\farewell to the working class

7/27/2019 \Farewell to the Working Class

1/80

Farewell to the Working ClassAn essay on Post-Industrial Socialism

Translated by Michael Sonenscher

Pluto ~ PressLondon and Sydney


2/80

First published in France as Adieux au Proletariatby Editions Galilee, 9 rue Linne, 75005 ParisCopyright Editions Galilee 1980Translation by Mike SonenscherTranslation Pluto Press London 1982This translation first published in 1982 by Pluto Press LimitedThe Works, 105A Torriano Av enue, London NW5 2RXThird Impression 1987ISBN 0 86104 364 2Typeset by Gra ss roots Typeset, 101 Kilburn Square, London NW6Pr inted and Bound in Great Britainby Billing and Sons Ltd., W o r c

As unemployment rises, the struggle, Gorz insists, is notfor the 'Right to Work ' but for an income regardless o fwork, fo r the sharing of the reduced amount of necessarysocial labour, above all for the primacy o f autonomous,self-determined activity. And it is a struggle, he claims, that, is already taking place.

New StatesmanGorz is also candid in confronting the challenge to conventional socialist theory presented by the disappearance of anindustrial working class. This latest essay is vintageGon-stimulating in its insight and rich in its documentation, but finally frustrating in the failure of the analysis tolead to any programme of action.

The Guardian

Gon's terrain is one that must be thought through. Thedisastrous failure of present day Labourism to confront theimpact o f technological re-equiment permits the credibilityo f Thatcherism. A new socialist project must be formedthat can include the abolition o f work and the liberation o fdesire. City Limits

... a stimulating book which addresses several of the iSSUe!1tm: ,which are bound to be raised in the forthcoming i n q u e s a i ' . l ' t i , : .on British socialism. J : 1 g ~ W J... , ,New Society , ~ , ~ '

.. .a tightly-structured tour deforce with a universalapplication.Marxism Today


3/80

!

Contents

Preface: Nine Theses for a Future Left /Introduction / 14

1. The Working Class According to Saint Marx / 162. The Myth of Colleclil'e Approprialion / 233. The Proletariat as Replica of Capital ! 354. Workers' Power? / 45S. Personal Power and Functional Power / 546. A New Historical Subject:The Non-Class of Post-Industrial Prolelarians / 667. The Post-Industrial Revolution / 758. Towards a Dual Society / 909. The Sphere of Necessity: The State ! 105

Postscript:Destructive Growth and Productive Shrinking ! 120Appendix I.Towards a Policy of Time ! 126Appendix 2.Utopia for a Possible Dual Society / 145


4/80

fo r Dorine

Preface: Nine Theses for a Fufure Left

This book is an essay in the fullest sense of the word. It is an attempt to outline the perspectives and the themes around wh ich a1 ;ft endowed with a future rather than burdened with nostalgiamigh t re-emerge. It makes no pretence to have answered all theQuestions it raises.l . Its central theme is the liberation of time and the abo lition

of wo rk - a theme as old as wo rk itself. Work has not alwaysexisted in the way in which it is currently understood. It came intobeing at the sa me time as capitalists and proletarians. It meansan activity carried out: for someone else; in return for a wage;according to forms and time schedules laid down by the personpaying the wage; and for a purpose not chosen by the wo rker. Amarket gardener 'works'; a miner growing leeks in his backgarden carries out a freely chosen activity.'Work' nowadays refers almost exclusively to activities carriedout for a wage. ' The terms 'work' and 'job' have become interchangeable: work is no longe r something that one does butsomething that one has. One 'looks for work' and 'finds work'just as one 'looks for' or ' find s' a job.Work is an imposition, a heterodetermined, heteronomous ac-tivity, perceived by most of those who either ' have' it or a.re,11kL'looking for' it as a nondesc ript sale of time. One works ~ ~ ~ ~ J "Peugeot's' or 'at Boussac's' rather than to make cars or t e x t i l ,!ij-rf . .,-One 'has' a good or a bad job according to how much one earp.s " ..- and only secondly according to the nature of the task and its: -purpose. One can have a 'good' job in the armaments industry / .

1. On the or igins and etymology of the word 'work ', see M. Godel ier , 'W ork andits representations .. ', i listory Workshop Journal, no . 10, 1980, pp . 164 -74(translator'S note).


5/80


6/80


7/80


8/80


9/80


10/80


11/80


12/80


13/80


14/80


15/80

22 I Farewell to the Working Classfrustrate it.'The terms of the problem govern the inquiry into its solution.The inquiry - and its results - would doubtless be very differentif the problem were posed in the following way: 'Given that theproletariat is not revolutionary, let us examine whether it ispossible that it might still become so and why it has been possibleto believe that it already is. '

[

,.j

.,

i. The Myth of Collective Appropriation

In marxist theory, the emergence of 'general abstract labour' attheexpense of artisans' individual labour is understood to be thekey to the historic necess ity of communism. So long as artisansowned their tools and the products of their labour they were ableto retain individual identity, leaving their mark upon what theyproduced and living their work as the practical expression of acertain autonomy. Only insofar as the products of their labourbecame commodities made exclusively for sale on the marketwas it possible for artisans to encounter the experience of alienation. They could not control the exchange-value of their products.Exchange-value depended on trade channels and circuits be yondthe control of any single individual and - - subsequently - upontechnical innovations which only large-scale manufacture couldafford. And yet despite their alienation as owners and vendorsof the products of their labour, artisans continued to remain incontrol of work it se lf, as the activities of conceiving and producing, of transforming raw materials into finished artefacts, weregoverned by rhythms and methods which, within limits, variedfrom individual to individual.Artisans were thus both able to control their own work, and : , 'alienated in their role of owners and vendors. They thus had ( l r , ~ " : \ ;tieu/ar and limited interests, amounting to a desire to maintai.1iU",the highest and most stable exchange-value for whatever t h ~ Y i nproduced. This objective presupposed a capacity to e x e r c i s emonopoly or, when this wa s impossible, to league together with ."". 'other artisans and to have the city re st rict the numbers in par- vticular urban trades, the length of the working day, the conditionsgoverning the sa le of goods and so on.The conditions that allowed artisans a degree of autonomouscontrol over their work were, at the same time, a limitation ofthe extent of that control. As a specialist in a particular trade


