On the Composition of the International Working Class

A new report of the UN’s International Labour Office with interesting figures about social developments between 2000 and 2018

Article (with 2 Tables) by Michael Pröbsting, International Secretary of the Revolutionary Communist International Tendency (RCIT), 25 February 2020, www.thecommunists.net

Note of the Editorial Board: We recommend to view the two tables in the appendix as a pdf (see below).

The latest issue of the “World Employment Social Outlook”, published by the UN’s International Labour Office, contains some interesting material which demonstrates the changes in the international working class. [1]

Our movement has always stressed that the focus of global capitalist production, and therefore of the international proletariat, has shifted during the past half century from the old imperialist metropolises (i.e., North America, Western Europe and Japan) to the semi-colonial countries in the South as well as to new imperialist powers like China. As we have elaborated in several RCIT books and pamphlets, this process is one of the most fundamental changes in recent history which has important consequences for the revolutionary strategy. These changes must be reflected in the politics of the international workers organizations and, most importantly, in the building of a new Revolutionary World Party which should have its focus in the South and the East (and not in Western Europe and North America). [2]

In this article we do not intend to repeat this analysis and the resulting consequences for Marxists in party building work. We rather limit ourselves to summarize the latest developments and to highlight their most important features.

Before doing so we have to explain briefly the limitations of the ILO’s statistics. It should surprise nobody that the ILO studies about the global labor force are not based on a Marxist definition of classes and layers in general and of the working class in particular. Hence, these studies just differentiate between “employers”, “wage and salaried employees”, “own-account workers” and “contributing family workers”. At this point we have to use these categories as approximations to the Marxist class categories while being at the same time aware that there are important limitations in this.

Very broadly speaking one can indentify “employers” with all types of capitalists (small, medium and big), “wage and salaried employees” with the working class, and “own-account workers” as well as “contributing family workers” with peasants and the urban petty-bourgeoisie.

What are the most important limitations of these bourgeois categories from a Marxist point of view?

First, the category “wage and salaried employees” includes not only workers. A minority of wage earners is not part of the working class, but belongs to the salaried middle layers (supervisory personnel, police, lower-grade manager etc.). ^[3] We have estimated in an extensive analysis that, in the imperialist countries, the number of wage earners – making up to 90% of the total working population – can be divided into two, with approximately 2/3 working class while 1/3 are middle layer. ^[4] In the poorer countries, the salaried middle classes are much smaller.

Second, the proletariat in the poorer countries is larger in size than the numbers in the official ILO statistics would appear to indicate. A considerable proportion of the workers in these countries are formally counted not as wage laborers, but as formally self-employed, due to the large informal sector. However, in fact, they are part of the working class. ^[5]

As a result of these necessary corrections, the actual shift of the proletariat towards the semi-colonial and emerging imperialist countries is even bigger than official statistics indicate. As we demonstrated other works on this issue, about ¾ of the international working class is located outside the old imperialist countries in North America, Western Europe and Japan.

There are also other problematic categories used by ILO (as well as other international bourgeois agencies). In most studies of the global economy bourgeois analysts differentiate the countries in “Low-Income Countries”, “Lower-Middle-Income Countries”, “Upper-Middle-Income Countries” and “High-Income Countries”. Such categories ignore the class character of these countries, i.e. if they are imperialist or semi-colonial countries. In other words, they ignore the relationship of capitalist exploitation between such countries. [6]

Broadly speaking, once could say that the category of “High-Income Countries” equals imperialist countries while the other categories include both advanced, industrialized capitalist semi-colonies as well as less developed capitalist semi-colonial countries. However, as we show in Table 2, the ILO includes a number of advanced, industrialized semi-colonies in the category of “High-Income Countries” (e.g. Ireland, Portugal, some Eastern European country and Arab countries) and, on the other hand, it includes China – an imperialist Great Power and the most important challenger of the U.S. – in the category of “Upper-Middle-Income Countries”.

These are the most important limitations of the ILO’s analysis which we present below. Nevertheless, these figures are valuable for a Marxist analysis as they are indicative for the developments and changes in the world proletariat.

Let us now briefly summarize the most important conclusions of the ILO’s figures which we have reproduced below in Table 1.

1) It is evident, irrespective of various petty-bourgeois intellectuals announcing the “end of the proletariat”, that the working class is continuing to grow globally. In fact, the share of the “wage and salaried employees” among the global labor force increased from 45.7% (2000) to 52.0% (2018), i.e. it constitutes for the first time a majority of the global labor force. In absolute figures this means that out of a global labor force of 3305.3 million people, 1718.8 millions are wage labourers.

