Work is organised by capital in many different ways. We may work in a large or small workplace, with lots of people or just a few. Some work involves a lot of expensive equipment, while in other cases, we might rely mostly on our own abilities. What we do in our work, where we work, what tools we use, who we work with, and how we are managed all affect our experiences of work. These differences can change the kind of power we have as workers, as well as the way capital has power over us. We know that teachers, factory workers, nurses, and delivery drivers all have different experiences at work, and that these shape how they can organise and struggle.

If workers’ inquiry is a method to try to understand what is specific about our experience of work, “class composition” is a framework to try to make sense of what this can mean for struggle. Class composition might sound technical (particularly given that one part of it is called “technical composition”), but it is about the connection between our experiences of work and class struggle. In Notes from Below, we understand class composition in terms of technical, social, and political composition. This piece will address each of these in part, explaining how and why we use these ideas.

Notes from Below first published a piece on “workers’ inquiry and social composition” in the first issue.¹ It was developed in response to inquiries we had been part of, particularly during the food delivery platform worker strikes. We were trying to make sense of the specific technical composition of platform workers, as well as their conditions outside of work, for understanding the widespread wildcat strikes. In the eight years since publishing that piece, we have used and developed our understanding of class composition. However, we have not written anything more about it so far. Given the increasing popularity of inquiry and ideas about composition, it is useful to return to these concepts and the ideas that inspired them.

For us at Notes from Below, class composition is an important framework for understanding changes in work and workers’ struggles. It is one of the contributions of Italian workerism, despite never being clearly explained or detailed in this tradition. This has meant it can be difficult to find an entry point into the debates about class composition. The aim here is to provide a clear account of what class composition is, as well as why you might find it useful for making sense of your own workplace or workers’ struggles more widely.

Technical Composition and the details of our work

Technical composition is about the way our work is organised. It involves the details of the work itself, the subject of the work, and the tools and equipment we might use in the process. Whenever an employer pays us to work, they usually also pay for other things we need to do our work. Sometimes this can be costly or a routine part of the process. For example, there are no factory workers without a factory, its machinery, and the raw materials. Similarly, a transportation worker needs a vehicle and the infrastructure that goes with it, just as a teacher needs a classroom and teaching materials. These features differ across workplaces, leading to quite different work experiences.

So, how can we understand which difference might be important? We start with the process of capitalist production. Whether in a factory or an office, this involves a simple formula. The capitalist has money to invest (M), which they use to produce commodities (C), which are then sold for profit (M’). Marx called this the general formula of capital: M-C-M’.² This formula explains the cycle of investment and production in which money is turned into capital. Capital is invested to make commodities, which are any products or services produced for sale. There are two ways that investment is spent. First, on the things used in production. Depending on the type of work, this could include buildings, infrastructure, equipment, tools, and raw materials. This investment is also known as constant capital. Second, it is spent on wages, also known as variable capital.

We can use this distinction between “constant” and “variable” capital to think about how the workplace is created by capital. The “constant” part can only be recouped by the capitalist by selling the products or services that workers make. There is no point investing huge amounts in this if the capitalist will make little money at the end of the process. On the other hand, “variable” capital differs because it creates new value. Workers, unlike machinery, can create more value than we are paid in wages.³ This exploitation is what increases M to M’ through the process of production. However, achieving this in practice is often more complicated than the formula might imply. It requires the capitalist managing the labour process (the way we do the work) to ensure workers work efficiently.

Technical composition is a way of understanding the relationship between constant and variable capital in the workplace. Both the relationship and the ratio are important because they shape our experience of the workplace. Fixed capital can be used in many different ways. Some of the tools we use are intended to speed up our work or make it more intense. For example, a new machine in a factory might increase the pace of the work. Similarly, digital tools can greatly increase the speed and volume of communication we are expected to handle. Many kinds of fixed capital are used to increase control over our work. For example, the assembly line not only increases the pace of work but also takes control of the pace away from workers, centralising it. This is another part of what we mean by the “relationship” between fixed and variable capital: how do we experience the use of this technology, equipment, tools, or whatever it might be? How do they change our work? How are they used against us? What opportunities or challenges do these features of the work introduce?

