EXITING THE FACTORY

Strikes and Class Formation beyond the Industrial Sector

Volume 1: Global Labour Studies and Class Theory

Alexander Gallas

First published in Great Britain in 2024 by

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Contents

  • List of Tables iv

  • List of Abbreviations v

  • Acknowledgements vi

  • Preface ix

  1. Introduction 1

  2. PART IGlobal Labour Studies: Conducting Research on the Side of Workers
    1. 1Being on the Side of Workers: On the Normative Foundations of Global Labour Studies 21
    2. 2From Organic Intellectuals to Academic Workers: How Knowledge Handlers Connect with Organized Labour 45
    3. 3The Challenge of Strategic Research: A Critical Engagement with the Power Resources Approach 73
  3. PART IIClass Theory: Relations of Production, Antagonism and Social Domination
    1. 4The Ontology of Class: Moving beyond Inequality and Identity 87
    2. 5The Constitution of Class in Capitalism: From the Relations of Production to Collective Agency 101
    3. 6Making, Unmaking, Remaking: Working-Class Forces in Formation 124
    4. 7Between Representation and Intermediation: The Double Character of Workers’ Mass Organizations 148

  4. Afterword 162

List of Tables

  1. 4.1National Readership Survey social grades 88
  2. 5.1Class domination 105
  3. 5.2Class antagonism 109
  4. 5.3Class constitution in the capitalist mode of production 112
  5. 5.4The apparatuses of the capitalist state 114
  6. 5.5Economic, political and cultural class struggles 121
  7. 5.6Dimensions of the class struggle 122
  8. 6.1Conceptions of working-class formation 139
  9. 7.1Institutionalized avenues of the class struggle 152

List of Abbreviations

AKSU

Arbeitskreis Strategic Unionism (Working Group Strategic Unionism, University of Jena, Germany)

GEW

Gewerkschaft Erziehung und Wissenschaft (Education and Science Workers’ Union, Germany)

GLU

Global Labour University

NRS

National Readership Survey (Britain)

NUM

National Union of Mineworkers (Britain)

PRA

power resources approach

SALB

South African Labour Bulletin

SWOP

Society, Work & Politics Institute (formerly Sociology of Work Programme, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg)

ver.di

Vereinte Dienstleistungsgewerkschaft (United Services Trade Union, Germany)

Acknowledgements

The road to completing this manuscript was long-winded, rocky and, in parts, steep. Considering my personal circumstances – precarious working conditions, the trials and tribulations of family life and the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic – it sometimes felt like an over-ambitious endeavour. If that was not enough, I opted for tackling an intellectual challenge that at certain points seemed insurmountable, which consisted in reconciling materialist class and state theory with global labour studies. It is for my readers to say whether I succeeded or not. In any case, I am glad that I got to where I am now, and I feel the need to stress how much I benefited from the help and support I received along the way.

My venture into strike research started in 2011 with a project on political strikes against austerity that was funded by the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation. I partnered with Jörg Nowak on this project, and our research led us to write a number of jointly authored publications. I would like to thank Jörg for the comradely spirit of our collaboration and for our discussions on the subject matter of strikes, which laid the foundations for this later book project. To a degree, the concepts we developed back then still inform my analysis today.

A great number of people have read draft chapters of my book or draft articles that later ended up as book chapters at different points in the writing process, and their recommendations were invaluable. I am grateful to Mark Anner, Maurizio Atzeni, Peter Birke, Anne Engelhardt, Elaine Hui, Katherine Maich, Jörg Nowak, Agustín Santella and Joscha Wullweber for their advice. I hope I have done justice to it, and, needless to say, I am solely responsible for any shortcomings and mistakes.

I would like to thank Ian Bruff, Sian Moore and Edward Webster for pointing out to me literature and sources that were important for the development of my conceptual framework and my empirical analysis, and Niklas Holzhauer for transcribing interviews and assisting me with the bibliography. Special thanks also go out to Stefan Krupp, who gave expert advice on bibliographical questions and, more generally, on matters of life and death. I am grateful to Georgina Bolwell, Isobel Green, Ellen Pearce and Paul Stevens at Bristol University Press for being such patient editors, and to the anonymous reviewers of my book proposal and my first manuscript for detailed and helpful recommendations. My sincere thanks also go out to Andreas Bieler, who supported me in the process of my Habilitation, the arcane rite of passage that is still a prerequisite for obtaining tenure in Germany. The manuscript for this book also served as my Habilitation thesis, and Andreas agreed become my external reviewer and examiner, an arduous task that is not recognized much in German academia and beyond. At various points in the last few years, Sonja Buckel offered guidance on how to navigate the partly feudal, partly neoliberal university system that I am part of. I would like to thank her for her advice – and for offering me a contract towards the end of my stint at the University of Kassel ensuring that I was still in work when I revised this manuscript. Like any other academic worker in Germany, I faced, and continue to face, a university system that is characterized by a combination of neoliberal competitive pressures, casual employment and steep, feudal hierarchies. My comrades at Uni Kassel Unbefristet, the grassroots campaign that we started in 2017 to fight against fixed-term contracts and precarious work on campus, offered invaluable support and unconditional solidarity whenever I experienced the toxic effects of this system. Thank you so much!

On many occasions, my students were my first audience, and I benefited greatly from sharing and discussing my ideas with them. Teaching on the MA programmes in ‘Global Political Economy and Development’ and ‘Labour Policies and Globalisation’ was one of the most enjoyable aspects of my work in Kassel. Thanks to all of you for the intellectual stimulation!

In the fall semester of 2017, I was a visiting scholar at the Center for Global Workers’ Rights, which forms part of the School of Labor and Employment Relations at the Pennsylvania State University. Even if I had started doing research on strikes and the Great Crisis in 2011, it only occurred to me there and then what my book would be about. I would like to sincerely thank Mark Anner for inviting me to Pennsylvania and enabling me to work in an environment that allowed my ideas to flourish.

During the writing process, I learned that a colleague and fellow Poulantzasian, Ed Rooksby, had passed away. Ed wrote an excellent review of my previous monograph, The Thatcherite Offensive. Sadly, I never got to thank him for his critical appraisal of my work. I fondly remember a panel that I had organized and he participated in at the 2011 Historical Materialism Conference, and I hope that his contribution to materialist state theory will be remembered.

Last but not least, I cannot stress enough how grateful I am to my family. I would like to express my gratitude to my siblings, Elisabeth and Max, who were as reliable and consistent in their support as ever. My wife Verena and my sons Milo and Ben helped me through all the ups and downs of the research and writing process, and I know that it was not easy sometimes. Thank you so much!

Unfortunately, my father Andreas did not live to see the publication of this book. I owe to him my passion for politics and for reading, writing and debating, and he took great interest in my academic ventures. Undoubtedly, he would have liked to discuss the subject matter of my book with me, and I am equally sure that we would have disagreed at certain points. I dedicate this book to him.