Marx, Social Change and Revolution

Karl Marx was both a philosopher and a political agitator. He thus often thought about questions relating to social change and revolution. However, Marx was not content to analyze each in isolation as if it were a self-contained idea. Like every other idea he pondered, Marx examined social change and revolution in light of his all-encompassing theory which sought to explain how societies progress materially, economically, and socio-politically. Within his system social change is a by-product of class struggle and revolution that is as much a permanent state of mind as an actual event marking capitalism's anticlimactic end.

Keywords Bourgeoisie; Class-for-Itself; Class Struggle; Dictatorship of the Proletariat; Forces of Production; Historical Materialism; Labor-Power; Labor-Time; Lumpenproletariat; Means of Production; Permanent Revolution; Petty Bourgeoisie; Proletariat; Relations of Production; Secondary Exploitation; Superstructure; Surplus Value

Marx, Social Change & Revolution

Overview

At heart, Marx was an ideologue, a philosopher convinced he had discovered the immutable laws governing social change. To Marx, only economics mattered. Free will, shifting societal values and aspirations, population growth and dislocation, and many other possible causes of social change mattered little in the Marxian universe. Rather, Marx believed, how we produce and exchange the goods necessary for our survival shapes how we relate to each other. Moreover, he claimed that in order to take advantage of new knowledge and technology people always have organized themselves around said production differently at distinct times in history. However, he believed, society has often lagged behind these changes, creating friction and conflict until a new social order more conducive to the emerging economic order replaces the old social order (Holton, 1981).

At best, social change is an uneven process that continually pits emerging interests against entrenched ones. That is why Marx famously concluded in the Communist Manifesto "the history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles." Yet the idea of class struggle itself was far from new in Marx's day. Aristotle in fact wrote about class and conflict in the fourth century BCE, observing that in democracies the poor ruled, while in oligarchies the rich did. Further, he believed that politics reconciled the interests of the many with those of the few, sometimes equitably, sometimes not (Arendt, 2002).

A more contemporary writer on the subject, the early nineteenth century social theorist Henri de Saint-Simon, differentiated rich from poor as well. He went one important step further, though, by explicitly distinguishing "producers" or laborers, from mere consumers or property-owners (Kim, n.d.). Marx soon turned this purely descriptive distinction into a socioeconomic dynamo of the first order. Indeed, the impetus for all social change, he asserted, emanated from the class struggle between workers, or the proletariat, and owners, or the bourgeoisie. However, Marx believed that the ultimate source of this change lay elsewhere: in the inevitable conflict between the economic forces of production and the communal relations of production, a dialectical process he called historical materialism.

Here, man is defined entirely by what he makes, by the labor this production requires, and by the interactions with others production necessitates. Broadly speaking, labor, technical expertise, and the organizational ingenuity needed to make efficient use of both make up the forces of production. The relations of production, conversely, arise from the social interactions among workers and between workers and the owners of the means of production, who, in capitalism's case, are the bourgeoisie. Constantly in flux, the forces and relations of production are all but guaranteed to clash, with the more basic of the two, the forces of production, prevailing. Changes in the way things are made, in effect, require new forms of communication and cooperation, giving rise, over time, to new relations of production.

Further Insights

In very real and persistent ways, then, the economic base of a society periodically reinvents itself, prompting broader sociopolitical and cultural change. To perpetuate itself materially society must have order, so every economic system gives rise to a corresponding societal superstructure. Courts, government bureaucracies, social mores, family and religious values, and even culture itself all stem from the economic base they buttress. When this base falters, the social fabric woven around it inevitably unravels (Wacquant, 1985).

In capitalism's case, Marx believed owners would ultimately bankrupt themselves trying to remain competitive, and that this base would literally consume itself at humanity's expense. In effect, things would get far worse before they got better. It was and is a bleak vision. And herein lies one of Marx's more uncomfortable beliefs: that lasting social change would come at a terrible price. The capitalist system would have to self-destruct before a more equitable socialist system could take its place. It must, in other words, fail so many so miserably that the dictatorship of the proletariat following it would be welcomed with open arms. Then and only then would the real revolution occur as private property gave way to collective ownership, class distinctions morphed into a society of equals, and thinly veiled authoritarianism transformed into rule by consensus.

