NATIONAL LAW INSTITUTE UNIVERSITY

BHOPAL

PROJECT OF
JURISPRUDENCE-II

ON THE TOPIC

“MARX’S IDEA OF CLASS”

SUBMITTED TO: SUBMITTED BY:

PROF. V. K. DIXIT SARTHAK RASTOGI
2007 B.A.LL.B.
(HONS.) 63
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XI TRIMESTER
DECLARATION

I HEREBY DECLARE THAT ALL THE TEXT OF THIS PROJECT REPORT IS AN

OUTCOME OF MY RESEARCH AND NO PART OF IT HAS IN ANY MANNER BEEN

COPIED FROM ANY OTHER AUTHOR’S WORK WITHOUT DUE

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT.

__________________

SARTHAK
RASTOGI
2007 B.A. LL.B. 63

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

TOPIC PAGE NO

INTRODUCTION 4

KARL MARX’S IDEA OF CLASS 5

CONCLUSION 8

BIBLIOGRAPHY 10

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INTRODUCTION

The concept of the class struggle is at the cornerstone of Marx’s thinking. He was not
unique in discovering the existence of classes. Others had done this before him. What Marx did
that was new was to recognize that the existence of classes was bound up with particular modes
of production or economic structure and that the proletariat, the new working class that
Capitalism had created, had a historical potential leading to the abolition of all classes and to the
creation of a classless society. He maintained that "the history of all existing society is a history
of class struggle". Each society, whether it was tribal, feudal or capitalist was characterized by
the way its individuals produced their means of subsistence, their material means of life, how
they went about producing the goods and services they needed to live. Each society created a
ruling class and a subordinate class as a result of their mode of production or economy. By their
very nature the relationship between these two was antagonistic. Marx referred to this as the
relations of production. Their interests were not the same. The feudal economy was characterized
by the existence of a small group of lords and barons that later developed into a landed
aristocracy and a large group of landless peasants. The capitalist economy that superseded it was
characterized by a small group of property owners who owned the means of production i.e. the
factories, the mines and the mills and all the machinery within them. This group was also
referred to as the bourgeoisie or capitalist class. Alongside them was a large and growing
working class. He saw the emergence of this new property less working class as the agent of its
own self emancipation. It was precisely the working class, created and organized into industrial
armies, that would destroy its creator and usher in a new society free from exploitation and
oppression. "What the bourgeoisie, therefore, produces, above all, is its own grave-diggers".

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KARL MARX’S IDEA OF CLASS

It is important to recognize that Marx viewed the structure of society in relation to its major
classes, and the struggle between them as the engine of change in this structure. His was no
equilibrium or consensus theory. Conflict was not deviational within society's structure, nor were
classes functional elements maintaining the system. The structure itself was a derivative of and
ingredient in the struggle of classes. His was a conflict view of modem (nineteenth century)
society.

The key to understanding Marx is his class definition. A class is defined by the ownership of
property. Such ownership vests a person with the power to exclude others from the property and
to use it for personal purposes. In relation to property there are three great classes of society: the
bourgeoisie (who own the means of production such as machinery and factory buildings, and
whose source of income is profit), landowners (whose income is rent), and the proletariat (who
own their labor and sell it for a wage).

Class thus is determined by property, not by income or status. These are determined by
distribution and consumption, which itself ultimately reflects the production and power relations
of classes. The social conditions of bourgeoisie production are defined by bourgeois property.
Class is therefore a theoretical and formal relationship among individuals.

The force transforming latent class membership into a struggle of classes is class interest. Out of
similar class situations, individuals come to act similarly. They develop a mutual dependence, a
community, a shared interest interrelated with a common income of profit or of wages. From this
common interest classes are formed, and for Marx, individuals form classes to the extent that
their interests engage them in a struggle with the opposite class.

At first, the interests associated with land ownership and rent are different from those of the
bourgeoisie. But as society matures, capital (i.e., the property of production) and land ownership
merge, as do the interests of landowners and bourgeoisie. Finally the relation of production, the
natural opposition between proletariat and bourgeoisie, determines all other activities.

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As Marx saw the development of class conflict, the struggle between classes was initially
confined to individual factories. Eventually, given the maturing of capitalism, the growing
disparity between life conditions of bourgeoisie and proletariat, and the increasing
homogenization within each class, individual struggles become generalized to coalitions across
factories. Increasingly class conflict is manifested at the societal level. Class consciousness is
increased, common interests and policies are organized, and the use of and struggle for political
power occurs. Classes become political forces.

The distribution of political power is determined by power over production (i.e., capital). Capital
confers political power, which the bourgeois class uses to legitimatize and protect their property
and consequent social relations. Class relations are political, and in the mature capitalist society,
the state's business is that of the bourgeoisie. Moreover, the intellectual basis of state rule, the
ideas justifying the use of state power and its distribution, are those of the ruling class. The
intellectual-social culture is merely a superstructure resting on the relation of production, on
ownership of the means of production.

