5 Ruling class, State Power and the Ideology of class struggle

Shashwati

1. Introduction

One of the main contributions of Marxist philosophy to the understanding of social and economic history is the concept of class-struggle. Each historical epoch is defined by contradictions between its two primary classes, which provide the thrusting force for society to develop. Class-struggle therefore, is the driving force of all history. The dominant view of history among Marxists concerns its linear, progressive movement, bound by certain immanent laws of motion, towards the ultimate telos. Marxist theory of history is a materialist theory, that is, primacy is attached to matter over mind and consciousness. This is not to say that factors of mind, consciousness and intention do not have any role to play in Marx’s theory of history. It is after all in the human world that Marx’s immanent laws of history operate. Therefore, the linearity of historical movement is far from being mechanical; for example, the ‘consciousness’ of the working class matters as much in perceiving their alienation and exploitation as a class, so as to organize against it. For his reflections on the material bases of history, Marx talks of his debts to French and English traditions of 17th-18th centuries, and especially to his contemporary, Ludwig Feuerbach. Based on his understandings of material bases of human evolution, Marx talks about the economy, and the class-struggle organized round the dominant mode of production within each economy, as the determinant force of each historical epoch. This is the law of historical materialism that defines Marx’s political economy. Another philosopher who was a huge influence on Marx while he framed his theory of history was Hegel. Marx’s philosophy was framed not only in guidance of the Hegelian logic, but also in defiance of it. The dialectical movement of history towards its ultimate telos was a view shared by both Marx and Hegel. By a principle of necessity, history progresses towards a condition where man is united with his true, fulfilled essence. For example, in Marxist thought, the history of contemporary man is slowly progressing from a life of exploitation and degradation, to reach a stage of communism that is characterized by a classless society and socialization of means of production. It is only through organized social action that the working class overturns its current state of subordination by capitalism. Where Marx differs concretely from Hegel, is his exposition of the guiding force behind such organized social action: it is not philosophy or consciousness, but the material factors that impel man to transform his situation.

By material bases to human evolution, Marxist thought refers to the fact that each stage of human history is defined by a particular mode of production of the material base on which the society grows. In production of the material base of society, men enter into definite relations with each other. These social relations of production organize men into distinct classes. Mediated by objective material conditions, the relation between different classes is mutually antagonistic based as it is on disunity between the direct producer and the means of production. Each historical epoch is characterized by one class that owns means of production and the other which has only its labor to expend. Capitalism, as the main focus of study of Marx, and later Marxists, represents the extreme form of class-rule, where the bourgeoisie owns the decisive means of production and subordinates the working class or the proletariat to work for its private interests of profit maximization and accumulation of capital.

2. The Ideology of Class Struggle

The main focus of Marx’s work is the historical study of the capitalism. The huge corpus of work produced by Marx and his contemporaries like Engles and Lenin, has as its primary focus, the exposition of the nature, and systematic functioning of the capitalist mode of production. The political agenda of Marxist theorization is more than apparent: it highlights the historic role to be played by the proletarian class- itself a historical product of capitalist system- in the overthrow of the latter and establishing a socialist society in its place. The objective location of the working class within the capitalist system enables it to bring about not only self-emancipation, but a universal liberation for all oppressed classes in society. Therefore, many scholars contend that one of the most important contributions of Marxism is the theory of proletarian revolution, by means of which the working class leads its historic struggle against the world capitalist system. Marx and Engels’ own theorization of proletarian revolution is a result of their active participation in the working class movements in Germany and England during the course of mid-nineteenth century. Intensification of class contradiction within such societies exposed the level of exploitation faced by the working classes, and also helped devise different strategies and tactics to be adopted by the proletariat in their revolutionary struggle against capitalism.

