An Analytical View of Marx`s Class Struggle and Social Utopia
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An analytical view of Marx`s class struggle and social utopia
Necessity is blind until it becomes conscious. Freedom is the consciousness of necessity. Karl Marx
Introduction
Marxism, or scientific Socialism; is the name given to the collection of ideas initially theorised by Karl Marx ( 1818- 1883) and Friederich Engels ( 1820- 1895). These ideas encompass a theoretic basis for the working class struggle in order to obtain a superior form of human society, organization and socialism.
The philosopher, social scientist, historian and revolutionary, Karl Marx, is without a doubt the most influential socialist thinker to emerge in the 19th century. He discovered the law of human developing history: the simple fact, hidden until now by the thicket ideology, that, before engaging in politics, science, art, religion, people should first eat, drink, have a home and get dressed; so, therefore, immediate material means of subsistence production and, along with her, every stage of economic development of a nation or an era basis, from which to develop state institutions, legal concepts and ideas, art and even religious people concerned, and that must be explained, however, and not vice versa, as was done before.
The conceptions of Marxism have been subsequently developed and enriched by the historical experience of the working class itself, the fundamental ideas remain unshaken, providing a firm foundation for the Labour Movement today. Neither before nor since the lifetime of Marx and Engels theories have been advanced, deeper or higher, more scientific to explain the evolution of society and the role of the working class in this development. Therefore, theoretical knowledge of Marxism arming the proletariat for the great historic task of socialist transformation of society.
The theories of Marxism provide worker who thinks such an understanding – a guide able to lead him through the confused labyrinth of events, the complex processes of society, economy and politics of class struggle.
Class struggle
It is a truism that people have an interest in improving their situation. The strategies available to them are by individual and collective betterment. In any society there are organized groups trying to promote the interests, broadly conceived, of their members. There will also be many individuals who have strongly felt interests in some public food or collective action but for various reasons are unable to join forces with other people with similar interests. Finally, there will be some individuals who, objectively, would seem to have a strong interest in some public good, although, subjectively, they do not experience it that way.
Of these, the second group of people form an unstable category. If they are unable to rise into the first, they will tend to sink down to the third.
Marx`s theory of class begins with a certain set of objectively defined interests, created by relations of exploitation and domination in production. Objectively speaking, people have an interest in not being exploited and dominated. For most of them, this interest can be realized only by collective action. ( An introduction to Karl Marx; Jon Elster; p122)
I will begin by determining the concept of class, stating that Marx`s conception about social class is derived from the analysis of relations of production. A social class act as a group of individuals that are in a similar position to the means of production and fulfilling the same role in the production/ ownership of economic surplus. Marxist social class analysis is integrated into capitalist system of commodity production. This establishes a fundamental division between the bourgeois( or capitalist class) which holds ownership of the means of production and the proletariat ( or working class), that does not have power over his work and he is forced to sell it for to procure the necessary means of living. Productive work is only creating value and acquiring capital gains is the essence of exploitation by capitalists, which makes these social class have interests opposed and irreconcilable objectives. But similar position to the means of production does not automatically confer the status of a group of individuals to social class. They should be aware that they have common interests, goals, specific to social class. In its entirety, in other words to acquire class consciousness, and organize themselves politically in order to promote these interests in the class struggle.
In the works with a strong polemical and propagandistic character, for mobilization and ideological classification of the working class, Marx simplifies the analysis of social class. Communist Manifesto (1848) refers exclusively to the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, the increasing polarization of these social classes and at the need of a proletarian revolution that would allow the transition to communism. However, other analytical work with a more pronounced character Marx does not overlook any existing divisions within the two fundamental classes, nor concurrent social classes in capitalist societies of the time. In the last chapter ( unfinished) of Capital ( Volume III, 1894) Marx says: “Those who have no other property than their workforce, together with capital owners and landowners, whose respective sources of income are wages, profit ground rent and therefore employed workers, capitalists and landlords constitute the three major classes of modern society based on capitalist mode of production.” This conceptualization is similar definitions of A. Smith and English classical economics.
For the better understanding of Marx`s view on society i will go through historical materialism, which will show as the steps that mankind took to get to the point we are, to show why class struggle is so important and the important role that this plays in achieving utopian socialism.
When someone look at history, she appears as a mass of contradictions. The events are lost in a maze of revolutions, wars, progress and decline periods. Class conflict between nations revolve around the chaos and social development. How is it possible to undestand and explain these events, when it seems that they have no rational basis?
Marxism attaches enormous importance to the study of history to study the great lessons it contains. Without this understanding of the development of events, is unable to provide their perspectives. Lenin, for example, has prepared the Bolshevik Party for the October Revolution in 1917 through a meticulous analysis of the experience of the Paris Commune and the events in Russia in 1905 and in February 1917.
Marxism is a