Workers’ Political Consciousness in Demobilized Class Societies: Redistribution, Recognition and Representation

Lisa shows up in her work overalls at a McDonald’s on the outskirts of Berlin. Outside, trucks thunder towards the Autobahn. Lisa grabs a coffee and sinks, exhausted, into a corner booth. She’s just come off the early shift, having been at the car factory since three in the morning, where she works as a temp on the assembly line. Really, she just wants to go home, but she still makes time for an interview. Lisa is one of the people we spoke to for a study on the political consciousness of a class that, until recently, was almost forgotten in public debate: the “old working class” of manual workers in industry, construction, and the trades.

“Is there even still such a thing as a working class?” university graduates ask us when we talk about our project. “Ah, the fashy crowd,” others say. These clichés are the result of a discourse in which for many years the working class had virtually vanished, only to reappear in stories about the rise of the far right. Media reports, as well as a veritable cottage industry of ethnographic explorations documenting right-wing views among workers, have consolidated an image of a class hopelessly lost to resentment and reaction.

Yet the statistics show a very different picture: While it is true that a growing share of workers has been voting for right-wing parties and candidates across Europe and the US in the last two decades, a more silent but equally pronounced trend is that of an altogether withdrawal and exclusion of workers from the political process. As we show for our German case, a host of indicators on political participation, party and union membership, the identification with representative democracy, or engagement in public debates show that workers, even more than the citizenry at large, are increasingly turning their backs on the political system. Strike activity has plummeted since the 1970s and parties and the media have essentially ceased talking about workers (see graphs below). In general, researchers document how the withdrawal of workers from politics is the flipside of a deepening of political inequality that sees workers’ preferences neglected wherever they clash with those of elites. Even in European countries, whose political systems are considerably less oligarchic than that of the US, today’s democracies operate by the creed “government of the people, by the elites, for the rich”, as one paper succinctly summarizes.

Adding further nuance to the image of a solidly right-wing working class, studies show that workers are particular heterogeneous, diverse, and unsystematic in their attitudes. Even in contentious and highly politicized questions like immigration policy, there is much more disagreement and variance within the working class than in other classes. The spectrum of opinions is particularly wide and instead of tightly organized political belief systems what dominates is an everyday common sense that is “strangely composite”, as Gramsci put it. What all this tells us is that a sole focus on right-wing ideology captures only a narrow part of working-class consciousness. Most workers—including many right-wing voters—are politically demobilized and distant from all politics, and hold views that do not neatly fit the boxes of left- or right-wing party platforms.

How are we to understand working-class consciousness under these conditions? This is the question our paper seeks to tackle both conceptually and empirically. Theoretically, we build on Klaus Dörre’s notion of “demobilized class societies”: societies that continue to be structured by class relations but in which class-based identities and political representation channels have fragmented. Drawing on thinkers like E.P. Thompson, Axel Honneth, Nancy Fraser, and Pierre Bourdieu we argue that in this conjuncture, the dominant form of workers’ consciousness is a moral sense of injustice, a protest against violations of an implicit social contract. The reactive scandalization of broken promises and violated expectations, rather than systematic ideological edifices, dominate as a modus operandi of workers’ political consciousness today.

Empirically, we trace this in interviews with manual workers, observing how in everyday talk, workers articulate critiques pertaining to injustices of material redistribution, symbolic recognition, and political representation. We met workers at home or during their lunch breaks, on building sites or in cafés. “How would you describe yourself?” is a question with which many of our long conversations began. “I’ve got no problem picking up a hammer or an axe,” Lisa replies. “I don’t need to get all dressed up to go to the factory. It’s not a catwalk — I’m there to work. So I guess that makes me an unusual woman.” Our conversations revolve around self-understanding and grievances, pressures and the identity-shaping role of work — and almost always, politics, which most keep at arm’s length with a dismissive wave. What emerges is a picture of a working class more diverse, perceptive, and contradictory than the caricatures of talk shows or election coverage suggest.