On the other side, the “ratio” (or, as Marx called it, the “organic composition of capital”) can tell us something about the dynamics of the workplace. Over time, there is a tendency for the proportion of constant capital to increase. Capitalists want to invest in new equipment to increase workers’ productivity. They also want to squeeze the wages they pay us. It is therefore important to understand how and why constant capital is spent and used in the workplace. In a context of very high fixed or variable capital, this can change workplace relationships. For example, a very high rate of fixed capital can mean there is a lot of expensive machinery that needs to be put to use by workers to make a profit. While this could push workers out of the workplace, it could also increase their relative power. On the other hand, a workplace with a very high rate of variable capital could mean there are quite different pressures. In both contexts, this could present new challenges or opportunities for us to organise around.

It is also worth noting here that constant capital doesn’t appear out of thin air. We can think of variable capital as “living labour”, as it comes in the form of our labour-power attached to real, living workers. Constant capital is therefore also a kind of “dead labour.” It is the result of the past labour of other workers, often employed by another capitalist. For example, the buildings and equipment were made by other workers, most likely employed by another capitalist. Through these relationships, we are connected to workers in other sectors and industries – and potentially across the world.

In brief, then, technical composition is about all of these elements in the workplace. As we have argued in Notes from Below, it is ‘the specific material organisation of labour-power into a working class through the relations of work.’ In practice, this means examining different aspects that are common across work:

The role of fixed capital

• What is the workplace like, and where is it?
• What kind of equipment or machinery is there?
• What is the role of different kinds of technology in the workplace?
• What connections are there to other parts of the supply chain?

The organisation of variable capital

• What is the labour process and how is it organised?
• What interaction is there between workers?
• What is the output of the work?
• What forms of management and supervision are there?
• What is the wage or pay structure for workers?

Each of these aspects can tell us something important about the workplace. It isn’t a schematic that we can read off different types of workplaces, but it suggests factors that might be important to focus on in making sense of an inquiry.

Thinking about technical composition means focusing on our workplaces as a site of capitalist production. Rather than understanding it just from the capitalist side, we want to analyse it from our perspective. It is a way of mapping the terrain of class struggle in the workplace: what is the balance of power between workers and capital?

Social Composition and our lives outside of work

While it is crucial to understand the organisation of our work, it is not the only part of our lives in which we confront capitalism. The way we live outside of work deeply shapes our experience of work. If we only focus on work, we miss what happens between the end of work and when we have to come back. This is about how we feed, clothe, and house ourselves. It is about the care we give and receive, as well as our relationship with others. It is also about the way capital confronts us in society: the relationships that try to control us both inside and outside of work. If the details of our work matter for understanding struggle, so do the ways we live outside of work.

If work is about the production of commodities, then we also need to consider how we are reproduced as workers each day. At the end of the workday, we need to recover and prepare for work for the next day. To understand this, we can expand the formula from before to consider how we reproduce ourselves and others as workers. Instead of M-C-M’, this involves C-M-C. In Notes from Below, we explain this “general formula of working class reproduction” as follows. As workers, we have the commodity of labour power (C, the ability to sell our time for a wage). By going to work, we earn money (M) in the form of wages. After work, we reproduce our labour-power through the consumption of commodities (C), such as food, drink, and housing. These are sometimes called the “means of subsistence”, the basic things we need to survive. Without access to these, we can’t come back to work and sell our labour-power as an effective commodity.

Social composition is a way to identify the factors in our lives outside of work that shape how we struggle. It can include factors such as where we live and the kind of housing we live in, the gendered division of labour, oppression, patterns of migration, access to community infrastructure, and so on. For example, if we have access to stable housing and places to meet, this might open opportunities for us to organise together. However, if we are in insecure housing spread over the city, this might present additional challenges.

We first began considering including social composition after inquiries with Deliveroo riders. While technical composition provided a powerful way to unpick the roles of digital platforms and algorithms, as well as the workplace spread across the city, it didn’t cover all the important dynamics emerging in these struggles. The patterns of migration and existing relationships within migrant communities were proving to be a powerful factor in understanding the forms of organising workers were developing. While capital more broadly shapes routes of migration, as well as much of our lives, this happens at a different level to the managers in our workplace.

