Hagen Koo

Middle classes, democratization, and class formation

ConclusionsThis analysis of the South Korean case demonstrates the importance of the historical context for understanding the political role of the middle classes. In late industrialization, as occurred in South Korea and other East Asian countries, the new middle class has emerged as a significant social class, before the capitalist class established its ideological hegemony and before industrial workers developed into an organized class. Neither of these two major classes was able to offer an ideological or organizational leadership to the middle classes. In this context, the middle class can act as more than merely a “dependent variable.” In South Korea, the minjung movement led by an intellectual segment of the middle class played a critical role in the formation of the working class, by providing an opposition ideology, new politicized languages, organizational networks, and other resources.The Korean experience also highlights the significant role of the state in class formation. The predominant role of the state in economic and social development puts it at the center of major social conflicts. Social tensions and conflicts that emerge in rapid industrialization are directly and indirectly related to the character of the state and the economic policies it implements. A high level of politicization among Korean middle-class members, not only among intellectuals but also among a large number of white-collar workers, is the product of the authoritarian regimes of Park and Chun and their repressive control of civil society. Both the nature of Korean middle-class politics and its relationship with the working-class formation have been shaped by the nature of state politics.The role of the middle class in the South Korean democratization process has been complex and variable, in part because of its internal heterogeneity and in part because of shifting political conjunctures in the transition to democracy. It would not make much sense, therefore, to characterize the Korean middle class as progressive or conservative, because different segments of it were inserted into the shifting conjunctures of political transition differently. At the same time, it would be also unsatisfactory to characterize middle-class politics as simply inconsistent or incoherent, because there exists some definite pattern in their behaviors.This analysis suggests that political behaviors of different segments of the middle class can be explained in terms of their locations within the broad spectrum of middle-class positions between capital and labor and by the changing balance of power between the two major classes. This is to acknowledge the fact that capital-labor relations constitute the primary axis of conflict and that middle-class politics must be understood ultimately in terms of this principal mechanism of class struggle. This is, however, not to assume that middle-class politics is simply a terrain of struggle between the capitalist and the working classes, as many Marxist theorists do. To repeat, in certain historical contexts middle-class politics can have an independent effect on the formation of the two major classes and the outcomes of struggles between the two.

Class and Income Inequality in Korea

This paper seeks to contribute to recent efforts to improve status attainment models by introducing class categories or labor market segmentation. The research reported here replicates and extends Wright and Perrones (1977) analysis of class categories and income inequality in the United States in the context of a rapidly industrializing society. The results confirm that Marxist class categories are as consequential as occupational status in explaining income inequality in both advanced and developing capitalist societies. Yet, there are several difficulties in applying this class model to developing economies, so that a substantially modified class model is developed taking the manual-nonmanual distinction and structural marginality as additional major axes of class determination. This new model is superior to Wrights (1976) model in explaining income inequality in Korea. In the final part of the paper, a tentative test of a dependency model of inequality is attempted, with negative results for the predicted hypothesis of the center-periphery sectoral inequality.

Modernity in South Korea: An Alternative Narrative

A large literature on South Korean economic development has presented one dominant narrative on Korean modernity, essentially that of a smooth and peaceful process of modernity brought about by the immutable logic of the market and by a gradual expansion of the middle class and civil society. This essay presents another narrative which stresses the role of social struggles in this process. Koreas transition to modernity has been marked by a high level of social conflicts and by clashes between modernity and tradition and between external and national values. In this process, history and tradition did not simply give way to modernity but have been continuously rediscovered and reappropriated for new social struggles. Koreas modernity has been woven out of these political, social and cultural materials rather than simply out of the universal fabric of capitalism.

The Global Middle Class: How Is It Made, What Does It Represent?

Abstract One important phenomenon to be observed in the world today is the rapid growth of the middle classes in emerging economies, especially in Asia. This development called for a new concept, the global middle class. The purpose of this paper is twofold: one is to examine the ways this term is currently used and clarify its meaning, and the other is to examine one empirical case of South Korea and highlight important processes involved in the making of a global middle class. The term global middle class has 2 meanings: (1) all the middle classes that exist in the world or (2) the affluent and globally oriented segments of the middle classes in developing countries. These 2 different conceptions serve different purposes and address different aspects of globalizations effect on the affected economy and society. While the expansion of the middle classes around the world is an unquestionably welcome phenomenon, the rise of the affluent global middle classes in developing countries represents a more complex and problematic phenomenon. The Korean case demonstrates that the emergence of the global middle class is associated with growing internal division within the middle class and intense processes of class distinction and educational pursuits in the global education market.

Working Class Formation in Taiwan: Fractured Solidarity in State-Owned Enterprises, 1945–2012Working Class Formation in Taiwan: Fractured Solidarity in State-Owned Enterprises, 1945–2012, by HoMing-sho. Hampshire, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. 272 pp.

Taiwan is not known as a country of much labor activism or of any special pattern of class politics, and thus its labor movement has received little attention in the literature. Ming-sho Ho’s Working Class Formation in Taiwan will be a valuable addition to this scant literature on Taiwan’s labor movement. The purpose of the book is to analyze ‘‘how Taiwan’s workers in state-owned enterprises (SOEs) managed to change their subordination and dependence in the 1945–2012 period’’ (p. ix). The focus of the study is on the SOE workers, not on the entire working class, and within the SOE sector, on two groups of workers: petroleum and sugar workers. This delimitation of the study population is justified, given the large size of SOEs and their leading role in Taiwan’s labor movement in recent years. The author has conducted intensive interviews with workers in the petroleum and sugar industries. This book demonstrates that Taiwan’s labor history was indeed characterized by a remarkable degree of labor docility and ‘‘industrial peace’’ during the period of rapid industrial development since the early 1960s. Hardly any significant labor conflicts or unionization struggles occurred until the late 1980s. The phrase ‘‘working class formation,’’ thus, appears somewhat unfit to describe Taiwan’s labor situation during the industrial era. The active unionization movement did occur, however, following political liberalization in 1987. But the militant union movement of this period did not last long; it began to recede in the early 2000s as Taiwan’s economy was transformed under the impact of neoliberal globalization. Preoccupied with their own job security, which was being threatened by privatization and neoliberal labor market reform, rank-and-file workers quickly abandoned their union activism and returned to their usual passivity. The highly politicized union movement that emerged in the post-1987 period, which the author calls ‘‘social movement unionism,’’ quickly declined and gradually turned into the narrow ‘‘economic unionism’’ by the early 2000s. But the main concern of the study is not really with this larger picture of working class formation or its absence. Instead, the author’s primary interest is in capturing diverse forms of worker resistance under the fac xade of labor submission and passivity. Three substantive chapters of the book are concerned with these mundane forms of resistance (‘‘everyday resistance’’), while only one chapter is devoted to describing the rise and fall of militant unionism since the late 1980s. The major thesis of the book is that intraclass division can play a more important role in promoting labor activism than interclass division. ‘‘The experience of Taiwan’s SOE workers,’’ the author argues, ‘‘offers us a case in which the intraclass rather than interclass divide gives rise to workplace contentions. . . . it is their internal difference [sic] that fuel labor activism’’ (p. 186). He stresses three forms of intraclass division among the Taiwanese workers: ethnicity (between the Taiwanese and the mainlander Chinese), party (KMT) membership, and job position within the workplace. He regards these three bases of division as ‘‘institutions’’ and stresses historical institutionalism as his principal theoretical approach. Having identified these internal cleavages among the workers, the book describes in detail how workers adapted to the authoritarian industrial structure. The following paragraph summarizes the main finding of the study: