The Use and Abuse of Class Reductionism for the Left

Class, Race and Corporate Power, 2020

An overview of three recent books examining the politics of class and race provide lessons about how to avoid a "class reductionist" politics that interferes with building a multiracial and inclusionary working class movement.

Essays by Alain Badiou, Jacques Rancière, Slavoj Zizek, Bruno Bosteels, Vivek Chibber, Barbara Foley, Nancy Fraser, Adolph Reed Jr, Cedric Johnson, Walter Benn Michaels, David Harvey, Jodi Dean and Marc James Léger

The Sociological Review, 2015

The problem that the concept of ‘class’ describes is inequality. The transition from industrial to financial capitalism (neoliberalism) in Europe has effected ‘deepening inequalities of income, health and life chances within and between countries, on a scale not seen since before the second world War’ (Hall et al., 2014: 9). In this context, class is an essential point of orientation for sociology if it is to grasp the problem of inequality today. Tracing a route through Pierre Bourdieu's relational understanding of class, Beverley Skeggs' understanding of class as struggles (over value), and Wendy Brown's argument that neoliberalism is characterized by the culturalization of political struggles, this article animates forms of class-analysis, with which we might better apprehend the forms of class exploitation that distinguish post-industrial societies. Taking a cue from Jacques Rancière, the central argument is that the sociology of class should be grounded not in the a...

The problem that the concept of ‘class’ describes is inequality. The transition from industrial to financial capitalism (neoliberalism) in Europe has effected ‘deepening inequalities of income, health and life chances within and between countries, on a scale not seen since before the second world War’ (Hall et al., 2014: 9). In this context, class is an essential point of orientation for sociology if it is to grasp the problem of inequality today. Tracing a route through Pierre Bourdieu’s relational understanding of class, Beverley Skeggs’ understanding of class as struggles (over value), and Wendy Brown’s argument that neoliberalism is characterized by the culturalization of political struggles, this article animates forms of class-analysis, with whichwe might better apprehend the forms of class exploitation that distinguish postindustrial societies. Taking a cue from Jacques Ranciere, the central argument is that the sociology of class should be grounded not in the assumption and valorization of class identities but in an understanding of class as struggles against classification. In this way, sociology can contribute to the development of alternative social and political imaginaries to the biopolitics of disposability symptomatic of neoliberal governmentality.

In "From Redistribution to Recognition?" Nancy Fraser formulates a theory aiming at defending only those versions of identity politics that can be coherently combined with socialist politics. Many commentators have criticized the analytical distinction between economic and cultural injustice underpinning this theory. I argue, however, that it is Fraser's inability to uphold this distinction that makes her argument problematic, and that a clearer analytical distinction between the categories class and identity makes possible both a more theoretically satisfying critique of the "postsocialist" condition and the formulation of a radical politics that addresses economic as well as cultural injustices.

No abstract available. This paper was published in the annual journal, Socialist Register, 2015. Issue title: Transfrming Classes

A critique of identity politics and race reductionism, published in Sublation.

2017

The question of class rests at the center of a left-Marxist project. Nonetheless, ›class‹ has not really played much of a role in recent stratecig debates and political prax- ises. The reasons are manyfold: since the 1970s, social democracy has abandoned the question of class in favor of models that assume a diversity of social strata; dis- tancing themselves from an understanding of class reduced to male industrial labor, new social movements have turned to questions of gender relations, the post-co- lonial legacy and ecology; and the ›end of socialism‹ has also done its part. At the same time, social antagonisms have inten- sified in Western industrial countries as a consequence of a financialised capitalism in crisis and declining profit rates. The lat- ter are being ›compensated‹ for by means of flexibilization, downward pressure on wages, and the destruction of public infra- structure, carried out on the backs of the majority of the population. Most recently, the successes on the right – from BREXIT through the Front National and AfD up to the election of Donald Trump in the US – have, in a strange way, put the question of class back on the agenda: legitimate anger on the part of those who feel they are being held back by this system and aren’t being represented has in many places been expressed by a rightward turn. How could critique of the current state of democracy and social inequality be articulated differently? Could left-wing politics by making »class experiences« once again their subject demarcate a clearer difference from ruling elites? Could this help forming a »connecting antagonism« (Candeias) from different perspectives? The answer cannot lie in going ›back‹ to old conceptions of »class struggle«! Collective effort is required to map out a »new class politics« that does not posit identity politics and the social question as antagonistic to each other, but rather overthrows all the relations under which so many suffer. Herein lies a chance to both sharpen emancipatory struggles in terms of class politics and draw the line against their selective integration within neoliberalism, as well as to read feminism, ecology, and anti-racism as integral aspects of »ques- tions of class«, thus (finally) placing them at the center of a left project. How can various parts of the class be connected? How can we read precarious labor in traditionally female vocations as a question of both gender relations and class relations? And how can racism be recognized as a form through which one part of the class is pitted against others? Creating solidarity is complicated, but more urgent than ever! The LuXemburg Magazine has worked on some of these questions. The present brochure assembles a selection of texts on the topic. with: Bernd Riexinger, Anne Steckner, Barbara Fried, Alex Demirović, Volker Woltersdorf, Markus Wissen, Bernd Röttger

2019

In the wake of US debt crisis a wave of protest swept through the advanced Capitalist countries and around the world bringing down governments in Tunisia, Egypt and challenging neoliberal centrist parties throughout the developed world. This ‘newest’ wave of social protests is distinct in its predominantly young social base, its leaderless organization structure and its media savvy tactics. Guided by the highly anti-capitalistic narrative these protests have developed, leading scholars in the field of social movements have begun to re-analyse the impact of economic and cultural structures and the role of class on the development of this newest wave of social movements. The present analysis builds on this research trend first theoretically by adding the insights of Marxist scholars on the nature of capitalism and the specifics of both normative, cultural and structural sources of grief and frames of action within neoliberal labour relations to an analysis of relationally based class location. The analysis focuses on the changing base for social movements within the west. Identifying a particular ‘latent’ class of young educated precariat the analysis uses models developed within the social movement literature to conduct an historical analysis to reveal the transformational process of class formation within these movements as they react to changing political and cultural events. This study then traces the development of this class consciousness through to the later more active forms of class consciousness seen in the Sanders and Corbyn campaigns. Rather than fading from view, this class-in-the-making is seen to evolve a more focused political consciousness during this period. Finally, a comparative analysis in done looking at the movement and party-politics of this precariat class in the wake of the crises brought on by the election of Donald Trump and the EU referendum.