Marx’s theory of the proletariat as the active, self-conscious agent of class struggle, receives an elaboration in some of his works like Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts (EPM) dated mid-1844, where he draws implications from the armed revolt by workers in Silesia in June 1844. Before that, Marx came up with the well know work, Introduction to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy, which placed the radically oppressed class of the proletariats at the centre of revolutionary politics. Struggle of any kind, by the proletariats against systemic exploitation, howsoever limited, was imbued with a universal essence and a political agenda, that is, one of emancipation from the exploits of the capitalist system and formation of a communist society based on socialization of means of production. Marx’s own ideas on the revolutionary potential of the proletariat in the course of class struggle, found a match in those of Engles who had studied the Chartist movement (1838-58) in Britain closely and applauded it for its working class agenda. Ideas of Marx and Engels helped to dispel earlier understandings of the role of proletariat in transformatory politics. The proletariat as the ‘passive’ element while the lead was provided by philosophy; betterment in the situation of working class through reformist measures like cooperative schemes; theory of revolutionary conspiracy which alone could emancipate the workers: these were some of the pre-existent theories before the crucial intervention of Marxists which accorded a central place to proletariats in socialist transformation of society. Such a conceptualization was not possible without viewing the proletariat class as the main agent of class struggle, as a ‘class’ with a political consciousness. The organized movement of the working class against organized capital was not born out of any utopia or conspiracy. It was only through a conscious movement, that the working classes organized itself into a political struggle against capitalist exploitation; therefore it was with intensification of class struggle that the working classes transitioned from being a class-in-itself to a class-for-itself, to move forward with the goal of revolutionary socialism.

Class struggle in advanced capitalist societies was born out of a condition whereby the production was social but appropriation of profit was private. The underlying structural reason giving rise to such a condition was private ownership of means of production. The working classes did not have any stake in private property and with intensification of class struggle, worked towards abolishment of private property and socialization of means of production. All these ideas Marx and Engles discussed in- what became the program of the Communist League amongst workers in England and Belgium- the Communist Manifesto.

The socialization of ownership and regulation of means of production as the historic goal before the proletariat could be achieved only by a revolutionary seizure of political power by the latter. Therefore the inevitable end of class struggle in capitalist societies was establishment of dictatorship of the proletariat, which was a pre-requisite for transition into a communist society. Intensification of class struggle results in initiation of a political movement by the proletariat class against the exploitation and alienation inherent in capitalist system. The proletariats as a class, finds origin in the capitalist system itself. Global capitalism brings together large number of workers for its production and exchange units. It is the mass of workers organized as the industrial armies that develops a common understanding of its source of exploitation, as also its strength, transforming thereby into a class-for-itself, armed with a revolutionary consciousness and organization to struggle for end of capitalist exploitation. Moreover, owing to advanced technology and communications within capitalism, workers are able to establish better contacts with each other, and unionize various local struggles into a national movement. Therefore, the working class as the historical class to take forward the agenda of socialist transformation owes its origin to capitalist industrialization based on advanced technology, modern forces of production, and a complex division of labor. Therefore, it is only in advanced capitalist countries, with development of modern forces of production, that the revolutionary class of proletariats is born. With intensification of class contradiction within such societies, the proletariats as a class strives to end systemic inequality rooted within capitalism.

3. Bourgeois Democratic Revolution as Prerequisite to Proletarian Class Struggle

According to Marxist understandings, it is the class struggle waged by the capitalists that sees first ever mobilization of the working classes. The bourgeois middle classes, in their struggle to break the feudal order to achieve certain political ends for themselves, mobilize the working classes to bring about revolutions to democratize society. The result of such bourgeois democratic revolutions is the break-down of feudal order, dawn of liberal constitutionalism based on codification of individual rights and establishment of a centralized modern state in place of monarchical rule. In other words, the demise of all pre-existing forms of social relations and political forms that are hindrances for capitalism to develop is ensured by bourgeois revolutions, for which purpose the petty bourgeois class mobilizes the working classes as well. With the institution of capitalist mode of production that follows bourgeois revolutions, the political agenda of the democratic petty bourgeois comes to an end. The new social order begins to get organized around two main classes, that is, the capitalists and the proletariats, and with each passing day, contradiction between the two classes increases more and more resulting in further alienation, exploitation and misery for the proletariats. Within a bourgeois system, the limited reprise available to the workers is in form of certain state-initiated reform and welfare measures that claim to ensure better working conditions for the proletariats. The workers are entitled a right to collective bargaining through which they can demand better economic and social status, in terms of better wages and social security measures. However, the bourgeois framework does not address the structural inequality of the capitalist system that sustains on keeping the working classes in a subordinated position. According to the ideology of class struggle, the proletariat class is responsible to make the democratic revolution permanent, that is, to organize themselves for a wider struggle to abolish private property, going beyond its immediate economic demands for better wages and working conditions, to strive to achieve its political end which is revolutionary overthrow of capitalism. Such radicalization of revolution by the proletariat class entails two things: first, each and every reform measure introduced by the bourgeois democrats must be linked with the wider political agenda of the working classes to attack private property, and second, the working classes, during the extended course of lass struggle, must brace themselves to exercise political power. Class struggle waged by the working classes requires that workers organize independently through councils and clubs, and train themselves in mass agitation and public propaganda, in order to bring out their revolutionary position and program in the public domain.

