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have changed as much. Secondly, the categories themselves are
far from homogenous. For example
the Skilled Trades Occupation category could include a variety
of different class positions, covering
foremen, the manual self-employed, and small businessmen. This
is important because it embraces
-
ers, however skilled, who depend on the sale of their
labour-power for their livelihood (Callinicos,
Service Occupations, there are various layers of supervisors
which control and supervise the labour
of other workers. This means that there can be workers to use
Wrights (1978: 63) terminology
occupying objectively contradictory locations within class
relations. Although they sell their own
labour they form part of the role of capital, and therefore,
they have two opposing class interests.
The growth of service work is a central trend. What would it
mean if a worker is now more likely to
work in a supermarket or a call centre, rather than in a factory
or a coal mine? This kind of employ-
ment can indeed be subjected to similar methods of control and
supervision originally developed in
the factory. The technology used to control the labour process
in call centres is perhaps analogous
according to Taylorian principles. The application of
Taylorianism outside the Fordist factory was
anticipated by Braverman (1999: p79), when he argued that mental
labour, after being separated from
manual labour, is then itself subdivided rigorously according to
the same rule. The purpose of this
is to cheapen the worker by decreasing his training and
enlarging his output (Braverman, 1999: p81).
Impact of neoliberalism
The statistics from 1987 and 2012 capture a period marked by the
rise of neoliberalism. Its ad-
-
es (Harvey, 2007: p12). These structural changes have been
forced through with a series of de-
governments austerity agenda. It has exposed increasing layers
of society, without organisations
or traditions of trade union membership, to the experience of
precarious working conditions.
This can be seen in the statistics for trade union membership,
providing an estimate of the current
institutional level of working class organisation. Like census
statistics, however, such statistics ob-
scure certain dynamics within working class organisation. The
headline statistics for 2011 show that
series, begun in 1995. The membership is divided between 3.9
million in the public sector and 2.5
million in the private sector (Brownlie, 2012: p7). Union
membership density in the public sector
is exacerbated by the fact that the education and health and
social work industries each account for
-
tively (Brownlie, 2012: p11). It is therefore possible to say
that these areas have a hugely dispropor-
The phenomenon of workplaces without organisation and precarious
conditions has been
the focus of recent debates about work. At one extreme Guy
Standing (2011) argues for the
emergence of a new class, the precariat, providing little
empirical evidence in support of his
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We hope to meet in this work with the support of all workers in
town and coun-
try who understand that they alone can describe with full
knowledge the mis-
fortunes from which they suffer, and that only they, and not
saviours sent by Providence,
can energetically apply the healing remedies for the social ills
to which they are a prey.
-
sus or a sociological study. It explicitly links the
construction of knowledge to a politi-cal project. It takes as its
starting point that those interested in conducting such
surveys:
Must wish for an exact and positive knowledge of the conditions
in which the work-
ing class the class to whom the future belongs works and moves.
(Marx, 1938: p379)
The postal survey aimed to collect information, but crucially,
it also intended to make contact
-duction are, in a sense, part of trade union organisation. What
is novel about this outline of a
-
sults that were gained from the survey, nor is there a
discussion of either its successes or failures.
-
skyist movement, concerning the analysis of Stalinist Russia as
a degenerated workers state. Of
particular interest are the Johnson-Forest Tendency in the USA
(Dunayevskaya, 1972), the Social-
isme ou Barbarie group in France (Kessler, 1978), and the
International Socialists in Britain, which
did not solidify into a group until later (Kuper, 1971). One
particularly interesting example is the
study produced by the Johnson-Forest Tendency called The
American Worker. It is a two part
working class. This builds on the arguments put forward by Lukcs
(1971: p21), according to
whom the Marxist method, the dialectical materialist knowledge
of reality, can arise only from
the point of view of a class, from the point of view of the
struggle of the proletariat. This
-
development of capitalism, but the development of the
revolution. This new method of re-
Political militants have always done conricerca. We would go in
front of the factory and
Alquati taught us that the problem is to grasp the truth, not to
describe it. For the capacity to anticipate a tendency
