Socialist Party Australia

What is the working class?
Today it is fashionable to assert that the working class no longer exists. Many ALP politicians here, and their 'Third Way' colleagues overseas, claims that we will soon all be middle class. So-called 'experts' on the economy talk about how we now live in a knowledge-based society where all you need is access to the internet to escape from membership of the working class.

The truth is very different. The fastest growing sector of the labour market in all capitalist countries belong to those who clean, shop, child mind or garden for others. Low wages and long hours are the norm for working-class people. More and more workers have to take on several jobs just to survive.

As one journalist stated in The UK Guardian on 6 June 2000: "For those on rock bottom wages, both parents need to work all the hours they can to keep the family afloat financially. Karl Marx would recognise their situation even though the job descriptions may be unfamiliar."

When Marx talked about the working class he did not simply mean people who wore flat caps or the equivalent stereotype in the 19th century. He defined classes not by a superficial façade (what kind of car someone owns or whether their house is pebble-dashed) but by both an economic and a social definition.

In Marx’s day the average worker was more likely to sell their ability to work in a factory. Today in Britain, millions still work in factories but there are others working in different fields who, nonetheless, produce new value. Others again do not strictly fit this category but are part of the working class because of their social outlook and their economic situation – their wage level and standard of living, etc.

Contrary to popular opinion among the chattering classes, the working class is not disappearing. In fact, it is objectively stronger than it was in Marx’s day. When Marx and Engels were writing the working class was a minority worldwide. The working class was growing but large sections of the population were still artisans, small shopkeepers, peasants, and small-business people.

Now, in all economically advanced countries, those of us who rely on wages make up the overwhelming majority. Of course, some people – the unemployed, pensioners and many single parents – have to survive on the meagre pittance provided by state benefits. They are still members of the working class and the only way they can hope to improve their living standards above the breadline is to work.

Work is the only option available to most of us. In general, stories of individuals becoming rich by setting up companies in their bedrooms are a myth. The saga of the dotcoms, where young entrepreneurs believed they had discovered a new way of making millions from the internet, demonstrates this. Even prior to the dotcom bubble bursting, the reality was very different to the fiction.

Most internet millionaires, such as Martha Lane-Fox of lastminute.com, are the sons and daughters of existing ‘traditional’ millionaires. In many cases, less privileged small-business men and women are seeing their companies crushed under the juggernauts of the multinational companies. In 2000, 43,365 small businesses went bust. This is a record figure for a boom year. Up and down the country local high streets are dying because the small shops cannot compete with Coles, Safeway and all the rest.

Capitalism has led to the concentration of wealth and power in ever decreasing numbers of hands at the top. Meanwhile at the bottom, more and more previously middle-class people are forced downwards into the ranks of the working class. This process is taking place in a particularly harsh and barbaric way in Argentina.

The heart-rending economic crisis is devastating the lives of the population. The UK Financial Times declared that "Argentina can no longer afford its middle class" and it is, in fact, rapidly disappearing. The shanty towns are strewn with banners marked ‘welcome middle classes’ as teachers, lecturers, and bank workers are forced into the ghetto.

In the advanced capitalist countries, nothing so dramatic is taking place. Nonetheless, many sections of the population - such as teachers, civil servants and lecturers – who were relatively privileged in the past and who saw themselves as middle class, are now low paid, overworked and increasingly see themselves as part of the working class. They are also beginning to draw the conclusion that the only way they can defend their pay and conditions is to use the traditional weapon of the working class, by taking strike action.

Only 2% of Australians are employers, and most of these 2% are small businesses. We are potentially by far the strongest force in Australian society, and far stronger than in Marx’s day.

It is true that the working class has not made its strength felt in Australia over the last few years. However, this does not primarily stem from an objective weakening of its latent power. It is more a result of subjective reasons that can be summed up as a temporarily debilitating lack of confidence.

This followed the defeats that the working class suffered during the 1980s and 1990s internationally. These factors resulted in a low level of class struggles over the last decade.

This has had some objective effects. Sections of the older generation have been affected by the memory of bitter defeats. The younger generation has, in general, no experience of struggle and so is, as yet, inexperienced, raw and untutored. At the same time, right-wing trade union leaders took advantage of the situation to try and entrench their power and detach themselves as far as possible from their members.

But like a natural athlete who is a little out of shape through lack of practise, the Australian working class has not lost its capacity to fight. It only needs to experience its strength in struggle to regain confidence. As it does so, it will also turn on the right-wing union leaders. The first steps in this direction are already underway, as shown by the recent election of left-wing leaderships in many unions such as the AMWU, MUA, ETU and more.

It is true, however, that the most powerful sections of the working class - that is, the industrial working class whose strength stems from the fact that it is largely responsible for the creation of new value - are a smaller proportion of the workforce now than they were 20 or 30 years ago. The main reason for this is the continued decay of Australian manufacturing industry, with over 90,000 jobs in this sector lost since 1996.

There are other additional, international trends which also had an effect. The major one is capitalism’s constant drive to speed up production, creating factories with the capacity to produce ever more commodities.

At the same time, capitalism is incapable of fully using the capacity that has been created because, ultimately, the working class cannot afford to buy all of the goods it produces. This leads to overproduction and overcapacity. The bosses attempt to deal with this through lay-offs and downsizing, resulting in a smaller number of industrial workers producing the same amount of commodities that a larger number produced in the past.

In the last 20 years there has been a sevenfold increase in the sales of the biggest multinational companies, yet the number of people they employ has remained virtually the same. (This gives a glimpse of the potential for a democratically planned economy to fully utilise and further develop the productive forces capitalism has created.)

Whilst it is smaller than it was at the height of the post-war economic upswing, however, the industrial working class has far greater numbers today than it did a century ago. In the 24 leading economies, it numbered 51.7 million in 1900, 88 million in 1950, 120 million in 1971 and even in 1998 still numbered 112.8 million. In the US there were 8.8 million industrial workers in 1900, 20.6 million in 1950, 26 million in 1971 and 31 million in 1998.

The decrease in the size of the industrial working class in Australia is also, partially, the result of the international phenomenon known as ‘globalisation’. The capitalists in the US, Europe and Japan, in an attempt to restore their profit levels, have set out to drive down the living conditions of the working class.

One means by which they have achieved this is by moving production to other countries where labour is cheaper. Nonetheless, the majority of manufacturing industry is still concentrated in the advanced capitalist countries. For example, if the industrial economy of the whole western hemisphere is given the value of 100%, then the US accounts for 76% of this. By contrast, the biggest of the Latin American countries, Brazil, is only 8%.

And while all of the factors mentioned above have had some effect, the strength of the working class remains immense.

Even less powerful sections of workers are able to have an effect on the profits of the capitalists. For example, to a far greater degree than in the past, when teachers take strike action millions of parents are unable to work because of childcare commitments. This would exert real pressure on the capitalist class.