Class politics

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Class politics describes a policy that pursues the goal of asserting the interests of a social class . The term is used both as a positive self-description of socialist politics and in socialist states as well as pejoratively as a political catchphrase for the criticism of non-socialist politics. Since the use of the term class has declined today compared to that of the social class , the use of "class politics" has also become rarer.

Related terms

Class politics fits into a number of other terms. According to the Marxist view (" historical materialism ") there is a class society . History can be described as the history of class struggles in which the ruling class defends its supremacy through class politics. Class justice is an instrument for securing power . The working class oppose this ruling class and fight the class enemy in the class struggle . First of all, class politics in the narrower sense are required, i.e. H. To form a class from a social stratum that looks after its interests as closely as possible ( class consciousness ). The goal is to achieve the classless society .

In addition to "class struggle" (with or without quotation marks), Max Weber also used the terms "class struggle", "class revolutions" and "class action (against the immediate opponent of interests)" "Or" Class warfare "used. Warren Buffett , American multibillionaire, investor and partner in the rating agency Moody's , spoke of “Class war” several times. B. in an interview with the New York Times on November 26, 2006: “The class struggle is a historical fact; it is run by my class - the class of the rich - and we are about to win it ”. When Republican Congressman Paul Ryan alleged "class warfare" against the idea of ​​abolishing tax breaks for the rich, Paul Krugman replied in the New York Times on September 22, 2011 that "people like Mr. Ryan who do the wants to exempt the very rich from carrying the burden of restructuring our state finances ”, lead the class struggle. After the defeat of Romney and Ryan in the 2012 presidential election, the "class war" will continue. The German economist Heiner Flassbeck , Director of the Globalization and Development Department at UNCTAD, said at a conference in Austin (Texas) on November 3, 2011: “The words, class was' may be unfashionable, but it is still a battle between labor and capital . ”

Concept history

Use of the word class politics

Friedrich Engels noted that "every real proletarian party , from the English Chartists onwards, has always placed class politics, the organization of the proletariat as an independent political party, as the first condition, and the dictatorship of the proletariat as the next goal of the struggle". On December 15, 1897, August Bebel gave a speech in the Reichstag on the subject of class politics and social reform .

Friedrich Naumann wrote an essay for Die Hilfe (10th year 1904, No. 2) on: Class politics of liberalism .

The in Tsarist Russia in Yiddish written language social-revolutionary Jewish labor leader Chaim Zhitlowsky wrote from a Jewish perspective on nationalism and class politics of the proletariat .

In its 1907 election campaign program, the “Group of United Liberals” in the Hamburg citizenship named the fight against “social democratic class politics” as an important goal. Ernst Niekisch accused Marxism of teaching the state to see only as a class-political fact and thus becoming a theory of harsh state negation and radical overthrow. The Socialist Workers' Party of Germany (1931) published an article in its newspaper Neue Front of June 1936 with the title “About the German People's Front”, which reads: “A critically important question of a successful proletarian class policy is the question the alliances with the non-proletarian classes. ”In the previous editions, SAP had published a series of articles entitled“ What comes after Hitler? ”and others. a. Announces: "... the more effectively the proletarian class policy is pursued, the greater the confidence it will arouse among the petty bourgeoisie who despair of fascism, the more it will make them ready to follow the working class ..." The Left Opposition initiated by Leon Trotsky set the Fourth International as one of its priorities a revolutionary class policy in the Spanish Civil War from 1936 to 1939. In an appeal from 1945, Kurt Schumacher wrote : “For the working masses, the idea and the fact of the German Reich are not a necessity only in national politics, but also in class politics. Your political and economic liberation struggle is doomed to failure without this foundation. ”In the epilogue of the new edition by Ignazio Silone's Der Fascismus (German first edition 1934), Christian Riechers 1978 , who was instrumental in the university“ Project Workers' Movement ”, assumes that not anti-fascism , but only a socialist-class-political strategy can overcome the fascist danger.

