Working-Class Hegemony and the Struggle for Socialism

Chantal Mouffe* Working-Class Hegemony and the Struggle for Socialism The discussion provoked by Andre Gorz's Adieux au proletariat, and by Alain Touraine's L 'Apres-Socialisme has revived the question of the role of the working class in the anti-capitalist struggle. At a time when the importance of the "new social movements" is increasingly recognized, and the demands expressed by them considered as important in the definition of a socialist project, it is urgent to pose the problem of the articulation between these new types of struggle and those of the working class. In the field of Marxism, it is without a doubt Gramsci, thanks to his concept of hegemony as the articulation by a fundamental class of a whole series of demands of other groups, who allows us to approach this question in the most productive way. I But the position of Gramsci consists in stating that only the working class can be the articulating principle of a national-popular collective will. This thesis of the "centrality" of the working class in the anti-capitalist struggle must, I believe, be abandoned, for it can only be defended within an economistic and reductionist problematic. Although Gramsci provides us with valuable material for the criticism of such Translated by Sinclair Robinson, Department of French, Carleton University 7

Studies in Political Economy a conception, he remains nonetheless a prisoner of it when he asserts the necessary hegemonic character of the working class. We must therefore go "beyond Gramsci" so as to complete the Copernican revolution which he began. If Gramsci and more recently other Marxists, both in France and Italy, continue to emphasize workers' demands in the struggle for socialism, it is because they still accept uncritically one of the least tenable postulates of the Marxist tradition: the idea that the working class (and it alone) has a "fundamental" interest in socialism. It is also the acceptance of that idea which led to the debate of the seventies on the definitions of the "true" working class, which tried to draw a dividing line between those who have a "true" interest in socialism, and its possible but necessarily unstable allies who may always be recuperated by the bourgeoisie. I shall start from the way in which the thesis of the revolutionary character of the proletariat is formulated by Marx, and I shall show how this is based on three presuppositions that are untenable today: (1) the neutrality of the productive forces; (2) the homogenization of the working class via the double process of proletarization / pauperization; and (3) the statement that this homogeneous working class has a fundamental interest in the construction of socialism. I shall show how this conception is profoundly linked to the economistic conception, which reduces social complexity to the expression of a unique logic - that of the contradiction between productive forces and relations of production - and to the reductionist model which establishes the dichotomy of base/superstructure. I shall maintain that in order to break completely and definitively with economism it is necessary to introduce political struggle into the very heart of the economy, and to abandon the thesis that the development of capitalism will create both the material base of socialism (very socialized and advanced productive forces) and its social base (a homogeneous proletariat of a socialist character). Proletariat and Revolution in Marx One finds in Marx two radically different ways of posing the problem of the necessary connection between the working class and socialism. The first, that of the early works, clearly comes within the framework of a philosophical problematic with a Hegelian matrix, and consists in basing the historic mission of the proletariat to bring about an end to the society of oppression on the very definition of its class being. In the Holy Family, Marx declares: "It is not a matter of knowing what a given proletariat is and what it must do, historically, in conformity with its class being."? It is therefore a 8

Chantal Monffe/Working Class Hegemony question of an ontological privilege. The analysis of this "class being" will teach us that its characteristic is to be a "universal class," for as a negation of human essence the proletariat embodies historical positivity. It represents in effect a sphere which cannot emancipate itself without emancipating itself from all spheres of society and without, consequently, emancipating them all. This sphere is, in a word, the complete loss of man, and can therefore only reconquer itself through the complete recovery of man. The proletariat is the decomposition of society as a particular class.! On the other hand, Marx insists on the necessary and inevitable character of this process, precisely because of the very being of the proletariat as a radical moment in the negation of man by bourgeois society: Because the denial of all humanity, even of the appearance of humanity, is practically complete in the fully formed proletariat because, in the living conditions of the proletariat, are summed up in their most inhuman crisis state all the living conditions of presentday society; because in the proletariat, man has lost himself but at the same time has not only acquired the theoretical awareness of this loss, but has been directly forced, by the misery which can no longer be rejected or embellished, which has become absolutely imperious, the practical expression of necessity, to revolt against this inhumanity; because of this the proletariat can and must liberate itself." These quotations are sufficient to reveal the influence of Hegel on the way in which Marx sees the historical role of the proletariat. As Lukacs points out, what Marx does is to concretize at the level of social evolution, and by applying it to class instead of people, the idea of Hegel that "the vocation of leading humanity to a higher stage of its development depends... on the fact that these 'stages of evolution appear as immediate natural principles' and that the people... 'which receives such an element as a natural principle has as its mission to apply it'."5 Such a conception has therefore a meaning only within a specific philosophy of history, which Marx will abandon rather quickly without being able to free himself completely from it (we find traces of it in the Manifesto oj the Communist Party and even in Capital). However, it is obvious that we can observe a clear change in the Marxian problematic, and in the mature works, the role of the proletariat is presented in a very different way. There, its historic mission is in effect justified from a socalled scientific problematic of the laws of the development of history, which is based on the contradiction between the productive forces and the relations of production. 9

