Unit 12: Karl Marx: Class Struggle and Social Change and Theory of Surplus Value

Notes
Unit 12: Karl Marx: Class Struggle and
Social Change and Theory of Surplus Value

CONTENTS
Objectives
Introduction
12.1 Class Struggle and Social Change
12.2 Analysis of Capitalism
12.3 Assessment of Marx’s Predictions
12.4 Analysis of the State
12.5 Dictatorship of the Proletariat
12.6 Revisionism, Russian Revolution and Dictatorship of the Proletariat
12.7 Inadequacies in the Marxist Theory of the State
12.8 Women and the Gender Question
12.9 The Asiatic Mode of Production
12.10 Views on India
12.11 Theory of Surplus Value
12.12 Summary
12.13 Key-Words
12.14 Review Questions
12.15 Further Readings

Objectives
After studying this unit Students will be able to
• Discuss Marx’s class struggle ans social.
• Understand Assessment of Marx predictions.
• Explain theory of surplus value.

Introduction
Which remained unpublished until the 1930s. In the Manuscripts, Marx outlined a humanist
conception of communism, influenced by the philosophy of Ludwig Feuerbach and based on a
contrast between the alienated nature of labour under capitalism and a communist society in
which human beings freely developed their nature in cooperative production. It was also in Paris
that Marx developed his lifelong partnership with Friedrich Engels (1820–1895).
Karl Marx was born and educated in Prussia, where he fell under the influence of Ludwig Feuerbach
and other radical Hegelians. Although he shared Hegel’s belief in dialectical structure and historical
inevitability. Marx held that the foundations of reality lay in the material base of economics rather
than in the abstract thought of idealistic philosophy. He earned a doctorate at Jena in 1841 writing
on the materialism and atheism of Greek atomists, then moved to Koln, where he founded and
edited a radical newspaper, Rheinische Zeitung. Although he also attempted to earn a living as a
journalist in Paris Brussels, Marx’s participation in unpopular political movements made it difficult
to support his growing family. He finally settled in London in 1849, where he lived in poverty

LOVELY PROFESSIONAL UNIVERSITY 213

Western Political Thought

Notes while studying and developing his economic and political theories. Above all else, Marx believed
that philosophy ought to be employed in practice to change the world. The core of Marx’s economic
analysis found erly expression in the Okonomisch-philosophische Manuskripte aus dem Jahre
1844 (Economic and Political Manuscripts of 1844) (1844). There, Marx argued that the conditions
of modern industrial societies invariably result in the estrangement (or alienation) of workers
from their own labour. In his review of a Bruno Baier book, On the Jewish Question (1844), Marx
decried the lingering influence of religion over politics and proposed a revolutionary re-structuring
of European society. Much later, Marx undertook a systematic explanation of his economic theories
in Das Kapital (Capital) (1867–95) and theory of surplus (1862). Marx and his colleague Friendrich
Engels issued the Manifest der kommunistischen Partei (Communist Manifesto) (1848) in the explicit
hope of precipitating social revolution. This work describes the class struggle between proletariat
and bourgeoisie, distinguishes communism from other socialist movements, proposes a list of specific
social reforms, and urges all workers to unite in revolution against existing regimes.
In 1844 Marx wrote Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts. In this work he developed his ideas on
the concept of alienation. Marx identified three kinds of alienation in capitalist society. First, the
worker is alienated from what he produces. Second, the worker is alienated from himself; only
when he is not working does he feel truly himself. Finally, in capitalist society people are alienated
from each other; that is, in a competitive society people are set against other people. Marx believed
the solution to this problem was communism as this would enable the fulfilmentof “his potentialities
as a humna.”
Marx’s concept of alienation is based on his analysis of alienated labour. Through political economy,
he sees that the worker is degraded to the most miserable commodity, i.e., the misery of the
workers increases with the power and size of their production. Marx depicts political economy as
the following:
The workers becomes poorer the more wealth he produces and the more his production increases
inpower and extent. The worker becomes an ever cheaper commodity the more goods he creates.
The devaluation of the human world increases in direct relation with the increase in value of the
world of things. Labour does not only create goods; it also produces itself and the worker as a
commodity and indeed in the same proportion as it produces goods.

12.1 Class Struggle and Social Change

Marx articulated the idea of human liberation distinct from political emancipation. The aim of
human liberation was to bring forth the collective, generic character of human life which was real,
so that society would have to assume a collective character and coincide with the life of the state.
This would be possible if individuals were freed from religion and private property. The proletariat,
by being the universal class in chains, would liberate itself and human society. Relations of
production in reality were class relations. Class antagonisms were crucial to the workings of all
societies, as Marx observed that, “the history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class
struggles”.
In every society there were two classes, the rich and the poor, one that owned the means of
production, and the other that sold its labour. During different historical phases, these two classes
were known by different names and enjoyed different legal statuses and privileges, but one thing
was common, that in the course of all these phases, their relationship had been one of exploitation
and domination. Marx wrote: “Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guild-
master and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one
another”.
Marx objected to the idea of the middle-class historians that class struggle had ended with the rise
of the bourgeoisie, just as he opposed the perceptions of the Classical economists that capitalism

214 LOVELY PROFESSIONAL UNIVERSITY

 Unit 12: Karl Marx: Class Struggle and Social Change and Theory of Surplus Value

was eternal and immutable. He harnessed the rising consciousness and power among the industrial Notes
proletariat, and emphasized that it was their desire to bring about economic equality that kept
class struggle and revolutionary change alive. He summed up his own contributions to the notion
of class struggle in a letter to Josef Weydemeyer in 1852, wherein he confidently declared that
class struggles would not be a permanent feature of society, but were necessitated by the historical
development of production. Class struggle would end with the destruction of capitalism, for
Communism would be a classless society.
Class, for Marx, symbolized collective unity in the same manner as the nation in Hegel’s theory.
Each class produced its own ideas and beliefs, and operated within a particular economic and
social system. The individual was important with respect to his membership within a class, which
determined his moral convictions, aesthetic preferences and every kind of reasoning.
For Marx, ideology played a pivotal role in controlling the oppressed. There were three main
features of ideas. First, they depicted the existing order as entrenched in forces that were beyond
human control. Things were not arbitrary, but instituted by certain sections of people for their
own benefit. Second, ideas explained how the existing order benefited everyone in society. Third,
ideas depicted the existing order as beneficial in a particular way, namely to promote the interests
of the dominant economic class and protect class privileges. The actual reality was hidden, which
Marx described as “false consciousness”.
The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas : i.e., the class which
is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force.
The class which has the means of material production at its disposal, has control at the
same time over the means of mental production, so that thereby, generally speaking,
the ideas of those who lack the means of mental production are subject to it. The ruling
ideas are nothing more than the ideal expression of the dominant material relationships,
the dominant material relationships grasped as ideas; hence of the relationship which
make the one class the ruling one, therefore the ideas of its dominance.
Ideology, along with economic determinism and class struggle, provided the strategic guide to the
working class in its efforts to bring about a social revolution.

12.2 Analysis of Capitalism

Marx defined capitalism by two factors, first, by the use of wage labour. In the Capital, he pointed
out that “capitalism arises only when the owners of the means of production and subsistence meet
in the market with the free labourer selling his labour power”. The basis of capitalism was wage
labour. The second defining characteristic of capitalism was private ownership of the means of
production, which was distinct from personal property, like household effects and home. The
ownership of the means of production was the crucial feature of capitalism, for it was restricted to
a few. Those who did not own anything were forced to sell their labour power and became wage
earners. The idea that labour was only the property of the poor was derived from William Cobbett
(1763-1835). Unlike the medieval guildsmen, they did not work for themselves but for others.
Marx observed :
The man who possesses no other property than his labour power must, in all conditions
of society and culture, be the slave of other men, who have made themselves the
owners of the material conditions of labour. He can work only with their permission,
hence live only with their permission .
In the Critique of the Gotha Programme (1875), Marx implied that even if the state owned the means
of production, wage labour would still continue. This was not real Socialism, but a new variation
of capitalism, namely state capitalism. Many critics often argued that the former Soviet Union was
not a true Socialist state, but a tyrannous form of state capitalism.

