[The following article is reprinted from the March 17 issue of the Belgian weekly La Gauche. The translation is by Intercontinental Press.]
The extremely militant strikes of the salaried employees at the Liège steelworks and of the white-collar workers in the petroleum industry illustrate a thesis that we have upheld for many years: The evolution of capitalism leads to a growing social homogeneity of all those compelled to sell their labor power.
The various currents in bourgeois sociology and the labor movement (both reformist and ultraleft who have obstinately denied this fact are now confronted by a reality that increasingly contradicts their schemas. This was shown during May 1968 in France and also during the Italian "creeping May." Real life has just provided us with another confirmation, on a more modest scale, in this country.
What Is the Proletariat?
The Marxist theory of social classes does not start from simplistic, a priori criteria. In the final analysis, each social class is defined by the place it occupies in production. But this is true only in the final analysis. And the objective position of a social class does not automatically mean that it is conscious of that position or its immediate class interests, not to mention its historical interests.
The idea that Marx and Lenin reserved the term proletariat only for manual laborers is an absolutely false one. Numerous quotations contradict this notion quite clearly. For Marx and Lenin, the proletariat included all those who are forced to sell their labor power because they do not own capital and have no direct access to the instruments of production or to means of sustenance.
In fact, Marx wrote: "Every wageworker is not necessarily a produc- June 5, 1972
tive worker; every producer is not necessarily a wage-worker." The concept of the proletariat-that is, the class of wage-workers - is therefore by definition broader than that of manual laborers.
Furthermore, Marx also asserted that the concept of productive worker is broader than that of manual worker. Progressively, as heavy industry develops, the division of labor develops within it, as does the application of science and technology to production. The special attribute of capital is that it appropriates to itself the fruits of this division of labor and technology.
This is why, as Marx said, the collective labor-capacity of the entire factory -which includes all those who are indispensable to the productive process - must be taken into consideration. He explicitly included technicians and engineers in this category. In our epoch it would be necessary to add a good number of those working in research laboratories, especially in the chemical and electrical industries. Without their labor, production would cease just as surely as it would without manual laborers.
Consciousness in White-Collar and Blue-Collar Workers
This development has been under way for a long time. But also for a long time, consciousness has lagged behind reality.
The consciousness of the white-collar workers is not solely a function of their general position in the productive process, but also of the material privileges they enjoy in comparison to other workers: much higher salaries (which often allow for a small accumulation of capital, not enough to live on but enough to round out their retirement pensions); much more stable positions (firings are much less frequent and advance notice is much longer); higher level of consumption; greater possibility of getting into the real capitalist hierarchy; etc.
And it must be added that many white-collar occupations are tied to the exploitation of the workers (time study, foremen, supervisors) or to the realization of surplus value (sales, credit, and financial services) rather than to production proper.
The third technological revolution has changed this situation from top to bottom.
Above all, the proportion of whitecollar workers engaged in activities indispensable to production has risen considerably. In semiautomatic and automatic processes, the difference between white-collar workers and bluecollar workers tends to disappear. Is a worker who operates (or supervises) an automatic assembly line blue-collar or white-collar? One can haggle forever without answering this question. The same comment could be made, for example, about electrical workers.
It is symbolic of the erosion of the barrier between white- and blue-collar workers that wider and wider layers of blue-collar workers are asking for a monthly wage-rate and for advance notice before layoffs identical to what white-collar workers get. The success achieved in this quest, while still modest, clearly indicates the trend.
What Is Changing
In the past, a blue-collar worker would go to school until age twelve, a white-collar worker until eighteen. Today, a blue-collar worker will go to school until age sixteen or seventeen, and a white-collar worker will not always go to college. In this regard also, the difference disappears.
The gap between the wages of blueand white-collar workers, while it remains real, has had a tendency to narrow. There are some skilled workers getting higher wages than salaried employees. The range of remuneration depends more on the branch of industry involved than on the manual or intellectual nature of the job.
A white-collar worker in the garment industry suffers from the gen-
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eral low wages of this sector. A worker in the steel or oil industry profits from the relatively high wages characteristic of these sectors.
During the second quarter of 1970, according to statistics released by the ONSS (National Organization of Social Sciences), 15.8% of manual laexceeding 15,000
borers got wages francs per month (about US$335); 42.3% of the white-collar workers made less than that.
Among women, who suffer from a scandalous discrimination in payscales, the difference is even clearer: 11.6% of blue-collar workers got more than 10,000 francs per month (about US$225); 53.7% of the white-collar workers made less.
The difference in level of consumption and life-style that used to separate the blue- and white-collar worker is likewise narrowing. Today, the worker in the peaked blue cap is just as rare as the salaried employee in the bowler hat. On Sunday at the soccer stadium, or on Saturday night when the movies let out in the workers'
quarter, no one, no matter how clever, can tell the difference between workers and white-collar employees. Clothes no longer make the man.
As to opportunities for individual advancement— this great fifty-year-old white-collar dream -they have also practically disappeared. Factory managerships are no longer as accessible as university diplomas. For a fortyforty-five-year-old white-collar worker, being fired can be just as tragic as for a blue-collar worker; it has become almost impossible to find a new job at the same pay.
Results of the Change
All these changes— as well as the erosion of savings in the wake of successive devaluations and inflation -have considerably reduced the divergence between blue- and white-collar consciousness. Unionization of white-collar workers is increasing. In some countries, like Belgium and Great Britain, the white-collar workers are among the most militant layers of the proletariat. They are now found on the left, and no longer on the right, in the trade-union movement.
We have seen this occur in the pastfor example, the employees' union in Brussels at the end of the second world war. But at that time it was a relatively small minority reflecting the higher educational and cultural level of the white-collar vanguard.
Today, we are dealing with a much larger mass, which is organized and can be drawn into trade-union struggles.
It would be premature to say that all differences between white- and bluecollar workers have disappeared. Furthermore, differences among various layers of blue-collar workers remain substantial. It would be still more fallacious to suppose that all white-collar workers have acquired a trade-union consciousness, let alone political class consciousness. But it is the direction of development that is important.
It is this development that we wanted to point out and discuss.