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p The concept of class struggle is a matter of great controversy JL in the contemporary world. Never before has this elementary concept of Marxism been the object of such a sustained discussion and debate.

p Perhaps this is to be expected given the turn of events in the 1980s, namley, the ascendancy of right wing regimes in the advanced capitalist countries and the nearly concurrent collapse of socialist societies in the Soviet Union ad Eastern Europe.

p Nevertheless, this ’retreat from class’, that is entirely fashionable among some progressive and socialists caught many unawares.

p Why it did is at once interesting and worthy of discussion, but beyond the scope of this article. Suffice it to say that at other turning points in world history a similar pattern has been evident with some notable personalities in the socialist and communist movement bidding farewell and taking up the cudgel of anti-Marxism.

p At the centre of this current controversy is not whether the forms of class struggle should be modified in light of changing conditions. Nearly everyone agrees that this is always obligatory. After all, we live in a dynamic and changing world. And in recent decades, we have observed some unforeseen and quite dramatic turns in the historical process.

p What is at issue is the very relevance of the concept of class struggle to the modern world.

p Of course, this would not be the first attempt to turn the class 293 struggle into a vestigial structure or relic of a bygone era. And just as earlier efforts fell on their face, a similar fate awaits this newest assault. For life’ as Lenin was fond of saying, "will assert itself”. And in so doing, will provide fresh evidence of the vitality of the class struggle.

p Class and class straggle were foundational concepts of Marx’s theorectical and practical work. Now as well as then these concepts help to illuminate the inner, multilayered texture of societies and how they change. They have lost none of their analytic power.

p No less important, they also are weapons of struggle. Class concepts impart a militant revolutionary character and outlook to the working class movement. What eventuated in the Soviet Union in recent years, to mention the most prominent example, demonstrates tellingly and tragically the dangers associated with a classless approach to politics.

p Notwithstanding the claims of bourgeois ideologies, class concepts are not self-enclosed, unbending, and abstract but rather open ended, pliant and concrete. They are not imposed on society, but reflect the real relationships in society, They are not transitional, but are historically specific.

This may be self evident, but it deserves repeating because many of the present day critics turn Marx’s class categories into caricatures of themselves, far removed from his coneptual understanding and application of them.

The Main Features of the Class Struggle

p The class struggle is the overarching feature of capitalist society. It expressed the inevitabe conflict, antagonism, and tension between the two main classes of capitalist society. It is the mainspring of social transformations.

p The class struggle is not episodic, intermittent, and occasional, but a permanent feature of capitalist society. It is grafted on the social, economic and political landscape, but rather reflects the intrinsic antagonisms embedded in the class structure.

p It operates on the surface as well as in the inner recesses of society. It conditions, without subsuming, other struggles. Indeed, other struggles react back on the class struggle.

p This indubitably is not the image of capitalist society conjured 294 up and promoted by capitalism’s well paid image makers. They like us to believe that the class struggle is an invention or a remnant of a bygone era. Even the language of class conflict, these unabashed apologists would like to evict from everyday disourse. They say that the use of the words ’class struggle’ is not only an unaffordable luxury in view of US capitalism’s competitive struggle on a global scale, but also the grounds for antagonizing sectors of the population. Cooperation, not conflict must be labor’s compelling imperative.

p But this conflicts with reality. The class struggle is not the invention of Communists or anyone else. Communists ’merely express the relations springing from an existing class struggle going on before our eyes’ (Marx and Engels, Communist Manifesto).

p Nor do allusions to the class realities of capitalism alienate potential supporters. The fact is that millions of white collar workers, technicians, professional people, etc., subjected to exploitation and oppression, increasingly respond to class concepts and rely on working class methods of struggle—strike, marches, demonstrations—to maintain their standard of living as well as their professional standards. In real sense, these new sectors of working people are coming to think and act in class ways which is exactly what Marx and Engels foresaw.

p Finally, the clas struggle is hardly on the wane. In fact, the class struggle has intensified on both sides of the class over the past decade. And the new administration in the White House does not alter this in any fundamental sense.