In 1963, Hans Mommsen spoke of “class politics as a means of international integration in the growth years of the social democratic movement from Hainfeld to Badeni's electoral reform (1889-1897)”. Jürgen Kuczynskis The History of the Situation of Workers under Capitalism contains a chapter on “Bourgeois Class Politics and Class Ideologies” The Austrian Erwin Scharf repeatedly advocated (so 1945-48 in the SPÖ and 1968-70 and 1991 in the KPÖ) as a consistent Marxist a profiled class policy. Franz Urban Pappi stated in 2002: “ Lipset emphasizes the compromise character of class politics, since, as is customary in collective bargaining, a negotiation result appears possible by fine-tuning the profits and losses of both sides. Of course, this is not the only form of class politics. If social counter-drafts are combined with it, as in the development phase of the socialist labor movement, class politics loses its compromise character and becomes an ideological either-or. " Heinz Steinert published (in: Thien, Hans-Günter (Ed.), Münster 2010) an article "The Prekariat: Conceptual Politics and Class Politics", in which he states that the formation of the concept " precariat " was part of a class politics that aimed to create and regulate structures of inequality, because "the most important field of class politics is." mastering the labor market, .. ". With precarization "it's not just about cheap, but above all about flexible, so easily terminable workers." In the same volume, Ceren Türkmen describes under the title `` Rethinkig Class-Making '' how class politics in Germany deals with migrant workers.

Jürgen Hartmann characterized the class politics of the Mubarak regime as a redistribution from the bottom up and the corrosion of public services in the interest of the "military-commercial complex", i. H. a class that included the state elite, the military and the bourgeoisie and stood out from the social majority of Egypt . In the age of global neoliberalism , according to Dani Rodrikist, the political left is successful where it pursues class politics in accordance with the visible social dimension of globalization .

In his essay For a “New Class Politics”, Sebastian Friedrich believes that “despite sexist, racist and nationalist divisions, common struggles are possible”. It is true that the left in the West has turned its back on class politics in recent years, so that it lacks class political practice in Germany. A part of the left has entered into an alliance with a "cosmopolitan" neoliberalism and, according to Didier Eribon, has "with questionable enthusiasm for neoconservative intellectuals" and emptied the essence of the left. But it is about showing that - across gender, ethnic and national borders - there are common interests of the working class. What is required is a common struggle for freedom on a socio-political level as well as equality on a social and economic level for everyone, in order to - as Nancy Fraser says - refuse the wrong alternative of progressive neoliberalism and reactionary populism. Such state-of-the-art class politics make a left social project possible and a revitalized left could “lay the foundation for a powerful new coalition that aims to fight for justice for all”.

Downside

While “class politics from below” is openly propagated from the left and attacked from the right, “class politics from above” has always been tacitly and naturally accepted. This was not only said by Karl Marx: “Connection among the capitalists habitually and of effects which the workers forbidden and of bad consequences for them.”, But even Adam Smith : “People from the same trade rarely come together for amusements or diversions without their conversation ending with a conspiracy against the public or a plan to raise prices. "And even today one can see it this way:" Since the balance of power between the classes is fundamentally structured asymmetrically in favor of capital, the power of the Capital as ›normal‹, and its use as a class struggle (›from above‹) is regularly not or hardly noticed, while the actualization of the ›power of work‹ also regularly appears openly as a class struggle (›from below‹). "

The former British central banker Alan Budd feared about the monetary policy of the Bank of England under the administration of Margaret Thatcher : “Many never (...) believed that one could fight inflation with monetarism. However, they recognized that it can be very helpful in increasing unemployment. And the increase in unemployment was more than desirable in order to weaken the working class as a whole. (...) Here - in Marxist terminology - a crisis of capitalism was brought about which restored the industrial reserve army and which from then on allowed the capitalists to realize high profits. "

Class fragmentation

After the end of Fordism in the industrialized countries, which was characterized by corporatism d. H. Partnership between trade unions and employers' associations, developing post-Fordist society is characterized by further differentiation. The class structure becomes more complex through fragmentation, the perception of interests more complicated.

