Restructuring State Employment: labour and Non-labour inthe Capitalist State

Abstract

Changes in the organization of the state, and labourwithin it, are giving new urgency to the need for aMarxist account of state labour. Traditionally, Marxisttheory concerning the capitalist state and the labourprocess have remained disconnected. The article examinesboth these areas and attempts to extract elements fromeach to present a coherent account of state labour. Theperspective developed argues for a strategy whichconnects stote labour to the recipients of state servicesand transforms the state functions of control to ones oflabour.

Introduction

Braverman’s seminal work, Labor and Monopoly Capitalism(1974), focused attention on the neglect by Marxists ofthe labour process in contemporary capitalist societies.While there may still be doubts about the politicalorientation of subsequent works which Braverman'scomplaint prompted (Nichols 1992) and the lack ofsubsequent innovation (Carter 1994), there is certainlyno shortage of attempts to fill in this absence. However,despite the growth of labour process analysis, the topicof the state labour process continues to be neglected orunder-developed. There is a long, if limited, traditionof studies of labour in the state sector (inter aliaDennis et al. 1956; Beynon and Austrin 1994) but on thewhole the studies reflect or continue the bias ofindustrial sociology towards male manual workers, asection increasingly a minority within the state.Moreover, most studies use the fact of state employmentas a context for the study rather than seeing stateemployment itself as being problematic. The question ofthe social function of different sectors of state labourwithin state policy and the relationship of stateemployment and class relations do not therefore arise.With the concerted drive by successive Conservative

governments to privatise, marketise and restructure stateservices, the specifically state nature of some sectorsof employment has been thrown into relief. As theconditions of state employees have worsened, with growingintensification of labour, greater flexibility andincreasing insecurity, across a range of state sectorsthe claim has been made that state employees — civilservants, teachers and social workers — are beingproletarianised (Fairbrother 1994; Ball 1988; Joyce etal. 1988). At the same time social policy theoristsportray the services which state employees carry out asmore authoritarian and hostile to working classinterests, a claim which would seem to merit someconsideration as the number of working class pupils beingexpelled from schools rises and the barriers and otherprotections for staff against attack from desperateworking class claimants at benefit offices grow moresubstantial.

Approaching the question of state labour from anotherangle throws no more light on its specific nature.Despite the very real advances in state theory (Clarke1991), there have been few attempts to explore whatimplications characterisations of the role of the statehave for the class locations of state employees,attempts, it is argued here, which would necessitate ananalysis both by sector and position within hierarchiesof control. This absence of theoretical concern with theclass location and role of state employees is made morestrange by the noted growth in interest in the nature ofthe capitalist labour process. These two areas oftheoretical concern — the state and the capitalist labourprocess — have remained separate, with the result that,in a number of discrete areas, there is a dislocationbetween the characterisation of the state and its socialpolicy as repressive, on the one hand (Bowles and Cintis1976; Clarke 1993), and, on the other, a class analysisof state employees, which either designates them asworkers (Joyce et al., 1988) or sees strong tendenciestowards proletarianisation, a claim particularly strongin the sociology of teaching (Lawn and Ozga, 1988).The claim for the specificity of state sector does not

deny that there are many similarities between labourprocesses within it and the capitalist labour process ingeneral. The question of the level of abstraction is,however, of critical significance. It is possible to talkabout the capitalist labour process containing certainelements, for instance, the unity of a labour process,creating use values, and a valorisation process, with thelatter being the 'determining, dominating and overridingone' (Marx 1976:990).As soon as we look at any specific national and industrylabour process, however, at any particular conjuncture,the combination of elements will be different, dependingon the configuration of tasks into occupations, therelative strengths of capital and labour and otherinfluences (Smith and Meiksins 1995).

Similarly, at a certain level of abstraction, it ispossible to posit what distinguishes the state sectorlabour process from the capitalist labour process ingeneral. In many areas of state employment, the purposeof work is not the expansion of capital but thefulfilment of need (Carchedi 1977). So, while it ispossible to agree with Joyce et al. that class relationsin the public sector are in need of urgent study, it isincorrect to predicate this need on the claim that 'somuch … 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, andthus the primary role of any state is seeking to secureconditions conducive to capital accumulation' (Harris1994: 45). Certainly, every type of society needs asocial surplus to guarantee long-term survival, butcapital is a specific and not trans-historicalrelationship. The basis for examining state employmentand the state labour process will have to start from adifferent appreciation of its significance.

Harris is no doubt trying to signal that the capitaliststate is not neutral and that perceptions of need and theway in which they are satisfied are determined byrelations, not in the abstract, but under conditionsimposed by capitalism as an international system. The

idea of need and the pressures of capital accumulationresult in complex political outcomes which influence thecontent and form of the labour process. In particular,what is distinctive of the state sector is the two-foldpolitical determination of the labour process: firstly inrelationship to the fact that the state is 'at the centreof the dialectic of the organisational and repressiveaspect of the presence of labour within capital'(Bonefeld 1991: 49); secondly, the terms and conditionsof employment are mediated through political processesand structures, which obscure and inhibit, but do notnegate, the law of value. When the state labour processis examined at a more concrete level in particularsocieties and at specific conjunctures, there is anunevenness in the outcome of these political mediations,in part because of the uneven strength and organisationof labour, and the ability of employees to subvert formalpolicies. Class relations are not static andpredetermined but are constructed and changed in struggleover the means and ends of state policies.

