Class Interests & Collective Action: Formation & Compromise - Prof. Erik O. Wright, Study notes of Introduction to Sociology

Download Class Interests & Collective Action: Formation & Compromise - Prof. Erik O. Wright and more Study notes Introduction to Sociology in PDF only on Docsity! Sociology 298 Lecture 6 Thursday March 7, 2002 CLASS STRUGGLE, CLASS FORMATION AND CLASS COMPROMISE I. Stating the Problem 1. Structures and People It is sometimes thought that the study of class structure revolves strictly around positions, whereas the analysis of class formation and class struggle centers on people, on the actual practices of real individuals confronting the world. This is not an adequate way of drawing the distinction. Both analyses revolve around people, but viewed from different vantage points. The analysis of class structures views individuals as incumbents of relationally defined positions -- or, to say the same thing: analyzes individuals in terms of their relational interactions generated by their ownership and control over productive resources. The analysis of class formation views individuals as participants in collective actions oriented around the interests generated by class relations. One of the central objectives of class analysis, then, is to understand is how individuals-as-incumbents in positions are organized, disorganized and reorganized into individuals-as-participants in struggle. This is the process of class formation. 2. Class Structure as a terrain for constructing potential class formations So far, our main preoccupation has centered on the class structure side of this process. As I have argued in various places, the crucial way in which class structure bears on the problem of class formation is by defining a terrain of material interests upon which collective actors are formed. More specifically, for every person, the objective, material interests defined by the class structure determines three potential categories of actors: a) actors who share the same class-based material interests as oneself (i.e. who face the same trade-offs and strategies: have to do the same things to improve material welfare) b) actors who have antagonistic material interests to one’s own, and c) actors whose class interests may not be identical to one’s own, but whom nevertheless may have sufficiently overlapping interests to form the basis of class coalitions. Class structures determine one’s potential friends, potential enemies, and potential allies: Class consciousness is knowing what side of the fence you are on; Class analysis is knowing who’s there with you The process of class formation – as we shall see in future lectures on this –involvemuch more than an account of class interests. Issues such as class identities forged through class experiences are also of great importance in understanding the ways in which solidarities are formed and collective actions accomplished. But we will begin in a simple way here by focusing on interests. Lecture 6. Class formation & Class Compromise 2 3. The two primary problems in the analysis of class formation The study of class formation and class struggle engages two primary theoretical and empirical problems: 1) Explaining why and how individuals located in various ways in the class structure come to engage in solidaristic struggles. This is basically the collective action problem: explaining how it comes to pass that individuals cooperate in collective struggles which impose sacrifices, often considerable sacrifices, on them. 2) Explaining the form of struggle that results from such collective solidarity. Class formations can take many different forms: there can be sharply polarized class formations in which workers are engaged in revolutionary struggles to overthrow capitalism; there can be sharply polarized struggles in which workers are trying to secure a more favorable realization of their interests within capitalism, but not attempting to destroy capitalism itself; there can highly unified class formations in which working class organizations – unions and parties – engage in bargaining with the capitalist class as a whole; there can be highly fragmented forms of class formations in which particular segments of the working class engage in struggle with particular fractions of capital. So, there is much variation. A good theory of class formation will attempt a conceptual map of this variation and provide explanations for the conditions conducive to one form or another. These two problems are, of course, connected: how you explain participation of individuals in collective action contributes to explaining the types of collective action that are possible and the conditions under which different possibilities are likely to occur. But also, the theory of strategic possibilities of different kinds of collective formation may also help explain important features of the process of mobilization. When we return to the problem of class formation in a month or so we will look primarily at the first of these issues – the problem of solidarity and individual participation in collective action. Here we will focus on the form of class formation, in particular at the problem of what is called class compromise. Lecture 6. Class formation & Class Compromise 5 2. Conditions for Class Compromise 2.1 Foundational Fact about capitalism: Przeworski’s basic argument for the possibility of class compromise is this: It is a fundamental fact of capitalism that economic growth and innovation comes out of private profits. This has profound implications for working class class formation. Workers’ present welfare depends upon two central variables: 1) level of productivity of the forces of production 2) workers ability to resist exploitation (capture part of the surplus produced with the productivity) Workers future welfare also depends upon two processes: 3) capitalists’ present investments out of the surplus they appropriate, 4) workers capacity to appropriate future stream of wages from productivity growth BUT this generates a dilemma: workers cannot maximize both #2 and #3. This generates a deep tension within working class struggles since workers face a potential trade-off between present and future income in their struggles with capitalists. This is like the perpetual trade-off inherent in every act of balancing present consumption against future consumption – you save from present consumption in order to consume more in the future – with the crucial added problem of struggle and uncertainty: workers do not control investments and thus they do not control the conditions for the future earnings. Let us suppose that workers are insufficiently powerful to overthrow capitalism in their lifetime, but they are powerful enough that they could win very large wage increases through their struggles. Would it be rational for them to do so? Przeworski’s answer is that the rationality of particular wage-strategies of workers depends upon the likely response of capitalists to different levels of working class militancy. 