On the one hand, the factions of finance capitalists and managers are gaining increasing importance within the bourgeoisie .

Precarization

On the other hand, through labor market policy measures and social expropriation and exclusion, a new type of lower class was formed for which the word “ precariat ” was coined in order to avoid the word “poverty” . This fact of new poverty leads to threats and discipline of workers well into the middle classes. But the precariat is also very different in itself: In addition to the majority of the unemployed, atypical employees (contract and temporary workers, part-time workers, mini and mid-jobbers) and bogus self-employed who have to live on the edge of the subsistence level, there are also freelancers: academics, artists , Journalists, media workers and academics who work only occasionally and irregularly, but sometimes as highly qualified “labor entrepreneurs” can enjoy their “precariousness” as freedom far from poverty.

Transnationalization

The position of workers in industrialized countries is made more difficult by increasing global competition. In less developed economies the standard of living is lower and the lower wages there use transnational corporations to put pressure on labor incomes in the more developed ones. Alongside the class factions of the national bourgeoisie and the comprador bourgeoisie , which "acted as a financial and commercial joint for the operations of imperialist foreign capital". functions, according to Poulantzas, an " inner bourgeoisie " has developed which, despite its interdependence with foreign capital, has its reproductive base within the nation-states. In spite of partial dependence, "important contradictions between the inner bourgeoisie and American capital" can arise

The managers of the large companies work together globally and network. There are hardly any political boundaries for capital flows either and transnational finance capital is emerging. The neoliberal economic theory and the orientation towards shareholder value, especially among institutional investors, i.e. hedge funds , insurance companies, pension funds, favor concentration and led to the development of gigantic assets and a new elite of "super-rich". These regulate the states via rating agencies, influence national governments in their interests, and a transnational bourgeoisie can possibly develop from them. Krysmanski, Jürgen Habermas and other sociologists also speak of refeudalization .

