From Proletariat to Precariat:

Representations of Labour in the Age of Globalisation

Peter Holliday 2015

Synopsis

This dissertation explores how still photography and the moving image have been used to

critically represent the condition of labour within the context of neoliberal globalisation. By referring to the traditional Marxist theory of the working class individual as the proletarian and

Marxist theories of social alienation, I will focus upon the photographic series of Workers: An Archaeology of the Industrial Age (1997) by Sebastião Salgado, selected work of Allan

Sekula, as well as the documentary film Western Deep (2002) by Steve McQueen. I will provide a comparative analysis between Marxist theories of social alienation and the recent

photographic representations of labour in the post industrial age, as well as describing how photographic realism can be used to channel class consciousness. I will begin by providing a

Marxist definition of class. I will then analyse the photography of Salgado and Sekula, and the moving image of McQueen, to explore the relationship between present day

representations of the working class, comparing and contrasting them with the influential observations of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels made of labourers working within the

European factory system during the 19th century. This dissertation argues that the Marxist definition of class is as relevant as it has ever been within Third World economies and that as

long as low paid wage earners exist the world still belongs in the “epoch of the bourgeoisie” (Karl Marx, 2008: 3). I also conclude by considering how Marxist theory can be

applied in the contemporary age.

Chapter Plan

Introduction 1

1. A Marxist Definition of the Working Class: The Proletariat 2

2. Labour Under Globalisation: The Emergence of the Precariat 7

3. Photography, The Moving Image, and Realism 12

4. Sebastião Salgado: Workers: An Archaeology of the Industrial Age (1997) 14

5. Steve McQueen and the Moving Image: Western Deep (2002) 19

6. Allan Sekula: The Forgotten Spaces of Late Capitalism 21

7. Conclusion 23

Illustrations 26

Bibliography 37

Illustrations

Figure 1 - Courbet, G., The Stone Breakers, URL: https://17green.wordpress.com/

2014/05/25/gustave-courbet-the-stone-breakers/ Last accessed: 22/02/15

Figure 2 - Salgado, S., Serra Pelada, State of Pará, Brazil, 1986, ‘ Workers: An Archaeology of the Industrial Age’ Phaidon Press, London 1997 p. 339

Figure 3 - Salgado, S., Serra Pelada, State of Pará, Brazil, 1986, ‘ Workers: An Archaeology

of the Industrial Age’ Phaidon Press, London, 1997, p. 301

Figure 4 - Salgado, S., Serra Pelada, State of Pará, Brazil, 1986, ‘ Workers: An Archaeology of the Industrial Age’ Phaidon Press, London, 1997, p. 309

Figure 5 - McQueen, S., ’Carib’s Leap / Western Deep’, Artangel, London, 2002, p. 62

Figure 6 - McQueen, S., ’Carib’s Leap / Western Deep’, Artangel, London, 2002, p. 79

Figure 7 - McQueen, S., ’Carib’s Leap / Western Deep’, Artangel, London, 2002, p. 83

Figure 8 - Sekula, A., Welder’s Booth in Bankrupt Todd Shipyard. Two Years After Closing.

Los Angeles Harbor. San Pedro, California. July 1991, ‘Fish Story’, 1991, URL: http://www.tate.org.uk/research/publications/tate-papers/production-view-allan-sekulas-fish-story-

and-thawing-postmodernism. Last accessed: 22/02/15

Figure 9 - Sekula, A., Shipwreck, Istanbul, (Triptych) ’Shipwrecks and workers (1999-2007)’, URL: http://art.chicagobooth.edu/index.php?q=artist&ID=35. Last accessed: 22/02/15

Figure 10 - Sekula, A., Title Unknown, ’Fish Story’, ca. 1989-95, URL: http://

www.domusweb.it/en/news/2014/02/12/utopia_for_sale_.html. Last accessed: 22/02/15

Introduction

Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels both iconically defined the working class citizen during the

middle of the nineteenth century as an individual within society who, through exertion of hard labour, produces goods or materials in return for petty wages for themselves, but wealth or

capital for the owners of the means of production. Since the de-industrialisation of the United Kingdom that began around 1980 (which was arguably the result of the policies of neoliberal

ideology), and the emergence of high technology economies among many Western societies in the past several decades, conventional Marxist definitions concerning the working class

have been radically transformed. By referring to relevant literature and sources such as the critical realist documentary photography of Sebastião Salgado and Allan Sekula, as well as

the experimental documentary film work of Steve McQueen, I will investigate how photography and film created within the last 40 years can be used to critically reflect the

traditional 19th century Marxist representation of the working class and labour within the context of neoliberal globalisation and late capitalism, in a time when traditional ideas about

what it means to be a member of the traditional working class in the West continue to be revised and re-structured against a backdrop of post-industrialisation and the emergence of a

new class known as the precariat.

This dissertation provides a brief explanation of the artistic style Realism, and its relationship with photographic documentation. In examining the photography of Salgado’s gargantuan

project, Workers: An Archaeology of the Industrial Age, as well as the moving image of Steve McQueen, I will introduce the Marxist theory of social alienation, describing the estranged

experience of gold miners and their apparent expulsion from society, deprived of any political identity or economic status, in both Brazil and South Africa. By providing a general overview

of the work and philosophy of Allan Sekula, I will examine the ‘forgotten spaces’ of the global shipping industry and the key methods of transporting material commodities in the

contemporary era of globalisation. I will then conclude by considering the relevance of Marxism in the modern age, and how it may be applied to remedy the ills of capitalism.

I will begin this dissertation by providing Marx’s definition of the working class, whom he

referred to in his writing as the ‘proletariat'. I will also present a brief history of the working class individual since the dawn of industrial society at the end of the 18th century, as well as

providing the reader with a definition of what is meant by the term ‘globalisation’.

