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DOI: 10.1177/030981689706300105

1997 21: 65Capital & ClassBob Carter

Capitalist StateRestructuring State Employment: Labour and Non-Labour in the

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65

BRAVERMANS SEMINAL WORK, Labor and MonopolyCapitalism (1974), focused attention on the neglect byMarxists of the labour process in contemporary capitalist

societies. While there may still be doubts about the politicalorientation of subsequent works which Bravermans complaintprompted (Nichols 1992) and the lack of subsequent innovation(Carter 1994), there is certainly no shortage of attempts to fill inthis absence. However, despite the growth of labour processanalysis, the topic of the state labour process continues to beneglected or under-developed. There is a long, if limited, traditionof studies of labour in the state sector (inter alia Dennis et al. 1956;Beynon and Austrin 1994) but on the whole the studies reflect orcontinue the bias of industrial sociology towards male manualworkers, a section increasingly a minority within the state.Moreover, most studies use the fact of state employment as acontext for the study rather than seeing state employment itselfas being problematic. The question of the social function of

different sectors of state labour within state policy and therelationship of state employment and class relations do nottherefore arise. With the concerted drive by successive

Changes in the organization of the state, and labour within it, are givingnew urgency to the need for a Marxist account of state labour.Traditionally, Marxist theory concerning the capitalist state and the labourprocess have remained disconnected. The article examines boththese areas and attempts to extract elements from each to present acoherent account of state labour. The perspective developed arguesfor a strategy which connects state labour to the recipients of stateservices and transforms the state functions of control to ones of labour.

Restructuring State Employment:

Labour and Non-Labour in theCapitalist State

by Bob Carter

Introduction


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Conservative governments to privatise, marketise and restructurestate services, the specifically state nature of some sectors ofemployment has been thrown into relief. As the conditions ofstate employees have worsened, with growing intensification of

labour, greater flexibility and increasing insecurity, across arange of state sectors the claim has been made that stateemployeescivil servants, teachers and social workersarebeing proletarianised (Fairbrother 1994; Ball 1988; Joyce et al.1988). At the same time social policy theorists portray the serviceswhich state employees carry out as more authoritarian andhostile to working class interests, a claim which would seem tomerit some consideration as the number of working class pupilsbeing expelled from schools rises and the barriers and other

protections for staff against attack from desperate working classclaimants at benefit offices grow more substantial.

Approaching the question of state labour from another anglethrows no more light on its specific nature. Despite the very realadvances in state theory (Clarke 1991), there have been fewattempts to explore what implications characterisations of the roleof the state have for the class locations of state employees,attempts, it is argued here, which would necessitate an analysisboth by sector and position within hierarchies of control. This

absence of theoretical concern with the class location and role ofstate employees is made more strange by the noted growth ininterest in the nature of the capitalist labour process. These twoareas of theoretical concernthe state and the capitalist labourprocesshave remained separate, with the result that, in anumber of discrete areas, there is a dislocation between thecharacterisation of the state and its social policy as repressive, onthe one hand (Bowles and Gintis 1976; Clarke 1993), and, on theother, a class analysis of state employees, which either designatesthem as workers (Joyce et al., 1988) or sees strong tendenciestowards proletarianisation, a claim particularly strong in thesociology of teaching (Lawn and Ozga, 1988).

The claim for the specificity of state sector does not deny thatthere are many similarities between labour processes within itand the capitalist labour process in general. The question of thelevel of abstraction is, however, of critical significance. It is possibleto talk about the capitalist labour process containing certain

elements, for instance, the unity of a labour process, creating usevalues, and a valorisation process, with the latter being thedetermining, dominating and overriding one (Marx 1976: 990).

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As soon as we look at any specific national and industry labourprocess, however, at any particular conjuncture, the combinationof elements will be different, depending on the configuration oftasks into occupations, the relative strengths of capital and labour

and other influences (Smith and Meiksins 1995).Similarly, at a certain level of abstraction, it is possible toposit what distinguishes the state sector labour process fromthe capitalist labour process in general. In many areas of stateemployment, the purpose of work is not the expansion of capitalbut the fulfilment of need (Carchedi 1977). So, while it is possibleto agree with Joyce et al. that class relations in the public sectorare in need of urgent study, it is incorrect to predicate this needon the claim that so much social capital is involved (Joyce et

al 1988: 10). Nor is it accurate to state that capital must continueto accumulate if any social formation is to survive, and thus theprimary role of any state is seeking to secure conditions conduciveto capital accumulation (Harris 1994: 45). Certainly, every typeof society needs a social surplus to guarantee long-term survival,but capital is a specific and not trans-historical relationship. Thebasis for examining state employment and the state labourprocess will have to start from a different appreciation of itssignificance.