Exploitation of the working classes within capitalism is linked to production of surplus. In other words, the rate of profit accumulation for the capitalist is directly proportional to the rate of exploitation of the proletariat class. The global capitalist economy works through abstract concepts that conceal the aspect of direct exploitation of labor which is the source of all value or profit for the capitalist. Law of value, rate of profit, production and exchange mechanisms, market etc are some abstract concepts that are supposed to constitute the economic sphere of society. The fundamental aspect of exploitation of social labor within capitalism is a political issue: the capitalist class is able to extort surplus value from the working classes only because it owns the means of production. At the surface level, bourgeois political economy upholds the freedom of each individual, including a worker. Among crucial individual rights are included the right to enter into contracts freely and freedom to sell labor in exchange for an equal amount of wages. Therefore, within the capitalist system, the worker is ‘free’ in this crucial sense, especially in comparison with bonded or slave labor within feudalism. However, as pointed out by the Marxists, labor within capitalism is ‘free’ also in another sense, that is, a characteristic feature of capitalist social order is a disunity between the direct producer and the means of production. This implies that a worker has nothing but his labor to sell to a capitalist in order to make sustenance. The worker, on being hired by the capitalist for a certain work, does not sell a particular amount of labor for a fixed amount of time; rather, the capitalist buys the worker’s capacity to labor, that is, his labor-power, which then translates into profit for the former.

The bourgeois political economy manages to depoliticize the question of exploitation of workers within capitalism by restricting it to the sphere of economy. The ideology of liberal democratic rights especially that of freedom to enter into valid contracts and right to property, serve to separate the organization of capitalist production from the sphere of organized violence. This essentially means that the sphere of production is sanitized from any traces of physical or extra-economic violence to extort profit out of the worker. The truth of the statement cannot be denied, however, it also effectively obscures the level of exploitation of labor built into the way production process is organized within capitalism, whereby on one hand the worker produces surplus for the capitalist, and on the other, reproduces conditions of his own exploitation. The separation of the level of economy from that of politics is a characteristic feature of bourgeois society dominated by capitalism.

The separation between the elements of the ‘political’ and ‘economy’ as one of the trademark features of a bourgeois order has implications for the nature of capitalist state. The state as the sphere of the ‘public’, representing general interests of society, as against the civil society or the private sphere of the individual where private interests reign supreme- such a view according to Marx is a mystification promoted by the bourgeois social order. Such a view serves to delink man’s political identity from his concrete material reality, the latter being the determinant factor behind man’s social existence. Therefore as per Marx’s critique of liberal bourgeois order, the state as the neutral negotiator between conflicting interests within civil society, ends up mystifying the essential nature of the capitalist state, this is defined by its primary function as the protector of private property. State as the pure realm of politics is born out of the same class contradictions in society which it seeks to resolve in the first place. In this sense, the neutral position of the state in a capitalist society is a myth.

4. Nature of State in Capitalism: the Primary View

Marx’s analysis of the phenomenon of state within capitalist society also proceeds by a critique of the Hegelian position on nature of state. The narrative of Marx’s life and philosophy, as it took shape, is said to be marked by a sort of break, which represents Marx’s metamorphosis into a communist. The time-period of the break is said be around 1844, after which Marx’s detachment from Hegelian influence became more pronounced and his transformation into a hardcore materialist was complete. In ‘young’ Marx, the influence of Hegelian thought was most visible, and the question of state and its relation to society preoccupied most of his earlier works. By 1844, Marx came out with the much-celebrated Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts and Critiques of Hegelian Philosophy of Right. With works like these, Marx’s views about the nature of capitalist state underwent huge transformation and rested on a thorough critique of Hegelian thought. It is to be kept in mind that Marx never gave a systematic theory of the state; his conclusions on the nature of state within capitalism are by nature of derivations from his works like On the Jewish Question, The Class Struggles in France, The Civil War in France, and the 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte.