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1. A Marxist Definition of the Working Class: The Proletariat

Social class has been described in a number of ways and is often observed as a hierarchical

institution dependent on a number of socioeconomic factors such as wealth, education, and health. In The Making of the English Working Class (1963), E.P. Thompson describes the

concept of class as a fluid historical phenomenon that occurs within human relationships (E.P. Thompson, 2013: 8). In similar accordance to the Marxist theory of class struggle,

Thompson explains that it is underlying tensions between social and economic groups within society that form our notion of class. By his analysis, any idea about class does not belong to

a fixed social construct but rather it is something that is created and reshaped by the shared experience of men against other men with opposing interests. Ultimately class is a way for

man to identify with others (E.P. Thompson, 2013: 9). Thompson states that “the working class did not rise like the sun at an appointed time. It was present at its own making.” (E.P.

Thompson, 2013: 8). Thompson describes this seminal period as between 1780 and 1832 - what is often considered the beginning of the industrial revolution.

Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels defined the working class using the term ‘proletariat’, a word

derived from the Latin prolatarii defined in the Constitution of the Roman Republic as individuals within a certain social stratum who lack wealth and property (http://

referenceworks.brillonline.com/entries/brill-s-new-pauly/proletarii-e1010020). Marx adopted the term proletariat to describe a “class of labourers who live only so long as they find work,

and who find work only so long as their labour increases capital” (Karl Marx et al, 2008: 9) for the owners of industry. Essentially, the proletariat are a group within society who prostitute

themselves to an economic master, expending hard labour and sacrificing their autonomy as individuals, in return for wages for themselves, and wealth, or economic value for the

bourgeoisie authority - those who own the means of production.

Even though slave labour had been made illegal, Engels observed the toilsome and

unsanitary conditions which the labour class, including children, were working under during the mid nineteenth century. He was consequently driven to write the following - taken from

his essay The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844 (1845):

“How is it possible, under such conditions, for the lower class to be healthy and long lived?

What else can be expected than an excessive mortality, an unbroken series of epidemics, a

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progressive deterioration in the physique of the working population?” (Friedrich Engels, 2010:

107)

Engels writing is a vexed condemnation of the British factory system at the time. As a

consequence of the industrial revolution, people began to migrate from the countryside into the cities in the hope of finding better paid work. At the beginning of the nineteenth century

workers were expected to endure long and poorly paid working hours. Factory mortality rates were high. Although child labour was still the accepted norm, by 1840 the British government

had enforced a number of reforms designed to regulate working conditions and respect the rights of the labour force such as the Factory Act of 1833 (http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/

education/resources/1833-factory-act/) and eventually The Public Health Act of 1848 (http://www.parliament.uk/about/living-heritage/transformingsociety/towncountry/towns/tyne-and-

wear-case-study/about-the-group/public-administration/the-1848-public-health-act/). Although improvements for the working classes were gradually being made, it was still very obvious to

Engels that the majority of people benefiting from the industrial revolution in nineteenth century Britain were the profiteering business owners whose success had come at the

expense of the health and wellbeing of the working class. According to Engels, the working class had morphed from human beings into “toiling machines in the service of the few

aristocrats” (Friedrich Engels, 2009: 4).

Karl Marx argued that capitalist society had thrown the working class individual into a state of alienation in a multitude of ways. Marx called this condition social alienation, or Entfremdung.

He believed that the competitive and profiteering nature of capitalism had negated the proletarian of their right to determine their own destiny, hence alienating the working class

individual from a state of species-being. Marx used the term species-being to illustrate his concept of human nature, which he believed “in its reality it is the ensemble of the social

relations” (Dan Swain, 2012: 23). To Marx, human nature was interchangeable and could be adapted according to the way in which society organised itself (Dan Swain, 2012: 23).

Marx viewed the act of labour as an inherently collective act between human individuals, and

in this respect, this is what gave the working class their revolutionary ability: the proletariat as a class conscious of itself could choose to stop working, holding the bourgeoisie hostage to

their demands (Dan Swain, 2012: 29). Believing that labour was an essential part of human experience, Marx argued that how we engage with and change our world is vital for realising

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oneself within nature. Rather than remain demanding and oppressive, the act of labour

should be reformed into a source of enjoyment and creativity for the human individual (Dan Swain, 2012: 34). However, capitalist methods of mass production based on the sole idea of

bourgeoisie profit had forced the working class individual to give up their creative autonomy to a higher bourgeoisie authority. The proletariat had therefore, after selling themselves to the

factory system in return for a petty wage, lost control over their labour power to the owners of the means of production: the working class individual had now become alienated from the

labour process. After the worker is denied their true creative potential, they become alienated from themselves. Marx claimed that the worker “does not confirm himself in his work, but

denies himself, feels miserable and not happy, does not develop free mental and physical energy, but mortifies his flesh and ruins his mind.” (Dan Swain, 2012: 62). This Marxist

observation was therefore that the capitalist system of 19th century Britain had placed the needs of production and profit before the requirements and health of the working class

individual.

The prominent socialist, and founder of the Arts & Crafts movement, William Morris, claimed that capitalism, or what he called Commerce, had suppressed artistic expression within the

workplace. Exploring what art or individual creativity could become in a future socialist society, Morris criticised “the stupidity of our sham civilisation” as a system of subordination

and alienation that had become a “sacred religion” (http://www.marxists.org/archive/morris/works/1884/as/as.htm).

“To compel a man to do day after day the same task, without any hope of escape or change,

means nothing short of turning his life into a prison-torment. Nothing but the tyranny of profit-

grinding makes this necessary.” (William Morris, 2008: 19)

Within this system of “competitive Commerce” Morris spoke of the “enormous mass of labour which is just merely wasted; many thousands of men and women making nothing with

terrible and inhuman toil which deadens the soul and shortens mere animal life itself.” (http://www.marxists.org/archive/morris/works/1884/as/as.htm).