The partial nature of the debates over the state and thelabour process ensure that a number of problematicrelationships are not subject to critical scrutiny.Failure to relate the complex concepts of 'capital',labour' and 'proletarianisation' to the state sectorproduces an account which mechanically transposes them,ignoring the specificity of the state labour process.This account attempts to rectify this failure with a viewto stimulating a sharper focus in the growing literatureon state labour. It begins by an examination of theorigins and progress of theories of the labour process,noting the central but inadequate conceptualisation of'proletarianisation'. The uncritical adoption of theseperspectives within analyses of the state is thenillustrated, before examining more sophisticated attemptsto specify the basis of social relations within thestate. Finally the consequences of a revisedconceptualisation of the state labour process and itsrelationship to wider class relations are detailed,emphasising the ability of workers to change the classnature of state policy.

Capital, Labour and the Labour Process

Labour process analysis has been developed largely fromwithin a Marxist perspective refracted through the workof Braverman. His work has been much criticised, butcontinues to cast a long shadow over subsequent debates.As significantly, much which has become accepted as thecore of labour process theory has delimited his concernsand narrowed his field of vision to the questions of de-skilling and proletarianisation (Carter 1995). The resultis that few writers have sufficiently appreciated theinseparable relationship of labour process theory totheories of class formation. This is in part becauseBraverman did not make this relationship sufficientlyexplicit and, indeed, he would have had difficulties inso doing because of contradictions and ambiguities withinhis work.

The first problem relates to his failure to posit a cleardistinction between the function of capital and thelabour process (Carchedi 1977). Marx distinguishedbetween 'the real labour process' in which the labourer'creates new use-values by performing useful labour withexisting use-values' (1976:981) and the valorisationprocess which involves the extraction of surplus value orsurplus labour from the direct producer. According toMarx, while the capitalist has a definite role to play inthe wider production process, a role necessary toguarantee the production of surplus value, the capitalistdoes not take part in the labour process: he or she doesnot add use-values to the final product. Rather than therole of the capitalist (as capitalist) in the process ofproduction being conceptualised as non-productive labouror abstractly as labour of conception, it should beconsidered as nonlabour, as outside the labour processentirely. It has been Carchedi who has most developedthis perspective and whose work, although widely andinaccurately dismissed as sterile structuralism, offersthe prospect of more sophisticated development.Much of Braverman's analysis was compatible with that ofMarx. Braverman's perspectives were dynamic, for

instance, and he was at pains to emphasise process ratherthan analytical categories, maintaining that 'the term"working class" properly understood never preciselydelineated a specified body of people, but was rather anexpression for an ongoing social process' (1974: 24).While he picked no direct argument with previous orthodoxMarxist approaches defining the working class on thebasis of relations to means of production, he indicatedthe limited use of this formal position: '… in thepresent situation, when almost all of the population hasbeen placed in this situation so that the definitionencompasses occupational strata of the most diversekinds, it is not the bare definition that is importantbut its application (1974: 25).

This general approach to class analysis does notunconditionally support writers who, from within a labourprocess perspective, claim, for instance, that: 'Teachersare workers, teaching is work, and the school is aworkplace' (Connell 1985: 69). Nor, in another context,does it support those giving social workers unambiguousworking class status because social work is conceived asa labour process like any other: there is a raw material(people in distress) and an end product (people who areless distressed, or placed in an institution or givensupport to sustain themselves, so that physical survivalis extended (Joyce et al 1988: 45). Here social work isabstracted from the definite relations of capitalistsociety. In these widely adopted perspectives, the labourprocess is divorced from the exigencies of capitalistsociety in general and the relationship of the statesocial policy to accumulation and repression inparticular (Westergaard 1995).

Yet, Braverman maintained that the wage-labour form masksrelations which in substance are representative of thedialectical opposite to those of the working class, i.e.are representative of capital. That Braverman cancontinue to be an inspiration for claims which treat allwage labour as unambiguously working class is, in part, aresult of his failure to develop the logic andsignificance of this analysis. This is witnessed by his

mistaken belief that operating executives have a 'placein the hierarchy of the labour process' even though theyare 'themselves part of that class that personifiescapital and employs labor' (1974:405). His emphasis onfluidity, therefore, results in his being less thanprecise as to how changes in the structure andfunctioning of capitalism change the composition of theworking class.

