Key Arguments

• He describes the worker, day-laborer, and tenant farmer as having a 'certain style of life' in which they are subject to unemployment, prosperity, lack of control over work conditions and products, poor housing, and arbitrary power, so that 'it is sufficient that I am born and that I exist in order to experience my life as difficult and constrained – I do not choose to experience it this way,' showing that a first, tacit valuation of their condition is not the result of explicit choice.
• He emphasizes that these situations 'do not assume any explicit valuation, and if there is a tacit valuation, it is the thrust of a freedom without any project encountering unknown obstacles; in no way can we speak of a choice,' indicating that class-related experience is pre-reflective and not yet a conscious political stance.
• He explains how class consciousness begins to form when the worker 'learns that other workers in another trade have, after a strike, obtained an increased salary; he observes that shortly thereafter the salaries in his own factory were raised. The fatum with which he was grappling begins to become more clearly articulated,' so that structural relations are lived as modifiable rather than as sheer destiny.
• For the day-laborer, class consciousness occurs not when he arbitrarily decides to be revolutionary, but 'because he perceived concretely the synchronicity between his life and the lives of the workers, and the community of their lot in life,' i.e., through a lived perception of parallel destinies rather than a theoretical deduction.
• He shows that the small farmer, separated by 'a world of customs and value judgments' from day-laborers and village workers, nevertheless 'feels himself on the same side as the day-laborers when he pays them an insufficient salary; he feels solidarity with the workers of the city when he learns that the owners of the farm preside over the board of directors of several industrial corporations,' indicating that lived economic relations silently polarize social space.
• He says that 'Social space begins to become polarized, and a region of “the exploited” appears. Upon every upsurge, coming from any point on the social horizon whatsoever, the regrouping takes shape beyond different ideologies and trades. Class is coming into being,' defining a revolutionary situation as one where 'the objectively existing connection between the segments of the proletariat ... is finally experienced [vécu] in the perception of a common obstacle to each one’s existence.'
• He insists 'There is never a need for a representation of the revolution to arise,' and that 'Revolution is born day to day, from the interlocking of immediate ends with ends that are further removed,' which shows that revolution and class are first lived as tendencies and converging paths, not as explicitly represented goals.
• He characterizes class as 'prior to being conceived – lived as an obsessive presence, as a possibility, as an enigma, and as a myth,' arguing that any attempt to make class consciousness the result of a punctual decision misunderstands its pre-conceptual, mythic and enigmatic mode of existence.

Source Quotes

My fellow factory or harvest workers, or the other tenant farmers, do the same work I do, and under similar conditions; we coexist in the same situation and we feel ourselves to be similar, not through some comparison, as if each one of us lived above all in isolation, but on the basis of our tasks and gestures. These situations do not assume any explicit valuation, and if there is a tacit valuation, it is the thrust of a freedom without any project encountering unknown obstacles; in no way can we speak of a choice, for in the three cases it is sufficient that I am born and that I exist in order to experience my life as difficult and constrained – I do not choose to experience it this way. But things might well stay right there without my reaching class consciousness, understanding myself as a proletarian, or becoming a revolutionary.

How, then, will this passage come about? The worker learns that other workers in another trade have, after a strike, obtained an increased salary; he observes that shortly thereafter the salaries in his own factory were raised. The fatum with which he was grappling begins to become more clearly articulated. The day-laborer, who has rarely interacted with workers, who does not resemble them, and who is hardly fond of them, sees the price of manufactured objects increasing, as well as the cost of living, and notices that one can no longer make ends meet.

It might happen that, in that moment, he blames the workers of the city, and so class consciousness will not be born. If it is born, this is not because the day-laborer has decided to become a revolutionary and, consequently, to confer a value upon his actual condition, but rather because he perceived concretely the synchronicity between his life and the lives of the workers, and the community of their lot in life. The small farmer, who does not mix with day-laborers, and even less so with the village workers, separated from them through a world of customs and value judgments, nevertheless feels himself on the same side as the day-laborers when he pays them an insufficient salary; he feels solidarity with the workers of the city when he learns that the owners of the farm preside over the board of directors of several industrial corporations.

The small farmer, who does not mix with day-laborers, and even less so with the village workers, separated from them through a world of customs and value judgments, nevertheless feels himself on the same side as the day-laborers when he pays them an insufficient salary; he feels solidarity with the workers of the city when he learns that the owners of the farm preside over the board of directors of several industrial corporations. Social space begins to become polarized, and a region of “the exploited” appears. Upon every upsurge, coming from any point on the social horizon whatsoever, the regrouping takes shape beyond different ideologies and trades. Class is coming into being, and we call a situation “revolutionary” when the objectively existing connection between the segments of the proletariat (that is, those connections that an absolute observer would ultimately recognize between them) is finally experienced [vécu] in the perception of a common obstacle to each one’s existence. There is never a need for a representation of the revolution to arise.

Upon every upsurge, coming from any point on the social horizon whatsoever, the regrouping takes shape beyond different ideologies and trades. Class is coming into being, and we call a situation “revolutionary” when the objectively existing connection between the segments of the proletariat (that is, those connections that an absolute observer would ultimately recognize between them) is finally experienced [vécu] in the perception of a common obstacle to each one’s existence. There is never a need for a representation of the revolution to arise.

It is unlikely, for example, that the Russian peasants of explicitly set for themselves the task of the revolution and the transformation of property relations. Revolution is born day to day, from the interlocking of immediate ends with ends that are further removed. There is no need for each proletarian to conceive of himself as proletarian in the sense a Marxist theoretician gives this word.

It is only familiar with indicative consciousness in the present or the future tenses, and this is why it does not succeed in accounting for class. For class is neither simply recorded, nor established by decree; just like the fatum of the capitalist machine and just like the revolution, class is – prior to being conceived – lived as an obsessive presence, as a possibility, as an enigma, and as a myth. To make class consciousness into the result of a decision or a choice is to say that the questions are resolved the day they are posed, that every question already contains the response it awaits; it is, in short, to return to immanence and to give up the hope of understanding history.

Key Concepts

• These situations do not assume any explicit valuation, and if there is a tacit valuation, it is the thrust of a freedom without any project encountering unknown obstacles; in no way can we speak of a choice, for in the three cases it is sufficient that I am born and that I exist in order to experience my life as difficult and constrained – I do not choose to experience it this way.
• The worker learns that other workers in another trade have, after a strike, obtained an increased salary; he observes that shortly thereafter the salaries in his own factory were raised. The fatum with which he was grappling begins to become more clearly articulated.
• If it is born, this is not because the day-laborer has decided to become a revolutionary and, consequently, to confer a value upon his actual condition, but rather because he perceived concretely the synchronicity between his life and the lives of the workers, and the community of their lot in life.
• Social space begins to become polarized, and a region of “the exploited” appears. Upon every upsurge, coming from any point on the social horizon whatsoever, the regrouping takes shape beyond different ideologies and trades. Class is coming into being
• we call a situation “revolutionary” when the objectively existing connection between the segments of the proletariat (that is, those connections that an absolute observer would ultimately recognize between them) is finally experienced [vécu] in the perception of a common obstacle to each one’s existence.
• Revolution is born day to day, from the interlocking of immediate ends with ends that are further removed.
• class is – prior to being conceived – lived as an obsessive presence, as a possibility, as an enigma, and as a myth.

Context

Part Three, III - FREEDOM, subsection [f. Valuation of historical situations: class prior to class consciousness.], where Merleau-Ponty uses detailed examples of workers, day-laborers, and tenant farmers to show how class and revolution first emerge as lived, pre-reflective structures and shared obstacles before becoming explicit projects.