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PROLETARIAT IN MARX
From WIKIPEDIA
Class structure
Marx distinguishes one
class from another on the basis of two criteria: ownership of
the
means of production and control of the
labor power of others. From this, Marx states "Society as a
whole is more and more splitting up into two great hostile camps,
into two great classes directly facing each other":
I. Capitalists, or
bourgeoisie, own the means of production and purchase the labor
power of others
II. Workers, or proletariat,
do not own any means of production or the ability to purchase
the labor power of others. Rather, they sell their own labor
power.
Class is thus determined by
property relations, not by income or status. These factors are
determined by distribution and consumption, which mirror the
production and power relations of classes.
The Manifesto of the Communist Party describes two
additional classes that “decay and finally disappear in the face
of Modern Industry”:
iii. A small, transitional
class known as the
petite bourgeoisie own sufficient means of production but do
not purchase labor power. Marx's
Communist Manifesto fails to properly define the petite
bourgeoisie beyond “smaller capitalists” (Marx and Engels, 1848,
25).
iv. The “dangerous class”,
or
Lumpenproletariat, “the social scum, that passively rotting
mass thrown off by the lowest layers of the old society.”
Conflict as the nature of
class relations
"The history of all
hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles…
Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf,
guild-master and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed,
stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an
uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each
time ended, either in a revolutionary reconstruction of society
at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes....
The modern bourgeois society that has sprouted from the ruins of
feudal society has not done away with class antagonisms. It has
but established new classes, new conditions of oppression, new
forms of struggle in place of the old ones. Our epoch, the epoch
of the bourgeoisie, possesses, however, this distinctive feature:
it has simplified class antagonisms. Society as a whole is more
and more splitting up into two great hostile camps, into two
great classes directly facing each other: Bourgeoisie and
Proletariat.” – Communist Manifesto
Marx established conflict
as the key driving force of history and the main determinant of
social trajectories (Kingston). However, in order to understand
the nature of “class
conflict,” we must first understand that such conflict
arises from a unified class interest, also known as class
consciousness.
Class consciousness is an aspect of Marxist theory,
referring to the self-awareness of social classes, the capacity
to act in its own rational interests, or measuring the extent to
which an individual is conscious of the historical tasks their
class (or class allegiance) sets for them.
Moreover, by definition,
the objective interests of classes are fundamentally in
opposition; consequently, these opposing interests and
consciousnesses eventually lead to class conflict.
Marx first saw the
development of class conflict confined to individual factories
and capitalists. However, given the maturation of capitalism,
the life conditions of bourgeoisie and proletariat began to grow
more disparate. This increased polarization and homogenization
within classes fostered an environment for individual struggles
to become more generalized. When increasing class conflict is
manifested at the societal level, class consciousness and common
interests are also increased. Consequently, when class
consciousness is augmented, policies are organized to ensure the
duration of such interest for the ruling class. Here begins the
use of the struggle for political power and classes become
political forces.
Since the distribution of
political power is determined by power over production, or power
over capital, it is no surprise that the bourgeois class uses
their wealth to legitimatize and protect their property and
consequent social relations. Thus the ruling class is those who
hold the economic power and make the decisions (Dahrendorf).
Class structure of
capitalism
In
Marxist theory, the
capitalist stage of production consists of two main classes:
the
bourgeoisie, the capitalists who own the means of
production, and the much larger
proletariat (or 'working class') who must sell their own
labour power (See also:
wage labour). This is the
fundamental economic structure of work and property (See
also:
wage labour), a state of inequality that is normalised and
reproduced through cultural ideology. Thus the proletariat,
in itself, is forced into a subservient position by the power of
capital, which has stripped the means of production from them.
As the proletariat becomes conscious of its situation and power,
organizes itself, and takes collective political action it
becomes a class for itself which has the revolutionary potential
to become the ruling class.[2]
Max Weber critiqued
historical materialism, positing that stratification is not
based purely on economic inequalities but on other status and
power differentials. Social class pertaining broadly to material
wealth may be distinguished from status class based on honour,
prestige, religious affiliation, and so on. The conditions of
capitalism and its class system came together due to a variety
of "elective affinities".[citation
needed]
Marxists explain the history of "civilized" societies in
terms of a
war of classes between those who control production and
those who produce the goods or services in society. In the
Marxist view of
capitalism, this is a conflict between capitalists (bourgeoisie)
and
wage-workers (the
proletariat). For Marxists, class antagonism is rooted in
the situation that control over social production necessarily
entails control over the class which produces goods—in
capitalism this is the
exploitation of workers by the
bourgeoisie.[citation
needed]
Marx himself argued that it
was the goal of the proletariat itself to displace the
capitalist system with
socialism, changing the social relationships underpinning
the class system and then developing into a future
communist society in which: "..the free development of each
is the condition for the free development of all." (Communist
Manifesto) This would mark the beginning of a
classless society in which human needs rather than profit
would be motive for production. In a society with democratic
control and
production for use, there would be no class, no state and no
need for money.[citation
needed]
For Marx, class has three
primary facets:[3]
Objective factors
A class shares a common
relationship to the
means of production. That is, all people in one class make
their living in a common way in terms of ownership of the things
that produce social goods. A class may own things, own land, own
people, be owned, own nothing but their labor. A class will
extract tax, produce agriculture, enslave and work others, be
enslaved and work, or work for a wage.