“The waste of making useless things grieves the workman doubly. As part of the public he is

forced into buying them, and the more part of his miserable wages are squeezed out of him by

a universal kind of truck system; as one of the producers he is forced into making them, and

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so into losing the very foundations of the pleasure in daily work which I claim as his

birthright.” (http://www.marxists.org/archive/morris/works/1884/as/as.htm)

Morris argued that the only way to break free from the alienating qualities of capitalist labour was to replace the system of commerce and mass production with the philosophies of

Socialism. Only in such a society could the worker reclaim their creative individuality. Claiming that pleasure in a man’s work had disappeared from society due to the nature of the

mechanised factory system, he called for the restoration of “the dignity of labour” (https://www.marxists.org/archive/morris/works/1883/riches/riches.htm) and demanded that the

worker should be able to see themselves in the items they create. This Morrisian demand for the democratisation of creativity within the workplace would withdraw the proletarian from a

state of alienation:

“A work of Art, be it ever so humble, is long lived; we never tire of it; as long as a scrap hangs

together it is valuable and instructive to each new generation. All works of Art in short have the

property of becoming venerable amidst decay: and reason good, for from the first there was a

soul in them, the thought of man which will be visible in them so long as the body exists in

which they were implanted.” (http://www.marxists.org/archive/morris/works/1884/as/as.htm)

Marxist theory also suggests that the worker is alienated from the very products they are employed to produce. These products automatically become the property of the employer

and never become the property of the proletarian employee who toils to produce them. The irony is that the class of producers will commonly be unable to afford the items they

produce.1

After becoming alienated from themselves and the products of their labour, the proletarian begins to feel alienated from others. Even although Marx viewed labour as a collective act

that required societal cohesion, he argued that the competitive nature of capitalism was divisive and created hostility between individuals within society. In a capitalist economy,

instead of working in cooperation with others to achieve common goals that the whole of a community may benefit from, we begin to view other people as potential financial

A modern example of this would be of Apple iPhone manufacturers in China, who earn less than a meagre $200 a 1

month. The cost of the current iPhone is around $750. (Dan Swain, 2012: 42).

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competition. The individual within capitalist society ultimately perceives the worth of their co-

workers or other citizens in relation to their economic status and financial success.

Marxist theory also suggests that capitalism causes mankind to dissociate itself with nature. Once again, the needs of production and profit are put first, in this case before the

environment. On a global scale, alienation from the natural world has become one of the most dangerous problems of modern times. One example is the scientific belief that carbon

dioxide emissions from industry pollute the atmosphere, threatening to disrupt the metabolic balance of our climate and global ecosystem which would lead to environmental degradation

on an unprecedented scale (Dan Swain, 2012: 70).

During the past 40-50 years, increasing labour costs within the West, the growth of large multinational companies, following mergers of smaller companies, increased transport links,

and liberalisation of import tariffs, have driven business to shift production to countries where labour is cheap. This situation has become known as globalisation, a term I discuss in the

following chapter, examining the condition of labour within this context, comparing ideas of the Marxist proletariat with the recent 21st century concept of the precariat.

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2. Labour Under Globalisation: The Emergence of the Precariat

During the 1970s, a group of economists, who were to become known as neoliberals, argued

that unless labour markets were made more flexible, the cost of labour would continue to increase. This would mean that companies would begin to move production and investment

elsewhere where costs were cheaper (Guy Standing, 2012: 9). These neoliberal thinkers, who included economists such as Milton Friedman, argued that social democratic

governments had become too big, and proposed that without some sort of economic deregulation, society would begin to suffer from a plague of de-industrialisation,

unemployment, lack of economic growth, and increasing poverty (Guy Standing, 2014: 9). To remedy this apparent economic problem, proponents of neoliberalism demanded greater

global market freedom and “labour market flexibility” (Guy Standing, 2014: 9).

“Flexibility had many dimensions: wage flexibility meant speeding up adjustments to changes

in demand, particularly downwards; employment flexibility meant easy and costless ability of

firms to change employment levels, particularly downwards, implying a reduction in

employment security and protection; job flexibility meant being able to move employees

around inside the firm and to change job structures with minimal opposition or cost; skill

flexibility meant being able to adjust workers’ skills easily.” (Guy Standing, 2014: 10)

The period of the 1970s can be viewed as the birth of modern globalisation. Globalisation

can be defined as the complex action by which the modern world is growing progressively intertwined as a consequence of increased economic trade and societal exchange. Modern

technology and advancements in communications such as the internet, mobile phones, and air travel has made this possible. This means that people and countries can trade and

exchange information more quickly. It also means that corporations that manufacture products in a developing nation, can afford to sell them cheaply in a country such as the UK,

because they were made for less money.

Although generally viewed as advantageous for the economies of first world superpowers by proponents of neoliberalism, globalisation has also become associated with negative aspects

such as poverty, inequality, environmental destruction and military occupation within developing nations (http://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-explains/2014/09/economist-

explains-0?zid=293&ah=e50f636873b42369614615ba3c16df4a). It is sometimes viewed as

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a system driven by the world’s richest countries and multinational corporations (such as the

World Trade Organisation or WTO) designed to diminish the role of the nation state and exert control over world markets often at the expense of developing countries via political and

economic domination. With the advent of globalisation, Western corporations have moved abroad in search of cheap hard labour in economically disadvantaged countries. This has

resulted in the mass reduction in jobs within traditional factory industries in the West and helps provide developing nations with much needed employment, although at a fraction of

the wage the worker would receive in a first world economy and often in less regulated working environments. The philosopher and prominent critic of neoliberal globalisation, Noam

Chomsky, writes in his book Profit Over People (1999), that globalisation has not only been detrimental to developing nations but has also provided corporations with “new weapons to

undermine working people in the West, who must accept an end to their ‘luxurious’ lifestyle and agree to ‘flexibility of labour markets’ “ (Noam Chomsky, 1999: 122). Chomsky continues

to state that multinational corporations can move abroad in search of deregulated markets to buy labour at “a fraction of the cost of Western labour and be protected by high tariffs and

other restrictions… taking the profits and leaving the government with the costs” with consequences such as unemployment and environmental degradation (Noam Chomsky,

1999: 127). Today, the business elite in the West must engage in the search for cheap foreign labour or confront themselves with the inability to compete with the global capitalist

market.