Studies in Political Economy Instead of a philosophical dialectic of the inhuman, we find an economic dialectic based on the development of productive forces. These playa fundamental role in the historical evolution towards socialism because "the past development of the productive forces makes socialism possible, and their future development makes socialism necessary.t" From them also originates the formation of an even larger and more exploited proletariat, to which will be attributed this time the historic mission to appropriate and to collectively manage the highly socialized and developed productive forces, and for whose progress the capitalist relations of production now constitute an insurmountable obstacle. The contradiction between bourgeoisie and proletariat is therefore presented as the social and political expression of a principal contradiction of an economic type which combines a general law of the development of productive forces with specific laws of the development of the capitalist mode of production. Marx, in effect, proposes the following scenario: (a) Starting from a certain level of socialization, the movement of the productive forces comes into contradiction with the capitalist relations of production, for private appropriation hinders their natural development (Thus ends the mission of capitalism, "the development of the productive forces of social labour")": (b) At the very time when it becomes useless, the capitalist mode of production begins to be undermined by its internal contradictions, and increasingly serious crises occur which will lead to its disappearance." (c) Meanwhile, capitalist development has created a proletariat whose economic demands cannot be satisfied by the system, and which is thus led to challenge the latter politically; (d) this revolutionary workers' movement, whose strength can only increase, will finally, during one of the crises of capitalism, impose its solution: the collective appropriation of the productive forces (Thus is resolved the fundamental contradiction peculiar to this period of historical development). Let us look briefly at these last two assertions. In this second version, the proletariat is no longer a revolutionary class "by nature," but becomes so through a historical process of struggles that will mark the transition from a class "in itself" to a class "for itself." The problem is that Marx again considers this transition inevitable and necessary. But in this case, the necessity is based on the economy. It is because, given the laws of the functioning of the capitalist economy, its situation can only get worse; the proletariat must become a revolutionary class: As the numberof magnatesof capitalwhousurpand monopolizeall the advantages of this period of social evolution decreases,the 10

Chantal Mouffe/Working Class Hegemony misery, the oppression, the slavery, the degradation, the exploitation, but also the resistance of the ever growing and increasingly disciplined working class increases, and this class is united and organized by the very mechanism of capitalist production.? It is important to distinguish here two aspects: the first involves pauperism; the second the idea that the resistance to it necessarily leads to a struggle for socialism. Both are questionable. We shall examine the second aspect later when we discuss the question of the "interests" of the working class. For the time being we shall restrict ourselves to criticizing the thesis of pauperization. At the basis of this conception we find in Marx a theory of wages according to which these cannot increase. As the rate of exploitation was destined to rise, so the economic conditions of the working class were destined to deterioriate. At the heart of this theory is found a statement by Marx of which we must show the enormous consequences: labour-power is a commodity. In fact, wages are presented as the price of the commodity labour-power, and as such, they obey the same laws as those which determine the price of any commodity. This price will oscillate around its value: "labour, like any commodity, will in the long run have its market price adjusted to its value; despite ups and downs, the worker, whatever he may do, will receive on the average only the value of his labour-power, which is determined by the value of the objects necessary for its conservation and its reproduction." 10 Marx admits that in the value of labourpower, besides a purely physical element - the means of subsistence necessary for the working class to live and reproduce itself - it is necessary to consider an historical and social element which depends on the conditions peculiar to given societies. But he does not believe that this allows for great variations, for he states that "the general tendency of capitalist production is not to raise the average wage but to lower it."!1 This is due principally to the constant increase in the organic composition of capital which creates an "industrial reserve" which by its action on the labour market tends to maintain wages at their minimal value. This is why he is convinced that workers' struggles will not succeed in gaining improved economic conditions for them and that their poverty will drive them to destroy the capitalist system and to institute socialism. As we can see, the conception of labour-power as a commodity is crucial to this whole analysis, for this is what allows Marx to reduce the worker to an objective element of the economic system, completely subject to its laws. As Castoriadis points out, in order for economy to become a science "it is necessary for its object to be formed by objects; and it is in fact as pure and simple objects that workers and capitalists appear in Capital. They are only blind and 11