LOVELY PROFESSIONAL UNIVERSITY 215

Western Political Thought

Notes In the Communist Manifesto (1848), Marx paid handsome tributes to the bourgeoisie, while
highlighting its negative side. There were three reasons that made capitalism attractive. First, it
brought remarkable economic progress by revolutionizing the means of production and developing
technology as never before. It built and encouraged the growth of commerce and factories on a
scale unknown before. It instituted cooperative social production. Writing about the role of the
bourgeoisie, Marx observed :
The bourgeoisie, during its rule of scarce one hundred years, has created more massive
and more colossal productive force than have all preceding generations together.
Subjections of Nature’s force to man, machinery, application of chemistry to industry
and agriculture, steam-navigation, railways, electric telegraphs, clearing of whole
continents for cultivation, canalization of rivers, whole populations conjured out of
the ground— what earlier century had even a presentiment that such productive
forces slumbered in the lap of social labour ?
It had accomplished wonders far surpassing Egyptian pyramids, Roman aqueducts
and Gothic cathedrals; it has conducted expeditions that put in the shade all former
exoduses of nations and crusades.
By the very range and extent of its activity, capitalism made its second contribution. It undermined
national barriers. In its search for markets and raw materials, capitalism and the bourgeoisie
crossed national boundaries and penetrated every corner of the world, drawing the most backward
nations into their fold. Capitalism was cosmopolitan and international.
Being worldwide, the third achievement of capitalism was within its territorial confines. It
eliminated the distinction between the town and country, and enabled the peasants to come out of
what Marx called “the idiocy of rural life”. In summation, capitalism revolutionized the techniques
of economic production, reduced international barriers and created an urban civilization. In spite
of these achievements, Marx contended that capitalism had outlived its use because of the sufferings
and hardships it caused. It would have to yield itself to a new socialist organization of production.
Marx examined the sufferings within capitalism, which were rooted in its origin: the eviction of
peasants from their land, the loss of their sources of income, their vagabondage, their assembling
in cities where they had become dependent on starvation wages, and, most significantly, the
creation of the proletariat.
The historical movement which changes the producers into wage-workers appears, on
the one hand, as their emancipation from serfdom and from the fetters of the guilds,
and this side alone exists for our bourgeois historians. But, on the other hand, these
new freemen became sellers of themselves only after they had been robbed of all their
own means of production, and of all the guarantees of existence afforded by the old
feudal arrangements. And the history of this, their expropriation, is written in the
annals of mankind in letters of blood and fire.
The suffering required for the creation of the free-wage labourer was the first cost of capitalism.
The exploitation of the proletariat could be measured with the help of surplus value—the difference
between the wages paid to the labourer, and the final price for which the product was sold. The
rate of profit indicated the degree of exploitation. The capitalist squeezed the working class like a
sponge to extract the last drop of profit. Exploitation, therefore, was the second disadvantage of
capitalism.
The third was the alienation of the worker. To Marx, labour had to be satisfying and fulfilling,
which was not possible under capitalism. The reason was the lack of control the worker had over
the productive process. The worker had no voice to decide when, how and where to work, but
merely obeyed the boss’ commands. Division of labour and specialization of skills had made the
worker a specialist, preventing the full development of all his talents, thereby stifling his potential.

216 LOVELY PROFESSIONAL UNIVERSITY

 Unit 12: Karl Marx: Class Struggle and Social Change and Theory of Surplus Value

A labourer had no control over the final product of his labour. The nature of the productive Notes
process divided workers and set them against one another; they no longer conceived of their work
as a great, collective, human project. Moreover, human beings lost the ability to see their own
products for what they were, and were willing to be enslaved by them. This was what Marx meant
by commodity fetishism. All this criticism rested on an implicit Utopian premise, that individuals
were fully human only when they developed and expressed their potential through satisfying
labour. Linked with this premise was the second remarkable assumption, that the modern industrial
system afforded opportunities for all to engage in rewarding labour. In the socialist Utopia, division
of labour would be abolished ending alienation and monotony.
The early Liberals were confident that economic inequality could be obviated with constant growth,
which would percolate downwards and raise the standards of living. Marx, however, pointed out
that the gulf between the rich and poor forever widened. Capitalism encouraged inequality and
consumerism. Commodities assumed personalities of their own. Poverty and affluence were relative
categories, for human needs were by and large social in nature.
A house may be large or small; as long as the surrounding houses are equally small it
satisfies all social demands for a dwelling. But let a palace arise beside the little house,
and it shrinks from a little house to a hut... however high it may shoot up in the course
of civilization, if the neighbouring palace grows to an equal or even greater extent, the
occupant of the relatively small house will feel more and more uncomfortable,
dissatisfied and cramped within its four walls.
To Marx, exploitation and alienation made possible the revolutionary transformation of capitalism.
It was the individual as a producer who rebelled against society to free himself from exploitation
and oppression. The basis for change was therefore moral. Unless private property was abolished,
the worker could not be truly free. But once this was achieved, human nature would undergo a
transformation, for a true Communist society was one of socialized humanity.
Capitalism divided society into two hostile camps. The proletariat grew larger and larger, with
their miseries and pauperization attenuated, while the bourgeoisie would become numerically
small, prosperous and well-off. With wages pushed low, small entrepreneurs were forced to join
the working class or merge with giant monopolies. The ever-increasing appetite of the capitalist
class led to an ever-increasing demand for markets, raw materials and profits, representing a
crisis within capitalism. Marx argued that the increase in productivity did not benefit the worker,
who only received exchange, and not use value. The surplus value was appropriated by the capitalist.
With polarization of society, class struggles became sharper, making a revolution on a world scale
inevitable. Marx conceived of a worldwide transformation, for capitalism was truly international
and global in impact.
Marx asserted that capitalism contained within itself seeds of its own destruction. He rallied the
working class under the call “Workers of all countries unite”, a phrase that he borrowed from Karl
Schapper. Within capitalism, increase in monopolies led to growing exploitation, misery and
pauperization of the working class. Simultaneously, as the working class increased in number, it
became better organized and acquired greater bargaining skills. This initiated a revolutionary
process, leading to a new socialist arrangement in which common possession replaced private
ownership of the means of production. The clarion call given to the workers was to unite, shed
their chains and conquer the world. In fact, it was “Marx’s journalistic eye for the short, pithy
sentence which ... saved his entire philosophy from oblivion ...”.
Subsequently, in 1895 Engels questioned the efficacy of revolutionary insurrection of society by
the proletariat, for he observed that “history has proved us, and all who thought like us, wrong ...
has also completely transformed the conditions under which the proletariat has to fight. The mode
of struggle of 1848 is today obsolete in every respect”. This observation by Engels set the tone for
Revisionism led by Eduard Bernstein (1850-1932) (Elliot 1967).

LOVELY PROFESSIONAL UNIVERSITY 217

Western Political Thought

Notes 12.3 Assessment of Marx’s Predictions

Marx’s analysis of capitalism led him to predict the following :
1. The income gap between the capitalists and the workers would increase. More and more
independent producers would be forced down into the proletariat, leaving a few rich capitalists
and a mass of poor workers.
2. Workers’ wages, with short-lived expectations, would remain at a subsistence level.
3. The rate of profit would fall.
4. Capitalism would collapse because of its internal contradictions.
5. Proletarian revolutions would occur in the most industrially advanced countries.
Many (nearly all) of these predictions, did not come true as Marx failed to take into account the
changes within capitalism. He did not anticipate or comprehend its tremendous resilience. By the
late nineteenth century, capitalism stabilized itself. Historical developments did not validate many
of Marx’s observations, which became increasingly obsolete in the twentieth century. Besides
these, there was a basic error in the model which was that he failed to take cognizance of the fact
that “a hatred of capitalism need not lead to socialism” (as it could) “take other political directions”.
The operationalization of democracy, extensive social security cover and labour welfare laws had
improved the working conditions and the position of the working class. “The proletarian class no
longer exists in its previous stage. Workers have rights in developed countries, they are proprietors”.
In the 1890s, Bernstein rightly perceived that many of the Marxist predictions became obsolete. He
pointed out that the peasantry and the middle classes were not disappearing. Small business
organizations did not get eliminated, and the industrial working class was not becoming the
overwhelming majority of the population. Instead, the substantial portion of the population was
neither bourgeois nor proletarian. Rather, the middle class was on the increase. Among the members
of the working class, the rapid growth in membership and votes for social democratic parties did
not necessarily indicate any desire for Socialism. The workers voted and joined social democrats
for many reasons other than purely a commitment for Socialism. Bernstein also questioned the
capacity of the working class to assume control of the means of production.
Taking a cue from Webb, who had pointed out that the poor performance of the cooperative was
because of its democratic character on the one hand, and the need for functional differentiation
and hierarchy of authority on the other hand, Bernstein asserted the impossibility of the idea of
the manager being “the employee of those he manages, that he should be dependent for his
position on their favour and their bad temper”. Based on these observations, Bernstein pointed to
the lack of revolutionary ardour among the workers. Instead of analyzing the economic and
political implications of Revisionism, Vladimir Illyich Ulyanov Lenin (1870-1924) reiterated and
supported the Marxist critique of capitalism, which had lost its relevance by the end of the nineteenth
century, and more so by the beginning of the twentieth.
It would be tempting to denigrate the degeneration of the Marxist doctrine because the revolution
that Marx predicted occurred in a relatively backward country in Europe, with no prior tradition
of democracy. But it was equally true that there were no possibilities of a real Marxist revolution
in any of the advanced industrial democratic regions of Europe. “Marx’s economics has been
characterized as a reaction to the specific evils of the nineteenth century of capitalism”.

