Marxism and Class, Gender, and Race - Essay Example

MARXISM Introduction Karl Marx’s ideas put into writing by his closest collaborator Frederick Engels after Marx’s death. The theories and ideas of Mars are now known as Marxism. Later these concepts were enriched by the writings and living experience of Lenin and Trotsky who led the 1917 October Russian Revolution (Smith, www.marxism.org.uk, n. pag). Marxism is the philosophy and social theory based on Karl Marxs work. In other words Marxism is the political, economic, and social principles and policies promoted by Karl Marx and Frederik Engels (www.marxismfaq.co.uk, n. pag). The main belief of Marxism revolves around the following teams: Analysis of capitalism identifies and discusses different aspects of capitalism. Some of these aspects include "alienation" of workers, exploitation and the source of profits, economic growth and development, economic crises, business cycles, wage labour and surplus value, and the value of commodities (www.marxismfaq.co.uk, n. pag). The theoretical foundation of Marxism is in the materialist conception of history. In simple terms it is the application of Marxist thought to historical development. According to Marxists the main driving force of history is the class struggle. As Marx and Engels wrote in "The Communist Manifesto", "The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles." (www.marxismfaq.co.uk, n. pag) According to Marxists believe, the society is divided into separate classes. Bourgeoisie (capitalists) and the proletariat (workers) are the two main classes under capitalism according to Marx and Engels. The fourth important issue they addressed is after the proletariat have taken state power themselves, they will consolidate their position as the new ruling class of society through the so called "revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat". This "dictatorship" of the working class will be the midway between capitalism and communism (www.marxismfaq.co.uk, n. pag). Marxs passion towards communism was his focus which was far more important than the class struggle, the dialectic, the theory of surplus value, and all the others. Marx categorically discarded those utopian socialists who sought to arrive at communism through a gradual and evolutionary process, through a balanced advancement of the good. In fact Marx harked back to the apocalyptics, the post-millennia1 coercive German and Dutch Anabaptists of the sixteenth century, and to the various groups of pre-millennial Christians (Rothbard, 123-179). Race, Gender and Class as a Social Science Perspective in Marxism Earlier to the popularization of the Race, Gender & Class (RGC) viewpoint, most Marxist sociologists teaching social stratification were already adept practitioners. However, most sociologists do not take Marxism seriously and that theorists of gender and racial oppression have been, on the whole, hostile to Marxisms so-called reductionisms. In spite of the fact that class is a permanent dimension of each one of our lives, even today people are more likely to understand their social and economic grievances in gender, racial and ethnic terms, rather than in class terms (Belkhir, 23-33). Marxism and Class Marxist-Leninists accept the concept of social class, however it holds a strong perception that a persons social class is determined not by the amount of his wealth, but by the source of his income as determined by his relation to labour and to the means of production (www.mltranslations.org, n. pag). "Classes are large groups of people differing from each other by the place they occupy in a historically determined system of social production, by their relation (in most cases fixed and formulated by law) to the means of production, by their role in the social organisation of labour, and, consequently, by the dimensions of the share of social wealth of which they dispose and their mode of acquiring it". (Vladimir, 421). On the basis of the above definition, Marxist-Leninists distinguish three basic classes in 19th century Britain: "There are three great social groups, whose members... live on wages, profit and ground rent respectively". These three basis classes are 1) the proletariat or working class, 2) the bourgeoisie or capitalist class and 3) the landlord class, respectively. (Marx, 886). Class is thus determined by property and not by income or status, which is in turn determined by distribution and consumption, and finally it reflects the production and power relations of classes. For instance, the social conditions of bourgeoisie production are defined by bourgeois property. In other words we can say that class is a theoretical and formal relationship among individuals. The development of class conflict, the struggle between classes which initially was restricted to individual factories. In due course of time, given the maturing of capitalism, the growing disparity between life conditions of bourgeoisie and proletariat, and the increasing homogenization within each class, individual struggles become generalized to coalitions across factories. Later on class conflict manifested at the societal level. “All together, there are six elements in Marxs view of class conflict. Classes are authority relationships based on property ownership. A class defines groupings of individuals with shared life situations, thus interests. Classes are naturally antagonistic by virtue of their interests. Imminent within modern society is the growth of two antagonistic classes and their struggle, which eventually absorbs all social relations. Political organization and Power is an instrumentality of class struggle, and reigning ideas are its reflection. And structural change is a consequence of the class struggle” (Rummel, n. pag). Marxist Labor Economics For Marxism, labor and employment are the main concepts of social science. A Marxist would reject not only the supply-and-demand approach to labor markets, but many of the neoclassical criticisms and alternative models of "labor markets." According to Marxism, off late, the price of any commodity is the same as its average cost. Cost and price are measured in labor value, which is same as saying that, in the long run, the price is equal to the value. Since labor is a commodity in a capitalist system, the price of labor -- the wage -- will be equal to the average cost of production of labor. As the productivity of labor is more than its average cost of production, labor produces some surplus or extra that is not paid out as wages, even in the long run. On the other hand, the cost of production of labor is itself measured in labor value, hence to say that labor creates more value than is required to produce the labor. The difference, in terms of labor value, is termed as "surplus value." Hence surplus value is the source of profits or gain in a capitalist system. According to Marxism, labor is "exploited" through the wage employment system, which transfers the surplus value of labor to the capitalist class. In the short run however, this can be balanced or exaggerated by factors such as monopoly power, temporary scarcities of investment funds, machinery or natural resources, or political interference in the marketplace. Accordingly, marginal productivity may play its short-run role. The labor values define a typical capitalist system, in that prices in any real period tend toward the labor values. If theoretically, a capitalist system were to exist for an indefinite period without any new disturbing factors, the prices would ultimately equal the labor values. Marxists regard the surplus-value theory as the correct general explanation of profits and the most useful intellectual tool for understanding wages, labor and employment in a capitalist system (William-king, n. pag). This paper has tried to define some of the important terms in Marxism. There are many critics of Marxism. Some of them reject the fundamental theory of Marxist, such as the labour theory of value and historical materialism, criticize capitalism. Some of them advocate socialism - using other arguments. A few supporters of Marxism also argue that though many aspects of Marxist thought are viable, however the corpus fails to deal precisely with aspects of economic, political or social theory. Work cited Belkhir, J. Marxism and Class, Gender and Race: Rethinking the Trilogy. Race, Gender & Class, Vol. 8, No. 2 (2001), pp. 23-33. Karl Marx: Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, Volume 3; Moscow; 1971; p. 886 Marxism and Class: Some Definitions, A paper from the Communist League (Britain) 10 March 2007 Marxism FAQ 12 March 2007 Rothbard, M.N. Karl Marx: Communist as Religious Eschatologisy. The Review of Austrian Economics, Vol. 4, 1990, pp. 123-179. Rummel, R.J. Marxism, Class Conflict, and the Conflict Helix, In: Understanding Conflict And War: Vol. 3: Conflict In Perspective 10 March 2007 Smith, K. What is Marxism? May 2003, Socialist Party, 10 March 2007 Vladimir I. Lenin: A Great Beginning: Heroism of the Workers in the Rear: Communist Subbotniks In: Collected Works, Volume 29; Moscow; 1965; p. 421 William-King, Marxist Labor Economics 11 March 2007 Read More