Studies in Political Economy unconscious instruments realizing by their acts what is imposed by 'economic laws'."12 Economy thus becomes a "mechanism of society" driven by laws similar to those of the natural sciences that act on objective phenomena that are independent of human action. It is the unique logic that presides over the functioning of this mechanism which governs the whole of historical development. Thus, already in Marx are found the fundamentals of the economistic conception will be later systematized by the Second International and with which Marxism has had so much difficulty breaking. Such a conception is not only erroneous in attributing to economy a determining role (whether in the last instance or not), but also in the very way in which it conceives the nature of economy. We should now say more about this economistic conception of economy, whose pernicious effects have been immense in the whole Marxist tradition. It is a criticism of the postulate that labour-power is a commodity that will guide our comments. Herbert Gintis and Sam Bowles have demonstrated convincingly that it was incorrect to assert, as did Marx, that labour-power is a commodity.p In fact, while a commodity is the product of abstract labour, this is certainly not the case for labour-power. Its production and reproduction imply different social relations from those which govern the capitalist production process - those of family and state. Thus, labour-power is produced to a great extent by necessary labour which is not abstract labour. Bowles and Gintis declare that "the significant role of home produced noncommodity use-values involved in the production of labour-power invalidates the designation of labour-power as the product of abstract labour and therefore as a commodity." 14 This error of Marx has important consequences, for it blinds him to a whole set of characteristics of labour-power as an element of the capitalist production process. Unlike the other elements necessary for production, it is not sufficient for the capitalist to purchase labour-power in order to be able actually to enjoy it; he must also find the means to make it produce labour. That is a very important aspect of the capitalist system which Marx fails to see because of his conception of labour as the use-value of labour-power. Now if the latter is a commodity like any other, it is obvious that its use-value is automatically made effective by the very fact of its purchase. "The designation of labour as the use-value of labour-power to capital obscures the absolutely fundamental distinction between productive inputs embodied in people capable of social practice and all of those remaining inputs for whom ownership by capital is sufficient to secure the 'consumption' of their productive servlces.t"! Now a very large

Chantal Mouffe/Working Class Hegemony part of capitalist organization of labour is intelligible only in light of the necessity of extracting labour from the labour-power that the capitalist has purchased. Production is thus not the locus of a unique logic of an economic nature but is rather a terrain where antagonistic forces confront one another, and the evolution of the capitalist mode of production cannot be understood uniquely from the laws of competition. It has also been determined by the different struggles that have taken place at the level of the labour process. Production as a Political Mechanism Marxist tradition defines a mode of production as a combination of two elements: a certain level of development of the productive forces (a particular technical organization of production); and a specific type of production relation (relations between agents of production, or "class" relations). Until a few years ago little attention had been given to the first of these elements for, as we showed earlier, the development of the productive forces was conceived in the form of a natural and neutral movement, as being spontaneously progressive. The only control that society had over the productive forces consisted in being able to retard their development, but the direction and nature of the latter was not open to external intervention. This predetermined movement led necessarily, through a process of socialization, to the laying of the material bases of socialism. This explains the fact that the labour process was for so long a subject completely ignored by Marxists and that studies on the evolution of the capitalist mode of production were limited principally to the transformations of the forms of capital accumulation. An important debate on the labour process was begun by Braverman in Labor and Monopoly Capitalism, where he proposes to study the modifications of the labour process at the time of monopoly capitalism. Criticizing the idea of a neutral development of the productive forces, he shows how the guiding principle of the evolution of technology under monopoly capitalism is the separation of execution from conception, which produces an increasingly degraded and "deskilled" labour. He presents Taylorism as the decisive moment in this struggle, on the part of capitalists, to dominate workers and control the labour process. Scientific management, far from being a method of organizing labour in general!" is, in his opinion, "a response to the specific problem of how better to control alienated labour. "17 Braverman postulates that it is the law of capital accumulation that is the driving force behind the need of capital to seize control of the labour process from the direct producer, but no real justifica- 13