Harris is no doubt trying to signal that the capitalist state is notneutral and that perceptions of need and the way in which theyare satisfied are determined by relations, not in the abstract, butunder conditions imposed by capitalism as an internationalsystem. The idea of need and the pressures of capitalaccumulation result in complex political outcomes whichinfluence the content and form of the labour process. Inparticular, what is distinctive of the state sector is the two-foldpolitical determination of the labour process: firstly in relationshipto the fact that the state is at the centre of the dialectic of theorganisational and repressive aspect of the presence of labourwithin capital (Bonefeld 1991: 49); secondly, the terms andconditions of employment are mediated through politicalprocesses and structures, which obscure and inhibit, but do notnegate, the law of value. When the state labour process isexamined at a more concrete level in particular societies and atspecific conjunctures, there is an unevenness in the outcome of

these political mediations, in part because of the uneven strengthand organisation of labour, and the ability of employees tosubvert formal policies. Class relations are not static and

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predetermined but are constructed and changed in struggle overthe means and ends of state policies.

The partial nature of the debates over the state and the labourprocess ensure that a number of problematic relationships are not

subject to critical scrutiny. Failure to relate the complex conceptsof capital, labour and proletarianisation to the state sectorproduces an account which mechanically transposes them,ignoring the specificity of the state labour process. This accountattempts to rectify this failure with a view to stimulating a sharperfocus in the growing literature on state labour. It begins by anexamination of the origins and progress of theories of the labourprocess, noting the central but inadequate conceptualisation ofproletarianisation. The uncritical adoption of these perspectives

within analyses of the state is then illustrated, before examiningmore sophisticated attempts to specify the basis of social relationswithin the state. Finally the consequences of a revisedconceptualisation of the state labour process and its relationshipto wider class relations are detailed, emphasising the ability ofworkers to change the class nature of state policy.

Capital, Labour and the Labour Process

Labour process analysis has been developed largely from withina Marxist perspective refracted through the work of Braverman.His work has been much criticised, but continues to cast a longshadow over subsequent debates. As significantly, much whichhas become accepted as the core of labour process theory has de-limited his concerns and narrowed his field of vision to thequestions of de-skilling and proletarianisation (Carter 1995).The result is that few writers have sufficiently appreciated theinseparable relationship of labour process theory to theories ofclass formation. This is in part because Braverman did not makethis relationship sufficiently explicit and, indeed, he would havehad difficulties in so doing because of contradictions andambiguities within his work.

The first problem relates to his failure to posit a cleardistinction between the function of capital and the labour process(Carchedi 1977). Marx distinguished between the real labour

process in which the labourer creates new use-values byperforming useful labour with existing use-values (1976: 981) andthe valorisation process which involves the extraction of surplus



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value or surplus labour from the direct producer. According toMarx, while the capitalist has a definite role to play in the widerproduction process, a role necessary to guarantee the productionof surplus value, the capitalist does not take part in the labour

process: he or she does not add use-values to the final product.Rather than the role of the capitalist (as capitalist) in the processof production being conceptualised as non-productive labour orabstractly as labour of conception, it should be considered as non-labour, as outside the labour process entirely. It has been Carchediwho has most developed this perspective and whose work,although widely and inaccurately dismissed as sterile structural-ism, offers the prospect of more sophisticated development.

Much of Bravermans analysis was compatible with that of

Marx. Bravermans perspectives were dynamic, for instance,and he was at pains to emphasise process rather than analyticalcategories, maintaining that the term working class properlyunderstood never precisely delineated a specified body of people,but was rather an expression for an ongoing social process(1974: 24). While he picked no direct argument with previousorthodox Marxist approaches defining the working class on thebasis of relations to means of production, he indicated the limiteduse of this formal position: in the present situation, when

almost all of the population has been placed in this situation sothat the definition encompasses occupational strata of the mostdiverse kinds, it is not the bare definition that is important but itsapplication (1974: 25).

