What is Marxism?
Marxism is a movement within socialism which is defined by its materialist, scientific outlook (it is, after all, also referred to as scientific socialism). By contrast to other socialist movements, Marxism does not, in its method of analysis and practice, work from conceptions of “justice”, “morality”, or “fairness”. Rather, it works from the material, observable, objective conditions and relations of reality, observes their tendencies, and works to apply itself to the characteristics of those tendencies. Marxism is scientific because it uses this materialist method, and because its theories first come from practice, and then its practice is influenced by theories adjusted to failures and successes of initial practice. Marxism relies on trial and error, experimentation, not on universal ideals and morality. Unlike other ideologies, Marxism’s method is not tied to any immutable principles or the statements of particular Marxists. Marxism is capable of self-criticism, and can be improved without being destroyed.
How do Marxists understand reality?
Marxism is a dialectical-materialist ideology.
In being dialectical, Marxism believes that nothing is fixed in place, all of reality is constantly changing and flowing like a river, at a greater or lesser pace. This is because the internal elements of everything are in contradiction, and this contradiction leads to change. No mountain remains in place forever without being worn down by erosion, no corpse remains on the ground without decomposing, no word or concept holds the same connotations forever, and no molecular composition remains in one state of affairs forever.
In being materialist, Marxism believes that there is an objective, observable reality beyond our subjective experience of it. This reality can be measured and examined in an objective manner through the scientific use of, for example, units of measurement, and criticism of methods, in order to remove whatever subjective bias exists in analysis. Marxists focus especially on the objective factors of whether a society produces its own means of subsistence (rather than simply living off what it finds in nature, working with nature to produce its means of subsistence, as in agriculture), whether a society has property, and if so, the characteristics of that property, the characteristics of a society’s means of production (anything beyond a human’s own body which can be used to improve productivity, or, tools), the productivity of a society’s means of production, a society’s means of distribution, and a society’s relations of production, or, its classes (specifically, whether its classes which own the means of production and its laboring classes are separate, and if so, how).
Rather than ideas like justice, fairness, or enlightenment shaping this material reality, Marxists believe what a society defines justice, fairness, or enlightenment as are first of al influenced by the material conditions of a reality (the predominant factor in producing ideology), and that any influence the ideas come to hold on material reality subsequently are lesser than the influence of the latter upon the former. In short, “It is not consciousness that determines life, but life that determines consciousness.” (Karl Marx, The German Ideology). And in any society, it is the dominant class, the class which owns the means of production (and therefore the means of subsistence), which defines the dominant ideology. Not in any conspiratorial manner, mind you, but naturally, by the fact that they tend to own the means of communication and dominate public discourse by their prestige. Taken together, this means that Marxists believe that there is an objective, observable reality, and that its conditions are constantly flowing and changing rather than remaining fixed in place.
“The first historical act is thus the production of the means to satisfy these needs, the production of material life itself. And indeed this is an historical act, a fundamental condition of all history, which today, as thousands of years ago, must daily and hourly be fulfilled merely in order to sustain human life.”
- Karl Marx, The German Ideology
“The phantoms formed in the brains of men are also, necessarily, sublimates of their material life-process, which is empirically verifiable and bound to material premises. Morality, religion, metaphysics, and all the rest of ideology as well as the forms of consciousness corresponding to these, thus no longer retain the semblance of independence. They have no history, no development; but men, developing their material production and their material intercourse, alter, along with this their actual world, also their thinking and the products of their thinking. It is not consciousness that determines life, but life that determines consciousness.” - Karl Marx, The German Ideology
“Man cannot keep historical events in check while making recipes for them, but he can see in advance their apparently calculable consequences and arrange his mode of action accordingly.”
- Rosa Luxemburg, The Mass Strike
How does that philosophy relate to its practice? Why does such philosophy matter?
This philosophy matters because how one understands reality influences how one believes reality works, and how it can be changed. Marxism’s specifically dialectical-materialist outlook influences its practice in that it focuses on analyzing objective material conditions like class composition of a particular region, its rate of output for production, how industrially developed it is, and so on, and analyzing the tendencies of those conditions, such as the rate of growth for GDP, the rate of profit for the average company, the rate of consolidation and centralization of industries into monopolies or semi-monopolies, whether a country is colonized, and if so, the percentage of industries which are owned by such foreign colonial powers, the rate of increase or decrease in wages, the rate of increase or decrease in the prices of consumer products, and so on.
In analyzing these conditions, we can craft a plan of action which is adapted to these conditions, put it into practice, evaluate which aspects of the plan worked and which failed, determine why those aspects worked or failed, craft a new plan addressing the successes and failures of the previous, and continue the cycle. Through this scientific method, we find success, not in ignoring past successes and failures, and not in working from a universal standard of what we think is the most moral, disregarding particular material conditions and tendencies.
“Knowledge begins with practice, and theoretical knowledge is acquired through practice and must then return to practice. The active function of knowledge manifests itself not only in the active leap from perceptual to rational knowledge, but--and this is more important--it must manifest itself in the leap from rational knowledge to revolutionary practice. The knowledge which grasps the laws of the world, must be redirected to the practice of changing the world, must be applied anew in the practice of production, in the practice of revolutionary class struggle and revolutionary national struggle and in the practice of scientific experiment. This is the process of testing and developing theory, the continuation of the whole process of cognition.”
- Mao Zedong, On Practice
How does Marxism analyze classes?
Unlike liberalism, the basis of Marxism’s analysis of class isn’t in income (although it takes this into account, since it is influenced by and influences the conditions of classes). Such a basis assumes that the root of the issue is in the distribution of the product of social production rather than in the system of production itself, and therefore tends to conclude that the solution is simply wealth redistribution. Rather, it’s in relationship to the means of production. This means determining whether the classes which own the means of production and the classes which labor to put the means of production into motion are two separate classes, and if so, the relations of those classes to the means of production (for example, for the laboring classes, whether they are slaves, peasants, or wage-workers), and how the development of the means of production influences class relations.
So, rather than focusing on changing the system of distribution, Marxism focuses on changing the system of production. In the modern world order, we live under capitalism. Capitalism is a system defined by private property and market production. Under capitalism, those who own the means of production and land as private property are known as capitalists, or the bourgeoisie. They do not live by the product of their own labor-power, but by the product of the labor-power of others. These “others” are workers, or the proletariat, who sell their labor-power, to the capitalists in exchange for a wage. The capitalists extract surplus-value (value beyond the means of subsistence, what one needs to survive) from the workers, which takes the form of value produced by workers beyond the value of their wages. This surplus-value is known as profit, and is split into many fractions, including the income of the capitalist, capital to be invested in the means of production for upkeep and improvements, capital to be used to hire new workers, capital to be invested in stocks, and others.
The worker does not sell their labor-power voluntarily. While they may choose which particular capitalist to work for, they have no option in selling their labor-power for a wage, and have little bargaining power in negotiating what their wages will be. This is because the means of subsistence have been privatized by the process of primitive accumulation, forcing workers to sell their labor-power or starve. As a process, primitive accumulation refers to the process of obtaining “initial capital”, the investment of which can be used to accumulate more capital in the form of returns. This obtaining of “initial capital” is carried out through privatization of land formerly held in common (which enables people to live off their own labor through the land), enslavement of peoples, seizing spoils of war, and, in some cases, outright theft. With the privatization of land especially, people who once lived off their own labor are forced to sell their labor-power to the private owner of property, and that labor-power salesperson becomes a worker, while the owner becomes a capitalist.
