Bob Carter

A Grov^ing Divide:
Marxist Class Analysis
and the Labour Process
Introduction
The rapid, massive and global restructuring of employment, both
in the private and public sector, has given rise to a plethora of new
concepts attempting to encapsulate the changes and their
dynamic: post-Fordism; new times; flexible specialisation;
Japanisation. All these concepts bring in their train a vast, new
body of literature, both critical and promotional.' That this
restructuring of employment is simultaneously a restructuring of
class relations has been largely ignored or obscured within these
debates. While many of the contributors to the debates would
subscribe to the importance of class analysis in general, they fail
to enrich their perspectives with the importance of class relations
for the particular. This is not an individual failing, however, but
is integrally connected to wider trends in the direction of class and
labour process theory
That there has been a move away from class analysis in
political and social theory is now widely recognised. What has
been commented upon less is the way in which the dented
confidence of the working class and the lowering of overt class
struggle have influenced even those analysts whose commitment
to continued Marxist class perspectives remain. As confidence
and organisation of the working class has ebbed, capital has
In an extensive survey.
Carter examines the
changing emphasis
within Marxist class
and labour process
theory, arguing that
the explicit and
implicit movements
towards an orthodox
Marxist rwo class
model fails to identify
the significance of
workplace changes,
rendering Marxism
formal and abstract.
Conversely, a reintegration
of class and
labour process theory,
within a framework
which acknowledges
the role and functions
of the new middle
class, promises to revitalise
analysis and
provide perspectives
for understanding the
fluid relations of class.

34 Capital & Class55

reasserted control and reintegrated seaions ofthe new middle class
into managerial hierarchies. As working class resistance has faded,
so has the space for the independent organisation of the new
middle class. The explosive growth of supervisory and managerial
unionism ofthe 1960s and 70s has ended not because there is less
need for it
just the reverse but because it was always
predicated on the defence of conditions and procedures by the
working class (Carter 1985).^ It appears paradoxical that, as
capital strengthens its hold on the praaice ofthe new middle class,
Marxist class theory should forget the innovations of class theory
in the 1970s, to renew claims that managers and supervisors,
despite consciousness and practice, are part of the (albeit
heterogeneous) working class.
This is merely the latest phase of an extended debate within
sociological and political theory since the latter part ofthe 19th
century concerning white collar employees. Social theorists, from
all political perspectives have argued over their class designation
and role, variously characterising them as the service class, the new
middle class or part of the working class. Fashions in the
dominant characterisation of white collar employees have swung
in part according to the political orientations of white collar
employees, orientations themselves strongly conditioned by
particular political conjunctions. In the last quarter century alone,
and just within the Marxist tradition, sociologists have witnessed
sharply differing emphases: from the promises of white collar mass
radicalisation and their characterisation as a new working class
(Mallet 1975; Gorz 1967); through more complex analyses
designating all or part of them a new middle class (Poulantzas
1975; Carcbedi 1977); and now with a sustained downturn in the
European left, the defeat of communism and the demise of social
democracy, to a position where the complexity of class has been
replaced again by a neo.-Marxist orthodoxy (Cottrell 1984;
Meiksins 1986; Smith 1987; Scase 1992).
This is not the place to rehearse the history of social theory
relating to white collar employees from its origins in Germany
(Carter 1985). While much ofthe post-war debate mirrors many
of the positions and developments in Germany until the end of
the Weimar Republic, the later debate is no mere repetition. A
radically new element was introduced through a renewed interest
in class theory and its relationship to what only subsequently
became known as the labour process debate (Nichols 1992).
Although initially abstract in nature, these new perspectives

Marxist Class A nalysis & the Labour Process 3 5

promised both to offer a greater level of sophistication in Marxist
class analysis and to ground theories in day to day practices and
changes at workplace level. While the basic starting point of this
approach has been retained by some labour process theorists
(Burawoy 1985; Thompson 1983) there is now remarkably little
overlap in what are two discrete areas of analysis
class and
labour process: class analysis, on the one hand, makes the vaguest
of gestures towards the actual day to day relations inside the
workplace and, on the other, labour process perspectives examine
what happens inside workplaces without any informed or
extended dialogue with class theory.
It is the contention here that the emergence of a revitalised
class analysis during the 1970s represented a crucial development
in the social theory. The central innovation was the perception
of the integral relationship of changes in the capitalist labour
process to changes in class structure. Subsequendy, the increasing
separation of these perspectives has left Marxist class theory
abstract and formal, a spectator rather than a crucial interpreter
of the increasingly rapid changes to work processes. Labour
process analysis, on the other hand, has become (over)sensitive
to the myriad changes but is unable to relate them to wider class
theory.
These developments are traced through a review and critique
of contemporary Marxist literature, organised around four themes:
(1). The challenge to orthodox Marxist class theory from
perspectives which stress the importance of the labour
process and the position of a new middle class between
capital and labour.
(2). The movement to re-establish the older orthodoxy as
interest in these perspectives declined.
(3). The movement within the labour process debate away
from class perspectives.
(4). The specific role played by the concept of a new middle
class within labour process discussions.
The critique is, however, not an end in itself. Identification
of conceptual problems is important but has its limits. In
particular, questions of gender are not raised by most of the
literature and are consequently addressed in a cursory way (and
race not at all)."* In any more concrete analysis the social
construction of gender and race would have to be integrated as