This general approach to class analysis does not un-conditionally support writers who, from within a labour processperspective, claim, for instance, that: Teachers are workers,teaching is work, and the school is a workplace (Connell1985: 69). Nor, in another context, does it support those givingsocial workers unambiguous working class status because socialwork is conceived as a labour process like any other: there is araw material (people in distress) and an end product (people whoare less distressed, or placed in an institution or given support tosustain themselves, so that physical survival is extended (Joyceet al 1988: 45). Here social work is abstracted from the definiterelations of capitalist society. In these widely adoptedperspectives, the labour process is divorced from the exigencies

of capitalist society in general and the relationship of the statesocial policy to accumulation and repression in particular(Westergaard 1995).

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Yet, Braverman maintained that the wage-labour form masksrelations which in substance are representative of the dialecticalopposite to those of the working class, i.e. are representative ofcapital. That Braverman can continue to be an inspiration for

claims which treat all wage labour as unambiguously workingclass is, in part, a result of his failure to develop the logic andsignificance of this analysis. This is witnessed by his mistakenbelief that operating executives have a place in the hierarchy ofthe labour process even though they are themselves part ofthat class that personifies capital and employs labor (1974: 405).His emphasis on fluidity, therefore, results in his being less thanprecise as to how changes in the structure and functioning ofcapitalism change the composition of the working class.

A second problem arises from an ambiguity centred on histreatment of the significance of the division between conceptionand execution. At one point, for instance, his analysis suggests thatthose responsible for conception stand in a different class positionto the direct physical producersconception is a function ofcapital. Yet Braverman goes on to state that production has nowbeen split in two and depends on the activities of both groups.Inasmuch as the mode of production has been driven bycapitalism into this divided condition, it has separated the two

aspects of labor; but both remain necessary to production, and inthis the labor process retains its unity(1974: 126, emphasis added).Braverman conceives of the function of capital as part of thelabour process; or rather he vacillates between two contradictorycharacterisations (conception = capitalist function; conception =part of the unity of labour process). Bravermans vacillation is aresult of an insufficient appreciation of the dual nature ofmanagement under capitalism and the contradictory socialrelations to which this gives rise.

Marx noted that the role of the capitalist was never restrictedpurely to ensuring the production of surplus value. Managementof the enterprise had a double nature. As well as the function ofcapital, capitalists had always performed unifying and co-ordinating roles, roles which would be necessary under anysystem of social production. They did not arise because of theantagonism of classes under capitalism and were part of thelabour process. The complex organisation of modern production

has increased rather than lessened the need to unify and co-ordinate the labour process. As capitalism developed, the functionof the capitalist within the production process was transformed



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from an individual to a collective one, no longer embodied in theindividual capitalist, who was replaced first by a manager and thenby a managerial hierarchy. Those employees engaged withinthis hierarchy are paid salaries or wages a fact recognised by

Braverman as insufficient to make them workers.

Proletarianisation

The problems inherent in Bravermans perspectives make theman unreliable base from which to build a proletarianisation thesis,a thesis much in evidence in writings on the state labour process,particularly as related to social workers and teachers (for critiques

see Harris 1996 and Carter 1997 respectively). Braverman, infact, makes only two specific references which could be perceivedas dealing with proletarianisation. In one of these Bravermanstates: Not only does it [the new middle class] receive its pettyshare in the prerogatives and rewards of capital, but it also bearsthe mark of the proletarian condition. For these employees thesocial form taken by their work, their true place in the relationsof production, their fundamental condition of subordinationas so much hired labor, increasingly makes itself felt, especially

in the mass occupations that are part of this stratum (1974: 407).Nevertheless, in spite of the paucity of direct references, theargument for a process of proletarianisation is implicit in muchof the work, as in his description of the evolution of clericalwork into mass working-class employment.

