From Labor Geography to Class Geography: Reasserting the Marxist Theory of Class

Abstract

Class analysis has never been hegemonic in Human Geography, or indeed, in any other social science, although it had some visibility in the 1960s and the 1970s. Recently the claim has been made for a resurgence of class analysis, as with in labor geography and new working class studies. I subject this claim to a brief critique. Although labor geography has shed some light on workers’ agency, its underlying view of class is very problematic. I then offer a map of an alternative view of class more rooted in the Marxist tradition. In mapping the class theory in the form of a dialectical synthesis, I briefly elaborate selected conceptual theses on class. These theses together aim at conceptualizing class as a social-material relation of exploitation that exists at multiple levels, and as (tendentially) connected to class unity, consciousness/ identity and struggle. The theses show class to be a spatial and multi-scalar process. The paper also discusses briefly and illustratively why class matters, in particular, as far as the analysis of social oppression based on race and gender, and (uneven) economic development is concerned. It is about time to move from the labor geography type approach, whose dominant and narrowly-defined agency-oriented concerns include social-democratic manipulation of landscapes of capitalism, to a dialectical-materialist class analysis of social-geographical issues, which has more radical ambitions and which will encompass a less voluntarist and more radical labor geography.

Social Movements and State Repression in India

“…Its most fundamental objective is to protect exploitative private property relations and sustain/promote the associated mechanisms of accumulation (Draper, 1977: 251; Das, 2006). Class relations are fundamentally coercive, even under capitalism which celebrates individual freedom (Das, 2012). For example, the reproduction of capitalist class relations (including the market imperative) is based on the continuing separation of labourers from means of production.…”

Moral Matters: De‐Romanticising Worker Agency and Charting Future Directions for Labour Geography

“…A related point on agentic awareness is also made by Giddens with respect to a 'partly unconscious' use of humour, sarcasm and irony implicit in the schoolboy acts. This point is useful as it is suggests that worker actions are often unintendedperhaps also in the case raised by Gialis and Herod (2014) and in many cases actions emerge from limited planning or foresight (Coe 2015;Bezuidenhout and Buhlungu 2011;Das 2012). Work within the labour process tradition is replete with such examples of coping and getting by through social 11 This view is, itself, overly deterministicthe Lads still maintained the potential to become 'unstuck' from these realities.…”

“…It is thus typical to find ways of coping with ( for example) mundane environments through tacit, informal and 'second nature' acts of wit and humour (Taylor and Bain 2003). Accordingly understandings of worker agency as necessarily linked to purpose may prove unhelpful as a starting point for exploring a moral focus vis-à-vis modes of worker conduct (Castree 2007;Das 2012;Bezuidenhout and Buhlungu 2011). With reference to a forthcoming moral dimension, then, further work in the latest vein of labour geography's development may usefully re-clarify what counts as worker agency in the first place.…”

“…Such an appreciation, as part of a moral 'turn' within the project, is likely to aid labour geography's development as a sub-discipline not only devoted to labour's successes, but also emergent failures (and those outcomes that lie between). Indeed, an understanding of the latter is also likely to enhance the potential for labour geography to positively impact workers involved in spatial struggles, by elaborating on weaknesses in agentic practice and elucidating strategies for coping with formidable structural constraints (Das 2012). Appreciating the reality of conf licting labour situs is important to the goal of labour geographyi.e.…”

The Rural Nonfarm Sector in Flexible Capitalism: The Coir Industry in Kerala, India

“…Uneven development outcomes in the neoliberal era and actions of the state, are mediated by class struggles --from above (capitalist) and from below (working class) (Byres, 1999). Class analysis of capitalist labor processes calls attention to the different ways in which surplus labor is produced by the various place-based sections of the working class and appropriated by the various fractions of the capitalist class in their common pursuit of capital accumulation (Das, 2012). Studies have pointed out the ways in which global or local capitalist classes employ an economically (and sometimes extra-economically) coercive process to extract surplus value from workers.…”