Global History as a Relational Concept

It is interesting to see how Marcel van der Linden wrestles with the concept of “global history.” I sympathize with his arguments, but it becomes very clear how relational some of the categories are that we use for mapping our discipline and its subdivisions. This was true in the case of “social history,” which was a buzzword, a positive code for self-identification, and a category for depicting either a specific approach or a specific field of inquiry only as long as it was believed that mainstream history as practiced in academia, in the school curricula, and the public discourses was mainly political history or event-centered narrative history or something else (but not “social historical” enough). “Social history” was defined by its relation to a perceived tradition that it was meant to change or overcome. Once the practice of researching and writing history had been changed by thoroughly incorporating social and societal dimensions into the mainstream, and once this was broadly perceived to be the case, it became less meaningful to distinguish social history as a distinctive field of research or distinctive approach. It became less popular to call for “more social history” in order to supplement, change, or replace conventional forms of historical studies.Footnote ¹

Correspondingly, the present quest for “global history” is built on the—correct—conviction that previous research and writing of history has mostly taken place within more spatially limited frameworks, usually in national historical or even narrower contexts. In other words, the definition of what global history is or should be presupposes the notion—and the existence—of relevant (in the sense of structuring the field) boundaries to be bridged and overcome. It presupposes the notion and the definition of smaller units of analysis, like nations or regions, that should become more interconnected or less limiting. Without them and without their power of mapping historians' spaces, the quest for global history would lose its grounding in historiographical practice, its intellectual specificity, and its programmatic power. If one wants to transcend boundaries, they must exist, to begin with. This is what I mean with the relational quality of some of our key concepts. Marcel van der Linden comes near to this view when stating that “global history is in the first instance a question of mentality.”

What's Class?

Dipesh Chakrabarty once remarked that Western social theories are indispensable but not sufficient for studying social phenomena in non-Western parts of the world. It follows that confronting Western concepts with phenomena in other parts of the world may challenge the very same concepts and lead to their modification. This is what—according to Marcel van der Linden—happens to the Western concept of “class” once it is used for researching the history of work and workers in other parts of the world, like India or Africa in colonial times and later. There, labor historians find out that combinations of wage labor on a contractual basis, slave labor, and other forms of dependent labor (e.g., indentured labor) have been prevalent, frequently in close connection with households. They discover that “the dividing line between chattel slaves, serfs, and other unfree subalterns taken together and ‘free' wage earners was rather vague at best.” On this ground, they learn to question the centrality of proletarian labor (practiced by workers without any property rights, but also free of noneconomic ties and bonds) for class formation (and capitalism). They come to challenge central elements of influential class theories both in the Marxist and the Weberian traditions. (Both Marx and Weber saw formally free contractual labor—excluded from ownership of capital, freed from extraeconomic constraints like serfdom and separated from household embeddedness—as central elements of proletarianization, working class formation, and capitalism.) Marcel van der Linden gives voice to this revisionist argumentation. He proposes a bold broadening of the concept “working class,” which should include “all carriers of labor-power whose labor power is sold or hired out to employers, whether under economic or non-economic compulsion, regardless of whether these carriers of labor-power are themselves selling or hiring out their labor-power; and also regardless whether these carriers themselves own means of production.” This way he identifies the “common class-basis of all subaltern workers: the coerced commodification of their labor-power.” “Therefore, they share a common class interest in transcending capitalism.”

While I am fascinated by this argument, at the same time I have several doubts. On the one hand, I wonder what happens to the argument if we adopt a long-term perspective. If we are interested in continuity and change over decades or centuries, it probably turns out that those hybrid combinations between unfree labor (slave labor, serfdom, etc.), indentured status (in Eastern Europe: serf status), market-dependent petty ownership, and different forms of market-related wage labor on a contractual basis have been rather transitory. Once capitalist principles became really dominant and markets fully emerged, they gave way to a clearer distinction between capital owners and contractual labor, increasingly freed from noneconomic bonds and constraints (except from government-based regulations, which have become more frequent in the long run).