literature

  • Nicos Poulantzas : The Dictatorship Crisis. Frankfurt / M., 1977, p. 12.
  • Nicos Poulantzas: The internationalization of capitalist conditions and the nation state. in: Joachim Hirsch / Bob Jessop / Nicos Poulantzas: The future of the state. Hamburg, 2001; P. 51f.
  • Hans-Günter Thien (Ed.): Classes in Postfordism. Münster, 2010.
  • Sebastian Friedrich / editorial analysis & criticism (ed.): New class politics. Left strategies against shift to the right and neoliberalism . Bertz + Fischer, Berlin 2018, ISBN 978-3-86505-752-5 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Weber, Max: Economy and Society. Outline of understanding sociology. Neu Isenburg 2005, p. 680 ff. And p. 1012
  2. ^ Weber, Max: Economy and Society. Outline of understanding sociology. Neu Isenburg 2005, p. 682 (regarding antiquity)
  3. ^ Weber, Max: Economy and Society. Outline of understanding sociology. Neu Isenburg 2005, p. 224
  4. ^ Weber, Max: Economy and Society. Outline of understanding sociology. Neu Isenburg 2005, p. 226
  5. ↑ http://www.nachdenkseiten.de/?p=3618
  6. ↑ http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/23/opinion/krugman-the-social-contract.html?_r=3
  7. ↑ http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/30/opinion/krugman-class-wars-of-2012.html
  8. ↑ Archived copy ( Memento of December 27, 2011 in the Internet Archive )
  9. ^ Friedrich Engels, On the Housing Question , 1872/73
  10. ↑ Archive for the History of Resistance and Labor, No. 19, pp. 81–112 (in German)
  11. ^ Program of the United Liberals, printed in: Die Vereinigte Liberalen , 1910, p. 101
  12. ↑ Niekisch, Ernst: The way of the German workers to the state. Berlin 1925, p. 8f.
  13. ↑ Ursula Langkau-Alex: "Deutsche Volksfront 1932-1939." Berlin 2005, Volume 3. Document 18.2 p. 132
  14. ↑ Ursula Langkau-Alex: "Deutsche Volksfront 1932-1939." Berlin 2005, Volume 3. Document 18.1 p. 128
  15. ^ Mommsen, Hans: Social Democracy and the Question of Nationalities in the Habsburg Multi-Ethnic State
  16. ↑ Berlin 1965, Vol. 2, Vol. 24 II. 2.
  17. ↑ Pappi, Franz Urban: "The politicized social structure today: Historical reminiscence or current explanatory potential?" In: Brettschneider / Van Deth / Roller (eds.) The end of the politicized social structure? Opladen 2002, p. 27
  18. ↑ Steinert, Heinz: `` The Prekariat: Conceptual Politics and Class Politics '', p. 185
  19. ↑ Steinert, Heinz: '' The Prekariat: Conceptual Politics and Class Politics '', in: Thien, Hans-Günter (Ed.), Münster 2010, p. 186.
  20. ↑ in: Thien, Hans-Günter (Ed.), Münster 2010, pp. 202–234.
  21. ↑ Hartmann, Jürgen: State and Regime in the Orient and in Africa Wiesbaden 2011, p. 109
  22. ^ Dani Rodrik: `` Populism and the Economics of Globalization '' Harvard, Cambridge, MA. Revised August 2017
  23. ↑ ak - analysis & criticism - newspaper for left-wing debate and practice / No. 627 / May 16, 2017 [1]
  24. ↑ http://www.portal-sozialpolitik.de/uploads/sopo/pdf/Sozialpolitische-Chronik.pdf
  25. ↑ Marx, Karl: Economic-philosophical manuscripts from the year 1844 , [1. Manuscript] wages, [471]
  26. ^ Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations , Chicago 1976, Book I, p. 144; quoted n. John K. Galbraith: "Anatomie der Macht" Munich 1989, footnote 6 to p. 127 on p. 213.
  27. ↑ »Berlin Institute for Critical Theory (InkriT)« Class struggle A: ṣirā ‛ṭabaqī. - E: class struggle. - Q: lutte des classes. - R: Классовая борьба (Klassovaja bor'ba). - S: lucha de clases. - C: jieji douzheng 阶级 斗爭 Colin Barker (I.), Werner Goldschmidt (II.), Wolfram Adolphi (III.) HKWM 7 / I, 2008, columns 836–873
  28. ↑ http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/the-staggers/2010/07/class-war-budd-thatcher-cuts
  29. ↑ http://www.nachdenkseiten.de/?p=16111#note_1
  30. ^ Wienold, Hanns : The presence of the bourgeoisie. Outlines of a class. In: Hans-Günter Thien (Ed.): Classes in Postfordism. Münster 2010, pp. 235–283.
  31. ^ Heinz Steinert: Das Prekariat: Conceptual Politics and Class Politics. In: Thien (Ed.): P. 174.
  32. ↑ Steinert, Heinz: Das Prekariat: Conceptual Politics and Class Politics. In: Thien (Ed.): P. 192.
  33. ↑ Poulantzas, 1977, p. 12.
  34. ↑ Poulantzas, 2001, p. 52.
  35. ↑ Poulantzas, 2001, p. 53, cit. after: Joachim Hirsch / Jens Wissel : Transnationalization of class relations. in: Thien, p. 297 f.
  36. ↑ Hirsch, Joachim / Wissel, Jens: Transnationalization of Class Relations. in: Thien, 2010. pp. 287-309.
  37. ↑ Jürgen Habermas, Structural Change of the Public , Studies on a Category of Civil Society, Frankfurt am Main, 1990, p. 336f.