To have theoretical purchase, the concept of proletarianisationmust relate to the changing social nature of work tasks (theperformance of labour/non labour) and thus to changing classrelations, and not just to the formal status of becoming a wage orsalary earner (Smith and Willmott 1991), the conditions underwhich labour is carried out (Wright 1978) or the attendant levelsof skill (Apple 1995). Braverman, however, has difficultyidentifying the changing social function of employees withinthe production process because of his failure to hold consistentlyto the conception that the formal status of wage labour can maskthe function of capital. It is this inconsistency which hasencouraged numerous writers, especially within educational

sociology, to suggest that proletarianisation is coterminous withde-skilling and lessening autonomy (Ozga and Lawn 1981; 1988;Hatcher 1994; Ball 1988; Harris 1994). Similar claims, based on

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the supposed factory-like logic of social welfare, have been madeby Bolger et al. (1981), Jones (1983) and Simpkin (1979).

This version of proletarianisation has been challenged in amuch quoted article by Derber (1983). Professional labour in the

state sector is distinctive in that it has not followed the industrialmodel and has retained control over the technical aspects of thelabour process. What professional labour has lacked is controlover ends of labour. Derber refers to the latter process asideological proletarianisation, reflecting workers powerlessnessto define the use to which work is put. Industrial workersexperienced both technical and ideological components of controlsimultaneously, but the failure to distinguish the two aspects ofwork and the simple transference of the analysis to professional

work has allowed many analysts to blur the very real continuingdifferences in their respective conditions of work.

Derbers perspectives open up the need to go beyond a narrowconcern with the de-skilling, lessening job control and loweringlevels of autonomy within the capitalist labour process. Histreatment, however, does not give adequate consideration tothe dialectical relationship between labour and capital.Proletarianisation is posited as a process comprising twoprocesses of loss of control (over means and over ends). Both

component parts of this process are open to challenge. In theformer, the processes of de-skilling, loss of autonomy andlessening job control do not necessarily signify proletarianisation.It is possible to have lower levels of all three within the labour

process. This would undoubtedly affect the conditions of workersand their ability to resist capital but it would not signify a changefrom some other social location into a working class one.Similarly, when the realm of policy formation is considered, it isalso possible to have greater or less degrees of autonomy etc.within the function of capital, within a non labour function: thedegrees of autonomy etc. might signify a particular position in thehierarchy of control, but would not determine whether someonewas part of the collective labour process. It is the transition fromthe former to the latter, from one social function to another,that comprises proletarianisation and not levels of skill orautonomy when performing them.

If both components of proletarianisation can be singly

challenged, as importantly, so can their dualistic relationship.Derbers characterisation of two levels of proletarianisation isultimately unsustainable because it rests on the assumption that



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means do not affect ends and vice versa. In practice, theautonomy claimed for professionals in the technical labourprocess will tend to undermine the ends as defined by statepolicymakers. The corollary is equally true: policies also assume

an appropriate method of implementation and this willundermine autonomy and affect the relationships of professionalsto the users of their services.

The state, the labour process and critical theory

If employees make few appearances within theories of the state,it is also the case that the state has little presence in labour process

theory. Braverman was more than aware of the importance of thegrowth in state employment. The role of capitalist state, however,was conceived as unproblematically securing the conditions forthe continued social relations of capitalism. State functions suchas education and welfare arose specifically for this end. Hence, inhis discussion of schooling Braverman emphasises its role inthe socialisation of potential labour:

Whatever the formal educational content of the curriculum, it is

in this respect not so much what the child learns that is importantas what he or she becomes wise to. In school, the child and the

adolescent practice what they will later be called upon to do as

adults: the conformity to routines, the manner in which they

will be expected to snatch from fast-moving machinery their

wants and needs (1974: 287). (emphasis in original)

While the social function of education is thus explicit, theimplications for the social class position of those carrying out thefunction are less clearly stated and there is no consideration ofstate employment directly. What references there are to theparticular occupations in the state are general, as in his inclusionof teachers in the intermediate category of those between labourand capital. Braverman asserts that: In such occupations, theproletarian form begins to assert itself and impress itself upon theconsciousness of these employees (1974: 408). The function ofthe state (and hence its employees) was thus disarticulated from

employees class position. His innovatory perspectives on thelabour process were simply placed alongside a traditional Marxistview of the state.

