Zhang Liang: British Marxist Debates on the Contemporary Working Class and Theoretical Reflections
In March 1978, Eric Hobsbawm, a member of the Communist Party of Great Britain and a Marxist historian revered as "the wisest Marxist currently living," delivered a lecture titled "The Forward March of Labour Halted?", in which he expressed profound anxiety regarding the future of the British working-class movement. Published in September of that year, the transcript ignited a debate within the British Left. The journal Marxism Today continued to publish discussion pieces for nearly two years, only tapering off once Thatcherism began to forcefully command public attention. However, the reflection and debate sparked by this event did not cease. Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe subsequently developed "post-Marxism," proposing a highly influential theoretical model to explain the phenomenon of the declining revolutionary character of the contemporary working class. Stuart Hall, echoing "post-Marxism," offered profound reflections on the crisis of the contemporary working class and its possible solutions from an ideological dimension. Conversely, Ralph Miliband and Ellen Meiksins Wood attacked the aforementioned three perspectives as "New Revisionism" and the "New 'True' Socialism" [1]—views they believed had a deeply negative impact on the future of British socialism—while vigorously arguing that the Marxist doctrine of class struggle was not obsolete. Since the 1990s, the working-class movement in developed capitalist countries like the UK has fallen into a long-term decline and has yet to emerge from this trough. Recently, however, sporadic and radical worker protests, represented by the "Yellow Vests" in France, have appeared in Europe. Is the working-class movement in developed capitalist countries undergoing a revival? It is necessary for us to return to the debates and dialogues surrounding the contemporary working class within British Marxism during the 1980s to draw beneficial theoretical insights.
I. The Working-Class Movement in Crisis: The Warning Signal from Hobsbawm
Marxism Today was a theoretical journal founded by the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) in 1957. Because it primarily communicated the mainstream positions of the CPGB, its theoretical and political influence remained quite limited prior to 1979. In September 1978, at the invitation of the magazine's new editor, Martin Jacques, Hobsbawm published a short article—the transcript of his March 1978 Marx Memorial Lecture, "The Forward March of Labour Halted?" This short piece was primarily a summary of the historical changes in the British labor movement over the past 100 years; the introduction and conclusion briefly discussed his views on the current state and future of the working-class movement. Hobsbawm did not expect that such a "minor article," intended as a gesture of "friendly support," would exert such immense influence, thrusting him—a man who previously did not focus on practical politics—into the teeth of the storm of political debate. This precipitated his later vocational transformation and simultaneously enabled Marxism Today to leap forward as the most dynamic political-theoretical journal in Britain for the following decade.
Unlike other first-generation British New Left Marxists such as Raymond Williams, E.P. Thompson, and Ralph Miliband, Hobsbawm was a "scholarly" figure who did not pay much attention to current affairs. After graduating with a PhD from Cambridge University in 1947, he immediately became a lecturer in history at Birkbeck College, University of London. For the next 30 years, he devoted himself wholeheartedly to being a professional historian specializing in labor history, achieving distinguished results. Despite his research in labor history, he neither focused on nor participated in the practical working-class movement, but simply followed the mainstream political position of the CPGB, maintaining an optimistic attitude toward the British working class and the prospects of socialism. However, entering the 1970s, Hobsbawm underwent an unconscious change. Initially, due to the needs of academic exchange, he established close scholarly ties with Marxists in Southern Europe, such as Italy and Spain, which led to an intersection with the then-forming "Eurocommunism." Ultimately, he identified with Eurocommunist concepts, advocating for the exploration of theories and strategies for moving toward socialism that suited national realities, based on the new situations and tasks facing Communist Parties in developed European capitalist countries. Since he intended to explore a path consistent with national reality, what was the status of the British working class and its movement, and what were its prospects? These were the questions Hobsbawm contemplated and sought to answer while preparing "The Forward March of Labour Halted?" in 1978.