3 6 Capital & Class

5 5

a constituent part of class relations. The possible direction of class

analysis in relation to these areas is only hinted at: a more
developed contribution awaits a more substantive account of
particular class relations.
The general position taken here is that no formulae (nor
taxonomic boundaries) can defme a priori class membership of
actual groups. As a preliminary statement, the article suggests,
however, that a reintegration of class and labour process theory
promises a reassertion of the relevance of class analysis to an understanding
of a world in which every relationship appears in flux.
1. ORTHODOX MARXISM AND THE RADICAL BREAK
Class relations are central to Marxist analysis. A failure to theorise
adequately class relations within contemporary capitalism renders
Marxism as a project impotent and irrelevant. For much of the
period after World War II the chief accusation against Marxist class
perspectives was that in reality only two classes were recognised
in capitalist society, the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, the petty
bourgeoisie being a remnant of a previous period. In particular,
this meant that the growth and role of the new middle class within
capitalism, whose role was increasingly important, was distorted
or ignored. This was indeed the position of orthodox Marxism,
both that which emanated from the official academies of the
Soviet Union and even among more critical Marxists in the west.
The conversion of Marxism into state ideology on the one side,
and its divorce from practical revolutionary activity related to the
work-ing class on the other (Anderson 1976), perversely had a
similar effect. Marxist class analysis ceased to be critical and
dynamic and assumed a formalism. Class membership was
determined by ownership or non-ownership of the means of
production. It followed that the vast majority of people in the
workplace (and under some schemas everyone) were members of
the working class. Class membership of the bourgeoisie became
synonymous with ownership and was unrelated to any active part
that capitalists might play in the production. It is of little surprise
therefore that studies of what went on inside the capitalist
production process were given little academic or practical priority
by the tradition.
As a consequence of the failure to develop analyses of the
changing relationships within capitalism, where Marxism entered

Marxist Class Analysis dr the Labour Process 37

debates it tended to do so on the defensive. The argument
advanced that the growing separation of ownership from control
had significantly changed capitalism, for instance, was frequently
met by Marxist attempts to show that managers were also major
stockholders and therefore also capitalists, as if the continued
existence of capitalism was predicated on one particular structure
of ownership and control (Aaronovich 1961; Koiko 1962: for a
comprehensive review see Nichols 1969). Alternatively, the
response was that managers were simply agents of capital without
any corresponding analysis of the nature of the roles they carried
out and where the agency ceased (Blackburn 1965).
Conversely, Marxists simply designated white collar employees
'workers' because of their lack of ownership of the means of
production. The lack of correspondence between their objective
class position and their consciousness and organisation was
explained either by 'false consciousness' or by the importation of
Weberian concepts. The most sophisticated and influential
account of white collar employees in the class structure utilised
a neo-Weberian framework. David Lockwood's The Blackcoated
Worker (\')'!>K) related differences in the consciousness of white
collar employees to differences in the market, work and status
situations of the groups he examined. Apart from rhetorical
declarations, subsequent Marxist works in practice differed little
from Lockwood in their analyses (Frankel 1970, Westergaard and
Resler 1975). It was against this background the significance of
the emergence of the new Marxist class theories of the 1970s has
to be gauged.
Within the space of a few years, Poulantzas, Braverman and
Carchedi all produced works which sharply departed from
accepted Marxist perspectives. The work of Poulantzas was for
a time particularly influential. Counterposed to Anglo-Saxon
approaches to class analysis and their fixation with consciousness
and the individual characteristics of class membership
(Nichols 1979), Poulantzas appeared to offer a rigourous
conceptual scheme which emphasised a more structural determination.
'In the determination of social classes, the principal role
is played by place in the economic relations... The economic
sphere (or space) is determined by the process of production, and
the place of the agents, their distribution into social classes, is
determined by the relations of production' (Poulantzas 1973: 17).
He further distinguished between a labour process (not explicitly
defined) and the production process, defined by 'the relationship

38 Capital & Class55

between agents and the means of labour, and hence between the
agents themselves, in other words by the unity of the labour
process, the productive forces and the relations of production'
(1973: 20). But within this unity, it was not the labour process
but the relations of production which dominated the labour
process and the productive forces. Whereas for orthodox
Marxism, ideological and political practices are seen as independent
aspects that can run counter to economic relations,
Poulantzas attempted a more sophisticated position, arguing that
the 'relations of produaion and the relations which comprise them
(economic ownership/possession) are expressed in the form of
powers which derive from them, in other words class powers; these
powers are constitutively tied to the political and ideological
relations which sanction and legitimise them' (1973: 21).
The rigour of his presentation quickly exposed its rigidities and
contradictions and Poulantzas was subject to a number of
critiques, a particularly effective one coming from Wright (1978).
The most telling criticisms concerned Poulantzas's use of inconsistent
criteria to delimit membership of the working class. He
defined as working class only those wage workers who perform
productive labour while engaged in the production of material
commodities and who are not involved in ideological or political
domination over others. While not wishing to engage in an
extended defence of Poulantzas, it is worth noting that the
sweeping dismissal of his work in the area of class analysis, based
on a characterisation of Poulantzas merely forcing a recalcitrant
reality into his narrow categories (Smith and Willmott 1992) fails
to distinguish the originality and complexity of his contribution
and the level of abstraction at which he was working. He states
that 'the classes of a social formation cannot be "deduced", in their
concrete struggle, from an abstract analysis of the modes and
forms of production which are present in it, for this is not how
they are found in a social formation' (1973: 23).
Carchedi's contribution to the regeneration of Marxist class
theory was distinctive in the extent to which it attempted to offer
an analysis of the profound changes in the class structure of
contemporary capitalist societies based on developing Marx's
method. In particular, he insisted on the continued relevance
of the production and appropriation of surplus value to the
determination of class. In a pure model of capitalism the
bourgeoisie and the proletariat have diametrically opposed
relationships within the production process. The capitalist owns

