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Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy

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Class a simple view

Keith Graham

Department of Philosophy , University of Bristol , 9 Woodland Rd., Bristol, BS8 1TB,

England
Published online: 29 Aug 2008.

To cite this article: Keith Graham (1989) Class a simple view, Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy, 32:4,
419-436, DOI: 10.1080/00201748908602203
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Inquiry, 32, 419-36

Class - A Simple View

Keith Graham -

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University of Bristol

The aim is to defend the starting-point of Marx's theory of class, which is located in
a definition of the working class in the Communist Manifesto. It is a definition
solely in terms of separation from productive resources and a need to sell one's
labour power, and it is closely connected with Marx's thesis that the population in
capitalism has a tendency to polarize. That thesis conflicts with the widely-held
belief in the growth of a large middle class, unaccounted for by Marx. Moreover,
recent critics such as Elster, Roemer, and Cohen have argued that this definition
fails even in its own terms. The definition is refurbished so as to withstand these
objections. But is there any point in using it? Does it serve to pick out the
exploited producers as Marx intended? It does, once due attention is given to the
idea of the collective worker, which is central in the volume of Capital which Marx
himself published. That idea makes plain that it is an irreducibly corporate entity
which is productive and subject to exploitation. The structural conditions for
membership of that entity remove Marx's view from any simple identification of
working-class membership with manual or lowly labour.

I
The aim of this paper is not to defend the whole of Marx's theory of class
(whatever that is) but rather its starting-point, against a set of arguments
which purport to show that it is thoroughly misconceived. The startingpoint in question involves a conception of class resting on a definition in
terms of one's relation to the means of production, and an associated thesis
about the polarized class composition of contemporary society.
The Communist Manifesto opens with the declaration that the history of
all hitherto existing society has been the history of class struggles. It
proceeds with a characterization of the struggle in the capitalist era, between
the proletariat, the workers, and the bourgeoisie, the owners of the means
of social production and employers of wage labour. Their relation is seen
as the latest, and last, of a series of oppressive and exploitative relations
between classes. Many of the features of this particular relation are special
and specially complex, and one of the central tasks of the magnum opus,
Capital will be to lay bare their nature.
The antagonistic relation between bourgeoisie and proletariat is destined
to become more acute, and this is summarized in what one might call the
polarization thesis: 'Society as a whole is more and more splitting up into

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420 Keith Graham

two great hostile camps, into two great classes directly facing each other:
bourgeoisie and proletariat' (Marx and Engels [1848, p. 68]). But the
antagonism is to be resolved. As more people become separated from the
means of production the proletariat becomes the majority class; as capitalist
industry throws workers together they learn the lesson of solidarity; and
the resultant growth in political consciousness leads to a political movement
to overthrow the existing order of society. Ownership of the means of life
by a class is replaced by ownership of resources by the whole of society.
Much of this scenario has never taken place. One of the commonest
forms of explanation for this - even among those who wish to give a
sympathetic interpretation of Marx's theories - is that the proletariat as
originally specified has not grown to be the majority class, there has not
been the kind of polarization envisaged. In particular Marx's polar theory
allows no place for the middle class which has grown so large in the
twentieth century. That conventionally accepted explanation carries its own
difficulties, which are not the focus of this paper.
It is all but impossible to make any uncontentious claims about Marx,
and a shorter way with the starting-point would be to contend that it
inadequately represents his considered position. Thus, it might be pointed
out that Marx refers to 'the three [sic] great classes of modern society' in
the famous last chapter of Capital vol. iii, a chapter on 'Classes' which he
never finished (indeed, hardly began) (Marx [1894, p. 1025]). Equally, it
may be said that whereas in Marx's abstract writings the polarized startingpoint is posited, in his concrete writings on politics and history we are
allowed a much richer and more fragmented picture (Wright [1985, p. 7]).
But these points have limited force. For one thing, as Wright correctly
notes, the claimed tendency to polarization is also part of the argument in
Capital vol. iii (ibid., p. 8). For another, the three classes in question are
wage-labourers, capitalists, and landowners, and it is precisely the latter,
third element which tends to disappear into the polarization, rather than
being a new, emerging third element as sponsors of the new middle class
claim on its behalf.1 Finally, we should note that even in his political
writings Marx sometimes reasserts the polarization thesis in the midst of
recognizing the diversity of messy empirical reality, as in The Class Struggles
in France, where he describes the insurrection of 22 June 'in which the first
great battle was fought between the two great classes which divide modern
society' (Marx [1850, p. 58]).
Przeworski neatly summarizes some of the difficulties in retaining Marx's
starting-point. He argues that for Marx in 1848 all the relevant considerations pertaining to the proletariat fall together: viz. lack of access
to the means of production, engagement in manual labour, productive
employment, and the experiencing of poverty and degradation. In those
circumstances, Marx's theorized conception in terms of separation from