The only reason that present day capitalists seem less outright violent and coercive toward workers as feudal lords were toward peasants is not because they are “nicer”. Lords had to be more outright brutal toward peasants because peasants, who lived off their own labor with small plots of land, had access to their own means of self subsistence, and so outright force had to be used in order to coerce them into doing anything. They weren’t so easily threatened with siege or starvation, being relatively independent, and having access to common lands to benefit from even if their personal land did not yield enough to live off of. By contrast, capitalists can simply threaten workers with starvation, since they have no means of self subsistence to survive off of, and so need not rely on such outright violence.
“Back under feudalism, the State was simple. The ruling aristocracy were the State, and ruled directly and personally. But this is not practical under capitalism. Would IBM trust Microsoft to make the laws? Both the relatively large size of the capitalist class and its ever-shifting composition, as well as their culture of constant warfare to the death vertically & horizontally within the class, forced the bourgeoisie to create an indirect system of representative government. So bourgeois democracy became the preferred form of government by the capitalists. Even with all its constant stumbles, feuds and scandals, it is the most effective form of capitalist rule for their entire class. There is nothing new here. The renowned 19th century u.s. statesman Senator Daniel Webster was the open paid representative of the banking industry then, just as another important u.s. politician in the 1960s was actually called by his colleagues and by the press ‘the senator from Boeing’. Others represent the coal mining industry, the weapons lobby, New York banking and so on. Bourgeois democracy lets capitalists of every geographic region, industry and commercial interest influence State policy, although there is no pretense of equality amongst them. This is the most ‘normal’ form of capitalist rule.”
- J. Sakai, The Shock of Recognition
Does Marxism see race, gender, and other identities as distractions? Is it class reductionist
While some Marxists may be class reductionist, it is not inherent to the ideology. In fact, in addressing questions of the division of labor, class makeup and characteristics, Marxism can effectively analyze the manners in which particular races, genders, and sexual orientations experience class society, and how those identities affect their objective conditions. These identities are not distractions. They play a part in the division of labor.
Minority races tend to be exploited at a higher rate than white people because their people have been victimized by settler-colonialism and imperialism, and had their land and labor exploited by Europeans in the process of primitive accumulation. Due to this, they tend to face greater poverty and desperation than whites, and, thus, tend to make up less of the capitalist class, and as proletarians, be forced to accept lower wages and worse conditions.
Gender is very important to the division of labor as well, with the labor of women being exploited to reproduce the labor-power of men and their children. Capitalism assigns women a reproductive function, expecting them to have children, to raise them, to perform housework, and to provide the means of subsistence (by cooking, cleaning, providing sexual favors, etc) to husbands necessary to keep them as productive workers. As more women have joined the workforce, especially after WWII, women have faced a “double shift” of this reproductive labor and the wage labor they sell to capitalists. Further, women to face a greater rate of exploitation, and a greater rate of poverty due to their lack of opportunity and forced financial dependency upon men. Women who fail to “properly” perform this reproductive function are looked down upon, whether they are incapable of birthing children, refuse to marry, are transgender, or are lesbian or bisexual. We must challenge this gendered division of labor by encouraging the transition of all women out of housework functions and into the labor force by socializing domestic labor, with subsidized child care, paternal leave, and other institutions as exist in socialist states such as Cuba.
Sexual orientation factors into this as well, with discrimination against “non-reproductive” relationships being extremely violent, or general relationships which challenge the gendered division of labor. This forced normality of cisgender, heterosexual identity, and forced patriarchal relationships, serves as a means of population control, increasing or decreasing the pool of labor, calling the reserve pool of labor in the form of domestic women into the workforce when men go to war, and so on.
The gendered division of labor is the very basis of exploitation, as defining the class of women as a reproductive class ensures the availability of labor to the ruling class. All of these oppressions are not only components of class relations, but are their own oppressions, and must be combatted on both fronts. They cannot be hand-waved away as simple distractions, as they affect many thousands of people’s material reality. They must be addressed.
“As I have argued, the power-difference between women and men and the concealment of women’s unpaid-labor under the cover of natural inferiority, have enabled capitalism to immensely expand the ‘unpaid part of the working day’, and use the (male) wage to accumulate women’s labor; in many cases, they have also served to deflect class antagonism into an antagonism between men and women. Thus, primitive accumulation has been above all an accumulation of differences, inequalities, hierarchies, divisions, which have alienated workers from each other and even from themselves”
- Silvia Federici, Caliban and the Witch
“Although the ‘housewife’ was rooted in the social conditions of the bourgeoisie and middle classes, nineteenth-century ideology established the housewife and the mother as universal models of womanhood. Since popular propaganda represented the vocation of all women as a function of their roles in the home, women compelled to work for wages came to be treated as alien visitors within the masculine world of the public economy. Having stepped outside their ‘natural’ sphere, women were not to be treated as full-fledged wage workers. The price they paid involved long hours, substandard working conditions and grossly inadequate wages. Their exploitation was even more intense than the exploitation suffered by their male counterparts. Needless to say, sexism emerged as a source of outrageous super-profits for the capitalists.” - Angela Davis, Women, Race, and Class
“The structural separation of the public economy of capitalism and the private economy of the home has been continually reinforced by the obstinate primitiveness of household labor. Despite the proliferation of gadgets for the home, domestic work has remained qualitatively unaffected by the technological advances brought on by industrial capitalism... What is needed, of course, are new social institutions to assume a good portion of the housewife’s old duties. This is the challenge emanating from the swelling ranks of women in the working class. The demand for universal and subsidized child care is a direct consequence of the rising number of working mothers. And as more women organize around the demand for more jobs — for jobs on the basis of full equality with men — serious questions will increasingly be raised about the viability of women’s housewife duties. It may well be true that ‘slavery to an assembly line’ is not in itself ‘liberation from the kitchen sink’, but the assembly line is doubtlessly the most powerful incentive for women to press for the elimination of their age-old domestic slavery. The abolition of housework as the private responsibility of individual women is clearly a strategic goal of women’s liberation. But the socialization of housework — including meal preparation and child care — presupposes an end to the profit motive’s reign over the economy. The only significant steps toward ending domestic slavery have been in fact taken in the existing socialist countries. Working women, therefore, have a special and vital interest in the struggle for socialism. Moreover, under capitalism, campaigns for jobs on an equal basis with men, combined with movements for institutions such as subsidized public child care, contain an explosive revolutionary potential. This strategy calls into question the validity of monopoly capitalism and must ultimately point in the direction of socialism.” - Angela Davis, Women, Race, and Class
What is the basis of socialism? Isn’t Marxism utopian?
Marxism is not utopian. Socialist movements, such as those of Robert Owen or Charles Fourier, which came before Marx were utopian, defining themselves as seeking a more “just” system, trying to impose ideals on reality. Marxism rejects this utopianism. Marxism does not see the basis of socialism in “justice”, or any other moral virtue for that matter (although we don’t think morality can be abolished).