Finally, the division between classes will widen and the condition of the exploited worker will
deteriorate so badly that social structure collapses: the class struggle is transformed into a
proletarian revolution. The workers' triumph will eliminate the basis of class division in property
through public ownership of the means of production. With the basis of classes thus wiped away,
a classless society will ensue (by definition), and since political power to protect the bourgeoisie
against the workers is unnecessary, political authority and the state will wither away.

Overall, there are six elements in Marx's view of class conflict.

 Classes are authority relationships based on property ownership.

 A class defines groupings of individuals with shared life situations, thus interests.

 Classes are naturally antagonistic by virtue of their interests.

 Imminent within modern society is the growth of two antagonistic classes and their
struggle, which eventually absorbs all social relations.

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 Political organization and Power is an instrumentality of class struggle, and reigning

ideas are its reflection.

 Structural change is a consequence of the class struggle.

Marx's emphasis on class conflict as constituting the dynamics of social change, his awareness
that change was not random but the outcome of a conflict of interests, and his view of social
relations as based on power were contributions of the first magnitude. However, time and history
have invalidated many of his assumptions and predictions. Capitalist ownership and control of
production have been separated. Joint stock companies forming most of the industrial sector are
now almost wholly operated by non-capital-owning managers. Workers have not grown
homogeneous but are divided and subdivided into different skill groups. Class stability has been
undercut by the development of a large middle class and considerable social mobility. Rather
than increasing extremes of wealth and poverty, there has been a social leveling and an
increasing emphasis on social justice. And finally, bourgeois political power has progressively
weakened with growth in worker oriented legislation and of labor-oriented parties, and with a
narrowing of the rights and privileges of capital ownership. Most important, the severest
manifestation of conflict between workers and capitalist--the strike--has been institutionalized
through collective bargaining legislation and the legalization of strikes.

These historical events and trends notwithstanding, the sociological outlines of Marx's approach
have much value. His emphasis on conflict, on classes, on their relations to the state, and on
social change was a powerful perspective that should not be discarded. The spirit, if not the
substance, of his theory is worth developing.

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CONCLUSION

After having researched on Marx’s theory and making this report, I can safely conclude that ever
since human society emerged from its primitive and relatively undifferentiated state it has
remained fundamentally divided between classes who clash in the pursuit of class interests. In
the world of capitalism, for example, the nuclear cell of the capitalist system, the factory, is the
prime locus of antagonism between classes--between exploiters and exploited, between buyers
and sellers of labor power--rather than of functional collaboration. Class interests and the
confrontations of power that they bring in their wake are to Marx the central determinant of
social and historical process.

Marx's analysis continually centers on how the relationships between men are shaped by their
relative positions in regard to the means of production, that is, by their differential access to
scarce resources and scarce power. He notes that unequal access need not at all times and under
all conditions lead to active class struggle. But he considered it axiomatic that the potential for
class conflict is inherent in every differentiated society, since such a society systematically
generates conflicts of interest between persons and groups differentially located within the social
structure, and, more particularly, in relation to the means of production. Marx was concerned
with the ways in which specific positions in the social structure tended to shape the social
experiences of their incumbents and to predispose them to actions oriented to improve their
collective fate.

Yet class interests in Marxian sociology are not given ab initio. They develop through the
exposure of people occupying particular social positions to particular social circumstances. Thus,
in early industrial enterprises, competition divides the personal interests of "a crowd of people
who are unknown to each other. . . But the maintenance of their wages, this common interest
which they have against their employer, brings them together." "The separate individuals form a
class only in so far as they have to carry on a common battle against another class; otherwise
they are on hostile terms with each other as competitors."

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Class interests are fundamentally different from, and cannot be derived from, the individual
interests imputed by the utilitarian school and classical British political economy. Potential
common interests of members of a particular stratum derive from the location of that stratum
within particular social structures and productive relations. But potentiality is transformed into
actuality, Klasse en sich (class in itself) into Klasse fuer sich (class for itself), only when
individuals occupying similar positions become involved in common struggles; a network of
communication develops, and they thereby become conscious of their common fate. It is then
that individuals become part of a cohesive class that consciously articulates their common
interests. As Carlyle once put it, "Great is the combined voice of men." Although an aggregate of
people may occupy similar positions in the process of production and their lives may have
objectively similar determinants, they become a class as a self-conscious and history- making
body only if they become aware of the similarity of their interests through their conflicts with
opposing classes.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

Books

 Roemer, John, 1982, A General Theory of Exploitation and Class, Cambridge Ma.:
Harvard University Press.

Internet Sources

 http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/marx/
 http://www.infed.org/thinkers/et-marx.htm#class
 http://www.economictheories.org/2009/05/karl-marx-class-struggle-theory.html

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