The Marxist demand for the complete abolition of the capitalist system that has dominated Western politics and its economy since the mid 18th century has not yet been realised, and

regardless of the positive progress arguably so far inspired by Marx and Engels, there remains a large faction of the Western populace that is significantly economically deprived

and victimised by the policies of deregulated capitalism and neoliberal globalisation. However, within this modern age of globalisation, the traditional view of this class as the

proletariat or working class have been eroded in the West, with the exportation of cheap labour abroad:

“The class privileged by the classical Marxian theory of revolution, the proletariat, the industrial

working class, is a declining class sector in Western industrial countries, although this is not in

the developing world, where industrial labour is increasingly exported.” (Antonio Callari, et al,

1995: 37)

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Since 1978 the percentage of the UK labour force involved in manufacturing has fallen from 28.5% to only 10% (Dan Swain, 2012: 77). According to The Great British Class Survey of

2013, only 14% of participants identified themselves as ‘Traditional Working Class’. This group is described as ‘moderately poor’ with an average household income of £13,000 (Mike

Savage, et al, 2013: 22). On the other hand, 15% of participants identified themselves as belonging to the emerging ‘Precariat’ class - the lowest class, lying two classes below

‘Traditional Working Class’ (Mike Savage, et al, 2013: 25). The precariat individual engages in what is known as ‘precarious labour’ and typically lacks job security. The Great British

Class Survey describes the precariat as being concentrated in old industrial areas, away from large urban centres (Mike Savage, et al, 2013: 25). The survey also states they are

unlikely to have attended university and commonly occupy job positions such as cleaners, carpenters, care workers, cashiers and postal workers (Mike Savage, et al, 2013: 25). Guy

Standing, author of the book The Precariat: The Dangerous New Class (2011), although admitting there is no accurate way of knowing believes the total percentage of the global

adult population within the Precariat class lies at around 25% (Guy Standing, 2014: ). The precariat live precariously (as the name might suggest), engaging in temporary work and

‘zero hour’ contracts, suffering from employment or income security, and unlike the proletariat, they are typically under-represented: they lack a collective voice of their own and

are unlikely to unionise (Guy Standing, 2014: 17). According to Standing, these conditions perpetuate an existence of frustration, anxiety and alienation (Guy Standing, 2014: 33).

While accepting that traditional notions of the working class still exist in parts of the world, Standing makes the claim that rising inequality during the period of globalisation has paved

the way for the emergence of a new type of class, specifically among Western consumerist economies:

“The globalisation era has resulted in a fragmentation of national class structures. As

inequalities grew, and as the world moved towards a flexible open labour market, class did not

disappear. Rather, a more fragmented global class structure emerged. The ‘working class’,

‘workers’, and the ‘proletariat’, were terms embedded in our culture for several centuries.

People could describe themselves in class terms, and others would recognise them in those

terms, by the way they dressed, spoke, and conducted themselves.Today they are little more

than evocative labels.” (Guy Standing, 2014: 12)

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Standing also states that the precariat is different to the Marxian definition of the working

class:

“[The working class or proletariat] suggest a society consisting mostly of workers in long-term,

stable, fixed-hour jobs with established routes of advancement, subject to unionisation and

collective agreements, with job titles their fathers and mothers would have understood, facing

local employers whose names and features they were familiar with. Many entering the

precariat would not know their employer or how many fellow employees they had or were likely

to have in the future. They were also not ‘middle class’, as they did not have a stable or

predictable salary or the status and benefits that middle-class people were supposed to

possess.” (Guy Standing, 2014: 10)

It is important to note however that this Western twenty-first century interpretation of the

working class as the precariat is no less socially alienated than Marx’s and Engels’ initial analysis of the alienated proletariat class within nineteenth century capitalist society and that

of the Third World labourer today. Though unlike Marx’s theory of the proletariat, Standing argues that the precariat is not a class-for-itself - a unified class whose members cooperate

towards a shared goal - but rather, frustrated by their ‘precarious existence’, the members of the precariat constitute a class at war with itself (Guy Standing, 2014: 42). The Marxist

analysis that labour alienates the proletarian from others is however echoed here:

“A temporary low-wage worker may be induced to see the ‘welfare scrounger’ as obtaining

more, unfairly and at his or her expense. A long-term resident of a low-income urban area will

easily be led to see incoming migrants as taking better jobs and leaping to head the queue for

benefits. Tensions within the precariat are setting people against each other, preventing them

from recognising that the social and economic structure is producing their common set of

vulnerabilities.” (Guy Standing, 2014: 42)

According to Standing, this sense of alienation negates the precariat of Marxian concepts of solidarity. This is why the precariat therefore fails to develop a sense of class consciousness

like Marx argued the proletariat would. When combined with increasing political disenfranchisement, Standing argues that the precariat are prone to adopting dangerous

political philosophies such as Neo-Fascism (Guy Standing, 2014: 42).

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I will now review the contemporary photographic work of Sebastião Salgado, Steve

McQueen, and Allan Sekula with close reference to the concepts I have just discussed, examining how the condition of labour and the definitions of both the proletariat and precariat

have been documented within the current period of globalisation.

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3. Photography, The Moving Image and Realism

Both still photography and the moving image have long been associated with the critical and

accurate representation of the world, and in turn, have become associated with the artistic genre of Realism. In this dissertation I have chosen to analyse selected photographs of

Sebastião Salgado and Allan Sekula, as well as the moving images of Steve McQueen. These three artists adopt the style of photographic realism, attempting to portray with

honesty the sordid aspects of labour in the age of globalisation.

The English word Reality comes from the Latin Realis for ‘relating to things’. The primary function of Realism in art is to reveal the truth of the world: to visually expose human

interrelations and the universality between mankind and its domain. Realism as an artistic genre can be used to testify a physical event or act; to evidence human suffering and

exploitation; to channel consciousness; and to raise a sense of class consciousness.

