The Dilemmas of Working Class Collective Action - Lecture Notes | SOC 621, Study notes of Introduction to Sociology

Download The Dilemmas of Working Class Collective Action - Lecture Notes | SOC 621 and more Study notes Introduction to Sociology in PDF only on Docsity! Lecture 17 Sociology 621 November 14, 2005 THE DILEMMAS OF WORKING CLASS COLLECTIVE ACTION Classes are not simply formed or unformed, organized or disorganized. They are organized in particular manners, with historically specific inter-relationships with the class formation of other classes. One of the important tasks of a Marxist analysis of class formation is to understand the variability in types of class formation, and the central determinants of this variability. In the last weeks of the semester we will examine the various ways in which the state and ideology help to shape the specific forms of class struggle and class formation. In this session our focus will be more on the “material basis” which underlies different class formations. I. Stating the Problem 1. Why is reformism the universal form of working class politics in developed capitalism? Marxists traditionally distinguish broadly two ideal types of class struggle: revolutionary class struggle in which the struggle is over the fundamental rules of the game (socialism vs. capitalism) and reformist class struggles in which struggle is over interests within a given set of basic rules of the game. Corresponding to these forms of class struggle is a distinction in class formations: class formations organized around the tasks of revolutionary transformation, and class formations oriented towards reformist struggle. This distinction poses a basic puzzle for Marxism. If Marxists are correct and the interests of the working class are fundamentally opposed to those of the bourgeoisie -- if these are intrinsically polarized classes -- why is it the case that in no advanced capitalist country is the working class a revolutionary class? How can the theoretical claim of antagonistic class relations be reconciled with the pervasive empirical fact that in the most developed capitalist countries class struggles overwhelmingly take the basic rules of the game for granted? This is not to say, of course, that all reformisms are identical. There are deep and important differences among the various types of reformism that have characterized the history of the advanced capitalist nations - - from full incorporation and class collaboration to critical-oppositional progressive reformism. But the fact remains that no Western working class is struggling for a rupture in capitalism. How is this to be explained? In the next lecture on class compromise we will explore one kind of answer to this question: the dynamic of struggle between workers and capitalists opens a space within which class compromise may be possible. Here we will explore a quite different answer offered by Claus Offe and Helmut Weisenthal in their analysis of the intra- organizational dilemmas of working class formation 2. Two rejected explanations: misleadership & false consciousness Both Przeworski and O&W reject two common explanations of reformism (or what Offe and Weisenthal term “opportunism”): First, the reformism of working class associations, both unions and parties, is often attributed to “misleadership”. Leaders are accused of being sell-outs and corrupt, or at best misguided. The absence of revolutionary struggle reflects a failure of will on the part of the leadership of the working class and/or working class organizations. Lecture 17. Dilemmas of Class Formation 2 Alternatively, the failure is attributed to the subjectivity of workers -- false consciousness. Workers are the victims of ideological indoctrination from above, deception by bourgeois media, propaganda, anticommunist mystification. In the absence of such ideological manipulation, workers would engage in revolutionary struggle. Both Offe/Weisenthal and Przeworski reject these subjectivist explanations. While they do allow an important role for ideology in their respective explanations of class compromise, the central mechanisms are not to be found in duplicity on the part of leaders or ideological susceptibility on the part of workers. Rather, the central mechanisms are rooted in the dilemmas of collective action imposed on the working class by the logic of capitalism. Offe and Weisenthal analyze these dilemmas in terms of their effects on the associational practices of opportunism within working class organizations, Przeworski analyses them in terms of their effects on the terms of struggle between workers and capitalists. Both analyses share a common overarching claim that the basic mechanism which explains reformism centers on the constraints and dilemmas faced by rational, strategically acting workers. 3. Opportunism and Associational Practices Offe and Weisenthal’s analysis revolves around the concept of “opportunism.” Needless to say, this is a highly pejorative label, used in political debates as a way of impugning the integrity of particular political positions. Offe and Weisenthal are less interested in condemnation, however, than in understanding the material basis for the kinds of associational practices that are typically linked with the accusation. What then is “opportunism”? Offe and Weisenthal identify three primary attributes: (1) an inversion of means over ends in which maintenance of the organization has higher priority than the pursuit of the goals of the organization; (2) a preoccupation with short-term gains and losses rather than long-term possibilities; (3) primacy of tactics over strategy. The task is to explain the pervasive fact that to a greater or lesser extent these three attributes have generally characterized the working class formation in advanced capitalist societies. Offe and Weisenthal make three very interesting propositions about underlying logic of opportunism: 1. Structural logic: Opportunism is an organizational response to the structural logic of collective action faced by workers. Lecture 17. Dilemmas of Class Formation 5 employers associations, there is a simple ready-made criterion for all interest-calculations: profit, monetary costs and returns. The interests of capitalists in their role as owners of capital are fixed, pregiven by the nature of the market. The only issue facing employers associations is the best means for realizing these interests. The interests of workers, even in their role as sellers of labor power, are not fixed, not fully defined by the market precisely because the worker cannot separate him/herself as a living human being from labor power. The result of this difference in the nature of interests of workers and capitalists is that the process of representing those interests organizationally is much simpler for capitalists. This, as we will see below, has important consequences for the internal processes within capitalist and working class organizations. Capitalist interests are transparent and thus are capable of being articulated by experts in what Offe and Weisenthal (following Habermas) call a monologic process (i.e. a process of top-down, one-way communication between leadership and members). Workers associations must somehow or other discover what constitutes the interests of their members and thus need much more dialogic processes of communication and interaction (i.e. forms of communication that are symmetrical, participatory and open between leadership and members). 