12.4 Analysis of the State

Marx critically dissected the Hegelian theory of the modern state and its institutions in his Critique
of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right (1843). Hegel’s separation o f civil society and the state was only
relevant in his perception of a particular historical context. The state was not eternal. It would
eventually disappear. Marx was also critical of Hegel’s analysis of the state. The state was not, as

218 LOVELY PROFESSIONAL UNIVERSITY

 Unit 12: Karl Marx: Class Struggle and Social Change and Theory of Surplus Value

Hegel described, a “march of God on earth”, but an instrument of the dominant economic class Notes
exploiting and oppressing the other sections of society. Marx rejected the dichotomy between civil
society and the state in Hegelian philosophy, and concluded that the state and bureaucracy did
not represent universal interests.
Marx regarded the state, regardless of the forms of government, as an evil, because it was a
product of a society saddled with irreconcilable class struggles. It belonged to the realm of the
superstructure, as it was conditioned and determined by its economic base. In the course of
history, each mode of production would give rise to its own specific political organization, which
would further the interests of the economically dominant class. In a capitalist society, the state, as
defined in the Manifesto, was “the executive committee of the bourgeoisie”.
Unlike Hegel, who had worked out the details of a modern state by his distinction of the realm of
the state and the realm of civil society, Marx’s account was sketchy. This was in spite of Marx’s
professed aim to provide for an alternative to the Hegelian paradigm as outlined in his Critique of
Hegel’s Philosophy of Right. The alternative that Marx envisaged was a classless, stateless society of
true democracy and full communism, in which the political state disappeared.
For Marx and Engels, the state expressed human alienation. It was an instrument of class exploitation
and class oppression, for the economically dominant class exploited and oppressed the economically
weaker class. The state apparatus served the ruling class, but acquired independence and became
autonomous when the adversary classes were in a state of temporary equilibrium. This phenomenon
was described as Bonapartism. In such a situation, the dictator, with the support of the state
apparatus, became its guardian.
In the Anti Duhring (1878), Engels regarded the state as an unnatural institution arising when
society was divided into “two irreconcilable and antagonistic classes”. In such a situation, a state
could not be democratic, for a true democratic society would have to be both classless and stateless. The
instruments of the state, like law, government, police and bureaucracy, served the interests of the
dominant economic class, and not the whole of society as contended by the liberals.
Bonapartism
In the Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte (1852), Marx denounced the bureaucratic and all-
powerful state advising the proletariat to destroy it. His views on the state were determined
largely by his perceptions and analyses of the French state, the Revolution of 1848 and the coup
d’etat of Napoleon III. As a result, Marx advocated a violent revolutionary seizure of power and
the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat. However, in countries with democratic
institutions, the transition from capitalism to socialism could be peaceful. In 1872, Marx noted
such a possibility in America, England and Holland, where the state was not as highly centralized
and bureaucratic as in France.
In the Eighteenth Brumaire, Marx and Engels referred to Bonapartism as a regime in a capitalist
society in which the executive branch of the state, under the rule of one individual, attained
dictatorial power over all other parts of the state and society. Bonapartism was an extreme
manifestation of what, in recent Marxist writings, was described as relative autonomy of the state.
An example of such a regime during Marx’s lifetime was that of Louis Bonaparte, the nephew of
Napoleon I, who became Napoleon III after his coup d’etat of December 2, 1851. Engels found a
parallel with Bismarck’s rule in Germany.
Bonapartism was the result of a situation where the ruling class in capitalist society was no longer
in a position to maintain its rule through constitutional and parliamentary means. Neither was the
working class able to wrest control for itself. It was a situation of temporary equilibrium between
the rival warring classes. In the Civil War in France (1871), Marx described Bonapartism as a “form
of government possible at a time when the bourgeoisie had already lost, and the working class
had not yet acquired, the faculty of ruling the nation”.

LOVELY PROFESSIONAL UNIVERSITY 219

Western Political Thought

Notes In the Origins of the Family, Private Property and the State (1884), Engels remarked that the state was
generally a tool of the ruling class, but there were exceptional times when the warring classes
balanced one another, giving it sufficient independence. The independence of a Bonapartist state,
and its role as the “ostensible mediator” between the rival classes did not mean that the state was
in a position of suspended animation. The Bonapartist state, in reality, ensured the safety and
stability of bourgeois society, guaranteeing its rapid development.
In opposition to the German Federalists, in 1848 Marx and Engels contended that a strong centre
was a prerequisite of all modern states.
They criticized the Frankfurt Assembly for not creating a sufficiently strong central government,
and, conversely, praised the Jacobins during the French Revolution for overriding the powers of
the elected local authorities and establishing a centralized administration. Subsequently, Lenin
pointed out that the essential difference between the Marxists and the Anarchists was on the
question of centralism.
Both Marx and Engels had mixed feelings about parliamentary institutions. Whether the proletarian
revolution would be violent or peaceful would depend on the level and maturity of democratic
political institutions, but they were categorical that it would be democratic by virtue of being
majoritarian. In the light of the severe restrictions on suffrage in their times, they had qualms
about whether parliamentary means could act as instruments, or even as catalysts, for profound
social and economic changes. Hence, the Manifesto stressed the need to introduce democratic
institutions once the proletarian revolution was accomplished. The preliminary draft contended
that the revolution would “inaugurate a democratic constitution and thereby directly or indirectly
the political rule of the proletariat”.

Future Society
For Marx and Engels, Communist society eliminated all forms of alienation for the human
individual, from nature, from society and from humanity. It did not merely mean consumer
satisfaction, but the abolition of all forms of estrangement, the liberation of human forces and
enhancement of personal creativity. The institution of private property and division of labour,
identified as the source of alienation, would be destroyed as a prerequisite for the new and truly
human phase in history. Marx and Engels viewed the proletariat as an agent, and not as a tool in
history, and with the liberation of the proletariat came the liberation of society.
The transitional phase, the phase between the destruction of the bourgeois state and the inauguration
of a communist society, symbolized by the dictatorship of the proletariat, generated a great deal of
controversy in Marxist political theory. Interestingly, one of the well-known Utopias was the least
delineated. Marx’s cautious predictions were imposed by his own epistemological premises. Any
discussion of the future (which was not yet an existing reality) would smack of philosophical
idealism for it would amount to the description of an object that existed only in the consciousness
of the thinking subject. Moreover, he did not want to rival those Socialists whom he branded as
“utopian”, by constructing detailed blueprints for a communist society that would be determined
by the specific conditions under which it was established.
The crucial fact was that observations on future society were set forth in cautious tones “as a
posthumous analysis of the passing of the bourgeois world”. Communism, for Marx, “can never
be an ideal to which reality must adjust. It is reality that comes into being”. This was evident in
the’ Critique of the Gotha Programme. “What we have to deal with here is communist society not as
it has developed on its foundations, but on the contrary just as it emerges from capitalist society”.
In the Civil War in France, similar sentiments were stated. “The working class has no ideals to
realize but to set free the elements of the new society with which the old bourgeois society itself is
pregnant”.

