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<p>In their paper “Class versus climate?”, Klaus Dörre, Steffen Liebig, Kim Lucht and Johanna Sittel present fascinating empirical material on conflicts over the “transformation” of the German automotive industry. However, the argument is not pursued thoroughly enough: First of all, the authors’ reflections on the “class axis of transformation” are only loosely connected to the interpretation of the empirical case studies. Secondly, the “Jena class scheme,” on which the first part of the paper is based, constitutes a&#xa0;useful system of sociostructural categorization, but by obscuring the complex and permanently changing relations between capital and labor as well as within the working class, it gets in the way of critically analyzing processes of class formation. However, “class is not a&#xa0;thing,” as E. P.&#xa0;Thompson rightly argues, but an (ambivalent and dynamic) social relation. With regard to everyday processes of class formation, which can be studied not least on the shopfloor, the authors’ empirical material is actually very rich, indicating how much the social relations between management and workforce, but also between different groups of employees have been set in motion in the course of the “transformation” of car manufacturing. This could and should be used as a&#xa0;starting point for exploring, from the vantage point of class analysis, the potentials for a&#xa0;more inclusive “we” among wage earners and emancipatory politics of labor (at the workplace and beyond) that would be required in order to render the utopian project of a&#xa0;“transformation from below” thinkable.</p>

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„Class is not a thing“. Ein Plädoyer für die Analyse von Klassenformierungsprozessen

  • 期刊论文

  • 出版模式：

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  • 发表日期：

    2025年6月1日

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  • Nicole Mayer-Ahuja

摘要

In their paper “Class versus climate?”, Klaus Dörre, Steffen Liebig, Kim Lucht and Johanna Sittel present fascinating empirical material on conflicts over the “transformation” of the German automotive industry. However, the argument is not pursued thoroughly enough: First of all, the authors’ reflections on the “class axis of transformation” are only loosely connected to the interpretation of the empirical case studies. Secondly, the “Jena class scheme,” on which the first part of the paper is based, constitutes a useful system of sociostructural categorization, but by obscuring the complex and permanently changing relations between capital and labor as well as within the working class, it gets in the way of critically analyzing processes of class formation. However, “class is not a thing,” as E. P. Thompson rightly argues, but an (ambivalent and dynamic) social relation. With regard to everyday processes of class formation, which can be studied not least on the shopfloor, the authors’ empirical material is actually very rich, indicating how much the social relations between management and workforce, but also between different groups of employees have been set in motion in the course of the “transformation” of car manufacturing. This could and should be used as a starting point for exploring, from the vantage point of class analysis, the potentials for a more inclusive “we” among wage earners and emancipatory politics of labor (at the workplace and beyond) that would be required in order to render the utopian project of a “transformation from below” thinkable.