Karl marx : class struggle theory

Dr.sweety mathur
 Means of
producation

Relation of
production

Infrastructure and
super structure

Modes of
producations

Forces of
productions
 Meaning :class struggle
According to Marxism, there are two
main classes of people: The bourgeoisie
controls the capital and means of production,
and the proletariat provide the labour. Karl
Marx and Friedrich Engels say that for most
of history, there has been a struggle between
those two classes. This struggle is known
as class struggle
 Marxist perspectives

• Marxist perspectives
• Karl Marx (1818–1883) was a German born philosopher who lived the
majority of his adult life in London, England. In The Communist
Manifesto, Karl Marx argued that a class is formed when its members
achieve class consciousness and solidarity. This largely happens when
the members of a class become aware of their exploitation and the
conflict with another class. A class will then realize their shared
interests and a common identity. According to Marx, a class will then
take action against those that are exploiting the lower classes.
• What Marx points out is that members of each of the two main
classes have interests in common. These class or collective interests
are in conflict with those of the other class as a whole. This in turn
leads to conflict between individual members of different classes.
 Class struggle

• Marxist analysis of society identifies two main social

groups:
• Labour (the proletariat or workers) includes anyone who
earns their livelihood by selling their labor power and
being paid a wage or salary for their labor time. They
have little choice but to work for capital, since they
typically have no independent way to survive.
• Capital (the bourgeoisie or capitalists) includes anyone
who gets their income not from labor as much as from
the surplus value they appropriate from the workers
who create wealth. The income of the capitalists,
therefore, is based on their exploitation of the workers
(proletariat).
 Class struggle

• Not all class struggle is violent or necessarily radical, as with strikes and lockouts.
Class antagonism may instead be expressed as low worker morale, minor sabotage
and pilferage, and individual workers' abuse of petty authority and hoarding of
information. It may also be expressed on a larger scale by support for socialist or
populist parties. On the employers' side, the use of union busting legal firms and the
lobbying for anti-union laws are forms of class struggle.

• Not all class struggle is a threat to capitalism, or even to the authority of an

individual capitalist. A narrow struggle for higher wages by a small sector of the
working-class, what is often called "economism", hardly threatens the status quo. In
fact, by applying the craft-union tactics of excluding other workers from skilled
trades, an economistic struggle may even weaken the working class as a whole by
dividing it. Class struggle becomes more important in the historical process as it
becomes more general, as industries are organized rather than crafts, as workers'
class consciousness rises, and as they self-organize away from political parties. Marx
referred to this as the progress of the proletariat from being a class "in itself", a
position in the social structure, to being one "for itself", an active and conscious
force that could change the world.
 Class struggle

• Marx largely focuses on the capital industrialist society as the

source of social stratification, which ultimately results in class
conflict. He states that capitalism creates a division between
classes which can largely be seen in manufacturing factories. The
proletariat, is separated from the bourgeoisie because production
becomes a social enterprise. Contributing to their separation is
the technology that is in factories. Technology de-skills and
alienates workers as they are no longer viewed as having a
specialized skill.Another effect of technology is a
homogenous workforce that can be easily replaceable. Marx
believed that this class conflict would result in the overthrow of
the bourgeoisie and that the private property would be
communally owned.The mode of production would remain,
but communal ownership would eliminate class conflict.