This does not devalue the importance of those hybrid combinations within which millions have worked and survived for extended periods of time. But if such combinations were (and are) unstable and transitory, they pose less of a challenge to received theories of work under capitalism and class formation than they would in case they were more sustainable.

On the other hand, I wonder whether it is really helpful to categorize all those different varieties of more or less dependent workers as victims of “coerced commodification” and, henceforth, as united by a common interest in “transcending capitalism.” As to the degree and the kind of coercion they experienced, slaves on plantations, sharecroppers, legally free mine or factory workers, and subcontracting self-employed small-business owners (e.g., artisans) tremendously differed, and so did, presumably, their interest in changing their lot.

Finally, Marcel van der Linden does not only use “class” as a category that collects diverse subcategories of workers under one and the same label with respect to one or several criteria (e.g., “coerced commodification”). Rather, he also sees “class” as a basis and product of class formation, that is, of a process in which a common class-situation influences shared interests and collective identities as well as common actions and sometimes even organizations like protest, strikes, unions, and institutions of mutual support. I very much agree with this view. Bringing (a) the work, property, and market relations in the capitalist system, (b) the social and cultural identities of workers, and (c) their aspirations, fights, and institutions analytically together has been the core of historical class formation (and class devolution) analysis over decades, as much as authors have differed from one another in most other respects, and although they have learned only slowly to do this in a flexible, nonteleological way (which is necessary, but also possible).Footnote ² But as we all know, such an ambitious approach of combining structure, culture, and collective action has frequently failed empirically even when based on a classical (i.e., relatively narrow) concept of “working class” with emphasis on formally free contractual wage work. It failed because it turned out that workers, in spite of their common class position, frequently differed from one another in so many other important respects that a common class identity and class movement did not evolve—or only to very limited degrees and for limited periods of time, before tendencies of class formation became overwhelmed by tendencies of class devolution. Still, the approach has worked to some degree, when applied within the framework of single countries or with the purpose of limited international comparison (i.e., in studies that could take the varying political and cultural conditions into consideration which codefine the possibilities and limits of class formation as a process that interrelates economic, social, and political dimensions). However, if one broadens the concept as suggested by van der Linden, the social composition of the so conceived working (or subordinate) class becomes so heterogeneous and, in addition, fragmented that it turns out to be hopeless and perhaps meaningless to search for shared class interests, common class identities, and common class actions based on shared experiences, sufficient internal communication, and common enemies. There may be a trade-off: Broadening the concept as suggested makes it useful as an encompassing category that allows new research and interesting comparisons in global historical research between different groups of workers in different socioeconomic situations, spaces, and periods. This is a big gain. On the other hand, broadening the concept as suggested tends to separate it from the analysis of class formation (and devolution) in the classical sense. This is the prize. But it also may be seen as a testimony to the fact that a global working class in the ambitious sense of the word—class as a basis and product of working class formation—has never existed, nor does it exist today.

Capitalism and its Critics

Marcel van der Linden recommends that GLH should focus on labor under capitalism. Though he seems to be using a very broad concept of capitalism, this decision would mean for research on work and labor outside the West to give priority to phenomena influenced by colonialism and imperialism since it was only with colonialism and imperialism that capitalism became a powerful structuring principle in many non-Western societies, usually first under foreign dominance and control. This means that the emerging picture will be highly selective, even one-sided. As the author says: “If GLH would in time extend its horizons beyond capitalist civilization, it would deepen our understanding of the specificity (or non-specificity) of capitalist developments.” Knowing more about domestic precapitalistic forms of work and life is indispensable for assessing gains and losses brought about by capitalism, as introduced by colonial and imperialist powers. Clearly there are interesting projects within GLH that are not restricted to labor under capitalism only (e.g., the Amsterdam-based project with scholars from six continents reconstructing labor relations across the globe in five sample years starting with 1500).Footnote ³