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Class - A Simple View All

the means of production coincides with our intuitive conception. But the
intervening years between his day and ours involve a break-up of all these
different factors. In consequence, separation from the means of production
does not necessarily coincide with being subj'ected to manual labour. It may
lead to being placed in many different groups whose status is theoretically
ambiguous (Przeworski [1985, pp. 56-62]).
Clearly the issue here is not merely of academic interest. Whether you
think society is divided into classes, and if so how many and what relations
they stand in to each other - the answers to these questions will have
profound implications for the political allegiances which you can hold it
reasonable to recommend forming or to engage in yourself. But there is a
more specific political implication for Marxism than this. We saw that it
was part of Marx's story that the proletariat was due to become the majority
class in society. If you believe, as Marx also did, that this class is the only
practical agency which can be expected to carry out and consolidate a
socialist revolution, then you have very strong grounds for working for and
welcoming the introduction of universal suffrage and majority rule. That is
precisely what Marx recommended.2 But now contrariwise: if the proletariat
begins to shrink, a system of majority rule presents a problem. To the
extent that you retain commitment to and advocate class-based political
action, you run the risk of being in a permanent minority and therefore
being condemned always to lose in such a system.
There is, in other words, an implication here for specifically democratic
political values. If it is conceded that the proletariat is a minority and also
that it is the only appropriate agency for making a certain kind of revolution,
then this would force abandonment of the commitment to majority rule if
there is to be any hope of success along the line of political action based
on collective self-interest. That abandonment, indeed, would be compatible
with the historically most influential version of Marxism - the Leninized
version. But I have argued elsewhere that the respective attachments to
democratic values of Marx and Lenin are quite different, and that Marx
has a deep commitment to democratic values which is entirely absent from
Lenin.3 It is of some consequence, therefore, if it turns out that Marx's
commitment to democratic procedures rests on a conception of class which
itself stands under threat of abandonment.

II
Implicit in Marx's writings there is a conception of the working class; a
series of substantive theses about it; and also a set of prognoses about its
future. Among the substantive theses is the claim that the working class is
alone responsible for the production of surplus value. Among the prognoses

422 Keith Graham

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are the claims that working-class consciousness will grow and that political
action based upon that consciousness will occur. Roughly, what I want to
argue is that even if the prognoses have been mistaken, this does not
threaten the conception of the working class itself or its importance. On
the other hand, the falsity of the substantive theses would have that effect,
but it is much less obvious that their falsity has been established.
There is one explicit definition of the working class to be found in Marx's
writings (though it was put there by Engels). It occurs in a footnote in the
Communist Manifesto:
By proletariat [is meant] the class of modern wage labourers who, having no means
of production of their own, are reduced
to selling their labour power in order to
live. (Marx and Engels [1848, p. 67])4
This definition of the proletariat is buried deep, and to insist on its importance is to incur something of the same social odium as a grave-robber.
Both sympathetic and unsympathetic critics engage in lengthy discussion
of the question how to construe Marx's idea of the working class, and offer
their own amended definitions, without any explicit reference to it.5 My
intention, nevertheless, is to rush in where other theorists resolutely refuse
to tread, and to defend Marx's starting-point. This obviously implies acceptance of a very wide definition of the working class, which will embrace
many individuals normally regarded as middle class.
There is, moreover, one form of objection to Marx's view which should
be challenged at the outset: what one might call the appeal to pre-existing
belief or linguistic habit. This is the sort of objection which implicitly takes
the form 'The wide definition yields the consequence that A"s are members
of the working class. But we don't ordinarily believe (or say) that A"s are
members of the working class. Therefore the wide definition is false'. That
form of argument relies on the suppressed premise that what we ordinarily
believe or say is true, adequate or otherwise satisfactory. It seems illadvised to rest a philosophical argument on such a contentious assumption,
even if there are recent historical precedents in the subject for doing so (cf.
Graham [1977, ch. 2]).
Explicit or implicit reliance on some assumption like this does occur.
Thus, Wright criticized his own earlier attempt to construct a theory of
class because it yielded results 'which did not correspond to an intuitive
idea of the working class': a range of technical and professional jobs were
left in that category whereas they 'are usually viewed as "middle class"'
(Wright [1985, p. 45]). Against these comments may be set Marx's affirmations of the need to challenge current social perceptions; the lament of
the Communist Manifesto that the bourgeoisie 'has converted the physician,
the lawyer, the priest, the poet, the man of science, into its paid wage
labourers' (Marx and Engels [1848, p. 70]); the description of supervisors

