Was Marx right?

Great Debates
61

I love how you switch from ‘class struggle’ to ‘class warfare’ in the middle of your post. You’s a sneaky one, you is.

As for goalposts, I came in to this thread speaking specifically about Marx’ formulation regarding the revolutionary reconstitution of society or the common ruin of the contending classes. It should have been pretty clear from the get-go to anyone willing to pay enough attention where the goalposts were. They only seem to be moving because you’re running some crazy-ass patterns down the field.

Class struggle does not automatically involve the lowest classes in society, especially when they are not politically conscious enough to organize in their own interests. There were more than two classes in Athenian society, but there were only two that were able to set the social agenda of the age. One class had political and economic power, another one didn’t but was organized enough to fight for it. Two classes out of several fighting for power - class struggle. Same thing for the French, English, and American revolutions. There was the monarchy, the increasingly politically and economically powerful bourgeoisie, and other classes like farmers, peasants, and the beginnings of what would become the modern working class. The monarchy had the power, the bourgeoisie was strong enough and organized enough to make a bid for power - class against class. Class struggle.

Only now, under capitalism, has the world divided into only two classes. This is where it becomes impossible (and politically backward) to leave out sections of the working class in the struggle for power. Any struggle in which an oppressed section of the world’s population fights for its rights needs to involve ever wider sections of the working class, and thus such fights become part of the class struggle. Roe v. Wade wasn’t just popular sentiment; it was demonstrations and meetings and organizing and actually taking action to make sure abortion became legal in America. It involved working men and working women demanding rights from a government that wasn’t willing to grant them unless absolutely forced to. Class struggle.

62

Credit where credit is due, this perfectly fits, and I’m quoting it:

Shrugs.
Hard to keep nonsense terms straight sometimes I suppose.
But at least it’s not quite as bad as redefining “progress and social change” to “a radical restructuring of the socioeconomic and political structure of society”.

Nor is it quite as bad as redefining “class struggle/warfare/monkeyshines” into conflict between any two groups when they’re not totally equal. Unless they’re someone the Romans and Carthage, and then it just doesn’t count at all.

No, they’re moving because you’re moving them. “Class Monkeyshines” can be actual conflict between classes, or any sort of conflict involving people who aren’t clones, and “progress” and “social change” can be actual progress like coming up with antibiotics to cure disease or social change like changes in society, or it can be “a radical restructuring of the socioeconomic and political structure of society”.

But they’re still the sole thing that causes progress or social change, whatever those are exactly.

So any sort of struggle becomes a “class” struggle, even if it has nothing to do with economics or class. A garbage man argues with a CEO over who saw a parking space first? Class Monkeyshines!

Again goalposts move and definitions get rewritten on the fly. Certain men are a class unto themselves, well, because they are. And women and slaves don’t get counted in that class because, if they did, then it wouldn’t be an example of Class Monkeyshines, which it is, after all.

One group of people had power, they fought with other people who had more power that they were exercising over the first group, therefore it’s Class Monkeyshines. And now, conveniently, we’re back to some sort of standard “class” concept at least, rather than 'lower class folks, but not women or slaves, because they don’t count."

Of course, people would be hard pressed to find any conflict, at any point in history, where there wasn’t some sort of disparity between participants.

Ah, what luck. Now we’ll define the world in terms of only two classes, and if some people want to change anything in society and work in groups, then it’s Class Monkeyshines.

63

:dubious: Wait a moment, now. If you definite it that broadly you will end up making a class war of the Protestant Reformation; even you, I hope, would agree that would be utterly preposterous, despite the many very real instances class struggle that went on incidentally at the time.

The American Founding Fathers, to begin with, were mostly landed-gentry in their class identity, not bourgeois; some were petty-bourgeois like Ben Franklin or Paul Revere; but the industrial bourgeoisie hardly existed yet in Britain and not at all in America, and even the commercial bourgeoisie were comparatively marginal.

And the Americans owed no feudal dues to the king or to any British lord. Their problem was with the Westminster Parliament. The king was only named in the Declaration because it was necessary to unambiguously express a clean break with British sovereignty, and the American people had no tradition of mystic loyalty to Parliament, whereas they did, to the king. But the relations in question were as between states, not classes. There were no trans-Atlantic social classes (there are now, arguably).

