Marx and class

I have prepared this article to interpret some findings and facts in socialist literature by carefully reading and analyzing the notes expressed regarding these realities. At a time when Turkey and all of humanity are in dire need of collectivism, it is the duty of all of us who stand with labor to generate thought on these issues.

Ludwig Feuerbach directed significant criticisms at the Hegelian system. He had dealt it a nearly devastating blow. Friedrich Engels says: “The spell was broken; the [Hegelian] system was shattered and cast aside... Everyone was of one mind: we were all Feuerbachians. How enthusiastically Marx greeted the new conception and how much he was influenced by it, in spite of all critical reservations, one may read in ‘The Holy Family’.”

In 1843, the treatment of capitalist society on the basis of classes was not yet in question. However, an important step had been taken in this direction; the Hegelian view of the state, religion, and the intellectual world as a whole as a result or stage of the contradictory progress of the spirit had been made a subject of criticism.

Marx’s general approach to the relationship between human and society shows that he treats classes as active subjects conditioned by historical material relations. In this respect, for Marx, individuals and classes are not a flat reflection of material relations, but, as Marx insistently emphasized in his critique of Feuerbach, they are subjects with the power and potential to change these material conditions. And this possibility itself brings the working class onto the stage of history as the sole revolutionary subject due to the development of productive forces and, at the same time, its exploitation.

For the materialist analysis of history and the understanding of the role of production relations and fundamental classes in the shaping of social formation, the maturation of specific historical conditions was again necessary. Of course, before modern capitalism, philosophers and historians had pointed to the division within society, and some even noted that this division emerged during the process of producing social wealth. However, it was not possible for them to do this with its philosophical and economic foundations. The level of historical social relations was as influential in this as the level of development of theoretical thought.

However, capitalist society, in a sense, cast off the political and personal veil of the societies that preceded it. The conversion of everything in social life into a market commodity at once, and the rapid transformation of all kinds of products into objects of trade, showed the effectiveness of capitalist relations in society more clearly. Marx and Engels expressed this in the Communist Manifesto as follows:

“The bourgeoisie, wherever it has got the upper hand, has put an end to all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations. It has pitilessly torn asunder the motley feudal ties that bound man to his ‘natural superiors,’ and has left remaining no other nexus between man and man than naked self-interest, than callous ‘cash payment.’ It has drowned the most heavenly ecstasies of religious fervor, of chivalrous enthusiasm, of philistine sentimentalism, in the icy water of egotistical calculation. It has resolved personal worth into exchange value, and in place of the numberless indefeasible chartered freedoms, has set up that single, unconscionable freedom — Free Trade. In one word, for exploitation, veiled by religious and political illusions, it has substituted naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation.”

With the personal domination and violence of the lord, the serf’s personal dependence on the land and the lord came to an end; buying and selling relations in the market began to determine the life of the laborer. He must sell his labor in the capitalist market. If he does not do this, he will not be able to purchase the consumer goods necessary to sustain his life. A new mass of the working class had emerged, free from direct personal dependence but facing the “naked” threat of economic relations.

From the beginning of the 19th century, the early period of capitalism, defined as “savage” capitalism, changed all social relations, habits, and traditions. Along with slavery, which was the character of dependence on land and the feudal lord, “security” also disappeared. For this reason, in the late 18th century and a significant part of the 19th century, it was a clear fact for both those who opposed it and those who accepted it as normal that workers without any security were subject to unemployment, low wages, homelessness, and intense exploitation. Marx and Engels, relying on official sources and observations to an extent not done until then, closely monitored the working and living conditions of the working class under capitalist exploitation. 19th-century literature also frequently dealt with the hunger, poverty, unemployment, and the painful and striking consequences of the working class having no security. In philosophy and other social science fields, the working class and its struggles were taken into account in one way or another; various political proposals and approaches were developed, either in its favor or to suppress it.

One of the main agendas of the powerful anti-feudal wave in the French Revolution was the confiscation of the property of the aristocrats and their punishment. Therefore, just as the existence of the landowning class was indisputable, the demand for their elimination was equally clear. At the beginning of the 19th century, a large propertyless mass had emerged to work in the service of the capitalist class, which was increasingly strengthening and seizing or sharing power. While a part of this class, which had nothing to sell but its labor power, was working in practice, a part was deprived of this ‘fortune’.

There was a clear common acceptance among different thinkers regarding the existence of classes. The social perception of the period had also generally brought this differentiation into consciousness, as the lifestyle, standards, and spaces of these classes were established on the basis of direct contradictions. However, for now, this was limited to the ‘class-in-itself’ consciousness that merely accepted the existence of classes.

For example, for Adam Smith, who is considered the founder of modern political economy, social classes are quite clear: “...the whole of the annual produce of the land and labour of every country, or what comes to the same thing, the whole price of that annual produce, naturally divides itself into three parts; the rent of land, the wages of labour, and the profits of stock; and constitutes a revenue to three different orders of people; to those who live by rent, to those who live by wages, and to those who live by profit.”

For another important name in bourgeois political economy, David Ricardo: “The produce of the earth—all that is derived from its surface by the united application of labour, machinery, and capital, is divided among three classes of the community; namely, the proprietor of the land, the owner of the stock or capital necessary for its cultivation, and the labourers by whose industry it is cultivated.”

As Marx clearly stated in a letter to Weydemeyer, the “honor of discovering” the existence of classes in modern society or the struggle between them did not belong to him. Bourgeois historians had described the historical development of this class struggle, and bourgeois economists had described the economic anatomy of classes to a certain extent. Marx’s contribution, in his own words, is as follows:

“What I did that was new was to prove:

“1. That the existence of classes is only bound up with particular historical phases in the development of production.

“2. That the class struggle necessarily leads to the dictatorship of the proletariat. Despite so much experience, it has not been clarified what kind of dictatorship this will be. The fact that socialism cannot exist without democracy has also clearly emerged. Humanity has seen with many examples that the dictatorship of the working class does not function without a socialist state of law and without a socialist democracy. It is seen that there is a need for new socialist institutions such as limitations and clear rules to be brought to the property issue with a socialist constitution, independent courts, and independent audit institutions.

“3. That this dictatorship itself only constitutes the transition to the abolition of all classes and to a classless society.” Socialist democracy and the socialist state of law will already bring the working class to a much different situation than its current one. The social order that will emerge with the working class receiving the reward for its labor will already prepare the environment for the creation of a society without privileges and classes.

The existence of classes depends on specific historical and social stages. These relations create classes. A class is not formed according to one’s own whim. The fact that one is active in inherited historical conditions is the shaping of classes in interaction with these conditions. According to the historical materialist approach, classes emerged as a result of specific historical conditions and will disappear again with the development of specific historical conditions. This will not happen spontaneously, but through the class struggle of the working class as an active subject, by changing the production relations in which it finds itself and which it has inherited.