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Class - A Simple View 423

as 'a special kind of wage-labourer' (Marx [1867, p. 450]); the description
of teachers and writers as productive workers (Marx [1867, p. 644] [1933,
p. 1044]). Marx's theories are theories for revolutionary change, which
depend crucially on changing people's ordinary, non-revolutionary perceptions of the nature of the society they live in. It is therefore a mark in
favour of these theories, rather than against them, if their acceptance leads
us to believe and say different things from what we believe and say at the
moment.
In any case, there are more pressing objections to the wide definition of
the working class. There are arguments, from a variety of directions, which
purport to show that it is ill-conceived even in its own terms. I mention
four such arguments.
Elster argues that we cannot define class in property terms, i.e. in terms
of degrees of ownership and non-ownership of labour power and means of
production, on the grounds that infinite degrees are possible and this would
lead to an infinite fragmentation of classes; and he calls Marx in aid of his
point (Elster [1986, p. 143]).
Cohen has argued on a number of occasions that being forced to sell
one's labour power is not a description which successfully picks out anyone,
not even people normally taken to be members of the proletariat. Such
people are in an objective position no different from, for example, many
immigrants who arrive penniless but propel themselves up the class hierarchy by a mixture of savings made when they were employed plus borrowings, as a result of which they are able to become small shopkeepers
(Cohen [1986, pp. 240-1]). It is not true of the immigrants that they are
forced to sell their labour power, so it is not true of others either. Cohen
concedes that such people are collectively unfree, in the sense that not all
.of them could escape the condition of selling their labour power. Some are
able to do so only on condition that others do not; if all the exits were
crowded then not everyone could get through them. But not all the exits
are crowded, so it is true of people taken severally that they could leave
their present condition (ibid., pp. 243-4).
Przeworski entertains a similar thought: proletarians do not have to sell
their labour power, rather they choose to. They have a set of goals and
resources and they make choices in the light of these. That is what supports
his preferred view that classes are not a given, but rather 'historically
contingent products of reciprocal actions' (Przeworski [1985, p. 96]). Certain choices are made, such as to sell one's labour power, but these are the
choices of individuals who are not antecedently describable as workers.
That description becomes apposite only in the light of the choices they first
make. In that case, membership of the working class cannot be defined in
terms of being forced into a certain relation (Przeworski [1985, pp. 9597]).

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Roemer objects to the idea that workers are coerced on the grounds that,
on Marx's premises, workers sell their labour power at its value. 'Coercive
exchange would, on the contrary, involve one side being forced to exchange
its service for less than its value' (Roemer [1982, p. 82]), and this leads him
to reject the idea that the labour process is at the centre of the Marxian
analysis of exploitation and class (ibid., p. 93).
These arguments, I suggest, force clarification of the original definition,
rather than abandonment of it. Let us reformulate it with more nuances,
but in a way which I hope retains the central drift:
By proletariat is meant the modern class of wage- or salary-earning people
whose lack of ownership of sufficiently significant means of production of
their own results in their being forced, for a significant period of their lives,
to offer their labour power for sale, during a significant proportion of that
period, if they are to live at an average, reasonable standard of living in the
prevailing historical circumstances without engaging in specifiably outlandish
or dangerous alternative activities, as well as people who are, in specifiable
ways, directly dependent for their own livelihood on members of the proletariat as defined.
This refurbished definition clarifies a number of points. It makes plainer
that reference to non-ownership of means of production in the original
definition is linked to reference to sale of labour power: the first is causally
responsible for the second. Hence Marx's theory does not fall foul of
Roemer's admonition that '[i]t is a mistake to elevate the struggle between
worker and capitalist in the process of production to a more privileged
position . . . than the differential ownership of productive assets' (Roemer
[1982, p. 93]). On the contrary, even conceding Roemer's general demonstration that exploitation can occur in the complete absence of a labour
market, Marx's chief preoccupation happens to be with a system of society
where there is such a market and where it results precisely from differential
ownership of productive assets.
Nor does the fact that there can be infinite degrees of ownership result
in an infinite number of class fragmentations, as Elster claims. Rather,
there is a non-arbitrary quantitative cut-off point. Without specifying a
figure, we can say that there is a point at which someone owns the means
of production in such large measure that it is no longer necessary for them
to enter into a wage-relation if they do not choose to. At that point
they cease to be members of the working class. Because a quantitative
consideration is built into the definition there will necessarily be borderline
cases, but this is consistent with the great bulk of cases falling on one side
or the other.
It also becomes clear that the claim about being forced to sell one's
labour power is an elliptical one. It is not a matter of being forced in an