p Gus Hall, National Chair of the Communist Party, USA, made this cogent observation recently:

p “Despite a new occupant in the White House and many new faces in Congress, it would be naive to think that the class struggle is going or even receding. There have been no such signals coming from either the White House or Wall Street. As long a there is exploitation, the class struggle is here to stay.”

p “The monopoly corporations, for example, have no intentions of giving up their drive for maximum corporate profits. They are intensifying their attack on the living standards and working conditions of the working class. Their game plan for the 1990s is much like their game plan of the 1980s—more permanent layoffs, 295 cutting wages and benefits, speedup, and contracting out to low wage suppliers. "Lean and Mean" and downsizing continue to be the day to day policy of big business.”

The coming contract negotiations in mass production industries should dispel any notion that the class strggle is moving to the back burner, that the big corporations have ’changed their spots.’ The monopoly coporations, like General Motors, are saying that everything the auto workers have won over the past six decades is up for grabs. Other corportations negotiating contracts this year have a similar approach.”

Capitalism and the Class Struggle

p The class struggle isnot peculiar to capitalism. Slave and feudal societies were marked by sharp class conflicts as well. As Marx and Engels observed in the opening lines of the Communist Manifesto, "The history of all hitherto existing societies is the history of class struggle.”

p The class struggle under capitalism, however, does have some features which distinguish it from slave and feudal societies, its class structure, its forms of class struggle and organization, and its conditions of exploitation and oppression, for example, are different.

p So how do we explain this?

p Obviously, the material fact of exploitation cannot account for it. After all, the dominant classes in each of these societies appropriated the surplus labor of the primary producers which is essence of exploitation and, in turn, the motive force of the class struggle. Thus, we have to look elsewhere for an answer.

p According to Marx, the answer is to be found in the way in which surplus labor is extracted from the primary producers in the labor process. What do we find when we compare capitalist society with slave and feudal societies?

p First, the direct producers under capitalism, through an historical process of primitive accumulation, are forcibly separated from the means of labour and production and thus transformed into a propertyless class with nothing but their labor power at their disposal.

p Stripped of any claim over the means of production, these 296 propertyiess workers sell their labor power, that is, their ability to work, as a commodity on the labor market. There it is bought by the oweners of the means of production. The workers then set the meansof production into motion and produce commodities, which the owners appropriate by virtue of their ownership rights and then sell on the market for private profit.

p In its outward form, the transaction between the worker and the capitalist appears to be an exchange of equivalents—wages for labor power. But what appears on the surface as an exchange of equivalent is nothing of the sort.

p In the course of the work day, the worker creates value in excess of the wage which he or she receives from the capitalist owner. Thus only a portion of the work day is paid which is more or les equal to what is necessary for the worker’s survival, for the worker’s survival, for the worker’s social reproduction. The other portion is unpaid and the value created isappropriated by the capitalist in the form of surplus value. The wage form (could be hourly, daily, or weekly), therefore, conceals the exploitative nature of capitalism in so far as it gives the appearance that a worker’s wages are more less equal to full value of his or her labor. In orther words, labor power isappropriated by capital "without equal exchange, without equivalent, but with the appearance, of equal exchange.” (Grundrisse, P. 449)

p This contrasts with the form of appropriation of surplus labor in slave and feudal societies. In these societies, the exploitation of the primary producers by the dominant is open and unconcealed.

p No wage form, no market mechanism masks the unequal nature of the transaction between producers and non-producers in precapitalist societies. Contrasting wage labor in capitalist society with labor in pre-capitalist societies, Marx made the following observation:

p “The wage form thus extinguishes every trace of the division of the working-day into necessary labour. All labour appears as paid labour. In the course, the labor of the worker for himself, and his compulsory labor for his lord, differ in space and time in the clearest possible way. In slave-labor, even that part of the working-day in which the slave is only replacing the value of his own means of existence, appears as labour for his master. All the slave’s labour appears as unpaid labor, in wage-labour on the contrary, even 297 surplus-labor appears as unpaid, appears as paid. There the property-relation conceals the labour of the slave for hiself; here the money relation conceals the unrequitted (unpaid) labour of the wage-labourer>” (Capital Vol. 1, P. 540-541)

p Secondly, the wage worker is not bound to a particular capitalist He or she is formally free. The political and juridical contraints which bound serf and slave to their lord or master are not operative with respect to the wage worker. But there is a hitch. Having no access to the means of production, the worker either sells his or her labor power or starves. The worker, therefore, is subjected to economic pressure, if not coercion.

