quote:

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The discourse of class which has depicted class as the central
social relation of contemporary societies is now contributing to
its marginalization. Critics of Marxism proclaim the death of
class, while Marxist theorists of contemporary capitalism lament
working-class demobilization. From our perspective, what has died
or been demobilized is the fiction of the working class and its
mission that was produced as part of a hegemonic conception of
industrial capitalist development. As this conception has been
devalued by criticism and other historical processes, and as
multiple social "centers" and contending forces have seized the
historical stage, the "working class" has been peripheralized and
demoted. Discursive moves to displace the economic essence of
society have displaced as well its agents of transformation. Now
the militaristic image of a massive collectivity of workers all
defined by a similar relation to industrial capital is part of a
receding social conception and politics of change.

Despite the waning theoretical and political fortunes of the
"working class," class itself may still be theorized as present
and pervasive. Monolithic images of the "working class" associated
with craft unionism and Fordist indusries may no longer be
recognized by social theorists or those who labour. They may not
work to mobilize resistance and impulses toward social
transformation, or play a leading role on the stage of social
theory. But class is not thereby necessarily diminished as an
intelligible constituent of social development and political
change. Instead, the role of class as a social process may be
recast in different social and theoretical settings, ones in which
new political opportunities may emerge.

For us, the question today is not whether class is a concept with
continuing relevance, for discourses of socioeconomic
differentiation and surplus labour appropriation are still, and
perhaps will always be, involved in the constitution of social
knowledge and political subjects. Our question is, how can
theorizing class as a process of production, appropriation, and
distribution of surplus labour add dimensions to theories of
society and to projects of social and economic innovation? How may
it contribute to conceptualizing and constituting decentred and
multiple selves that are always in some ways political (powerful)
subjects?

A view of social subjects as multiply constituted by class
processes as well as other social processes does not allow us to
presume certain "class interests" or "class capacities", nor does
it lead to a theorization of likely "class alliances". At the same
time, it does not preclude the envisioning of collective
action. In the alternative space we see for a politics of class,
we may encounter and even foster the partial identification of
social subjects around class issues and the formulation of
strategic solidarities and alliances to effect class
transformation. Importantly, though, we are always aware that
these solidarities are discursively as well as non-discursively
constructed and that a class "identity" is overdetermined in the
individual social subject by many other discourses of identity and
social differentiation. This conception of class also allows us to
see many non-class-oriented social movements as having profound
effects on class transformations, possibly liberating the
potential for the development of class diversity in ways that
targeted "class politics" has not.

Our purpose here is not to create a "better" form of knowledge or
one that will lead to a "better" politics of change. We are
interested in producing a class knowledge that is one among many
forms of knowledge and not a privileged instrument of social
reconstruction. But we also have an interest in posing alternative
economic futures. Towards this end, we argue that a new knowledge
of class may contribute to a revitalized politics of class
transformation.

pp. 69-71

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