2) While the share of the “wage and salaried employees” among the labor force grew only modestly between 2000 and 2018 in the “High-Income Countries” (as well as in the “Low-Income Countries”), the more developed semi-colonial countries as well as China experienced a dramatic increase in this period. The share of the working class grew in the “Lower-Middle-Income Countries” from 26.2% to 34.5% and in the “Upper-Middle-Income Countries” from 47.7% to 59.2%.

3) If we look to the regional developments we can also recognize some interesting features. The most dramatic growth of the working class in the last two decades took place in Eastern Asia and South-Eastern Asia. Here the share of the workers grew from 43.4% to 56.6% respectively from 36.4% to 51.6%.

4) Latin America & Caribbean is a region with a traditionally large proletariat. This reflects the fact that while these countries are semi-colonies, they experienced a relatively long process of industrialization as they succeeded in gaining independence of colonial powers earlier than most other countries of the South. However, the growth of the share of the “wage and salaried employees” was relatively modest: from 60.0% (2000) to 63.1% (2018).

5) The Middle East (which includes the regional groups North Africa, Arab States and Western Asia) experienced a rapid growth of the working class in the past two decades. Today, it is the semi-colonial region with the highest share of workers (apart from Eastern Europe). In 2018 the share of the “wage and salaried employees” in this region is 81.2% (Arab States), 64.2% (Western Asia) and 63.9% (North Africa). These social and economic changes constitute an important background for the fact that this region has been the one which experienced the most revolutionary class struggles since 2011.

6) As we have emphasized in the past, Asia has become the focus of the international working class. More than half of the global working class (862.7 millions) live in Eastern Asia, South-Eastern Asia and South Asia alone. If we add Western Asia, this make even 910.9 millions.

We conclude this article by emphasizing once more that the RCIT considers it as crucial for revolutionaries to pay particular attention to the working class in the South and the East, i.e. outside of the old imperialist states in Western Europe, North America and Japan. The huge weight of the Southern proletariat must be reflected not only in their massive participation in international workers’ organizations, but also in the leaderships of these forces. And questions of particular importance for the Southern working class – their super-exploitation, their national liberation struggles against imperialism, etc. – must play a central role in the organizations’ propagandistic and practical work. ^[7]

The Global Working Class and Popular Masses, 2000 and 2018 [8]

                                             Employment                        workers                         family workers     (in Millions)         (in Millions)

                                             (Share)                                  (Share)                          (Share)

                                              2000       2018                     2000       2018                2000       2018            2018                      2018

World                                   45.7        52.0                      35.1        34.1                 16.4        10.7             3305.3                   1718.8

Low-Income Countries    15.8        18.8                      50.5        50.9                 32.2        28.6             300.2                      56.4

Lower-Middle-

Income Countries              26.2        34.5                     52.2        49.5                 19.6        13.3             1142.1                    394.0

Upper-Middle-

Income Countries              47.7        59.2                     31.3        28.3                 18.0        9.2               1267.1                     750.1

Upper-Middle-

Income Countries

High-Income Countr.       84.4        87.2                        9.6          8.6                    2.1         0.9                595.9                     519.6

Northern Africa                 57.0        63.9                       18.1        19.4                 15.1         9.8                  65.7                       42.0

Arab States                          73.2        81.2                      16.6        12.7                   5.8         2.6                  52.7                       42.8

Sub-Saharan Africa          19.6        22.6                        50.8        51.4                27.4        23.4               385.6                      87.1

Latin America &

Caribbean                            60.0        63.1                      28.4        28.3                   7.2          4.3               289.0                     182.4

Eastern Asia                       43.4        56.6                        32.9        29.3                21.1        11.2               891.2                     504.4

South-Eastern Asia

& Pacific                               36.4        51.6                       38.9        32.3                22.1        12.9               336.8                     173.8

Southern Asia                    20.3        26.5                        59.5        57.7                19.2        13.9               696.1                     184.5

Western Asia                      51.5        64.2                        29.1        23.3                15.6          8.8                 71.5                       48.2

Northern, Southern

& Western Europe             83.3        84.8                         9.9        10.0                   2.0          0.9               203.5                    172.6

Eastern Europe                  83.9        88.1                          12.0        8.9                   2.6          1.1              136.0                     119.8

Central &

Northern America            91.6        92.8                            3.3          2.7                  5.0          4.4              177.1                     164.3