Marxist Class Analysis & the Labour Process 39

the means of production (owner), does not produce value (nonlabourer),
appropriates surplus value (exploiter) or surplus labour
(oppressor). The worker, on the other hand, does not own the
means of production (non-owner), produces surplus value or
surplus labour (labourer) and has surplus value or surplus labour
expropriated (exploited or oppressed). Carchedi insists, following
Marx, that while the capitalist has a definite role to play in the
production process, a role necessary to guarantee the production
of surplus value, the capitalist does not take part in the labour
process: he or she does not add use-values to the final product.
Rather than the role of the capitalist as capitalist in the process
of production being conceptualised as non-productive labour, it
should be considered as non-labour, as outside the labour process
entirely.
The actual course of capitalist development, of course, allows
no such neat oppositions. As the capitalist production process
proper was established, the mode of labour was revolutionised and
less and less could an individual be said to be the direct producer.
Products became the result of socialised collective labour. There
occurs with this process an extension of the concept of productive
labour and with it that of productive worker.
But while the concept of productive labour expanded as labour
became socialised and collective, the changes also signalled a
transformation in the function of the capitalist within the
production process. The functions of the capitalist comprised
supervision and control of labour to ensure the generation of
surplus value. The necessity of these functions arose not because
of any technical or administrative imperative but because of the
antagonism inherent in the social relations of production. With
the development of capitalism, the function of capital was also
transformed from an individual one to a collective one, no longer
embodied in the individual capitalist, who was replaced first by
a manager and then by a managerial hierarchy. Those employees
engaged within this hierarchy are paid salaries or wages but this
latter fact is not sufficient to make them workers, a point that is
reinforced below through further references to Marx's writing.
In fact, Carchedi recognised that according to Marx the role
of the capitalist had never been restricted purely to ensuring the
production of surplus value. Management of the enterprise had
a double nature. As well as the function of capital, capitalists had
always performed unifying and coordinating roles, roles which
would be necessary under any system of social production. They

40 Capital & Class55

did not arise because of the antagonism of classes under capitalism
and were part of the labour process. The complex organisation
of modern production has increased rather than lessened the need
to unify and coordinate the labour process.
These simultaneous changes
the growth of the collective
worker and the growth of managerial hierarchies
have transformed
the social structure of the workplace. While it is still
analytically possible to distinguish the function of capital and the
function of labour, fewer occupations correspond with one
function or the other in a pure way. An increasing number of
people perform jobs the composition of which is made up from
both functions. Carchedi designated people in these locations the
new middle class.
Braverman's concerns were rather different and his continued
influence is due less to what he contributed to class theory than
to the challenge he posed to industrial and occupational sociology.
When it came to class relations, Braverman was at pains to emphasise
process rather than analytical categories. He maintained that
'the term "working class" properly understood never precisely
delineated a specified body of people, but was rather an expression
for an ongoing social process' (1974: 24). While he picked no
direct argument with previous Marxist approaches defining the
working class on the basis of relations to means of production, he
indicated the limited use of this formal position: '... in the present
situation, when almost all of the population has been placed in
this situation so that the definition encompasses occupational
strata of the most diverse kinds, it is not the bare definition that
is important but its application' (1974: 25).
Class perspectives are central to Braverman's work but his
emphasis on fluidity results in his being less than precise as to how
changes in the structure and functioning of capitalism change the
composition of the working class. For instance, he states at one
point that:
...in the setting of antagonistic social relations, of alienated
labor, hand and brain become not just separated, but divided
and hostile, and the human unity of hand and brain turns into
its opposite, something less than human. (1974: 125).
One might read into this analysis that those responsible for
conception stand in a different class position to the direct physical
producers. Yet Braverman goes on to state that 'production has

Marxist Class Analysis & the Labour Process 41

now been split in two and depends on the activities of both
groups. Inasmuch as the mode of production has been driven by
capitalism into this divided condition, it has separated the two
aspects of labor; hut hoth remain necessary to production, and in
this the lahor process retains its unity'(1974: 126, emphasis added).
Braverman conceives of the function of capital as part of the
labour process; or rather he vacillates between two contradictory
characterisations (conception = capitalist function; conception =
part of the unity oflabour process) because he fails to see the dual
nature of management under capitalism and the contradictory
social relations to which this gives rise.
While the emphasis of these writers differed, common to all
was a recognition of the need to look at relations inside production
as political relations. Technology was not neutral. Nor could
any changes in the form of ownership of production, which left
relationships within production untransformed, legitimately claim
to be socialism. While this did not make the political perspectives
of these writers necessarily cohesive (Poulantzas in particular never
strayed far from the reformism of the French Communist Party)
there was a focus on the necessity to transform property relations
and the authoritarian relations inside production. For Poulantzas,
Carchedi and Braverman relations at the workplace were central
to an understanding of the contemporary class structure.
Carchedi and Poulantzas, for instance, both started their analyses
of class from an analysis of the production of use values and
Marx's definition of the labour process. While Braverman's
emphasis was more concerned with transformations at the workplace
and less with the consequences of these changes on the class
structure, nevertheless, for all of these writers class analysis and
an analysis of the labour process were inseparable.
Although more sophisticated than orthodox Marxist ones,
these perspectives were not without their limitations. The contradictions
within Poulantzas scheme have already been mentioned.
Braverman was widely criticised for treating a particular ideology,
Taylorism, as if it represented the actual course of capitalist
management (Edwards 1979; Litder and Salaman 1982). Not
only did there continue to be other ways of managing, but
managerial actions were mediated by workers' resistance
(Friedman 1977). Carchedi's work was more difficult and was
frequently ignored. Where his work was examined, critics took
issue with the viability of distinguishing berween some functions
of the collective worker (tasks of coordination and unity) on the