Rather, Marxism sees the basis of socialism as existing within capitalism itself. Capitalism, as a system, has developed the capacity of production, and has spread reliance upon production across society. Gone are the days where people can live off the land within a small community, as a tribe, or in other petty social formations. Today, everyone relies on production, whether that is for the work they must perform in exchange for the wages they buy their necessities with, or if that is for the production of said necessities. Production has become socialized, it is a social affair. Contradicting this, however, is a privatized appropriation of the fruits of this process of production. The means of production are privately owned, and the surplus-value (in this case, value created by workers beyond the value of their wages) is thusly appropriated by those private owners, those capitalists. So, this contradiction leads to class antagonisms between the workers and the capitalists. The workers rely on this socialized production, and yet they do not control its appropriation. They don’t control what is produced, how much is produced, where it goes, what it’s used for, and so on. Further, attempts to socialize the distribution of this system of production through reform fail. Increases in the minimum wage, which seeks to address the social needs of the workers, lead to a long-term response of capital flight by capitalists, increases in taxes meant to fund social programs lead to capitalists putting their wealth in tax havens, and attempts to socialize ownership of even small sectors of production are faced by massive opposition by capitalists.
This socialized system of production can only be reconciled with a socialized system of appropriation, wherein those who put into motion and rely upon this social production own and control that system of production. That is socialism. Socialism does not come from any conception of justice, but from the tendencies of society’s contradictions toward a need for socialized appropriation of our present socialized production. Socialism sees the workers become the owners of the means of production, and therefore become the ruling class of society. Capitalism is finite, as the tendency of the rate of profit to decline leads to anarchy of production and repeated crises. Capitalism cannot last, and the goal of the worker’s movement is to ensure that the end of its epoch is the beginning of a socialist epoch.
“Communism is for us not a state of affairs which is to be established, an ideal to which reality [will] have to adjust itself. We call communism the real movement which abolishes the present state of things. The conditions of this movement result from the now existing premise.”
- Karl Marx, The German Ideology
“If for the imminent overthrow of the present mode of distribution of the products of labour... we had no better guarantee than the consciousness that this mode of distribution is unjust, and that justice must eventually triumph, we should be in a pretty bad way, and we might have a long time to wait... The most important thing in this is that the productive forces created by the modern capitalist mode of production and the system of distribution of goods established by it have come into crying contradiction with that mode of production itself, and in fact to such a degree that, if the whole of modern society is not to perish, a revolution of the mode of production and distribution must take place, a revolution which will put an end to all class divisions. On this tangible, material fact... and not on the conceptions of justice and injustice held by any armchair philosopher, is modern socialism's confidence of victory founded"
- Friedrich Engels, Anti-Dühring
“Then came the concentration of the means of production and of the producers in large workshops and manufactories, their transformation into actual socialized means of production and socialized producers. But the socialized producers and means of production and their products were still treated, after this change, just as they had been before — i.e., as the means of production and the products of individuals. Hitherto, the owner of the instruments of labor had himself appropriated the product, because, as a rule, it was his own product and the assistance of others was the exception. Now, the owner of the instruments of labor always appropriated to himself the product, although it was no longer his product but exclusively the product of the labor of others. Thus, the products now produced socially were not appropriated by those who had actually set in motion the means of production and actually produced the commodities, but by the capitalists. The means of production, and production itself, had become in essence socialized. But they were subjected to a form of appropriation which presupposes the private production of individuals, under which, therefore, every one owns his own product and brings it to market. The mode of production is subjected to this form of appropriation, although it abolishes the conditions upon which the latter rests. This contradiction, which gives to the new mode of production its capitalistic character, contains the germ of the whole of the social antagonisms of today. The greater the mastery obtained by the new mode of production over all important fields of production and in all manufacturing countries, the more it reduced individual production to an insignificant residuum, the more clearly was brought out the incompatibility of socialized production with capitalistic appropriation.”
- Friedrich Engels, Socialism: Utopian and Scientific
Isn’t socialism when everyone is paid equally?
By contrast to how some understand Marxism, we do not actually seek “economic equality”. We see this as utopian idealism, and not a real possibility. Because the conditions of each context are different, one cannot hold any universal standard to them, and, therefore, cannot try to create equality between those in those contexts. A universal standard is necessary to create equality, and one cannot create equality of conditions. For example, with money, if everyone were given the same rate of payment, there would not be equality, because some could work longer or more intensely than others. Even if everyone were paid the same sum regardless of labor-time, it would not be as useful for two people. For example, one person may need more money in order to pay for greater needs, such as if they needed to pay for medication which others wouldn't need. Even if we abolished money, and the commodity production (meaning production for exchange) which it represents, we couldn’t create equality. Say each person were given 6 gallons of water for a given period. A person in a desert region would have a greater need for this hydration, and more hydration, than a person in a humid region. People can never have equality of conditions, and so this is not our goal. Rather, we seek to destroy class distinctions, and use production to address social needs, not establish any universal standard of equality.
“‘The removal of all social and political inequality’ is also a very questionable phrase in place of ‘the abolition of all class differences.’ Between one country and another, one province and another and even one place and another, there will always exist a certain inequality in the conditions of life, which can be reduced to a minimum but never entirely removed. Mountain dwellers will always have different conditions of life from those of people living on plains. The idea of socialism as the realm of equality is a one-sided French idea resting upon the old “liberty, equality, fraternity” - an idea which was justified as a stage of development in its own time and place, but which, like all one-sided ideas of the earlier socialist schools, should now be overcome, for they only produce confusion in people’s heads and more precise modes of presentation have been found”
- Friedrich Engels, from a letter to August Bebel (March 18-28, 1875)
Communism killed 100 million people, it always fails and leads to famines!
This is the most common anti-communist talking point, and it finds its origins in The Black Book of Communism, a book denounced by 2 of its contributors as inaccurate, where many of the deaths for Asia were admitted within the book to be speculation, and where even Nazis killed by concentration camp prisoners or war deaths are counted as victims of communism. Communism does not lead to famines. The famines the USSR experienced in the early 20th century were due to a variety of factors, including drought, sabotage by anti-communists (who destroyed crops or otherwise organized campaigns to cause productive crises in the USSR), and economic isolation. The famines the PRC experienced in the late 1950s and early 1960s were partially due to poor planning, as Mao himself admitted, but also due to drought and sabotage. Russia and China are two regions which have been plagued by drought and poor harvests throughout history. Further, their revolutions inherited very underdeveloped conditions, with little technical advancement existing in the agricultural industry, and with an almost non-existent heavy industry. Both revolutions transformed their countries from small agrarian nations to major industrial superpowers. They increase life expectancy and decreased infant mortality. In fact, Cuba today has developed agriculture to the point of nearly holding the capacity to feed all its people. And keep in mind, these countries have had to make revolutionary, experimental changes, never before attempted, while under severe internal and external pressure from reactionary forces and imperialists. And yet, look at their successes. While its important to acknowledge their failures, we must also praise their successes, and determine what about their particular conditions lead to the success or failure of particular policies. With such investigation, we can learn from their practice, and develop new theories to put into practice, and continue the cycle of knowledge.
“Russia achieved Marxism—the only correct revolutionary theory—through the agony she experienced in the course of half a century of unparalleled torment and sacrifice, of unparalleled revolutionary heroism, incredible energy, devoted searching, study, practical trial, disappointment, verification, and comparison with European experience.”
- V.I. Lenin, Left-Wing Communism: An Infantile Disorder
What is socialism? What is communism?
Socialism is the political and economic rule of the workers. Marx also referred to this rule as the dictatorship of the proletariat. He called it a dictatorship not in the typical sense of the word, as in, a personal dictatorship of a person or clique, but in the sense of a class dictatorship. The proletariat is a mass class. And so, the dictatorship of the proletariat is the rule of a mass class, and does not look like other forms of class rule, all of which are rule by a minority class.