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As Strinati notes, where the state does receive treatment, byboth Braverman and other labour process theorists, it is seen asexternal and intervening. Strinati explicitly argues that suchstudies assume an artificial and arbitrary separation between the

state and the labour process and therefore fail to get to grips withthe specific politics of the labour process, the varying forms bywhich the state can restructure it (1990: 219). While, as anopening stance, Strinatis position can be commended, hisperspectives are themselves open to a number of criticisms. Tobegin with, he effectively reduces the specific politics of thelabour process to a largely formal consideration of industrialrelations policies. More importantly, however, in dealing with therelationship of the state to the labour process, Strinati stresses

only one side of the relationship (the states influence on thelabour process) and fails to realise that the labour process isitself present in at least some of the actions of the state. Whateverthe corrective effect of his critique, therefore, it is more thanoutweighed by the reinforcement of a more serious historicalabsence: there is no consideration of the state labour process. Inrightly criticising Braverman, Strinati fails to shift very far theprevailing paradigm.

Other attempts to shift the paradigm are not entirely absent,

however. In an important contribution, Cousins (1987),supplementing the labour process perspective with one drawnfrom Offe (1984) and critical theory, argues that: Any analysis ofthe state labour process should include consideration of therelation of state production of goods and services to both thecapital accumulation process and the democratic processes. It isin relation both to accumulation and legitimation that the statesactivities have become the source of new contradictions andpolitical divisions in the 1970s and 1980s (1987: 50). These dualprocesses have the practical consequence of subjecting the statesector to the pressures of cost-efficiency and productivity inorder to contain costs and to non-market rationality.Restructuring is thus restricted by the prior and existingorganisations of the welfare state and the interests of professionals,trade unions and clients movements and the voting intentions ofthe wider electorate. The provision of some services is thereforedetermined by non-market criteria: labour processes in the state

not only reproduce capitalist social relations but also negatethem. This contradiction between legitimation and accumulationfunctions is reflected in the tension between, and inadequacy of,



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three separate modes of operation within the state sector:bureaucratic; purposive-rational; and democratic.

These different modes of operation have differentialrelationships to different groups of employees, providing a

framework for linking critical theory to the state labour process.Professional employees are widely noted to be particularlyentrenched in the state sector (Thompson and McHugh1990: 127) and traditionally have had much discretion andautonomy. Echoing Derber, Cousins maintains, however, that theautonomy and discretion of some professionals (teachers, socialworkers) has been largely operational: they are unable to definethe social purposes to which their work is put and in return forideological co-option are able to keep control over technical

autonomy. More powerful and prestigious professions havebeen able to exercise an important influence in the determinationof social policy and remain the primary decision makers in thedelivery of welfare services. It is because of this that state managershave continuously sought new forms of control as a discipline onprofessional providers (1987: 98). The 1989 Children Act and the1990 National Health Service and Community Care Act couldhere be cited as one such attempt at curtailing the technicalautonomy of social workers (Holman 1993). The movement

towards more proscribed responses is also evident in someaspects of health care, such as the de-limiting of drugs availablefor prescriptions. On the other hand, Cousins claims thatallocative policy, (that is, social security benefits, or taxation) ismost effectively administered through a bureaucratic and rationallegal organization (1987: 108). The framework thereforeestablishes what are considered by managers to be theappropriate forms of control in organizations governed bynon-market criteria yet dependent for their resources on capitalistproduction (1987: 64).

At a general level, Cousins contribution, in its recognition ofthe contradictory functions of the state and different sociallocations within it, is a distinct advance on previous accounts.However, there is no clear relationship posed between the verygeneral functions of the state and the role of particular groups ofemployees. Instead, there is a correspondence between forms ofmanagerial control and the assumed class positions of the

recipients of this control. As such, the functions of the statecontextualise the study but do not inform concrete analysis,reproducing in less strong form the dislocation noted above:

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Forms of social inequalities are perpetuated and developed forboth workers and clients, for instance the persistence of highconcentrations of low-paid jobs, gendered and racial divisions oflabour, and forms of stigmatism and dependency induced by

professional and bureaucratic definitions of clients needs(1987: 184). This picture suggests stable and uniform groups ofmiddle class and working class employees, divided by theoperation of professional ideology and control. But thecontradictory functions of the state are not represented in anunambiguous fashion by discrete groups but impact, ifdifferentially, upon groups at all levels of the state hierarchy.