220 LOVELY PROFESSIONAL UNIVERSITY

 Unit 12: Karl Marx: Class Struggle and Social Change and Theory of Surplus Value

There were similar observations in the German Ideology and the Paris Manuscripts (1844). Marx Notes
projected an image of future society from the internal tensions of existing capitalist society, implying
that, at the outset, Communist society would be perfect, universalizing those elements of bourgeois
society that could be universalized.

12.5 Dictatorship of the Proletariat

The controversial and ambiguous concept of the dictatorship of the proletariat emerged in the
writings of Marx and Engels as a result of a debate with the German Social Democrats, the
Anarchists, and more significantly, from the practical experience of the Paris Commune of 1871.
These observations had to be put together from the remarks solely made en passant and from
different sources. The two major texts, however, were the Civil War in France and the Critique of the
Gotha Programme.
The concept of the dictatorship of the proletariat held the key to the understanding of Marx’s
theory on the nature of Communist society and the role of the proletarian state. It was a concept
that divided the Marxists and Leninists from the Anarchists on the one hand, and the Social
Democrats on the other.

The Communist Manifesto

The phrase “dictatorship of the proletariat” was not used in the Manifesto. Nor was there any
mention of the complete elimination of state power and the state machinery. Marx and Engels
spoke about the “political rule of the proletariat”, advising the workers to capture the state,
destroy all privileges of the old class, and prepare for the eventual disappearance of the state.
We have seen above that the first step in the revolution by the working class is to raise the
proletariat to the position of the ruling class, to win the battle of democracy ... . The proletariat will
use its political supremacy to wrest, by degrees, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralize all
instruments of production in the hands of the state, i.e., of the proletariat organized as the ruling
class; and to increase the total of productive forees as rapidly as possible.
Marx and Engels were convinced that existing states, whether as instruments of class
domination and oppression, or rule by bureaucratic parasites on the whole of society, would
grow inherently strong and remain minority states representing the interests of the small,
dominant and powerful possessing class. It was only when the proletarian majority seized
the state structure that the state became truly democratic and majoritarian. Whatever might
be the form the state assumed, it was powerful and the proletariat would have to contend
with while making its revolution. In the later part of his life, Marx was convinced of the
imperative need to destroy the state and establish the dictatorship of the proletariat. In the
initial stages, bearing in mind the example of the French Revolution of 1789, he anticipated
a seizure of the existing state machine by the revolutionary proletariat for he believed that
political centralization would assist the revolutionary process.
The initial “capture” thesis of the state, however, yielded to the “smash” thesis subsequently.
The former viewpoint was articulated in the Manifesto, where the existing state structure
would be used for revolutionizing the mode of production. The “smash” thesis was
articulated in response to the experience of the Parisian Communards, as evident in the
Civil War in France and the Critique of the Gotha Programme. In a book review written around
1848— 1849, Marx observed that the destruction of the state had only one implication for
the Communists, namely the cessation of an organized power of one class for the suppression
of another class.
In the Manifesto, Marx described the nature of Communist society as one in which the classes and
its antagonisms would have disappeared. The bourgeois society would be replaced by “an

LOVELY PROFESSIONAL UNIVERSITY 221

Western Political Thought

Notes association, in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of
all”. For the purpose of socializing the means of production, a list of 10 measures was outlined,
which would vary from country to country, but which were essential prerequisites for a Communist
society. These ten measures were as follows.
1. Abolition of landed property and application of all rents of land for public purposes.
2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax, and abolition of all rights of inheritance.
3. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.
4. Centralization of credit in the hands of the state.
5. Centralization of the means of transport in the hands of the state.
6. Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the state.
7. Equal liability of all to labour.
8. Combination of agriculture and industry.
9. Gradual abolition of the distinction between town and country.
10. Free education for all children in public schools.
Beyond this, Marx did not delve into the transitional phase. Interestingly, many of these ideas
were outlined by Engels in his Principles of Communism (1847), which formed the core of the
Manifesto.

The Class Struggles in France

Marx modified his views on the state between 1848-1852 as a result of events in France, and more
significantly after 1871. His ideas were the result of an elaborate misunderstanding of the French
Revolution, of the role of classes and of the very nature of the proletarian revolution. The Bolsheviks
in Russia imitated France as seen through the prism of the writings of Marx, which seemed to
them more real than the actualities of French history.
Until March 1850, Marx and Engels did not apply the word “dictatorship” to the rule of the
proletariat. The phrase was used as a tactical compromise slogan with the Blanquists, and then as
a polemical device against the Anarchists and assorted reformists. Before that, they neither
mentioned nor discussed the Babouvist-Blanquist conception of educational dictatorship for it
contravened their vision of a proletarian revolution based on the faith they had in the masses to
emancipate themselves. Hence, they did not feel the need for a period of educational rule by an
enlightened minority, or the need to postpone democratic elections.
It was not Louis-Auguste Blanqui (1805-1881), but Louis Eugene Cavaignac, a general and an
arch-antagonist of Blanqui, from whom Marx and Engels borrowed the word “dictatorship” and
incorporated it into their vocabulary. Engels clarified that the “strictest centralization of state
power” was necessary to fill the vacuum as a result of the destruction of the old order till the
creation of the new one. Unlike the previous phases, the dictatorship of the proletariat would
represent the rule of the majority over the minority. Marx accepted this formulation. Both were
confident that it did not mean the permanent rule of one person or group.
In March 1850, the phrase “dictatorship of the proletariat” replaced the habitually used phrase
“rule of the proletariat”. Marx and Engels stressed the notion of extraordinary power during an
emergency for a limited period of time. It was a constitutional dictatorship, like the one suggested
by Babeuf and Blanqui, but differed from their conception insofar as it would not be educational.
It did not mean the rule of a self-appointed committee on behalf of the masses, nor did it envisage
the need for mass terror and liquidation.
Marx did not define, in any specific way, what the dictatorship of the proletariat entailed, and
what its relationship with the state was. It was “a social description, a statement of the class
character of the political power. It did not indicate a statement about the forms of government
authority”. But for some scholars, the concept was both a statement of the class character of

222 LOVELY PROFESSIONAL UNIVERSITY

 Unit 12: Karl Marx: Class Struggle and Social Change and Theory of Surplus Value

political power, and a description of political power itself. “It is, in fact, the nature of political Notes
power which it describes which guarantees its class character”.
To Marx and Engels, the dictatorship of the proletariat was by the entire class, for the revolution
would be made by the masses themselves. In a series of articles written in Neue Rheinische Zeitung,
which were subsequently compiled under the title The Class Struggles in France (1848-1850), Marx
contended that
... the declaration of the permanence of the revolution, the class dictatorship of the
proletariat as the necessary transit point to the abolition of class distinctions generally
to the abolition of all relations of production on which they rest, to the abolition of all
social relations that correspond to these relations of production, to the revolutionizing
of all the ideas that result from these social relations .
The phrase dictatorship of the proletariat was incorporated into the first of the six statutes of the
Universal Society. In a letter to Otta Luning, co-editor of Neue Rheinische Zeitung, Marx clarified
that he did not find any significant departure from the idea of the dictatorship of the proletariat as
articulated in the Class Struggles, to the one formulated in the Manifesto.
The ambiguous compromise slogan “dictatorship of the proletariat” would have died a natural
death, had the Marxists and Blanquists not renewed their contacts in the aftermath of the Paris
Commune. The ramification of the concept was attempted by Marx, when engaged with Michael
Alexandrovich Bakunin (1814-1876) during their high-pitched debate in the First International,
and in response to the initiatives undertaken by the German Social Democrats.