In his earlier works, Marx endorsed Hegel’s view of the state as the custodian of general interests of society. Law was an embodiment of true freedom and represented rationality of man. Hegel viewed the state as the highest ethical moment, in which the conflicts of the civil society, and those between state and civil society, met their resolution. Therefore, the state represented society’s ultimate reality. Earlier writings of Marx bear a Hegelian imprint in that Marx looked at the institution of the state as reflecting the moral and political freedom of man. Even when Marx talked about the contradictory nature of the state’s actual behavior, it was seen as a digression from the true essence and purpose of the state. This early position on the state was slowly transformed into one where Marx grew increasingly critical of the abstract way in which Hegel dealt with the state and its institutions, detached from concrete material reality. The state was determined by the actual concrete circumstances it functioned in, and this led Marx to conclude that the functions of the state represented nothing else but concrete human actions. Therefore, the ‘essence’ of state was that determined by concrete material context, and in a society where a sense of profit and accumulation dominated, the state became a mediating force in the existing affairs of the social order, with the primary function of protecting the private interests of the bourgeois class.

The modern state born out of bourgeois democratic reforms is lauded by Marx as being the ‘perfect’ state because it embodies freedom from feudal control and intrusions. The liberal democratic representative state is a symbol of political freedom or emancipation, as Marx wrote in The Holy Family in 1844. However, he also maintained that political emancipation was different from human emancipation, the latter being possible to attain only by abolishing private property and eliminating class inequality in society. The bourgeois state was a mere tool, a kind of ‘political superstition’, as Marx called it, to foster stable conditions for unrestricted growth of private property. In other words, the modern bourgeois state was based on a sense of emancipated slavery, that is, it was bound by rules of private property. Therefore the dominant or primary view of the state within Marxist-Leninist thought is that the state is reflective of dominant economic relations within society, and in a capitalist society, the state represents the interests of the bourgeoisie. It acts to protect and promote private property; in the words of Marx as he puts it in the Communist Manifesto, “The executive of the modern state is but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie” constituting political power that is “merely the organized power of class for oppressing another.” Marx’s work is important in that it puts stress on the historical process of coming into being of the modern state; the universality accorded to the modern form of state is challenged in works of Marx. Therefore the historical phenomenon of the modern state will come to end with the end of class society. With the dissolution of class contradiction within society, the state with its origin in such contradiction also comes to an end. Class struggle led by the proletariats results in the constitution of dictatorship of the proletariat, that is, the acquisition of political power by the working classes, which is an essential condition for bringing about communism. Dictatorship of the proletariat represents rule by the working classes, the majority in society. However, this rule by the majority is different from the modern-day representative democracies which, very paradoxically, draw legitimacy from the notion of sovereignty of the people. Marx accepts that the democratic representative state is the most advanced form of political institution. But at the same time, it is inflicted with a class bias. The political rule of the working class en route to communist society, by contrast, symbolizes a classless society, where inequity fostered by private property is abolished. Rule of private property can be annihilated only when the working classes acquire for themselves, the ownership of means of production.

There have been contending positions within Marxism whether the Paris Commune of 1871 can be seen as a historical example of the dictatorship of the proletariat. The workers in Paris reacted strongly to the German occupation, following defeat of France in Franco-Prussian war in 1971 and organized peaceful resistance against it with the effect that the German soldiers failed to occupy a major portion of the city. Workers of the city with popular support constituted the Paris commune, a council composed of workers and soldiers on March 26, 1871. Subsequent interpretations contend that Marx never thought Paris Commune to qualify as the dictatorship of the proletariat, because the latter could result only after a national socialist revolution. However, owing to its pro-workers reforms, the Paris commune was lauded by Marx, more so because unlike any other previous revolution or upheaval, it was distinctly anti-statist in its politics. The Paris commune did not seek to reform or transform the state, but to abolish it.

5. Relative Autonomy of the State: the Secondary View

In Marx’s works, we find recognition of the fact that in certain historical periods or cases, the state exercises a relative autonomy from dominance of any one social class or classes. It might very well be the case that it is only a certain faction within the ruling class that controls the state; or that the state is run not by the economically dominant class. Internal differentiation or competition between different factions within ruling class makes the state relatively autonomous from being dictated by any specific class, and this might even result in the state taking certain progressive measures in the interest of the working classes. According to Marx, in historical situations of relative autonomy of the state, the essential nature of the state as the class instrument of the bourgeoisie is not altered, though it may seem otherwise.