Studies in Political Economy tion is provided to explain why this is expressed by an unceasing effort to destroy the skills of the workers and to organize production so as to reduce them to being mere executants. But especially, he presents this logic of the domination of capital as an all-powerful force that seems to be able to operate unhindered, since the economic forces that are commanded by capital do not allow the working class to defend itself and to influence the course of development." In this he is obviously faithful to the position of Marx, predicting the transition from "formal subordination" to "real subordination." But the problem is precisely that both Marx and Braverman consider that capital can actually treat labour-power as a pure and simple commodity that behaves as a passive object completely subjugated to its economic logic. This leads them to think that no effective struggle can take place at the level of production and that revolt must then necessarily take the form of a political challenge of capitalist society as a whole. In Braverman's case, this final resolution is being prepared thanks to the homogenization of the working class which results from the degradation of work, and which affects ever broader layers of workers as the separation between execution and conception spreads to more and more spheres of productive activities. But after challenging the idea of labour-power as a commodity of which labour would be the use-value, we are in a position to go beyond it. We can, in fact, unlike Braverman, explain the need of capital to control the labour process. In fact, once labour-power is purchased it is still necessary to find the means to extract from it the most labour possible, and this explains why the production process cannot exist without a set of social relations of domination. That is why the capitalist organization of labour is always at once a technique of production and a technique of domination. This aspect has been brought to light by writings such as those of Stephen Marglin and Katherine Stone, who attempt to prove that the fragmentation and specialization of labour have nothing to do with a supposed need for efficiency, but that they are the effect of the need of capital to exert its domination over the labour process. 19 Christian Pailloix has criticized this line of interpretation because it claims to be able to explain the evolution of the labour process solely on the basis of the necessities of class domination, without taking into account the extraction of surplus-value. He states that it is necessary to distinguish two labour processes: one centred on the production of a surplus product, thanks to mass production; and another centred on capitalist control of the reproduction of commodity relations. He asserts that the specific form of the evolution of the labour process involves "the perpetuation of the domination of capital of 14

Chantal Monffe/Working Class Hegemony course (by means of the control of commodity relations) but this takes place via the production of a surplus product, i.e., by the development of the conditions of production, and the inevitable revolutionizing of the labour process in the context of mass production. "20 But such a criticism collapses as soon as we grasp the unity of the process of domination and of the process of valorization. In fact, the need for capital to control the labour process is not external to the mechanism of the extraction of surplus-value, but it is its very condition, for it expresses the need for the capitalist to transform labour-power into labour in order to make it produce value. Hence it is there, at the very heart of the labour process, and not at the level of the reproduction of commodity relations as he believes, that is found the fundamental reason for capitalism's need for control and for the different forms of domination which it imposes in production. This allows us also to conceive of the labour process not only as the place where the domination of capital is exerted, but also as the terrain of a struggle, for as the worker is capable of social practice, he will be able to resist the control mechanisms put in place by capitalism and force it to adopt different strategies in order to overcome this resistance. It is therefore not the pure logic of capital that determines unequivocally the evolution of the labour process. We must therefore abandon any predetermined logic, whether it is of the neutral development of the productive forces or of capitalist domination. The advantage of such a perspective is to allow us to bring the class struggle into the very heart of the development of capitalism and to break with an objectivist conception of the economy, according to which its development is solely commanded by the laws of capitalist accumulation which are supposed to operate according to the model of the laws of the natural sciences. Now capital must constantly struggle to create the conditions necessary for valorization and accumulation, for its hegemony over production is never given once and for all but must be reinstituted periodically. This implies a whole set of practices - not only economic, but also political and cultural - with a double objective: to ensure its control over the labour process and to ensure the reproduction of the relations of production. The study of the development of the productive forces by capitalism must start from this necessity to control the labour process, and it is necessary of course to abandon the idea that such a development can be neutral. The productive forces developed by capitalism are the seat of social relations thanks to which capitalist domination is exerted over the labour process. These "relations in 15

Studies in Political Economy production" are structured by the "relations oj production"?' and therefore express the necessities of capital accumulation, but the successive forms that they will take historically cannot be deduced a priori from the various forms of accumulation for the latter are the results of workers' struggles in production and of the strategies implemented by capital to neutralize them. It is therefore legitimate to consider, as did the Italian "operaist" current in the sixties, the development of capital as dependent on workers' struggles. It is in this sense that Tronti can declare that far from blindly imposing its logic on the working class, capital, on the contrary, submits to it: "capitalist development is subordinated to workers' struggles, comes after them."22 He shows for example how these struggles have forced capital to modify its internal make-up and the form of its domination, because by setting a limit imposed on the working day they have forced capital to go from absolute to relative surplusvalue. This also leads Panzieri to uphold the thesis that production is a "political mechanism" and that it is necessary to analyze "the technology and the organization of labour as sanctioning a relation of forces between the classes.v-' The examples we have just cited from Tronti shows that these struggles go beyond the strict terrain of the labour process and challenge political mechanisms at the levelof the state. This is even more obvious in the case of workers' struggles from which stems the restructuration of capitalism associated with the application of Keynesianism. Negri asserts that the strength of Keynes is to have been able to recognize that the trade unions had become strong enough to interfere in the free play of supply and demand. In order for capital to regain the initiative it will attempt to make use of the struggles of the working class as an impetus for capitalist development, by linking wage increases to increases in productivity in order to maintain demand at a high level and to start up again the mechanism of accumulation.p It is worthwhile looking for a moment at this transformation of capitalism, for it permits us to show the flaws in the economistic logic. The transformations of the labour process linked to Taylorism and Fordism were demanded by the need to destroy the workers' autonomy, still exerted on the labour process and standing in the way of the reproduction of capital within the framework of the new forms of competition linked to the growing centralization of capital. Once the assembly line was put into practice, it succeeded in subordinating the worker to the rhythm of the machine. It also made for increased production that did not find a sufficient market, for then low wages were an obstacle to the selling of the mass of 16