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Class - A Simple View 425

absolute sense, but being forced if one has certain ends that are to be
achieved in a certain way. Hence it is compatible with being a worker in
this sense that one should be described as choosing to work, as Przeworski
suggests. You don't have to offer your labour power for sale: you could
starve, or rifle through garbage cans, or rob banks, or live off social security,
depending on the precise range of alternatives in your surrounding social
circumstances. But if you want to live a reasonably normal life then you
must choose to sell your energies in the absence of large enough reserves
to enable you to enjoy that condition without doing so.
It might be held that Cohen's argument shows that no one is forced even
in this elliptical sense. This may depend partly on how we interpret the
'significant period of time' of the refurbished definition. His counterexamples may show only that someone can on occasion change their
class membership, rather than that something ceases to be true of them
while they are still a member of a given class (cf. Reiman [1987]). As we
noted, he recognizes that an important element in the escape from the
proletarian condition may be 'savings . . . accumulated, perhaps painfully,
while still in the proletarian condition . . .' (Cohen [1986, p. 241]). But
that suggests that there is a significant period when the escapees have to
sell their labour power; only it may eventually come to an end.
Cohen might perhaps reply that such a period would not be sufficiently
significant, or else that the escapees are proletarians on the eve of their
ascent, at which point they are not forced to sell their labour power (cf.
ibid., p. 242, n. 6). But that may leave him prey to what is in a sense the
opposite difficulty. There is a large failure-rate among new small businesses.
This makes it reasonable to say that a large proportion of the people Cohen
has in mind could temporarily escape the condition of having to sell their
labour power, but only for a relatively short time, because they would fail
in business and be ejected back into that condition. In that case it might
still be true that for a significant period of their lives they had to sell their
labour power: but that period would be discontinuous, and would be
composed of time both before and after temporary escape. This does not
destroy the validity of Cohen's argument, but it does raise a serious doubt
about it. Certainly it will remain true that some can escape; what is no
longer so obvious is that 'for most proletarians there exists a means of
escape' (ibid., p. 243) if we are to understand by that a permanent or longterm means of escape.
Notice that this argument does not rely on questioning the acceptability
of the alternative, petty bourgeois condition, a line of objection which
Cohen considers (ibid., pp. 256-9). It relies rather on questioning its longterm availability. But the acceptability question can be raised too, and it
undermines not the validity but the importance of Cohen's argument.
Suppose, as seems plausible, that even if the position of a small shopkeeper

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426 Keith Graham

is formally different from that of someone selling their labour power, the
substantial effect this has on their life pattern is much the same. For
example, they must spend long hours engaged in activity whose nature and
circumstances are not within their own control but are in fact dictated by
agencies which own and control much greater resources. Then all that will
be true is that some can escape being proletarians by becoming formally
petty bourgeois but still remaining in a proletarian-like condition.
Cohen tries to meet this point with two rejoinders: first, that the pettybourgeois, being 'their own boss', have an autonomy that ought not to be
disparaged, and second that the argument can in any case be couched in
terms of ascent into the 'higher grade, not-so-petty, bourgeois positions,
into which workers also from time to time rise' (ibid., p. 256, n. 34). But
the questioning of the acceptability of petty-bourgeois conditions does not
constitute a challenge to the value of autonomy: rather, it expresses doubts
about whether autonomy really is greater in those conditions, whether
formally different relations do not simply disguise materially similar
relations. Marx makes relevant observations on just that social group in
The Class Struggles in France. No one had fought with more fanaticism for
the salvation of property than the Parisian petty bourgeoisie. 'But the
houses in which they lived were not their property; the shops which they
kept were not their property; the goods in which they dealt were not their
property' (Marx [1850, p. 65]). On the contrary, their autonomy was
impaired by their standing in relations of subservience, to the house-owner,
the baker, the capitalist, the manufacturer, the wholesale dealer. Similarly,
the exploitation of peasants may differ in form from that of the industrial proletariat, but the exploiter is still the same, viz. capital (ibid.,
p. 117). As for Cohen's second rejoinder, that simply takes us back to the
earlier objection, which challenges the inference that a means of escape
has been discerned which is available, even in sensu diviso, to most
proletarians.
It is not yet apparent why we should attach significance to Cohen's own
claim, that though workers are individually free in the relevant respect they
are not collectively free. He suggests that collective unfreedom as such need
not be of any particular concern to us, but that the collective unfreedom
specifically to refrain from selling one's labour power should be, because
this unfreedom forces workers to subordinate themselves to others (Cohen
[1986, p. 251]). But the whole force of his main argument is that, taken
individually, workers are not forced to do this. The compulsion on them,
on his account, is hypothetical in a quite different sense from that contained
in the refurbished definition: each individual would be so compelled if all
the available exits were crammed with aspiring small shopkeepers. But
they are not, so the individuals are not under that compulsion: there is
something else they could do. Accordingly, it is not clear to me why Cohen

Class - A Simple View 427

thinks that collective unfreedom matters even here. As I shall try to show
subsequently, significance should be attached to what is collectively true of
workers, but it concerns a different matter and indeed a different sense of
collectivity from Cohen's.

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Ill
Consider now an obvious objection. Even if we can sustain my refurbished
definition of the proletariat, there is no point in doing so. A concept must
do some work, it must play some role in increasing our understanding of
some phenomenon or other. But the concept of the proletariat defined
here does not. It no longer serves to pick out the homogeneous group of
wretched, impoverished, exploited beings which Marx had in mind. It will
include many who live in comfortable conditions and are themselves the
beneficiaries of the productive efforts of others, and it will certainly therefore be of no use in any attempt to reinstate the polarization thesis.
We should begin by noticing, as many commentators fail to, exactly how
impoverishment is a relative notion for Marx. He offers the analogy of a
house, which shrinks if a palace springs up beside it: in the same way,
the enjoyments of a worker may rise, but their social satisfaction, their
satisfaction relative to what a capitalist can enjoy, may fall if there is a
rapid growth in productive capital (Marx [1849, pp. 93-94]). He reinforces
this in Capital, insisting that 'in proportion as capital accumulates, the
situation of the worker, be his payment high or low, must grow worse'
(Marx [1867, p. 799], italics added). Later, he insists that the nature of the
capital/wage relation ensures that the wage system is 'a system of slavery,
increasing in severity commensurately with the development of the social
productive forces of labour, irrespective of whether the worker is then better
or worse paid' (Marx [1875, p. 352], italics added). This suggests that Marx
does not believe that workers must remain at the level of wretchedness
which he witnessed in nineteenth-century Britain, or that they cannot
increase their material well-being as compared with some earlier time. It
further suggests that his reasons for collecting workers under the concept
of a class are more closely connected with their entrapment in a set of social
relations in the course of wealth production.
The distinction between productive and unproductive labour has been a
subject of lengthy debate amongst commentators, and I touch on it here
only to the extent necessary for making sense of Marx's theory of class.
His comments on the subject are anything but clear-cut, occurring mainly
in works which he did not himself see through the press (principally
Theories of Surplus Value and Capital vols. i and ii). Two cases apposite
to the present discussion are those of commercial distribution and super-

