Theories of working-class movements

Most histories of working-class movements begin in Britain. During the nineteenth century, Britain was the only industrial nation, with the only large working class. Remarkably, as Table 15.1 indicates, there were more workers in manufacturing than in agriculture as early as the Battle of Waterloo, in 1815, virtually a hundred years earlier than in any other major Power (as Table 19.1 also reveals).

The early emergence of British labor made it unique. When, at the beginning of the twentieth century, other major Powers were industrialized, with comparably sized labor forces, the nature of industrialization, of the state, and of class had been transformed. What happened in Britain and in Chartism to the first proletariat was not repeatable. Nonetheless this first working class was then regarded – and often still is – as the prototype of the future. Britain housed Marx and Engels (who managed a factory in Stockport). Their theory of the working class drew principally on the British experience and has influenced virtually all subsequent writers. They argued four principal theses:

1. Capitalism diffused a qualitative divide between capital and labor throughout civil society as similar “universal classes.”

2. Manufacturing capitalism massified the labor force, making workers collectively interdependent at the point of production and in the labor market. Workers became interdependent “collective laborers,” forming trade unions and undertaking collective class action.

3. Similarity and interdependence are reinforced outside of work by dense worker communities capable of autonomous social and cultural organization.

4. These three capacities for collective action generate class politics and a socialist party capable of capturing political power, if necessary by revolution.