Chantal Mouffe/Working Class Hegemony commodities made possible by the new forms of production; hence the great depression. It was thus necessary to transform profoundly the way of life of the working class in order to create a new model of accumulation which was adapted to the transformations of the labour process. As Negri points out, the stroke of genius was to have been able to use the wave of workers' struggles, which broke out in reaction to the intensification of labour, to tie the increase in productivity to an increase in wages in order to create the social forms necessary for the new kind of accumulation which had just been put in place. This was not realized automatically by capital but required state intervention, both to impede the tendency of capitalists to depress wages, and to install a set of political mechanisms to maintain workers' struggle within the framework of demands compatible with the reproduction of capital. That is why the "planning state" came into being with a new labour policy (minimum wage, duration of work, accidents, insurance, unemployment insurance, indirect wages) through which it intervenes in the reproduction of labour-power and is linked to the needs of capital accumulation, thanks to the practice of the negotiated collective contract and agreements that link the raising of wages to that of productivity.p Thus was set up not only a new type of control of labour-power but a new type of legitimation which structured the form of the hegemony of capital until the crisis of the sixties. Effects of Capitalist Development on the Working Class We have just challenged the idea that the development of the productive forces under capitalism would create the material base for socialism by showing how the labour process was the seat of social relations of domination and that the different forms of control, far from corresponding to a simple logic of efficiency, aimed at ensuring the domination of capital over relations in production. But what about the other statement - that the development of the productive forces will create the social base of socialism, a homogeneous proletariat whose growing exploitation will push it to challenge the capitalist system and to appropriate the means of production to manage them collectively? Before dealing with this problem-we must mention a linguistic difficulty which causes much confusion and which is important to clear up. This involves the question of which term to use: proletariat or working class? The word proletarian, strictly speaking, means someone who sells his labour-power - the wage-earning worker - whereas worker means a wage-earning manual worker. At the time of Marx, the terms were practically interchangeable, and the 17 --------------_._---_... -

Studies in Political Economy proletariat was identified with the working class. But the fact that in the nineteenth century most wage-earning workers were industrial workers is a historical fact, explicable as a function of the type of capitalist development that existed at that time. The error consisted in postulating that the development of the wage-earning class as a fundamental social relation of capitalism would be identified with a development of the working class. Marx did just this with the theory of proletarization, when he stated incorrectly that the expansion of the wage form would coincide with that of industrial workers.p Such was not the case, and hence the problem posed for Marxists when the development of capitalism gave birth to this new category: nonproductive wage-earning workers whose status was problematic in terms of class. We shall see later how behind this problem of! terminology what is in fact involved is an economistic conception which attributes "interests" to places in production; but for the time being we shall simply note the difficulty, which originates in the confusion between the two terms and which poses a whole set of problems in the very formulation of the question we shall discuss: the homogenization of the working class. In the case of Braverman, for example, the central thesis of Labour and Monopoly Capitalism is that the degradation of labour, linked to the separation between conception and execution, affects ever broader layers of workers - whether or not they are employed in commodity-producing sectors - and that this leads to the formation of an ever larger and more proletarized working class. The polarization predicted by Marx between bourgeoisie and proletariat is therefore being realized, and Braverman has no doubt that the degradation of working conditions will push the working class to revolt politically. We thus find in Braverman at the same time a "broad" definition of the working class, which includes all who sell their labour-power with the exception of the "middle layers," and the thesis that this working class is made homogenous by a process of proletarization (which means for him deskilling, impoverishment, and ever greater submission to capital). He rejects the distinction between productive and unproductive labour as a criterion for membership in the working class, for in his opinion the integration which has been realized by monopoly capitalism between sectors directly engaged in production and sectors engaged in the process of realization and circulation has had as a consequence that the organization of labour in the latter follows the same principles as in the productive sector. As, on the other hand, the fragmentation and recomposition of tasks into different departments more and more combine productive activities with unproductive activities, he concludes that "the labor of both sectors 18