42 Capital dr Ctass55
one hand, and the global function of capital (control and
surveillance) on the other (Urry 1975; Johnson 1977). As
Carchedi conceived much of the new middle class performing a
mixture of these social roles, this inability was regarded as a central
weakness.
2.
CLASS AGAINST RELATIONS IN PRODUCTION:
RE-ESTABLISHING ORTHODOXY
Whatever the impact of new perspectives emphasising the
complexity of the class structure and the role of the new middle
class, it was never the case that they became dominant. Even at
the highpoint of their influence, orthodoxy was being re-worked.
Cottrell (1984) reviewing the various attempts to understand the
peculiar position of the salaried agents of capital claimed, that it
was not just the various designations of these employees, or the
particular methods used to examine them, that was wrong
the
whole project was misconceived. According to Cottrell, Marx
defined classes in economic terms and any attempt to integrate
political and ideological relations into class analysis necessarily
undermined the primacy of the economic determination of classes.
Moreover, despite attempts to widen the definition of classes, these
approaches are still unable to link the classes they define to any
identifiable social collectivities or political forces. What is left
therefore is 'either a structural reductionism, simple or complex,
or else a disjunction between structure and political behaviour
which produces a theoretical indeterminacy at a crucial point'
(1984: 93).
By returning to this 'economic' definition of classes, Cottrell
replicates the problems of orthodox Marxism. By defining the
working class simply by non-ownership of the means of production
and its consequent need to engage in wage labour, the class
is expanded to encompass, for instance, senior managers and
shopfloor workers whose social relations are mutually hostile.
Cottrell develops this tradition by plotting the further growth of
wage labour separated from the means of production through the
rise of the joint stock company and institutionalised shareholding.
Individual capitalists have been eliminated to be replaced by nonowning, salaried managers. While this latter group may have day
to day control of the enterprise, for Cottrell, this has no influence
on their class determination. In so far as they have this 'special

Marxist Class Analysis & the Labour Process 43

function' which brings them into conflict with 'rank and file'
workers, this is only 'a specific form of a universally necessary
fiinction, i.e. securing the reproduction of the units of production'
(1984: 87). Their role in the extraction of surplus value is
presented as universal, inevitable and neutral. But the necessity
for the role of control by managers arises because of the
antagonistic relations in production (Marx 1981).^
In reformulating orthodox Marxist class analysis, Cottrell
reproduces the problem of the lack of correspondence between
class membership and class consciousness and organisation. On
the whole, managers in industry and in the public sector are highly
likely to regard themselves as middle class and be Conservative
supporters (Savage et al 1992). Cottrell accommodates this
disparity by introducing two other levels of analysis, one at the
level of social collectivities and the other at the level of political
forces. The main social collectivities in Britain are for Cottrell the
'working class' and the 'middle class'. The former 'may be seen
as a suhsetoix)^t economically defined working class ...although
it includes sections of the petty bourgeoisie ...who regard
themselves as "working for a living"' (1984: 213). The British
middle class 'includes large sections of the economically defined
working class (especially salaried employees) as well as sections of
the petty bourgeoisie proper and sections of the "individual
bourgeoisie"' (1984: 213). This seems to characterise perfecdy
the dislocation and irrelevance of class analysis to social and
political life of which he was earlier so critical.
Faced with growing attacks on the integrity of Marxism and
the feasibility of any socialist project based upon working-class
self-activity, not least from former adherents (Hobsbawm 1981,
Gorz 1982, Hirst 1985) socialist theorists appear to have retreated
into the security of orthodoxy. Miliband, for instance, in
providing a critique of what he termed 'the new revisionism',
simply reiterated a picture of class relations long regarded as
inadequate. More specifically, he left unaddressed the question
of the class membership of the growing numbers of people whose
work is increasingly remote from direct production, many of
whom have, to varying degrees, managerial authority over other
employees. Miliband saw no complexity or contradictions in the
on-going development of capitalist social relations, believing that
while the working class is not identical to that of earlier periods,
'in terms of its location within the productive process, its very
limited or non-existent power and responsibility in that process.

44 Capital & Class55

its near exclusive reliance on the sale of its labour power for its
income, and the level of that income, it remains as much the
"working class" as its predecessors' (1985: 9).
A further attempt to re-establish the orthodox Marxist model
of classes was advanced by Peter Meiksins (1986). While explicitly
ranged against theories of the new middle class he makes no
considered examination of Poulantzas and Carchedi, offering,
instead, a 'democratic' method of dismissing their theories: 'there
is now a majority view that the "new middle class" is virtually
indistinguishable from manual labour in its conditions of work
and existence' (1986: 102). Instead, we are back to the contention
that within capitalist production there are only two classes,
bourgeoisie and proletariat, defined by ownership and nonownership of the means of production respectively.
Nevertheless, instead of an account positing dichotomy and
polarisation, Meiksins recognises the complexity of the division
of labour, the consequent importance of the concept of the
collective labourer and that there is no necessary political unity
amongst wage labour. Despite these amendments, Meiksins'
analysis is nevertheless a one-sided reading of the development of
the social relations of contemporary capitalism. Through his
contention that there stands no middle class between capital and
labour, he seriously underestimates the material base of the
political divisions he himself notes within workforces.
The source of Meiksins' failure to link divisions within the
workforce to different material interests, and to see some divisions
at least as resulting from antagonistic class relations, lies in his
inadequate theorisation of the capitalist production process.
Nowhere does he define the labour process. Meiksins notes that
the production process has become increasingly collective and that
'all non-capitalists
i.e, the entire collective labourer, irrespective
of function
are exploited' (1986: 111). What he does not
acknowledge or examine is the socialisation of the function of the
capitalist. Hence, the social structure which arises from modern
capitalist production is, according to him, made up of a small
number of capitalists and a vast working class.
In order to distinguish berween managers who are part of the
capitalist class from others who are not, Meiksins is forced to
emphasise that there has been little divorce of ownership from
control, as 'corporate managers are frequently major stockholders
themselves' (1986: 111). Confusion is immediately introduced,
however, by his simultaneous contention that even where not