Today, in capitalist society, we live under the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. The state exists first and foremost to protect private property, and its other functions extend from that. Historically, the state arose to maintain social cohesion when classes arose in society, and inevitably arose with conflicting material interests. The state, however, is not a neutral entity standing above society, and in fact enforces the rule of the dominant class. Today, the state exists to defend capitalistic private property first, with other functions extending from that initial function. The state deals with the affairs and interests of the capitalists, defending their interests, ensuring social cohesion, even providing some concessions of workers to maintain bourgeois class rule in the long run.
Under the dictatorship of the proletariat, the state becomes a state of the masses, with the function of asserting power over the bourgeoisie as a class. Thus, the project of abolishing said class is made possible, opening up the process of socializing the appropriation of social production. This means the abolition of private property and the repression of counterrevolutionary elements, first and foremost the bourgeoisie. The bourgeoisie cannot abolish the proletariat as a class, because it, by definition, relies on their labor-power, and the surplus-value it extracts from it. By contrast, the proletariat, being a laboring class, can abolish the idle bourgeoisie with the use of the state as its tool for class rule. In abolishing the bourgeoisie, the proletariat can abolish the class system as a whole, leaving the state obsolete. When this task is complete, society will no longer be plagued by class antagonisms, and the state will wither away, with no class to enforce the will of another upon.
In this classless, stateless society, where production will have developed toward the abolition of scarcity in previous stages of development, we will see communism, which can be summed up by the maxim, “from each according to their ability, to each according to their need”. The main economic difference between this high stage of communism and the low stage of socialism is that, under socialism, production has not yet been developed to the point of abolishing scarcity, and so some system of “rationing”, or distributing product, must be created. Usually, this in the form of central planning, with the maxim “from each according to their ability, to each according to their contribution” guiding distribution. This means that those who contribute more to production are provided to according to the value of their contribution. That value is measured by the average socially necessary labor time embodied in their labor, which can be greater than the actual time they contributed if they labored more intensely. The intensity of their labor as contrasted to average intensity can be measured by their average rate of output. Regardless, this system will doubtless have issues regarding such distribution, and the state will have to act to provide for those who cannot labor as much, and work to develop production so that scarcity can be abolished. When production is developed to a point of abolishing scarcity, which can only be accomplished when capitalists are eliminated as a class, then society will transition into a communist mode of production.
“What we have to deal with is a communist society, not as it has developed on its own foundations, but, on the contrary, as it emerges from capitalist society; which is thus in every respect, economically, morally and intellectually, still stamped with the birthmarks of the old society from whose womb it emerges. Accordingly the individual producer receives back from society - after the deductions have been made - exactly what he gives to it. What he has given to it is his individual amount of labor. For example, the social working day consists of the sum of the individual labor hours; the individual labor time of the individual producer is the part of the social labor day contributed by him, his share in it. He receives a certificate from society that he has furnished such and such amount of labor (after deducting his labor for the common fund), and with this certificate he draws from the social stock of means of consumption as much as the same amount of labor costs. The same amount of labor as he has given to society in one term, he receives back in another.”
- Karl Marx, Critique of the Gotha Programme
What is imperialism? How can we resist it?
Imperialism is, simply put, the highest stage of capitalism. The markets of the imperial core, the imperialist countries, have reached monopolistic or semi-monopolistic characteristics, with capital consolidating and concentrating in the hands of a few. The stock of capital grows, but becomes dominated by fewer and fewer hands. The reach of capital grows, but finds less room to grow into, and finds the tendency of the rate of profit to decline to be stifling. Capital’s investments in such a context yield a lesser and lesser rate of profit, it cannot grow at such a high rate as it once did. So, capital moves outside the imperial core and into the periphery, meaning countries victimized by imperialism. It’s investments in the periphery, which is usually agrarian, yield a far greater rate of profit. The capitalists can sell surplus products in the periphery, find raw materials to use in industrial production, find cheap labor, and establish their own monopoly over that country’s industry. Further, the superprofits they reap from the superexploitation (exploitation above and beyond the normal rate) can partially go to improving the wages of the labor aristocracy in the imperial core, buying off the top section of the proletariat and creating a new subset of the proletariat with stakes in imperialism. This, in short, is what led to the imperialism of the 19th and 20th centuries. Today, capital has become a worldwide power, and there are no more significant new regional markets on earth to conquer. Capital can simply extend its influence within existing markets, commodifying previously non-market goods or services, and expanding and contracting within the confines of the global capitalist market. Imperialism is global monopoly capitalism. Do not be deceived into believing national exploitation is over, either. America still holds hundreds of military bases across the world, and dominates world markets with products, the ownership of stocks, and the ownership of production. The periphery are still strangled by economic domination of the imperial core. The institutions of the World Bank and the IMF use predatory loans and debt as weapons to demand privatization and austerity measures of the periphery, which enable foreign capitalists to buy up production. Imperialism is not over, it has simply become less overt, it relies more on debt and economic dependency to exert its rule than outright military force. We must resist this imperialism by supporting national liberation struggles, whether they’re socialist or not. A country’s development is stifled by imperialism, as it brings revenue outside that country into the imperial core, impoverishing the periphery. A country can only reach toward the development of socialism when it is free of imperialism. Further, colonialism and settler-colonialism within a country ensure division within it, and such exploitation means a world order where the proletariat can never win, as its efforts are undercut by the exploitation of its comrades. We must support decolonization of settler-colonial countries like America, New Zealand, and Israel, with colonized peoples leading our struggles and deciding on the post-revolution order. We cannot play purity politics with imperialism, we must support all national liberation struggles. We in the imperial core must work to paralyze imperialist institutions from the belly of the beast, especially with politicized strikes. We must stand in solidarity to all the oppressed peoples of the world.
“Socialists cannot achieve their great aim without fighting against all oppression of nations. They must, therefore, unequivocally demand that the Social-Democratic parties of oppressor countries (especially of the so-called 'Great' Powers) should recognise and champion the oppressed nation's right to self-determination, in the specifically political sense of the term, i.e, the right to political secession. The socialist of a ruling or a colonial nation who does not stand for that right is a chauvinist. The championing of this right, far from encouraging the formation of petty states, leads, on the contrary, to the freer, fearless and therefore wider and more universal formation of very large states and federations of states, which are more to the advantage of the masses and are more in keeping with economic development. In their turn, the socialists of the oppressed nations must unfailingly fight for the complete unity of the workers of the oppressed and oppressor nationalities (this including organi- sational unity). The idea of the juridical separation of one nation from another (the so-called 'cultural-national autonomy advocated by Bauer and Renner) is reactionary. Imperialism is the epoch of the constantly increasing oppression of the nations of the world by a handful of 'Great' Powers; it is therefore impossible to fight for the socialist international revolution against imperialism unless the right of nations to self-determination is recognised. 'No nation can be free if it oppresses other nations' (Marx and Engels). A proletariat that tolerates the slightest violence by its 'own' nation cannot be a socialist proletariat.”
- V.I. Lenin, Socialism and War
How can we work toward socialism?