The Civil War in France

Meanwhile, an important event that helped in the clarification of the concept was the Paris
Commune, leading to an immediate amendment of the Manifesto in 1872. “One thing especially
was proved by the Commune, viz. that the working class cannot simply lay hold of the ready-
made state machinery and wield it for its own purpose”.
Marx was enthused about the Commune, regarding it as a “glorious harbinger of a new society”,
and observed in his letter to Kugelman in April 1871 that:
If you look at the last chapter of my Eighteenth Brumaire, you will find that I say that
the next attempt of the French Revolution will no longer be, as before, to transfer the
bureaucratic-military machine from one hand to another but to smash it and this is the
precondition for every real people’s revolution on the continent. And this is what our
heroic Party comrades in Paris are attempting .
Marx characterized the Paris Commune as the first major rebellion of the modern industrial
proletariat, in consonance with his belief that France would set the example in a struggle between
capital and labour. In his address in 1868 to the General Council of The International Workingmen’s
Association or the First International in London, he outlined the importance of the Commune and
its lessons for future socialist movements. These were identified as follows.
1. Abolition of the standing army and the institution of the citizen’s militia.
2. Election of all officials, subjecting them to recall.
3. Removal of political attributes of the police.
4. Abolition of the monarchy.
5. The role of the majority in directing and performing all functions of the state, which were
previously executed by a privileged minority.
With regard to the last-point, Marx emphasized the following measures.
1. Abolition of all representative allowances, all monetary benefits to officials, and reducing the
remuneration for officials to the level of “workmen’s wages”.
2. Abolition of the distance between the governed and the governors, and erasing the labels of
“High” dignitaries.

LOVELY PROFESSIONAL UNIVERSITY 223

Western Political Thought

Notes 3. Election of judges.

4. Universal suffrage, exercised freely and frequently.
The Commune was regarded as a working, and not a parliamentary, body exercising legislative
and executive power simultaneously. It would break down the power of the modern state, as
people would be organized on the basis of a decentralized federal system, with dissemination of
power at the broadest and largest levels. Its real strength lay in the fact that it represented the
working class, and was “the product of the struggle of the producing against the appropriating
class, the political form at last discovered under which to work out the economic emancipation of
labour”. Subsequently, in the 1891 edition of the Civil War in France, Engels eulogized the Commune
as the prototype of the dictatorship of the proletariat. This was one of the examples of the different
world-views of Marx and Engels.

The Critique of the Gotha Programme

The Anarchists were critical of Marx for retaining the state after the proletarian revolution, for it would
amount to replacing the old despotic rule with a new one. They regarded the Marxist variant as
essentially authoritarian and highly centralized, stifling voluntarism and individual initiative. The
German Social Democrats, following Ferdinand Lassalle (1825-1864), articulated the possibilities of
using the existing state for the realization of socialism and for the enhancement of human freedom.
They favoured reforms, as opposed to revolution, and believed that the spread of suffrage would
enable the workers to play a decisive role in parliament and the institutions of the state. These demands
were incorporated in the Gotha Programme, which the Social Democratic Party adopted in 1875.
In response to both the Anarchists and the German Social Democrats, Marx wrote the Critique of
the Gotha Programme, in which he emphasized the transitional nature of the dictatorship of the
proletariat. He outlined the two-phased development to full Communism, which could be attained
through a revolutionary transformation of society. “Between the capitalist society and communist
society lies the period of the revolutionary transformation of the one into another. There corresponds
to this also a political transition period in which the state can-be nothing but the revolutionary
dictatorship of the proletariat”.
According to Marx, the first (or the lower) phase would still be “stamped with the marks of the old
society from whose womb it emerges”. The principle of distribution with regard to consumer
goods would still be the principle of performance. In the second phase, production would be
abundant, and distribution would be on the basis of one’s needs. The principle of distribution
would be “from each according to his ability to each according to his needs”. This principle was
initially advanced by Proudhon. Lenin characterized these two phases as “socialism” and
“communism” respectively.
In the second phase, division of labour would be abolished and each individual would devote
himself to a single life task. In the Communist society as portrayed in the German Ideology, Marx
hoped that “each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes”, allowing a person to hunt
in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticize after dinner, “just as he
has a mind to without ever becoming a hunter, fisherman, shepherd, or critic”. Individual and
private ownership of property would cease to exist, and be replaced by social ownership. The anti-
thesis between mental and physical labour would be abolished, for labour would become not only
a means of life, but also a prime want of life. He contrasted the higher form of Communism with
Primitive or crude Communism, the first stage in the process of historical materialism. Primitive
Communism was signified by the necessity of all to labour, a levelling down of all individual
talents, and communal ownership of women, essentially indicating a negation of the human
personality. All these features would be absent in the final Communist society.
Marx did not specify the mechanisms of change from stage I to stage II in the post-revolutionary
phase of human history, leading to serious doubts as to how stage I would develop into stage II,

224 LOVELY PROFESSIONAL UNIVERSITY

 Unit 12: Karl Marx: Class Struggle and Social Change and Theory of Surplus Value

and whether it would develop as intended. Since this process was not explained, the ultimate aim Notes
that “free development of each will lead to the free development of all” might not ever be realizable.
In the Ami Duhring, Engels introduced the notion of the “withering away of the state”, and the fact
that “government of persons would be replaced by administration of things”, a phrase borrowed
from William Morris (1834-1896). Engels stressed that the state would not be abolished, but it
would wither away. Engels did not articulate on the nature of future society, except, like Marx, on
insisting that it was the condition, rather than the nature and form of the future society that was
important. Both Engels and Marx accepted that the proletarian state would be centrally planned
and directed, but without coercion and force. However, they failed to resolve the possible conflict
between centralized planning and individual freedom in the Communist society. They remained
ambivalent on the role of markets, but the inference was that markets had to be eliminated, for
they were unequal in their outcomes.
Thus, Marx and Engels reacted sharply to Bakunin’s criticism about the statist implications of
their conception and Lassalle’s ‘Free State’. By 1875, it became clear that the German Social
Democrats began to think about using the existing state apparatus, and had settled down to a
more reformist method. Marx still advocated the revolutionary overthrow of the existing
bureaucratic-military state, and replacing it with the truly transitory (but majoritarian and
democratic) dictatorship of the proletariat. Bakunin insisted on the immediate elimination of all
forms of political authority, replacing them with spontaneous and voluntary organizations. Marx
accepted the Anarchist demand of abolition of the state, but emphasized the majoritarian content
of the transitional state purely as a temporary measure, hoping to counter both his critics, Bakunin
and Lassalle.

12.6 Revisionism, Russian Revolution and Dictatorship of the

Proletariat
In the 1890s, the German Social Democrats decided on a new programme, which was adopted as
the official policy of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) in 1891 for the next 30 years. The Erfurt
Programme, as it came to be known, contained two parts. The first part was prepared by Karl
Johann Kautsky (1854-1938), known as the Pope of Marxism and the most important Marxist
theoretician of the period of the Second International (1890-1914). Reaffirming orthodox Marxist
posture, he emphasized economic determinism. The second part was prepared by Bernstein, laying
down practical reforms with a view to realizing socialism.
Bernstein rejected the notion of the dictatorship of the proletariat as barbaric, “an atavism” belonging
to a lower culture and civilization. He categorically insisted that socialism had to eschew all forms
of violence and dictatorial rule. He conceived of a representative democratic state organized on
the basis of socio-economic equity. He believed in democracy as the only framework for realizing
Socialism. It was not surprising that he characterized the Bolshevik regime as a brutal distortion
of Marxism. Within Russia, Julian Martov (1873-1923) of the Menshevik group accused the
Bolsheviks of undermining the majoritarian content of the dictatorship of the proletariat, as
envisaged by Marx and Engels. He contended that Lenin had superimposed on a passive majority
the will of an active minority, thereby reducing the former to passive subjects in a social experiment.
Martov and the Mensheviks broke away from the Russian Social Democratic Party (RSDLP), for
they disagreed with Lenin’s conception of the Vanguard Party.
In order to confront the Revisionist challenge, and seizing the observations made by Marx and
Engels in 1882, Lenin as a strategist committed himself whole heartedly to effecting a working-
class revolution, and explored its possibilities in Tsarist Russia. Taking a cue from Kautsky’s
formulations in the Class Struggles (1892), Lenin elaborated his theory of a party consisting of
professional revolutionaries, on the plea that the workers were capable of only trade union, rather
than revolutionary consciousness. Looking at the possibility of an outbreak of revolution in Tsarist
Russia, to counter the continuous criticism by the German Left and to meet the radical challenge