Marxist Class Analysis & the Labour Process 45

major shareholders themselves, corporate managers do not differ
significandy in their 'values, goals or behaviour'. This formulation
mirrors Dahrendorf's 'positions, roles and outlooks', while arguing
the exact opposite (Dahrendorf 1957: 47). Whereas Dahrendorf
argued that these features significantly distinguished managers
from the stockholders, Meiksins implies that managers should
also be included in the capitalist class. This introduction of
subjective criteria negates Meiksins' earlier approach, in which
class is defined objectively by ownership of capital and not by
values, goals or behaviour. Thus, his attempt to draw a picture
of a small, coherent and integrated capitalist circle in opposition
to the great mass of wage labour, both managerial and other, is
fundamentally flawed even within his own perspectives.
Granting no relevance in the determination of class to relations
of authority and subordination, Meiksins, nevertheless, does
acknowledge one source of class ambiguity. What makes the
position of some privileged, skilled, autonomous workers truly
ambiguous is 'the possibility that their occupants may be
promoted into the capitalist class' (1986: 113), raising the
question of whether the individual has an interest in the
maintenance of capitalism. Here, promotion into the capitalist
class is synonymous with promotion into upper management.
However, these positions are defined not by any positive or
particular role which people in them play within the productive
process, but rather by the associated absence or reduced threat of
unemployment, de-skilling etc. The move from an ambiguous
class position into the capitalist class, therefore, implies no
transformation in the social function, merely a removal of threats
to the continuance of existing roles within the 'labour process'.
There are different layers of control having different levels of
significance within the managerial structures of companies. But
it is by no means possible to draw a line through complex
managerial hierarchies and determine that on one side stands
capitalist managers and on the other workers. Lower and middle
management are integral to a process of control and supervision.
When workers express hostility to managers and supervisors they
are reflecting at least a partial truth: the occupants of these
positions represent antagonistic social forces. Meiksins evades the
world of real, practical relations by simply stating that: 'Routine
operational decisions do not add up to meaningful control over
the means of production' (1986: 112). Lower and middle management
may not have strategic control over many areas, but their

46 Capital & Class55

control over the labour of others is significant and meaningful, not
least to those who experience it. Meiksins is silent on the relations
of authority that the new middle class exercises over workers,
acknowledging only that 'occupants of middle positions are no
doubt privileged in material terms, generally also having a greater
degree of autonomy, skill and so on' (1986: 112).
Just as there are no qualitative differences between the roles of
capitalist managers and those in ambiguous locations, nor
according to Meiksins, is there any difference in role between those
with real promotion prospects and routine white collar employees,
members of the working class. Whether one falls into one category
or the other depends not on social roles performed within the
production process but an assessment of long term prospects of
promotion into the capitalist class. Meiksins, while recognising
that roles inside production have real effects on consciousness,
continues to insist that promotions other than to ambiguous
upper management 'do not affect ... long term class interests'
(1986: 113). Meiksins is here firmly back within the problematic
of orthodox Marxism, saved from the problems of an ill-fitting
reality by the deus ex machina of'false consciousness'.
The failure of Meiksins to give due weight to the conflict of
interests which underpins workplace ideologies is also reflected in
his discussion of the relationship of gender to class structure and
conflict. Undoubtedly sexism is a real factor within the labour
movement, limiting solidarity and allowing the majority of women
to be restricted to low-paid jobs. The argument advanced by
Meiksins su^ests something further. According to Meiksins, the
fact that women are frequently supervised or managed by men
contributes to the mutual limitation of knowledge of each other's
situations and reinforces the barriers to working class solidarity.
But Marxism is not co-counselling and it aims not to make male
managers and working class women mutually sensitive to each
other's needs and problems but to abolish the hierarchical control
system, the division of labour and private ownership for profit
which necessitates them.
That it is no longer considered necessary to give extended
accounts of theories dealing with the new middle class is also
reflected in Richard Scase's most recent work. Here, Poulantzas
and Carchedi appear, are characterised inaccurately, and are
dispensed with all in one page. Once again examination of the
labour process is rudimentary and there is no reference to recent
debates concerning it. In a book in which Marx's ideas are

Marxist Class Analysis & the Lahour Process 47

generally taken seriously, these absences cause fundamental
problems for the analysis.
Acknowledging that capitalist corporations are hierarchically
organised Scase maintains that 'it is possible to identify the
underlying dichotomous and antagonistic nature of employment
relations' (1992: 15). This possibility arises because: 'Some tasks
are associated with the functions of capital vA\i\e. others relate to
the activities oi lahour (1992: 15). Although the division between
those respectively employed is recognised as being less than
evident in most profit-making corporations, Scase states that 'it
is oft:en visible in day-to-day activities through the structuring of
controlxAztions (1992: 15). What his approach blurs, however,
is the fact that the control exercised through managerial
hierarchies is integral and extensive and allows no such
dichotomous division. When Scase attempts to concretise these
divisions he is therefore forced into the quite arbitrary
assignments. Technologists, scientists, engineers and various
specialists are dispatched to the side of capital because the primary
nature of their work tasks attaches them to the ownership
function. As 'intellectual' employees they are compelled to utilise
their talents and skills for the interests of institutional and/or
individual shareholders (1992: 17). But he is unable to state that
which differentiates the compulsion they face from the
compulsion faced by workers. Scase is clear that 'intellectual'
employees share a common objective class position but vacillates
between subjective elements ('their predisposition to regard wage
labour as a productive cost that must be offset against corporate
revenues') and their 'strategic functions' (which give them 'the
overriding goal of proHt-making and capital accumulation') (1992:
18). Much of this characterisation could be disputed both on the
subjective level (as Scase himself notes) and empirically by
reference to the lack of involvement of engineers and scientists in
strategic decision-making, certainly in British industry (Finniston
Committee 1980; Armstrong 1987).
By failing to conceptualise the new middle class and to
appreciate the dual nature of work performed by this grouping,
Scase mistakenly assigns them en hloc to the capitalist class. As
if to compensate, he assigns those providing a range of ancillary
and support services, to the working class. This designation is
made despite his acknowledging the fact that they do not
produce surplus value. Rather, the assignment occurs because
they are indispensable to the accumulation process. But he fails

