Marxist Theory of Capitalism As Class: a Dialectics of Exchange, Property and Value Relations

chapter 7 Marxist Theory of Capitalism as Class: A Dialectics of Exchange, Property and Value Relations

Marx and Engels declare in the opening pages of the Communist Manifesto that the bourgeois society that has ‘sprouted from the ruins of feudal society has not done away with class antagonisms’. Much rather, that society ‘has but established new classes’ (Marx and Engels, 1975: 41). These new classes are: the bourgeoisie, the class of ‘owners of the means of social production and employers of wage labor’ and a class which must sell its labour power to live (ibid.: 40). This chapter provides a detailed theoretical analysis of the multi-dimen sional forms and aspects of the capitalist class relation/process, keeping in mind the general qualities of class society discussed earlier. This chapter is based in the discussions in the previous chapters (and sets the context for a discussion on consciousness and politics in subsequent chapters, which rely more on Lenin and his legacy). More specifically, the theoretical analysis presented here is closely informed by the principles of dialectical materialism briefly laid out in Chapter 5 and the ideas presented in Chapter 6 about the trans-historical class analysis including specificities of pre-capitalist form of class relation. In the background are also the criticisms of existing class theory presented in Chapter 4. The theoretical analysis of capitalism as a class relation presented in this chapter (and to be continued in the next) is firmly based on a fundamental principle asserted in the previous chapter. The principle concerns the internal relation between class theory and theory of production and accumulation of wealth. When one discusses abstract mechanisms through which a class society works – commodification, multiple forms of exploitation, capitalist accumulation, economic crisis formation, etc. – from the vantage-point of the interests of antagonistically-related classes, one is in the realm of class theory. And Capital 1 (and indeed all the three volumes) tend to do that, while also presenting abstract mechanisms as such. It is my fundamental belief that class theory must avoid ‘sociologism’, ‘politicism’, ‘voluntarism’, and ‘reformism’, and if class theory has to avoid these problems, it cannot divorce itself from the dy- namics of production and accumulation. Reflections on accumulation not as an abstract process but from the vantage point of the antagonistic interests of the capitalist and working classes and from the vantage point of their mutual

250 chapter 7 struggle, potential or real, makes accumulation an object of class theory. This principle applies to other abstract processes (e.g. commodification, exchange relations; division of labour, labour process, introduction of machinery). To theoretically reflect on how an abstract process such as accumulation affects and is affected by the interests of antagonistically-related classes and how it affects and is affected by the reality or the possibility of class practice (consciousness, struggle, organization, etc.) is to engage in class theory. Class theory without a consistent, rigorous consideration of underlying accumulation processes becomes an approach to society which explains things merely in terms of ‘social relations’ (sociologism). For the same reason, it also becomes an approach to society which gives far too much importance to politics and to action (‘resistance’), and correspondingly to the possibilities of reform of class relations. Thus such an approach becomes vulnerable to politicism, voluntarism, and reformism, which bedevil much existing class theorizing. The chapter argues: that capitalism is a form of class relation which is as- sociated with and normally promotes a rather high level of development of productive forces relative to pre-capitalist class forms, that such a relation is a dialectical articulation of processes involving exchange (of labour power and means of subsistence, among other things), control over property or means of production, and production-appropriation of value/surplus-value, with the effects on the capitalist and working classes that are irreconcilably different and antagonistic, and that such class relation of unity gives rise to, and is re- produced through, a massive amount of fragmentation/ differ ence/divisions within the classes. A class theory of capitalism can only be a grand theory of capitalism, matching, contrary to existing class theories, the extremely ambi- tious nature of Marxist theory as such. And contrary to existing class theories of the type we have discussed, which claim to be Marxist, such a theory of capitalism not only unpacks the fundamental mechanisms of the capitalist class relation but also points to the possibility and necessity of its abolition. This chapter (and the next) is a protracted (and still incomplete) process of a combing operation in relation to political-economic ideas of Marx and Engels (and to some extent Lenin and others) in order to articulate and re-articulate what I think is a defensible theory of class at a relatively concrete level: a theory that is valid for the capitalist form of class society. Marx’s thinking in Capital (and especially, Capital vol. 1) about abstract mechanisms of capitalism are fundamental to the articulation of class theory of capitalism. In a letter to a friend (Johann Becker of Geneva), Marx (1867; para 1) said this about his work on political economy, and about his Capital.

The whole work will appear in 3 volumes. The title is Capital. A Critique of Political Economy. The first volume comprises the First Book: ‘The Pr ocess