The reason for including social composition is that we need to take the experiences outside of the workplace seriously. We are not only workers when we are at work, but also in our communities afterwards. How we reproduce ourselves and care for others also forms the material basis for our collective ability to struggle. We confront capital in the workplace in very specific forms: the constant capital we use, and that is used against us. Our experiences outside of work might differ, but we can find common factors that shape our struggles.

The Leap To Political Composition

So far, we have focused on the factors to think about in our workplace (technical) and outside of work (social). However, this is only one half of class composition, considering how we are organised by capital at work and in society. We are not passive in the face of capital. Political composition is about how we self-organise as workers into a force for class struggle. It involves factors such as the tactics we use in our struggles, the forms of organisation we have, and the expression of class struggle in politics. It is the collective experiences of how workers have struggled before, what has worked and what hasn’t, and how that informs how we struggle in the future.

Our understanding of class composition is that technical and social composition lay the material basis from which struggles develop. It matters how work is organised by capital and how we reproduce ourselves outside of work. From these features, there are opportunities and challenges. However, the existence of opportunities does not mean we can take advantage of them, particularly if we are unaware of them. Similarly, just because challenges exist, that does not mean we cannot overcome or circumvent them. The technical and social composition lays out the terrain of struggle for particular groups of workers. It can also define who that group of workers are, as well as what their relationship to other workers might be. We are also fighting to change both that technical and social composition, while capital tries to do the same.

Composition changes, as it is both the terrain and the target of class struggle. Clearly, there is a relationship between the conditions and struggles of work. The reasons we choose to organise are often direct responses to those conditions. Workers don’t organise against abstract forms of exploitation, but rather against the concrete expression in their workplace. Similarly, successful forms of struggle respond to the way our work is organised. For example, some kinds of strikes can be very successful in one work context, while they might have little effect in another. What works in a hospital is different from what works in a factory. What works in one kind of school might not work in another. However, what is common across both is that shared experiences of exploitation can lead to shared collective responses. The features of technical and social composition provide us a way to interrogate the how and why.

It is never as simple as one technical/social composition leads directly to a political composition. Instead, we argue that there is a leap between technical/social and a political composition. These factors lay the material basis for struggles to develop. How workers address challenges and take advantage of opportunities is part of the development of struggles. The movement from one to the other is neither mechanical nor predictable. It is a result of how our struggles develop. This ‘leap’, as we have argued at Notes from Below, ‘ultimately defines the working class political viewpoint.’

If we want to change the world, we need to start with what happens in the workplace. If we can’t improve our own conditions, even on a small scale, how can we even talk about revolutionary change? If we believe that workers, because of our exploitation by capitalism, can become the force to overthrow it, how can this actually happen? This means taking seriously Marx’s argument that “the emancipation of the working class must be the act of the working classes themselves.” But this is no small undertaking. In our current moment of disorganisation, it can feel vanishingly distant. Class composition analysis provides a way to understand the potential in struggles as they emerge and unfold. By understanding concrete struggles in one workplace or sector, we can start to understand how that broader movement can come into being. It is about finding the first steps that workers are taking towards that longer goal. For those who want to participate in that collective movement, it can also help to identify where we put our time and energies.

In the leap from technical/social to political, it is also important to understand that the former does not happen in isolation from the latter. Successful struggles and new political compositions shape capitalist development. For example, individual capitalists reorganise the workplace in response to workers’ struggles. The struggles of the past have shaped the workplaces we work in today and the communities we live in. Therefore, analysing class composition is always an ongoing task. There is no single answer. But we do have questions that we can, and should, be asking.

Capitalism continuously changes through class struggle. This changes both the terrain on which class struggle happens and the forms of that struggle. We believe that class composition is an effective analytical framework for understanding the concrete forms of work, community, and struggle. We don’t use this framework just to document these, but because we want to find new ways to develop our struggles together.