48 Capital dr Class55
to say why, when they exercise control, their indispensability is
any different from the indispensability of the engineer, manager
or foreman. These employees too are essential for the
accumulation process under capitalism. The justification for this
determination, according to Scase, lies not now in function but
in the conditions under which tasks are carried out: 'Although
they may enjoy a certain degree of working autonomy, the
discretion and judgement they exercise are circumscribed by
managers and higher-grade technical-professionals. As such they
are controlled by others, with their performance monitored, and
they are generally treated as a cost of production' (p. 19). Despite
Scases's contention, however, this control and monitoring is not
specific to these groups: modern control systems envelop virtually
the whole of the managerial hierarchy (Nichols and Beynon.
1977). In their absence from strategic management they would
be joined by the vast majority of employees included by Scase in
the capitalist class.
3. THE LABOUR PROCESS DEBATE
A NARROWING FOCUS
If, as has been argued above, the new contributions to class theory
in the 1970s were based on a much more sophisticated reappraisal
of Marx's writings on the labour process and its relationship to
valorisation, the impact of these writings was far from even. The
'labour process debate' arose almost solely as a response to the
work of Braverman. The focus of the debate was, for a time,
dominated by the universality or otherwise of de-skilling and, as
contributors were drawn from ever wider academic circles,
Braverman's integral concern with the process of class formation
was largely lost. Grint (1991) a less than sympathetic critic,
introduces the debate by claiming that for most Marxists 'class is
defined so widely in direct relationship to ownership or non
ownership of the means of production, and encompasses so many
widely variant occupational groups (to say nothing of the gender
and ethnic divisions), that the relationship berween class structure
and class action tends to be either transparent or totally obscured'
(1991: 153). The formal allegiance to Marxist class analysis,
therefore had little influence on concrete analysis. In practice, it
is hard to find labour process analyses venturing an opinion on
the relationship of workplace relations to class analysis and class
consciousness.'' Labour process writers, on the whole, see only

Marxist Class Analysis & the Lahour Process 49

occupational variation and complexity and have no framework
with which to connect the labour process with wider conceptualisation
of class structure.
In the twenty years since Braverman's started the debate on the
capitalist labour process hundreds of articles and books have
followed. Any assessment of the debate has of necessity to be
selective. In Britain, not only has his impact been greatest
(Nichols 1992), the debate has been relatively centralised through
the mechanism of the annual Aston/UMIST Labour Process
Conference. It does not seem unreasonable therefore to take the
Conference proceedings as representative of the direction of the
debate and the state of the theory. Moreover, what are considered
the most important of the contributions to the Conferences
appear subsequently in print. Of late, the books have included
a good deal of doubt about the viability of the labour process as
a coherent field of study. The range of anxieties and their validity
is not the concern here. Some of them, however, directly impinge
on the relationship berween class and the production process.
A sensible starting point is the collection of articles by Knights
and Willmott (1990) reflecting upon the state oflabour process
theory. There is no reason why articles with quite different yoa
should all deal with class. What is surprising is that not only does
the relationship of the labour process to class analysis not get
substantial treatment, it is not mentioned at all! Craig Littler's
comprehensive theoretical review of the debate, for instance,
argues that three questions have dominated the debate: questions
about deskilling; questions about labour markets; and questions
about managerial strategies and control. In none of the
subsequent discussion does class arise as a problematic concept,
although it should be stressed this is a reflection of the debate
rather than the responsibility of Littler. Nevertheless, class
relations permeate all these questions. Littler calls, for instance,
for a clearer conceptualisation of the labour process and the
distinction berween it and the valorisation process. Were Littler's
injunction to be taken up, central to this distinction would be
which tasks and roles fall within the former and which within the
latter, and the consequences of this distribution for class analysis.
This question is also clearly linked to Littler's other major claim
that 'there is a need to clarify the role given to the concept of
control and control relations' (1990: 77). This is important in
terms of class analysis because, as we shall see, there are writers
who would subsume both the role of control and the agents