1978 happened to be the 160th anniversary of Marx's birth, and Hobsbawm was invited to deliver the Marx Memorial Lecture on the theme of "The British Working Class One Hundred Years After Marx." At the beginning of the lecture, Hobsbawm stated that he "wanted to take this opportunity to look generally at certain developments in the British working class over the past hundred years," because "the working class and the labor movement are in a stage of crisis." Yet, most people, including the leaders of working-class parties, were oblivious to this, let alone prepared to make changes to advance with the times. His goal was to "examine the crisis within the long-term perspective of the changing structure of British capitalism and the proletariat," because "our task as Marxists, and my task as the guest speaker for the Marx Memorial Lecture, is to use Marx's method and general analytical theory to specifically analyze our own era." Hobsbawm pointed out that with the continuous development of British capitalism and the growth and maturation of working-class political consciousness, the traditional British working-class movement, with industrial workers as its mainstay, reached its climax around 1878. However, after entering the 20th century, and especially after the end of the Second World War, "the nature of British capitalism underwent profound changes in four aspects": first, the capitalist mode of production shifted from labor-intensive to technology-intensive; second, a large-scale public service sector emerged outside the private capitalist sector, absorbing a vast employed population; third, the impact of capitalist competition on the condition of the working class was decreasing, while the impact of the public service sector, driven by political interests, was rising; fourth, the actual living standards of workers escaped the absolute poverty of Marx's era and achieved substantial improvement. These morphological changes in capitalism influenced and altered the internal composition of the working class. Occupationally, the number of white-collar workers grew rapidly, while the number of industrial workers and manual laborers in the Marxian sense dropped sharply, falling from about 75% of the total working population in 1911 to about 50% in 1976. In terms of gender, the situation dominated by male workers was completely transformed: the proportion of female employees rose from 20% in 1951 to 50% at that time. Regarding the source of labor, a large number of immigrant workers appeared after the Second World War, especially immigrant workers of color. This diversification of composition led to a resurgence and prevalence of sectarianism within the working-class movement: geologically-based sectarianism, trade-based sectarianism, and income-stratification-based sectarianism, which ultimately led to the differentiation and division between the poor and the rich within the working class. Social existence determines social consciousness. Along with the changes in the mode of social existence, the political consciousness of the contemporary British working class also changed. Simply put, the will to pursue a socialist future weakened, and the 19th-century unionism that prioritized economic interests once again became dominant. Hobsbawm’s conclusion was: "The development of the working class over the last generation has raised so many serious questions for itself and for the future of its movement. What makes all this more tragic is that today we are actually in a stage of world crisis for capitalism—more accurately, a stage of crisis for British capitalist society, perhaps even a stage of collapse! At this very time and place, the working class and its movement should have provided a non-capitalist alternative and led the British people toward this goal." At the end of his lecture, Hobsbawm issued a Eurocommunist-style appeal: Marxists should, like Marx did in his day, analyze new situations and new changes and formulate new lines and new strategies to "restore the soul, vitality, and historical initiative of the Labour Party and the socialist movement." "This is what we should do while waiting for British capitalism to enter its suddenly descending crisis stage. We are in that crisis stage now; we must do this!"
Despite knowing it had potential political-polemical overtones, Hobsbawm truly did not expect that the transcript would attract so much attention. Trade union leaders, Labour Party politicians and theorists, Communist theorists, and New Left theorists all participated in the discussion. This catalyzed an expansive debate within the Left camp regarding the current state of British politics. Simultaneously, in the process of responding to these debates, Hobsbawm continuously developed and refined his own political views, achieving a transformation from a "scholarly" figure to a "public political intellectual" engaged with reality.
Why did "The Forward March of Labour Halted?" generate such an enthusiastic response beyond Hobsbawm's expectations?
First, it warned of the British Labour Party's defeat in the 1979 general election. In 1945, the Labour Party formed its first independent cabinet, subsequently replacing the Liberal Party as the governing party that alternated power with the Conservatives. Before the 1979 election, its time in power was roughly equal to that of the Conservatives. At least before the end of 1978, the James Callaghan government (1976–1979) had not shown obvious signs of defeat. In this context, the fact that Hobsbawm warned of Labour's defeat a year in advance, based solely on his foresight as a historian, was naturally a great shock.
Second, it provided a new angle of analysis, stimulating the debating passion of people from all sides. Why would the process of Labour's political victory invite a historic setback? Hobsbawm provided a brand-new analytical perspective, arguing that the problem lay in the working class and trade unions' one-sided pursuit of economic interests and their obsession with "wage strikes" characteristic of unionism, such that they could no longer form an effective political integration with the Labour Left who pursued a socialist future. As Hobsbawm later summarized in retrospect, it was precisely this new perspective—derived from history yet facing reality—that attracted not only theorists but also political activists from the local to the central levels to participate.
Finally, it prompted the British Left theoretical community to begin seriously considering the major question of "what happened to the contemporary working class." After the Second World War, developed capitalist countries successively entered the "affluent society," and the social class structure changed accordingly. First, the number, proportion, and role of the traditional working class in social progress were declining significantly. Second, a considerable number of new social strata appeared, driving various new social movements—including gender, race, LGBTQ+, anti-nuclear, and ecology—which played an increasingly powerful role in promoting social change. In the 1970s, French Marxists were the first to reflect on these new phenomena and changes. Whether it was Nicos Poulantzas's theory of the "new petty bourgeoisie" or André Gorz's theory of the "new working class," both argued that the traditional industrial working class was in crisis and had lost its original revolutionary character; social change and the socialist future could only rely on various new class forces. Hobsbawm's position clearly echoed those of Poulantzas and Gorz, thereby prompting more and more British Marxists to focus on the fate and direction of the British working class.
II. Laclau and Mouffe: First is the Crisis of the Marxist Doctrine of Class
In January 1979, four months after the publication of "The Forward March of Labour Halted?", Stuart Hall published "The Great Moving Right Show" in Marxism Today, predicting that the Conservative Party led by Margaret Thatcher would win the general election and publicly using the new term "Thatcherism" for the first time. Subsequently, the debate on the contemporary working class and the discussion on Thatcherism were carried out simultaneously and permeated each other in Marxism Today. Eventually, while the discussion on Thatcherism continued to deepen, the contemporary working-class debate came to a temporary close. Right at this moment, in January 1981, two Left theorists appeared who had not participated in the previous debate and were not very famous at the time. They suddenly elevated the original debate from the level of specific practices—such as unions, the Labour Party, and their policies—to the theoretical level of class concepts, class theory, and revolutionary strategy. They pointed out that the current crisis of the British working class was actually, first and foremost, a crisis of the Marxist doctrine of class. These two were Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe.
