Marxist Theory: Class Struggle and Social Change
Relations of Production and Social Change
Social change is inevitable because it depends on objective factors, in the same society and its economic and technological novel. This inevitability is that Marx draws the necessary time to explain the explosion of the capitalist mode of production and transit to the communist model. But the way to a new society can not be, no proletarian revolutionary effort needs without one, derived from an awareness of class exploitation. That the transition to communism is inevitable (Kel “capitalism has dug its own grave” in the words of Marx) does not mean we sit around waiting to happen. Part of that inevitability depends on the transforming action of the oppressed class, the proletariat.
The Revolutionary Process
The interpretations of Marxist thought after Marx agree in their thinking to identify three moments in the revolutionary process that must lead to communism:
1. The Workers’ Democracy. When capitalism is abolished and the dictatorship of the proletariat is established to take political power, we will find ourselves in a first phase in which workers’ democracy, or seizure of power by the workers, will replace bourgeois democracy. At this time the proletariat class will assume the role of owning their own workforce, councils will be created in factories, work was collectivized and political institutions will be taken by the Communist Party.
2. Socialism. The next step in the implementation phase of communism is socialism. It will recover the role of government to streamline production and design five-year economic plans. The state will distribute the wealth generated by all together, according to the maximum Marxist “from each according to ability, to each according to his needs.” The socialist state means of social control used to avoid the removal of those who want to return to the previous state of bourgeois democracy and capitalist privileges. The state has the function of eliminating the inequalities of wealth that might arise between individuals and to ensure the equitable distribution thereof, as well as health and education.
3. Communism. The final phase of the Marxist revolution is the introduction of communism as a social model. Here begins, according to Marx, the true human history. In it, the man will have completely liberated from the yoke of oppression and class differences, so it will be back to their true nature and feel real owner of himself and his work product. Work organization and social structure will have become natural phenomena, so that even the State shall be abolished, leaving his duties to make sense.
The Use of Violence in the Communist Revolution
These phases described were actually less developed by Marx himself. For example, Marx did not clarify too much if he favored the use of violence to establish the communist revolution or not. Many parties, however, both communists and anarchists, defended the legitimate use of force, guerrillas or attacks as methods of acceleration of the communist revolution and recovery of authentic “freedom” human, which comes from the right of each to own their own bodies and their own work.
Ten Steps Towards a Communist System
However, Marx if you point at the end of the Communist Manifesto ten steps he believes should be implemented in those countries (most advanced) in the workers’ revolution to triumph. These measures are the prelude to the communist system and contain the essence of internal organization of the social model:
- Expropriation of land ownership and use of land rent for government spending.
- Heavy progressive tax.
- Abolition of right of inheritance.
- Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.
- Centralization of credit in the hands of the state through a national bank with state capital and an exclusive monopoly.
- Centralization in the hands of the State of all means of transport.
- Multiplication of manufacturing firms belonging to the State and instruments of production, reclamation of waste lands and improvement of land, according to a plan.
- Obligation to work for all; Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture.
Contradictions Move the Change
Explained the idea of “social change” proposed by Marx and the actual phases of this change in history, it should now explain what internal mechanisms drive to societies to change. In other words, what is the engine of history?
At this point Marx uses the familiar expression “motor of history is class struggle.”
The Origin of Class Contradictions
The exploitation of labor worker. The situation of the proletariat.