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CHAPTER 4 predictions to be made about the future development of capitalism: in the words of the Communist Manifesto ([1848] 1967), ‘The history of all hitherto existing societies is the history of class struggle.’ Classes, rather than individuals, parties or other movements, are the chief agents of historical change. Crucially, Marx believed that the relationship between classes is one of irreconcilable antagonism, the subordinate class being necessarily and systematically exploited by the ‘ruling class’ . This he explained by reference to the idea of ‘surplus value’ . Capitalism’s quest for profit can only be satisfied through the extraction of surplus value from its workers, by paying them less than the value their labour generates. Economic exploitation is therefore an essential feature of the capitalist mode of production, and it operates regardless of the meanness or generosity of particular employers. Marx was concerned not only to highlight the inherent instability of capitalism, based on irreconcilable class conflict, but also to analyse the nature of capitalist development. In particular, he drew attention to its tendency to experience deepening economic crises. These stemmed, in the main, from cyclical crises of overproduction, plunging the economy into stagnation and bringing unemployment and immiseration to the working class. Each crisis would be more severe than the last, because, Marx calculated, in the long term the rate of profit would fall. This would eventually, and inevitably, produce conditions in which the proletariat, the vast majority of society, would rise up in revolution. Politics Marx’s most important prediction was that capitalism was destined to be overthrown by a proletarian revolution. This would be not merely a political revolution that would
remove the governing elite or overthrow the state machine, but a social revolution that would establish a new mode of production and culminate in the achievement of full communism. Such a revolution, he anticipated, would occur in the most mature capitalist countries – for example, Germany, Belgium, France or the UK – where the forces of production had expanded to their limit within the constraints of the capitalist system. Nevertheless, revolution would not simply be determined by objective conditions alone. The subjective element would be supplied by a ‘class- conscious’ proletariat, meaning that revolution would occur when both objective and subjective conditions were ‘ripe’. As class antagonisms intensified, the proletariat would recognize the fact of its own exploitation and become a revolutionary force: a class for-itself and not merely a class in-itself. In this sense, revolution would be a spontaneous act, carried out by a proletarian class that would, in effect, lead or guide itself. The initial target of this revolution was to be the bourgeois state. The state, in this view, is an instrument of oppression wielded by the economically dominant class. However, Marx recognized that there could be no immediate transition from capitalism to communism. A transitional ‘socialist’ stage of development would last as long as class antagonisms persisted.This would be characterized by what Marx called the dictatorship of the proletariat . The purpose of this proletarian state was to safeguard the gains of the revolution by preventing counter-revolution carried out by the dispossessed bourgeoisie. However, as class antagonisms began to fade
Ruling class: A Marxist term denoting the class that owns the means of production, and so wields economic and political power. Surplus value: A Marxist term denoting the value that is extracted from the labour of the proletariat by the mechanism of capitalist exploitation. Social revolution: A qualitative change in the structure of society; for Marxists a social revolution involves a change in the mode of production and the system of ownership. Dictatorship of the proletariat: A Marxist term denoting the transitional phase between the collapse of capitalism and the establishment of full communism, characterized by the establishment of a proletarian state.
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