Weekly Worker 681 Thursday July 12 2007 Subscribe to the Weekly Worker

Workerist class?

Chris Harman gave the opening speech in a session entitled ‘How important is class today?’, reports Dave Isaacson

Chris Harman gave the opening speech in a session entitled ‘How important is class today?’ Basically his argument was that class is still a feature in our society, that the working class globally continues to grow, and that, though class-consciousness in Britain is relatively low at present, it can (indeed will) return when the working class once again moves into struggle.

Harman did a relatively good job of pulling apart the ideas of those who say that class is no longer important because of changes in the way we work. However, while class remains fundamental for us, as Marxists we cannot ignore the changes that have undoubtedly taken place within the economy - we must strive to understand them.

Throughout the whole session, however, ran comrade Harman’s complete misunderstanding of what a class is. In all of Harman’s examples and definitions the working class was only seen to be composed of workers (ie, those that work in a workplace and are paid a wage by a boss). Yes, Harman went beyond those who look only to blue collar or manual workers and mentioned the importance of a growth in consciousness amongst teachers, local authority workers, etc who began to take collective action for the first time in the 1960s. But completely absent from the working class, it seems, are housewives/househusbands, the unemployed, pensioners, students and youth.

In reality it is not the earning of a wage from a capitalist that makes someone working class, but their position in relation to the means of production. The unemployed, housewives, pensioners, students, etc, as well as wage-earners, who make up the working class do not own or control any part of the means of production, and it is this that makes them working class.

This point is not merely academic or semantic: it is in fact central to developing a strategic approach to how we win working class political power.

It informs us that, while workplace struggle is important, it is not the be-all and end-all in the fight for socialism - we must organise politically, not only where we work, but where we study, relax and live. We must organise locally, nationally and internationally and we must fight for a party to represent us in all those spheres.

This is also key to understanding why Marx looked to the working class as the primary agent of revolutionary change (an issue that was completely absent from comrade Harman’s talk). It was/is their propertylessness (in terms of the means of production) which means that the working class has to act collectively if it is to win, and that it has no interest in the creation of another system based on class divisions. It is the universal class alone which can abolish class divisions and bring about the general freedom of humanity.

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