To: "Activists and scholars in Marxist tradition" Subject: [Marxism] two questions on Marx

[Dieter Elken]

1. "Why did Marx rely on a definition of the proletariat as factory workers?"

 

Marx did not define the proletariat as the class of factory workers: 

 

He defined capitalist classes in regard to relations of property. The bourgeosie is the class of owners of the means of production, the rentiers as the owners of land and the proletariat as those without owning means of production, owning nothing else than their force of labour and therefore being forced to sell it. See Engels footnote to the English edition of the Manifesto of the Communist Party from 1888.

 

Marx and Engels thus gave a sociological definition of  the proletariat, including the young, blue and white collar workers, unemployed, pensioners etc. All are dependent on the market for wage earners and the ability of active workers to fight for appropriate wages and appropriate social conditions regulating the market. 

 

Robert Wood is right if he insists that the industrial proletariat is still the most significant part of the working class. But it has to be noted that the proletariat is a class which developes with capitalism, it changes its structure, its composition, its qualifications etc. To insist on old secondary definitions which were more or less appropriate during the life times of Marx an Engels and define the proletariat as being THE class of factory workers would be neither consistent with Marx' method nor with reality. 

 

2. Marx and Engels did not deduce the revolutionary role of the working class (proletariat) from its role of  being the most productive and by far most central agent of production and capitalist accumulation as such. The revolutionary mission is deduced from the fact that the development of capitalism with inevitability would lead to a situation where most human beings will be proletarians. Therefore a situation will be created which would be characterized by the quantitative domination of a class which has the POTENTIAL and objective INTEREST to free itself and with itself mankind by abolishing capitalist relations. Marx and Engels analysed the ongoing class struggle and saw the potential to organize the proletariat within these struggles to turn the proletariat into a united force, being able to realize its situation and act consciously to overcome its exploitation und oppression - even if capitalism would not have completed its role as destructor of all precapitalist social institutions. They thought that even "normal" capitalist conditions would foster class struggles. During their lifetime they expected the facory workers to lead the revoltuion.



3. Slavery did not have the potential to develope into the dominant mode of production as soon as capitalist relations became dominant. Only the accumulation of capital demanded an ongoing modernization and development of productive fordces which would eliminate precapitalist modes of production by means of market competition and military means. Even if productive in niches of social production - slavery could not coexist with a capitalist market forever, which had the need for "free" wage workers. On the other hand the interest of slaves was to become "free". They revolted against their chains but were able to become free of slavery without abolishing oppression at all.  



Greetings

Dieter Elken

Strausberg/Germany