Fairbrother also claims that state employment is distinct: thesite of employment, the state apparatus, in a liberal democracy is

moulded as both a representative and a managerial structure(1989: 189). Different perspectives are introduced, however, bya greater emphasis on the labour process and on the structuralcontradiction whereby workers sell their labour power for wages,on the one hand, and produce use values or the means for othersto participate in exchange relationships, on the other. Fairbrotherproceeds to draw a picture of the balance swinging towards themanagerial, as opposed to the representative, structure,simultaneously proletarianising the workforce. The commonality

of this experience across different sectors is indicated by theintroduction of a degree of uniformity in control and workpractice in all areas of state activity, with the consequence that thebasis has been laid for a state labour process (Fairbrother1989: 196). As part of this development, non-manual state workhas been structurally redefined so that this work has taken onfeatures of proletarian work, with the development andextension of state labour processes contributing to and sustainingthe complex social arrangements associated with capitalaccumulation (1989: 196).

Fairbrothers identification of the shift from representative andmanagerial forms of organisation, designed to increase thecontrol of the labour process, is paralleled in accounts whichstress the significance of the transition from forms of corporatism,including Whitleyism, to what is now perceived as the newpublic sector managerialism (Pollitt 1990). The forms of classcontrol have shifted and with it the relations within the state

work process. There has been the well noted centralisation ofpolicy-making (conception) and a decentralisation of decisionsabout its implementation (execution). But, contrary to the



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impression which Fairbrother gives, this is a far from uniformprocess. Different groups within different areas have varyingresources to resist restructuring and varying amounts ofcontinued control over the nature of services delivered, the work

process and the labour of others. After initial attempts tosubordinate hospital consultants to general managers, forinstance, the strategy has been to incorporate them through theestablishment of clinical directorates. This has parallels to, but isalso different from, the experience of headteachers. Indeed,Hoggett (1994) has argued that there is a general strategy ofconverting professionals into managers, rather than attemptingto control them by bureaucratic means. The experiences of bothgroups, however, are in marked contrast to the fortunes of

occupations lower down the hierarchy such as social workers andteachers.

Decentralisation has not, as its government proponents haveclaimed, empowered local workforces. But neither can theopposite claim be made. There has been no uniform proletarian-isation of employees, such as teachers and social workers, but theconstruction of a more hierarchical workplace and thecoalescence of a clearer inter-relationship between a new middleclass and the rest of the workforce.1 Whether this workforce

should be considered a working class, moreover, depends onthe social relations reflected in their practice and in this there isgreat variation. While emphasising power inequality within theorganisation of the state, Callinicos (1987), for instance, ignoresthe power relationships between some state employees and theirworking class clients. It is this absence which allows him todismiss working class hostility to social workers by the facilereference to the hostility faced by bus-drivers (1987: 26). Heignores the fact that more buses would placate frustratedpassengers: more social workers would not in itself transform theattitudes of clients towards the functions and practice of socialworkers.

Fairbrothers work raises more centrally than that of Cousinsthe state labour process, but gives only a partial exposition of itsdistinctive significance. Much is made, for instance of thecontradiction of state workers selling their labour power whileproducing use value. However, the contradiction in state sector

work stems not from the relation of wage labour to the productionof use value (the latter in fact defines the labour process) somuch as the absence of exchange value and the relation of work

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to wider social policy and control. It is the absence of thediscipline of exchange that allows for political mediation in theproduction of use value with consequent internal and externaleffects. Within this political mediation, Fairbrother represents

conflict as only between representational and managerial formsof organisation, without specifying the content of these concepts.In fact, if the former refers to the formal democraticdetermination of policy, workers voices are just one amongstother interests and are themselves likely to be less thanhomogeneous. The continued co-existence (or even adominance) of this form would not take labour beyondtraditional social democratic structures. As far as the increasingswing towards managerial determination of policy, it is similarly

unclear which class interests are represented through themanagerial structure (whether managers as a new middle class orthe interests of capital). If the former is intended, we have aparallel claim to that of the managerialists that state policy isdetermined contrary to the interests of capital (Nichols 1969;Gould 1981): if the latter, the social structure of the state appearspolarised and policy unmediated. The relations between thechanging forms of decision-making and class relations aretherefore not made explicit.

