Graham, K. 1977. J. L. Austin: A Critique of O rdinary Langua ge Philosophy. Sussex:Harvester Press.

Graham, K. 1986a. The Battle of Dem ocracy. Sussex: Wheatsheaf.Graham, K. 1986b. 'Morality and Abstract Individualism.' Proceedings of the Aristotelian

Society 87, 23-33.Graham, K. 1988. 'Morality, Individuals and Collectives', in J. D. G. Evans (ed.), Moral

Philosophy and Contemporary Problems. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1-18.Mandel, E. 1978. 'Introduction' to Marx 1885, 11-79.Marx, K. 1849. 'Wage Labour and Capital', in M arx and Engels: Selected Works i. Lond on:

Lawrence & Wishart, 1962, 70-105.Marx, K. 1850. 'The Class Struggles in France', in D. Fernbach (ed.), Surveys from Exile.

Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1973, 35-142.Marx, K. 1867. Capital i. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1976.Marx, K. 1875. 'Critique of the Gotha Programme', in D. Fernbach (ed.), Th e First Interna-

tional and After. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1974, 339-59.Marx, K. 1885. Capital ii. Harm ondsworth: Penguin, 1978.

Marx, K. 1894. Capital iii. Harmon dsworth: Penguin, 1981.Marx, K. 1905-10. T heories of Surp lus Value. London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1969.Marx, K. 1933. 'Results of the Immediate Process of Production', appendix to Marx 1867,

943-1084.Marx, K. and Engels, F. 1848. The Communist Manifesto, in D. Fernbach (ed.), Th e

Revolutions of 1848. Harmo ndsworth: Penguin, 1973, 62-98.Miliband, R. 1977. M arxism and Politics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Parkin, F. 1979. M arxism and Class Theory: A Bourgeois Critique. London: Tavistock.


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Przeworski, A. 1985. Capitalism and Social Democra cy. Cam bridge: Cam bridge U niversityPress.

Reiman, J. 1987. 'Exploitation, Force and the Moral Assessment of Capitalism.' Philosophyand Public Affairs 16, 3-41.Roem er, J. 1982. 'New D irections in the Marxian Theory of Exploitation and Class.' Politics

and Society 11, reprinted in J. Roemer (ed. ), Analytical Marxism. Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press, 1986, 81-113 .

Roemer, J. (ed.), 1986. Analytical Marxism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Wright, E. O. 1985. Classes. London: Verso.

Received 4 April 1989

Keith Graham, Department of Philosophy, University of Bristol, 9 Woodland Rd., BristolBS8 1TB, England

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