A second problem arises from an ambiguity centred on histreatment of the significance of the division betweenconception and execution. At one point, for instance, hisanalysis suggests that those responsible for conceptionstand in a different class position to the directphysical producers — conception is a function of capital.Yet Braverman goes on to state that 'production has nowbeen split in two and depends on the activities of bothgroups. Inasmuch as the mode of production has beendriven by capitalism into this divided condition, it hasseparated the two aspects of labor; but both remainnecessary to production, and in this the labor processretains its unity'(1974:126, emphasis added). Bravermanconceives of the function of capital as part of thelabour process; or rather he vacillates between twocontradictory characterisations (conception = capitalistfunction; cohception = part of the unity of labourprocess). Braverman's vacillation is a result of aninsufficient 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 neverrestricted purely to ensuring the production of surplusvalue. Management of the enterprise had a double nature.As well as the function of capital, capitalists hadalways performed unifying and coordinating roles, roleswhich would be necessary under any system of socialproduction. They did not arise because of the antagonismof classes under capitalism and were part of the labourprocess. The complex organisation of modern productionhas increased rather than lessened the need to unify andcoordinate the labour process. As capitalism developed,

the function of the capitalist within the productionprocess was transformed from an individual to acollective one, no longer embodied in the individualcapitalist, who was replaced first by a manager and thenby a managerial hierarchy. Those employees engaged withinthis hierarchy are paid salaries or wages a factrecognised by Braverman as insufficient to make themworkers.

Proletarianisation

The problems inherent in Braverman's perspectives makethem an unreliable base from which to build aproletarianisation thesis, a thesis much in evidence inwritings on the state labour process, particularly asrelated to social workers and teachers (for critiques seeHarris 1996 and Carter 1997 respectively). Braverman, infact, makes only two specific references which could beperceived as dealing with proletarianisation. In one ofthese Braverman states: 'Not only does it [the "newmiddle class'] receive its petty share in theprerogatives and rewards of capital, but it also bearsthe mark of the proletarian condition. For theseemployees the social form taken by their work, their trueplace in the relations of production, their fundamentalcondition of subordination as so much hired labor,increasingly makes itself felt, especially in the massoccupations that are part of this stratum' (1974: 407).Nevertheless, in spite of the paucity of directreferences, the argument for a process ofproletarianisation is implicit in much of the work, as inhis description of the evolution of clerical work intomass working-class employment.

To have theoretical purchase, the concept ofproletarianisation must relate to the changing socialnature of work tasks (the performance of labour/nonlabour) and thus to changing class relations, and notjust to the formal status of becoming a wage or salaryearner (Smith and Willmott 1991), the conditions underwhich labour is carried out (Wright 1978) or theattendant levels of skill (Apple 1995). Braverman,

however, has difficulty identifying the changing socialfunction of employees within the production processbecause of his failure to hold consistently to theconception that the formal status of wage labour can maskthe function of capital. It is this inconsistency whichhas encouraged numerous writers, especially withineducational sociology, to suggest that proletarianisationis coterminous with de-skilling and lessening autonomy(Ozga and Lawn 1981; 1988; Hatcher 1994; Ball 1988;Harris 1994). Similar claims, based on the supposedfactory-like logic of social welfare, have been made byBolger et al. (1981), Jones (1983) and Simpkin (1979).

This version of proletarianisation has been challenged ina much quoted article by Derber (1983). Professionallabour in the state sector is distinctive in that it hasnot followed the industrial model and has retainedcontrol over the technical aspects of the labour process.What professional labour has lacked is control over endsof labour. Derber refers to the latter process asideological proletarianisation, reflecting workers'powerlessness to define the use to which work is put.Industrial workers experienced both technical andideological components of control simultaneously, but thefailure to distinguish the two aspects of work and thesimple transference of the analysis to professional workhas allowed many analysts to blur the very realcontinuing differences in their respective conditions ofwork.Derber's perspectives open up the need to go beyond anarrow concern with the de-skilling, lessening jobcontrol and lowering levels of autonomy within thecapitalist labour process. His treatment, however, doesnot give adequate consideration to the dialecticalrelationship 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 tochallenge. In the former, the processes of de-skilling,loss of autonomy and lessening job control do notnecessarily signify proletarianisation. It is possible tohave 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 notsignify a change from some other social location into aworking class one. Similarly, when the realm of policyformation is considered, it is also possible to havegreater or less degrees of autonomy etc. within thefunction of capital, within a non labour function: thedegrees of autonomy etc. might signify a particularposition in the hierarchy of control, but would notdetermine whether someone was part of the collectivelabour process. It is the transition from the former tothe latter, from one social function to another, thatcomprises proletarianisation and not levels of skill orautonomy when performing them.

If both components of proletarianisation can be singlychallenged, as importantly, so can their dualisticrelationship. Derber's characterisation of two levels ofproletarianisation is ultimately unsustainable because itrests on the assumption that means do not affect ends andvice versa. In practice, the autonomy claimed forprofessionals in the technical labour process will tendto undermine the ends as defined by state policymakers.The corollary is equally true: policies also assume anappropriate method of implementation and this willundermine autonomy and affect the relationships ofprofessionals to the users of their services.

