Why is the proletariat, unlike all previous exploited classes, able to abolish class society once and for all? What material conditions give rise to this?
Is it because the proletariat is the first exploited class to be able to found a society of abundance?
I'm especially interested in why Marx (not Marxists) and anarchists see it as such an important class.
In short. It's because of labour is the very life blood of capitalism that workers have negative power that we can wield to destroy class society.
Hmm. Thanks for the answers. But why is it in the proletariat's class interest to overthrow class society instead of, say, become an exploiter class?
Before I try to give an answer to your question, could you please define what you think the working class is? Who is a part of it? How is it subjectively and objectively defined?
The definition I have in mind is a property-less class (in the Marxist sense), forced to sell its labor for a wage in order to survive. In Marx's time I would have added "whose existence is completely insecure" but that's not completely true now-a-days.
I've heard the argument that because the proletariat is a property-less class its class interest is to overthrow classes and private-property for good, but I don't understand it.
Hmm. Thanks for the answers. But why is it in the proletariat's class interest to overthrow class society instead of, say, become an exploiter class?
The working class cannot become an exploiter class unless it finds a source of wealth creation other than itself. Small parts of the working class can end up in the exploited class but for the class as a whole it is logistically impossible.
Trofim wrote:
Hmm. Thanks for the answers. But why is it in the proletariat's class interest to overthrow class society instead of, say, become an exploiter class?The working class cannot become an exploiter class unless it finds a source of wealth creation other than itself. Small parts of the working class can end up in the exploited class but for the class as a whole it is logistically impossible.
Only when the proletariat constitutes a majority, which wasn't the case in most countries when the Communist Manifesto was written, for example.
jef costello wrote:
Trofim wrote:
Hmm. Thanks for the answers. But why is it in the proletariat's class interest to overthrow class society instead of, say, become an exploiter class?The working class cannot become an exploiter class unless it finds a source of wealth creation other than itself. Small parts of the working class can end up in the exploited class but for the class as a whole it is logistically impossible.
Only when the proletariat constitutes a majority, which wasn't the case in most countries when the Communist Manifesto was written, for example.
how could the proletariat exploit even if they are a minority class? they do not own anything and thay do not have the money to employ anyone.
Trofim wrote:
jef costello wrote:
Trofim wrote:
Hmm. Thanks for the answers. But why is it in the proletariat's class interest to overthrow class society instead of, say, become an exploiter class?The working class cannot become an exploiter class unless it finds a source of wealth creation other than itself. Small parts of the working class can end up in the exploited class but for the class as a whole it is logistically impossible.
Only when the proletariat constitutes a majority, which wasn't the case in most countries when the Communist Manifesto was written, for example.
how could the proletariat exploit even if they are a minority class? they do not own anything and thay do not have the money to employ anyone.
Well obviously they wouldn't still be the proletariat as such... I suppose you could envision some weird industrial syndicalist class exploiting the peasantry in some alternate dimension in 1920 or something...
I feel funny doing this, but a few years ago I wrote an essay trying to argue why class was primary and what that meant. I'm pasting a bit below. At the time I was reading this stuff influenced by Althusser (Resnick and Wolff) which is really terrible. I was arguing against it but I took on some of the unfortunate parts of the vocabulary. I think I may also overstate how much Marx meant by "radical chains", this is because I was recruited at a young age by a party with a ridiculous idea that ending capitalism would automatically solve all human problems of any sort, I was trying to argue in this essay in favor of class being primary but was worried not to end up back with that ridiculous idea.
*
Class struggle is not merely one form of struggle among others. This was Marx’s view, though Marx, at least in the Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, overstated this point. Marx held that the working class “has radical chains.” This means that the working class’s grievance against capitalism “has a universal character because its sufferings are universal, and which does not claim a particular redress because the wrong which is done to it is not a particular wrong, but wrong in general.” The class “claims no traditional status but only a human status.” The class is thus “totally opposed” to all forms of oppression or power process. This means that the working class “cannot emancipate itself without emancipating itself from all other spheres of society, without, therefore, emancipating all these other spheres” (Marx-Engels Reader, 64).
