II.

This brings us to the second question: What is the class struggle?

Of course, the class struggle is a struggle between or among classes. But what is a class? And what do classes struggle for? The answers to these questions are more obvious than the fact of the class struggle. In fact, in order to answer them properly we must go somewhat into history and make a little excursion into philosophy.

“In making their livelihood together,” says Marx,

“men enter into certain necessary involuntary relations with each other, industrial relations which correspond to whatever stage society has reached in the development of its material productive forces. The totality of these industrial relations constitute the economic structure of society, the real basis upon which the legal and political superstructure is built, and to which definite forms of social consciousness correspond. The method of producing the material livelihood determines the social, political and intellectual life-process in general.”[a]

There was a time when the mode of producing the material livelihood was simple, and required the co-operation of nearly all the members of the small societies in which men then lived. They, therefore, lived in communistic groups to which private property, in our sense of the word, was unknown. Socially, there were no classes, and politically there were no rulers. Soon, however, the mode of producing the material livelihood changed, and private property was introduced. The introduction of private property led to the division of society into classes. To begin with, there were those who owned and those who did not own any property. Then there were those who owned different kinds of proeprty, owing to the development of the material productive forces of society. The division into classes led to struggles among them. The propertyless (slave, serfs, etc.) sometimes struggled against their masters, the property owners. These struggles, however, were only intermittent, and played no role historically for the reason that they did not aim to introduce any radical changes in the structure of society, economic or social. The main struggles are those between the classes who own different material productive forces, as these forces develop. It is through these class struggles that all historical progress has until now been made. As Marx puts it:

“At a certain stage of their development the material productive forces of society come into conflict with the old conditions of production, or, what is its legal express, with the old property relations under which these forces have hitherto been exerted. From forms of development of the productive forces these relations turn into fetters of production. Then begins an epoch of revolution. With the change of the economic basis the whole vast superstructure becomes slowly or rapidly revolutionized.”

At any given stage of the development of society based on private property, that social class which owns the tools of production then mostly in use dominates that society politically. When the methods of production have changed, new tools coming extensively into use, a new class has arisen in that society, which disputes the supremacy of the old dominating class. And when the development of those new forces has reached that stage when they come into serious conflict with the old conditions of production, the struggle between the two classes becomes one for life and death. In this struggle the new class always comes out victorious. In the revolution which follows the victory of the new class, the new material productive forces are unchained and are given free scope to assert themselves, the new class controlling these forces becomes politically supreme, and the process of evolution begins anew.

A typical example of the class struggle is the struggle of the bourgeoisie against feudalism in Europe. This struggle, including such of its episodes as the great French Revolution, was not caused by the excessive “oppression” of the disinherited classes of society by the kings and barons, their rulers, but by the collision of the newly developed material productive forces represented by the bourgeoisie, with the old conditions of production, the feudal property relations. It was not because exploitation of the lower classes by barons and monarchs had become more general, that the latter revolted, but, on the contrary, because the lower classes had attained a comparatively high degree of economic power, and needed more political power to still further expand their economic interests. Nor was the cause of that struggle the more intense misery of some portions of the lower classes, which was undoubtedly the fact (as is always the case in periods of revolution in social forms of production), for this evil was not remedied, and the most exploited were not relieved by the revolution. This gave many a chance for some further declamation on the theme of the failure of this revolution to attain its object. This is, of course, silly. “Revolutions” never fail to attain their object. If the movement fails it is not a revolution. The fact is that relief from oppression and misery were not among the objects of the bourgeois revolution, except in so far as such oppression and misery were the result of the old conditions of production, property relations, with which the newly-developed material forces of production collided.

It is true that this struggle was conducted in the name of Justice and Liberty for all men, and that perhaps most of those who fought its pitched battles honestly believed themselves to be fighting for these high ideals without the slightest economic interest or motive. But what we consider Justice and Liberty is itself the result of “the method of producing our material livelihood.”

The bourgeoisie has now itself run its course. Affairs have reached a point where “the material productive forces of society have come into conflict with the old conditions of production,” the old property relations, when “from forms of development of the productive forces,” the capitalistic property relations have turned into “fetters of production.” This is due to two circumstances: First, because the system of diffused private property with unlimited competition upon which the bourgeois social order is based, does not permit the employment of the most economic, that is most productive technical and industrial machinery, which is based on stupendous aggregations of property under single control, so as to virtually abolish competition. Secondly, because the hunt for [profits] taken in connection with the laws of surplus value does not permit the employment of all the productive forces of society all the time, even where the most productive means of production are employed. This means the appearance of a new class ready to take over the job of adjusting property relations to the requirements of the productive forces of society, so that these have full and free play, and incidentally right the wrongs which resulted from the old order of things or its maladjustment. Such a class, historically fitted and ready for the job, and to fight for it, is the working class. Hence the struggle of the working class against capitalism.

So far there is no difference between this class struggle and any other class struggle that has preceded it. But there is a difference, and it is this: Unlike other classes which preceded it in the fight against old social forms which interfered with the free development of the social forces of production, the working class is not a propertied class. While it is in actual possession and control of the newly-developed productive forces, it is not so in a legal sense, that is, it has no property right therein. It cannot, therefore, change the property rights governing the relations of production. It must abolish them. It must substitute collective property for private property, and social control for private control of the productive process. The historic mission of the working class, the object of its struggle against the capitalist class, is, therefore, a double one: the expansion of the productive forces of society, and the abolition of private property, and with it the division of society into classes, thus putting an end to the class struggle.