Redistribution: The higher-ups take it out on the lower ones

What do workers think about politics and society? Where do they stand politically? To get a sense of this, it’s worth looking at feelings of injustice, anger, and criticism that were omnipresent in our interviews. Less than a clear ideology, what comes through is more of an intuitive unease with the status quo. “The higher-ups take it out on the ones at the bottom,” Lisa says, visibly angry. “They earn obscene amounts of money, retire on pensions that an average person could only dream of. And our pensioners get practically nothing. I don’t get it. It just doesn’t go into my head.”

Like Lisa, many of the people we spoke with see society as dichotomously divided into an “above” and a “below.” In this vision of society, a small, closed-off upper class of managers, bankers, and politicians, keeps multiplying its wealth, while ordinary people’s incomes stagnate and pensions for those at the bottom aren’t enough to live or die on. “Working class — that’s everyone busting their ass for a meager life,” says Robin, a construction worker. “And then there’s the upper class, up in some skyscraper, maybe stamping a paper from time to time, and the money just flows in on its own. They don’t even have to do a damn thing.”

Workers’ critiques closely match what economists have long described: the growing imbalance between the wealth of the few and the struggles of the many. At the same time, the upper class and its riches remain largely beyond everyday experience, tucked away in some vague “above” of distant skyscrapers. Things look different, though, when it comes to concrete experiences at work. Here, people sharply criticize bosses who enrich themselves through strategies that deprioritize the employees’ well-being, such as technologically assisted surveillance, relentless pressure and work intensification, temp contracts, or low wages. The conflict of interest between workers and management becomes obvious, summed up in a word that comes up again and again: “exploitation.” One respondent put it bluntly: “Profit, profit, profit. Wages lower and lower, profits higher and higher. Profit comes before the worker.” What exploitation stands for in this discursive repertoire is not necessarily the structural fact that owners claim the surplus generated by employees, but rather breaches of a moral economy triggered when managers and owners blatantly undermine workplace standards, the dignity of workers or certain relations of reciprocity organizing the implicit social contract of labor relations.

In another critique of unjust material relations, it is not individuals who are blamed for injustice and hardship, but an impersonal “system” that keeps everyone running in the hamster wheel of competition and growth. Fred, a young landscaper, for instance, sighs as he says: “In this system you’re basically just a puppet. You have to function. Everything’s getting more controlled, which just means more pressure on people. Because the competition is global. I think it’s just gotten out of hand.”

The acceleration of life, the tightening pace of work, job insecurity, even the ecological crisis — all are criticized as products of a misguided imperative of greed and intensification: “More, more, always more.” Business has to keep running, even at the expense of workers and nature, and that becomes the core target of systemic critique. “There’s going to be a collapse, no question”, a craftsman comments. “If we keep focusing only on growth — well, by definition, that has to hit a wall at some point.” In workers’ accounts, the uncontrollable systemic forces that ultimately drive toward crisis here remain faceless and nameless.

When workers talk about conflicts of interest with their bosses, the social divide between rich and poor, or the competitive growth logic of capitalism, they reveal what should surprise no one: workers are sharp observers of society. What’s missing, though, is a positive vision that could channel this sense of injustice. Almost everyone we spoke to waved off the idea that there are political actors who might actually help. With Klaus Dörre, we can understand precisely this coexistence of an awareness of inequality and political passivity as a symptom of demobilized class societies. In this society, it is first and foremost capital’s interests that remain effectively mobilized. They ensure that even in moments of massive state intervention — such as most relief packages and bailouts in recent crises — and despite all the appeals for resilience and a collective tightening of belts, it is above all property and profitability that are of the highest priority. Working people, especially those at the bottom of command chains, by contrast, find the channels of democratic influence largely closed. Often, what remains is only a shrug or quiet rage.