Radical here means “to grasp things by the root” (Marx-Engels Reader, 60). For Marx, “radical chains” are chains which are, so to speak, chained the root of all forms of social inequality and oppression. Thus, the severing of radical chains will sever all forms of chaining of human beings. The proletariat’s severing of its chains will sever all chains. In other words, Marx held that the end of the class process or class processes will end all forms of power processes, or at least all forms of undesirable power processes.
This is an overstatement on Marx’s part. There is no reason why the end of class will end all other forms of oppression or undesirable power process. If class is abolished it is entirely possible that racism, sexism, homophobia, and other contradictions or reactionary ideas and practices will still exist. The important point remains, however, that these other contradictions or power processes will not, however, have any economic expression. In that sense, class can still be held to be primary.
If class is abolished via the abolition of capitalism, abolition of the appropriation of surplus labor, much of the teeth of other contradictions will be abolished. Gaybashing, racist violence, sexual assault, domestic violence and other atrocities may all still exist in post-capitalist society. There will not, however, be economic power present which serves to reinforce them. Companies will no longer be able to decide whether or not same-sex partners shall be covered on the company insurance plan, because healthcare will be provided to all. Racists will not be able to appeal to the lie of immigrants lowering wages, because wages will not exist. Abusive partners will not be able to use their partners’ economic dependence on them to trap the partner in the violent relationship. Employers and privileged employees will not be able to use their power in the workplace to provide them with the power to inflict sexual harassment with impunity upon those below them in the workplace hierarchy, because the institution of the waged workplace will not exist.
Any preferential/discriminatory practices in hiring, firing, wage levels, housing, access to healthcare, or other forms of inequality in the distribution of means of subsistence will not exist after capitalism is abolished. This is the meaning of the slogan Marx liked, describing communism as “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need!” (Marx-Engels Reader, 531). There may well still be contradictions, reactionary ideas and practices remaining after the abolition of capitalism. These will need to be dealt with. With the end of capitalism, there will be more resources available for education to erode some of the bases for reactionary ideas. In addition, because we will no longer be having so much of our time stolen by the capitalist class’s forcing of surplus labor upon us, we will all have more time available to support those victimized by reactionaries and more time to deal in the requisite fashion with reactionaries.
Here is a very good article on the subject called Perspective of Communism Part 3: Why The Proletariat Is A Communist Class, which answers your questions.
. . .
But, however ferocious their exploitation, however inhuman their living conditions over the past fifty years, workers have been impressed by such arguments, to the point of virtually giving up any hope of emancipating themselves. This despair has allowed all sorts of theories to blossom, notably those of Professor Marcuse[1], according to which the working class is no longer a revolutionary class, is integrated into the system, so that the only hope for the revolution lies with the marginal strata, those who are excluded from present-day society like ‘the young’, ‘blacks’, ‘women’, ‘students’ or the peoples of the Third World. Others arrived at the idea that the revolution would be the work of a ‘universal class’ regrouping nearly everyone in society.What actually lies behind all these theories about the ‘integration’ of the working class is a petty-bourgeois disdain for the class (hence the success of these theories in the milieu of the intellectual and student petty bourgeoisie). For the bourgeois and petty bourgeois that follow in his footsteps, the workers are nothing but poor sods that lack the will or intelligence to make anything of their lives. They spend the whole of their lives being brutalised: instead of breaking out of their conditions they fritter away all their leisure-time in the pub or stuck in front of the TV, the only thing that arouses their interest being the Cup Final or the latest scandal. And, when they do demand something, it’s just a measly wage rise so that they can be even more alienated by the ‘consumer society’.