Compared to Hobsbawm and most other original participants in the debate, Laclau and Mouffe were quite...
"Alternative": First, they had practical experience in the more radical and violent leftist struggles of Latin America; thus, their perception of class and class struggle differed from those more localized British leftist theorists and activists. Second, both were experts in Marxist political theory—their first theoretical works being Politics and Ideology in Marxist Theory (1977) and Gramsci and Marxist Theory (1979), respectively—and they possessed a more theorized understanding of class struggle with greater depth in the history of ideas. Third, they were intellectually deeply influenced by continental "Western Marxism" and post-structuralism, finding themselves more familiar with and supportive of the class theories of Nicos Poulantzas, André Gorz, and others. Naturally, when looking at the same crisis of the contemporary working class, what they saw differed from what Hobsbawm and others observed. In January 1981, they co-authored an article in Marxism Today titled "Socialist Strategy: Where Next?", stating clearly at the outset: "Socialist political struggle today takes place in a terrain profoundly transformed by the emergence of new contradictions; traditional Marxist discourse, centered on the analysis of class struggle and capitalist class contradictions, faces great difficulty in articulating this struggle. The women's movement, national movements, movements of racial minorities and minority sexual orientations, anti-nuclear and anti-establishment movements—these new political subjects possess distinct anti-capitalist characteristics, yet their identities are not constructed around a clear 'class interest.' Has the time now come where it is necessary to revise the conception of class struggle? ... This is a new type of problem currently facing socialist fighters in developed capitalist countries. The old necessity, the famous 'guarantees of history,' are seriously questioned; political uncertainty arises alongside a growing theoretical impasse. This is why one hears the phrase 'the crisis of Marxism' with increasing frequency." That is to say, in their view, what the crisis of the contemporary working class truly exposed was a crisis of Marxist theory—especially the Marxist doctrine of class—because "the conception of the working class as the 'historic force for change' is no longer valid." The urgent task was to reinvent a new class doctrine, identify new subjects of revolutionary struggle, and formulate a new strategy for socialist revolution. In 1985, they published Hegemony and Socialist Strategy, hoisting the banner of "Post-Marxism." The most scrutinized aspect of this book was, of course, its theory of radical democracy, but this theory was precisely grounded in their new doctrine of class.
In the view of Laclau and Mouffe, there is nothing new under the sun. The crisis encountered by the British working class in the late 1970s had already appeared once in Germany before the First World War: the German working class and trade unions grew through economic struggle, but their political relationship with the Social Democratic Workers' Party of Germany became increasingly strained, "to the point that the unity of the working class and its determination to pursue socialism became increasingly problematic." This reality, which ran contrary to Marxist theoretical expectations, confirmed the "crisis of Marxism." The Second International, the Third International, and "Western Marxism" all made unremitting efforts to overcome this theoretical crisis, yet the same working-class crisis reappeared eighty years later! This proved that a thorough reflection on Marxist theory, especially class theory, was mandatory. Drawing on Gramsci’s theory of hegemony and the post-structuralist trend that flourished in the 1970s, they argued that the true problem with Marxist class theory lay in its insistence that socialism could only be reached and realized by relying on the working class; this was a fallacious essentialist way of thinking. This essentialist thinking in Marxist class theory rested on three theoretical pillars: the thesis of the centrality of the productive forces, the thesis of the trend toward the universalization of working-class poverty, and the thesis that socialism is the fundamental interest of the working class. However, historical development had proven all of them wrong. "The economic sphere is not a self-regulating space governed by endogenous laws; there exists neither a principle for the construction of social subjects that can be fixed to a final class core, nor a class position located by historical interests." That is to say, as the material bearers of specific functions of the capitalist mode of production, the working class does not necessarily form a revolutionary class consciousness from its "class-in-itself" experience.