We can work toward socialism by organizing the workers. The organization and liberation of the workers can only be carried out by the workers themselves, not by bourgeois politicians or reformism within capitalism. As we have discussed, the capitalist order contains within it the germs of a future socialist order in its own contradictions. It is in the interests of the working class to socialize the appropriation of our socialized production. Capitalism cannot sustain itself, as the contradiction of socialized production with private appropriation inevitably leads to crises, such as recessions, depressions, mass unemployment, bankruptcies, overuse of land and resources, etc. Even global warming is a capitalist-caused issue, as industry has been highly invested in fossil fuels, meaning that the rapid diversion which we need would likely lead to the death of semi-monopolistic companies, something capitalists never intentionally seek. These crises in turn lead to a lesser and lesser confidence in capitalism, and a tendency of the workers to realize the contradiction of socialized production and private appropriation. The workers’ growing consciousness and organization is the most important factor in the coming revolution, but it cannot occur spontaneously. The workers’ movement has a self-centralizing tendency, as a response to the centralizing nature of capitalism. While the workers grow in tactical experience and consciousness in their day-to-day struggles with capitalism, as in strikes and demonstrations, this spontaneous action can only go so far. This centralizing tendency comes to a head in the vanguard party, which is made up of the most conscious and well-trained among the workers, acting as professional revolutionaries. The vanguard, standing beyond the process of production, can analyze it from afar, and can dedicate their time and effort entirely to organizing and consciousness-raising rather than doing it in what little free time they’d have as an average worker. The party is not an imposing force, but a leading, a guiding force, which serves as the body which develops theory and practice, self-criticizes, and improves. The party must be organized on the basis of democratic centralism, with the membership electing its leadership, and holding the freedom of internal debate and criticism of decisions while holding to the decisions of the leadership and party. This principle can be summed up by “difference in discussion, unity in action”. The vanguard party must raise a mass base of supporters and sympathizers through community projects like labor organizing, tenant organizing, political demonstrations, serving the needs of communities, and others. While we cannot create a universal plan of action for this party in all contexts, we Marxists must seek to build such a party, and pay special attention to struggles of decolonization, anti-imperialism, politicization of labor organizing, the gendered division of labor, the experience of the LGBT community, and others. We cannot simply stand beyond these struggles, but must become involved in them, and aid the proletariat. We must earn their sympathy, we cannot expect to simply be given it by them. We must fight for revolutionary reforms, reforms which build the power of the proletariat, while constructing our own alternative institutions to the bourgeois order as the foundation for the future socialist order. The vanguard party must be a mass party, though it does not necessarily have to be a majority party. Rather, it must gain the support of the majority through revolutionary gains. We further, especially those of us in imperialist countries, must resist imperialism, encouraging politicized strikes in key industries to the war machine, and we must support currently existing socialist states such as Cuba, Venezuela, and the DPRK against imperialism. We cannot be preferential and wishy-washy in supporting existing socialism, because we are not idealists. We are materialists, and we must support them as they are, and support them against imperialism. This is what the future demands, and we must fulfill our revolutionary task.
“The first questions to arise are: how is the discipline of the proletariat's revolutionary party maintained? How is it tested? How is it reinforced? First, by the class-consciousness of the proletarian vanguard and by its devotion to the revolution, by its tenacity, self-sacrifice and heroism. Second, by its ability to link up, maintain the closest contact, and - if you wish - merge, in certain measure, with the broadest masses of the working people, primarily with the proletariat, but also with the non-proletarian masses of working people. Third, by the correctness of the political leadership exercised by this vanguard, by the correctness of its political strategy and tactics, provided the broad masses have seen, from their own experience, that they are correct. Without these conditions, discipline in a revolutionary party really capable of being the party of the advanced class, whose mission it is to overthrow the bourgeoisie and transform the whole of society, cannot be achieved. Without these conditions, all attempts to establish discipline inevitably fall flat and end up in phrase-mongering and clowning. On the other hand, these conditions cannot emerge at once. They are created only by prolonged effort and hard-won experience. Their creation is facilitated by a correct revolutionary theory, which, in its turn, is not a dogma but assumes final shape only in close connection with the practical activity of a truly mass and truly revolutionary movement.” - V.I. Lenin, Left-Wing Communism, An Infantile Disorder
“I would not altogether deny that a revolution can be started by a very small party and brought to a victorious conclusion. But one must have a knowledge of the methods by which the masses can be won over. For this thoroughgoing preparation of revolution is essential. But here you have comrades coming forward with the assertion that we should immediately give up the demand for 'big' masses. They must be challenged. Without thoroughgoing preparation you will not achieve victory in any country. Quite a small party is sufficient to lead the masses. At certain times there no necessity for big organisations. But to win, we must have the sympathy of the masses. An absolute majority is not always essential; but what is essential to win and retain power is not only the majority of the working class — I use the term 'working class' in its West-European sense, i.e. the sense of the industrial proletariat — but also the majority of the working and exploited rural population.”
- V.I. Lenin, Speech On Tactics of the Communist International
Key Terms, Concepts, and Recommended Reading for Understanding Marxism
Key Terms:
Alienation: A social process wherein a worker no longer feels ownership over their labor, it comes to feel foreign to them. This alienation is due to the fact that they no longer live directly by their own labor, instead selling their labor-power for a wage, and purchasing the means of subsistence with that wage. Alienation extends to the rest of society, with the worker feeling alienated from consumers, other workers, and even society as a whole.
Base and Superstructure: The method of analysis which Marxism comes to from the idea that existence precedes essence. In this concept, the “base” is the dominant mode of production, which includes class relations, the mode of distribution, the development of production, the gendered division of labor, colonial exploitation, and so on. The “superstructure” gets its form and characteristics from the “base”, and includes the state, ideology, morality, religion, popular culture, and so on. While the base precedes and is dominant over the superstructure, the superstructure can exert a degree of influence on the base.
Capital: Anything which is invested and used to create value beyond its initial value. Capital’s function is accumulation, accomplished through investment and returns on those investments. Capital can take the form of fixed capital, the means of production AKA physical capital, or variable capital, labor-power.
Commodity: A commodity is any object which has been given exchange-value in a particular social context. Commodity production refers to production for such exchange, rather than production for direct immediate consumption.
Commodity Fetishism: The mystification of commodities in capitalist society, turning them into something to be lavished after as commodity-forms. This attitude obscures the labor process which is embodied in the products, treating them as simply commodities and ignoring the history which has gone into their production.
Dialectical: Ever-progressing, being non-fixed, having internal contradictions which lead to a resolution of change. To be dialectical means that nothing stays the same forever.
Exchange-Value: When an object’s value is expressed in terms of another object, the comparison being the average socially necessary labor time each represents. For example, when a coat is defined as being worth 20 yards of linen. This value-form can only exist in the context of commodity production.
False Consciousness: A state of affairs wherein someone is deceived into opposing their class interests, being sold a false view of the reality of a situation. Usually, this refers to when proletarians come to believe an ideology which seems to address their interests, but which really misleads them, such as anti-immigration sentiment or other scapegoating trends.
Labor-Power: The commodity form of human labor. A worker sells their labor-power, not labor, because they sell their labor for a set limited time, rather than selling their body itself.
Materialism: A belief in the existence of an objective, empirical reality which can be separated from the subjective personal experiences people have of reality.
Means of Production: Anything beyond a human’s own body which is used to increase productivity. In other words, tools. This ranges from a scythe used in farm labor to an assembly line used in a factory.
Means of Subsistence: Necessity for providing for survival. This means food, water, housing, and other basic needs of one’s life, which are necessary to reproduce the capacity for labor.
Mode of Production: The relations of production (classes), system of distribution, system of production, and mode of exchange taken as a whole.
Money: A universal unit of exchange used to create a standard for the expression of the exchange-value of commodities.