And when the Revolution was over, the same class was in charge in America as before. (Minus the United Empire Loyalists, who had to flee to Canada.) The only difference was that they no longer had any royal governors to answer to.

Whether a struggle against a regime of racial discrimination can be considered a class struggle is a more complicated question. Races are not essentially classes, not in the economic-function sense; OTOH, a racially discriminatory regime can make them so, and the whole of Jim Crow was designed to keep the blacks down in the status of propertyless, unskilled lumpenproles who would sell their labor dirt-cheap; on the gripping hand, how could it really be a “class struggle” if the black working class was in it but the white working class stayed out of it or even (in many cases) opposed it?

:confused: The fight for abortion rights was not a struggle that broke down along class lines. It broke down along very different cultural fault lines, cutting across classes, as the whole issue does today.

I don’t see how we can draw any meaningful lessons from a regime that only lasted two months. Except, perhaps, “A city-state surrounded by hostile countryside can’t hang.”

64

FinnAgain, just what would you consider a genuine instance of class struggle?

65

(bolding mine)
That’s going to be some argument.

66

Arguing that a class struggle isn’t really a class struggle because it doesn’t involve your particular pet classes–that’s silly.

67

Are you seriously arguing that advances in agricultural science don’t result in radical restructuring of the socioeconomic and political structure of society?

There’s never been a BIGGER factor in the restructuring of the socioeconomic and political structure of society.

And Roe V. Wade, too? Oh, come on. So you’re just going to claim any political change was a class struggle.

Honest question; when was the last time you honestly considered the possibility Karl Marx might have been wrong about something?

68

Very well, let’s give FinnAgain that one. :smiley: Tell us: Why was the French Revolution not a class struggle?

69

The problem is how it’s defined, and how classes are delineated. If, for instance, we define it as socioeconomic classes fighting against each other, then we have to at least have a stable delineation of socioeconomic classes. If in one case it’s all lower class people, but another it’s all men from the middle and lower classes, and then then it’s people from low, middle and upper classes who support abortion, and then…

And there’s also the fact that it’s important to describe whether or not the conflict is actually over socioeconomic issues or simply between some (but not all, or perhaps not even most) people in various socioeconomic groups. Is a barber and a doctor fighting over who gets a parking space an instance of class warfare? If it involves money is it, then, necessarily “class struggle”? So if a worker asks his boss for more money, that’s “class struggle”? What about if that CEO then asks the board of directors for a pay increase, that “class struggle” too, or not since they’re both upper-class?

And so on.

It seems to be a term with little to no definition that’s used to rationalize pre-determined conclusions. Like the already-referenced bit about how the freakin’ Agricultural Revolution didn’t really lead to progress or societal change, bu Roe V Wade is “class whatever”, and the Information Age hasn’t lead to change or progress but absolutely all societal change and progress, ever, is solely due to “class wombat”.

70

It would depend on how one defined ‘class’ and ‘class struggle’. The French Revolution wasn’t a struggle between Capitalist and Proletariat, as Marx defined both the term ‘class struggle’ and the two classes…it was basically a civil war between the royalists, factions of the noble classes, the minor nobility, the shop keeper class (who’s name escapes me atm), and…well, everyone else (the lower classes, peasants and workers and such).

That said, I’d go with the French Revolution as being a pretty good example of ‘class struggle’, as long as we aren’t using Marx definition of things. I’ll be interested in Finn’s response as well.

Personally, I would list as examples of ‘class struggle’ basically the clashes between labor and management over wages and working conditions…that’s basically as far as it’s ever gotten IMHO. And those clashes brought about higher wages and better benefits, at least thus far in western nations. It’s shifted the whole definition of what and who comprise the ‘proletariat’, the ‘bourgeoisie’ and the, um, sub-‘bourgeoisie’ (Petit? Petty?). The terms really aren’t relevant anymore (another example of Marx getting it wrong), since a huge percentage of the population (at least in countries like the US), while still technically ‘proletariat’ are really more like the sub class in the middle…which is a large shift from Marx days when the middle group made up a small number of people without much power.

