Identity politics

Jim heartfield Jim at heartfield.demon.co.uk
Sun May 31 02:56:08 PDT 1998


In message <2.2.16.19980530161448.0e7f5ac0 at pop.igc.org>, Michael Eisenscher <meisenscher at igc.apc.org> writes
>Perhaps it would be helpful to connect this discussion/analysis to the
>concept of "labor aristocracy." Don't workers who could be considered in
>this category "benefit" from exploitation or super-exploitation of other
>workers? But status in the aristocracy is not fixed or enduring and the
>inner workers of the system routinely knock workers who felt safely
>insulated within it back into the larger labor market. Momentary advantage
>(always relative) is not the same thing as secure or enduring advantage,
>whether that advantage is created by skill, by race, by gender, by nepotism,
>by ethnicity, or whatever. As the system matures and evolves, with the
>introduction of new technologies that change the calculus of the labor
>markets, a relatively smaller proportion of workers are able to secure this
>privileged niche.

The labour aristocracy was a very specific product of Britain's monopoly position at the end of the last Century. The labour aristocrats derived their special privileges from the control over access to their trade, and so could command a price for their skills way above ordinary wages. Often they hired workers to do menial parts of the job. It was in this way that the labour aristocracy shared in the monopoly profits of the British Empire. They were swept away by the technological developments that undermined their control over their skill, and thereby their profession. The only equivalents today would be middle class professions and their organisations (I'm thinking of the British Medical Association, which is drawn from Doctors and also licenses Doctors).

Trade unions based upon wage labourers have often aspired to defend wages by excluding balck or women workers, but they have never had the power to do so where employers are determined to use migrant or women labour. Many different sociological studies have tried to locate the source of racial oppression within workers' organisations. And the willingness of these to endorse chauvinistic ideas certainly gives succour to that idea. But employers have never surendered their authority over hiring and firing, and reserve the right to use whatever labour they wish. -- Jim heartfield



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