p The appropriation of surplus labor in precapitalist societies, on the other hand, rested primarily on extra-econmic coercion, on force, on political domination. The chattel slave and self were not free. They were bound to their master and/or land. Aristotle described the slave in Andent Greek society as an ’inanimate tool’.Finally, the woker under capitalism finds himself or herself locked into a dynamic system of production, its aim is to accumulate capital, to maximize profits. The production circuit is—Money (M)-Commodity-Money(M) with M being more than M. Otherwise there would be no purpose to the production circuit. This gives capitalism an inherently self-expanding character which is further reinforced by the competitive pressures which also are internal to the system. By contrast, modes of production anterior to capitalism are essentially conservative. Commodity production is not yet generalized in precapitalist societies, but rather confined to a limited number of goods. Production is largely for use in precapitalist societies. The production circuit, as Marx pointed out in Volume I of Capital, is the inverse of capitalist society: Commodity - Money - Commodity.

p Capitalism, therefore, has an internal tendency to "constantly revolutionizing the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society”. In fact, Marx and Engels said that the capitalist class "cannot exist without more or less constant technical changes iri the production apparatus.” (Communist Manifesto) Individual productive units are forced by the law of competition to organize production in the most efficient way and adopt the most advanced forms of productive technique. Either that or they fall by Ithe wayside which many businesses do.

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p Not only does this bring about the rapid growth of the productive forces, acclerate the centralization and concentration of capital, and result in the extraction of surplus labor or upaid labor at a rate and on a scale never together a class whose interests are incompatible, irreconcilable, and antagonistic to those of the exploiting capitalist class.

p “Of all classes that stand face to face with the bourgeosie today”, wrote Marx and Engels, "the proletariat alone is the really revolutionary class. The other classes decay and disappear in the face of modern industry: the proletariat is its special and essential product.” (Communist Manifesto)

p Thus, we can say from the foregoing that mode of extraction of surplus labour in capitalist society determines the development of "new classes, new conditions of oppression, new forms of struggle.. "(Marx and Engles, Communist Manifesto) Years later, and after exhastinve study, Marx enlarged on this idea. Speaking of the mode of extraction of surplus value and its consequent effects on capitalist society (and all class divided societies for that matter) he wrote:

“The specific economic form in which unpaid surplus labor is pumped out oi the direct producers determine the relationship between those who dominate and those who are in subjection, as it grows directly out of production itself and reacts upon it as a determining element in its turn. Upon this, however, is founded the entire orgnization of the economic community which grows up out of the production-relations themselves, and thereby at the same time its specific political form. It is always the direct relationship of the owners of the conditions of production to the immediate producers—a relation always naturally corresponding to a definite stage in the development of the nature and the method of labour and consequently of its social productivity—which reveals the innermost secret, the hidden foundation of the entire social structure and therefore also of the political form of the relations of the sovereignty and dependence, in short, the corresponding specific form of the state. This does not prevent the same economic basis— the .same as far as its main conditions are concerned—owing to innumerable different empirical circumstances, natural environment, variations and gradation of aspect which can be grasped only by analysis of the empirically given circumstances.” (Marx, Capital, Volume III, p. 791)

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Other Aspects of the Class Struggle

p The class struggle while having its origins in the production is not exclusively confined to the point of production. It is relfected in .one form or another and to one degree or another in every sphere of life. If we look hard enough, the interest of opposing class will be observed habitating in place that are seemingly above class, that appear to be class neutral.

