Working class

Summary

Dominique Pagani approaches the working class mainly through Michel Clouscard. Against the idea of a consumer society, he argues that there are only classes that consume. Workers have access to equipment goods, while playful, libidinal and marginal consumption remains reserved for the privileged. He concludes from this that the majority does not consume enough1. He distinguishes the workers' May 68 of the strike and of Grenelle from the liberal-libertarian 68, which replaces the social with the societal2. He describes a "phantom class": vanished from discourse but not from reality, it is growing on a world scale and is being driven out of city centres, as the rue Mouffetard shows3. Against Frédéric Lordon, he gives the producer's demand an ethical basis: the extraction of surplus value implies that the proletarian is deprived of consumption. He extends the working class to precarious workers and makes it the crucible of a revolutionary thought to which the cultural heritage must be given back4. He also reads Mallarmé's "Conflit" as a "class struggle on the lawn", in which the poet comes to see in the sleeping workers the share of the sacred5.

1. 1C for Consumption17 Dec 2014
2. 2Everything is allowed, nothing is possible! Michel Clouscard, May 68 and the capitalism of seduction14 Jul 2021
3. 3Everything's allowed, but nothing is possible! Michel Clouscard, May 68, French theory and capitalism14 Jul 2021
4. 4Neo-fascism and the ideology of desire: is Michel Clouscard still relevant?23 May 2026
5. 5Mallarmé, or class struggle on the lawn31 Jan 2023

Introduction produced automatically from the 5 sessions on this theme, to be reviewed; the numbers link to the sessions.