Such, at least, was Marx's utopian vision of the future, one so ideal that there would be no further need for a state. In the meantime, increasing swathes of humanity not only would but had to live and die in the direst of conditions. For, if nothing else, this utter deprivation will fan the flames of class struggle to a fever pitch, hastening capitalism's demise. There is a logic, then, to Marx's rather dour prescription for social change. Incremental reforms like reducing the length of the workday or banning child labor, he believed, were no more than temporary ploys owners, citing declining profits, would revoke the minute workers put their own parochial interests above those of their class as a whole.

Marx's Classes

But what exactly did Marx mean by "class?" Marx himself insisted that people, even if they are in similar circumstances, are not a class per se unless they are aware of their shared relationship. A hereditary caste was thus not a class in the Marxian sense, and neither are the upper, middle, and lower income bracketed classes sociologists study today. Of those he did identify, the largest and, from his point of view the most important by far, was the working class or proletariat. Technically speaking, anyone who drew a regular wage belonged because, owning no private property or any means of production, these workers were reduced to selling their labor-power to survive.

Capitalists, or the bourgeoisie, on the other hand owned the means of production outright and purchased workers' labor-time. Sooner or later, though, they would find ways to boost earnings by increasing the tempo of production but keeping workers daily wages the same. Marx saw this purloining as inherently exploitive. Those who enjoyed wealth did not actually produce it, and those who did produce it lived in poverty. However, the latter had no "legitimate" means of righting this wrong because laws, governments, and religious and social institutions all existed in order to validate the existing forms of ownership and deflect any and all challenges to these forms.

A keen social observer, Marx also acknowledged the transient existence of more marginal classes: most notably the petty bourgeoisie and the lumpenproletariat. Primarily artisans, shopkeepers, and small farmers, the petty bourgeoisie owned their means of production and, doing so, worked for themselves. Until, that is, a declining capitalism would no longer accommodate small businesses, at which point the petty bourgeoisie would enter the ranks of the disaffected proletariat. The lumpenproletariat, on the other hand, didn't work at all. Its ranks were populated by those farthest removed from the means of production: the chronically unemployed, the unemployable, and the criminals. Marx predicted that, when push came to shove, the lumpenproletariat would align with the proletariats, albeit tenuously, since the promised socialist revolution would provide for everyone's needs regardless of their social status.

Additionally, there were the peasantry, the tenant farmers Marx considered part of the proletariat. Like the petty bourgeoisie, they were victims of secondary exploitation because they had to pay the capitalist class rent and interest on loans. Finally, there were the administrators, supervisors, police and other intermediaries charged with the day-to-day management of the capitalist system. As wage earners they could technically be considered part of proletariat. In reality, though, they enjoyed a far better living than the average worker, and had a vested interest in preserving the capitalist system.

Capitalism & Class Struggle

In the end, Marx believed, market competition would undermine the economic viability of small producers, small-holder farms, and the petty bourgeoisie, and sooner or later these classes would all find their circumstances reduced and be relegated to the proletariat class. Left to its own devices, it seems capitalism's penchant for large-scale operations and technology-heavy production processes would end up ruthlessly polarizing both the economy-at-large and the labor force. All of which would only succeed in further intensifying class struggle as the ranks of the militant proletariat swelled with the newly displaced and disaffected.

In Marx's world, lasting social change for the better would come about only after a prolonged, fractious decline in people's living standards that was dictated by purely economic factors. For so great was the innate competitiveness of the capitalist system that owners would have to extract ever more surplus value from an ever dwindling pool of wage earners. Incomes across all boards would decline and with them the very sales capitalists depend upon. Everyone but the very rich would end up a pauper. The starker this polarization, the more cathartic the resulting class struggle. Eventually, the day would come when no one, not even the bourgeoisie's intermediaries, would be willing to defend the interest of the remaining rich, sparking a breaking point (Rattansi, n.d.).