Private Property: Property which is used to produce value beyond the means of subsistence. Typically used to refer to capitalistic private property, which the owner uses to extract surplus-value from the labor-power of others. Individual private property, while becoming more and more uncommon as capitalistic private property accumulates greater and greater property within itself, refers to property used to provide for an individual’s means of subsistence with that individual’s own labor. Marxists focus on the abolition of capitalistic private property, seeing no need in abolishing the already dying out individual private property, the owners of which will likely voluntarily join in the greater benefits of social production anyways.
Personal Property: Property which is used by an individual in their day-to-day needs, such as their clothing, books, bed, and so on. Marxists do not seek the abolition of this property.
Reformism: Any political program which seeks to reconcile the contradictions of a system rather than overturn it in a revolutionary manner. Under capitalism, this specifically refers to those who believe that the contradictions of capitalism can be resolved with reforms like Universal Basic Income, a higher minimum wage, and greater social welfare. Marxists are not against reforms, but they do not view them as ends in themselves.
Revisionism: Any trend within Marxism which destroys its revolutionary quality. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, this largely referred to Marxist trends which sought to turn the ideology into a reformist current, believing capitalism was too adaptable to crises to overthrow.
Surplus-Value: Value produced beyond the basic means of subsistence. Under capitalism, this takes the form of value produced by workers beyond the value of their wages. This value is appropriated by the capitalist class in the form of profit.
Tendency of the Rate of Profit to Decline: Under capitalism, as capital is consolidated and centralized, investments of new capital do not lead to as great a rate of growth as they did before, although they may in terms of simple numbers be much greater. For example, in the first year of operation a capital of $100 may have yielded a profit of $50, a rate of profit of 50%, in the 10th year a capital of $100,000 might have yielded a profit of $10,000. While this would have been greater than the initial $50 in absolute numbers, the rate of profit has declined from 50% to 10%. Once capital reaches a certain size, investments do not yield as great a rate of profit, and crisis begins to loom on the horizon.
Use-Value: Value defined by an object’s ability to serve one’s needs, or, to provide for one’s means of subsistence. This cannot be measured in quantitative terms.
Wage-Labor: Labor which is sold as a commodity in the form of labor-power to a capitalist. Though capitalists see this as a voluntary transaction, socialists argue that it is involuntary, since the worker has no choice but to sell their labor-power for a wage, because they have no other means of providing for their subsistence. In other words, they will starve if they do not sell their labor-power to a capitalist.
Modes of Production:
Nomadic, Hunter-Gatherer: A non-sedentarized mode of production, usually exists where for one reason or another, sedentarization is not worth the effort. This society is marked by a strongly communal character, with the reaps of the hunt and what food is gathered being shared among the tribe. This system of production has no classes and no state. Although a gendered division may exist, it is not as patriarchal as other modes of production, and can be matriarchal when the labor assigned to a woman is especially prominent. Usually, the communalistic tendencies of these societies are confined to a tribe, rather than an especially large social formation.
Communalism: The general characteristic of most pre-capitalist modes of production, often characterized as primitive communism. It does not always have production without exchange, however, with surpluses often being exchanged. Rather, it is delineated by a loyalty to the community, focus on the needs of all in the society, and relative “equality.” However, it is also defined by being limited to a particular community, not society as a whole. Thus, inter-communal wars and conflicts in competition for appropriation of resources, land, etc.
Early Agriculture: In this mode of production, we see people begin to manipulate the environment for their needs. They grow their food rather than relying on simply finding food, and in this we see the beginning of production. In early forms of this society private property does not yet exist, and women tend to hold influence over agriculture, giving them great dominance. As private property develops, however, especially the ownership of domesticated animals, the man begins to become dominant, especially when what he owns is prominent in production of the means of subsistence. With the emergence of private property, we also see the emergence of classes.
Slave Society: Slaves are among the earliest form of private property, usually being captured enemies in early agricultural societies. In later slave societies, such as the Southern US, they tend to be chattel slaves, slaves defined according to race or nation. This is the earliest stage of pronounced class society, with the birth of masters and slaves. The masters are the owning class, owning private property like cattle, farms, and slaves. The slaves are the laboring class, working to reap the means of subsistence from the master’s property. While they are not paid, they still have a cost, as the master must pay for their means of subsistence to keep up their productive capacity. Usually, within the society of slaves, there is little gendered division of labor, since there are few distinctions made by the master in the assignment of labor tasks, and there is no property to pronounce a division of gender. Within the society of masters, the gendered division of labor is far more pronounced, with the man usually owning slaves, and therefore having dominance. This is where we see the emergence of explicit patriarchy.
Feudal/Tributary Society: This system largely emerged out of the collapse of the Roman Empire, with the freed slaves coming to live off their own labor in small plots of land. Some slaves, however, became serfs, and were tied to a particular plot of land as servants to the owner. The main class distinction in feudalism is between peasant and lord, laborer and owner. The peasant lives off their own labor on the land, and the lord demands duties from the peasant, usually in the form of a particular share of their produce. Feudal society is one form of something generally falling under the Tributary mode of production. In the Tributary mode of production, the producers control the means of production, producing their means of subsistence, and the lords, state, etc appropriate surpluses for their direct immediate consumption, though with transitions to money economies, they tend to begin using them for trade. In later Feudal societies, they tended to demand money tribute instead, as the lords begin to invest their hereditary wealth as capital. As a result, the poorer peasants, who do not produce enough to sell for the money they need for the tribute, are forced to become wage-laborers, proletarians, for better off peasants, who, in hiring other peasants as wage-laborers, become agrarian capitalists, an early subset of the bourgeoisie. The gendered division of labor among peasants is usually less pronounced when the woman’s domestic industries of weaving, garden-tending, pottery, medicine-making, and so on are dominant. But, with the introduction of money tribute, which women hold little power to pay since their services are not valued on the market, women become dispossessed, and more dependent upon men. Further, with primitive accumulation, which deprives peasants of their means of self-subsistence and proletarianizes them, women are excluded from or paid miserably in jobs. They are forced to become domestic laborers for women, performing reproductive functions to reproduce their labor-power. And so, we come to the next stage of production.
Capitalist Society: A mercantile system of production based on capitalistic private property. In this system, the bourgeoisie, or capitalists, own the means of production, and the proletariat, or workers, labor to produce value and surplus-value. The bourgeoisie emerge out of merchants, artisans, wealthy peasants, and aristocrats who invested their wealth, as capital, in the ownership and upkeep of private property, beginning to hire wage-laborers for the production of surplus-value. In this system of production, production becomes socialized, with everyone relying on mass scale production for work, and also for the products which they consume. They cannot produce their own means of subsistence as peasants once did, they must sell their labor in exchange for a wage, which they use to purchase the means of subsistence created in the social production process. Contradicting this is private appropriation of production, with surplus-value being appropriated by the capitalist, and with the capitalist controlling production. This culminates in the antagonism between workers and capitalists, proletarians and the bourgeoisie. The gendered division of labor under capitalism varies among cultures, colonized or non-colonized groups, and so on. In common, however, is the expectation of women to serve as a reproductive class for labor-power. Women are expected to have children, to serve men, to perform domestic tasks, all this while, in present capitalist society, performing a “second shift” of wage-labor. In the proletariat, there is the potential to challenge the gendered division of labor by socializing such domestic functions and encouraging women to enter the workforce as equals to men. In the bourgeoisie, however, there is a stake in the gendered division of labor. Within their own class, they support patriarchy as a means of inheriting property and ensuring men’s domination. With regards to the proletariat, they seek to ensure that women reproduce the labor-power of their workers, and that women workers can be exploited as an underclass within the proletariat.