The state, the labour process and critical theory

If employees make few appearances within theories of thestate, it is also the case that the state has littlepresence in labour process theory. Braverman was morethan aware of the importance of the growth in stateemployment. The role of capitalist state, however, wasconceived as unproblematically securing the conditionsfor the continued social relations of capitalism. Statefunctions such as education and welfare arosespecifically for this end. Hence, in his discussion ofschooling Braverman emphasises its role in thesocialisation of potential labour:

Whatever the formal educational content ofthe curriculum, it is in this respect not somuch what the child learns that is importantas what he or she becomes wise to. In school,the child and the adolescent practice whatthey will later be called upon to do asadults: the conformity to routines, themanner in which they will be expected tosnatch from fast-moving machinery their wantsand needs' (1974: 287). (emphasis inoriginal)

While the social function of education is thus explicit,the implications for the social class position of thosecarrying out the function are less clearly stated andthere is no consideration of state employment directly.What references there are to the particular occupationsin the state are general, as in his inclusion of teachersin the intermediate category of those between labour andcapital. Braverman asserts that: 'In such occupations,the proletarian form begins to assert itself and impressitself upon the consciousness of these employees' (1974:408). The function of the state (and hence its employees)was thus disarticulated from employees' class position.His innovatory perspectives on the labour process weresimply placed alongside a traditional Marxist view of thestate.

As Strinati notes, where the state does receivetreatment, by both Braverman and other labour processtheorists, it is seen as external and intervening.Strinati explicitly argues that such studies assume 'anartificial and arbitrary separation between the state andthe labour process' and therefore fail to get to gripswith the specific politics of the labour process, thevarying forms by which the state can restructure it'(1990: 219). While, as an opening stance, Strinati'sposition can be commended, his perspectives arethemselves open to a number of criticisms. To begin with,he effectively reduces the specific politics of thelabour process to a largely formal consideration of

industrial relations policies. More importantly, however,in dealing with the relationship öf the state to thelabour process, Strinati stresses only one side of therelationship (the state's influence on the labourprocess) and fails to realise that the labour process isitself present in at least some of the actions of thestate. Whatever the corrective effect of his critique,therefore, it is more than outweighed by thereinforcement of a more serious historical absence: thereis no consideration of the state labour process. Inrightly criticising Braverman, Strinati fails to shiftvery far the prevailing paradigm.

Other attempts to shift the paradigm are not entirelyabsent, however. In an important contribution. Cousins(1987), supplementing the labour process perspective withone drawn from Offe (1984) and critical theory, arguesthat: 'Any analysis of the state labour process shouldinclude consideration of the relation of state productionof goods and services to both the capital accumulationprocess and the democratic processes. It is in relationboth to accumulation and legitimation that the state'sactivities have become the source of new contradictionsand political divisions in the 1970s and 1980s' (1987:50). These dual processes have the practical consequenceof subjecting the state sector to the pressures of cost-efficiency and productivity in order to contain costs andto non-market rationality. Restructuring is thusrestricted by the prior and existing organisations of thewelfare state and the interests of professionals, tradeunions and clients' movements and the voting intentionsof the wider electorate. The provision of some servicesis therefore determined by non-market criteria: labourprocesses in the state not only reproduce capitalistsocial relations but also negate them. This contradictionbetween legitimation and accumulation functions isreflected in the tension between, and inadequacy of,three separate modes of operation within the statesector: 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 statelabour process. Professional employees are widely notedto be particularly entrenched in the state sector(Thompson and McHugh 1990: 127) and traditionally havehad much discretion and autonomy. Echoing Derber, Cousinsmaintains, however, that the autonomy and discretion ofsome professionals (teachers, social workers) has beenlargely operational: they are unable to define the socialpurposes to which their work is put and in return forideological co-option are able to keep control overtechnical autonomy. More powerful and prestigiousprofessions 'have been able to exercise an importantinfluence in the determination of social policy andremain the primary decision makers in the delivery ofwelfare services. It is because of this that statemanagers have continuously sought new forms of control asa discipline on professional providers' (1987: 98). The1989 Children Act and the 1990 National Health Serviceand Community Care Act could here be cited as one suchattempt at curtailing the technical autonomy of socialworkers (Holman 1993). The movement towards moreproscribed responses is also evident in some aspects ofhealth care, such as the de-limiting of drugs availablefor prescriptions. On the other hand, Cousins claims that'allocative policy, (that is, social security benefits,or taxation) is most effectively administered through abureaucratic and rational legal organization' (1987:108). The framework therefore establishes what areconsidered by managers to be 'the "appropriate" forms ofcontrol in organizations governed by non-market criteriayet dependent for their resources on capitalistproduction'(1987: 64).