If it is not generated inherently and historically within the dialectical relationship between the economic base and the superstructure, how then is working-class consciousness formed? Laclau and Mouffe argued: first, class consciousness is formed within a non-essentialist totality of overdetermined social relations. In their view, the concept of "overdetermination" [2] was Althusser’s significant theoretical contribution, but in his later stages, Althusser increasingly emphasized the determination by the economic base in the last instance, thereby leading the concept of "overdetermination" toward a new essentialism. His original conception, however, contained a different "theoretical promise"—an anti-essentialist "logic of overdetermination." Within this overdetermined totality of social relations, the formation of class consciousness is not only truly overdetermined but is also "structurally to be subverted and transcended," rather than being fixed and immutable. Second, class consciousness is formed autonomously by the working class through the contingent articulation [3] of ideological elements. In the introduction to Politics and Ideology in Marxist Theory, Laclau utilized Plato’s "Allegory of the Cave" to derive his theory of articulation, emphasizing that the construction of meaning is subjective, contingent, and not necessarily true. Based on this theory of articulation, Laclau and Mouffe argued that within the overdetermined totality of social relations, various ideological factors could be randomly and contingently articulated by the working class into a "discourse"—that is, their own class consciousness. In this regard, the working class forms its own class consciousness, but this consciousness is not necessarily revolutionary or related to socialism. Third, class itself is actually an identity constituted through subjective acts of identification. The discursive choices of the working class are open; whatever ideological elements are chosen will form a specific discourse and, subsequently, determine what kind of person or "subject" they become. In contemporary capitalist society, if the working class does not choose a revolutionary ideology, it naturally ceases to be a revolutionary "subject." This being the case, where is the new revolutionary "subject"? Based on the actual landscape of social movements, Laclau and Mouffe pointed out that new forces for socialist revolution should be constructed from the pluralistic political subjects involved in current new social movements: "innumerable new struggles have shown a tendency to oppose new forms of subordination, and they emerge from the very heart of the new society."
Shortly after its publication, Hegemony and Socialist Strategy attracted the attention of the British leftist theoretical community. There were defenders and apologists as well as critics and opponents, and it quickly spilled over Britain's borders, exerting considerable international influence, with repercussions lasting until the beginning of the 21st century. Carefully analyzing the long-term debate surrounding "Post-Marxism," it is not difficult to find that Laclau and Mouffe's new class doctrine was not the main focus of the controversy. For any leftist theorist not viewing the working-class movements of contemporary developed capitalist countries from the explicit standpoint of a working-class party, it was not difficult to acknowledge: first, they provided a new theory of the formation of working-class consciousness that could explain the decline of revolutionary consciousness under developed capitalist conditions; second, they revealed new trends in anti-capitalist movements in developed capitalist societies—namely, the shift from traditional class struggle to new ideological and hegemonic struggles, with new social movement groups historically replacing the working class as the active subjects of anti-capitalist movements; third, they made people realize that while it is impossible for new social movement groups to replace the working class in completing the task of socialist revolution to achieve the liberation of all humanity, these groups do indeed possess the possibility of becoming revolutionary subjects, and Marxists should strive to facilitate the realization of this possibility by supporting these new social movements.
III. Stuart Hall: The Working Class Must "Learn from Thatcherism"
In a sense, Laclau and Mouffe’s new class doctrine expressed, in a radical and highly theorized manner, the aspirations of the second generation of British New Left theorists who were deeply influenced by continental "Western Marxism," particularly French thought, in the 1970s. However, their theoretical expressions and strategic choices were so radical that most influential second-generation New Left theorists of the time kept their distance from them and avoided endorsing them. Perhaps there was only one exception: Stuart Hall. Throughout the 1980s, Hall was primarily committed to the critique of Thatcherism; the other side of this critique was a reflection on the ideological crisis of the contemporary working class. In Hall's view, the reasons for the success of Thatcherism were the same as the reasons the Left had fallen into crisis. If the British working-class movement and the Labour Party wanted to escape their current crisis, they had to "Learn from Thatcherism" in the ideological struggle. This obviously resonated with the position of Laclau and Mouffe.
Before triggering the debate over Thatcherism, Hall was renowned in the British leftist theoretical community as the true father of "cultural studies" [4] rather than as an observer of socio-political issues. However, he had always closely monitored the state of the contemporary working class, especially its ideological condition. In the mid-to-late 1950s, Richard Hoggart and other members of the first generation of the New Left observed that, compared to the 1930s, British working-class consciousness had undergone significant changes, showing a clear trend of embourgeoisement. Hoggart tended to attribute this to the negative influence of the emerging bourgeois commercial and mass cultures. In 1958, the American economist John Kenneth Galbraith published The Affluent Society, arguing forcefully that the arrival of the affluent society had profoundly changed the economic, political, social, and ideological structures of developed capitalist societies, and that Marx’s 19th-century "traditional wisdom" was obsolete. Galbraith’s views inspired Hall, prompting him to publish "A Sense of Classlessness" in 1958. Based on the theory that the economic base determines the superstructure, he re-interpreted the decline of proletarian consciousness observed by Hoggart: the development of the capitalist mode of production led to the arrival of the affluent society; the lifestyle of the working class began to converge with that of the bourgeoisie, which in turn led to a convergence of class consciousness, thus giving rise to the phenomenon of classlessness. Taking this as a starting point, Hall began to explore in depth the formation mechanisms of contemporary working-class cultural concepts and their possible revolutionary potential. In cultural studies projects of the 1970s, such as Resistance Through Rituals: Youth Subcultures in Post-War Britain (1975) and Policing the Crisis: Mugging, the State, and Law and Order (1978), Hall increasingly discovered that bourgeois ideology had an objective role in shaping and transforming working-class concepts. Theoretically, he grew more aligned with the theory of Ideological State Apparatuses (ISA) of Althusser and Poulantzas, as well as Gramsci’s theory of cultural hegemony. He ultimately confirmed that the power exercised by contemporary bourgeois ideological state apparatuses over members of society, including the working class, was comprehensive, material, and therefore objective—and sometimes even decisive. With the establishment of this understanding, Hall’s focus shifted from culture to the bourgeois ideological state apparatuses, and further to the bourgeois state itself; leading the critique of Thatcherism thus became a natural development. In 1988, responding to accusations that the critique of Thatcherism abandoned class doctrine and class analysis, Hall emphasized that his relevant writings never "suggested that one could analyze British society or 'Thatcherism' by leaving behind the concept of class"; rather, "the real problem was not whether to use the word 'class,' but what the term signifies and what it can or cannot convey." In fact, Hall's critique of Thatcherism inherently contained a new class doctrine.