p Furthermore, these spheres are not separated one from the other, instead they interpenetrate. The ideological struggle, for example, is encased in every crevice of social life, it does not trail along behind the economic factor atsome remote distance, (E.P. Thompson, Poverty of Theory) and that is particularly true to bourgeois ideology which has at its disposal a ramified, flexible and sophisticated ideological apparatus, plus the weight of tradition behind it.

p What is less evident, at least in its fully developed form, is working class ideology.

p Thus a critical task of the more advanced workers in the course of struggle is to bring to the fore capitalism’s inner essence, to lay bare the Tudden foundation’. For this reason, Lenin placed special emphasis on the class struggle in the political and ideological spheres with the struggle for political power being the highest form of class confrontation. In "What is to be done”, he vigorously argued that the working class cannot confine itself to the economic struggle whileconcedingleadership to liberals and social demorats in the ideological and political struggle.

p Some might interpret mis to mean that the economic arena of struggle should be abandoned for higher tasks. Nothing could be further from the truth. Owing to the systemic nature of the economic crisis and the readiness of millions to think and act in new ways, it is imperative to organize mllions around the economic issues. But for that to happen the working class and its allies must see the class roots of the crisis, come forward in a mass and militant way in the political arena, and bring their own advanced demands to bear on the crisis.

p To do less is what Lenin called economism. To be more specific, economism narrows the sights and the flood of activity of’Hie exploited and oppressed. It relies an spontaneity. And in today’s 300 Emacs-File-stamp: "/home/ysverdlov/leninist.biz/en/1993/CWSVM387/20071216/387.tx" conditions that would not only ensure that the economic conditions of tens of millions would worsen, but also inhibit the new positive trends which have been developing in the labor movement over the past decade. Nevertheless, there is a section of the labor leadership who are moving in this direction, including a number of union leaders who played a positive role in the struggle against Reagon and Bush in the 1980s. Plainly, a new emphasis on the rank and file in the labor movement is needed.

p The class struggle is closely connected to the struggle for democracy, while each has its own dynamic, the two are interwoven in a number of ways. First of all, the drive to maximize corporate profits is the source of class oppression as well as the cause of the restriction of democratic rights. Second, the working class cannot achieve its class aims without allies nor can the democratic movement expand and deepen democracy without the working class. What other social force in society has the social and econmjc power to confront the big corporations directly? Finally democracy is inextricably linked to the abolition of exploitation and socialism requires complete democracy.

p Lenin said it, this way:

p “A social Democrat must never for a moment forget that the proletariat will inevitably have to wage a class struggle for socialism even against the most democratic and republican borgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie. This is beyond doubt Hence, the absolute necessity of separate, independent; strictly class party of SocialDemocracy,.... However, it would be ridiculous and reactionary to deduce from this that we must forget, ignore, or neglect tasks which, although transient and temporary, are vital at the present time.” (Lenin, Two Tasks of Social Democracy)

p Thus, to bypass the democratic struggle in the name of the class struggle is a prescription for defeat. Conversely, to separate the struggles for democracy from the class struggle is a profound mistake for which a high price will inevitably be paid.

p In this connection, special importance attaches to the struggle against racism and for full equality of the racially and nationality oppressed. Because of the historical and present day development developments of the United States, the two are tied one to the other. The fight against racism and for full equality is at the heart of the struggle for class unity; by the same token, the struggle for class 301 unity opens up new vistas in the struggle for full equality and against racism. Accordingly, the struggle for the class, wide concerns of the multi-racial, multi-national working class has to be closely bound up with the specific struggle for the special demands of racially and nationally oppressed people as whole. Herein lies the basis of unity of the victims of class and racial oppression.

p Nevertheless, there are those who counterpose the class struggle against racism and for equality and vice versa. This kind of counterposing of problems serves the interests of capitalism and imperialism whose guiding principle is "divide and rule”. It also runs against the grain of Marxism-Leninism.