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428 Keith Graham

vision. Are workers in these areas productive or not? On the one hand,
we are told that the mere process of commercial exchange is not productive
of any value (Marx [1885, pp. 207-8]), that an employee in this sphere 'is
himself part of the faux frais of production' (ibid., p. 209); on the other
that some costs of circulation - those placed under the heading of storage
costs rather than pure circulation costs - 'do enter into the value of
commodities to a certain extent . . .' (ibid., p. 216), and elsewhere there
is an implication that 'commercial middlemen' belong to 'the productive
class' (Marx [1905-10: i. 218-19]). In the case of supervision, Marx makes
a distinction between supervision which is necessary in any form of cooperative labour and that which arises from the antagonism between worker
and proprietor (Marx [1894, p. 507]; cf. Marx [1867, pp. 448-50]), and he
suggests that the second kind belongs, once more, to the 'incidental
expenses of production' (Marx [1905-10: iii. 505]).
There are, moreover, independent difficulties in identifying those individuals who produce surplus value. For example, Roemer defines as
exploited someone who cannot buy with their revenue goods with as much
value as the value of the labour they contributed in their productive
activities (cf. Roemer [1982, p. 96]). Although that is a clear definition it
will not enable us to identify who, in concrete circumstances, is exploited.
Elster correctly observes that it would be a horrendously complex business
to draw the line between someone who is in this sense exploited and
someone who is not (Elster [1986, pp. 143-4]). Here is one reason why.
Even in the simplest case, in order to know how much value was added to
a commodity by a given labourer we should need to separate that labourer's
contribution from two other factors: the quantity of value transferred to
the commodity from the means of production which the present labourer
uses, and the value of the commodity before that labourer began to work
on it (Marx [1867, pp. 293-4]). The calculation of the commodity's value
at that earlier stage would depend on the same considerations, and so on
right back to the stage when the raw materials making up the commodity
were mined from the earth. Even at that point the same recursive problem
would arise: calculation of how much value was added to the raw material
specifically by the labourer would depend on how much value was transferred to it from the instruments used to mine it, and so on. All this, quite
apart from the fact that the actual price of the commodity at any stage
would be no more than a guide to its value, given Marx's assumption that
price and value diverge (ibid., p. 196).
Now it is tempting to cut short all these difficulties, about who is
productive and whether they produce a surplus over what they receive in
payment, by pointing out that in several places Marx distinguishes between
those workers who are productive and those who are not; that, in other
words, for him it is possible to be a worker without being productive. He

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Class - A Simple View 429

says, for example that 'the extraordinary increase in the productivity of
large-scale industry . . . permits a larger and larger part of the working
class to be employed unproductively' (ibid., p. 574; italics added. Cf. Marx
[1905-10: iii. 363]). In that case, it might be thought, we can preserve the
identification of the working class in terms of having to sell labour power
without settling these more intractable issues about productive labour.
But this point can really be no more than a temporary holding operation,
and to insist on it is to betray a failure to grasp the difficulty which leads
to the debate about productive labour in the first place. If non-productive
workers are paid out of the revenue provided by productive ones, then
there seem to be reasons entirely internal to Marx's theory of exploitation
for putting these two different groups of workers into two different
categories. No doubt we could focus on what they have in common, their
wage-labouring status, but that may now look less important than what
separates them, for their interests will not just be different but in fact
opposed.
The problems raised in this section cannot be resolved simply by assembling quotations from Marx (as opposed to relating those quotations to his
wider purposes). However, in the remainder of my discussion I want to
suggest a different perspective on the problem of productiveness, which
grows out of comments attributable to Marx on the basis of what he did
see through the press (notably Capital, vol. i) and which would give further
support for the refurbished definition and the associated polarization thesis.

