Class Analysis Part 1: Marxist theories of Class

- 8 mins read

Introduction

Today we will be focusing on the concept of class within marxism. Class has always been a very important notion in marxism and therefore one often subject to controversy. While that makes it something daunting to approach one cannot hope to avoid this topic when trying to organise politically.

Therefore while giving definitive answers on the precise definition of class is most definitely beyond our capabilities, our goal here is to //TODO more stuff about nuance etc.

We will start with a few definitions of some core concepts for today’s lecture as well as give a short overview of some controversies and developments surrounding the concept of class.
After that we will we focus on some of the most common mistakes and pitfalls that can be found over //TODO
Then we will dive deeper into a specific example that will help us showcase how too much dogmatism in class analysis can prevent a specific political theory from being successfully actionable in practice.
After that we will present a
And finally we will focus on how divisions are present within the working class by examining how the state interacts with migration and gender.

Short explanation of the marxist terms we are going to use:

  • Class : That the Communist Manifesto opens by stating that “The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles” underlines how class is a central concept of marxist thought. But we cannot consider it to be only that: class is also the basis upon which the political form of marxism rests. The centrality of this concept in both marxist thought and marxist political practice explains the existence of numerous controversies around the concept, each different theoretician trying to finally understand who it is that will compose the revolutionary struggle of our time.
    Unfortunately Marx died before he was able to give us a clearer picture as to what a social class is in general instead only leaving us with various examples of analysis focusing on this or that specific class. While we do not have an in depth definition of it, we can infer from the commonalities of those examples a first attempt at a definition. A social class then would consist of a large group of people that relate to production in a unified way.
    However, this can only ever be a starting point and we will endeavour throughout this lecture to show through various controversies, historical and contemporary examples how and why a more in depth approach to class is necessary.

Marx highlights 2 classes in his works:

  • The proletariat: The working class is defined by their lack of ownership of the means of production, forcing them to sell their labour power to a capitalist and earning wages in the process.
  • The capitalist class: The capitalist class, also referred to as the ruling, owning class or the Bourgeoisie is characterised by their ownership of the means of production. This allows them to buy the labour power of the proletariat for their production and - to really shorten it down - let capital be created through the labour of the working class. This exploitation creates the class conflict between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie.
  • The peasantry: While the two previous classes are often the only ones presented when one gives a simple overview of the capitalist system, they do not encompass all of society. A primary example of that is the peasantry, commonly considered as a class of its own. While there are distinctions to be made within the various social stratas present in agricultural work a simple definition of the peasantry as a class would be those who toil the land that they own or rent, directly benefiting and reselling the products of their work.
  • Labour (concrete, abstract, surplus, maybe mental and manual?)
  • concrete: making of a product -> the difference between the necessary and surplus labour cant be seen in the concrete labour
  • abstract: the socially necessary labor needed to create the product, the sharing characteristic of all products is that abstract labor
  • surplus labor: additional labor a worker does that is not needed for the subsistence of the worker
  • Relations of production:
  • Whether someone owns the means of al out of the work others, who do not own them, who are therefore forced to sell their labor power to the owning clproduction or doenst, if one is to own the means of production, they generate their capitass

Labour aristocracy as its defined by Marx, Lenin and Engels

Labour Aristocracy:
Marx simply defines the labour aristocracy as the best paid part of the working class

Engels adds that through exploitation of the entire world, the ruling class in GB
tries to establish a bourgeois Proletariat
Engels also adds that the Capitalist class needs to integrate parts of the working class and will use the trade unions and their methods to achieve that goal. The union leaders have therefore brought themselves in a comfortable situation, in which they are happy with their bourgeois and their bourgeois with them.
Lenin also sees the aristocracy in the upper union members, workers, sport clubs and religious sects. He explains that the upper levels of the working class can get a bonus out of the surplus extracted in the imperial periphery. The question on how this bonus is distributed among the working class is secondary to him. Out of this aristocracy arose bourgeois workers parties in all imperial nations allied with the social chauvinists. Lenin however can’t permanently define which part of the proletariat is part of the aristocracy and which parts are revolutionary, as he acknowledges parts of both to be a fluid category. socialist one should simply stick to the lower masses.

“simple polarisation” approach by Charles Lorens

Lorens does not see any subdivisions in the working class, reducing the class contradiction purely to the exploitation of the proletariat through the capitalist class
In his view the capitalist class is not directly involved in any kind of labour in the production process and is reduced to a representative of non production while workers cooperate ever more in the production process.
The worker is on the one hand defined by producing surplus value, therefore wage labour.
On the other hand he claims, it is all the same whether the worker is working in the public or private sector. There is also unpaid labour whose executors also belong to the working class, the examples he names are housewives and workers of family businesses. Later he also mentions veterans and pensioners.
Lorens doesn’t see any difference between manual, mental or coordinating labour, classes are not defined by their function in production but by their relation to the means of production. That is why in his view even supervisors and most managers belong to the proletariat, as they exploit their own maximum in exploiting the maximum out of the other workers.
That’s why he argues that class is not divided by inner power, as the idle capitalist is never even involved with the worker.
The working class isn’t split by commanding workers, they may gain some bonuses from their position but never actually change their relation to the means of production
However, there is a part of the top executives that, even though they are still excluded from the means of production, belong to the capitalist class as they don’t contribute to the direct production, don’t show a high technical intelligence, don’t get paid in salaries but bonuses and have accumulated investments providing passive income, which is a portion of the surplus labour of the working class.

Erik Olin Wright - Structural Version

Wright also adds to the aspect of ownership three different dimensions of domination and subordination: The control over money capital, physical capital and labour.
Control over money capital: This is what most people associate with a capitalist: It is the direct control over the flow of investments and the overall accumulation of surplus value
Control over physical capital: This is what most marxist associate with a capitalist: It is the control over the means of production, the buildings and land, machinery and tools.
Control over labour capital: That is the control over the actual deployment and
activity of labour of the direct producers within production.
On the highest level of abstraction, the capitalist class still holds power over all 3 of these aspects, the class conflict still revolves around the owning, labour buying class vs the working, labour selling class with a petty bourgeois somewhere in between, owning the means of production but not buying labour power. In a lower level of abstraction other positions are added. Yet Some positions in the production process do not match with any of the 3 class positions we have worked out so far (bourgeoisie, proletariat, petty bourgeoisie), therefore occupying a contradictory position. The 3 most important are: Managers and foremen in a position between working class and capitalist class, small employers in a position between petty and real bourgeoisie and semiautonomous employees in a position between petty bourgeoisie and the proletariat, those would include Uber and Gorillas but also a lot of scientists or freelancers.
All those positions hold a certain power over one or more of the three dimensions I explained before. Wright further divides this control in 4 subcategories: no control, minimal control, partial control and full control.