At a general level. Cousins' contribution, in itsrecognition of the contradictory functions of the stateand different social locations within it, is a distinctadvance on previous accounts. However, there is no clearrelationship posed between the very general functions ofthe state and the role of particular groups of employees.Instead, there is a correspondence between forms ofmanagerial control and the assumed class positions of therecipients of this control. As such, the functions of the

state contextualise the study but do not inform concreteanalysis, reproducing in less strong form the dislocationnoted above: ‘Forms of social inequalities areperpetuated and developed for both workers and clients,for instance the persistence of high concentrations oflow-paid jobs, gendered and racial divisions of labour,and forms of stigmatism and dependency induced byprofessional and bureaucratic definitions of clients'"needs" (1987:184). This picture suggests stable anduniform groups of middle class and working classemployees, divided by the operation of professionalideology and control. But the contradictory functions ofthe state are not represented in an unambiguous fashionby discrete groups but impact, if differentially, upongroups at all levels of the state hierarchy.

Fairbrother also claims that state employment isdistinct: the site of employment, the state apparatus, ina liberal democracy is 'moulded as both a representativeand a managerial structure' (1989:189). Differentperspectives are introduced, however, by a greateremphasis on the labour process and on the structuralcontradiction whereby workers sell their labour power forwages, on the one hand, and produce use values or themeans for others to participate in exchangerelationships, on the other. Fairbrother proceeds to drawa picture of the balance swinging towards the managerial,as opposed to the representative, structure,simultaneously proletarianising the workforce. Thecommonality of this experience across different sectorsis indicated by the introduction of 'a degree ofuniformity in control and work practice in all areas ofstate activity', with the consequence that the basis hasbeen laid for 'a "state" labour process' (Fairbrother1989:196). As part of this development, non-manual statework has been structurally redefined so that this workhas taken on features of 'proletarian' work, with thedevelopment and extension of state labour processescontributing to and sustaining the complex socialarrangements associated with capital accumulation' (1989:196).Fairbrother's identification of the shift from

representative and managerial forms of organisation,designed to increase the control of the labour process,is paralleled in accounts which stress the significanceof the transition from forms of corporatism, includingWhitleyism, to what is now perceived as the 'new publicsector managerialism' (Pollitt 1990). The forms of classcontrol have shifted and with it the relations within thestate work process. There has been the well notedcentralisation of policy-making (conception) and adecentralisation of decisions about its implementation(execution). But, contrary to the impression whichFairbrother gives, this is a far from uniform process.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 initialattempts to subordinate hospital consultants to generalmanagers, for instance, the strategy has been toincorporate them through the establishment of clinicaldirectorates. This has parallels to, but is alsodifferent from, the experience of headteachers. Indeed,Hoggett (1994) has argued that there is a generalstrategy of converting professionals into managers,rather than attempting to control them by bureaucraticmeans. The experiences of both groups, however, are inmarked contrast to the fortunes of occupations lower downthe hierarchy such as social workers and teachers.

Decentralisation has not, as its government proponentshave claimed, empowered local workforces. But neither canthe opposite claim be made. There has been no uniformproletarianisation of employees, such as teachers andsocial workers, but the construction of a morehierarchical workplace and the coalescence of a clearerinter-relationship between a new middle class and therest of the workforce.[ 1] Whether this workforce shouldbe considered a working class, moreover, depends on thesocial relations reflected in their practice and in thisthere is great variation. While emphasising powerinequality within the organisation of the state,Callinicos (1987), for instance, ignores the powerrelationships between some state employees and their

working class 'clients'. It is this absence which allowshim to dismiss working class hostility to social workersby the facile reference to the hostility faced by bus-drivers (1987: 26). He ignores the fact that more buseswould placate frustrated passengers: more social workerswould not in itself transform the attitudes of clientstowards the functions and practice of social workers.Fairbrother's work raises more centrally than that ofCousins the state labour process, but gives only apartial exposition of its distinctive significance. Muchis made, for instance of the contradiction of stateworkers selling their labour power while producing usevalue. However, the contradiction in state sector workstems not from the relation of wage labour to theproduction of use value (the latter in fact defines thelabour process) so much as the absence of exchange valueand the relation of work to wider social policy andcontrol. It is the absence of the discipline of exchangethat allows for political mediation in the production ofuse value with consequent internal and external effects.Within this political mediation, Fairbrother representsconflict as only between representational and managerialforms of organisation, without specifying the content ofthese concepts. In fact, if the former refers to theformal democratic determination of policy, workers'voices are just one amongst other interests and arethemselves likely to be less than homogeneous. Thecontinued co-existence (or even a dominance) of this formwould not take labour beyond traditional socialdemocratic structures. As far as the increasing swingtowards managerial determination of policy, it issimilarly unclear which class interests are representedthrough the managerial structure (whether managers as anew middle class or the interests of capital). If theformer is intended, we have a parallel claim to that ofthe managerialists that state policy is determinedcontrary to the interests of capital (Nichols 1969; Gould1981): if the latter, the social structure of the stateappears polarised and policy unmediated. The relationsbetween the changing forms of decision-making and classrelations are therefore not made explicit.

