Association was once assumed natural yet today even trade-union consciousness cannot be assumed.

Evidence

“Whether we will or no, we are bundles of hyphens,” wrote the English Fabian and sometime Labour leader Harold Laski in 1916, “for man is so essentially an associative animal that his nature is largely determined by the relationships thus formed.” In this optic, organizations of the working class could reach for a secure anthropological basis. Lenin’s understanding of revolutionary class consciousness likewise assumed a nigh-irresistible drive toward association on the part of workers, who then had to be spurred beyond narrow corporatism by a revolutionary party. Today, Gopal Balakrishnan writes, “not even a spontaneous trade union consciousness can be assumed.” — Anton Jäger, Hyperpolitics, 253

Categorization

• SEED: Potential essay angle: the 1916 Laski quote marks the moment intellectuals stopped needing to argue for association’s anthropological basis — and when that taken-for-granted dissolved.