The Worker Elite

[ska invita]

I've just yesterday come across this short book (not read fully yet - just skimmed) - The Worker Elite: Notes on the "Labor Aristocracy" by Bromma - no doubt some on here are familiar with it

PDF here:
The Worker Elite. Bromma.pdf

AK Press summary here
The Worker Elite | AK Press

Thoughtful, not totally uncritical, Goodreads review here:
C. Derick Varn’s review of The Worker Elite: Notes on the “Labor Aristocracy”

Its undeniable that there are stratifications in the working class, and somewhat particular to each country - writing about the USA, Bromma goes for three big categories (there are probably more): proles, lumpen, and worker elite

In fact, what is generally referred to as the working class isn’t really a single class at all, but a family of three separate classes: the proletariat, the worker elite (“labor aristocracy”), and the lumpen working class (“lumpen-proletariat”). Although all three interact extensively, and share a lot of geographical and social terrain, each has its own specific class interests and politics.

The proletariat is made up of the slave, semi-slave, and heavily exploited workers who generate
almost all of capitalism’s profits. It is the “lower and deeper” part of the working class—and the
overwhelming majority.

Since it lacks property ownership, social capital, and institutional privilege, the proletariat
survives by working for other classes. The proletariat includes not only heavily exploited
manufacturing workers but also huge populations of domestic, service, clerical, and agricultural
workers. Millions of proletarians get no wages at all. Among these are a multitude of slaves,
“peasant” women, and housewives. Millions of proletarians work outside the formal economy, or are unemployed, or are in prison. Hunger, deep poverty, and economic insecurity are completely normal conditions for the proletariat under capitalism. Child labor is widespread. The capitalist labor market pushes the proletariat’s standard of living toward, or at times below, bare subsistence.

The lumpen is a parasitic class made up of people who live outside the web of “legal,” above-
ground production and distribution. It makes up a significant minority of the working class. The
lumpen includes those who have been pushed or pulled out of the proletariat to become thieves, thugs, swindlers, gangsters, and warlords. It also includes working class people recruited into the
repressive apparatus of the state—police, informants, prison guards, career soldiers, mercenaries,etc. The lumpen prey on all classes, but especially on the proletariat. In fact, from the viewpoint of the proletariat, the lumpen is basically a criminal class.

The worker elite is the main subject of these notes. This is not, as some would maintain, a thin
layer of trade union bureaucrats and craft workers. Rather, the worker elite is a mass class,
comprising hundreds of millions of middle class workers around the world whose institutionalized
privileges set them decisively apart from the proletariat. In short, entitled middle class workers.
Although the absolute population of the worker elite world-wide is quite large, it makes up only a
small fraction of the international working class.

The worker elite is part of a band of classes that exists “in the middle” between the proletariat
and the bourgeoisie. The worker elite’s middle class status comes into being when a particular subset of working class jobs—skilled or unskilled—is linked to institutionalized social bribery. This
happens through a historical process of economic change, struggle, and negotiation with capital. The worker elite has its own unique class characteristics that distinguish it from other middle classes. But it shares their position of privilege relative to the proletariat.
It’s crucial to recognize the distinctions among the three classes that make up the “working class.”

They are embodied in sharp real-life contradictions: between slaves and overseers, between
sweatshop seamstresses and six-figure crane operators, between immigrant farm workers and border cops, between day laborers and suburban homeowners, between health care aides and middle class pensioners, between machinists and drug dealers.
Downplaying these class contradictions is a recipe for political defeat.

Although written about/from the US I think the analysis applies equally to Britain, and perhaps particularly England.

I think its useful in several ways, such as:

-by recognising and defining the relative power of a large section of the US/UK (and beyond) working class it forces a critical look at some of the cruder/essentialist marxist assumptions about the category of 'working class'

-leads on to useful thinking about the contradictory role of trade unions/competition within the working class

-reinforces the need to view class struggle within the globalisation of capitalism / exporting of worker exploitation

-Theres a tendency to want to simplify class analysis (such as the whole 99% thing), which isnt totally without merit - making a positive case for the common good/'many not the few' etc is important - but partly class analysis is wobbling in public consciousness these days due to a lack of accuracy of the terms in an increasingly complex socially stratified world (far more complex and full of contradictions than the industrial revolution+ era Marx witnessed). This seems to add to accuracy within the complexity

...a clear-cut example of worker elitism in reactionary action here:
Outside Amazon Spheres, iron workers shout down Kshama Sawant over proposed head tax
Construction workers demonstrating against Amazon having to pay a proposed tax

Thoughts/criticisms?

Not got much time to post much at the mo, but wanted to get this thread started at least

 

[seventh bullet]

Never got round to reading it, when me and dialectician talked about it some years ago on here.

The author is originally from the Maoist and/or third-worldist mileu of the 1970s/80s, no? Not to confuse the above work with the upper middle class fringe Maoist Third-Worldists who appeared over a decade ago on blogs and YouTube with their own particular anti-revisionist take on things.

 

[redsquirrel]

Never got round to reading it, when me and dialectician talked about it some years ago on here.

Can you remember which thread that was SB?

EDIT: Found it here.

 

[seventh bullet]

Ah. It was mainly about MTW loonspuds.

Will give the bromma a read. Didn't want to give the impression it was the same shit spouted by the global people's war while at a fee-paying school crowd.