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Title: Class and Exploitation
Author: Workers Solidarity Movement
Date: October 2016
Language: en
Topics: class, exploitation, position paper
Source: Retrieved on 15th October 2021 from http://www.wsm.ie/c/class-and-exploitation
Notes: Collectively agreed by WSM National Conference, Oct 2016.

Workers Solidarity Movement

Class and Exploitation

The left talks about class in ways that are often contradictory and

confusing. This paper represented our collective use of class and how we

understand exploitation. The scope of what we cover means that it

necessarily makes sweeping generalisations but the goal is to sketch

what our collective perspective is around these, not to be an

educational resource in itself.

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1. How We Talk About Class

The most common way that class is talked about in the global north is

an ideological ‘common sense’ definition of class which focuses on

poverty & wealth in themselves, formal education received and often most

importantly whether those who work primary use their physical strength

or their brains. This is reflected in the deeply ideological expression

of politicians and media that ‘we are all middle class now’. That is

that almost no-one in the global north is working class outside of a

small population highly marginalised by poverty and snobbery.

A more radical variant of the same often espoused on the left insists

there is still a significant working class because as well as manual

workers that class also includes the unemployed, and most of those in

service industries including the public sector. This variant puts

emphasis on the capitalist class and tends to minimise the existence of

the middle class, outside of using it to describe their political

opponents on the left.

The section of the left influenced by intersectional feminism is a sub

set of this where class is an added oppression rather than also being

the core of exploitation. Here it is ‘classism’ that must be opposed,

although we prefer the directional term snobbery. That is the

criminalisation of the lower classes — often very much linked to racism

— and the fact that people with certain accents or who live in certain

districts are discriminated against. All this is to be opposed but it’s

not a compete picture of the way living in a class society deeply shapes

every aspect of our lives and that society. This can only be fully

understood through the lens of exploitation.

Leaving opposition to snobbery aside we prefer to talk about class

with the following broad divisions:

A working class or proletariat that includes the vast majority of

society. Basically all of us who lack capital and therefore need to work

for others plus those that have only enough capital to survive —

subsistence farmers remain a large minority of the world’s population,

street traders are another example.

A capitalist class that comprises people who would have no need to

work to remain wealthy and who continue to generate wealth by having

others work for them, either directly or through rent. This class is

less than 1% of the population.

A middle class of small landlords, shopkeepers and very well paid

functionaries which includes top lawyers, civil servants, academics,

media personalities and managers. That class unlike the rest of us can

accumulate substantial capital across their lifetimes. In most societies

it’s probably 5–10% of the population.

This division we choose is functional. We choose it because anarchists

we see the route to freedom lying in a large part though the class

conflict between the working class and the capitalist class. If we

increase our proportion of wealth generated through wage demands their

share of the wealth decreases. The working class is often so divided we

fail to articulate that common interest but the capitalist class remains

fully aware of and pursues its class interests. The position of the

middle class is more complex, its often well rewarded by the capitalist

class but still subservient to it.

A successful revolution requires the working class to overcome its

internal divisions and so reach an awareness of itself as a class

including an awareness of its own power to transform society. This is

why the struggle against oppressions is essential, it’s the existence of

racist, sexist and colonialist ideology within the working class and the

privileges given to the white male sector in particular that produce and

reproduce divisions in the working class. Although we focus on

exploitation in this paper it is not somehow sealed off from

oppressions, rather the creation and reproduction of class rule in

general and of capitalist rule in particular require the division and

redivision of the working class across multiple intersections.

2. Origins and Development of Class and Exploitation

For most of humanity’s existence we lived in groups that had no class

structure. There was some labour specialisation but there doesn’t appear

to have been divisions in power and wealth that were passed from one

generation to the next. There is nothing natural about class, its

entirely something we have constructed.

Class appears to have developed around the same time and in the same

locations as agriculture. Agriculture and animal husbandry along with

grain storage meant that surpluses could be accumulated over time.