The power of photography, and other image based media, to influence our opinion of undesirable situations has been described by the art critic Susan Sontag in her anthology On

Photography (1977):

“A photograph that brings news of some unsuspected zone of misery cannot make a dent in

public opinion unless there is an appropriate context of feeling and attitude.” (Susan Sontag,

1979: 17)

Sontag continues that our reaction and potential shock towards such images depends on our

familiarity with the circumstance or event happening within the scene. She implies that our sense of disbelief is greater when we lack familiarity with a situation:

“The quality of feeling including moral outrage, that people can muster in response to

photographs of the oppressed, the exploited, the starving, and the massacred also depends

on the degree of their familiarity with these images.” (Susan Sontag, 1979: 19)

Realism as an art movement began to emerge during the Industrial Revolution at around

1850, several years after the publication of The Communist Manifesto (1848). In contrast to the Romantic movement, Realist artists rejected idealised subject matter and exaggerated

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drama, and instead sought to illustrate the reality of ordinary people in their working and

social environments. They chose to portray, with relative detail and accuracy, the undesirable and mundane aspects of everyday life. Gustave Courbet, the French Realist painter,

predominantly chose to document the peasants of rural France, sympathising with the harsh reality of their working conditions and exposing the peasants’ situation to the middle class

citizens of Paris. His famous piece, The Stone Breakers (ca. 1849-50) (Fig. 1), was a painting that disturbed the French bourgeoisie, and Courbet was accused by the

Establishment of corrupting the beauty of art (https://mydailyartdisplay.wordpress.com/2012/07/07/the-stonebreakers-by-gustave-courbet/). Unfortunately destroyed during World

War II, The Stone Breakers (ca. 1849-50) aimed to expose the working lifestyle of French peasants. In Courbet’s painting (Fig. 1), we see two anonymous workers wearing dishevelled

clothing. It is an image that pays close attention to detail, and Courbet has made the stylistic decision to show very little sky, implying a sense of hopelessness and entrapment.

Just as Courbet’s monumental piece The Stone Breakers (ca. 1849-50), revealed the unpleasant working lives of the French proletariat to the middle class citizens of Paris, the

photographers cited in this dissertation reveal the invisible proletariat of an unseen world to the West at a time when definitions of class in the globalised age continue to be restructured.

In common with the philosophy of Courbet, the artists examined in this dissertation have also chosen to reject “the beautiful as a typical bourgeoisie category” (Jan Baetens, et al, 2010:

37).

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4. Sebastião Salgado: Workers: An Archaeology of the Industrial Age (1997)

Sebastião Salgado’s documentation of industrial labourers in his project Workers: An

Archaeology of the Industrial Age (1993) published in 1991, is a romantic depiction of the worker of globalisation illustrating the ‘warriors’ of industry around the world - gold miners of

Brazil, mill employees in Bangladesh, construction workers in the Channel Tunnel, and firefighters working in the explosive aftermath of the Gulf War of 1991. In this epic series, the

Brazilian documentary photographer explores the idea of the changing nature of work in a highly industrial age and documents ‘the end of the first big industrial revolution’. In first world

consumerist economies, hard labour is no longer the “central axis of the world” (Sebastião Salgado, 1997: 7) However, for many workers in the developing world, labour is accepted

with an attitude of fatalism. Salgado states:

“The highly industrialised world is racing ahead and stumbling over the future. In reality, this

telescoping of time is the result of the work of people throughout the world, although in

practice it may benefit few. The developed world produces only for those who can consume-

approximately one-fifth of all people. The remaining four-fifths, who could theoretically benefit

from surplus production, have no way of becoming consumers. The destiny of men and

women is to create a new world, to reveal a new life, to remember that there exists a frontier

for everything except dreams. In this way, they adapt, resist, believe, and survive.” (http://

www.amazonasimages.com/travaux-main-homme)

Salgado maintains that our globalised world remains divided between ‘a first world in a crisis

of excess’ and ‘a third world in need’ that provides for the former. Meanwhile the utopian promise of Communism lies in ruins (Sebastião Salgado, 1997: 7).

As a photographer with a history of left wing activism, Salgado seems to adopt the traditional

Marxist view of the labour class. The images captured in Workers commonly show an economically deprived and destitute workforce engaging in dangerous labour. These

photographic scenes are often made within subhuman conditions and hazardous environments that would be considered unacceptable in Western society today, but perhaps

better tolerated within the social climate and labour conditions of 19th century Europe - the very conditions that Marx and Engels famously attempted to rally the proletariat against.

There is also a strong sense of fatalism in Salgado’s images - this is the life that the workers

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have been born into and condemned to live. Ultimately, Salgado’s photographic

representations of these ‘invisible worlds’ question the framework that the global forces of order use to justify their ideology of neoliberalism as well as their self proclaimed right to

economic domination and material inheritance in our singular world of social disparity.

Salgado’s visual language is also important to note when describing Workers. His repeated use of analogue black and white negative film and his neorealist approach not only

emphasises the mechanical repetition of hard labour and industrial economies, but also suggests that the subjects’ lives lack colour and emotion themselves. This decision to shoot

monochromatically also helps to highlight a visual sense of the black horror and potential ruin of heavy industry. Workers (1997) is undoubtedly a powerful series which has been tailored

towards audiences of the West. The industrial landscapes and documentary portraits that Salgado has compiled have been taken within situations that are incomprehensible, and

potentially alien, to the majority of citizens living in post industrial Western nations. For a viewer in such a society as ours, it is their sense of detachment from the images that gives

them much of their visual strength.

In Salgado’s powerful and violent images of workers in Kuwait illustrate Canadian specialist firefighters as they battle to repair oil wells that Saddam Hussein’s army had destroyed in

retaliation against U.S. air strikes. In one image (Fig. 2), we see a lone firefighter knocked unconscious by an exploding wellhead as he lies among an oil-soaked post-war landscape. It

is a series that aesthetically is very similar to the photographic documentation of World War 1 in the trenches. Just as the photography of the Great War brought home the horrors of

industrialised warfare, Salgado’s images remind the viewer of the horror and exhaustion of hard labour. (Sebastião Salgado, 1997: 339)

In Salgado’s depiction of the now abandoned Serra Pelada gold mine in Brazil, we are

presented with biblical scenes reminiscent of scenes from the Old Testament. Discovered in 1979 at the height of a gold boom, it is estimated that around 80,000 artisanal miners or

garimpeiros worked at the state controlled Serra Pelada mine in the Brazilian state of Para. According to the World Bank, there are currently 100 million artisanal miners around the

world (http://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/extractiveindustries/brief/artisanal-and-small-scale-mining). These type of miners are not employed by any mining company, but often work

independently using their bare hands instead of heavy machinery to extract rock and ore. In