First is a theory of the re-formation of modern working-class consciousness centered on the concept of "articulation." In the 1990s, British "cultural studies" began to spread aggressively from the English-speaking world to the non-English-speaking world, becoming a global academic trend. Against this backdrop, in 1996...
In 1985, the American cultural studies scholar Jennifer Daryl Slack published a widely circulated paper claiming that “articulation theory” is “one of the most productive concepts in contemporary cultural studies.” The greatest problem with this judgment lies in its conflation of the political critique of “Thatcherism” with the nature of “cultural studies,” thereby generalizing “articulation”—a specific concept of political analysis used primarily to explain the re-formation of contemporary working-class consciousness—into a general theory of ideological critique. When we restore the specific problematic of the formation or re-formation of modern working-class consciousness and re-examine Hall’s famous interview regarding articulation, it is not difficult to understand Hall’s true intent: First, unlike the era of Marx and his predecessors, the modern working-class faces a complex environment of ideological struggle; the acquisition of class consciousness is no longer an a priori or inevitably deterministic process, but a concrete and non-inevitable process of contingent articulation, characterized by strong autonomous choice and the possibility of re-formation. Second, Hall refused to limit articulation solely to the ideological field or treat it as a pure discursive process—as Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe did in Hegemony and Socialist Strategy—and instead emphasized that articulation always occurs within a real social process of dialectical and complex interaction between the economic base and the superstructure, particularly during periods of intense social upheaval. Third, during such social upheavals, the existing ideological structures of specific social forces undergo a rupture, subsequently articulating with new ideological compositions. At this moment, although the external material form remains unchanged, a new socio-political subject emerges. Fourth, between 1964 and 1970, as the social democratic–welfare state consensus entered a period of crisis, the established class consciousness of the modern British working class began to rupture; after 1970, the Conservative Party shrewdly seized this opportunity to launch an ideological struggle against the Labour Party, continuously promoting the rupture and disintegration of the social democratic–welfare state consensus. This ultimately led the working class to articulate with the new Conservative ideology of “authoritarian populism,” integrating a significant portion of the working class into the Conservative “historical bloc” [5] and turning them into supporters of “Thatcherism.” In other words, by using a concept of “articulation” derived from but distinct from Laclau’s, Hall successfully explained—from the perspective of the reconstitution of class consciousness—the puzzling new phenomenon of why the contemporary British working class turned to support the Conservative Party.
Next is the theory of modern class struggle centered on ideological hegemony. Why was the Conservative Party under Thatcher able to repeatedly defeat the Labour Party—which had made enormous contributions to the welfare of the contemporary working class—to win general elections in 1979, 1983, and 1987, even achieving a landslide victory in 1983? Hall argued that the key lay in the fact that the thinking of the Left and the Labour Party remained stuck in traditional “Labourism,” failing to recognize that the struggle for ideological hegemony had historically become the most important arena of modern class struggle. By “Labourism,” Hall referred to the political conceptions formed by the British Labour Party in previous class struggles: “It really assumed that economic facts would transmit themselves directly into the minds of the working class without passing through the real world. Working-class consciousness was like a pre-programmed tube train: once Labour, always Labour.” However, with the re-formation of working-class consciousness, the main battlefield of class struggle between Labour and Conservative, or Left and Right, had shifted from the economic sphere to the ideological sphere. The Labour Party and the Left failed to soberly realize this change and ceded ideological hegemony, leading the working class to be integrated by “Thatcherism” and to form an “imagined community” [6] according to the political project of Thatcherism. To stand back up where one has fallen, Hall argued that if the British working-class movement and the Labour Party wanted to escape their current crisis, they must “learn from Thatcherism” and take the initiative in the struggle for ideological hegemony.
