Panel discussion I: On the Marxian Theory of Class
Channel: Inštitut za delavske študije
Date: 2014-05-05

Tibor Rutar: The Marxian Theory of Class: Recentring Exploitation and Class Struggle
&
Chris O'Kane: 'The specific social characters that the social production process stamps on individuals': On The Constitution of Classes in Capital as 'products of these specific social relations of production'
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The last chapter of the third volume of Marx's Capital bears a promising title: 'Classes'. Marx opens this chapter by listing 'the three great classes of a modern society based upon the capitalist mode of production': wage-labourers, capitalists and land-owners. He proceeds by posing an important question: 'what constitutes a class?' However, a couple of paragraphs later the chapter suddenly ends, leaving the reader without a satisfying answer. Unfortunately, Marx was unable to finish the third volume of Capital and the chapter on classes during his lifetime. Hence, even though Marx's theoretical opus contains numerous sporadic references on classes and class struggle, it does not contain a coherent and elaborate theory of classes.

The first objective of the panel is to tackle the question that was left unanswered by Marx and ask, What constitutes a class in a capitalist society? Our intent here is not to inquire into what historically constituted the classes, by way of explaining their historical genesis and development, but rather to look into the peculiarities of the underlying social relations that structurally constitute classes within what Marx calls 'the inner organisation of the capitalist mode of production, in its ideal average'. Particularly, we will be interested in the specific social form assumed by the antagonistic relations between classes in a capitalist society and in the distinct nature of class domination entailed by this form.

The second objective of the panel is to examine some of the contemporary notions of classes and class struggle in the works of post-Marxist theorists and bourgeois sociologists. The prevailing idea in these currents is that the Marxian concepts of class and class struggle are anachronistic and incapable of grasping the social relations in contemporary society. Moreover, Marx's concepts of class and class struggle are seen as an integral part of his supposedly crude economic reductionism. By way of returning to Marx's original texts, we will critically scrutinise these contemporary theories and ideologies.