Revolution

Marx called violence the "handmaiden" of history. Not surprisingly, then, he foresaw a violent end in store for capitalism. But the spilling of blood at this point would be very much the coda, not the prelude, to revolution. For violent acts of rebellion, first of all, do not always lead to revolution, which by definition ends with the demise of the existing state and the establishment of alternative form of governance (Boswell & Dixon, n.d.) Often rebellions are brutally quashed by the military, or else subside once concessions are wrung from the existing government. Marx drew valuable lessons from the "revolutions" of 1848 that swept Europe and from the Paris Commune of 1870: he concluded that spontaneous popular uprisings were just inconclusive skirmishes in a much more protracted war against exploitation and oppression. Revolution, on the other hand, came about through protracted class warfare in which the most potent weapons were ideas, the winning tactics not martial but political, and the victors the masses which unite to constitute themselves as a class-for-itself. "Class-for-itself" does not simply describe what a generic class is - Marx uses the term "class-in-itself" for this - rather it refers to a class that is conscious of its collective relationship to the means of production, which spurs it to politically organize itself in its own interests. A proletariat, or working, class-for-itself recognizes the extent to which not only its economic but also its human needs are not being met under capitalism, despite its role as the direct producers of society's material prosperity (Baxter, n.d.).

Marx predicted that workers would never share in this prosperity unless they rid themselves of the bourgeois state, the protector of private property and cause of their misery, through persistent collective action. Demonstrations, strikes, and sporadic violence might accompany these actions, however full scale violence would materialize only when a worker-led rebellion overthrew the last vestiges of the civil infrastructure protecting a bankrupt capitalism.

The very first step towards the dictatorship of the proletariat, then, is self-enlightenment. According to Marx, one has to see historical materialism's imprint in one's immediate environs, gauge the progress made to date in the class struggle, and then form the political parties necessary to educate and organize the proletariat. He expected that with ever lower wages, more frequent and pronounced economic crises, and the growing recognition that all but a very few face a future of endemic poverty, support for these parties would grow. The groundswell of converts would genuinely believe that their lives would be better in a classless society based on collective ownership of the means of production.

Congregated together by the very industrial system that exploited them, capable of duplicating the organizational efficiency of the workplace in the political arena, and, most of all, disciplined and dedicated, the wage earners making up these parties would become the vanguard converting skeptics and confounding opponents. Winning this struggle, moreover, would take many years if not many decades, and would ultimately depend on party activists scrupulously pursuing permanent revolution.

By permanent revolution, Marx meant that the proletariat's revolutionary actions must continue as long as all the proletariat's goals are not fully met. In spite of any partial gains and no matter how powerful the opposition, Marx believed, this militancy must continue until workers gain complete control of the means of production. He warned that although other political parties, especially those of the petty bourgeois, might attempt to form political alliances after the overthrow of the existing state, these overtures must be resisted. In effect, even after the downfall of bourgeois rule the revolution would continue, making it as much a frame of mind as an actual event.

Viewpoints

Evaluating Marx

In hindsight, it's easy to think that Marx was naïve about social change and revolution. History certainly supports such a view. Capitalism, much less a proletariat, barely existed in agrarian Russia and China when they were transformed by prolonged and bloody revolutions instigated by elite cadres of professional communist organizers. Further, the more classically Marxian proletariat revolutions that occurred in industrial Europe immediately after the First World War failed for want of widespread popular support.