Chantal Mouffe/Working Class Hegemony has become increasingly an undifferentiated mass."27 From the point of view of the workers, subject to the same organization of labour both inside and outside production, the fact that their functions are productive or unproductive has less and less importance, and this criterion is no longer relevant for distinguishing given social groups and a fortiori different classes. This thesis of homogenization is based of course on a quite debatable conception of the relation between subjectivity and economic conditions, since Braverman assumes that as their working conditions are increasingly similar, the "interests" of the workers and their forms of political action will necessarily follow the same path. But we shall leave this point for the time being, for even without challenging his reductionism, we can present serious arguments against Braverman's thesis. In fact a whole series of studies of the fragmentation of the labour marker" point to a very different view of the working class. To take only the case of the United States, which is the one studied by Braverman, the analyses of Edwards, Reich and Gordon, for example, show how the evolution of forms of control in the labour process, combined with racism and sexism, have created a segmentation of the labour market which has led to a division of the working class into "fractions." They distinguish three labour markets to which correspond three sections of the working class: the first independent market includes most occupations of a professional type, where employees acquire general skills through formal education and are capable of using these skills with a rather high degree of initiative and in varying situations, and thus enjoy a certain mobility. This is the area of the "medium" sectors, with stable employment and possibilities for promotion, and relatively high wages. These latter characteristics are also found in the "first subordinate market," with the difference that the workers in this sector (the "traditional" working class as well as the semiskilled workers of the tertiary sector) possess only specific skills generally acquired on the job and that their tasks are repetitive and subjected to the rhythm of machines. Finally, there is the "secondary market" with its unskilled workers, with no possibility of promotion, no job security, and low wages. These workers are not unionized, turnover is rapid, and the proportion of women and blacks is very high. We can reproach some of these studies for tending to present this segmentation of the working class as the result of the conscious desire of capital to divide a class which otherwise would be homogeneous, and for not breaking, fundamentally, with the reductionist conception. We have to recognize, however, that, unlike Braverman, they have the merit of not presenting an idealized vision of a homogeneous working class and of insisting on 19

Studies in Political Economy the necessity of constructing this unity from a heterogeneousness of conditions and interests. Other studies in Western Europe'? reach conclusions that also go against the thesis of a progressive simplification of the social structure and show that the general tendency is rather towards a polarization between two sectors of the economy: a central sector, well paid and protected; and a peripheral sector of unskilled or semiskilled workers where no type of security exists. If we add a third sector of "structural unemployed" - which is increasingly rapidly - it appears indeed that the thesis of the homogenization of the working class in advanced capitalism does not correspond to the actual evolution of working conditions. The Question of the "Interests" of the Working Class Even if we admitted hypothetically that such were the case, would we be able to conclude that this homogeneous working class has a "fundamental interest" in socialism? The time has come to go more deeply into our criticism and to state that it is the very problematic of the interests of the proletariat! working class that must be questioned, for it is based on untenable theoretical grounds. We shall show how any attempt to establish the necessary hegemonic role of the working class on the basis of the fundamentally socialist character of its interests (qualified as "true," or "long term," etc.) inevitably falls within an economistic problematic even when, as it is in the case of Poulantzas or Olin Wright,30 there is an explicit criticism of economism. There is no point in asserting the relative autonomy of ideology and politics if these continue to be conceived of as a function of the place occupied by the social agents in the production process. This is simply a slightly more sophisticated form of economism, that is: "class reductionism. "31 It is obvious that to state that the working class, by virtue of its place in the social relations of capitalist production, has a fundamental interest in socialism, is to attribute to a determined place at the economic level, "interests" that will be represented subsequently at the political and ideological levels. But if these interests are already "given" at the economic level, the relative autonomy of ideology and politics can only lie in the time difference in relation to the economy, that is, a certain delay in the rise of political and ideological consciousness in relation to its conditions of existence in the relations of production. In reality, despite the new terminology (transition from "structural capacities" to "organizational capacities," in the case of Olin Wright), we still have the same old problematic of the class in itself becoming a class 20

