Working Class - History

History

The history of the working class has been defined by two contradictory processes, the immiseration of traditional communities in order to produce workers, and the vast surplus of production available from industrialization creating better living standards. Throughout this process workers have taken cultural and political action to create their own cultures and positions within industrial society. Many of these responses have emphasized that working class individuals are defined by processes other than work. Working class history is generally accepted to begin with the enclosure of English commons, and the generation of paid industrial labor in manufactories in Holland and England.

In feudal Europe, the working class as such did not exist in large numbers. Instead, most people were part of the laboring class, a group made up of different professions, trades and occupations. A lawyer, craftsman and peasant were all considered to be part of the same social unit, a third estate of people who were neither aristocrats nor church officials. Similar hierarchies existed outside Europe in other pre-capitalist societies. The social position of these laboring classes was viewed as ordained by natural law and common religious belief. This social position was contested, particularly by peasants, for example during the German Peasants' War.

In the late 18th century, under the influence of the Enlightenment, European society was in a state of change, and this change could not be reconciled with the idea of a changeless god-created social order. Wealthy members of these societies created ideologies which blamed many of the problems of working-class people on their morals and ethics (i.e. excessive consumption of alcohol, perceived laziness and inability to save money). In The Making of the English Working Class, E.P. Thompson argues that the English working class was present at its own creation, and seeks to describe the transformation of pre-modern laboring classes into a modern, politically self-conscious, working class.

Vladimir Lenin saw the potential for imperialism to ameliorate the drudgery of working class life in the advanced countries, and argued this had already begun in the United Kingdom in the early 20th century. Access to cheap sports such as boxing and bicycling, expanded food cultures including coffee, chocolate and later junk food, and particularly access to motor vehicles and home ownership, transformed the complexion of first world working classes during the 20th century. A similar process occurred in the Soviet-style societies, but at a far slower pace.

Starting around 1917, a number of countries became ruled ostensibly in the interests of the working class. (see Soviet working class) While arguments over standards of living and potential growth rates have occurred in academic history and sociology, the development indexes of these countries are often higher than other countries of equivalent gross domestic product. However, additional criticisms have been leveled at these countries from authors who criticize the presence of massive human rights abuses which impacted primarily on workers, and for the lack of democracy within and amongst the working class. Some historians have noted that a key change in these Soviet-style societies has been a massive a new type of proletarianisation, often effected by the administratively achieved forced displacement of peasants and rural workers. Since then, three major industrial states have turned towards semi-market-based governance (China, Laos, Vietnam, Cuba), and one state has turned inwards into an increasing cycle of poverty and brutalisation (North Korea). Other states of this sort have either collapsed (such as the Soviet Union), or never achieved significant levels of industrialization or large working classes.

Since 1960, large-scale proletarianisation and enclosure of commons has occurred in the third world, generating new working classes at the margins of living. Additionally, countries such as India have been slowly undergoing social change, expanding the size of the urban working class.