p Writing at around the time of the Civil War, Marx made this profound observation:

p “In the United States of America, every independent movement of the workers was paralyzed so long as slavery dish’gurd a part of the Republic, Labor cannot emancipate itself in the white skin where it in the black is branded.” (Marx, Capital, Vol. I)

p This formulation is as relevant today as it was then to the United States, but also to South Africa, in fact to all countries and globally to the struggle against the imperialist countries and globally to the struggle against the imperialist countries.

p Marx binds alliance together or, expressed differently, dialectically connects the struggle for the complete eradication of racism and chauvinism irrevocably to the class struggle, the self-interests of workers of all races and nationalities.

p While the alliance of working class and the racially and nationally oppressed has proved in life to be strategic to the realization of the class and democratic advance, it should be added that such unity is no better than a foundation of social progress. As the 1992 elections revealed, a broad and diverse front is necessary to curb the power and eventually eliminate the transnational corporations which dominate economic and political life.

p In a different context, but with a similar objective of amassirig together a broad front, Lenin observed:

“To imagine that social revolutions is congnisable Without revolts by the small nations in the colonies and in Europe; wimbut revolutionary ou tbrust by a section of the petty bourgeoisie with all of the prejudice, without a movement of the politically non- 302 conscious proletarian and semi-proletarian masses against oppression by the landowners, the church, and the monarchy, against national oppression, etc. to imagine all this is to repudiate social revolution. So one army lines up in one place and another, somewhere else, says We are for socialism:, and soemwhere else says, "We are for imperialism”, and that will be a social revolution... Whoever expects a ‘pure’ social revolution will never live to see i t. Such a person pays lip service to revolution without understanding what revolution is.” (Lenin, The Discussion on Self-Determination Summed Up, P. 485)

Advance and Retreat

p The class struggle passes through various stages. But these stages are not neatly demarcated one from the other. Nor is there any universal pattern governing the transition from one stage to another stage which all must follow for "History as a whole and the history of revolutions in particular is always far richer in content, more varied, more multiform, more lively and ingenious than is imagined by even the best parties, the most class conscious vanguards of the most advanced classes.” (Lenin, Left Wing Communism—An Infantile Disorder)

p Nor is the class struggle necessarily a smooth, uninterrupted process free of setbacks.

p While changes in the relative strength of the contending classes is a constant feature of the class struggle, at certain moments qualitative shifts occur in one direction or another, in favor of one cotending class or another.

p A key task of a revolutionary working class party is to discern these shifts and their concrete features before they are full blown and to make necessary adjustments in tactics—demands, slogans* forms of organization and so forth. To do this, a revolutionary working class party must be rooted among the working people and sense their mood.

p Another the class struggle urges forward at certain moments, there are also moments when the working class finds itself on the defensive and experiences setbacks, sometimes strategic ones. The destruction of the left in the labor moment during the 1950s which was, in the last analysis, the chief aim of Ma Carthism, falls into this category.

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p Thus, knowing how to retreat and at what moment is as essential to a revolutionary working class party as understanding how to advance. Both require a sober estiamate of the balance of class foress at any given moment.

p Of equal importance is the ability to differentiate between longer term trends and momentary shits in the class struggle. To mistake one for the other can result in major tactical blunders which, in turn, can set in train strategic setbacks for the working class.

Finally, leaping over stages can also bring unnecessary setback for the working class movement. Mao’s Great Leap Forward is an instance in which stages of development were ignored and an economically backward country attempted to construct communism in the absence of the economic and political prerequisites. This was voluntarist and ultimately slowed down the process of socialist construction for decades.