50 Capital & Class55

performing it within the labour process and the working class
respectively (Smith and Willmott 1992).
Frequently, writers have approached the issue of control in
tandem with the concept of resistance. As Edwards notes in the
same volume: 'One tendency was to contrast capitalists' control
with workers' resistance. This, however, assumed that capitalists
have clear strategies, that they try to maximise their own control
of the details of work operations and that workers do nothing but
resist this alleged control' (1990: 125). More pertinently here, it
also assumes that we know who are workers and who are
capitalists. Edwards is simply following the common formulation
in which there is a near universal assumption that these are
unproblematic concepts. The nearest Edwards gets to acknowledging
the complexities of relations within the production process
is when he refers to the substantial problem concerning 'the
distinction between productive and unproductive labour and the
definition of who exactly is subordinate to whom' (1990: 139).
But the problem remains unexplored and we are left: with a more
sophisticated attempt to understand how conflict between capital
and labour is mediated by traditions and understandings grafted
on to an assumed dichotomous model of class.
Thompson, who did much to popularise the debate on the
labour process, recognised early the significance of new class theory
for any discussion of changes in the labour process. What is
notable about these approaches, he stated, 'is their common
commitment to analysing class with reference to criteria which go
beyond legal ownership, property and wage relations' (1983: 228)
But, as importantly, Thompson insisted that it was not only class
theory that bore down upon the arena of the labour process:
what happened in the labour process also reflected back on class
theory. 'History only tends to register classes when they make
their mark as fully conscious and active agencies. What is needed
is emphasis on class formation and action on a day-to-day level'
(1983: 227).
More or less the same emphasis is still present some years later
when he states that there is no 'automatic relationship between the
labour process, class formation and social transformation as
envisaged in the Marxist schema. The formulation rests on a
number of inadequate theoretical premisses, including the
conflation of the relations of production with class relations'
(1990: 113). Nevertheless, he acknowledged the obvious interrelationship
between class and production, not least through the

Marxist Class Analysis & the Lahour Process 51

concept of exploitation. Here again, however, the fact of exploitation
tells us litde about particular class formations and Thompson
is at pains to stress the need to recognise the activity of classes as
organised collectivities in contingent circumstances:
These 'conjunctural maps of classes' are dependent on forms
of mediation which include the labour process as well as the
state and other factors; hence analysis of the labour process is
both informed by a structural analysis of class and helps to
shape it, as evidenced by the work of Wright, Poulantzas and
Braverman himself. Yet until recently the 'leap' from the
structural features of the labour process and class to class
formation and struggle was made all too easily'. (1990: 113).
If this implies that following these over-simple leaps,
subsequent theorists have offered us something infinitely more
sophisticated, Thompson fails to cite them. So while he is able
to give broad pointers to the failure of the debate to theorise
adequately the relations between class and production, he is well
short of supplying the a detailed alternative. Indeed, rather than
locating class at the centre of concerns, he arguably encourages
those who would take research into the area of individual
psychology and existential angst: 'The issue of the boundaries
between the labour process and class formation, and with the
psychology of individual identity, are indicative of the longrunning debate concerning the neglect or omission of the
"subjective faaor" in many accounts of the workplace, beginning
with Braverman. The construction of a full theory of the missing
suhject is probably the greatest task facing labour process
theory...'(1990: 114, emphasis in original).
One possible explanation for the increasing distance berween
labour process contributions and class analysis is the incorporation
of the debate within managerial perspectives (Nichols 1992;
Thompson 1990). But even when reviewed from an overtly
Marxist perspective, the complexities of class at the point of
production are hardly approached. Cohen (1987) openly attacks
labour process theorists for the centrality they give to deskilling
and managerial control: 'The insistence within the labour process
debate on a central dynamic of 'control' fails to provide any
explanation of tuhy this dynamic should structure the capitalist
labour process
unless, perhaps, it expresses some lust for power
inherent in human nature' (1987: 49, emphasis in original). She

52 Capital & Class55

does not, however, object to the simple polarisation which
normally accompanies' these emphases but wants attached to
them the statement that they result from exploitation, by the need
for capital to throw up strategies to increase valorisation.
Nowhere in her article is class a problematic concept. The
labour process is about exploitation, but the agents of exploitation
do not appear and the proletariat is unspecified. The only
exception is when she states:
It is part of our argument here that in forming socialist
strategies we have to base ourselves on these fundamental,
independent class interests, whatever the reconstruction,
relocation or re-deployment going on within capitalism
and
it is important to remember that both capitalism and class
structure have always been 'changing' (1987: 48).
Cohen manages both to signal the need the changing
composition of classes while relegating recomposition to
unimportance because capitalism has always changed. There is
no specificity concerning the actual make up of classes and their
relations to one another, and how these might be reflected within
the production process.
Cohen's objective is to reinstate the centrality of exploitation
and the law of value: 'Labour process writers have never considered
the labour process from the point of view of value...' (1987: 48).
But to do so outside of Cohen's generalities and ritual insistencies
is to pose the question, 'who is producing value and when?'. To
do so raise class as a central relationship within the production
process in a particularly stark way. It is this challenge which still
confronts Marxism and labour process theory. To accept it is to
recognise uncertainty and change and to reintroduce the
intellectual excitement absent from present debates.
4. THE LABOUR PROCESS AND THE ABSENT NEW MIDDLE CLASS
Much analysis within labour process writings has made implicit
assumptions that the workplace is inhabited by workers and agents
of capital alone. Work centring on categories of employees who
were unambiguously workers could carry this assumption without
great damage to their analysis. However, anyone writing on
groups of professional employees immediately confronts the

