What is class struggle and its historical role according to Marx? Is Marx’s account of class struggle sociological? How (not) so?
From the ancient Roman Conflict of the Orders in 494 BC to the Great Peasants’ Revolt in 16th century Germany, Margaret Thatcher’s destruction of trade union powers in the 1980s to Occupy Wall Street in 2011, class struggle has been a continuous presence in history. Described as ‘the oppressor and the oppressed standing in constant opposition’ (Marx, K, 1848: 8), discussion of the bourgeoisie against the proletariat is prevalent throughout much Marxist literature. With its focus on labour and argument that social relationships are bound up in trade and ownership, it could be assumed that Marx’s account of class struggle is, in fact, an economic study. Indeed, his analysis is deceptively economic: within The Manifesto of the Communist Party, his rhetoric of ownership and production, and argument that societal relations have been reduced to a mere money relation (Marx, K, 1848) is an analysis of the capitalist economy of the time. Yet, though Marx did not consider himself a sociologist, in assessing his account of class struggle, it is vital that we question the nature of his argument – whether he simply presents an economic analysis, or if his discussion is actually a more complex and skilfully nuanced sociological account of class struggle.
Throughout The Manifesto of the Communist Party, Marx continuously refers to the reality of two classes facing one another, stating that ‘one fact is common to all past ages – the exploitation of one part of society by the other.’ (Marx, K, 1848: 36). It is this concept of exploitation, defined as ‘to make full use of and derive benefit from (a resource) and to make use of (a situation) in a way considered unfair or underhand’, (Oxford English Dictionary) that simultaneously forms Marx’s concept of class struggle and contributes to the challenge in understanding his account. In analysing this conflict between the bourgeoisie as owners of the means of production and the proletariat as those who must sell their labour to live, Marx highlights the fundamental relationship between economic and societal relations, blurring the boundary between the concepts of ‘economy’ and ‘society’. In such, though initially this exploitation is thought of on an economic level, it becomes evident that class struggle is based on economic relations constructed by those dominant in society, the bourgeoisie. Indeed, In Making Sense of Marx, Elster states that ‘Communism differs from all previous movements in that it overturns the basis of all earlier relations of production…and…consciously treats all naturally evolved premises as the creation of hitherto existing men.’ (Elster, J, 1985: 83), further evidence that economic relations are intrinsically linked to social relations, and in order to understand the latter, we must assess the former.
Though a definition of sociology is arguably another debate, in assessing the sociological nature of Marx’s account of class struggle, a definition of sociology is crucial. For the purposes of this essay, sociology will be regarded as understanding and interpreting what humans do, and more specifically, the study of the relationships between people especially in industrial societies. With this in mind, it is within Marx’s conflict with Georg Hegel that we see the more sociological core of his account of class struggle. Morrison states that ‘Hegel claimed that hardship and suffering stem from a kind of consciousness existing in the minds of individuals rather than in the form of material obstacles which exist in reality and hinder individual freedom’, while Marx argued that ‘it is economic necessity, not abstract conscious relations, that binds the slave to the master’ (Morrison, K, 1995: 31). Furthermore, Hegel felt that freedom from oppression materialises when individuals alter their consciousness, yet ‘Marx asserted that suppression stems from the system of social relations which arise from economic inequalities’ (Morrison, K, 1995: 31). Given this argument that social relations arise from economic inequalities, Marx’s analysis of the economic structure does not reduce the sociological nature of his study – rather, it reinforces it, as his analysis is supported by a thorough investigation of society, of which the relations of economic production are a fundamental part.
Alongside Hegel, others such as Rousseau, Smith and Ricardo were concerned with sociological issues during the late 1700s. Interestingly, the term ‘economics’ only replaced what was previously referred to as ‘political economy’ in the late 19th century, but the earlier term arguably better encapsulates the reality of the studies of such theorists, acknowledging the fundamental relationship between the economy and political society. Rousseau was interested in the discourse on the origin of inequality, aiming to understand the real foundations of human society and discussing the idea that society emerges out of artificial inequalities imposed by social development. Equally, Smith argued that the economy is not limited – it is essential to a civilised society, and in order to understand the economy, we must understand society. Similarly, in Marx’s efforts to understand society, it was vital that he understood the economy. Indeed, his ‘critique of the political economists is levelled at Smith’s and Ricardo’s inability to see how economic laws were the effects of much broader historical and social processes’ (Morrison, K, 1995: 55), something that he develops in his Preface to A Critique of Political Economy, where he states that legal relations and political forms originate in the material conditions of life, which Hegel embraces within the term “civil society” (Marx, K, 1859: 2). This sociological foundation of Marx’s account of class struggle, is perhaps best described in Karl Marx’s Theory of History, in which Cohen argues that ‘the capacity to enslave men belongs primarily to social relationships, not material powers’ (Cohen, G.A, 1978:147). Regardless of liberal claims that, as Smith stated, society is at the mercy of the ‘invisible hand’ (Smith, A, 1976:184) of the markets, capital is ‘a collective product’ and ‘only by the united act of all members of society can it be set in motion’ (Marx, K, 1848: 29), making it not a personal, but a social power. Indeed, for an economic position to have any worth, it must be accepted by others in society, otherwise it is meaningless: wealth is inconsequential if you do not have comparative boundaries. Ultimately, humans make the markets, control and own the means of production, therefore making the class struggle sociological.
