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7 | Why Does Class Matter? (Patreon)

Published:
2021-02-15 05:56:30
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2026-06
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Content

Episode 7 dives into class theory as we discuss why it’s important to make a normative case for class politics, misconceptions about who the working class is, and why the labor market dominates. We also ruminate on why workers don’t always organize and why solidarity is a counterculture. Plot twist: Lillian accuses everyone except herself of class reductionism.

Why Does Class Matter? (forthcoming article): Lillian Cicerchia | Free University of Berlin - Academia.edu

Claus Offe and Heimut Weisenthal. “Two Logics of Collective Action.” In Disorganized Capitalism. The MIT Press, 1985.

Cedric Johnson. Revolutionaries to Race Leaders: Black Power and the Making of African American Politics. University of Minnesota Press, 2007.

Comments

Paul Bowman

Really like the paper. Agree on constraints on solidarity being endogenous to the class dynamic. Malatesta made a similar point in his debate with Pierre Monatte (CGT founder, revolutionary syndicalist) at the 1907 Amsterdam conference: "The basic error of Monatte and of all revolutionary syndicalists, in my opinion, derives from an overly simplistic conception of the class struggle. It is a conception whereby the economic interests of all workers – of the working class – are held to be equal, whereby it is enough for workers to set about defending their own particular interests in order for the interests of the whole proletariat against the bosses to be defended. The reality is very different, in my view. The workers, like the bourgeoisie, like everyone, are subject to the law of universal competition that derives from the system of private property and that will only be extinguished together with that system. There are therefore no classes, in the proper sense of the term, because there are no class interests. There exists competition and struggle within the working "class", just as there does among the bourgeoisie. The economic interests of one category of worker are implacably in contrast with those of another category. And indeed we sometimes see some workers much closer, economically and mentally, to the bourgeoisie than to the proletariat. Cornelissen gave us some examples of this fact here in Holland. And there are others. I need no remind you that workers very often use violence during their strikes... against the police or the bosses? No, against the scabs who too are exploited and even more unfortunate, while the workers' true enemies, the only real obstacle to social equality, are the police and the bosses. However, moral solidarity between proletarians is possible, if economic solidarity is not. Workers who limit themselves to the defence of their corporative interests will not know what it is, but there will come the day when the shared will to transform society will make new men of them. In today's society, solidarity can only be the result of sharing a common ideal. It is the task of anarchists to incite the syndicates to the ideal, guiding them little by little towards the social revolution – at the risk of damaging those "immediate gains" which they are so fond of today." "in proprio senso" - i.e. as a pre-given class-for-itself with unitary interests.

What's Left of Philosophy

Thank you for reading it! I still think there are class interests. I'm workin on that. I'm into the collective vulnerability part of my paper, so I think something like an "interest" is at stake there. -L

Abra K

Please please the paper is no longer at the link… i’d be very grateful if you could post it here or somewhere?

Abra K

Amazing podcast btw - thank you!