IV
Some of the difficulties in the ideas of productiveness and exploitation
discussed in section HI arise from an expository device employed by Marx
in Capital vol. i and reflected elsewhere. He begins from the idea of
individual human beings working on material so as to produce an object
which they can then exchange for some other object. Concentration on
that basic activity of a capitalist economy may lead to an equation of
productiveness with the process of manual transformation of natural matter.
Some commentators have arrived at a view very close to that, intending
explicitly to exclude from the realm of productive activity the production,
for example, of non-material goods (e.g. Mandel [1978, p. 43]).
But Marx begins from this basic case precisely in order to show that its
simplicity is deceptive: a network of complicated social relations necessarily
grows up around it, giving rise to new realities and the need for new
concepts and categories to understand them. Certainly the production
specifically of a material object comes to be no longer necessary for

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430 Keith Graham

productive labour to occur. How does this come about? Everything hinges
on the idea of the collective worker.
This idea is first introduced in Capital implicitly in the discussion of
cooperation. The starting-point of capitalist production, we are told, both
historically and conceptually, is the gathering of a large number of workers
in one place (Marx [1867, p. 439]). But their combined expenditure of
energy brings about a crucial change. Just as the offensive power of a
squadron is essentially different from the sum of offensive powers of the
individual soldiers, so the social force created when many hands cooperate
differs from the sum total of mechanical forces exerted by individual
workers. A new productive power is created here which is an intrinsically
collective one (ibid., p. 443). The collective worker is then referred to
explicitly in the case of manufacture, as being formed from the combination
of many specialized workers (ibid., p. 464), and it is made clear that the
excellence then displayed by the collective worker occurs at the expense of
the individual workers: their imperfections or one-sidedness, resulting from
specialization, become virtues and many-sided excellence for it (ibid., pp.
468-9). 'In manufacture, the social productive power of the collective
worker, hence of capital, is enriched through the impoverishment of the
worker in individual productive power' (ibid., p. 483).
Subsequently, Marx draws out the implications of this shift. In the case
of one individual working on an object, for example, there is no separate
supervisory role, no distinction between mental and physical labour,
whereas in the case of the collective worker specialization requires that
there should be. Most important for our purposes, there is an accompanying
shift in the conception of productive labour when we come to the collective
worker.
The product is transformed from the direct product of the individual producer into
a social product, the joint product of a collective labourer, i.e. a combination of
workers, each of whom stands at a different distance from the actual manipulation
of the object of labour. (Ibid., p. 643)
In consequence, there is a progressive extension of the concept of the
productive labourer.
In order to work productively, it is no longer necessary for the individual himself
to put his hand to the object; it is sufficient for him to be an organ of the collective
labourer, and to perform any one of its subordinate functions. (Ibid., pp. 6434)
The definition of productive activity in terms of manipulation of material
'is derived from the nature of material production itself, and it remains
correct for the collective labourer considered as a whole. But it no longer
holds good for each member taken individually' (ibid., p. 644; cf. Marx
[1905-10: i. 411-12]).
Crucially, Marx goes on to argue that capitalism primarily involves not

Class - A Simple View 431

the production of commodities but the production of surplus value (Marx
[1867, p. 644]), and that too changes the range of those who might be
regarded as productive.

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The only worker who is productive is one who produces surplus-value for the
capitalist, or in other words contributes towards the self-valorization of capital.
(Marx [1867, p. 644]; cf. Marx [1905-10: i. 156-7])
And he gives as an example of such production of surplus value, the case
of a schoolteacher who works himself into the ground to enrich the owner
of the school (Marx [1867, p. 644]; cf. Marx [1905-10: i. 292]).6
Six interesting points emerge from these observations. First, in the
measure that the image of a lone individual, working on a portion of raw
material and transforming it, is inapposite as an image of modern, largescale production, it becomes not merely difficult in practice but misconceived in principle to attempt to calculate whether an individual is a net
producer of surplus value. Abstract models, as in Roemer's arguments,
notwithstanding, there is no criterion we could adopt which would enable
us to decide in a concrete case whether an individual was a net exploiter
or exploitee. Marx makes the point that what distinguishes the division of
labour in manufacture is '[t]he fact that the specialized worker produces
no commodities. It is only the common product of all the specialized
workers that becomes a commodity' (Marx [1867, p. 475]), and he quotes
Thomas Hodgskin with approval: 'There is no longer anything which we
can call the natural reward of individual labour. Each labourer produces
only some part of a whole, and each part, having no value or utility in
itself, there is nothing on which the labourer can seize, and say: It is my
product, this I will keep to myself (ibid., p. 475, n. 34).7
Second, in so far as we can ascribe the epithet 'productive' to a number
of individuals, it is not in virtue of some specific common characteristic
which they possess or some specific common activity which they carry out.
Rather, it is their combination into a unit which can itself be described as
productive that allows derivative ascription of that epithet to them. The
collective worker constitutes a collective in the sense which I have articulated elsewhere: certain powers are attributable to it which could not be
attributed to its constituent parts, and the significance of those constituents
in the context of the collective can be brought out only by an ineliminable
reference to it.8 A worker's productiveness consists in their contributing
positively to the collective's production of surplus value.
Third, the grounds on which to make such derivative attributions to
individuals are clearly and explicitly removed from any crude idea of manual
labour. It is one's position in a system, the fact of making a contribution
to it, of performing any of the subordinate tasks of the collective, which
qualify one for the epithet.9 Elsewhere Marx associates himself with the