Subjective factors
The members will
necessarily have some perception of their similarity and common
interest. Marx termed this
Class consciousness. Class consciousness is not simply an
awareness of one's own class interest (for instance, the
maximisation of shareholder value; or, the maximization of the
wage with the minimization of the working day), class
consciousness also embodies deeply shared views of how society
should be organized legally, culturally, socially and
politically.
Reproduction of class
relations
Class as a set of social
relationships that is reproduced from one generation to the next.
The first criterion divides
a society into the owners and non-owners of means of production.
In capitalism, these are capitalist (bourgeoisie) and
proletariat. Finer divisions can be made, however: the most
important subgroup in capitalism being
petite bourgeoisie (small bourgeoisie), people who possess
their own means of production but utilize it primarily by
working on it themselves rather than hiring others to work on it.
They include self-employed
artisans, small shopkeepers, and many
professionals. Jon Elster has found mention in Marx of 15
classes from various historical periods.[4]
Vladimir Lenin has defined classes as "large groups of
people differing from each other by the place they occupy in a
historically determined system of social production, by their
relation (in most cases fixed and formulated in law) to the
means of production, by their role in the social organization of
labor, and, consequently, by the dimensions of the share of
social wealth of which they dispose and the mode of acquiring it."
[5]
Proletarianisation
The most important
transformation of society for Marxists has been the massive and
rapid growth of the proletariat over the last two hundred and
fifty years. Starting with agricultural and domestic textile
laborers in England and Flanders, more and more occupations only
provide a living through wages or salaries. Private
manufacturing, leading to self-employment, is no longer as
viable as it was before the industrial revolution, because
automation made manufacturing very cheap. Many people who once
controlled their own labor-time were converted into proletarians
through industrialization. Today groups which in the past
subsisted on stipends or private wealth—like doctors, academics
or lawyers—are now increasingly working as wage laborers.
Marxists call this process
proletarianization, and point to it as the major factor in
the proletariat being the largest class in current societies in
the rich countries of the "first world."[6]
Inevitability of socialist
revolution
Marx assumes the
inevitability of the revolution of capitalist society into
socialist society because of eventual discontent.[citation
needed] The socialization of labor, in the growth of
large-scale production, capitalist interest groups and
organizations, as well as in the enormous increase in the
dimensions and power of finance capital provides the principal
material foundation for the unavoidable arrival of socialism.
The physical, intellectual and moral perpetrator of this
transformation is the proletariat. The proletariat's struggle
against the bourgeoisie inevitably becomes a political struggle
with the goal of political conquest by the proletariat. With the
domination of the proletariat, the socialization of production
cannot help but lead to the means of production to become the
property of society. The direct consequences of this
transformation are a drop in labor productivity, a shorter
working day, and the replacement of small-scale unified
production by collective and improved labor conditions.
Capitalism breaks for all time the ties between producer and
owner, once held by the bond of class conflict. Now a new union
will be formed based on the conscious application of science and
the concentration of collective labor.
He also extended this
redistribution to the structure of power in families. Marx
imagined that with
socialism women's status would increase, leading to the
break-up of the patriarchal family.
"Modern industry, by
assigning as it does, an important part in the socially
organized process of production, outside the
domestic sphere, to women, to young persons, and to children
of both sexes, creates a new economic foundation for a higher
form of the family and of the relations between the sexes…
Moreover, it is obvious that the fact of the collective working
group being composed of individuals of both sexes and all ages,
must necessarily, under suitable conditions, become a source of
human development; although in its spontaneously developed,
brutal, capitalistic form, where the laborer exists for the
process of production, and not the process of production for the
laborer, that fact is a pestiferous source of corruption and
slavery." (Capital, Vol. I, Chapter 13).
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