LOVELY PROFESSIONAL UNIVERSITY 225

Western Political Thought

Notes posed by Nikolai Ivanovinch Bukharin (1888-1938) in 1916, Lenin developed his theory of the state
in The State and Revolution, regarded as the greatest contribution of Lenin to political theory.
Lenin reiterated the need to destroy the state machinery in a situation of revolutionary seizure of
power. The state, per se continued in its socialist phase in the form of the dictatorship of the
proletariat with full democracy, exhibiting, like Marx, contempt for parliamentary and
representative institutions. However, the suppression of the constituent assembly, universal
suffrage, the exclusive monopoly and pre-eminence of the Communist Party and the brutal
repressive measures against the Kronstadt rebellion, completed the logic of what was essentially
a minority revolution led by the Bolsheviks. The libertarian and majoritarian perceptions of Lenin,
in 1916, were subsumed by his authoritarian and undemocratic outlook in What is to be done!
(1902).
The dictatorship of the proletariat, in practice, was reduced to the dictatorship of the Bolshevik
Party over the proletariat. Both Kautsky and Rosa Luxemburg (1871-1919) were critical of the
Leninist experiment. Kautsky characterized the Bolshevik revolution as a coup d’etat, and its
socialism as “barrack socialism”, for it had nothing to do with majority rule and parliamentary
democracy. Luxemburg expressed solidarity with Lenin and Trotsky for pre-empting a socialist
revolution, but was critical of their abrogation of spontaneity, freedom of opinion and socialist
democracy.
Lenin and Trotsky reacted sharply to Kautsky’s criticism. Lenin dismissed the argument that
democracy was not only compatible, but also a precondition for the proletarian rule, as irrelevant.
He clarified that democracy was abolished only for the bourgeoisie. Subsequently, in 1921, Lenin
acknowledged the lack of culture, and the fact that the Bolsheviks did not know how to rule, as the
serious shortcomings of the new regime. Trotsky defended the use of terror, force and violence as
means of safeguarding Socialism and its advancement in Russia. Later, Trotsky also turned critical
of Stalin for making Socialism repressive and bureaucratic, never acknowledging that along with
Lenin, he himself was instrumental for laying the foundations of Stalinism. In fact, Solzhenitsyn
characterized Stalinism as the malignant form of Leninism.

12.7 Indequacies in the Marxist Theory of the State

Viewed in this perspective, all the experiments that were carried out in the twentieth century in
the name of Marx have totally repudiated his principles. Russia’s backwardness, the lack of a
coherent theory of post-revolutionary society in Marxism, and Marx’s personal fascination with
the possibilities of absolute power, attenuated the Blanquism in Lenin and Stalin. If Stalinism was
an offshoot of Leninism, then Leninism itself was inspired by Marxism, for Lenin repeatedly
affirmed his commitment and faith in Marxist ideology. The distortions in Soviet Communism
could be attributed to the shortcomings and inadequacies in Marx’s world-view, the fact that Marx
had pointed out that
historical developments are always open to several possibilities. Yet Marx disregarded
the possibilities open to his own theory; and here lies its major intellectual blunder ...
he overlooked the possibility that one of the alternatives to which the future
development of his own theory was open might be the combination of his philosophical
and historical theory with the Jacobin tradition of merely political, subjectivist
revolutionary action. Thus, if Marx’s point of departure was Hegelian, so was his
blind spot : like Hegel himself he did not subject his own theory to a dialectical
critique.
Dahl asserted that Marxism could not be accepted “as an adequate political theory” on the basis of
the basic propositions on democracy which were agreeable to all political parties, and defended
zealously by them. These were: (a) inevitability of conflict of interests and articulation of wants as
a matter of choice in a complex society, (b) resolution of such conflicts by majority rule, but with

226 LOVELY PROFESSIONAL UNIVERSITY

 Unit 12: Karl Marx: Class Struggle and Social Change and Theory of Surplus Value

due concern for minority rights; and (c) freedom to form political parties, and recognition of free Notes
competition. The emphasis on harmony in Socialist society was inconsistent with the first
proposition of the democratic theory. Marxism did not offer any clue to the distribution of political
power in a Socialist society, and was equally ambiguous on the concept of majority rule. The
introduction of universal adult franchise in Germany in 1866, the electoral reforms in England in
1867 and 1884, and the mushrooming of socialist parties, weakened the essential proposition of
the state as an instrument of oppression, controlled by the bourgeois minority exploiting and
oppressing the proletarian majority. The reforms gave the workers an opportunity to control the
state by winning the majority of votes, and thereby seats in the parliament. “Marx’s politics is
based on particular qualities of the bourgeois state in the nineteenth century”.
Marxism in theory and practice could never provide a primer for constitution-based representative
democracy. The important fact to note was that “neither Marx nor Lenin spoke of a law governed
state ... because they considered that the state would inevitably wither away”.
Marx never addressed himself to the issue of rights, political freedom, power and the role of
authority in a socialist society. For all his libertarian vision, Marx himself was consumed by the
idea of having absolute, total, concentrated state power, unrestrained and unlimited. He was
contemptuous, of, in fact had very little faith in, a constitution or law, dismissing them as shams,
formalities and covers to conceal bourgeois oppression and domination. The attack on formal
democracy by promising substantive democracy resulted in reducing formal democracy to the
point of non-existence. Marx overlooked the protection that constitutional representative democracy
and rule of law gave against arbitrary rule, and the freedom it ensured against physical harm. He
failed to understand the dynamics of democracy in empowering people being more revolutionary
than a bloody, violent revolution itself. “He profoundly underestimated the capacity of democratic
societies to correct or mitigate the injustices that seemed to him built into capitalism. The concept
of the ‘class struggle’ which is central in the thinking of all Marxists seems largely irrelevant in
America and Western Europe”.
Berlin’s last observation about the obsolence of class struggle in advanced industrialized countries
can be extended to the developing world now. There is no more talk of revolutionary transformation
of society, or that the “East is Red”. Moreover, the possibility of using democracy as a means of
realizing socialism never moved to the centre stage of his analysis of future society. “The overall
sweep of the Marxist historical scheme relegates democracy to a subsidiary role in the drama of
human development”.
This was where the Social Democrats scored over Marx, for they, and in particular Bernstein,
insisted on the need to combine democracy (representative parliamentary institutions with universal
suffrage) with socialism, bringing about a breach that could never be closed between German
Marxism and Russian Communism.
The idea of Communist society being classless and equal remained a myth. Djilas, in the New Class
(1959), pointed to the presence of the nomenklatura in the former communist societies, namely
those who enjoyed privileges and special status because of their position within the hierarchy of
the Communist Party, thus confirming the fears of Bakunin that the dictatorship of the proletariat
would create fresh inequities and new forms of oppression and domination. Perhaps no one has
captured the myth of a classless society better than Orwell in his Animal Farm and Nineteen Eight-
Four. As Orwell observed succinctly “... so-called collectivist systems now existing only try to
wipe out the individual because they are not really collectivist and certainly not egalitarian—
because, in fact they are a sham covering a new form of class privilege”.
An examination of the development of the idea of the dictatorship of the proletariat revealed a
tension between the concept’s organizational necessity, though maybe of a transitory kind, with
the larger Marxist hypothesis of enlargement of human freedom. The idea of delineating and
working out a participatory model of democracy was never completed by Marx. This was also
compounded by Marx’s inadequate handling of the crucial role of the theory of the state. In

LOVELY PROFESSIONAL UNIVERSITY 227

Western Political Thought

Notes tackling the complexities of the modern state, the general descriptions of the ideal as realizing true
democracy and Communism have proved to be extremely simplistic in providing the essential
institutions of a modern democratic state. Marx’s aversion to Utopian blueprinting made him
ignore the details that were necessary for managing a society based on equity, just reward and
freedom. The terms “true democracy” and “communism” hardly dealt with the complexities of
modern times.

12.8 Women and the Gender Question

Like in many other areas, even with regard to the question of women, Marx made Hegel the
starting point. Hegel regarded women as inferior, with less reasoning abilities, seeing the natural
differences between men and women as immutable. Marx did not say much on the role and
position of women. He took it for granted that Socialism would bring about their emancipation. In
the German Ideology and the Capital, he spoke of the natural and spontaneous division of labour
within the family. The natural relationship paved the way for a social one, and the first property
relationship was the one when the man regarded his wife and children as his slaves. The man had
power over them, and could do with their labour as he chose, though Marx did not explain how
this came about. Marx did not focus his attention on the position and role of women.
Engels, in the Origins, provided a materialist account of the origins of patriarchy, and linked
women’s subordination with the rise of private property. In the Holy Family, Marx and Engels
observed that the degree of emancipation of women could be used as a standard by which one
could measure general emancipation. Marx reiterated this view in a letter to Dr L. Kugelmann in
1868, that social progress could be assessed exactly by the social position of women. In 1845, Marx
warned against treating the family regardless of its specific historic setting. In his criticism of Max
Stirner (1805-1856), he observed that it was a misconception to speak of the family without
qualification. Historically, the bourgeoisie endowed the family with the characteristics of the
bourgeois family, whose ties were boredom and money.