2.3 POWER ACCUMULATION. The problem of power accumulation is just as difficult for workers’ associations as interest aggregation. Working class power cannot be aggregated in a simple additive way; the atomization of workers is an inherent problem, not just a result of external manipulation by capitalists. It is intrinsic to the asymmetry between capital and labor: since the worker cannot be separated from the labor power he/she sells on the labor market, the power of workers cannot be enhanced by literally accumulating labor power; it must be continually constituted by forging solidarity among workers as persons. Workers power depends fundamentally on solidarities; capitalist power does not. In attempting to forge such solidarity, individual workers face a deep dilemma in terms of the interests which working class associations pursue. So long as individual workers calculate the costs and benefits of participation in collective organizations and collective action strictly in terms of individual material benefits, such participation will always be problematic. Because capitalists are individually so much more powerful than workers, they are in a much stronger position to punish individual workers for such participation than workers are individually able to punish capitalists (i.e. in general, being fired is a bigger threat to individual workers than quitting is a threat to capitalists). If the only value which unions pursue are the atomized interests of workers -- the interests of workers taken individually -- then such organizations will be permanently vulnerable to the disintegrative effects of prisoners dilemmas and free riders. Indeed, this is one of defining what it means to describe a class as dominant: it has a capacity to impose prisoners dilemmas on challenging class, to intensify free-riding problems. These observations lead Offe and Weisenthal to an important conclusion: Lecture 17. Dilemmas of Class Formation 6 “Those in inferior power positions can increase their potential for change only by overcoming the comparatively higher costs of collective action by changing the standards according to which these costs are subjectively estimated within their own collectivity....The logic of collective action of the relatively powerless differs from that of the relatively powerful in that the former implies a paradox absent from the latter -- the paradox that interests can only be met to the extent that they are partly redefined. Therefore, the organizations [of the relatively powerless must always]... simultaneously express and define the interests of their members” (Offe and Weisenthal, p.78-79). Or, to use Elster’s terms, working class associations must try to create the conditions for conditional altruism if they are to be able to shift the balance of power with capital. Solidarity, community, common fate: these must become part of the subjective calculus of workers if collective action is able to shift the balance of power. Capitalist associations need not rely on such deep commitments. These arguments suggest that in the case of working class formations there is a deep causal interconnection between the interests pursued by working class organizations and the power of those organizations. In all instances of class formation, the power of class-based associations helps to explain the extent to which different class interests can be realized. This is true for both the working class formation and the capitalist class formation. In the case of working class formation, however, they reverse causal relation also exists: the transformation of the interests that are represented within working class organizations helps to explain the power of those organization. This dialectical relationship between interests and power within the working class defines its distinctive logic of class formation. 3. ORGANIZATIONAL PROCESSES The above comments on the interests and power of workers and capitalists has direct implications for the kinds of organizations they need to create in order to effectively pursue their interests. More specifically, employers and workers associations differ fundamentally on what it is that determines the power base, and this in turn affects their internal processes. For employers associations, the power base depends essentially on the sanctioning abilities of individual members, not the organization as such. Business associations are powerful because their members are individually powerful and can individually impose sanctions on workers in conflict situations. The result of this is that the activities of the organization depend primarily on the willingness of members to provide funds to the organization, and the direction of those activities can be broadly delegated to a monologic leadership -- that is, a leadership which relates to the associational membership primarily in one-way, top-down communication. Lecture 17. Dilemmas of Class Formation 7 In sharp contrast, the power base of workers association depends almost entirely upon the sanctioning ability of the association, not the individual members, and this sanctioning ability depends in turn upon the willingness to act of the members (especially their willingness to strike). The power of even the most bureaucratic union thus ultimately rests on the reality of membership support. This contrast between power based on the willingness to pay vs. willingness to act generates very different leadership tasks and dilemmas for employers and workers associations. Labor unions, unlike employer associations, face a basic contradiction between the conditions for the accumulation of power and the exercise of power. • In order to accumulate power, unions must do two things: first, they must attempt to increase their membership and the financial resources controlled by the union, and second, they must increase the bureaucratic control over these resources in order to ensure that these resources will be effectively used and coordinated in struggles. • In order to exercise power, on the other hand, unions depend upon the degree to which the association is able reinforce solidarities and commitments among members. This, in turn, depends to a significant extent upon the degree to which the internal structure of the union organization is governed by dialogic forms of communication -- interactions which are fundamentally participatory and help to forge collective identities that shield the organization from free rider problems. All things being equal, increasing size and centralization undermine such solidaristic interaction, and in this sense unions typically face a trade-off between the accumulation and exercise of power. The history of the labor movement is rife with examples of rich unions that cannot