The external consequences of political mediation are leftunexamined. The production of use value is raised byFairbrother as a defining feature of the state workingclass, but without a consideration that some stateemployees, even at low levels of any hierarchy of controlwithin the state, might perform roles and tasks which arecentral to the control of others. Lower levels of thepolice are an obvious example, but one could includeBenefits Agency workers who might enthusiasticallyinterpret their role as finding ways to restrict benefitsas part of a wider government ideology to discipline theworking class to the realities of the labour market. Evenmore clearly, there is much evidence within the sectionalliterature on social work and teaching that statepolicies in these areas are not simply benign: they playa major role not only in social co-ordination and thetransfer of necessary knowledge and skills (a labourprocess), but also perform a vital function in securingcapitalist dominance (Centre for Contemporary CulturalStudies 1981). It is thus possible to distinguishanalytically the respective roles of the performance oflabour (when creating use values) and the function ofcapital (when supervising the state labour process orperforming tasks which only arise because of the need tosubordinate the working class under capitalism).

The class location of state employees is thereforesubject to a dual determination. Fairbrother's approachdetaches the class/repressive role of the state from theclass analysis of its employees and suggests anincreasing bifurcation of state employees which is farfrom clear in practice. The programme of changes forcedupon the state sector by successive Conservativegovernments has not been uniform in purpose or outcome.One important and general feature of state policy is,however, its reversion to a more authoritarian nature(Jessop et al. 1984), with the likely result that withinemployees' roles the balance of the production of use-value to the function of social control has tipped in thefavour of the latter. At the same time, the internalrelations of state employees have been (and are being)recomposed, so that hierarchies are more sharply defined

and line-management and control more prominent (Pollitt1990). The changes brought about by restructuring havetherefore resulted in complex outcomes including a re-configuring ofclass relations. This re-configuration hasproduced not only a tendency towards the consolidation ofnon-manual wage labour in proletarian conditions, ashighlighted by Fairbrother (1994), but also a new middleclass (the latter consolidation subsequently recognisedin Carter and Fairbrother 1995).

One consequence of the acceptance of such an analysis isthe necessity to challenge not only the conditions ofemployment, but also its content. The struggle to definethe nature of the service provided by state workers isalso a struggle about the nature of class relationswithin the state and the relationship of state employeeswith the working class more generally. As such,Poulantzas's rhetorical claim (1975), that class struggleis constitutive of class, is made real and thus hasprofound implications for state sector trade unionism.

Conclusion

Then there came a moment when the first shockhad worn off and when, in spite of everything— in spite of their terror of the dogs, andof the habit, developed through long years,of never complaining, never criticising, nomatter what happened — they might haveuttered some word of protest. But just atthat moment, as though at a signal, all thesheep burst out into a tremendous bleatingof- "Four legs good, two legs better! Fourlegs good, two legs better! Four legs good,two legs better!" It went on for five minuteswithout stopping. And by the time the sheephad quieted down, the chance to utter anyprotest had passed, for the pigs had marchedback into the farmhouse (Orwell 1950:87).

With the minor change of terminology — 'Public sector

bad, private sector good!' — Orwell's allegory provides afitting parallel with Conservative attitudes towards thestate sector and privatisation and the rather ineffectualpolitical and trade union opposition to the processthroughout the 1980s. Conservative policies can berelated to the state's relationship to capitalaccumulation. The state is regarded as a drain onaccumulation and is an inefficient producer of servicesbecause decisions which are taken are insulated from themarket and exchange relations. [2] Privatisation reducesthe taxation burden and provides the same or superiorservices more efficiently. These economic and servicequality arguments are contested (Fine and Poletti 1992;Whitfield 1992; Kirkpatrick and Martinez Lucio 1995) andit is likely that the urge to privatise and restructureis driven as much by ideology as other forces.

In particular, the state sector provides an alternativemodel to that of private ownership and appropriation. Theabsence of the profit motive is a practical demonstrationthat it is possible to organise society and fulfil needson a different basis. It is possible to envisage, in asocialist mode of production, collective discussion anddecision-making about the content and definitions of jobsand about the accountability of 'management' to theworkforce. Marx indicates these possibilities in hisdiscussion of the work of supervision in co-operativefactories. Democratic practice, in which the workforcewillingly submits to collective decisions, removes thebasis for capitalist-type supervision and control: 'theantithetical nature of the supervisory work disappears'(Marx 1981: 512). What remains is the work ofcoordination and unity which is part of a labour process.In this perspective, democracy at work changes the basisof the organisation of work from coercion to consent andabolishes the structural base for class antagonisms.

