SWP and the Middle Class

SOYMB recently posted about the middle class and by coincidence the SWP paper Socialist Worker similarly have an article on the subject . And as always with the SWP , truths mixed with confusionism .
" Some commentators and politicians say that changes in society make class meaningless...They claim that the people who work in these “white collar” jobs are middle class...This view of society has become mainstream – but it is wrong. Class is not about whether you do manual work or work in an office. It is not even about how much you earn. It is about where you stand in relation to how things are produced in society...Workers still have to sell their ability to labour to capitalists to survive, just as they did 100 years ago.Some workers may think they are middle class – but it’s not about what you think. Class is based on the reality of whether you own a workplace or have to work for a wage..."

And here the SPGB can only agree . But as usual with th SWP they then disingeniously add:

"Marx did, however, recognise that there is a middle class. It is smaller than the working class but bigger than the ruling class. The middle class have more control and autonomy over their working lives. This class – made up of doctors, headteachers, lower-level managers and small businesspeople – faces contradictory pressures. Their wealth and social position mean that they can buy into the system."

Engels gives a clearer meaning for the usage of the term "middle class":
"Firstly, that I have used the word Mittelklasse all along in the sense of the English word middle-class (or middle-classes, as is said almost always). Like the French word bourgeoisie it means the possessing class, specifically that possessing class which is differentiated from the so-called aristocracy" (our emphasis) - exactly just as SOYMB pointed out the word's origin here

But this “middle class” the SWP claim the existence of is said to be composed of higher-grade white collar workers and to make up between 10 and 20 percent of the workforce (The Changing Working Class by SWP leaders Alex Callinicos and Chris Harman, p. 37). The reason given for excluding these people from the working class is that they exercise some degree of control over the use of the means of production and/or authority over other workers; in short, because they perform some managerial role ( similar to the Parecon co-ordinator class perhaps) . But to adopt this view is to abandon the relationship-to-the-means-of-production theory of class for one based on occupation. The SPGB have always maintained that, as far as the actual production of wealth is concerned, the capitalist class are redundant. They play no part in production, which is run from top to bottom by hired workers of one sort or another. This means that all jobs , including those concerned with managing production and/or disciplining other members of the working class, are performed by members of the working class. To exclude from the working class workers with no productive resources of their own who are paid, among other things, to exercise authority of behalf of the employing class over other workers is to give more importance to the job done i.e. their occupation than to the economic necessity of having to sell labour power for a wage or salary which for Marxists is the defining feature of the working class. Having to work for an employer was how Marx defined the working class. Of management he says :

"With the industrial capitalist, this labour of superintendence, which is “his”, is performed by workers delegated by him. These are the NCO’s of the workshop. It is in fact the overlookers and not the capitalists who perform the real labour of superintendence. The mechanical workshop is altogether characterised by these relations of subordination, regimentation, just as under the system of slavery the ruling mode of cooperation is slave-driving Negro slaves and working Negro slaves. It is labour for the exploitation of labour." (our emphasis)

It had been the experience of the 70s that forced the change in the SWP class theory. They found that the largest and longest-lasting of the rank-and-file groups they sponsored were not those for industrial workers but those for white collar groups such as teachers, council staff and lower level civil servants and indeed, they found that (apart from maybe university lecturers ! ) this was where most of their members came from.
This was a bit disturbing in terms of Tony Cliff’s 1966 perspective about a “new socialist movement” arising and that “its roots will be in the class struggle at the point of production”. What to do ? Revise the theory and extend the definition of the working class to include these groups. Harman and Callinicos were commissioned to write The Changing Working Class.

Of course they had no problem in doing so since such groups are indeed part of the working class, though their classification of which white-collar workers should fall into the working class and which should not (based on the degree of authority they are or aren’t able to exert over other workers) ended up being a bit tortuous .

The SWP was forced to make this shift towards recognising that most, if not all, white collar workers were fully-fledged workers and not middle class because they had to accommodate their average member . Any Marxist objectivity in class definition was secondary to their motives .