Finally, there is the theory of the re-creation of the subject of socialist revolution oriented toward new social movements. Although he called on the working class to learn new skills of ideological struggle from “Thatcherism,” as a sober and calm observer, Hall’s judgment on the current state and foreseeable future of the British political landscape was actually pessimistic. Entering the 1990s, he noted, “Capital remains global, and today more so than ever. Not only that, but the old inequalities that arose with it are still determining people’s lived experience and limiting the hopes and sorrows of all groups, all classes, and all communities. Emerging alongside the New Era are new social divisions, new inequalities, and forms of disenfranchisement that are overlaying the original forms.” Can one then give up the struggle because the opponent is powerful? Hall’s answer was negative. With a spirit of persistence—striving for the impossible—he sought to re-create the subject of socialist revolution. On one hand, like Laclau and Mouffe, Hall valued new social movements and believed that the working-class movement must establish broad alliances with various new social movements in practice. On the other hand, unlike Laclau and Mouffe, Hall was not convinced that a new revolutionary subject could certainly be constructed from these new social movements; instead, he asked with doubt: “Is there a political force there capable of restarting the movement toward ‘socialism’? Is there a doctor in the house who can treat the illness?” Why was this the case? Ultimately, it was because Hall adhered to the fundamental materialist position of Marxism, doubting or even denying the possibility of articulating and constructing a revolutionary subject with genuine revolutionary consciousness from new social movements that lacked an objective basis in class experience. If this is so, why did Hall still choose to support new social movements such as the struggles of migrants of color and ethnic minorities in the late 1980s? Beyond the fact that such movements were surging in Britain at the time and that Hall himself was a migrant of color, the most fundamental theoretical reason was that Hall was clear that the vast majority of migrants of color and ethnic minorities belonged to the working class; from them, it might be possible to articulate a genuine revolutionary subject!
IV. Miliband and Wood: The Marxist Doctrine of Class Struggle Is Not Obsolete!
Among the British Marxist camp, the most senior political theorist regarding the working class and working-class parties was Ralph Miliband. As early as 1961, he published Parliamentary Socialism: A Study in the Politics of Labour, which discussed the relationship between British trade unions and the Labour Party; in 1978, he published Marxism and Politics, reconstructing Marx’s system of political theory based on class and class struggle, which received widespread acclaim. In fact, as early as the 1960s, Miliband had noted phenomena such as the declining revolutionary character of the British working class and the rightward shift of the British Labour Party. However, as a Marxist political theorist who maintained close ties with the working class and the working-class movement, no matter how disappointed he was with the working class or the Labour Party, he insisted that Britain’s socialist future must ultimately rely on workers, trade unions, and the Labour Party, because “the Labour Party remains the ‘working-class party,’ and in this sense, there is currently no other significant party to replace it. This has, of course, always been the fundamental dilemma of British socialism, and it is not a problem that seems likely to be solved immediately.” From this position, Miliband naturally disagreed with the views of Hobsbawm, Laclau, Mouffe, and Hall. Consequently, in 1985, he published the widely noted article “The New Revisionism in Britain” in the New Left Review, criticizing Hobsbawm, Laclau, Mouffe, and Hall for having retreated from a socialist position to a new revisionist one, even if they had not formally abandoned their socialist faith.
In Miliband’s view, “new revisionism” held four basic positions: first, rejecting “class politics” and believing that trade unions and the working class were no longer capable of undertaking the historical mission of transforming capitalism; second, placing the future of socialism more on various new social movements; third, opposing statism and refusing to utilize the capitalist state for social reform; and fourth, fiercely criticizing or even denying the historical role of the Labour Party (including the Labour Left). Miliband emphasized that no matter how low the revolutionary spirit of the contemporary working class might be, one should not deconstruct the working class, because “the ‘ruling class’ is not a linguistic figure: it signifies a very real and powerful constellation of power, a close cooperative relationship with capital and the capitalist state, a union of class power and state power that not only possesses enormous resources but uses them firmly and comprehensively, capable of uniting its foreign allies to prevent any substantial challenge to its existing power.” Miliband did not deny the importance of new social movements and their active role in the struggle against capitalism, but he argued that these could not serve as a reason to cancel the status of the working class as the revolutionary subject of the socialist movement, because “if the organized working class refuses to do this work, then this work will not be completed by anyone; as a conflict-ridden, increasingly authoritarian and cruel social system, capitalist society will continue to exist, generation after generation.” He affirmed that in the process of building socialism in the future, it would be necessary to unite various active forces, such as popular forces, political parties, trade unions, workers’ councils, local governments, women’s groups, and Black parliamentarians. However, he resolutely opposed underestimating or denying the role of the state, because “the state must play an important role throughout the process... not only to contain and conquer the resistance of reactionary elements to socialist progress but also to perform many different functions, including mediating the interests between different and potentially conflicting forces grouped under the name of ‘people’s power’... the task of providing ultimate protection for political, civil, and social rights will fall to the state and its regional and local organizations; even after capitalism is transcended, the state will be the ultimate force in opposing sexism, racism, and other unknown discriminations and abuses of power.” Although he had long ceased to harbor illusions about the Labour Party, Miliband resolutely opposed treating the party in a nihilistic manner. This was partly because there were still many radical leftists within the party—“those who campaigned for the implementation of Left policies within the Labour Party after 1979”—whose presence proved that there was still hope for the party. On the other hand, in a situation where socialism was encountering a low ebb, the Left should unite rather than disparaging or killing one another, something that “is best left to the enemies of socialism.”
To prove that the Marxist doctrine of class struggle was not obsolete, Miliband also dedicated himself to applying it to the study of practical problems, the result of which was the 1989...