Marxist Class Analysis & the Lahour Process 53

problem that in commonsense views of the world, as well as in
much sociology, these groups are regarded as the occupational
backbone of the middle class. This in part explains the necessity
for rwo of the most consistent Marxist writers examining the class
location of professional engineers to draw on wider class analysis
and to reflect back upon it.
Engineers and Social Class (i)
Meiksins' attempt to modernise orthodox Marxist theory has
already been noted. His analysis, maintaining the absence of a
new middle class from the social relations of production, is
underpinned by his analysis of the function and role of
professional engineers. At this level he cannot ignore the relations
of authority exercised by many engineers over other workers but
he is quite explicit in dismissing these relations of control as
determining features of class:
It is certainly reasonable to assume that their position in the
labor process may affect engineers' consciousness, perhaps
encouraging them to think of themselves as superior to or
different from other types of employee. Nevertheless, to argue
that this is a class barrier is misleading and inaccurate. For to
do so is to confuse a group's function in the labor process with
the social relations of production... While it is important to
consider how a laborer's function may affect his or her
consciousness, the question of whether the laborer is totally
subordinate (as with the assembly-line worker) or in a position
of relative power (as with the engineer) is irrelevant to the
question of whether he or she is a wage-laborer' (1984: 193).
The social relations of production are here reduced to
ownership and non-ownership of the means of production, with
the internal relations within the production process rendered
irrelevant.'' The opposition of the function of labour and the
social relations of production ignores the fact that the function
oflabour is simultaneously a social relationship, just as the social
relations of production are manifested in concrete tasks and
interactions. Through this false dichotomy he is able to mask the
class differences between engineers and lower managers, on the
one hand, and labourers, on the other, claiming that the flinctions
of supervision and control of the former comprise merely
differentiated tasks within a common labour process.^

54 Capital dr Class55
Engineers are, according to Meiksins, wage labourers within a
labour process but at the same time their position is 'structurally
ambiguous' (1990: 4). This ambiguity stems from the fact that
although they are employees their work 'often places them in
conflict with subordinate workers' (1990: 10). As a consequence
of their location, ambiguity is reflected in their self-definitions:
Meiksins contends that in America engineers have refijsed to equate
themselves with organised labour and yet have been sceptical of the
view that their interests and the interests of business are the same.
Meiksins contrasts this characterisation to the conventional
Marxist view which 'tends to exclude significant portions of engineering
labour from the labour process, seeing it linked to capital
instead' (1990: 17). It is doubtful whether there is such a
conventional Marxist view. Meiksins udlises it to buttress the older
and even more conventional position of orthodox Marxism. But in
arguing against their wholesale absorption into the capitalist class,
Meiksins also confronts the more sophisticated perspective arguing
that such employees are best conceived as a new middle class.
A perspective arguing for the recognition of a new middle class
would seem readily to encompass his observations of engineers'
structural and ideological ambiguity. Indeed, Meiksins, in contrast
to earlier work, pays considerable attention to the work of
Carchedi. Meiksins notes Carchedi's insistence on the distinction
between the work of coordination, carried out by some managers,
and the work of surveillance. The former is considered to be part
of the labour process while the latter is part of the global function
of capital. Meiksins contends that not all engineers carry out work
of surveillance, a point which could readily be accepted. However,
Meiksins gives no account of the work of engineers in any
particular work location, so the actual organisation and content
of their work remains abstract.
A further point of criticism made by Meiksins concerns the
status and importance of the distinction between coordination and
surveillance. Even where engineers dearly do not carry out the work
of surveillance, he notes that they still consider themselves different
from production workers. But he gives no indication of the
significance of this sense of difference and its relationship to class
relations. Toolroom workers, for instance, have traditionally felt
themselves to be distinct from machinists, let alone the women
who staff the canteen, but these feelings as such do not indicate
antagonistic class interests.' Meiksins fails to state whether the sense
of difference of non-supervisory engineers is of a different order.

Marxist Class Analysis & the Lahour Process 5 5

Meiksins misrepresents Carchedi in order to further question
the validity of the basis of a new middle class. He states that
'Carchedi notes that directive labour may form part of the
collective labourer or part of the ftinction of capital, depending on
whether it is coordination or surveillance' (1990: 21-2). Meiksins
has worked a crucial change of terminology. Nowhere does
Carchedi, or Marx before him, refer to coordination as a form of
direction. Meiksins confuses the concepts and the argument. It is
possible to have coordination without direction. One can describe
tasks of coordination
such as ordering materials, scheduling
work which, divorced from the power to compel and control,
are part of the labour process. It is the relationships within which
these tasks are performed which determine their character.'" It is
therefore not possible to produce a list of tasks which pass some
technicist test, determining their social fiinction outside of the
relationship within which the tasks take place.
By constructing the concept of imperative coordination
Meiksins effectively conflates coordination and control. It is a
short step to claim that 'capitalists organise the labour process
hierarchically, build relations of control and domination into the
labour process itself (1990: 23). If the ftinction of control is now
part of the labour process itself, senior managers controlling the
production process are also workers. This conclusion is not the
intended one, however. Rather, Meiksins' point is that all kinds
of mental labour, be it supervisory or not, is pitted against other
kinds of labour through the creation of a hierarchical labour
process which obscures its collective character. This allows him
to conclude that the contradiction between its collective character
and its hierarchical organisation is the key source of ambiguity.
Meiksins presents an orthodox Marxist model of class struaure
in which there is no new middle class berween the capitalist and
working class, but rather a small ruling class and a large
heterogeneous working class within which certain positions are
'ambiguous' because they permit the occupants to enter the
capitalist class. Essentially the same model has been advanced by
Chris Smith over a number of years, a model linked by the
common concentration on engineers.
Engineers and Social Class (ii)
What distinguishes Smith's work from that of Meiksins is that
much of it has arisen from sustained empirical work on engineers
in particular locations. This has unearthed much richer detail of

56 Capital & Class*'!>5

the work of engineers, but at the same time has produced a
complexity frequendy contradicting the theory of class structure
to which Smith is drawn. Smith has an unstable relationship with
the concept of a new middle class. He variously attempts to
modify it by moving the boundaries, so that it applies to a smaller
group than he claims envisaged by Poulantzas and Carchedi, or
attacks the concept as not useful or plain wrong. However, while
he shifts berween levels of criticism both within and between
articles, there has been a movement over time away from qualified
acceptance of the existence of a new middle class to outright
opposition to the very concept. This movement takes place,
moreover, with no conscious re-evaluation of his