Recognition: Defending one’s slice of the pie

This demobilization shapes working-class consciousness. Under the pressures of enforced passivity, shrinking expectations, and political powerlessness, perceptions are reshaped. Collective action seems unrealistic, replaced by individual perseverance and the protection of whatever small private happiness one can manage. Lacking a sense of collective agency, workers retreat to a defensive position centered on warding off the transgressions of groups above (the rich, bosses, and politicians) and below (‘takers’, intruders, and cheats). Criticism of social injustices can, under these conditions, easily be redirected into competition among workers themselves.

The lack of recognition for one’s own existence and labor often gets scandalized by accusing others of having it undeservedly easy. The most common target of such resentment is migrants, who are said to “get everything” without lifting a finger. Listening to Lisa makes clear how closely anti-immigrant rhetoric is intertwined with neglected claims of her own: “Take our pensioners, for example — it’s unjust, what they get. It’s nothing. An asylum seeker gets more, sorry to say it like that. And they don’t do anything. They could do more for our pensioners, or for the homeless, build houses or something. No, they’d rather give a smartphone to migrants who’ve only been here three months.”

Frustrated claims for support, like those of pensioners, are set against the supposed privileges of foreign-born freeloaders. This rests on the assumption of a limited pie to be divided among different groups. Through their hard work, people feel they’ve earned a piece. But whether they’ll actually get it is increasingly uncertain. Racist tropes of laziness or criminality play a major role here, reinforced by the media’s stock images of idle welfare recipients. “When I see this on TV,” says a machinist, “all these people just collecting benefits and waiting it out … Meanwhile some folks are working two jobs just to get by. And then there’s some guy on welfare who can’t even be bothered. He’ll say, ‘for those low wages I won’t work.’ That’s outrageous! He’d deserve a boot up his ass.”

The silent authoritarianism of work discipline, the hierarchy and control that workers experience firsthand, is passed downward onto others, particularly groups of social outsiders. After all, the notion that shirkers can enjoy a decent life amounts to a devaluation of one’s own sacrifices. The burdens of physically demanding routines, combined with the sense of being dismissed by a society that has turned away from the working class, often result in competition directed downward. These symptoms of a demobilized class are ripe for exploitation by those who profit from undermining solidarity — from tabloids and corporate media to right-wing parties.

Yet a politics of solidarity could also build much more strongly on workers’ legitimate demands for recognition — without feeding into poisoned distinctions between “native” and “foreign” workers or “deserving” and “undeserving” poor. A key starting point is workers’ insistence on the social usefulness of their labor, which they feel is increasingly devalued. “The ones at the bottom are the foundation of society,” says Felix, a construction worker, “and those are the people with normal jobs. The ones keeping everything running: the baker, the hairdresser, the garbage collectors, the street cleaners, the bus drivers, the truckers. Without them, nothing works.”

The critique here is directed at the mismatch between the use value and hardship of one’s work on the one hand, and its pay and social status on the other. Their criticism of the excessive claims of the upper class, of exploitation, of a mad intensification of work, and of the disregard for manual labor points to important opportunities to renew left politics among workers. What is notable is that across workers’ narratives, critiques of misrecognition are often addressed to the state and political actors. Workers may be disappointed, but – at least in our German case – they still hold high expectations of the state organizing a just society. It would be interesting to see how our findings on workers’ critiques of redistribution, recognition and representation compare to those in other settings, like the US, with a different history of class organizing and political struggle.

Representation: Politicians Don’t Get Their Hands Dirty

Overall, our study seeks to achieve a shift in perspective that contradicts the view of workers as either hopelessly lost right-wingers or a sleeping class subject only waiting to be mobilized by the left. Workers are not too blind to see how society systematically stacks the deck against them. But they largely lack hope in a collective answer to their hardship. The biggest obstacle to a political mobilization that could shift the balance of power in their favor then is not false consciousness but rather the deep alienation and fundamental mistrust toward all of politics. “Honestly, I’m not interested in politics anymore,” Lisa says. “No matter what we do, we just get kicked in the ass. So I keep out of it. I don’t need that.”

