Class conflict constitutes the central theme of Marx theory of conflict .Karl Marx described in Communist Manifesto about class conflict. Establishing his theory of social class Karl Marx-went to point out that there has always been lass conflict among different classes “The history of all hitherto existing societies is the history of class struggles. Free men and slaves, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guild master and journeyman, In a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, own hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended either in a revolutionary reconstitution of society at large or in the common ruin of the contending classes.”
Marx’s original idea was that there is a fundamental contradiction between wage earners and capitalists. He was convinced moreover; that fundamental opposition of interests dominated all of capitalistic society and would assume an increasingly simplified form in the course of historical development. From another point of view, excellent observer historical reality, Marx was aware of the plurality of social groups plurality, reducible to two large groups is capitalists and proletariat. However, a capitalistic society did exhibit these two features which should not be confused with social groups.
In the case of the workers verses the owners of the teams of production, the various inertia which may he invented or observed are identifie. Accepting the difference between the conflict among classes in ancient societies and the modern and the difference between the nature of exploitation Karl Marx admitted, “The fact that modern workers are formally ‘free’ to sell their labour while being existentially constrained to do so makes their condition historically specific and functionally distinct from that of earlier exploited classes.” The industrial workers have determined mode of existence which depends on the lot they are assigned in capitalistic society. They are conscious of their solidarity, they are antagonism towards other social groups hence a “social class” in the true sense of the term. The proletariat will plan it in fundamental opposition to the capitalists.
There are sub-groups within each of these classes and also groups which are not yet identified into the camp of one or the other of the Iwo chief actors in the drama of history. But these exterior or marginal Groups will gradually, in the course of historical evolution, be obliged to join once or the other of the two existing camps of the proletariat or the camp of capitalists. Marxist theory of class conflict requires the understanding of the development of the proletariat, the importance of property, the identification of economic and political power, the identification of authority, polarisation of classes, theory of surplus value, pauperization, alienation, class solidarity and antagonism, revolution, the dictatorship of proletariat and finally the inauguration of the communist society.
The class conflict starts with the development of proletariat, the importance of property and the polarisation of classes. It is a result of exploitation of the proletariat by the capitalists and their consequent pauperization. Exploitation leads to alienation. Class solidarity and antagonism lead to revolution. Revolution eliminates capitalism and establishes dictatorship of the proletariat the class conflict ends in the inauguration of the communist society. In fact, the most significant part of the social thought of Karl Marx is the theory of class conflict. Therefore, the above mentioned factors may be classified in three groups :the development of social classes, the class conflict, and finally the revolution.
Development of social class
Class conflict presuppose the development of social classes.The following are the important steps in this direction:
- Importance of property.
Classes are determined on the basis of the relation of the individual to the means of production. As the importance of property increases so increases the distance between different classes.
- Theory of Surplus Value.
Surplus value refers to the extra value Produced by the worker by means of his labour. In fact, this is the share of the worker usurped by the capitalists resulting in exploitation.
- Polarization.
Exploitation results in polarization. In the word: of Ralf Dahrendorf, “The whole society breaks up more-and more-into two great hostile camps, two great directly antagonistic classes: bourgeoisie and proletariat.
- Proletarianization.
According to Raymond Aaron, “The rise of 4. Proletarian results is proletarianization which means that, along with the development of the capitalist’s regime, the intermediate state between capitalists and proletarians will be worn thin and that an increasing number of the representatives of these intermediate strata will be absorbed by the proletariat.” Mats described the process of development of the proletariat as follow: “The first attempts of the workers to associate among themselves always take place in the form of combinations (unions). Large-scale industry concentrates in one another. Competition divides their interest. But the maintenance of this common interest which they have against the boss unites them in a common thought of resistance-combination. Thus, combination always has a double aim, that of stopping the competition among themselves, in order to bring about a general competition with the capitalists.”
- Praise of political authority
In word of Raymond Aron “Political power, properly so called, is merely the organised power of one class for oppressing another.” The political power is embodied in the state. In the capitalist society the state is an instrument of economic exploitation and the consolidation of the interest of the capitalist. This is the identification of economic and political power. This of intensifies class conflict which ultimately leads of revolution.
- Pauperisation.