Individuals and groups could lay claim to these surpluses and the land

on which they were produced. Warfare for the purpose of claiming

additional land, seizing food stores and animals and enslaving

additional workers became possible. A specialist class who ruled by the

sword rather than working in the fields came into being. The imposition

of patriarchy allowed the members of this class to pass on their power

and wealth, primarily to male sons. From within this military group

emerged individual ruling families who often concentrated power

absolutely in their hands, sometimes founding dynasties that continued

for many generations.

Most of the remaining 10,000 years of recorded history can be broadly

described in the above terms. That is broadly there was a specialist

military command class that used direct violence to rule over the

classes. Exploitation was immediately obvious as the soldiers physically

sized the output of those who worked, torturing, killing and imprisoning

those who refused. New patriarchal religions came into being that

emphasised the divine nature of rulers, sometimes they were literally

presented as gods.

A common re-occurring feature of such societies was the emergence of

classes of merchants who accumulated considerable wealth through trade.

Quite often such groups were suppressed and their wealth seized by the

ruling class when their wealth became too powerful or because the ruling

class want to wipe out debts they had accumulated.

Most societies also contained a layer of skilled workers whose work

meant they were not so easily subject to the usual mechanism of

exploitation through violence. Their skills were rare and not easy

replaced which gave them a limited form of power that could be expressed

through flight or even organised work stoppages. Even 3000 years ago we

have records of tomb builders at the Valley of the Kings in Egypt going

on strike in the reigns of Ramesses III, IX and X.

The emergence of capitalism in is the story of the successful effort

of an emerging European merchant class to demand universal democratic

and legal rights that would serve to protect its wealth from arbitrary

seizures. Ironically a major component of their wealth was the product

of slavery and colonialism, i.e. accumulation built on seizing the

wealth and even bodies of people who were conquered by military force.

This required the creation of the racist and colonialist ideologies

recognisable today to justify the process of conquest and enslavement.

That accumulation of wealth allowed the emerging merchant class to use

its monopoly of capital rather than simple violence to accumulate

further wealth. Rather than using slave labour to crew ships or work in

mines they paid mariners or miners a wage in return for their labour on

the voyage or in the mine. The factory system grew out of this where

machinery was used to allow a single worker to do the work that once

many workers would have done. Instead of the workers selling what they

produced the output went to the factory owner who sold it for profit and

used part of that profit to pay the wages of the worker. Machinery was

expensive, far beyond what any worker could afford. The cost of

machinery and the space to install it along with the inputs needed to

keep it running came to be called ‘capital’ and hence those with enough

wealth were called capitalists.

The development of capitalism did require considerable violence,

factories were dangerous unpleasant places, early industrial cities were

overcrowded, filthy and had high mortality rates. Force had to be used

to turn people into workers but once they were workers it was the wage

system itself that enforced capitalist discipline. Stripped of land and

any other means of subsistence workers either worked or they starved.

This working class was still a small minority but increasingly laws in

general were framed around the needs of the capitalist class to obtain

and discipline workers.

The capitalist class were not a military class as previous rulers had

been and their birth of capitalism saw the emerging capitalist class of

merchants and bankers come into conflict with the old military feudal

class. Parliamentary democracy and the ‘rule of law’ was born out of

that conflict and the need of the capitalist class for a system that

would simultaneously protect them from the military class seizing their

wealth but also prevent the far more numerous classes of workers doing

the same. Creation of that system required mass revolutions that threw

down the old feudal order and erected the new capitalist order in its

place.

Exploitation can be understood as the working of this system where the

wealth generated does not flow to those doing the work but rather those

owning the capital. The owners don’t directly threaten the workers with

violence, instead the workers depend on the owners for work and indeed

learn to be grateful for it. Today that capitalist class are often

talked of by media and politicians as ‘job creators’ and ‘entrepreneurs’

to whom us workers should be grateful. In Ireland we are told we need to

be grateful to super profitable tax avoiding corporations like Apple and

Google because they ‘create jobs’. This underlines just how invisible

exploitation has become. The focus is not on the huge profits that are

made on the brain of each worker but on the job being ‘given’.