mobilize to strike vs. militant small unions that cannot afford to strike. Working class formation thus generally faces a range of organizational antinomies that are absent from capitalist class formation: mobilization of resources vs. mobilization of activity, increasing the size of the organization vs. increasing the strength of collective identity, building the bureaucracatic efficiency of the organization vs. deepening democratic participation within the organization. These are deep trade-offs inherent in the nature of working class interests and conditions of struggle. Because these antinomies cannot be eliminated, they result, as we shall see below, in tendencies within working class associations for internal organizational practices to oscillate between dialogic and monologic forms, punctuated by periods of organizational crisis and reconstruction. Employer associations lack these dilemmas and thus tend to have more continuous, less crisis-ridden organizational histories. Lecture 17. Dilemmas of Class Formation 10 delivering on promises made in response to these threats. This requires that the leadership be in a position to control the organization and restrain the militancy of members. These coexistence of these two imperatives creates a maximum tension between monologic and dialogic forms of associational practice: the need for mobilization requires dialogic forms, the need for control requires monologic forms. Offe and Weisenthal argue that there are two basic ways in which this tenstion can be resolved: either the organization can return to stage I or it can attempt to create external guarantees for the survival of the organization. This ushers in stage III. Stage III. This is the stage of full-fledged opportunism: the triumph of monologic over dialogic forms of associational practice. In order to resolve the tensions of stage II, the leadership of the organization seeks external guarantees for the survival of the organization, most importantly, external legal guarantees from the state. The objective of these guarantees is, in Offe and Weisenthal’s words, “to make the organization’s survival as independent as possible of the motivation, the solidarity and the ‘willingness to act’ of the members” (p.107). Of particular importance is labor legislation which legally protects union rights and survivability, both by making unions less vulnerable to attack by employers and by making it possible for unions to recruit members (and thus obtain financial resources in the form of membership dues) without having to mobilize workers in active atruggles. To obtain these external guarantees, of course, the union has to give something up in return. What they give up is militancy. They promise to be “responsible”, to institutionalize internal controls within the union over militants in exchange for security. In short, they agree to adopt the organizational practices described as “opportunism” above. Opportunism is thus institutionalized as a rational strategy of insuring organizational continuity. In Offe and Weisenthal’s words, this “secures the chances for success while escaping the threats to survival” (p.107). Stage IV. The creation of monologic institutional forms and opportunistic practices within working class organizations may be a rational strategy on the part of leadership, but it does not eliminate the fundamental antagonism of interests between workers and capitalists. This means that capitalists will always have an inherent interest in undermining the power of workers if this is politically possible. Periodically, therefore, capitalists launch offensives against working class organizations, sometimes tentatively to see how vulnerable those organizations are, sometimes aggresively with the hope of seriously undermining their power. So long as the state provides the external guarantees for unions, these offensives are unlikely seriously to jeopardize their power and viability. But of course, these guarantees can be withdrawn, and indeed one of the objectives of anti-union offensives is often to erode or even to eliminate these legal protections. In such circumstances, unions may become extremely vulnerable. The monologic form of the organization will have eroded the solidarities among members and weakened the leadership’s ability to mobilize members for collective action, while the assault on the organization makes such mobilization imperative. Lecture 17. Dilemmas of Class Formation 11 Such situations are likely to provoke a general organizational crisis in which the established monologic associational practices confront reemergent dialogic tendencies. Such crises form the basis for the next stage of the historical trajectory. Stage V. The final stage is marked by a period of renewed militancy and mobilization, by a re- formation of the associational practices. This looks like the first stage of the process, but with certain important differences. First, this reemergence of militancy and mobilization usually takes the form of divisions and splits within existing unions. This means that the new militancy typically operates within a very different organizational environment from the initial militancy, an environment in which there are more organizational resources available and in which the contest is between between different factions of workers, not simply between workers and capitalists. Secondly, the renewal of militany action takes places at a potentially higher level of ideological awareness than the initial phase or militancy. Workers have lived through the historical cycle of militancy and opportunism, and thus potentially have learned lessons which will inform the subsequent struggles over class formations. The overall result of these interconnected processes, is that the long-term historical trajectory is not necessarily an endless cycle of militancy leading to the organizational strategies of opportunism which ultimately undermines the power base of the organization thus leading to a renewed period of militancy. Rather, the process is potentially one of an historical spiral in which periods of militancy oscillates with periods of opportunism, but at ever more politicized and radical levels of consciousness. Offe and Weisenthal view this spiral-like quality of the historical learning curve of working class formations as inherent in the logic of collective action. This is, perhaps, an overly optimistic view. Whether or not historical experiences produce a cumulative learning process depends upon the strength of historical memory within the working class and on the ability of workers to draw the correct lessons from the victories and defeats in class struggles. Historical forgetting, however, is as pervasive a fact of social life as historical memory, and the lessons to be learned from struggles are often opaque and highly contested. Ruling classes have a deep interest in erasing historical memory and of interrupting the learning process embedded in such cycles. Whether or not such lessons are learned and cyles are transformed into spirals, therefore, cannot be read off of the logic class formation itself.