Moral Disapproval: The Political Consciousness of the Demobilized Working Class

Abstract

This study maps latent forms of political consciousness in the contemporary working class, moving beyond a narrow focus on far-right leanings among workers. Based on in-depth interviews with German manual workers, we reconstruct how workers criticize injustices of redistribution, recognition, and representation. We show that rather than any systematic political ideology, what dominates workers’ accounts is the moral scandalization of broken promises and violated expectations. The political consciousness of workers is defined by a reactive sense of injustice centered on violations of an implicit social contract. Building on Axel Honneth and Klaus Dörre, we interpret this as symptomatic of the political horizon of “demobilized class societies”. These are societies that continue to be structured by class relations but in which class-based identities and political representation channels have fragmented. Lacking a sense of collective agency, workers retreat to a defensive position centered on warding off the transgressions of groups above (the rich, bosses, and politicians) and below (‘takers’, intruders, and cheats). Politically, the moral grammar of the demobilized working class is ambivalent and contains openings for both right- and left-wing mobilization.