Lecture 13 Sociology 621 October 19, 2009 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 what game should be paid (socialism vs. capitalism) and reformist class struggles in which struggle is over the rules of a given game, capitalism. 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 modifications. 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? The puzzle is actually even stronger: in no mature capitalist country has the working class ever been 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 Adam Przeworski’s theory of 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 formationLecture 13. Dilemmas of Working Class Struggles 2 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”): misleadership and false consciousness. 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. Alternatively, the failure is attributed to the faulty 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 13. Dilemmas of Working Class Struggles 3 2. Dynamic logic: Opportunism is a self-limiting phenomenon: it erodes the conditions for its own rationality, and thus there is a tendency for a cycle to exist between opportunism and militancy. 3. Historical logic: Because a kind of historical learning process occurs across cycles, each cycle occurs at a higher level of potential mobilization: the historical trajectory thus has a tendency to