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432 Keith Graham

idea that these positions may range from that of 'the actual operative to
the manager or engineer' (Marx [1905-10: i. 157]).
Fourth, productiveness in this sense is not merely compatible with widely
varying conditions of existence and material reward: on Marx's premises it
actually requires such variation. The collective worker must perform tasks
which are simple and complex, high and low, and therefore the collective
worker's organs, individual workers, must receive different kinds of training
to meet these needs, with a consequential scale of wages corresponding to
a hierarchy of labour powers (Marx [1867, p. 469]). For Marx, the value
of any commodity, including labour power, depends on its cost of production and theoretically the commodity will change hands at its value. If
different forms of labour power have very different costs of production
then we should expect them to change hands at very different levels.
Fifth, and again using a military analogy, Marx points out that an
industrial army 'requires, like a real army, officers (managers) and NCO's
(foremen, overseers) who command during the labour process in the name
of capital. The work of supervision becomes their established and exclusive
function'; they become 'a special kind of wage-labourer' (ibid., p. 450).
But notice that for Marx the occupation of such supervisory roles does not
constitute departure from the working class. The subordination of workers
to the instruments of labour develops the labour of superintendence,
'thereby dividing the workers into manual labourers and overseers' (ibid.,
p. 549, italics added).
Sixth, although this is inexplicit in Marx's text, some of the reasons which
dictate a shift from the individual to the collective worker as the focus of
attention also dictate a very wide construal of the collective worker itself.
Calculation of individuals' contribution to surplus value at the level of the
individual firm is not possible because it is not possible to subdivide the
collective effort which results in surplus value. But the same will apply to
the contribution of the individual firm to the sum total of surplus value. It
may be able to draw up a balance sheet which indicates what profit it has
made, and profit constitutes one form which the total surplus value takes.
But it will be another matter to plot the existence and quantitative contribution of every source of input to the total surplus value. Many such
contributions will lie outside the limits set by the individual firm itself.
Workers as diverse as doctors, social workers, and housewives may in
Marx's words contribute towards the self-valorization of capital, in the
sense of their presence and effort being a necessary condition of the
realization of that self-valorization.
What this suggests is a move to the level of considering the total workforce
as being responsible for the total surplus value created. At that point, of
course, we have left the field of mere definition. The idea that the group
of people identified in the refurbished definition is coextensive with the

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Class - A Simple View 433

group of people who make up the overall collective labourer is beset with
many familiar difficulties. Przeworski fairly notes that we do not know
exactly what kinds of labour are necessary to keep capitalism going as a
system, and we should resist the temptation to 'jump into the abyss of
functionalism' in that version which sees everything that happens as necessary for reproducing capitalist relations (Przeworski [1985, p. 85]).
Relatedly, it may be felt that there must be some people who are unproductive even in the most extended sense, but yet who may still fit the
description of the refurbished definition. There is also the argument that
some capitalists will be part of the collective labourer, viz. those who choose
to work and therefore may contribute to the production of surplus value,
though precisely because they choose to do so they will fall outside the
scope of that definition.

I suggested we could view Marx as providing us with a definition of the

working class, a set of substantive theses and a set of prognoses about it.
When we do proper justice to the substantive thesis about production which
Marx asserts, we discover that it is, to say the least, a highly theorized
claim. It is the claim that a particular, complex theoretical entity, the
collective worker, is uniquely responsible for the carrying but of a theoretically-defined task, the production of surplus value.
Now that claim may be completely wrong. We may wish to reject the
existence of the entity or the task which it is supposed to carry out. We
may, indeed, wish to reject the whole concept of value without which a
theory of surplus value would have no place. Or we may wish to agree that
there is such a thing as the collective labourer and there is such a thing as
surplus value, but depart from Marx's story about how they relate to each
other. But no one could plausibly argue that, by taking a glance around at
the contemporary world, we can see that it is obvious that he was wrong
in this theoretical claim. And in that case, no one could argue that his
original concept of the working class is discredited on the grounds that this
substantive thesis about the working class is obviously not true. There may
well be work for that original concept to do, and it would take a lot more
theoretical argument to establish whether that is so or not.
It remains to stress the modesty of the thesis advanced in this paper. I
have attempted to show that Marx offers a viable means of identifying the
working class by means of the refurbished definition, and that the substantive theoretical claim which he makes about the class as so defined is at
least not obviously false. Much more would need to be done to establish
that we have here the makings of a theory of class which is acceptable. In

434 Keith Graham

particular, it would need to be shown that a plausible theory of interests
can be built on these foundations and it would need to be shown why class
consciousness has not developed in accordance with this conception of
class. These are further tasks for another occasion. What I hope to have
shown on this occasion is that at least there is a distinctive view of class
implicit in Marx which rises to the level of being worth consideration.10