Outside exceptional and unstable circumstances, genuinedemocracy at work is not possible under capitalism evenin that sector of the state which does not directlyproduce exchange value. State policy is necessarilydistorted because the state is both dependent on and a

reflection of the economic and political relations withincapitalist society. State policy is constantlyconstrained by the determining needs of capital. Thisdependence limits the nature of the representation oflabour within the state. Genuine and radical democraticdecision-making is therefore not a feasible possibilitybecause the limits of state policy are set by theinternationally competitive need to accumulate capital.Within state employment this translates into the need toensure the provision of services with the expenditure ofno more than the average amount of socially necessarylabour. Hierarchical mechanisms of supervision andcontrol are necessary to ensure this. As the averageamount of socially necessary labour is lessened,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 mechanicallydetermined nor simply imposed. Despite the preoccupationof industrial relations and labour process theory withmanagerial strategies (Sewell and Wilkinson 1992), thesubjective orientation of employees is still an importantdeterminant of organisational outcomes. Moreover, thequality of relations embedded in these outcomes are classrelationships. Subjectivity is, of course, not static andis affected by location and the apparent viability ofdifferent modes of behaviour, but subjectivity is nomechanical reflection of these circumstances. Harris(1996) has documented the levels of discretion whichsocial workers retained in the 1970s and early 1980s,even as claims were being made that their positionparalleled those working on assembly lines (and eventhese latter groups were not averse to affectingoutcomes, as the industrial relations 'crisis' of the1970s highlighted). We should be equally wary ofaccepting employees' total subordination even under thestricter regimes being enacted now. The contrast in theposition of groups such as teachers and social workersunder different regimes of control is therefore not onebetween some golden age of autonomy and identificationwith the working class, on the one hand, and, on the

other, worsening conditions and more control over, andhostility to, the working class. There is variation inclass orientation and practice under both forms oforganisation and the class relations of such groups willsimilarly vary internally.

If this perspective appears a complex and confusingpicture of class relations, it is an inevitable result oftheir complexity and fluidity in reality. One conclusionis clear, however, a trade union orientation to greaterdemocracy within the state, a commitment to serviceswhich are determined by need and an alliance with workingclass constituencies and organisations, could transformthe varying state labour processes, public sectorunionism and simultaneously the structural basis of classrelations. Such a perspective does not deny thecapitalist nature of the state so important to modernstate theory. It recognises, however, the complexrelationship of control, stemming from the antagonismswithin production, to the provision of necessaryservices. Hence the dialectic of oppression andemancipation and the embryonic possibilities of adifferent kind of provision, based upon the working classin the state.

Acknowledgment

An earlier version of this paper was given at the 14thInternational Labour Process Conference, University ofAston March, 1996. Thanks are due to Peter Fairbrotherfor his supportive comments on the earlier version and toPaul Stewart and the anonymous referees whose commentswere engaging, critical and generous.

Notes1. Hoggett's (1994) contention that bureaucratic controlis giving way not to devolved control but rather toremote control is therefore only partially correct.Strategic control is more centralised, but operationalcontrol is more localised and thus there is a dualmovement to the centre and to the unit of delivery. Thislatter 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 the useful distinction between capitaliststate activities and non-capitalist state activities(Carchedi 1977). The latter term refers to activitiessuch as health care and education, while the former towhat used to comprise in the UK the nationalisedindustries (utilities, coal, transport). Thesenationalised industries have largely been privatised.

ReferencesApple, 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 ofEducation, Vol.9,3:289-306.Beynon, H and T. Austrin (1994) Masters and Servants: The Durham Minersand the English Political Tradition, Rivers Outram Press, London.Bolger, S., P. Corrigan, J. Docking and N. Frost (1981) Towards SocialistWelfare Work, Macmillan, London.Bonefeld, W. (1991) 'The Reformulation of State Theory', in W. Bonefeld and J.Holloway (eds.) Post-Fordism and Social Form, Macmillan, Basingstoke: 35-68.Bowles, S. and H. Gintis (1976) Schooling in Capitalist America, Routledge,London.Braverman, H. (1974) Labor and Monopoly Capitalism: The Degradation ofWork in the Twentieth Century, Monthly Review, New York.Callinicos, A. (1987) 'The New Middle Class and Socialist Polities', in A.Callinicos and C. Harman, The Changing Working Class: Essays on classstructure today, Bookmarks, London.Carchedi, G. (1977) On the Economic Identification of Social Classes,Routledge, London.Carter, B. (1995) 'A Growing Divide: Marxist Class Analysis and the LabourProcess', Capital&Class 55: 33-72.----- (1997) 'The Restructuring of Teaching and the Restructuring of Class',British Journal of Sociology of Education, 18 (2).Carter, B. and P. Fairbrother (1995) 'The re-making of the state middle class',in T. Butler and M. Savage, Social Change and the Middle Classes, UCL Press,London: 133-47.Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (1981) Unpopular Education:Schooling and Social Democracy in England since 1944, Hutchinson, London.Clarke, J. (1993) 'The Comfort of Strangers: Social Work in Context' in J. Glarke(ed.) A Crisis in Care? Challenges to Social Work, Sage, London.

