Lashed by its own Whip: the Working class, Sadomasochism and Pension Funds

The working classes have been particularly battered by global capitalism’s most recent recession cycle. As this working class grows older and more of these people reach retirement age, the primary concern of these people will be whether their savings and pensions will provide them enough of a financial cushion for the next 20 years or so. Those members of the working class fortunate enough to have been represented by trade unions are most likely to be best insulated against volatility in the market place as judicious saving, in combination with a healthy pension, will presumably keep these people more than comfortable.

Many of the pensions owed to such people will be the result of a curious arrangement on the behalf of trade unions and their employers however. This is because during the last 30 years a growing number of trade unions have sought out market mechanisms in the form of investment pension funds, either through the union entirely, or in conjunction with a particular employer, to seek returns on the pension contributions of union members.

This curious arrangement is just that, curious, for a number of reasons. First, the practice of a trade union vulgarly embracing capitalist market mechanisms to generate financial capital appears to be a reactionary concession to the capitalist class. The trade union movement in its inception sought to transform society into a more egalitarian environment no longer premised on the private ownership of capital.

Second, the pension funds organized for the benefit of the membership are rarely directly managed or overseen by the working brothers and sisters on the shop floor. These funds are generally overseen by professional union managers who work solely for the union and no other organization. Furthermore, these managers rarely have concrete work experience on the shop floor with their fellow brothers and sisters. Thus, the establishment of a pension fund is a symptom of the profound bureaucratization of the trade union movement. Excessive Bureaucratization is an outcome that the trade union movement originally sought to avoid since it represented a regression into petty-bourgeois organizational patterns

These trends among the working class thus indicate a pattern of bourgeoisification among their ranks. What is the nature of this bourgeoisification? Surely the consumption cycle it implies is different than that of the more classically oriented middle class of lawyers and doctors?

It certainly is. We must never forget that in a capitalist economy it is labour that is fundamentally the basis of all economic value. The activity that the professional and middle classes have been primarily engaged in however is not of “creating value” so much as expropriating profit. Profit is derived from the exploitation of the working classes who are not compensated for the full financial value that their work in turn implies.

When this dual formula of value enaction and expropriation of profit is applied to the newly bourgeoisified working class, a perverse scenario results; the working class relinquishes its autonomy. It metaphorically hands its own lash to the capitalist class only to be subsequently, repeatedly and violently whipped by it. This situation results from the fact that investment funds must continually seek a source of return. In order to derive this return on investment, the fund must necessarily put someone to work. Perversely, the funds invested by trade unions inevitably trickle back into the coffers of the organizations that employ the working class in question. The end result is the institution of the working class’ slavery through the medium of the trade union. The lash has been handed over, and this kind of sadomasochistic relationship is what structures labour negotiations today. The proletariat learns to love what dominates it.

It may be said that new opportunities are opened to the working class as result of this kind of industrial relationship. As perverse a claim as that is, it may still be true. The price paid has been high however. It has come at the expense of the working class’ own autonomy. Only when the working class recognizes the fundamentally autonomous nature of its existence may it once again become of world historical importance as a class. Until then, alternative means are necessary in order to institute an autonomous and egalitarian society.

This is not to say that work is to be abandoned. Quite the contrary, work is the creative basis that fundamentally assures the maintenance and institution of a free and autonomous society. The task for such a society is therefore to fundamentally re-conceive the nature and end goal of such work. Will work be based on the untenable and unsustainable basis of profit or some other means? This seems crucial.