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The Enquête represents a significant expansion on the questions previously posed in the IWMA efforts. Indeed, it entails a fundamentally qualitative shift: rather than pursuing a broad knowledge of workers’ situations, the questionnaire rigorously scrutinises the immediate dynamics of the capitalist labour-process. Its political character is obvious: through pursuing the questions, the respondent is led to consider the disjuncture between workers and capitalists, and is faced with an empirical demonstration of opposing interests in the capitalist organisation of work. [...]
The work of Marx, who claimed “I am not a Marxist”, has often been misrepresented as an abstract philosophical effort, or worse, an ideology. The importance of the questionnaire throughout Marx’s political life, from its centrality within the IWMA to the survey of La Revue Socialiste, demonstrates the opposite, and underlines the practical import at the core of Marxism: a tool for understanding and advancing proletarian power in the class-struggle.