Chantal Mooffe/Working Class Hegemony for itself with all the "false consciousness" that that implies in terms of ideology. Moreover, such a position is logically incoherent. How can it be maintained that economic agents can have interests defined at the economic level which would be represented a posteriori at the political and ideological levels? In fact, since it is in ideology and through politics that interests are defined, that amounts to stating that interests can exist prior to the discourse in which they are formulated and articulated. This is contradictory. What is involved here is actually the very conception of the economy as a world existing prior to its ideological and political conditions of existence, with its subjects already formed and with defined interests, functioning by itself according to a unique logic completely independent from the rest of society, which it would "determine." This is the model of the social formation as a base/superstructure, or more generally of determination (whether in the last instance or not) by the economy. Once we abandon the reductionist thesis that paradigmatic ideological and political forms can be attributed to positions in the relations of production, there is no longer any basis for asserting the necessarily socialist character of the interests of the working class or for determing a priori the form that will be taken by workers' struggles. The latter have been extremely varied according to the specific conditions of oppression that they have challenged and the discourse through which they construct their interests and objectives at a given time. If Marx was led to conceive of the proletariat as a favoured revolutionary subject, it was under the influence of the workers' struggles that broke out during the nineteenth century. But these were not, as Marx believed, struggles which expressed the paradigmatic form of the struggle of the proletariat, but rather struggles against proletarization. The great workers' struggles from 1848 to the Paris Commune were principally artisans' struggles opposing the destruction, by capitalism, of traditional forms of labour and ways of life. The "revolutionary" character of these struggles - their global and radical challenging of the capitalist system - can be explained by the fact that they were expressing resistance to the implantation of capitalism and to the destruction of the autonomy of the artisans and that of the precapitalist social, cultural and political forms, which was brought on by the implantation of capitalist relations both at the levelof relations in production and of relations of production. Their violent and radically anti-capitalist character must be understood as a function of a very specific historical context in which two radically different modes of social organization confronted each other, each with their specific 21

Studies in Political Economy discourse and social practice. Without going as far as James O'Connor, who states that these were conservative struggles because they expressed a defensive reaction against "capitalist modernizatlon.v's we must acknowledge that it is difficult to present these struggles as typical of the industrial proletariat conceived of as the product of capitalist development. As Ludolfo Paramio correctly points out, "What initially drives the workers to revolt against capital is its violation of traditional, that is precapitalist, values. "33 It is not until the late nineteenth century, when capitalist relations of production have been solidly implanted, that there appears a workers' movement that can really be considered to be the product of capitalism. This movement, in the majority of cases, no longer challenges capitalist relations of production, but struggles rather for the transformation of relations in production. We have already indicated the great impact that these struggles had on the evolution of the labour process and the model of accumulation, since they constantly forced capitalists to transform their strategy in order to recreate the conditions necessary for the valorization of capital. However, most Marxists long remained blind to these struggles or ignored them as "reformist," for to the extent that they did not correspond to what they expected, they could not grasp their importance. Their main problem was to explain why the working class had ceased to be revolutionary and to oppose capitalism as a system. In the case of England where - capitalism having developed earlier - the phenomenon of "reformism" appeared more quickly, they attributed it to the existence of a workers' aristocracy linked to the British imperialist position. Then, when at the beginning of this century the phenomenon became general, it was attributed to the "social democratic betrayal." Whatever explanations were given, the problem was always to explain why the working class did not behave as it was supposed to and at no time did they question the dogma of the necessarily revolutionary character of the proletariat. The Working Class and the New Social Movements The objective of this article has been to show how the necessary link established by Marxist tradition between working class and socialist revolution can only be defended within an economistic and reductionist problematic. As a consequence, any definitive break with economism implies the abandonment of Gransci's thesis that only the working class can provide the articulating principle of the totality of anti-capitalist and democratic struggles which exist today in western societies and give them a socialist orientation. Let this 22 -- -------------------------------------- --

Chantal Mouffe/Working Class Hegemony argument be clearly understood: it is obviously not claimed that one can qualify as socialist a social transformation which does not put an end to class antagonism and does not institute a real socialization of the means of production. What is being questioned here is the idea accepted uncritically by many Marxists that the working class must necessarily play the leading role in a process of socialist transformation and that its interests must have priority. In fact, the recognition of the end of class domination as a necessary (but I would also add non-sufficient) condition for socialism does not at all imply that we attribute a predominant role to the working class in the struggle for socialism. It is perfectly possible to imagine the realization of such a struggle in the form of a vast popular movement in which the working class does not play the central role. There is absolutely no reason to suppose that only a movement led by the working class can put an end to the domination of capital over paid labour. It is actually an illusion of language that lies behind the belief that the "class struggle" can only be the work of determined political agents - the "social classes." The history of the social revolutions which have occurred until now strikingly proves this point, because none of them has been led by the proletariat. But we must avoid making the opposite error by stating, as do some, that the working class can no longer exert leadership in the anti-capitalist struggle, because its demands are necessarily reformist and even reactionary, as they generally imply the preservation of the present mode of growth. The defenders of this view consider that we must look to the "new" social movements for the new revolutionary subject, the ecology movement often being presented as the most serious candidate for this position. This view involves substituting one form of reductionism for another, for it is just as much open to criticism to assert the necessarily reformist character of the workers' struggles as it is to assert their necessarily revolutionary character. Furthermore, like the struggles of the workers, those of the new social movements can be articulated in different discourses and have no a priori anti-capitalist character. It is urgent for us to abandon the problematic of the favored revolutionary subject, whatever it may be, and to recognize that the construction of a true socialist subject must be the result of the articulation of a whole set of struggles against numerous forms of domination that cannot be reduced to the expression of a unique logic. None of these struggles can have a predetermined centrality, for centrality exists only as an effort to constitute a centre, never as an already given effect of some objective structure. Marx actually conceived the socialist revolution on the model of the bourgeois revolution, which had aimed at bringing to power a 23

Studies in Political Economy class whose economic power had been prepared by the development of the productive forces in feudal society and which had only to take political power. But this cannot be the case for the creation of a socialist society. The latter creation implies the end of all forms of exploitation and domination and cannot therefore be the work of a single group which selects itself as the representative of the general interest but demands the active participation of all the oppressed. The objective is the construction of a society that is truly democratic - that is autonomous and self-managing - and to attain this it is necessary to recognize the pluralism and specificity of democratic struggles and to try not to reduce their diversity to the expression of a unique contradiction. Notes The ideas presented in this article stem from our research on the transformations of the forms of politics, undertaken in collaboration with Ernesto Laclau, the results of which will be presented in our forthcoming Hegemony and Socialist Strategy, New Left Books. I. See on this subject my article, "Hegemony and Ideology in Gramsci," in Chantal Mouffe, ed., Gramsci and Marxist Theory (London 1979). 2. Karl Marx, La sainte famille, in Oeuvres philosophiques, 2:63 3. Karl Marx, Contribution a la critique de la philosophie du droit de Hegel, in Oeuvres philosophiques, 1:105-6 4. Marx, La sainte famille, 62-3. (See n. 2 above.) 5. G. Lukacs, Histoire et conscience de classe, 40 6. C.A. Cohen, Karl Marx's Theory of History; A Defence, (Oxford), 206 7. K. Marx, Capital, 3:254 8. This statement does not have to be construed as leading to the collapse of capitalism and it is not necessary to make Marx a "breakdown" theorist to maintain this point. 9. K. Marx, Capital, bk. I, vol. 3, chap. 32, 205 10. K. Marx, Salaire, prix et plus-value, 527 II. K. Marx, Salaires, prix et profits, 27 12. C. Castoriadis, Capitalisme moderne et revolution (Paris 1979),2:122 13. Sam Bowles and Herbert Gintis, "Structure and Practice in the Labor 24

Chantal Mouffe/Working Class Hegemony Theory of Value," Review of Radical Political Economics, 12:4. This idea had already been criticized by Castoriadis in an article published Socialisme et Barbarie in 1961. The article, entitled "Le mouvement revolutionnaire sous Ie capitalisme moderne" re-appears in volume two of Capitalisme moderne et revolution. Such a criticism was first made by Karl Polanyi in The Great Transformation, but with different implications. 14.Ibid., 12 15. Ibid., 8 16.This view is even found among Marxists and it is well known that Lenin himself was a great admirer of Taylorism, advocating its introduction shortly after the October Revolution. 17.H. Braverman, Labour and Monopoly Capitalism, 90 18.This criticism of Braverman has been made by many, among them Michael Burawoy in his "Towards a Marxist Theory of the Labour Process," Politics and Society, 8:3-4 (1978); and Jack Sattel, "The Degradation of Labor in the 20th century," Insurgent Sociologist, 8:1 (1978). 19.Stephen Marglin, "What Do Bosses Do?" Review of Radical Political Economics 6:2 (1974); Katherine Stone, "The Origins of Job Structure in the Steel Industry." Review of Radical Political Economics 6:2 (1974). 20. Christian Pailloix, "The Labour Process: From Fordism to Neo- Fordism," in The Labour Process and Class Strategies (London, CSE Pamphlet No. 1) 21. I am taking up here the distinction made by Michael Burawoy in his article "Terrains of Contest: Factory and State under Capitalism and Socialism," Socialist Review, no. 58. 22. M. Tronti, Ouvriers et Capital (Paris 1977), 106 23. Panzieri, cited by B. Coriat, "L'operaisme italien," Dialectiques, no. 30, p. 96 24. A. Negri, La c1asse ouvriere contre l'etat (Paris 1978), 25-70 25. B. Coriat, L'atelier et Ie chronometre (Paris 1979), 155 26. Regarding the ambiguity of the concept of the proletariat in Marxism, see the excellent article by Adam Przeworski, "Proletariat into a class: The Process of Class Formation from Karl Kautsky's The Class Struggle to Recent Controversies," Politics and Society 7, 1977 27. Braverman, Labour and Monopoly Capitalism, 417. (See n. 17 above.) 28. See especially R. Edwards, Contested Terrain: The Transformation of