Socialist Society: A system of production wherein the proletariat socially appropriates the socialized production which capitalism develops. This system is defined by such social ownership of the means of production. This society still has a state, because it is still seizing private property from the bourgeoisie, and resisting the declassed bourgeoisie and other counter-revolutionary elements, especially the threat of invasion from reactionary countries. However, because it inherits capitalist conditions, the productive capacity of this society is not yet at a degree of the abolition of scarcity. Because production has not developed to this point, “rationing” of production must take place, there must be a means of deciding who gets the scarce product. For socialism, this is done by compensating each person greater if they perform a greater degree of labor. Each person is given a share of produce according to the share they have contributed, usually measured by average socially necessary labor time. This average socially necessary labor time can be measured by the average time necessary to produce a particular product, and how much produce is created in a set time frame. A worker would be rewarded for more intense production, since it would be the equivalent of contributing more socially necessary labor time. The intensity of their production could be measured by how much greater their rate of production is than the average rate. This system would of course still leave the needs and wants of those who cannot labor as much with a need for attendance, which the state could provide for with social programs. Typically, rationing of scarce production is performed by central planners in socialist societies, such as the USSR or Cuba. The gendered division of labor in this society will be combatted, with women being encouraged to join the labor force and with domestic labor being socialized.
Communist Society: In this society, classes, the state, and commodity production (which money represents) have been abolished. With socialism abolishing private property and destroying the bourgeoisie, there is no need for a state, since states are simply a tool of class rule. With productivity developed to a point of abolishing scarcity, there is no more need for rationing produce. In this society, production will become a habit, perhaps eventually leaving no need for central planning. The gendered division of labor will be totally destroyed, along with all other class distinctions. We cannot say too much about this stage, however, as it is far in the future.
“Finally, from the conception of history set forth by us we obtain these further conclusions: 1) In the development of productive forces there comes a stage when productive forces and means of intercourse are brought into being which, under the existing relations, only cause mischief, and are no longer productive but destructive forces (machinery and money); and connected with this a class is called forth which has to bear the burdens of society without enjoying its advantages, which ousted from society and forced into the sharpest contradiction to all other classes; a class which forms the majority of members of society, and from which emanates the consciousness of the necessity of a fundamental revolution, the communist consciousness, which may, of course, arise among the other classes too through the contemplation of the situation of this class. 2) The conditions under which definite productive forces can be applied are the conditions of the rule of a definite class of society, whose social power, deriving from its property has its practical-idealistic expression in each case in the form of the state and, therefore, every revolutionary struggle is directed against a class which till then has been in power. 3) In all previous revolutions the mode of activity always remained unchanged and it was only a question of a different distribution this activity, a new distribution of labour to other persons whilst the communist revolution is directed against the hitherto existing mode of activity, does away with labour, and abolishes the rule of all classes with the classes themselves because it is carried through by the class which no longer counts as a class in society, which is not recognised as a class, and is in itself the expression of the dissolution of all classes nationalities, etc., within present society; and 4) Both for the production on a mass scale of this communist consciousness and for the success of the cause itself, the alteration of men on a mass scale is necessary, an alteration which can only take place , a revolution; the revolution is necessary, therefore, not only because the ruling class cannot be overthrown in any other way, but also because the class overthrowing it can only in a revolution succeed in ridding itself of all the muck of ages and become fitted to found society anew.”
- Karl Marx, The German Ideology
Classes:
Bourgeoisie:
Anyone who owns private property, i.e. property which, through their ownership, they can “charge” others to use it. This could mean either by charging rent, interest, or in the case of the means of production, by appropriating surplus value (value produced by a worker beyond what they are paid in wages). The bourgeoisie’s income primarily comes from profit, interest, and rent. However, some do have to, out of necessity, supplement this income with labor of their own, either in a business they own or by becoming wage laborers themselves.
Haute Bourgeoisie:
The “big” bourgeoisie, who you usually think of as a capitalist. They are defined by the fact that they make enough income off of profit, interest, and/or rent to live entirely off that income. Though they may voluntarily choose to work, it isn’t out of necessity as with the next category.
Petit/Petty Bourgeoisie:
The “small” bourgeoisie, such as small business owners. They make most of their income off ownership of private property, but out of necessity, not choice, must dedicate some of their labor either to producing value from their property or to wage labor to supplement their income. They can partake in a revolution either with their imminent proletarianization in view, which is usually caused by crises or consolidation of capital among the Haute Bourgeoisie, or when they become dispossessed or financially damaged generally. However, they can never become the leadership of a revolution, and their class interests still often come into conflict with the proletariat. Further, they tend to fall into reactionary ideology very easily, since, while they also occasionally suffer financially like the proletariat, they have something to lose if there is imminent change in society. When they are declassed or proletarianized, they have also been seen to fall into anti-capitalist fascism rather than socialism.
Minor Classes:
Merchant:
Someone who makes an income off selling commodities (aka off profit), but does not exploit another’s labor to produce said commodities. A very uncommon class in the industrialized West, although somewhat common in the developing world. For example, they’re very dominant in the Iranian economy. Usually they either purchase them and sell them at a marked up price, or they take something from nature/generally found items, which could include surpluses from, say, hunts. They have historically been one of the major classes which has developed into the bourgeoisie. They usually do not sell commodities that they themselves made, but if they do that makes them the next class.
Artisan:
Essentially like a merchant, except they sell commodities which they produced through a particular form of specialized labor. This could include furniture, artwork, and so on. As long as the commodity is solely the product of their labor, they are an artisan. This class is very uncommon under capitalism and have mostly become modern day professional workers
Liberal Professional:
General professions outside the process of production, such as artists, musicians, authors, and so on. These people’s income essentially comes from consumption of their produce primarily by either the bourgeoisie or proletariat.
Intelligentsia:
Academics broadly, including professors, social critics, and philosophers. This class is semi-neutral in class struggle, and segments of it can become either reactionary or revolutionary depending on its class alignment and the context.
Proletarian:
A proletarian, since they lack private property to make income off of, and also lack land through which they could directly live off their labor from, is absolutely dispossessed. Proletarians, in being propertyless, can only make income by selling their labor-power in exchange for a wage, aka by becoming wage laborers. The majority of the proletariat’s income comes from these wages, they make make some supplementary income from owning minor stocks, but not significantly, and they do not own private property through which they could make an income off profit, interest, or rent. They may also own a house, but this does not make them bourgeois, because they use said house for personal purposes rather than for profit (such as if someone were a house flipper, purchasing houses to remodel them and sell them at a profit, who would be bourgeois). The proletariat are those who put the means of production into motion, who create value and commodities through their labor. The bourgeoisie derives profit from the proletariat by either charging them rent or interest, or by appropriating their surplus value (the value the proletariat’s labor creates beyond the cost of their wages)
The proletariat and bourgeoisie are inherently antagonistic because the proletariat has a tendency to seek the highest possible value for their wages, while the bourgeoisie has a tendency to seek the lowest possibility for their wages to reduce production costs. This is not always the case, such as when the bourgeoisie pays efficiency wages, but it is the tendency. The proletariat, because they have nothing to lose in this system in being propertyless, is the most revolutionary. As Marx said, they have nothing to lose but their chains. The petit bourgeoisie have some property to lose, the merchants and artisans have customers to lose, and the peasantry, who I will discuss next, have their individual means of subsistence to lose, but the proletariat has little to no stakes in the maintenance of the current system. They can be stifled in their revolutionary character by material interest, however. Often this is debt, but it can also be due to class gradation within the proletariat, which I will explain.