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an image from the Serra Pelada series (Fig. 3), we witness the collectivity of the machine of

mankind. In this image of a vast industrial relief, the plight and suffering of millions of industrial workers around the world is visible. The viewer is asked to observe semi naked

labourers as they march through a landscape of hell on an epic scale. Known as mud hogs, after pigs who bathe in dirt, fifty thousands workers enter the open pit mine every morning

and drudge through a mire in passive anticipation of finding gold for their supervisors in return for a petty wage. Do these labourers harbour the hope that the mineral’s discovery will

emancipate them from this black chasm? Salgado recounts the conditions of the landscape he witnessed when visiting the Serra Pelada mine. “Not since the building of the pyramids by

thousands of slaves, or the Klondike gold rush in Alaska, has such an epic-scale human drama been witnessed”, Salgado writes in the caption booklet for Workers (Sebastião

Salgado [B], 1997: 19). In his 2014 documentary, Salt of the Earth (2014), Salgado continues to explain what he saw:

“When I approached the edge of that enormous hole, in a split second I saw unfolding before

me, the history of mankind, the building of the pyramids, the Tower of Babel, the mines of King

Solomon.” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jMb7eWaBVvQ)

This image (Fig. 3) by Salgado reveals to us the dissociation from nature that capitalist

industry can cause. In their desperate search for a new hope, the thousands of miners of Serra Pelada have alienated themselves from nature, permanently scarring the earth and

polluting the surrounding environment. Due to the use of the mercury in the gold production process, areas in close proximity to the Serra Pelada mine remain highly polluted, even more

than two decades after the mine’s closure (Carl J. Watras, et al, 1994: 35). Marx writes about this condition of alienation from nature in Das Kapital (1867):

“Capitalist production collects the population together in great centres, and causes the urban

population to achieve an ever growing preponderance. This has two results. On the one hand

it concentrates the historical motive force of society; on the other hand it disturbs the

metabolic interaction between man and earth.” (Dan Swain, 2012: 73)

In another image from the Serra Pelada series (Fig. 4), we observe an image of a

confrontation between a mine worker and an armed uniformed member of the Brazilian state civil guard. On first glance, it is a metaphor exploring the greater hierarchical relationship

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between the masses of men and their economic and political masters. The disheveled worker

in question adopts a somewhat heroic stature as he looks down onto his opponent, fearlessly gripping the rifle pointed at his torso. As this dispute occurs the two contestants are

surrounded by what the viewer must assume are other workers, some of whom look away submissively, seemingly reluctant to become involved in this hostile situation. It is suggested

in this image that the labour force of the Serra Pelada gold mine have submitted themselves to a master - the global economic system. They are forced, not only economically, but

physically at gunpoint, to perpetually toil in an industrial swamp, bound by the chains of economic servitude to labour within the most hazardous of working conditions and confined

to this slavish condition for eternity. The Communist Manifesto (1848) explores this condition of industrial subjugation:

“Masses of labourers, crowded into the factory, are organised like soldiers. As privates of the

industrial army they are placed under the command of a perfect hierarchy of officers and

sergeants. Not only are they slaves [the proletariat] of the bourgeois class, and of the

bourgeois State; they are daily and hourly enslaved by the machine, by the overlooker, and,

above all, by the individual bourgeois manufacturer himself.” (Karl Marx, 2008: 10)

According to Salgado’s account, it is revealed that the two central figures in this image (Fig. 4) are in fact prisoners trapped within the same system, both condemned to serve orders

from above. The armed guards are controlled by the state and often paid less than mine workers (S. Salgado [B], 1997: 19). The Marxian concept that capitalism alienates us from

other individuals and divides communities is clearly exposed in this image. It is interesting to mention that at one point in the mine’s history the pit was managed by Colonel Sebastião de

Moura who was notorious for torturing and killing rebels during Brazil’s military dictatorship between 1964 and 1985 (Erich Follath et al, http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/

notorious-killer-of-rebels-de-moura-might-face-justice-in-brazil-a-895471.html). The visual relationship between the two figures reminds the viewer that the most powerful weapon of an

un-armed and exploited labour force is its ability to unite against the keepers of the established order. According to Marx, this is where the power of the proletariat is to be found;

if the workers suddenly stopped working the economic system that governs them would grind to a halt. Hence the famous rallying call: “Working men of the world unite” (Karl Marx, 2008:

39) for “the proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains.” (Karl Marx, 2008: 39).

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In Workers, Salgado has shown labour of traditional industry in the Third World as a gruelling

and demoralising act, alien to current Western consumerist economies who have come to deny the devastating social consequences of these invisible worlds. As the Realism of

Courbet revealed the peasants of rural France to the citizens of Paris, Salgado has revealed the world of the late 20th century proletariat to the West.

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5. Steve McQueen and the Moving Image: Western Deep (2002)

Steve McQueen’s short documentary film, Western Deep (2002), is a harrowing cinematic

depiction of life within TauTona gold mine situated near Johannesburg, South Africa. With a depth of around three miles it is considered to be the world’s deepest mine. Commissioned

for the 2002 exhibition, Documenta 11, Western Deep is a 25 minute narrative free documentary shot using a Super 8 camera on a grainy colour film stock, and captures the

essence of a claustrophobic, sweaty, and dark industrial underworld (T. J. Demos, 2013: 35) (Fig. 5). Exploring themes of oppression the experimental film documents the brutal

subterranean working conditions of black miners seemingly trapped in an underground prison hidden from view both literally and metaphorically. The images of disheveled and

sweaty miners working in this dangerous environment and engaging in monotonous activities discredits globalisation’s promise of wealth and prosperity. Western Deep itself does not

directly acknowledge any economic or political context but instead attempts to focus on the uncomfortable atmosphere present in the hellish workplace the film documents (T. J. Demos,

2013: 43).