To his credit, though, Marx was the first theorist to systematically link social change to economic change, fully appreciate the political implications of class, and provide a cogent rationale for organizing workers en masse. All of these ideas resonate to this day. If Marx had a great failing as a theorist, it was to see the world too starkly, to think of it categorically as a series of either/ors, leaving little if any room for nuance. It is the kind of sweeping analytic rigidity one expects more in a dogmatic revolutionary than in a truth-seeking philosopher. Marx saw himself as both. With all the zeal of a revolutionary he devoted his life to furthering the cause of the industrial labor movement of the mid-to-late nineteenth century. Its socialist ideals became Marx's vision of the end of history, the time when the workers revolution would have seized control of the means of production, rid society of the ills of private property, and dispensed with class altogether.

Marx provided his activist colleagues with all the assurances they could possibly have wanted about the appropriateness and inevitability of the cause they championed. He did this to spectacular effect by presenting the world with a set of carefully argued theories to show that the coming socialist epoch was actually the culmination of historical trends countless centuries in the making. What is more, he claimed that these trends were propelled by immutable economic forces. The world view he put forward was and is an intellectual tour de force: encyclopedic in scope, detailed almost to excess, on the whole logically argued, and written with passion and verve. Still, it was and is also sprawling, dogmatic, polemical, at times inconsistent, and not above an emotional appeal when logic and factual evidence failed.

Marx's work was, lest we forget, very much a product of its time. Profound structural changes had been set in motion by the Industrial Revolution, the full ramifications of which were not yet known. All too apparent even then, though, were the often appalling living and working conditions the new industrial laborer endured without any real recourse. Politically, Europe had reverted to a reactionary stance since the Napoleonic Wars and viewed any proposed change with great suspicion. If ever there was a time when a robust, sweeping theory of social, political, and economic change was needed, it most likely was then.

Terms & Concepts

Bourgeoisie: The owners of the means of production; capitalists.

Class-for-Itself: A class that is conscious of its collective relationship to the means of production within a society and politically organizes itself in its own interest.

Class Struggle: Economic and social conflict between different strata of society defined by distinct relations to the means of production. Also called class conflict or class warfare.

Dictatorship of the Proletariat: The civil and political superstructure that Marx believed would emerge when the workers took full control of the means of production. Despite its title, Marx conceived of it as a democracy.

Forces of Production: Labor, its technical expertise, and the organization of the work-flow that optimizes both.

Historical Materialism: Marx's most central concept, it states that a given economic base created by the forces and relations of production gives rise to a civil, political, and social superstructure that promulgates and protects it.

Labor-Power: The physical and mental effort expended to produce a good.

Labor-Time: How long it takes for a motivated worker to produce a good.

Lumpenproletariat: The unemployed, the unemployable, the criminals of a society who together have the most tenuous, removed relation to the means of production

Means of Production: The tools, machines, plant, and related infrastructure necessary to production. Under capitalism these are privately owned, under socialism they are all publicly owned.

Permanent Revolution: The conviction that revolutionary action must continue until all the means of production are fully in the hands of workers and private property is abolished. What is more, to maintain their militancy, the proletariat's political agenda should always be autonomously arrived at and never compromised.

Petty Bourgeoisie: Self-employed artisans, shopkeepers, independent farmers, etc., who own their means of production.

Proletariat: Anyone who exchanges his labor power for a wage, i.e. a worker.

Relations of Production: The social interactions that arise, on the one hand, from the division of labor, and, on the other, from the ownership of the means of production.

Secondary Exploitation: Excessive rents and interest that the petty bourgeoisie, peasantry, and artisans must pay to the capitalists, or the bourgeoisie.

Superstructure: The legal, political, and social systems along with the familial, cultural and religious values that collectively buttress the forces and relations of production necessary to sustain life.

Surplus Value: Essentially, the value added to goods when a laborer works his or her usual number of hours but, because of machinery and the division of labor, produces more. Owners selling goods produced in such a manner earn higher profits and keep this additional sales revenue for themselves.