Marx elaborates on certain historical forms of the state, which owing to numerous factors, gained autonomy from being dominated by interests of one particular class. The first is the case of the Bonapartist state, which finds exposition in Marx’s The 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte (1852). The Bonapartist state represented despotic rule of one individual, and was seemingly free from hegemony of any one class. The Bonapartist state represented all social classes alike, be it small peasantry, the middle classes or the bourgeoisie and yet its actions remained unaffected by the interests of any one of them. Marx maintains that though the Bonapartist state claimed to represent the entire society, yet it strengthened the existing social relations; even if the certain interests of the small peasantry were attended to, it was done without challenging the overall framework of bourgeois social order. The relative autonomy of the Bonapartist state grew from the fact that neither of the classes, the bourgeoisie or the working class, was in a position to exercise dominance. However, the political independence of the Bonapartist state does not mean it no longer represents the status quo, that is, the interests of the socially and economically dominant class. Marx’s views on the Bonapartist state and its relative autonomy had been corroborated by Engles, who, in The Origins of Family, Private Property and the State, adds that in certain historical periods the conflicting classes balance each other out, according a moment of relative independence to the state. The second instance which Marx talks about is the historical phenomenon of Asiatic societies, like India and China, and even Russia, which he designates as a semi-Asiatic state. In Marx’s scheme, Asiatic mode of production is one of the successive stages in the onward march of history. Asiatic mode of production is one characterized by lack of private property in land. The feudal social orders of Asiatic societies lack objective conditions for bourgeois democratic revolution and therefore are inherently backward. There exists communal possession of property under the tutelage of the state as the superior landlord. The low level of civilization and the consequent primitiveness of the social order necessitate constant interference of the state which is the ultimate sovereign in such societies.

6. Conclusion

The ideology of class struggle as the driving force behind the development of history has been subjected to several criticism. While Marx’s own analysis was based on study of advanced industrial societies like England, France and Germany, its assumed universal applicability to all histories- Western and non-Western alike- is much doubted. The unilinear development of capitalism and its supposed potential to revolutionize society has been problematized by several critics. It is contended that the history of development of global capital has been an uneven process; in all histories and contexts, capitalism has failed to oust feudal or pre-capitalist forms and institutions. In several countries, the narrative of capital has fostered conditions of co-existence of both so-called development and underdevelopment. Such conditions do not see the concretization of classes in the classical sense. The experiences of colonized countries bespeak of such contexts where capitalist expansion has taken place on the condition of survival or retention of pre-existing relations of production. Therefore, to understand development of societies like India, we must pay attention to the mediating role played by factors like caste, religion, ethnicity etc in giving a particular shape to process of evolution of capitalism herein. All these factors have an impending impact on the way working class develops in the specific historical context of India. It is also to be noticed that the proletariat as the modular class, does not exist in several historical contexts, including that of India. Decolonization of the nation in 1947 saw development of capitalism through initiatives of the newly independent state. Scholars mention how the ruling bloc within the new nation was composed of not only a relatively weak bourgeoisie, but also the rural landowning classes. Therefore, the classical bourgeois-led democratic revolution did not take place in the Indian context as per Marxist projections, and what was seen instead, was a ‘passive revolution’ of capital. This entailed that the pre-existing relations of production and social classes were retained in hegemonic positions within the ruling bloc. The question is to probe the implications of such specific developments on the classical theorization of working

Further Reading

Karl Marx. Economic and Philosophical Mauscripts of 1844. Courier Corporation, 2012
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. 2002. The Communist Manifesto, 1848. Delhi: Penguin
Gerald Allan Cohen. 2000. Karl Marx’s Theory of History: A Defense. Oxford: OUP
Ellen Meiksins Wood. 2007. Democracy Against Capitalism, Renewing Historical Materialism. Delhi: Aakar Books.
Terrell Carver (ed.) 1991. The Cambridge Companion to Marx. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Ralph Miliband. 1993. Marx and the State, Subrata Mukherjee and Sushila Ramaswamy (eds) Great Western Political Thinkers, 11. New Delhi: Deep and Deep Publications.
Ralph Miliband. 1983. State Power and Class Interests, New Left Review, 138: 57-68
Nicos Poulantzas. 1973. The Problem of Capitalist State, in Robin Blackburn (ed.) Ideology in Social Science: Reading in Critical Social Theory, New York: Vintage Books.
Bob Jessop. 1982. The Capitalist State: Marxist Theories and Methods. Oxford: Martin Robertson
Sudipta Kaviraj. 1988. A Critique of Passive Revolution, Economic and Political Weekly, 2429-2444
Shlomo Avineri. 1969. Karl Marx on Colonialism and Modernization, The Economics of.
Hamza Alavi. 1972. The State in Post-colonial Societies: Pakistan and Bangladesh, New Left Review, 74/1: 59-81