As Western Deep (2002) opens we are immediately plunged into complete darkness. The

viewer ‘descends’ into the abyss of the unknown and we hear the uncomfortable and sinister screeching sounds of heavy machinery. This audio-visual combination helps to introduce an

unsettling feeling of claustrophobia. The clamour ceases and the door swings open - the viewer has arrived at the bottom of an elevator shaft and for a moment the sound of silence

reigns (T. J. Demos, 2013: 33). Only now does the viewer become somewhat aware of the location. During the remainder of the film the viewer is introduced to grainy scenes of

workers engaging in a series of servile and monotonous tasks, clambering through the dimly lit tunnels and drilling into the rotten core of the global hegemonic economic system.

Here in this pit the labourers carve out their lives, and as Demos suggests, it is as though the

miners are hollowing out their own mass grave (T. J. Demos, 2013: 53). One of the more memorable scenes of Western Deep is when we see the miners performing in some sort of

strange regimental step exercise (Fig. 6). Facing each other in two rows wearing only boxer shorts, the miners synchronise their movements with a loud alarm as an inspector walks up

and down between the two rows. It is a bizarre sequence and as the film lacks any sort of narrative the viewer is left to guess what task they are being forced to partake in (T. J.

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Demos, 2013: 43/44). It is a scene which conveys servility and suggests that these working

class men have been reduced to the status of machine even in a modern day post-apartheid South Africa.

Western Deep (2002) ends with a shot of a man (Fig. 7) standing behind a metal grid with his

eyes half shut, seemingly exhausted and forlorn in passive acceptance of his undesirable situation. It is a powerful final scene which proposes that there is no escape from this

malevolent nether world. It is suggested here that these forgotten victims of neoliberal order are doomed to play out the rest of their lives searching for gold in a bleak and rocky industrial

gulag held to ransom by the economic puppeteers of the global political establishment (T. J. Demos, 2013: 53). Like the themes within the still photography of Sebastião Salgado,

McQueen’s film provokes a sense of fatalism, banality and alienation from the outside world. The art critic Jean Fisher writes:

“In Western Deep the journey is a descent in and through space without the temporal measure

and hence its alienation: the men walk, work and, in perhaps the most poignant moments of

the film, they listlessly wait.” (Jean Fisher, 2002: 120)

Fisher states that the film evokes a sense of people that are ‘missing’ from society (Jean Fisher, 2002: 124). Fisher maintains that time and space, or lack of, are both integral

features within the film. Demos notes in The Migrant Image (2013) that the film has an ambiguous relationship to time, removes itself from any perceptible location and is therefore

very much open to interpretation (T. J. Demos, 2013: 38). This unclear spatial and temporal relationship inherent in Western Deep (2002) - the very basis upon which the human

condition is grounded - helps to convey a sense of distress and estrangement that the viewer must assume the workers experience from every working day. Here we sense the social

alienation originally described by Marx. The contemporary Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben has described Western Deep (2002) as a sensually immersive portrayal of ‘bare

life’, a term that he uses to describe the condition of individuals deprived of any political identity or economic status by the forces of the global order (T. J. Demos, 2013: XIV/41).

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6. Allan Sekula: The Forgotten Spaces of Late Capitalism

Allan Sekula’s photography is an enquiry into the unseen economic and geographic

conditions of globalisation, specifically the global maritime economy. It is Sekula’s goal to analyse what the ocean means as we enter the new millennium; to expose and record these

hidden geographies and imperceptible spaces of global industry. His large project Fish Story (1995), investigates the maritime environment as a ‘forgotten space’ beyond the horizon, but

a space that has become integral to the health of the global capitalist economy. His proposition is one that asks what it means to be a seafaring nation. Using this invisible space

as a metaphor for the condition of contemporary labour, he aims to expose the complex social and geographic relationships within the period of late capitalism :2

“[Sekula’s work] reflects on the theme of globalisation and the circulation of ideas, products and

people in an era of whirling social, cultural and economic changes in which the Utopia of monetary

power is replacing the Utopia of social good.” (http://www.domusweb.it/en/news/2014/02/12/

utopia_for_sale_.html)

Exhibited at Documenta 11 held in Kassel in 2002, Fish Story (1995) is a research-based art project. Created during a span of 6 years from 1989 to 1995, Fish Story (1995) is a complex

body of work through which Sekula explores the maritime environment as a means to document and comment on the decline of industrialism in Europe and the US as industry

expands in East Asia, the relaxation of borders to trade, and the global consolidation of corporate power. It also highlights the material reality of the sea. Organised in nine chapters

and delivered through a mix of colour photographs, text panels, essays and two slide sequences Fish Story (1995) is produced both as an exhibition and as a book. The

composition of the photographic images include a range of styles from detailed close ups of factory and shipyard scenes to panoramic views of seas and coasts. The first slide projection

entitled Dismal Science (1989-92) consists of 80 slides and examines the decline of the two shipyards in the First World, Glasgow and Tyneside, presenting life among the ruins of an

industrial waterfront, considering the men who used to work there and the now unused and out-dated factories, warehouses and decaying machinery. (http://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/

tate-britain/display/bp-spotlight-allan-sekula-fish-story-chapter-8-dismal-science)

‘Late capitalism’ is a term used by some neo-Marxists to describe the nature of modern capitalism. The term is often 2

used to imply that the days of capitalism are finite. (https://www.cla.purdue.edu/english/theory/marxism/modules/jamesonlatecapitalism.html)

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A photograph (Fig. 8) from a sequence taken at Los Angeles Port District shows a rusty

spanner in a derelict welder’s booth. The spanner has been moved from its position on a rusty ledge to reveal a rustless outline image on the surface. This image, also from Fish

Story (1995) appears to symbolise not only the marginalisation of traditional workers at contemporary automated container ports but also the reduction of manual labour and

production in the broader global sphere (http://www.tate.org.uk/research/publications/tate-papers/production-view-allan-sekulas-fish-story-and-thawing-postmodernism). The

precariousness of modern day labour is implied to us here by Sekula.