Bibliography

Arendt, H. (2002). Karl Marx and the tradition of Western political thought. Social Research, 69 , 273-319. Retrieved April 5, 2008 from EBSCO Online Database SocINDEX with Full Text. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=sih&AN=7114024&site=ehost-live

Baxter, D. (n.d.). Marx, class consciousness, and the transition to socialism. Critical Sociology, 19 , 19-43. Retrieved April 5, 2008 from EBSCO Online Database SocINDEX with Full Text. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=sih&AN=9731753&site=ehost-live

Boswell, T., & Dixon, W. (n.d.). Marx's theory of rebellion - A cross-national analysis of

class exploitation, economic development, and violent revolt. American Sociological Review, 58 , 681-702. Retrieved April 5, 2008 from EBSCO Online Database International Bibliography of the Social Sciences. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ioh&AN=1177132&site=ehost-live

Hayes, P. (n.d.). Marx's analysis of the French class structure. Theory and Society, 22 , 99-123. Retrieved April 5, 2008 from EBSCO Online Database Academic Search Complete. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=10755700&site=ehost-live

Holton, R. (1981). Marxist theories of social change and the transition from feudalism to capitalism. Theory & Society, 10 , 833-867. Retrieved April 23, 2008 from EBSCO Online Database SocINDEX with Full Text. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=10746265&site=ehost-live

Kim, D. (n.d.). The theoretical foundation of Marx's historical sociology. Critical Sociology, 21 , 81-100. Retrieved April 5, 2008 from EBSCO Online Database SocINDEX with Full Text. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=sih&AN=9731802&site=ehost-live

Kozel, P. (2012). The transformation of psyche and the emergence of radical subjectivity: Introduction to mass psychology of capitalism. Rethinking Marxism, 24, 264-268. Retrieved October 25, 2013 from EBSCO Online Database SocINDEX with Full Text. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=sih&AN=73355901

Rattansi, A. (n.d.). End of an orthodoxy? The critique of sociology's view of Marx on class. Sociological Review, 33 , 641-669. Retrieved April 5, 2008 from EBSCO Online Database Academic Search Complete. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=5473444&site=ehost-live

Resnick, S. A., & Wolff, R. D. (2013). Marxism. Rethinking Marxism, 25, 152-162. Retrieved October 25, 2013 from EBSCO Online Database SocINDEX with Full Text. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=sih&AN=87044497 ..FT.Stoetzler, M. (2012). On the possibility that the revolution that will end capitalism might fail to usher in communism. Journal Of Classical Sociology, 12, 191-204. Retrieved October 25, 2013 from EBSCO Online Database SocINDEX with Full Text. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=sih&AN=76333027

Wacquant, L. (1985). Heuristic models in Marxian theory. Social Forces, 64 , 17-45. Retrieved March 12, 2008 from EBSCO Online Database SocINDEX with Full Text. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=5287489&site=ehost-live

Suggested Reading

Goto, K. (2013). STS and Marxist study: Where are we standing now?. Social Epistemology, 27, 125-129. Retrieved October 25, 2013 from EBSCO Online Database SocINDEX with Full Text. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=sih&AN=88212573

So, A., & Suwarsono, S. (1990). Class theory or class analysis? A reexamination of Marx's unfinished chapter on class. Critical Sociology, 17 , 35-55. Retrieved April 5, 2008 from EBSCO Online Database SocINDEX with Full Text. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=sih&AN=9730656&site=ehost-live

Spencer, D. (2011). Why we still study Marx?. Conference Papers -- American Sociological Association, 315. Retrieved October 25, 2013 from EBSCO Online Database SocINDEX with Full Text. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=sih&AN=85657843

Wendling, A. (2003). Are all revolutions bourgeois? Revolutionary temporality in Karl Marx's Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte . Strategies: Journal of Theory, Culture & Politics, 16 , 39. Retrieved April 23, 2008 from EBSCO Online Database Academic Search Complete. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=10136583&site=ehost-live

Worsley, P. (2002). Social evolution. In Marx & Marxism (pp. 59-72). Abingdon: Routledge. Retrieved April 23, 2008 from EBSCO Online Database SocINDEX with Full Text. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=sih&AN=17445518&site=ehost-live