After the patent failure or recuperation of the marginal movements that were supposed to overturn the established order, it’s understandable that those who held such theories should now be giving up any perspective of changing society. The most astute of them are now becoming ‘new philosophers’ or officials of the social democratic parties; the less well provided for are drifting into scepticism, demoralisation, drugs or suicide. Once one has understood that it won’t come from ‘all men of good will’ (as the Christians believe), or from the universal class (as Invariance [2] believes), or from the much-vaunted marginal strata, or from the peasants of the Third World as Maoism and Guevarism claim, then one can see that the only hope for the regeneration of society lies with the working class. And it’s because they have a static vision of the working class, seeing it as a mere collection of individual workers, that the sceptics of today don’t think that the working class is capable of making the revolution.
http://en.internationalism.org/wr/273_poc_03.html
It then goes on to define why the proletariat is a revolutionary class, and the only revolutionary class in capitalist society.
radicalgraffiti wrote:
Trofim wrote:
jef costello wrote:
Trofim wrote:
Hmm. Thanks for the answers. But why is it in the proletariat's class interest to overthrow class society instead of, say, become an exploiter class?The working class cannot become an exploiter class unless it finds a source of wealth creation other than itself. Small parts of the working class can end up in the exploited class but for the class as a whole it is logistically impossible.
Only when the proletariat constitutes a majority, which wasn't the case in most countries when the Communist Manifesto was written, for example.
how could the proletariat exploit even if they are a minority class? they do not own anything and thay do not have the money to employ anyone.
Well obviously they wouldn't still be the proletariat as such... I suppose you could envision some weird industrial syndicalist class exploiting the peasantry in some alternate dimension in 1920 or something...
Player Piano stylee.
I think that it's incorrect to characterise capitalism as "inherently cooperative". I think rather that capitalism is inherently, fundamentally, competitive. It is a system of dog eat dog where the weakest, of its own and certainly the workers it no longer needs, as well as great masses of humanity, go to the wall. While this is the fundamental nature of capitalism there are obviously certain elements of cooperation within the system and amongst its representatives. This, I suggest, takes its highest form at the level of the state, at the level of national capital and its defence. But here capitalist competition is tipped into imperialism and this competition takes on a new edge. Across national borders it is possible for different national capitals to have "cooperative" relations with others in the form of blocs or contingent alliances. But any superficial study of war in the 20th and 21st century shows that these cooperative alliances are riven by competitive tendencies that often affect the coherence of the national capitals involved. The one time we see a clear cooperation of the ruling class is when it's faced with a proletarian enemy and even here, as was the case with east/west cooperation faced with class struggle in Poland in 1980, competitive tendencies, ie, imperialist advantages, were still strong.
What capitalism did was to concentrate the forces of production like never before, increase productivity like never before, create unrprecedented industrial conurbations and, during the process, create its own gravedigger. I don't think that at any time during its history the proletariat has been in a numerical majority but even so this class creates and produces all the requisites for daily life and most other "things". Given the developments of productivity and given the potential development of technology that capitalism cannot develop on, then I think that it would need only a relatively small number of this minority to produce every basic need required by humanity in the first instance. The production of wealth is the strength of the working class.
The association of labour, coming from its position at the point of production, is an innate expression of the cooperative nature of the working class and this contributes greatly to its revolutionary potential. It also carries the potential for the development of consciousness and a complete break with past where ending capitalist exploitation, a system which is breaking down anyway, makes the proletariat a revolutionary class for the whole of humanity.
I think that it's incorrect to characterise capitalism as "inherently cooperative". I think rather that capitalism is inherently, fundamentally, competitive. It is a system of dog eat dog where the weakest, of its own and certainly the workers it no longer needs, as well as great masses of humanity, go to the wall. While this is the fundamental nature of capitalism there are obviously certain elements of cooperation within the system and amongst its representatives.
Well, I was talking more about the production process itself and "the co-operative nature of the working class", not so much it's 'representatives' or the state. To be honest, it's pretty standard Marx, but I'm too lazy look it up in Capital at the moment.