The 1989 publication Divided Societies: Class Struggle in Contemporary Capitalism. In this work, Miliband insisted that contemporary advanced capitalist society remains a class society and that Marx's analysis of class struggle is not obsolete; the issue lies merely in how to correctly apply it to a changed reality. He argued that there exists a conical class structure in contemporary advanced capitalist societies composed of eight basic classes: the power elite and high-level professionals in various fields constitute the ruling class, while the vast emergence of various new middle classes (the petty bourgeoisie), together with the traditional working class, constitute the ruled class. Outwardly, there are significant differences between the new social movements dominated by the new middle classes (petty bourgeoisie) and traditional working-class struggles, but they "establish potential alliances with industrial workers, service workers, and other workers engaged in struggle, creating the possibility of building new pressure groups and coalitions," all of which "re-point toward class struggle." Miliband emphasized that no matter how highly one affirms the significance and role of new social movements, they should not be placed on an equal footing with the working-class movement on the path toward socialism. "The labor movement will remain the heart of the struggle for fundamental change and revolution in advanced capitalist societies. New social movements may doubt or even deny this. But no conservative force in this society will deny it. For them—it is they who are first in the struggle, pressured by it, and if necessary, crushed by it—the primary adversary has always been organized labor and the socialist left." Miliband believed that class struggle in contemporary advanced capitalist societies has not only not been extinguished but has expanded under new, less noticed forms. This new form is what he called "class struggle from above" launched by the ruling class: "What I call class struggle from above is actually launched by different actors—employers, holders of state power, political institutions such as parties, lobby groups, the press, and many other institutions claiming to be 'non-political' (and they may indeed believe they are non-political), etc.—but they undoubtedly lead to class struggle." This expansion of class struggle should bear the main responsibility for the massive setbacks suffered by British socialism. Furthermore, internationalization—the use of various means to interfere in the political processes of other countries—is a new development in the class struggle of contemporary advanced capitalist states. In short, Miliband argued that class struggle in advanced capitalist societies has not ended, yet the existing class struggle has not led to ideal or positive results because the kind of "class struggle to create a democratic, egalitarian, and cooperative classless society has barely begun."
In criticizing New Revisionism [7] and defending the Marxist doctrine of class, Miliband had a very staunch and consistent ally in Ellen Meiksins Wood. Wood was a Marxist political theorist in the Anglophone world who was born in the United States and taught in Canada; however, after the 1980s, her main theoretical activities were linked to "British Marxism." This was particularly evident in the publication of her monographs: of her nine individual works, seven were published in the UK, and six were released by the same publishing house—Verso, founded by Perry Anderson! In 1986, Wood published The Retreat from Class: A New "True" Socialism with Verso, establishing her status in British Marxist theoretical circles in one fell swoop. Regarding the issue of the contemporary working class, The Retreat from Class maintained a high degree of consistency with Miliband's critique of "British New Revisionism," offering four main theoretical innovations: First, it returned to The German Ideology and The Communist Manifesto, using the designation "New 'True' Socialism" to place the latter directly in opposition to Marx and Marxism. Second, using Poulantzas as an intermediary, it traced the origins of "New 'True' Socialism" to the trends of post-structuralism and deconstructionism in 1970s France, thereby elevating the critique to the level of settling accounts with the negative influence of structuralism and post-structuralism on the second generation of the British New Left. Third, it focused on Laclau and Mouffe's Hegemony and Socialist Strategy, providing a comprehensive and systematic theoretical dissection of the "Post-Marxist" new doctrine of class; given the later widespread dissemination of "Post-Marxism," this critique was undoubtedly prescient. Fourth, through the analysis of Raymond Williams's views in Chapter 11, "Socialism and 'Universal Human Goods'," it emphasized that as long as one adheres to the doctrine of class and class struggle—"viewing socialism not only as an abstract moral good but as an objective political goal for organizing social forces most directly against the interests and power structures of capitalism"—then Marxists can similarly speak of socialism from an ethical and moral perspective. This effectively distinguished the ethical socialist tradition cherished by the first generation of the British New Left, including Miliband, from "True Socialism" and "New 'True' Socialism."
V. Several Theoretical Reflections
The year 1989 coincided with the 200th anniversary of the French Revolution. In the second half of that year, just as revisionist historians in France were striving to prove that there had been no revolution back then, the "drastic changes in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe" [8] suddenly occurred and rapidly deteriorated. On December 26, 1991, the Soviet Union dissolved. Hobsbawm immediately declared that the "Short Twentieth Century," closely linked to the great Soviet socialist movement, had come to an end! Faced with this sudden and massive upheaval, socialists and Marxists worldwide felt shocked and even lost: "At the end of this century, for the first time in human history, we can observe a world in which the past, including the present past, has lost its guiding role. The old maps and nautical charts that guided people throughout their lives no longer represent the land we are traversing or the seas we are sailing. In this world, we do not know where our journey is taking us, nor even where it ought to take us!" In this state of mind, the debate over the contemporary working class was quickly forgotten and discarded. However, this debate, which ended without a conclusion, contains important theoretical insights that deserve serious consideration by today’s Chinese Marxist theoretical circles.
