[WS:] This is a minor quibble, but your assertion of the 'service sector expansion" is moot. Comparing to what? If you go back in time, say, 200 years you will find a vast army of domestic servants and other workers serving the rich which probably outnumbers those employed in the industry. Furthermore, look into the corporate reorganization that spins off different function to supposedly "independent" firms. Before that reorganization, a janitor working for say, an automobile manufacturer was being counted as an "autoworker" based on the industry of the establishment that employed him. However, when janitorial services are being spun off to, say, avoid paying union wages, the same janitor is being counted as a service workers, again based on the industry of the establishment that employs him.
Based on this, I think that the claims of expansion of the service sector needs to be at least scaled down.
But more to the point - what is less questionable is the expansion of technical-managerial occupations. For example a quick look at the ILO occupational stats for the US shows that in 1970 professional, technical, administrative occupations represented 24.7% of the labor force - while in 2002 - 34.5%. That is a huge increase of the "technostructure" in 30 years. It would be absurd to believe that these folks - more than a third of the labor force - would embrace any "workerist" ideology, let alone the more radical varieties such as those promoted by the IWW http://www.iww.org/.
Then you have clerical and sales worker accounting for 23.5% of the lf in 1970 and 25.2% in 2002 - and you will end up with about 60% of the labor force that are unlikely to identify themselves as the "working class" regardless of what Marxists say. That may not be true for some clerical or retail employees but these are nonetheless non-manual occupations that are closer in status to managerial position than to "blue collar" positions. I think this offers the empirical evidence of the changing nature of the labor force that you asked for, you can get stats for other countries here http://laborsta.ilo.org/STP/guest.
There is of course, the question of subjective identifications, perceptions and most importantly ideological affinities which is far more fuzzy than occupational statistics. It is difficult to show statistics showing ideological affinities - which is the second part of my argument. Most what we can do is to quote personal observations, anecdotal evidence, and references to different literature. Mine is based on Hofstadter "The American Political Tradition" arguing general acceptance of the capitalist value in the American society and Harvey "A brief history of neoliberalism" showing affinity of neoliberal ideology to the US left.
I am pretty sure that you will find books or polls showing otherwise - but let's ask ourselves which of these two competing visions are most consistent with the political reality that we see around us? Why is it that any left political candidate gets almost no popular support? Even Eugene Debs in the heyday of labor organizing got less than 3% of the votes. Why is that the support for communists and radical left in Europe - which have fair more favorable political system than the US - is still in single digits?
Surely we can explain that by some conspiratorial conjecture that people are being manipulated or otherwise duped and bamboozled by the ruling elites, but I do not buy it. I do not think people are that stupid or have any sort of "false consciousness" (false comparing to what, that of true believers? - gimme a break.) People generally know what they want, they support what appeals to them and what speaks to their views, and the ideas and views of the old left are not among them. We may not like their choices, but that is not the reason to deny the facts. One should instead try to explain why people make such choices, and my argument about the growing technostructure and their "elective affinity" to neoliberalism is one such an attempt of explanation that does not rest on a moral judgement or belief what constitutes "true" working class and "true consciousness."
Wojtek
On Wed, Feb 1, 2012 at 12:56 PM, Marv Gandall <marvgand at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 2012-01-31, at 8:21 AM, Wojtek S wrote:
>
>> More specifically, the last hundred or so years saw the rapid growth
>> of the new social class - the "technostructure" (engineers, lawyers,
>> doctors, managers, economists, etc.) as Veblen and Galbraith called
>> them or the "intelligentsia" as they are known in Eastern Europe.
>> This new social class - neither the proletariat nor the bourgeoisie as
>> understood in the 19th century have different 'elective affinities"
>> (to use Weber's term) as far as ideologies are concerned…
>>
>> ...We have plenty of proles to be sure, but
>> nobody wants to be one or, for that matter adopt an ideology that
>> identifiers them as such. They all aspire to the "professional"
>> status that will make them a part of the technostructure. So if the
>> class to which these "wannabe professionals" aspire have elective
>> affinity to neoliberal ideology of free market, this means that this
>> ideology will be accepted by a very large people who have nothing to
>> gain from this ideology but their upwardly mobile social status.
>>
>> So if the left wants to be politically relevant again - by which I
>> mean attracting some 40-60% of the voters - they must come with
>> something different than old left ideologies glorifying the
>> proletariat…
>
> I have no disagreement that Marxism is best treated as a method (historical materialism) rather than a creed, and that the body of thought associated with it is in constant need of revision in light of changing historical circumstances.
>
> That said, your assertion that the professional and administrative employees, who have come to the fore with the great expansion of the service and public sectors, represent a "new class" with a distinctive ideology is a debatable one. The working class has gone through successive changes in its composition as new layers with new skills for new occupations have emerged - from industrial workers to retail and white collar employees to today's fastest growing college-educated segment of the workforce.
>
> Except for the self-employed and the very top level of these professions, where there has been the opportunity to join unions, teachers, nurses, social workers, computer programmers, journalists, researchers, lawyers, accountants, government program administrators, and other better educated and paid workers have typically done so to defend their interests as salaried workers. Some of these groups have a history of militant strike action. Most belong to the same labour federations as industrial workers. They tend towards the liberal rather than conservative end of the political spectrum, and are as apt as other workers in the large urban centres to support the DP in the US and the social democratic parties and their offshoots in Europe.
>
> I appreciate your command of the sociological canon, Woj, but can you give us less textual and more empirical evidence to support your theory that the nature and outlook of this working class cohort is other than I've described above? My own reading and experience suggests otherwise.
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-- Wojtek http://wsokol.blogspot.com/