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NOTES
1 But what about the passage in Theories of Surplus Value where Marx criticizes Ricardo
for ignoring 'the constantly growing number of the middle classes, those who stand between
the workman on the one hand and the capitalist and landlord on the other' and 'maintain
themselves to an ever increasing extent directly out of revenue' (Marx [1905-10: ii. 573])?
That passage seems to me simply inconsistent with Marx's dominant view, especially in
the light of the conception of productive labour elaborated below in sections III and IV.
2 'All previous historical movements were movements of minorities or in the interest of
minorities. The proletarian movement is the self-conscious, independent movement of the
immense majority, in the interest of the immense majority' (Marx and Engels [1848, p.
78]). Hence the first step in the revolution is to 'win the battle of democracy' (ibid., p.
86). Compare Marx's support for the aims of the Chartists, and his linking this to the
possibility of emancipation and non-violent revolution (Graham [1986a, pp. 181-4]).
3 See esp. Graham (1986a, pp. 221-30).
4 This passage was added by Engels to the 1888 English edition. So far as I am aware Marx
himself nowhere offers as explicit a definition as this, but the definition is consistent with
the rest of the jointly-authored text of the Manifesto and, I should argue, consistent
with quasi-definitional statements made by Marx elsewhere, e.g. '"Proletarian" must be
understood to mean, economically speaking, nothing other than "wage-labourer", the man
who produces and valorizes "capital", and is thrown onto the street as soon as he becomes
superfluous to the need for valorization possessed by "Monsieur Capital" . . . " (Marx
[1867, p. 764, n. 1]). He also stresses the importance of being compelled to sell one's
labour power (ibid., p. 272).
5 This is true, for example, of both Miliband (1977) and Parkin (1979). Przeworski is an
exception. He calls attention to Engels's definition and Kautsky's subsequent echoing of
it, though only in order to point out that many who would normally be regarded and would
regard themselves as middle class fall under it (Przeworski [1985, p. 57]).
6 In opposing the idea that schoolteachers are productive Mandel argues that it is a basic
thesis of Capital that 'there can be no production without (concrete) labour, no concrete
labour without appropriation and transformation of material objects' (Mandel [1978, p.
43]), and he asks 'What is the "immaterial good" produced by a wage-earning teacher
. . .?' (ibid., p. 43, n. 48). However, what Marx says towards the end of the passage to
which Mandel refers is that the labour process, considered in abstraction from particular
social circumstances and forms 'is purposeful activity aimed at the production of usevalues' (Marx [1867, p. 290], italics added). It might be thought that this supports Mandel's
reading, since Marx introduces a commodity as 'an external object, a thing . . .' and says
it is the usefulness of a thing which makes it a use-value (ibid., pp. 125-6). But it is precisely
my point that these formulations, introduced right at the beginning of Capital, are
subsequently modified. This must be true, since what turns out later for Marx to be the
most important commodity, labour power, is not a thing. And the teacher produces surplus
value precisely by producing that commodity: labour power in various more developed or
specialized forms. That is the immaterial (though embodied) good which teachers produce.
7 Once again, there are tensions in Marx's own comments. He certainly allows identification
in principle of an individual's contribution, at least to the extent of speaking of total surplus
value being equal to the surplus value provided by one worker multiplied by the number
of workers employed (Marx [1867, pp. 417-18]). On the other hand, he suggests that 'the

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Class - A Simple View 435

labour which is set in motion by the total capital of a society, day in, day out, may be
regarded as a single working day' (ibid., p. 422; cf. ibid., p. 294).
8 I elaborate on this idea of a collective in Graham (1986a) and Graham (1986b). In a
nutshell, collectives in my sense are identified by reference to irreducibly collective powers
of action. In contrast, Cohen identifies collective unfreedom as existing where performance
of an action by all members of a group is impossible, and throughout his discussion the
relevant agents are individual human beings (Cohen [1986, p. 248]). There are reasons for
concentrating on irreducibly collective actions. For example, Cohen correctly points out
that no individual proletarian could be free to overthrow capitalism even when the
proletariat is so free (ibid., p. 249). But that is because overthrowing capitalism is an
irreducibly collective action.
The freedom of collectives qua collectives is important, among other reasons, for the
impact it can have on the freedom of individuals. The freedom of individuals can increase
or decrease significantly, depending on how collective entities decide to act. For further
argument, see Graham (1988, pp. 7-14).
9 I here depart from Miliband's interpretation of Marx's claim that one labours productively
if one performs one of the subordinate functions of the collective labourer. Miliband
construes this as indicating subordination to other individual labourers, and he produces
a corresponding conception of the working class which is confined to those at the lower
end of the income scale and 'scale of regard' (Miliband [1977, p. 24]). Given that Marx's
own comments clearly identify those individuals in superordinate positions as themselves
labourers, my suggestion is that the position of subordination in Marx's comment is being
contrasted not with the position of other individuals but with the position of the collective
labourer itself. Taken in that way, any individual worker is subordinate.
10 For extremely helpful comments I thank David Archard, G. A. Cohen and Adam Morton.

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Przeworski, A. 1985. Capitalism and Social Democracy. Cambridge: Cambridge University
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Received 4 April 1989

Keith Graham, Department of Philosophy, University of Bristol, 9 Woodland Rd., Bristol

BS8 1TB, England