Power Analysis

Many anarchists now believe that class analysis is no longer relevant and a pure power analysis is sufficient to explain the forms of exploitation and domination we experience today. Power analysis suggests that it is domination that is the main basis and form of oppression in this society. It's proponents suggest that it is somehow beyond class analysis. Anarcho-syndicalists believe that class analysis has a place for anarchists - because class and power are inextricably linked. Class analysis does not ignore power. It is clear that power, in all it's forms, serves the interests of those who benefit most from society as it is.

This benefit can be direct or indirect. The sexist organization of domestic work in the family, for example, benefits men directly - but also benefits class society through the division of men and women, developments of concepts of domination and passivity and through the reproduction of capitalist society. It provides the material base for keeping the worker in the workplace as well as for the rearing and acculturation of children and commodity consumption.

The problem of class analysis is not that it is irrelevant, but that in some anarchist and anarcho-syndicalist writing, it hasn't been updated from its original nineteenth century formulations. Anarcho-syndicalists acknowledge the contribution by some feminist (especially some socialist-feminist), situationist, anti-racist, ecological, and modern socialist thought to developing the analysis of power and class. The developments made showing the importance of the relationships between gender, sexuality, culture, technology, and power are invaluable.

But a pure power analysis has many limitations. It seems to suggest a generalised and disembodied domination that we must struggle against in our individual lives, but seems to play down the social basis of this power or the social struggle against it. It is not true that class analysis is essentially Marxist and therefore un-anarchist. Peasants and workers knew they were peasants and workers long before Marx walked into the British Museum. This is because we experience class (exploitation, powerlessness, prejudice) in our everyday lives.

Some people suggest that western societies are now "post-industrial" societies and that class analysis is therefore no longer relevant. That is, that the "working class" (the traditional industrial proletariat) have sold out to materialism and that workers have all become middle class. There is some truth in this - yet it cannot be universally applied. Some sections of the industrial workforce are very conservative - yet some others are quite militant despite substantial material benefits from the system (eg. the Builders Labourers, Tramways and Railways workers, nurses, airline pilots). Unemployment has led to the intensification of the exploitation of some workers, especially young people, recently arrived migrants, women and part-time workers, illegal immigrants and others in the cash economy. This in turn has led to pressures to reduce incomes and worsen working conditions for the industrial workforce and we are yet to see the effects of these developments. The passivity of recent years may be more apparent than real.

While "post-industrial" critics of class analysis point out the increasing importance of a small number of technical, scientific, and managerial workers, another of the effects of this process is the de-skilling of many areas of employment. There are significant numbers of workers who find that their position (income, industrial bargaining power and sense of trade identity) is under threat. This creates the potential for a new, large "proletarianised" section of the workforce with much less commitment to supporting the existing system. For example, the growth in the number of "outworkers" such as migrant women in the textile industry who work long hours in their flats for low piece rates with nor guarantees of regular income, holiday pay or sick leave, workers compensation, industrial health and safety protections, maternity leave, etc. The burgeoning tourism and hospitality industry is another example of where "hyper exploitation" through casual employment of young people, students, women and migrants shows that economic exploitation is not a thing of the past in Western economies.

Many workers have been "de-skilled". Railway station staff, for example, who ran all the activities at the station now find parcels and goods, ticketing, rosters, etc. have all been centralised and computerised and they have become passive train watchers and ticket checkers. This makes them much more vulnerable to sacking or "redeployment" on the bosses terms! As capitalism develops new forms of exploitation develop. The desire for the latest consumer gadget keeps the worker going to work allowing the continuing extraction of profit despite most basic material needs having being met for workers in Western countries. Recent times have seen great strides in the creation of new "needs" - VCRs, computer games, compact disc players and other products are examples of the commercialisation of leisure time.

Some of the coming of "post-industrialism" in the west has to do with the shifting of western industries "off-shore" to countries where, owing to poverty, workers are less organized. Industrial based class society hasn't disappeared - indeed for many people in the world it is becoming the new form of exploitation. The class nature of these societies is very clear, especially in free-trade zones and under a range of authoritarian governments. Class relations may appear to becoming outmoded for some people in the west, but with an international perspective they are a common form of exploitation and oppression.

We acknowledge that it is not easy any more to determine strictly who profits and who doesn't from systemic exploitation. Who is an order giver and who is an order taker? Many people are both beneficiaries and victims of this system, they both control and are controlled. This is not necessarily an argument against class analysis. An analysis of class explains some of the particular nature of power relations in this society. Class analysis allows us to choose a strategy - helping anticipate the likely development so capitalism and the state and have a chance to counter them.

Not all power relations in a capitalist society can be understood in terms of simple economic exploitation - but the whole nature of the current capitalist society allows us to understand the links between, for example; opposition to Aboriginal land rights and mining and grazing interests; the position of women in the home and marriage and their exploitation as factory 'hands' and outworkers; between advertising, mass media culture and the consumerist ethic; between industrialism and progress as ideologies and protection of the environment. It is still possible to determine who benefits the most - materially-economically, power-politically, emotionally-psychologically - from society and the world as it is. There are some people in whose interest it is to change it. A pure power analysis, on an individual basis, implies` that it is in everybody's interest to change society. If this is the case why hasn't society changed? What power analysis fails to do is to provide an explanation of how change comes about - or a strategy for achieving change. It doesn't go beyond people rejecting power in their own lives and joining with others who share the same particular oppression. If this was effective then the movement politics of the last twenty years would've brought about more revolutionary changes that it has. The fact is that movement politics has not been a revolutionary force and has been used to propel some people to positions of greater power or profit making within the existing system.

Class analysis, on the other hand, implies an allegiance to others in the same class - and the existence of an opposing class. It explains the real opposition and retaliation when class interests are challenged by revolutionaries. The ability to identify who we are struggling with and who we are fighting against has important implications in the struggle against Capital and the State.

Next Section

back to the index