Labor Aristocracy:
Essentially the most well-off workers. This usually includes professional workers like programmers, engineers, professors, and often well-paid union leaders or the managerial class. The labor aristocracy is different than the petit bourgeoisie in that they are well off solely from income derived from wage labor, not partially from their labor and partially from profit, interest, or rent like the petit bourgeoisie. Typically, these workers are less likely to be revolutionary, since they have some stakes in present conditions by the fact that they’re afforded some privilege. Usually, their better-off conditions and wages are enabled by the exploitation of workers in the imperial periphery, giving them a stake in imperialist interests.
Lumpenproletariat:
In modern economics, these people are usually referred to as “not in the labor force”. This includes petty criminals (drug dealers, petty thieves, bank robbers, mugger, etc), sex workers, the homeless, and, generally, the most destitute and poverty stricken section of the proletariat. In traditional Marxism, they’re usually seen as lacking revolutionary potential, either because they usually aren’t active participants in the process of production, or because they fear that a change from the current system could be even worse than current conditions, sort of a “devil you know” mindset. However, some communists have seen them as holding revolutionary potential and organized them, usually it’s Maoists, like the Black Panther Party, or anarchists, like the IWW.
Notes on the Proletariat:
As a general principle, most Marxists see the proletariat between the labor aristocracy and the lumpenproletariat as having the most revolutionary potential, because, while they have nothing to lose but their chains, they are better off than the lumpenproletariat to be able to concern themselves with something beyond day to day survival. This is not everyone’s opinion, however, it’s just a trend among Marxist ideology. If someone works in the government for a wage they’re a proletarian, except for if they work for a repressive political apparatus such as military or police. For example, NASA, the FBI, the police, the national guard, the army, navy, and Air Force are all part of the repressive state apparatus; anyone that works in these is a class traitor. Government workers who work in the DMV or work to coordinate social security or all that typical low level government work are just proletarians and basically have the same interests as the rest of the proletariat, especially public school teachers.
Peasantry:
The peasantry are essentially farmers who own small individual plots of land, what Marx called “individual private property”. The peasantry can live off their own labor through the land. Usually they farm an edible food to live off of and sell the surplus product for supplementary income to, say, buy new tools/equipment or clothing. The peasantry in feudal or semi-feudal societies tend to be tied to a lord or an equivalent entity, who historically would gain ownership of the land as a reward from the aristocracy/monarchy for military service, but around the 1500s, in the midst of Enclosure and the early development of capitalist social relations, they would gain the land by purchasing it with money. The peasantry, either as serfs or as debtors to this lord, would toil on the land of the lord to create agricultural produce to live off of, and the lord or equivalent would be entitled to a part of it, which, in the past would usually be what they lived off of directly, but later on and in modern feudal or semi feudal societies they would sell as commodities for an income.
The peasantry usually graduates from extremely destitute peasants, who often own infertile or generally terrible land which yields them little produce, to well off peasants, like Charles Chaucer (author of The Canterbury Tales), who usually have a large surplus of produce to sell and live relatively comfortably off that. Sometimes the latter, when they own larger plots of land and become better off, become bourgeois when they use that to employ agricultural laborers, who they appropriate the surplus value off. This is what the Soviets referred to as “kulaks”. For independent peasants who solely live off their own labor, Marxists usually do not advocate seizing their property. What usually happens is they’re either dispossessed by the concentration of capital and by primitive accumulation, or, in a socialist society, they decide to join agricultural communes to live off the greater product of collective labor rather than live off their individual product.
Traditionally Marxists have viewed the peasantry as lacking revolutionary potential because, in owning individual private property (and therefore the means of self subsistence), they have a stake in the maintenance of the current system, because they’ve got there’s and usually don’t desire a change from that. However, peasants with destitute enough conditions can become revolutionary, like when there’s crop failures or extreme demands from those they are in debt to or lords. This is what happened in Russia during the Russian Revolution. The revolutionary peasantry in traditional Marxist ideology is seen as the secondary major revolutionary class, but as inferior in this regard to the proletariat, who, in being propertyless and in engaging in cooperative production, have been shaped by their material conditions as a class to have little to no stakes in the current system, to have discipline, to have cooperative potential, and to better understand the class struggle with the bourgeoisie. Essentially, the proletariat leads the peasantry. Some Marxist currents like certain Maoists, however, have posited that, in countries which lack a developed proletariat, the peasantry can lead a revolution.
Notes on the Peasantry:
Classes such as sharecroppers would most likely be considered to be peasants (with the farmer who takes a share of their crop being the equivalent of a lord), whereas agricultural laborers like farmhands would be considered agrarian proletarians. In America, most people in the agricultural sector are today either agrarian proletarians or the agrarian bourgeoisie. The independent farmer/peasant is essentially extinct here.
Aristocracy:
Largely extinct by now, but relevant if you want to read historical Marxist theory or analyze past class societies. The aristocracy is synonymous with the nobility, and they are essentially those who hold hereditary legal privileges and titles. Usually they retain these privileges by the “legitimization” of providing military service to a monarchy. They are very much a military class. They pretty much arose from warlords and military leaders. In reward to their loyalty to the monarchy, they often receive lands, which in turn come with serfs (indentured peasants/servants tied to said lands). When they receive these lands, they become feudal lords. The aristocracy could actually ironically sometimes become poor of their hereditary wealth was depleted, but they were usually wealthy. Most of them became the bourgeoisie, since they began to demand tribute from peasants in money-form rather than as actual products, and invested their hereditary wealth, thereby turning it into capital. Needless to say, the aristocracy is a fundamentally reactionary class.
On Defining Classes According to Income:
We socialists should avoid defining class in terms of income because it allows social democrats and reformists to push the narrative that wealth redistribution is the end-all-be-all solution. We socialists advocate a fundamental restructuring of the relations of productions, so we need to be sure to define classes in terms of relationship to the means of production. Income does relate to class, such as the bourgeoisie being more likely to be wealthy than the proletariat, and wealthier proletarians often having overlapping class interests with the petit bourgeoisie, but those are simply gradations on classes defined by property. Income isn’t the root and to focus on it alone is an abstraction; it’s much better to focus on it as an extension of property-defined classes. We’ve seen where “rich vs poor” “99% vs 1%” rhetoric has brought us, and it’s nothing but toothless social democracy and liberalism which thinks the base problem is income inequality and not private property.
Recommended Reading:
By Karl Marx:
The Communist Manifesto
Critique of the Gotha Programme
The German Ideology
Capital
By Friedrich Engels:
Principles of Communism
Socialism: Utopian and Scientific
Anti-Dühring
On the Origins of the Family
By V.I. Lenin:
What is to Be Done?
The State and Revolution
Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism
“Left-Wing” Communism: An Infantile Disorder
By Rosa Luxemburg:
Reform or Revolution?
The Accumulation of Capital
By Mao Zedong:
On Practice
On Contradiction
On New Democracy
By Silvia Federici:
Caliban and the Witch
Witches, Witch-Hunting, and Women
By Angela Davis:
Women, Race, and Class