Stating that ‘The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles’ (Marx, K, 1848: 8), Marx was concerned with ‘developing an understanding of reality and history’ (Morrison, K, 1995: 56). This interest in defining history led his focus to issues of social existence and economic necessity (Morrison, K, 1995: 56), evident in The Manifesto of the Communist Party. Moreover, it is Marx’s theory of history as a materialist concept, giving explanatory primary to matter (Elster, J, 1985: 56) that links the economic element of history to that of sociology, a concept he takes further in The German Ideology stating that production is the ‘first historical act’, and going on to say that ‘the satisfaction of the first need…leads to new needs, and this creation of new needs is the first historical act’ (Elster, J, 1985: 71). Marx’s understanding of history is not accepted by all. Indeed, his very definition of the term was borne out of a disagreement with Hegel’s belief that ‘society and the state had developed out of what he called the forces of the spirit in history and ‘the actualisation of the ethical’ (G.W.F. Hegel, 1958: 218). Moreover, ‘Hegel empowered the state with a kind of ‘eternal’ quality which meant that its activities were unalterable’ – Marx, on the other hand, reasoned that inequality and human hardship resulted from social disadvantages and historical social inequalities of society, rather than natural outcomes of history, reinforcing his social constructionist stance towards class struggle.
In The End of History and the Last Man, Fukuyama speaks of the debt owed to Hegel in Marx’s thought, and states that the two shared a belief in the possibility of the end of history. While both foresaw a final form of society that was free of contradictions, and thus terminating the historical process, Marx differed from Hegel in his belief that the end of history would come only with victory of the ‘universal class’ (Fukuyama, F, 1989), the proletariat, resulting in a global communist utopia, ending class struggle. More recently, however, Fukuyama argued between 1989 and 1992 that the rise of liberal democracy constituted ‘the end of history’ (Fukuyama, F, 2012, xi), stating that ‘What we may be witnessing is not just the end of the Cold War, or the passing of a particular period of postwar history, but the end of history as such: that is, the end point of mankind's ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government’ (Fukuyama, F, 1989). This notion of human history as the progression of western liberal democracy moves away from Marx’s definition that ‘History is the history of human industry which undergoes growth in productive power, the stimulus and vehicle of which is economic structure, which perishes when it has stimulated more growth than it can contain’ (Cohen, G.A, 1978: 26) and neglects the fundamental position of the oppressed in the class struggle, as even within modern western liberal democracy, the reality of the class struggle remains, with the proletariat unable to enjoy the ‘freedom’ brought about by liberal democracy.
Maintaining this contemporary focus, but returning to an earlier point in Marx’s account of class struggle, it is important to discuss exactly where the distinction between the terms ‘economy’ and ‘society’ lies, if it exists at all. In studying Marx, and within contemporary capitalist society, this question becomes problematic: it becomes increasingly difficult to distinguish between the two, yet this is arguably fundamental to his account. Michael Sandel, in What Money Can’t Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets, states that over the last thirty years ‘without deciding to do so, we drifted from having market economy, to being a market society’ (Sandel, M, 2012: 10). Indeed, in almost all aspects of daily life and interaction, we are faced with instances of class struggle, and social relations developed with this ‘market society’ motivation. Furthermore, Sandel argues that while market economy was a tool, the market society is a way of life (Sandel, M, 2012: 10). Such a distinction is dubious, since market economy is formed and maintained by humans in society, and given this, it is worth questioning whether it is too much to expect humans to prevent such market driven behaviours from seeping into other, if not all, aspects of life.
Marx argues that ‘the history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggle.’ (Marx, K, 1848: 8) and that the end of history would come only with victory of the proletariat (Fukuyama, F, 2012: 65). Indeed, it is clear to see how Marx came to view class struggle as ‘history’, the driver of historical actions, not only the historical role of the class struggle in shaping history, but also how history shapes the class struggle. Marx’s account is extremely nuanced, and it could be misread as an economic account of the time. However, to see it as such would miss the fundamental point of Marx’s work – the vital connection between the economy and society. In Karl Marx’s Theory of History, Cohen argues that ‘What changes the productive forces thereby changes the production relations – this suggests the formers domination of the latter. Yet here what changes the productive forces is the bourgeoisie’ (Cohen, G.A, 1978: 145). This arguably adds a sociological element missing from Marx’s own statement, that ‘not only are they slaves of bourgeois class, they are enslaved by the machine’ (Marx, K, 1848) – they are not slaves of the machine, they are slaves of the owners of the machines, returning the analysis to the bourgeoisie. This sentiment is echoed in the idea that capital fetishism occurs when ‘capital’s power to produce…appears to be a faculty inherent in it, not one it owes to, the labour process’ (Cohen, G.A, 1978:117). Yet, it is vital we remember that machinery is always controlled, rather than allow it to take on some kind of human power. Marx’s account of the historical role of class struggle is not initially obviously sociological. However, looking at his influences, and the disagreements that he had with these thinkers, it is evident that his analysis rejects a basic economic approach, and views class struggle as a more multi-faceted issue, intrinsically linked to the economy and society, and sociological in its approach.
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