Throughout our interviews, politics appears as the domain of “the elites,” with all politicians lumped together at the top. As Robin puts it: “Decisions get made by rich people. These politicians never get their hands dirty. None of them do. Maybe they dig around in the dirt once in a while when they feel like growing organic carrots in their little garden or something. But otherwise they’ll never get their hands dirty. Because they’ve got it too good.” Because the political elite never stoops to the level of ordinary people, politics is thought to remain outside workers’ sphere of action. It stands for a distant, self-contained world populated by experts, closed off to “normal folks.” Exclusion is answered with self-exclusion. As one respondent put it: “Politics to me is like: let them do their shit alone.”

This is the flipside of the sensationalist discourse about the supposedly solidly right-wing working class. Just as most contemporary workers are not staunchly right-wing, they are not left-wing either. The dominant political stance is one of turning away from politics altogether. That means many workers cannot be reached through conventional channels of political communication or through ideologically framed appeals (“against neoliberalism” and the like). Beyond the small minority active in unions, the left needs to begin at a much more basic point: proving that politics can actually solve the problems workers face day to day and give voice to their hidden grievances and violated expectations. A political language capable of this can draw from the rich reservoir of everyday critique — which is widespread, but can be mobilized in very different directions.

Right-wing appeals draw their power from deeply internalized realities of competition and discipline, from resentment of migrants, and from framing entitlements in national and ethnic terms. Left-wing critique, however, can connect to an equally real core of workers’ social experience: their acute awareness of being disadvantaged in systems of distribution, recognition, and representation — and their sense of the injustice of this position. Although largely disarticulated as a class conflict in the Marxist sense, a sense of society being structured by unequal distributions of resources and power runs as a common thread through the statements of all our interviewees. It finds expression in a critique of social polarization and practices of overexploitation by owners and management, in the critique of inhumane market pressures, in the sense of a devaluation of manual work symbolized by low wages, and in complaints about the political inequality that results from the state neglecting the interests of ordinary people compared to those of the rich and the big companies. Money is the central medium through which all three dimensions of injustice—maldistribution, misrecognition and underrepresentation—are perceived and criticized in workers’ discourses.

The widespread criticism, anger, and biting dismissal of political elites shows that the legitimacy of capitalist democracy is under strain. “Just because I live in this system doesn’t mean I like it,” one of our interviewees put it. The current crises will only deepen these problems of legitimacy — though it is unclear what the consequences will be. Right-wing actors will seek to harness the all-too-understandable impulse to defend one’s slice of the pie first. The left, in turn, must develop a strategy that credibly promises to enlarge the pie for the working population as a whole: a strategy that highlights the strength that comes from fighting for shared goals, and that names the real opponents standing in the way. Our study seeks to contribute to such a strategic renewal by mapping the highly contradictory and polyphonous structure of workers’ political consciousness. As Axel Honneth writes, the sense of injustice of dominated social groups ‘negatively preserves […] a potential of expectations of justice, need claims, and ideas of happiness’ (Honneth, 1982: 18 ff.). Reconstructing repertoires of everyday critique focalizes forms of consciousness below the radar of established political ideologies. This exposes the everyday powers of judgement of politically passive groups which could act as seedbeds for political change. The moral outrage linked with workers’ sense of injustice, we believe, could fuel the kind of collective organizing that alone could turn the latent disapproval of workers’ everyday critique into a manifest force for moral progress.

Linus Westheuser is a postdoctoral researcher at Humboldt University in Berlin.

Linda Beck is a doctoral researcher at the Institute for Sociology, Georg-August-Universität, Göttingen

Adapted from Linus Westheuser and Linda Beck, “Moral Disapproval. The Political Consciousness of the Demobilized Working Class.” Critical Sociology. OnlineFirst, https://doi.org/10.1177/08969205251353116. This summary draws on an article which first appeared in the German edition of Jacobin magazine.

Image credit: File:140827-N-NU281-044 Angel Lopez performs maintenance.jpg, via Wikimedia Commons.