12.9 The Asiatic Mode of Production

Marx’s views on the non-European world, like, his overall political theorizing, also flowed from
Hegelian prescriptions. But in the evolution of these two basic themes, there was an interesting yet
contradictory development. The contemporary analysis of Germany that Hegel offered was rejected
on the basis of a universalistic criterion, while the notion of the unchanging and static nature of the
non-European world was accepted without any critical examination. Marx used the phrase “Asiatic
Mode of Production” to describe the non-European societies. In this formulation, there was a clear
“discrepancy between the analytical and historical nature of the categories of ancient, feudal and
bourgeois modes of production and the mere geographic designation of the Asiatic one” .
Prior to 1852, Marx did not show any specific interest in the non-European world. His interest arose
as a result of a series of articles that he penned for the New York Daily Tribune (1852-1862). The Asiatic
Mode of Production assumed importance subsequently, in the theoretical and political debates
within Marxist circles. “The debates about the Asiatic Mode of Production has raised questions
concerning not only the relevance of Marxist concepts outside the European context, but also the
character of materialist explanations of class society, revolutionary change and world history”.
The underlying assumption among many post-Renaissance European thinkers who took an interest
in the non-European world was that there was a marked and qualitative distinction between the
advanced European cultures and other backward civilizations. Montesquieu was the pioneer of
this perception. Using climatic conditions as the yardstick, he noted that tropical climates were
unsuited for democracies and individual freedom. Smith clubbed China, Egypt and India together
for the special attention irrigation received in these societies. James Mill observed the difference
between European feudalism and governmental arrangements in Asiatic societies. Richard Jones

228 LOVELY PROFESSIONAL UNIVERSITY

 Unit 12: Karl Marx: Class Struggle and Social Change and Theory of Surplus Value

used the phrase “Asiatic society” and J.S. Mill used the term “Eastern society” in 1848. Others, like Notes
Herbert Spencer (1820-1903), Vilfredo Pareto (1848-1923) and Emile Durkheim (1855-1917), analyzed
Asiatic societies from a comparative perspective. Hegel was the most influential among these
thinkers, whose philosophy of history not only concurred with this prevailing European perception
of the East, but also influenced—to a very large extent—the left Hegelians with respect to perceiving
colonization as a modernizing force. For Hegel, with his clear Eurocentricism, India and China did
not have any history as these were “stationery and fixed”. This was true of all Asiatic societies.
Hegel’s point that the East lacked history influenced Marx.
Marx described the oriental societies of India and China as lacking in history, incapable of changing
from within, and essentially stagnant. Since, by themselves, they would block historical progress,
the industrialized West, when it became socialistic, would be the agent of liberation in the less
developed areas. In other words, European socialism would have to precede national liberation
movements in the Asian societies. Marx identified Europe with progress, and the Orient with
stagnation. He looked upon imperialist rule as being simultaneously destructive and constructive.
It was degenerative, for it destroyed indigenous institutions and practices; it was regenerative, for
it created the modem techniques of production, brought political unity and social changes.
Marx and Engels concluded that the chief characteristic of Asiatic societies was the absence of
private property, particularly private ownership of land. In contrast to the state in the European
context, which was an instrument of class domination and exploitation, the state in Asiatic societies
controlled all classes. It did not belong to the superstructure, but was decisive in the entire economic
arena, building and managing water supply and the life breath of agriculture in arid areas. It
performed economic and social functions for the whole of society. Social privileges emanated from
service to the state, and not from the institution of private property, as was the case in Europe.
Asiatic societies had an overdeveloped state, and an underdeveloped civil society. Military conquests
and dynastic tussles ushered in changes periodically, without affecting the economic organization,
for the state continued to be the real landlord. The unchanging nature of Asiatic societies was also
buttressed by self-sufficient autarchic villages, which sustained themselves through agriculture
and handicrafts.
In the Grundrisse, Marx and Engels developed on these preliminary sketches of Asiatic societies to
highlight the key differences in the urban history of the West and the East. In the West, the
existence of politically independent cities conducive to growth of the production of exchange
values determined the development of a bourgeois class and industrial capitalism, whereas in the
East, the city was artificially created by the state, and remained a “princely camp” subordinated to
the countryside. The city was imposed on the economic structure of society. Social unity represented
by the state lay in the autarchic self-sufficient villages where land was communally owned. Stability
was ensured by simplicity of production. The state appropriated the surplus in the form of taxes.
Factors like free markets, private property, guilds and bourgeois law, that led to the rise of the
capitalist class in the West, were absent in Asiatic societies due to a centralized state that dominated
and controlled civil society. For Marx, imperialism would act as a catalyst of change since these
societies lacked the mechanisms for change. It was because of its covert defence of imperialism
that Marxists have sought to dismantle the concept.
The Anarchists, and in particular Bakunin, defended the right of nations (including the
predominantly peasant Eastern nations) to self-determination. The West was based on slavery,
and did not prove that it was superior to the “barbarians of [the] Orient”. He asserted that all
states were constituted by their nature and the conditions of the purpose for which they existed,
namely the absolute negation of human justice, freedom and morality. By this logic, he did not
distinguish between the uncouth Tsarist Russia and the advanced countries of North Europe, for
the former did the same thing as the latter, with the mask of hypocrisy.
The concept of the Asiatic Mode has had a chequered history. In the preface to A Contribution to the
Critique of Political Economy (1859), Marx considered the Asiatic Mode as one of the “epochs marking

LOVELY PROFESSIONAL UNIVERSITY 229

Western Political Thought

Notes progress in the economic development of society”. Engels did not refer to the Asiatic Mode in The
Origins of the Family, Private Property and the State. It was in the context of discussions on
revolutionary struggles in Russia, that the concept figured once again. Different political strategies
were devised in view of Russia being feudal, semi-capitalist, authoritarian and partly Asiatic. In
1853, Marx and Engels characterized Tsarist Russia as “Semi-Asiatic”. In the Anti Duhring, Engels
viewed the Russia commune as the basis of oriental despotism. Between 1877 and 1882, Marx, in
his letters to Vera Zaulich (1852-1919) and Engels, as a member of the editorial board of
Otechestvenniye Zapiski, examined the prospects of revolution in Russia and whether in such an
eventuality the commune could provide the foundations of socialism.
In exploring the possibilities of a world proletarian revolution, Marx and Engels began to show
interest in the non-European world. The notion of the Asiatic Mode of Production examined the
relevance of Marxist concepts outside the European context. While Marx and Engels were convinced
that socialism represented the zenith of capitalism, and that the proletarian revolution would
break out only in the advanced industrialized societies, they pointed out in 1882 that if a revolution
would break out in Tsarist Russia, it would complement the efforts of the proletariat in the advanced
West.
The Asiatic Mode paradigm undermined Marx’s universalistic presumption that a ruling class
could only be a proprietary class, i.e. a class that owned the means of production. The primary
paradigm in the Manifesto and other writings did not focus on the class character of the state
bureaucracy, which could be one of the reasons why the Asiatic Mode in particular and the theory
of the state in general, remained so sketchy in the works of Marx and Engels.