-XT

71

The base answer I’d give is that if we’re using “Class Horseplay” to mean whatever we want it to mean, then of course the French Revolution is an example of it, because we can definite it as “exactly what happened during the French Revolution.” internal-delineations consistent? Are there three (or two now, I suppose) classes in a society if that is what is required for an analysis, but seventeen classes if we need to divide things that way so that we can claim a conflict is class-based? The real test is whether or not it’s got a set of objective definitions that can then be applied to other, varied conflicts. And how often the definitions and goalposts need to be changed to make it work while we try to shoehorn other situations into a pre-determined framework.

Because virtually every conflict in the history of humanity, and most likely every conflict to come, is and will be between groups that can be broken down on rough lines and/or grouped into many various categories. Group vs Group conflict is indeed a part of many upheavals, but which groups, how do you define them, how do you analyze the conflict? If, for instance, we have the nation of Hypothetica in which people of a low socioeconomic status are generally religious and people from higher socioeconomic classes are generally non-religious, and many people in society are demanding that religious law be the law of the land is that a religious conflict or a “Class Brawling”?

And so on.

72

Yeah, I agree…it boils down to where you set the goals and how you define the terms. Basically, if you define them as Marx did, then the French Revolution wasn’t a ‘class struggle’, since it wasn’t an economic uprising but a civil war which just happened to involve various classes on opposing sides. Basically, as you said, you could say the same about everything, thus everything that humans do is a ‘class struggle’.

That’s what I was trying (badly) to get at earlier…humans are constantly involved in struggle, full stop. Seeing how that’s the case, inevitably there will be folks from various classes involved. Only if Marx non-prediction about the end of all ‘class’ distinctions ever happens (:dubious:) will this not be the case anymore. If it DID happen, then we’d simply continue struggling…just everyone would be in the same class (or something).

-XT

73

:dubious: Forget Hypothetica. What historical events would you consider genuine instances of class struggle?

Perfectly fair question. Remember, your consistent denial up to this point in this thread that this or that event was a “class struggle” is utterly meaningless and dismissable unless you can provide us with that baseline point. After all, a class struggle is not a unicorn fight, no reasonable person can deny that such things as class struggles do exist, regardless of whether they ever warrant the characterization or importance Marx put on them.

74

The “shop keeper class” and a great deal besides – bureaucrats, professionals, businessmen, and such few industrialists as there were in France in 1789 – were the “bourgeoisie” or “Third Estate.” A rising class of new wealth at the time. Essentially everyone who had money and was not of the landed gentry/nobility. The French Revolution was initially made by them, as against the king and nobles, but their class-struggle demands were comparatively modest – they just wanted to end the nobles’ tax exemptions and break their monopoly on political power and offices. They did not, I think, even aim to confiscate the nobles’ estates or end their feudal-dues-derived incomes.

Before long it developed that the peasants and proles, and radicals drawn from several classes, had much more ambitious goals in mind, and things quickly got out of hand, where they have remained ever since.

75

Cite?

76

To be more specific: Where did Marx define the class struggle as solely between capitalist and worker / bourgeois and proletariat?

77

Look, here’s the point: Technological change can drive class struggle, but cannot be driven by it. Class struggle might well be an engine of history, but technological change definitely is an engine of history, and one independent of any class struggle, and a far more important engine of change than class struggle.

I believe Marx would have agreed with every word of the above. But, it presents a problem when it comes to using Marxism as a general predictive theory of history – because technological change is inherently unpredictable. We can predict technological progress will continue so long as industrial civilization continues, but we cannot predict even in broad outlines what forms it will take. Look at old issues of Popular Mechanics – even tech-savvy speculators almost always get technological predictions entirely wrong. Marx could not have predicted the vast socioeconomic effects of the automobile or the radio or the atomic bomb because he had no way of knowing – and neither did any scientist or engineer of his time – whether such things would ever be possible or not. Will nanotechnology or strong Artificial Intelligence or any of those “Singularity” techs ever be possible? Nobody knows, not even those now working along those lines.

78

The death of the middle class?

It’s happening right now. It’s right in our faces.

79

Despite the fact that corporations find that preventing these reforms are more profitable than allowing them? Seriously? You think they’ll allow these reforms to become global in nature?

I think I’ll bet against that.

80

Agreed, and I don’t believe I’ve asserted otherwise. Technological change alters the conditions under which we live, and opens up the potential for further social change. But that social change cannot be driven by anything else but class struggle.