Varieties of Laborism. Social Inclusion and Exclusion in Working-Class Visions of the Political Economy.

My paper studies moral frames blue-collar workers in advanced capitalist democracies use to justify why some social groups should be allowed to benefit from social and economic policies – and why other groups should be excluded from these benefits. Doing so, I address a notorious puzzle around the working-class’ socio-economic policy preferences in the light of their “re-alignment” with populist radical right-wing politics: do workers trade-off of “cultural” against “economic” preferences? I join a recently growing literature in political party and social policy scholarship (i.a. Mudde 2007; Derks 2006; Ennser-Jedenastik 2016; Otjes et al. 2018) on the one hand, and the much longer-standing account of E.P. Thompson on the other hand, in arguing that socio-economic policy always is cultural and economic at the same time, or more precisely it is “moral-economic”, in so far as it leverages social mores to define groups and just relationships between them. This framework is further enriched with concepts from the sociological tradition of studying the social functions of morals, drawing firstly on the theoretical tradition of Emile Durkheim that understands common mores as constitutive of social groups, secondly on Michèle Lamont’s work on moral boundaries as functional in constructing group boundaries, and thirdly on the work on welfare deservingness in the social policy literature that analyzes moral justifications that policy-makers and citizens use when making arguments on “who should get what, and why” (van Oorschot 2000). Empirically, this article draws on 75 qualitative interviews with Austrian and German blue-collar workers conducted between 2018 and 2020, in which interviewees were asked to extensively narrate, in their own words, their preferences, perceptions, and experiences on various socio-economic policy issues. Results highlight that the core arguments of most blue-collar workers refer to questions around the value of work, and notably that of manual work, in the political economy (a vision I call “laborism”). Interviewees make use of moral propositions to emphasize the worth of the contributions their socio-structural group (or "type") makes to the common good of the polity and base socio-economic demands on arguments that underline the dignity of socio-economic roles they exercise vis-à-vis other groups. Heterogeneity in this moral discourse, and in concrete policy demands, emerges notably as a function of moral coalitions or moral boundaries with/against other socio-structural groups. I distinguish, firstly, an “exclusivist” variety of laborism in which workers align with small capitalists around a radically materialist vision of value in the political economy that has priorly been called “producerism”, constructing boundaries both towards social outgroups (the unemployed, immigrants) and towards “bureaucratic” and “socio-cultural” professions. Secondly, I identify a ”moderate” variety of laborism that is based on a broad, majoritarian coalition of social groups and an economic ideology of moderate “productivism”. Thirdly, there is mixed evidence for an “inclusivist” version of laborism, in which individual workers join a social coalition with strong presence of educative capital, socio-cultural and health-sector occupations that carries a “post-productivist” ideology, which goes with (at least nominal) universal inclusivity in its policy demands.