I think, at this moment in history, the working class probably is the global majority, but aside from the that, yeah, I'm with you for the rest of the post.
NC, yeah that's pretty standard Marx. The sphere of production requires the cooperation of the workers. I believe this is the chapter on machinery in v1 of Capital, I can't recall. Marx makes the point that workers have a cooperative power which the capitalists get entirely for free when they employ many workers together. Some of the time Marx sounds like he thinks this is part a historical advance that comes with capitalism, it's not clear. That cooperation is not a freely associated one, though, as we all know, which is a pretty important point. It's also worth pointing out that one fundamental condition of capitalism is the cooperation of working class people with other working class people in having and raising kids who end up sellers of labor power in the future.
I think over all the rhetoric of "inherently cooperative" and of "inherently competitive" are both true in a sense and serve different uses. The first says "look, human cooperation on a grand scale is possible - it already happens!" and "look at how much they steal from us!" The second underscores a lot of the fuckedness of capitalism - competitive, appetitive, etc.
Marx and other socialists/anarchists/Marxists saw capitalism as a progressive stage in human development. A stage in our development which has finally given us the tools to facilitate material abundance. Capitalism itself doesn't provide abundance it facilitates false scarcity but has given us the industrial means of production.
The working class has the potential to be the only class because capitalists are not necessary to maintain industrial society. A factory cannot operate without workers- It can without capitalists. Capitalism was a necessary step but in order for mankind to evolve out of it capitalism/private property must be abolished and thus class society with it.
CRUD that seems like a very good answer to me.
ncwob:
I think, at this moment in history, the working class probably is the global majority
Does anyone have the facts about this? I have some vague memory of hearing that there are in fact more peasants than working-class even in the present day, but that could well be wrong. My knowledge here is terrible.
Nate: Could you please explain more clearly the meaning of the "radical chains" which the proletariat is chained with? Why is its suffering, unlike the suffering of all previous exploited classes, not a specific suffering but human suffering? Why does the proletariat have a "human status"?
Trofim
hi Trofim,
I'm 100% sure about this but my understanding is that for Marx the proletariat has radical chains because the proletariat alone has the power to end class exploitation. The implication is that the end of class exploitation ends all oppression. The issue isn't suffering, it's the potential to bring about a genuinely free society. As I tried to say, i don't think Marx is right on this - I don't think freedom is just the end of exploitation, though that would get us much closer for sure. Thinking of it now, this might have also been a rhetorical move on Marx's part - by claiming the proletariat's struggle as a genuinely universal one he may have been hoping to get the class to struggle in a more universal fashion. (that's just speculation on my part)
Thanks for the answer, Nate.
But what I don't understand is the material conditions which give rise to these "radical chains". Is it because the proletariat, unlike all previous exploited classes, propertyless?
You say that
for Marx the proletariat has radical chains because the proletariat alone has the power to end class exploitation.
As I understand it the radical chains the proletariat has is what gives it the power to end class exploitation, so the question still remains: what gives the proletariat, unlike all previous classes, the power to end class exploitation? Meaning, what gives rise to it being in "radical" chains?
Thanks for the answer, Nate.
But what I don't understand is the material conditions which give rise to these "radical chains". Is it because the proletariat, unlike all previous exploited classes, propertyless?
i don't think slaves had property, and i think many peasants did not own there land.
edit: irrelevant post
Capitalism itself doesn't provide abundance it facilitates false scarcity but has given us the industrial means of production.
no, the "industrial revolution" has given us the industrial means of production, and incidentally made possible modern capitalism in the process. Capitalism itself has not made life any easier or more comfortable, and it has not been a "progressive stage of human history" or whatever ridiculous reductionist bollocks you imagine you read in Marx.
what gives the proletariat, unlike all previous classes, the power to end class exploitation? Meaning, what gives rise to it being in "radical" chains?