The International Class Struggle

p The struggle between the main contending class is international in scope. It is not confined to one or a few countries. Its dimensions are and have been since its infancy-worldwide. Nearly 150 years ago, Marx and Engels remarked:

p ’The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the whole globe. It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connection everywhere.” (Communist Manifesto)

p And as it does, it brings ever fresh continents into network of capitalist explotation thus enlarging the ranks of the working class. Presently, the new level of globalization of economic life has accelerated prosesses. The dominance of transnational corporations banks over the giobal economy, frowing inter imperialist rivalry as manifested in the formation of economic blocs, and a new international; division of labor which increasingly leaves entire nations and regions outside the mainstream of economic life impresses on the international working class the imperative need to forge new bonds of solidarity and unity. But for that to happen concrete forms and practial actions are mandatory. General dogans and appeals won’t do it.

p Anything short of that allows imperialism to continue to set 304 worker against worker and nation agaist nation in capital’s predatory struggle for higher and higher profits. Here too the formation a broad and varied anti-imperialist front with the working class in the center is on the agenda.

p Thus, restraint and collaboration are ony sensible course of action for the nation’s working people. Set aside your bold and imaginative plans. This is no time for ’storming heaven’. Join the team, adopt to the logic and requirments of the global economy. And all will be the best in the best of all classless worlds.

p As dubious as these propositions are, they still find their echoes in the progressive and left movement. To be sure, the motivation is usually genuine and the arguments are constructed somewhat differently. Without being exhaustive* a few are worth mentioning.

p Some, for example, say that is necessary to find a substitute for strikes which, it is said, are less and less winnable, while long strikes are doomed to defeat the recent struggle of the Greyhound bus drivers after a tgree year strike in which they won all of their demands give lie to this assertion. To be sure, it is more diffficult to win strike struggles, but this should not be a reason to scale down labors sights, but cause to fight for hew and ever wider forms of solidarity, for higher level of class consciousnes, for unflinching resolve and determination. Far from disappearing, the class struggle is moving to a higher stage.

p Other say class instersts should be subsumed and subordinate to universal human interest. But life shows that universal human interests can finally prevail only by the elimination of the system of cpitalist exploitation for private profit; in other words, by the victory of the system of capitalist exploitation for private profit; in other words, by the victory of the class struggle of all who labor. There is a conflect between universal human interests and the class struggle only if the former is used to obscure and expunge the latter. There is an alliance between the two when the primacy of the class struggle is recognized as crucial to the realization and eventual triumph of universal human interests.

And still others argue that the socialist movement, historiclly associated with the working class, no longer has a specific class identity. Instead it is constituted by a broad array of social movements and intesests in which the working class and the labour movementarebutone component. If it confers a porivileged status 305 on any grouping it is on intellectuals. Unlike the working class which is easy prey to the twin vices of opportuninsm and reformism, intellectuals and other non-working class strata are less apt to be moved by narrow class and crude material interests. Rather rational appeals and discourses are their bread and butter. In a sense, anyone who has soiled hands, wears a blue collar, performs routinized work, or experience economic hardship does not comprise the natural constituency for socialism. But the end results of this line of thinking is the same as the other tworthe working class is reduced to a minor player, the foundations of the socialist movementare dissociated from class and class conditions, and by implication, very little is determined by the all embracing logic.

Capitalism and its relations of production

p Such views gave in to the mystifications and modifications of capitalist ideologues, not to mention reflecting a detachment from the class struggle and working class life in any felt sense. Contemporary capitalist society is not less, but more determined by the imperatives of its accumulation process. It is by no means a harmless apparition. Its logic penetrates and shapes every area of life. Nor is the class struggle receding, but rather exercising a greater weight and influence on world development. And the international working class is not a bit player, but ever more so, the only social force capable of ’storming heaven’.

p In any case, these new ideological trends have to be combated, but partisans of the working class can be confident that we are on solid ground. The new developmens in the capitalist countries and, tragic as it is, the disaster that overtook the socialist countries the relevancy of the doctrine of the class struggle. Both experiences show how unrelenting are the imperialists in fighting to preserve their private profit system and the struggles which inevitably issue from that fact.

p The class struggle is alive and well. It is being fought in the former Soviet Union, in all the former socialist countries, pn all continents and in all countries.

p Now more than ever before, Marxism-Leninism is necessary. It is grounded in life and the struggle of the working class and people.

Now more than ever: "Workers of the World and all Oppressed People Unite”.