Clarke, S. (1991) The State Debate, Macmillan, Basingstoke.Connell, R. W. (1985) Teachers' Work, Allen & Unwin, Sydney.Cousins, C. (1987) Controlling Social Welfare,: A Sociology of State WelfareWork and Organisation, Wheatsheaf, Sussex.Dennis, N., F. Henriques and G. Slaughter (1956) Coal is our Life: An Analysisof a Yorkshire Mining Community, Tavistock Publications, London.Derber, G. (1983) 'Managing Professionals: Ideological Proletarianization andPost-Industrial Labor', Theory and Society, 12,3: 309-41.Fairbrother, P. (1989) 'State workers: class position and collective action' in G.Duncan, Democracy and the Capitalist State, GUP, Cambridge: 187-214.----- (1994) Politics and the State as Employer, Mansell, London.Fine, B. and G. Poletti (1992) 'Industrial Prospects in the Light of Privatisation',in J. Michie (ed.) The Economic Legacy 1979-1992: 315-30.Gould, A. (1981) 'The Salaried Middle Class in the Gorporatist Welfare State',Policy and Politics, Vol. 9,4:401-418.Harris, J. (1996) 'From Bureau-Professionalism to New Managerialism:Developments in the Social Work Labour Process', Paper to 14th InternationalLabour Process Gonference, University of Aston, March.Harris, K. (1994) Teachers Constructing the Future, Falmer Press, London.Hatcher, R. (1994) 'Market Relationships and the Management of Teachers',British Journal of Sociology of Education, Vol. 15,1:41 -61.Hoggett, P. (1994) 'The Politics of the Modernisation ofthe UK Welfare State' inR. Burrows and B. Loader (eds.) Towards a Post-Fordist Welfare State?Routledge, London: 38-48.Holman, B. (1993) A New Deal for Social Welfare, Lion Publishing, Oxford.Jessop, B., K. Bonnet, S. Bromley and T. Ling (1984) 'Authoritarian Populism,Two Nations and Thatcherism', New Left Review 147:32-60.Jones, G. (1983) State Social Work and the Working Class, Macmillan, London.Joyce, P., P. Gorrigan and M. Hayes (1988) Striking Out: Trade Unionism inSocial Work, Macmillan, Basingstoke.Kirkpatrick, I. and M. Lucio Martinez (1995) 'The uses of "quality" in the Britishgovernment's reform ofthe public sector', in I. Kirkpatrick and M. LucioMartinez, The Politics of Quality in the Public Sector, Routledge, London: 16-43.Lawn, M. and J. Ozga (1981) Teachers, Professionalism and Class, FalmerPress, London.----- (1988) 'Schoolwork: interpreting the labour process of teaching', BritishJournal of Sociology of Education, Vol. 9,3: 323-36.Marx, K. (1976) Capital, Vol.l, Pelican, Harmondsworth.----- (1981) Capital, Vol.3, Pelican, Harmondsworth.Nichols, T. (1992) 'The Labour Process Before and After the Labour ProcessDebate', Paper presented to 10th Annual Aston/UMIST Labour Process

Conference.Nichols, W. A. T. (1969) Ownership, Control and Ideology, Allen & Unwin.Offe, G. (1984) (J. Keane ed.) Contradictions of the Welfare State, Hutchinson,London.Orwell, G. (1950) Animal Farm, Seeker and Warburg, London.Pollitt, C. (1990) Managerialism and the Public Services: The Anglo-AmericanExperience, Blackwell, Oxford.Poulantzas, N. (1975) Classes in Contemporary Capitalism, New Left Books,London.Sewell, G. and Wilkinson, B. (1992)' "Someone to watch over me": surveillance,discipline and the just-in-time labour process', Sociology 26,2: 271-89.Simpkin, M. (1979) Trapped Within Welfare. Surviving Social Work, Macmillan,London.Smith, C. and P. Meiksins (1995) 'System, Society and Dominance Effects inCrossnation Organisational Analysis', Work, Employment and Society, 9,2:241-67Smith, C. and H. Willmott (1991) 'The New Middle Class and the LabourProcess', in G. Smith, D. Knights and H. Willmott (eds.) White-Collar Work: TheNon-Manual Labour Process, Macmillan, Basingstoke: 13-34.Strinati, D. (1990) 'A Ghost in the Machine?: The State and the Labour Processin Theory and Practice', in D. Knights and H. Willmott, Labour Process Theory,Macmillan, Basingstoke: 209-43.Thompson, P. and D. McHugh (1990) Work Organisations: A CriticalIntroduction, Macmillan, Basingstoke.Westergaard, J. (1995) Who Gets What? The Hardening of Class Inequality inthe Late Twentieth Century, Polity Press, London.Whitfield, D. (1992) The Welfare State. Privatisation, Deregulation,Commercialisation of Public Services: Altemative Strategies for the 1990s,Pluto Press, London.Wright, E. 0. (1978) Class, Crisis and the State, New Left Books, London.

Bob Carter