Partly because capitalism has universalized the proletariat and that it is under capitalism that we've started to produce enough so that we don't really need to worry about survival only if the means of production were socialized. It's radical chains simply comes from its position relative to capital, i.e. that it is the working class that produces the social wealth that capitalists expropriate.
Trofim wrote:
Thanks for the answer, Nate.
But what I don't understand is the material conditions which give rise to these "radical chains". Is it because the proletariat, unlike all previous exploited classes, propertyless?i don't think slaves had property, and i think many peasants did not own there land.
I don't think there's any particularly good reason to think of slaves as outside the proletariat, at least after 1800 or so, at least in N America.
radicalgraffiti wrote:
Trofim wrote:
Thanks for the answer, Nate.
But what I don't understand is the material conditions which give rise to these "radical chains". Is it because the proletariat, unlike all previous exploited classes, propertyless?i don't think slaves had property, and i think many peasants did not own there land.
I don't think there's any particularly good reason to think of slaves as outside the proletariat, at least after 1800 or so, at least in N America.
i was actually thinking of slaves in europe/asia
i not sure that slaves are the same as proletariat, proletariat are forced to sell there labour by there lack of property, slaves are forced to work through more direct force.
The history of the waged working class is full of direct threats to people who refuse to work, both in the sense of crushing organized workers and in the cases of women and children workers forced to work by husbands and fathers. I'm not at home so I don't have my books but "free" waged labor comes very late and the legal compulsion to work (in the sense of a legal order to work, instead of a financial penalty) lasts into the 19th century, I believe. (There's a book on this by Robert Steinfeld.)
I'm not saying there's no difference between slaves and waged workers (though many slaves in the US also were rented out as waged workers for wages, occasionally the masters gave them a cut) but I don't think there's a difference between slaves and waged workers at the level of value production, in capitalism.
CRUD wrote:
Capitalism itself doesn't provide abundance it facilitates false scarcity but has given us the industrial means of production.no, the "industrial revolution" has given us the industrial means of production, and incidentally made possible modern capitalism in the process. Capitalism itself has not made life any easier or more comfortable, and it has not been a "progressive stage of human history" or whatever ridiculous reductionist bollocks you imagine you read in Marx.
Why was it not capitalism that gave us this? What was responsible for the industrial revolution? Would it have been possible without capitalism?
I'm not saying there's no difference between slaves and waged workers ...
Yeah, it's important to emphasise the class difference between proletarians and slaves.
Workers own their own hands; slaves do not.
Thus, a worker can seek a different exploiter; a slave is the physical property of their owner.
...but I don't think there's a difference between slaves and waged workers at the level of value production, in capitalism.
I'm keen to hear some more discussion on this point - I don't know what the political consequences are, of agreeing or disagreeing with your opinion. I think Political Economy is a particular weak point of mine.
CRUD wrote:
Capitalism itself doesn't provide abundance it facilitates false scarcity but has given us the industrial means of production.no, the "industrial revolution" has given us the industrial means of production, and incidentally made possible modern capitalism in the process. Capitalism itself has not made life any easier or more comfortable, and it has not been a "progressive stage of human history" or whatever ridiculous reductionist bollocks you imagine you read in Marx.
I think your being harsh on CRUD here. Cos capitalism increased the speed of technological innovation? Its a fucked up system, but give it credit.
In less than two weeks time hundreds of neo-Nazis and racists will descend on the coastal town of Dover calling for Britain to “close the border”. It is vital that anti-fascists and anti-racists...
A short account of the West Siberian uprising against the Bolsheviks.
Michael Heinrich argues that Marx was not after a “Marxism” as an identity-defining “truth.” Rather, he was more interested in the critical business of undermining certainties.
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yes, and also because capitalism is inherently co-operative (as counter-intuitive as that sounds). The "army of labor" is already engaged in a collective and interdependent process of production. All that's left to do is throw off the exploiters....