The exploitation of the proletariat by the capitalist leads to pauperisation of the masses. In the words of Raymond Aaron, “Pauperisation is the process by which the proletarians tend to grow poorer and poorer as the forces of production are developed.” It follows that in every mode of production which involves the exploitation of man by man, the social product is so distributed that the majority of people, who labour, are condemned to toil for no more than the barest necessities of life. Sometimes favourable circumstances arise when they can win more, but more often they get the barest minimum, and at times not even that. On the other hand, an animosity, the owners of means of production, he property owners, enjoy le insure and luxury. Society is divided into rich and poor.”
7 Alienation.
Economic exploitation and the inhuman working conditions in capitalist society lead to alienation of men. Due to alienation impediment in the ideal of total man. Explaining the process of increase of alienation of man Karl Marx has said, “ Within the capitalist system all methods for raising the social productiveness of labour are brought about at the cost of the individual labourer ; all means for the development of production trumsform them salves into means of domination over and exploitation of the producers; they mutilate the labourer into a fragment of a man, degrade him to the level of an appendage of a machine, destroy every remnant of charm in his work and turn it into hated toil; they estrange from him the intellectual potentialities of the labour-process in the same proportion incorporated in it as an independent power ; they distort the conditions under which he works, subject him during the labour-process to a despotism, the more hateful for its mean-noses ; the transform bits life time into working-time and drag his wife and child under the wheels of the juggernaut of capital. But all methods for the accumulation of surplus value are at the same time methods of accumulation; and every extension of accumulation becomes again a means for the development of those methods. It follows, therefore, that in proportion as capital accumulates, the lot of the labourer is his payments high or low must grow worse.”
- Class Conflict.
Tracing the process of class conflict in the capitalist society, characterised by proletarisation, pauperization and alienation Karl Marx said, “With the development of industry, the proletariat not only increases in number; it becomes concentrated in greater masses, its strength grows, and it feels that strength more. The various interests and conditions of life within the ranks of the proletariat are more and more equalized, in proportion as machinery obliterates all distinctions of labour and nearly everywhere reduces wages to the same low level. The growing competition among the bourgeoisie and the resulting commercial crises make the wages of the workers ever more fluctuated. The increasing improvement of machinery, ever more rapidly developing, makes Their livelihood more and more precarious individual workmen and individual bourgeoisie take more and more the character of collisions between two classes. There upon the workers begin to form combinations (trade unions) against the bourgeoisie; they club together in order to keep up the rate of wages; they found permanent associations in order to make provisions beforehand for these occasional revolts. Here and there the contest breaks out into riots.”
- Social Revolution.
According to Karl Marx the social revolution is a law of development of an antagonistic class society. In his preface to A Contribution to The Critique of Political Economy Marx wrote that at a certain stage of their development, the material productive forces of society come in conflict with the existing relations of production within which they have been at work hit hereto. From forms of development of the productive forces these relations turn into their fetters. Then begins a coach of social revolution. To quote Marx: “Finally, in times when the class struggle nears the decisive hour, the process of dissolution going in fact within the whole range of old society, on within the ruling class, assumes such a violent, glaring character, that a small section of the ruling class cuts itself adrift and joins the revolutionary class, the class that holds the future in its hands. Just as therefore, at an earlier period, a section of the nobility went over to the bourgeoisie, so now a portion of the bourgeois ideologists who have risen Themselves to the level of comprehending theoretically.
- Dictatorship of the Proletariat.
Between capitalism and Socialism “lies the period of the revolutionary transformation of the one into the other. There corresponds to this a political transition period in which the state can be nothing but the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat.” The dictatorship of the proletariat is a qualitatively coercive, determined and ruthless. It is constructive and educative. It is the highest type of democracy. It takes various forms in transition from capitalism to communism. The Marxist party in USSR took the leading role in the dictatorship of the proletariat. However, the concept of social dictatorship gradually became controversial among the Marxists. As Irving Howe observes: treacherous phrase ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’, both because it is open to obvious misconstruction and because it has acquired, in the Stalinist and post-Stalinist dictatorships, abhorrent connotations. Marx himself had written that he differentiated himself from ‘those communists who were out to destroy personal liberty and who wish to turn the world into large barrack or into a gigantic warehouse.”
11 Communist society.
In the end class a conflict result into victory of the proletariat and establishment of a communist society which abolishes provide property and eliminates class. Karl Marx proclaimed that the communist state is the instrument for establishment of communism after the achievement of this purpose the state withers away.