The external consequences of political mediation are leftunexamined. The production of use value is raised by Fairbrotheras a defining feature of the state working class, but without aconsideration that some state employees, even at low levels of anyhierarchy of control within the state, might perform roles andtasks which are central to the control of others. Lower levels of thepolice are an obvious example, but one could include BenefitsAgency workers who might enthusiastically interpret their role asfinding ways to restrict benefits as part of a wider governmentideology to discipline the working class to the realities of thelabour market. Even more clearly, there is much evidence withinthe sectional literature on social work and teaching that statepolicies in these areas are not simply benign: they play a majorrole not only in social co-ordination and the transfer of necessaryknowledge and skills (a labour process), but also perform a vitalfunction in securing capitalist dominance (Centre forContemporary Cultural Studies 1981). It is thus possible to

distinguish analytically the respective roles of the performance oflabour (when creating use values) and the function of capital(when supervising the state labour process or performing tasks



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which only arise because of the need to subordinate the workingclass under capitalism).

The class location of state employees is therefore subject to adual determination. Fairbrothers approach detaches the

class/repressive role of the state from the class analysis of itsemployees and suggests an increasing bifurcation of stateemployees which is far from clear in practice. The programme ofchanges forced upon the state sector by successive Conservativegovernments has not been uniform in purpose or outcome. Oneimportant and general feature of state policy is, however, itsreversion to a more authoritarian nature (Jessop et al. 1984),with the likely result that within employees roles the balance ofthe production of use-value to the function of social control has

tipped in the favour of the latter. At the same time, the internalrelations of state employees have been (and are being) re-composed, so that hierarchies are more sharply defined andline-management and control more prominent (Pollitt 1990). Thechanges brought about by restructuring have therefore resultedin complex outcomes including a re-configuring of class relations.This re-configuration has produced not only a tendency towardsthe consolidation of non-manual wage labour in proletarianconditions, as highlighted by Fairbrother (1994), but also a new

middle class (the latter consolidation subsequently recognised inCarter and Fairbrother 1995).

One consequence of the acceptance of such an analysis is thenecessity to challenge not only the conditions of employment, butalso its content. The struggle to define the nature of the serviceprovided by state workers is also a struggle about the nature ofclass relations within the state and the relationship of stateemployees with the working class more generally. As such,Poulantzass rhetorical claim (1975), that class struggle isconstitutive of class, is made real and thus has profoundimplications for state sector trade unionism.

Conclusion

Then there came a moment when the first shock had worn off and

when, in spite of everythingin spite of their terror of the dogs,

and of the habit, developed through long years, of nevercomplaining, never criticising, no matter what happenedthey

might have uttered some word of protest. But just at that moment,

State Labour 79


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as though at a signal, all the sheep burst out into a tremendous

bleating of -

Four legs good, two legs better! Four legs good, two legs better!

Four legs good, two legs better!

It went on for five minutes without stopping. And by the time the

sheep had quieted down, the chance to utter any protest had

passed, for the pigs had marched back into the farmhouse (Orwell

1950: 87).

With the minor change of terminologyPublic sector bad, privatesector good!Orwells allegory provides a fitting parallel with

Conservative attitudes towards the state sector and privatisationand the rather ineffectual political and trade union opposition tothe process throughout the 1980s. Conservative policies can berelated to the states relationship to capital accumulation. Thestate is regarded as a drain on accumulation and is an inefficientproducer of services because decisions which are taken are insulatedfrom the market and exchange relations.2 Privatisation reduces thetaxation burden and provides the same or superior services moreefficiently. These economic and service quality arguments are

contested (Fine and Poletti 1992; Whitfield 1992; Kirkpatrick andMartinez Lucio 1995) and it is likely that the urge to privatise andrestructure is driven as much by ideology as other forces.

In particular, the state sector provides an alternative model tothat of private ownership and appropriation. The absence ofthe profit motive is a practical demonstration that it is possible toorganise society and fulfil needs on a different basis. It is possibleto envisage, in a socialist mode of production, collectivediscussion and decision-making about the content and definitionsof jobs and about the accountability of management to theworkforce. Marx indicates these possibilities in his discussion ofthe work of supervision in co-operative factories. Democraticpractice, in which the workforce willingly submits to collectivedecisions, removes the basis for capitalist-type supervision andcontrol: the antithetical nature of the supervisory workdisappears (Marx 1981: 512). What remains is the work of co-ordination and unity which is part of a labour process. In this

perspective, democracy at work changes the basis of theorganisation of work from coercion to consent andabolishes thestructural base for class antagonisms.