2.2. Levels of Militancy & class compromise “Optimal militancy” = that level of militancy which generates the maximum sustainable positive trajectory in wages over time (assuming continuation of capitalism). “Maximal Militancy” = the maximum achievable level of antagonistic struggle against capital Let us suppose that no class compromise is possible, either because the economic conditions do not allow it or because the capitalist class is so short-sighted and selfish that they refuse to make any deal with workers. They prefer all-out class war. Under such conditions, Przeowrski argues, workers will do better by being maximally militant, by trying to obtain maximum wage increases at every point in time. Lecture 6. Class formation & Class Compromise 6 Hyper-radicalism thesis: optimal militancy = maximal militancy: class compromise is always a sham. Class Compromise Thesis: under certain conditions optimal militancy is less intense than maximal militancy. A class compromise means that in exchange for workers moderating their militancy, capitalists agree to reinvest part of the surplus (profits) and to give workers some of the fruits of this reinvestment in the form of productivity based wage increases. Under such conditions, Przeworski argues, the optimal strategy for workers is to be moderately militant: sufficiently militant to ensure that capitalists abide to their side of the bargain, but not so militant as to threaten the compromise by squeezing the rate of profit. 2.3 Conditions for sustainable class compromise The critical issue is, then, what determines the feasibility of class compromise? Three issues are especially important: time horizons, trust, associational power. (1) Time horizons The problem of time horizons basically concerns how far in the future workers and capitalists make strategic calculations. The higher the degree of uncertainty about future states of the economy, the shorter will be the time horizons of all actors. The more confident actors are about the predictability of the future, at least in terms of basic material conditions, the longer into the future they are willing to make strategic calculations. In advanced industrial capitalism, Przeworski argues, there is generally a relatively long time horizon based on the historical experience of stable accumulation. (2) Trust Trust is in some ways even more important than time horizons. Even if workers believe that they can predict the future state of the economy pretty well, they are unlikely to agree to a class compromise if they feel that they cannot trust capitalists to follow through with their promises. The same, of course, applies to the willingness of capitalists to believe the promises of workers. The historical memory of betrayals, therefore, can be a serious obstacle to forging stable class compromises. Because of the antagonistic interests of workers and capitalists and the generally depersonalized character of the capital-labor relation, it is unlikely that this kind of trust can be built exclusively on beliefs of good faith. It is therefore important that an institutional framework exist in which trust is reinforced and, perhaps, even guaranteed. Przeworski argues that the institutions of bourgeois democracy, especially under the guidance of social democratic parties, provides the institutional setting for the necessary reciprocity and trust to develop. (We will discuss the specific issue of the role of parliamentary democracy in class compromises in the next block of the course). Lecture 6. Class formation & Class Compromise 7 If these arguments are correct, then in advanced industrial capitalist democracies there will in general be both a sufficient time horizon and the institutional conditions of trust for class compromises to be forged between workers and capitalists. Under these conditions, then workers will be better off opting for moderate militancy and capitalists for productivity-based wage increases: both benefit from this arrangement relative to historically feasible alternatives. (3) Associational Power of workers & Form of Class Compromise Up tp this point, the form of class compromise we have been discussing could be termed a negative class compromise. The key issue is that workers have sufficient power to appropriate too much surplus from the point of view of capital accumulation or to in other ways disrupt the accumulation process. Capitalists respond to this credible threat by granting some of the demands of workers, thus agreeing to a compromise. But the compromise is strictly negative: workers agree to abstain from punishing capitalists in exchange for a wage-productivity bargain. I think that there is also a possibility of what might be termed “positive class compromise”. Przeworski discusses this as well, although not as systematically as he does negative compromise. Positive class compromise depends upon a specific relationship between the associational strength of the working class and the material interests of capital. The conventional Marxist wisdom is that these are inversely related: increasing working class organizational strength is monotonically more disadvantageous to capitalists. The class compromise thesis indicates that the relationship is more like an inverse-J relationship: Capitalists prefer a disorganized working class, but if working class associational power moves beyond the trough in the curve, then capitalists individually have interests in further increasing union density because this makes their labor supply predictable, increases market coordination and potentially increases worker discipline within production; below that threshold, capitalists have interests in reducing density. US = to the left of the trough; Sweden = to the right of the trough. My work on class compromise tries to lay out more precisely the underlying mechanisms which make a positive class compromise stable. The core of my argument is that in various ways workers associative power can help capitalists solve various kinds of collective action problems, problems which they have difficulty solving on their own. Two of these have been especially important: 1. Underconsumption: This is a classic problem identified by Marx. Each capitalist tries to minimize wages of worekrs-as-employees, for in doing so he maximizes his own profits. But in reducing the wage bill, this means that in the aggregate workers-as-consumers have less money to spend in the market, and this makes it more difficult for capitalists to seel what they produce. This is the classic problem identified by Keynes as insufficient aggregate demand generated by the individual strategies of capitalists. There are a variety of solutions to this problem. They state can increase spending, for example, to absorb some of this over- production. But class compromise can also help solve this problem by constraining the wage- cutting capacity of individual capitalists and thus increasing aggregate wages.