First, we must insist on the leadership of the working-class party over the working class. The history and reality of the working-class movement in Britain and even Europe allowed both sides of the debate to reach a tacit agreement on one issue: denying that the working-class movement requires the leadership of a strong and powerful party. Even Miliband believed that "it is untrue to take for granted that the 'party' is, as it were, a natural political organ of the working class, endowed with a unique mission to represent the working class politically (as in many other ways)," and that the coexistence of multiple working-class parties within a country is the major trend in the development of the modern working-class movement—that "a multi-party form represents the reality of the movement more accurately than a single party." Looking back at the history of the socialist movement over the past 100 years, Lenin's instructions remain correct: First, the class needs the leadership of a party—"as a general rule, in most cases, at least in modern civilized countries, classes are led by political parties." Second, only a Communist Party established according to Marxist-Leninist principles can truly lead the working class to victory: "Only the Communist Party, if it is really the vanguard of the revolutionary class, if it contains all the best representatives of that class, if it is composed of fully conscious and staunch Communists who have been educated and steeled by the experience of a persistent revolutionary struggle, and if this Party has succeeded in linking itself inseparably with the whole life of its class and, through it, with the whole mass of the exploited, and in completely winning the confidence of this class and these masses—only such a Party is capable of leading the proletariat in a final, most ruthless and decisive struggle against all the forces of capitalism. On the other hand, it is only under the leadership of such a Party that the proletariat is capable of displaying the full might of its revolutionary onslaught... and of exerting its full strength."
Second, we must master the leadership of the ideological struggle. Why did the Labour Party lose the support of the working class? The consensus between both sides of the debate was: the Labour Party did not value and was not adept at carrying out ideological struggle, thereby losing leadership over it. This allows us to see the importance of ideological struggle from the perspective of advanced capitalist countries and to recognize more profoundly that "while we concentrate our energy on economic construction, we must not for a moment relax or weaken ideological work. The collapse of a regime often begins in the realm of ideas; political turmoil and regime change can happen overnight, but ideological evolution is a long-term process. Once the ideological line of defense is breached, other lines of defense are difficult to hold. We must firmly grasp the leadership, management, and discourse power [9] of ideological work in our hands and never let it fall to others; otherwise, we will make irreparable historical mistakes." Meanwhile, we must be daring and adept at engaging in ideological struggle: "Our comrades must enhance their sense of 'battlefield awareness' (zhandi yishi). If we do not occupy the positions of publicity and ideology, others will. ... Different strategies must be adopted for different zones. For 'red zones,' we must consolidate and expand them, continuously increasing their social influence. For 'black zones,' we must dare to enter them—'crawl into the belly of the Iron Fan Princess' [10] to fight—and gradually push them to change their color. For 'grey zones,' we must carry out work on a large scale to accelerate their transformation into red zones and prevent them from degenerating into black zones. This work must be grasped urgently and persisted in; results will inevitably be achieved."
Third, we must correctly handle the relationship between the working class and other new social strata. The economic base determines the superstructure. With changes in the mode of production, the emergence of new social strata is inevitable. The working class and its party must learn to correctly handle the relationship with these new social strata. Following Laclau and Mouffe in abandoning the subjectivity of the working class and placing all hope in new social strata, or blindly insisting on the leadership of the working class like Miliband and Wood, are both inadvisable. The correct approach must be able to unify the leadership of the working class and its party with the subjectivity of the new social strata. In handling this issue, our Party has set a successful example: "To do a good job in United Front work under new circumstances, we must correctly handle the relationship between consistency and diversity. The United Front is a unity of consistency and diversity; if there is only consistency without diversity, or only diversity without consistency, the United Front cannot be established or developed. As the saying goes, 'Without the One, the Two cannot be formed; without the Two, the One cannot be reached' (fei yi ze bu neng cheng liang, fei liang ze bu neng zhi yi) [11]. Consistency and diversity are not static but are historical, concrete, and developmental."
Fourth, we should restore and strengthen the tracking and study of contemporary Western class issues and class theories. After the Cold War, and especially after entering the 21st century, the attention of domestic academic circles toward contemporary Western class issues and class theories continued to decline. Looking back now, this practice was undoubtedly problematic, because "a very important feature of contemporary world Marxist trends is that many of them have critically revealed the structural contradictions of capitalism as well as the contradictions in the mode of production, class contradictions, and social contradictions, and have conducted deep analyses of the crisis of capitalism, the process of capitalist evolution, and the new forms and essence of capitalism. These views help us correctly understand the trends and fate of capitalist development, accurately grasp the new changes and characteristics of contemporary capitalism, and deepen our understanding of the trends of change in contemporary capitalism." Facing "great changes unseen in a century" [12], we must make full theoretical preparations, restore and strengthen the tracking and study of contemporary Western class issues and class theories, and provide the necessary theoretical support for the scientific understanding and prediction of the nature and direction of contemporary Western social resistance activities.
(Notes omitted) (Author's Unit: Center for the Study of Marxist Social Theory and Department of Philosophy, Nanjing University) Web Editor: Zhang Jian Source: Fujian Forum (Humanities and Social Sciences Edition), Issue 6, 2020.