12.10 Views On India

Analyzing India within the framework of the Asiatic Mode, Marx was convinced that Imperial
Britain would establish the foundations of Western society in India, for English imperialism
represented the only social revolution in Asia. This belief rested on the logic that though colonialism
was brutal, it was dialectically important for the world proletarian revolution. Colonialism would
unleash forces of modernization which would eventually lead to the emancipation of these areas.
Marx’s account of British imperialism led to the proposition that the more extensive the forms of
imperialism, the more profound would be the consequences for modernization. Marx and Engels
favoured colonialism, as it was a catalyst for modernization, though they did take note of regressive
and exploitative side of it.
Marx noted that in India, England had a dual function, one destructive and the other regenerative.
Colonization as a regenerative force brought about political unification, introduced railways, a
free press, a trained army, Western education, rational ways of thinking, and abolished common
land tenures. As for its being destructive, British colonization destroyed indigenous industries
and handicrafts. Marx mentioned the exploitative role played by the East India Company, and the
increasing resentment English capitalists had against its monopoly, preventing the transfer of
surplus British capital to India. All these changes profoundly affected the static nature of Indian
society. In this context, he mentioned superstition and narrow-mindedness, which reinforced
animal worship, preventing development.
In spite of these insights, the fact remained that like the Conservatives, Marx and Engels favoured
colonialism. In the fierce controversy between Marx and Bakunin, the question of the right of self-
determination was one of the major issues of disagreement. Moreover, the Marxist view of the
non-European world and the dominant streams of twentieth-century nationalist thought did not
vindicate the Marxist thesis. Amilcar Cabral (1924-1973) rightly rejected this entire postulate of
history, starting with the emergence of class struggle and the consequent thesis that the continents
of Africa, Asia and America did not have any history before the colonial period. The factor of
nationalism that contributed to the liberation of the colonies was completely ignored by Marx.

230 LOVELY PROFESSIONAL UNIVERSITY

 Unit 12: Karl Marx: Class Struggle and Social Change and Theory of Surplus Value

Marx, in spite of his erudite scholarship, was a child of his times. He viewed the non-European Notes
world through the European perspective. His observations, however profound, reflected a great
deal of prevailing Hegelian prejudices and Eurocentricism. Many of the Indian Marxists did not
accept Marx’s formulations on the Asiatic Mode, or his observations on British imperialism in
India.

12.11 Theory of Surplus Value

Marx himself considered his theory of surplus-value his most important contribution to the progress
of economic analysis. It is through this theory that the wide scope of his sociological and historical
thought enables him simultaneously to place the capitalist mode of production in his historical
context, and to find the root of its inner economic contradictions and its laws of motion in the
specific relations of production on which it is based.
As said before, Marx’s theory of classes is based on the recognition that in each class society, part
of society (the ruling class) appropriates the social surplus product. But that surplus product can
take three essentially different forms (or a combination of them). It can take the form of straight
forward unpaid surplus labour, as in the slave mode of production, early feudalism or some
sectors of the Asiatic mode of production (unpaid corvee labour for the Empire). It can take the
form of goods appropriated by the ruling class in the form of use-values pure and simple (the
products of surplus labour), as under feudalism when feudal rent is paid in a certain amount of
produce (produce rent) or in its more modern remnants, such as sharecropping. And it can take a
money form, like money-rent in the final phases of feudalism, and capitalist produts. Surplus-
value is essentially just that: the money form of the social surplus product or, what amounts to the
same, the money product of surplus labour. It has therefore a common root with all other forms of
surplus product: unpaid labour.
This means that Marx’s theory of surplus-value is basically a deduction (or residual) theory of the
ruling classes’ income. The whole social product (the net national income) is produced in the
course of the process of production, exactly as the whole crop is harvested by the peasants. What
happens on the market (or through appropriation of the produce) is a distribution (or redistribution)
or what already has been created. The surplus product, and therefore also its money form, surplus-
value, is the residual of that new (net) social product (income) which remains after the producing
classes have received their compensation (under capitalism: their wages). This ‘deduction’ theory
of the ruling classes’ income is thus ipso factor an exploitaton theory. Not in the ethical sense of
the world-although Marx and Engels obviously manifested a lotof understandable moral indignation
at the fate of all the exploited throughout history, and especially at the fate of the modernproletariat-
but in the economic one. The income of the ruling classes can always be reduced in the final
analysis to the product of unpaid labour: that is the heart of Marx’s theory of exploitation.
Marx likewise laid bare the economic mechanism through which surplus-value originates. At the
basis of that economic mechanism is a huge social upheaval which started in Western Europe in
the 15th century and slowly spread over the rest of the continent and all other continents (in many
so-called underdeveloped countries, it is still going on to this day).

Self-Assessment
Choose the correct options
1. Who said, “The history of all hitherto existing society in the history of class struggles”.
(i) Marx (ii) Engels (iii) Marx-Engels (iv) None of these
2. The label “Utopian Socialists” was first used by ............... in the History of political economy.
(i) Heinrich Marx (ii) Jerome Blanqui (iii) Hegel (iv) None of these

LOVELY PROFESSIONAL UNIVERSITY 231

Western Political Thought

Notes 3. ..............was the first to point out the contradictions within the revolutionary slogans of liberty
and equality.
(i) Francois Noel Gracchus Babeuf (ii) Marx
(iii) Hegel (iv) None of these
4. The poem ‘The player’ was written by ..............
(i) Marx (ii) Bentham
(iii) Hegel (iv) None of these
5. ..............was known as the Pope of Marxism
(i) Karl Johann Kautsky (ii) Marx
(iii) Lenin (iv) None of these

12.12 Summary
• Marxism’s dream of creating a classless society beyond conflict and based on equality remained
illusory. However, its critique of exploitation and alienation, and the hope of creating a truly
emancipated society that would allow the full flowering of human creativity, would continue
to be a starting point of any Utopian project. In spite of Marx’s Utopia being truly generous,
it displayed a potential for being tyrannical, despotic and arbitrary. Centralization of power
and absence of checks oh absolute power were themselves inimical to true human liberation
and freedom. He “offered no good reason to believe that the power politics of radicalism
would prove to be less authoritarian in practice than the power politics of conservative
nationalism”. Commenting on the activities of his fellow comrades, which were in total
negation of his ideals, Marx once proclaimed that he was not a Marxist. This proved to be a
serious limitation of his theory, even during his lifetime, as it was after his death. He would
be remembered at best as a critic of early nineteenth-century capitalism and politics. The
limitations and inadequacies within the doctrine are reminders that his blueprint was, as
Koestler remarked, “a God that failed”.
• Marx’s class theory rests on the premise that “the history of all hitherto existing society is the
history of class struggles.” According to this view, ever since human society emerged from
its primitive and relatively undifferentiated state if has remained fundamentally dividend
between classes who clash in the pursuit of class interest. In the world of capitalism, for
example, the nuclear cell of the capitalist system, the factory, is the prime locus of antagonism
between classes-between exploiters and exploited, between buyer and selles of labour power-
rather than of functional collaboration. Class interests and the confrontations of power that
they bring in their wake are to Marx the central determinant of social and historical process.
• Marx’s analysis continually centres on how the relationships between men are shaped by
their relative positions in regard to the means of production, that is, by their differential
access to scare resources and scarce power. He notes that unequal access need not at all times
and under all conditions lead to active class struggle. But he considered it axiomatic that the
potential for class conflict is inherent in every differentiated society, since such a society
systematically generates conflicts of interest between persons and groups differentially located
within the social structure, and, more particulary, in relation to the means of production.
Marx was concerned with the ways inwhich specific positions in the social structure tended
to shape the social experierices of their incumbents and to predispose them to actions oriented
to improve their collective fate.

232 LOVELY PROFESSIONAL UNIVERSITY

 Unit 12: Karl Marx: Class Struggle and Social Change and Theory of Surplus Value

12.13 Key–Words Notes

1. Universalistic : It refers to religious, theological and philosophical concepts with universal

application or applicability.
2. Discrepancy : a conflict or variation, as between facts, figures or claims.
3. Proletariat : It is a term used to identify a lower social class, usually the working class; a
member of such a class is proletarian.

Answers- Self Assessment

1. (iii) 2. (ii) 3. (i) 4. (i) 5. (i)

12.14 Review Questions

1. What did Marx mean by the economic structure of society contributed by its relations of
productions is the real foundation of society.
2. Explain the theory of class war.
3. Write a short note on Dictatorship of the proletariat.
4. Write an essay on the class struggle and social change.
5. Write a short note the Theory of Surplus Value.

12.15 Further Readings

1. Mukherjee, S. and Ramaswamy, S. 2004: A History of Political Thought, PHI

Learning Pvt. Ltd.
2. Mukhopadhyay, A.K. 1990 Western Political Thought, Calcutta - KP Bagchi and
Company.

LOVELY PROFESSIONAL UNIVERSITY 233