In another image (Fig. 9) belonging to Sekula’s series Fish Story (1995) we see two workers, who both appear to be engineers within the bowels of a ship, working among intersecting

electrical conduits and metal piping. They are entangled by the tentacles of global industry, crucified to the cross of capitalism. Like McQueen’s preposition that there is no way out of

the gold mining industry for the labourers of Western Deep, here too, Sekula has proposed that a bleak future awaits both individuals documented in his image.

Sekula’s work makes a comment on the visibility to the general public of how photographs of

the ocean used in advertising convey a sense of luxury and desire. Sekula reveals the unglamorous reality of the sea; an invisible network of floating iron and steel required to

transport material commodities to within the market’s reach.

In another project titled Shipwrecks and workers (2005-2007), Sekula includes an image titled Shipwreck (Fig. 10). Exhibited as a triptych, it shows the bleak image of a ship lying

against a muddy sandbank, half sunk. This pessimistic image reveals a sense of precariousness and a lost hope: the exploitation and the irresponsible degradation that

capitalist ideology has left in its wake. In contrast, the grand ambition and consequent failings of late capitalism can be viewed here: we sense the slow death of the neoliberal machine, its

foundations corroding against the rising tide of the politically disenfranchised, although not submerging without taking its victims.

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Conclusion

In this dissertation I have examined and described the Marxist concept of the proletariat and

Marxist theories of social alienation, or Entfremdung, exploring the relevance of such ideas in the age of globalisation. I have compared these concepts to the photographic documentary

work of Sebastião Salgado, Steve McQueen, and Allan Sekula, who have revealed the nature of labour within the framework of the current global economy, exposing Marxist

concepts of labour in an era when definitions of the working class are in a state of revision. Since the advent of neoliberalism in the 1970s, leading to the rapid expansion of the world’s

market economy and the consequent exportation of cheap labour abroad, I have described how Marx’s revolutionary subjects of the proletariat are a declining class sector in the West,

further illustrating how ideas about the traditional working class are being replaced by the emergence of new class known as the precariat.

For the past century, the philosophy of Marxism has been in a state of crisis. Its failings led to

the rise of multiple Communist totalitarian states across the world, birthing political systems far less free than the “bourgeois tradition of rights, individual liberties, and

democracy” (Antonio Callari, 1995: 39) granted by neoliberalist societies. The idea of achieving a Marxist democracy by negating and alienating the individual from the

fundamental ideals of freedom of thought and expression remains an absurd concept, even to contemporary Marxists. As the Soviet Union met its end, Western capitalist economies

celebrated its collapse, using this as a justification for the perpetuation of their neoliberal doctrines as the true path to individual freedom and democracy. In his essay, The End of

Orthodox Marxism, a retrospective on the evolution of Marxist thought over the past century, Douglas Kellner writes:

“Marxism should have established itself as the champion of these political values [of freedom

and democracy], but an underdeveloped Marxian political philosophy and really existing

political oppression of the socialist regimes created an identification of Marxism with

oppression and liberalism with freedom and democracy.” (Antonio Callari, et al, 1995: 39)

In examining the documentary photography of Salgado, McQueen, and Sekula, it is clear that traditional Marxist notions of the working class still exist in the period of global late capitalism.

When we view their photographic works, all created during the last 40 years, the ideals of

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individual democracy and freedom that were promised under the flag of neoliberalism are

impossible to find. Instead Marx’s argument that the capitalist system is designed to enslave men to the machine of bourgeoisie competitive commerce is laid bare: the mundane and

alienating drudgery of labour under globalisation is realised.

The photographs examined in this essay have exposed the brutal shortcomings of late capitalism, and if we ever hope to redeem the apparent failings of the global order, we must

confront the status quo with a revised version of Marx’s philosophy that looks at the social and economic relationships of the current age of globalisation, considering both the precariat

labour force of Western economies and the traditional working class individuals of the developing nations:

“A Marxism for the twenty-first century could help promote democracy, freedom, justice, and

equality, and counterattack conservative ideologies that merely promote the interests of the

rich and powerful. As long as tremendous class inequality, human suffering, and oppression

exists, there is the need for critical theories like Marxism and visions of radical social change

that the tradition has inspired.” (Antonio Callari, et al, 1995: 40)

Guy Standing, author of The Precariat: The New Dangerous Class (2011) believes the time

for a fairer society is nigh:

“There is a need for a new politics of paradise that is mildly utopian and proudly so. The timing

is apt, for a new progressive vision seems to emerge in the early years of each century. There

were the radical romantics of the early nineteenth century, demanding new freedoms., and

there was a rush of progressive thinking in the early twentieth century, demanding freedom for

the industrial proletariat. It is already late, but the discrediting of labourism alongside the moral

bankruptcy of the neoliberal model of globalisation is a moment of hope for an emancipatory

egalitarianism geared to the precariat.” (Guy Standing, 2014: 268)

George Monbiot claims that the neoliberal consensus is dying as “the lamps come on all over

Europe.” (http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jan/28/convictions-politics-fear-syriza-podemos-snp-green). We have begun to witness the ripples of a new political age: the

Scottish call of 2014 for an independent society built on ideals of greater equality and the re-distribution of wealth; the recent election success of a leftist anti-austerity government in the

Euro-zone state of Greece; and the growing socialist Podemos movement in Spain (http://

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www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jan/28/convictions-politics-fear-syriza-podemos-

snp-green). More than a century on from the publication of The Communist Manifesto, it is clear that Marxian observations of the relationship between money and power still provide a

relevant argument against neoliberal policies that continue to create levels of unprecedented inequality. For as long as capitalism exists, Marxist theory will too, and any argument for a

future society built on the trinity of freedom, fraternity, and equality will have to reconsider the original theories of Marx and Engels.

Do the images of Salgado, McQueen and Sekula symbolise the bleak future of labour

conditions and the perpetuation of the global capitalist system? Or will they help inspire the call for a more egalitarian society, leaving the images as nothing more than historical

documents from a past period of environmental degradation and great inequality? The choice is ours.

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Illustrations

Figure 1

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Figure 2

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Figure 3

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Figure 4

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Figure 5

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Figure 6

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Figure 7

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Figure 8

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Figure 9

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Figure 10

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