18/21

Outside exceptional and unstable circumstances, genuinedemocracy at work is not possible under capitalism even in thatsector of the state which does not directly produce exchange

value. State policy is necessarily distorted because the state is

both dependent on and a reflection of the economic and politicalrelations within capitalist society. State policy is constantlyconstrained by the determining needs of capital. This dependencelimits the nature of the representation of labour within the state.Genuine and radical democratic decision-making is therefore nota feasible possibility because the limits of state policy are set by theinternationally competitive need to accumulate capital. Withinstate employment this translates into the need to ensure theprovision of services with the expenditure of no more than the

average amount of socially necessary labour. Hierarchicalmechanisms of supervision and control are necessary to ensurethis. As the average amount of socially necessary labour islessened, exploitation increases and antagonism rises, the level ofsupervision of labour necessarily increases.

But the forms which organisation takes and the extent andnature of supervision within it are not mechanically determinednor simply imposed. Despite the preoccupation of industrialrelations and labour process theory with managerial strategies

(Sewell and Wilkinson 1992), the subjective orientation ofemployees is still an important determinant of organisationaloutcomes. Moreover, the quality of relations embedded in theseoutcomes are class relationships. Subjectivity is, of course, notstatic and is affected by location and the apparent viability ofdifferent modes of behaviour, but subjectivity is no mechanicalreflection of these circumstances. Harris (1996) has documentedthe levels of discretion which social workers retained in the 1970sand early 1980s, even as claims were being made that theirposition paralleled those working on assembly lines (and eventhese latter groups were not averse to affecting outcomes, as theindustrial relations crisis of the 1970s highlighted). We shouldbe equally wary of accepting employees total subordinationeven under the stricter regimes being enacted now. The contrastin the position of groups such as teachers and social workersunder different regimes of control is therefore not one betweensome golden age of autonomy and identification with the working

class, on the one hand, and, on the other, worsening conditionsand more control over, and hostility to, the working class. Thereis variation in class orientation and practice under both forms of

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organisation and the class relations of such groups will similarlyvary internally.

If this perspective appears a complex and confusing picture ofclass relations, it is an inevitable result of their complexity and

fluidity in reality. One conclusion is clear, however, a tradeunion orientation to greater democracy within the state, acommitment to services which are determined by need and analliance with working class constituencies and organisations,could transform the varying state labour processes, public sectorunionism and simultaneously the structural basis of classrelations. Such a perspective does not deny the capitalist natureof the state so important to modern state theory. It recognises,however, the complex relationship of control, stemming from the

antagonisms within production, to the provision of necessaryservices. Hence the dialectic of oppression and emancipationand the embryonic possibilities of a different kind of provision,based upon the working class in the state.

______________________________


An earlier version of this paper was given at the 14th International LabourProcess Conference, University of Aston March, 1996. Thanks are due to PeterFairbrother for his supportive comments on the earlier version and to PaulStewart and the anonymous referees whose comments were engaging, criticaland generous.

______________________________

1. Hoggetts (1994) contention that bureaucratic control is giving way not todevolved control but rather to remote control is therefore only partiallycorrect. Strategic control is more centralised, but operational control ismore localised and thus there is a dual movement to the centre and to theunit of delivery. This latter movement does not signify the empowerment

of workers, but a more overt management.2. This is obviously not the case for all state activity. Carchedi makes theuseful distinction between capitalist state activities and non-capitalist stateactivities (Carchedi 1977). The latter term refers to activities such as healthcare and education, while the former to what used to comprise in the UK thenationalised industries (utilities, coal, transport). These nationalisedindustries have largely been privatised.

______________________________

Apple, M. W. (1995)Education and Power, Routledge, London.

Ball, S. J. (1988) Staff Relations During the Teachers Industrial Action: context,conflict and proletarianisation, British Journal of Sociology of Education,Vol.9, 3: 289-306.

Acknowledgment

Notes

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