Still, it would have many advantages to concentrate, within GLH, for a while on work and labor under capitalism. Researchers following this orientation can draw on a rich and sophisticated literature that started in the nineteenth century and has been dealing with the theory and the history of capitalism, largely neglected in economic and social history for a while, but recently rediscovered. As van der Linden says, concentrating on work under capitalism enables GLH to contribute to “understanding the world in which we live now.” As is convincingly demonstrated by his article, such an orientation can provide a substantial but limited number of central viewpoints, topics, and questions that may lend structure to the emerging field of GLH, which otherwise would seem to be indefinite and extremely fluid. From a Western—rather, from a European—point of view, I would like to emphasize an additional topic related to the history of capitalism and the history of labor alike, namely Kapitalismuskritik, criticism of capitalism.

In Europe at least, criticism of capitalism is as old as capitalism itself.Footnote ⁴ One knows the rejection of money-lending businesses as usury by medieval Christian doctrine, aristocratic despisement of capitalist merchants' wealth, and moral economy-based distrust of the price mechanism and unregulated competition. Presently, Kapitalismuskritik has come back in the form of attacks on the excesses of deregulated finance capitalism, on the increasing inequality of income and wealth, the deepening insecurity of labor markets (“precariousness”) and the destructive consequences of economic growth for social life, natural surroundings, and the endangered climate. This present criticism of capitalism is not closely related to problems of work nor primarily supported by organized labor, either.

But from the first phases of industrialization to roughly the second third of the twentieth century, there has been a close and very visible alliance between Kapitalismuskritik and labor. Aspects of industrial capitalism became major targets. Resistance against capitalist exploitation, protest against the capitalist degradation of work (“alienation”), as well as the fight against the misery and the social discrimination of the working classes became highly popular among workers. These criticisms were skillfully formulated—partly in reformist, partly in revolutionary, frequently in Marxist language—by the speakers and leaders of anarchist, socialist, Catholic, and later on of Communist movements and organizations as well as by intellectuals who supported them. They helped to build relatively coherent oppositional milieus and fueled increasingly powerful protests, strikes, self-help organizations, unions, labor-based parties, and other institutions that did not only serve labor interests in social life, public discourses, and political arenas, but also contributed to the basic reform of societies and polities, usually (not always) in progressive directions. It is this alliance between Kapitalismuskritik and the working class that has constituted the heroic age of labor in Europe (and, to some extent, in North America). It is a matter of the past. It has been central and dear to working-class and labor historians over the decades.

It is amazing to see how quickly the major topics and the major carriers of Kapitalismuskritik have changed over time, even inside the West. It has been argued that capitalism, by learning and changing, has managed to accommodate and absorb the criticism it faced again and again.Footnote ⁵ But not, one should add, without being pressured to change by challenges and protests translated into cultural and political power. The way in which criticisms of capitalism were formulated and made effective, strongly depended on the cultural, intellectual, and political contexts in which they occurred.

It remains to be seen what all this means for the emerging field of GLH. One thing seems certain: While the varieties of capitalism have strongly differed between world regions and continue to do so, Kapitalismuskritik has varied and is varying even more strongly with respect to intensity, topics, theoretical formulation, and translation into political pressure. There is no reason to expect that the European or Western pattern—characterized by a radical, secular, progressive articulation of workers' Kapitalismuskritik in the public space and its translation into sociopolitical movements which, by and large, contributed to social emancipation, political democratization, and cultural liberalization—has been repeated or is going to be repeated elsewhere. Marcel van der Linden assumes that radical religion can be an alternative form in which the new working classes of the Global South articulate their criticisms. At any rate this should be a central topic for GLH. It requires relating the history of labor to its cultural and political contexts and combining systematic comparison with the reconstruction of transfers and entanglements on a global scale.