16/80


17/80


18/80


19/80


20/80


21/80

34 / Farewell to the Working Classsee it in perspeetive and redefine it according to its ownautonomous goals. The political power of the working class hasto be seen as one prerequisite among many in the transformationsto be undertaken, rather than as a solution in itself. 3. The Proletariat as Replica of Capital

The process of proletarianisation is complete when workers havebeen stripped of all autonomous capacity to produce their ownmeans of subsistence . For as long as workers own a set of toolsenabling them to produce for their own needs, or a plot of landto grow some vegetables, and keep a few chickens, the fact ofproletarianisation will be felt to be accidental and reversible. Forordinary experience will continue to suggest the poss ibility ofindependence: workers will continue to dream of setting themselves up on their own, of buying an old farm with their savingsor of making things for their own needs after they retire. Inshort, 'real life' lies outside your life as a worker, and being aproletarian is but a temporary mi sfortune to be endured untilsomething better turns up.However limited it might be, this type of practical autonomyand the dreams (and generally unrealisable projects) of an'independent existence' which it allows, are a bar to 'class consciousne ss ': they preclude conscious identification with the proletariat as the inescapable social fate of each of its members.This is why, especially in Britain and Germany, the bourgeoisie- whether consciously or not - has preserved those marginalzones of autonomy formed by tiny allo,tments or k - y a r d s ~ a t ,workers' houses. This is also why proletarian militants h ~ ~ ~ ~ ' : Jgenerally opposed the yearning for individual autonomy, l nd "dismi ssed it as a residual sign of petty-bourgeois i n d i i d u a l i s m ; ' , ~Autonomy is not a proletarian value. The de sire for autonomyhas habitually been understood as either a form of regressive'


22/80


23/80


24/80


25/80


26/80


27/80


28/80


29/80


30/80


31/80


32/80


33/80


34/80


35/80


36/80


37/80


38/80


39/80


40/80


41/80


42/80


43/80


44/80


45/80


46/80


47/80


48/80


49/80


50/80


51/80


52/80


53/80


54/80


55/80

104 / Farewell to the Working Classimperatives have nothing whatsoever to do with morality, and inconfining such tasks to a specific social area by means of precise


56/80

rules. The di sjuncture between the sphere of necess ity and thesphere of autonomy is an essential condition for the greatestpossible expansion of the latter.9. The Sphere of Necessity: The State

The sphere of necess ity encompasses two types of heteronomousactivity: that required for the social production of necess ities,and that required for the functioning of society as a materialsystem. The capitalist model of development is characterised bya simultaneous expansion of both types of activity. As commodity production has become concentrated into larger andlarger units and the geographical, as well as the social andtechnical, division of labour ha s grown, so the functioning ofthe economic apparatus has required a very rapid developmentof the network of state services: transport, telecommunications,the collection and centralisation of information, the training(schooling) and maintenance (health care) of the labour force,taxation, police, to name the most obvious. In '' other worr,ls,work linked to the administration and reproct'uction of' socialrelations has grown more rapidly than work directly linked tomaterial production, and has become a precondition of itsheightened efficacy. I The mechanisms of the productive apparatus require a substantial sub-structure of administration andpublic service (the state apparatus) and, through its mediation,tend to transform society into a system of externalised relations ..in which individuals are not the acting subjects but the a c t e 9 ; ~ i tupon objects. Society is thus corroded to the benefit of the * ~ l t las are. the range of pO.lit!cal oPti.ons, freedoms and powers to ~benefll of technocratIC Imperatives. > '1 'r"Thus the reduction of the sphere of necessity cannot merelyinvolve reducing the amount of work required for material production of the necess ities of life, It al so necessitates a reductionin all the external di seconomies and state-regulated activities

I. Economists describl: the phenomenon as 'Iertia risa tion '.


57/80


58/80


59/80


60/80


61/80


62/80


63/80


64/80


65/80


66/80


67/80


68/80


69/80


70/80


71/80


72/80


73/80


74/80


75/80


76/80


77/80


78/80


79/80

152 / Farewell to the Working Classor insecticide factories.The prime minister concluded by saying that, in order to en-courage the exercise of imagination and the greater exchange ofideas, no television programmes would be broadcast on Fridaysand Saturdays.


80/80

Andre GorzEcology as PoliticsEcology as Politics is an examination of the relationship betweenecological ba lance and our economic and political structures.An earlier cri tique of social development than Farewell to (he Work-ing Class, Gorz argues for the need for fighters for democrati csocialism and an ecological sociely to address their mutual values andaims.'Socialism is no better than capitalism if it makes use of the sametools. The total domination of nature inevitably entails a dominationof people by the techniques of domination.'

o 86104 904 7 paperback

\farewell to the working class

Documents