NationMaster - Encyclopedia: Class conflict

Class conflict is both the friction that accompanies social relationships between members or groups of different social classes and the underlying tensions or antagonisms which exist in society. Class conflict is thought to play a pivotal role in history of class societies (such as capitalism and feudalism) by Marxists who refer to its overt manifestations as class struggle. Regardless of the truth or utility of that theory, conflict between classes exists and is expressed both in daily life and politics. Social class refers to the hierarchical distinctions between individuals or groups in societies or cultures. ... Human relationships within an ethnically diverse society. ... For other senses of this word, see history (disambiguation). ... For other uses, see Capitalism (disambiguation). ... Roland pledges his fealty to Charlemagne; from a manuscript of a chanson de geste. ... Marxism is the philosophy, social theory and political practice based on the works of Karl Marx, a 19th century German socialist philosopher, economist, journalist, and revolutionary. ... Class struggle is class conflict looked at from a Marxist, libertarian socialist, or anarchist perspective. ... Politics is a process by which decisions are made within groups. ...

Sometimes class conflict results in violent struggles, either episodic, such as the Johnson County War in Wyoming in the 19th century, or chronic, such as the atmosphere that prevailed in pre-revolutionary Russia. It can be open, as with a business lockout aimed at destroying a labor union, or it can be hidden, as with an informal slowdown in production that protests low wages or an excessively fast or dangerous work process. The Johnson County War, also known as the War on Powder River or Wyoming Civil War, was a range war which took place in Johnson County, Wyoming, in the Powder River Country, in April, 1892. ... Official language(s) English Capital Cheyenne Largest city Cheyenne Area Ranked 11th - Total 97,818 sq mi (253,348 kmÂ²) - Width 280 miles (450 km) - Length 360 miles (580 km) - % water 0. ... Alternative meaning: Nineteenth Century (periodical) (18th century — 19th century — 20th century — more centuries) As a means of recording the passage of time, the 19th century was that century which lasted from 1801-1900 in the sense of the Gregorian calendar. ... The Russian Revolution of 1917 was a series of political events in Russia, which, after the elimination of the Russian autocracy system, and the Provisional Government (Duma), resulted in the establishment of the Soviet power under the control of the Bolshevik party. ... The examples and perspective in this article or section may not represent a worldwide view. ... The examples and perspective in this article or section may not represent a worldwide view. ...

"Representing a political group of working people with a common interest" , Labour unions and labor-oriented political parties have revolutionised health and safety standards in industrial economies, either directly (by making government policy) or indirectly (by pressuring incumbent politicians). A union (labor union in American English; trade union, sometimes trades union, in British English; either labour union or trade union in Canadian English) is a legal entity consisting of employees or workers having a common interest, such as all the assembly workers for one employer, or all the workers... A political party is an organization that seeks to attain political power within a government, usually by participating in electoral campaigns. ...

1 Classes under capitalism
2 Class in the Soviet Union and similar societies
3 See also
4 Further reading

Classes under capitalism

Class warfare is a term long-used by many socialists (including Marxists and communists, but also anarchists, democratic socialists, etc.) to describe social and political conflicts between classes (groups of people with a different relationship to the means of production, and to each other). Socialism refers to a broad array of doctrines or political movements that envisage a socio-economic system in which property and the distribution of wealth are subject to social control. ... This article is about communism as a form of society and as a political movement. ... Libertarian socialism is any one of a group of political philosophies dedicated to the abolition of property by restoring direct control of production and resources to the working class. ... Democratic socialism is a broad political movement propagating the ideals of socialism within the context of a democratic system. ... The means of production are physical, non-human, inputs used in production. ...

In this view, capitalism consists of two social classes: the wage-workers (the proletariat) and the business owners or capitalists (the bourgeoisie). The wage-workers do not own or have control over the means of production, and must sell their labor power to the capitalists in order to survive. The capitalists own and control the means of production, and subsist by exploiting the workers. For other uses, see Capitalism (disambiguation). ... The proletariat (from Latin proles, offspring) is a term used to identify a lower social class; a member of such a class is proletarian. ... bourgeoisie is basically a trem that meens middle class. ... Labor power (in German: Arbeitskraft, or labor force) is a crucial concept used by Karl Marx in his critique of political economy. ... The term exploitation may carry two distinct meanings: The act of utilizing something for any purpose. ...

Therefore, a socio-political imbalance is said to exist between individuals of extreme wealth or power and those with little or no wealth. This imbalance was probably first recognized by Adam Smith:

"The masters [i.e., employers], being fewer in number, can combine much more easily; and the law, besides, authorises, or at least does not prohibit their combinations, while it prohibits those of the workmen. We have no acts of parliament against combining to lower the price of work; but many against combining to raise it. In all such disputes the masters can hold out much longer. A landlord, a farmer, a master manufacturer, or merchant, though they did not employ a single workman, could generally live a year or two upon the stocks which they have already acquired. Many workmen could not subsist a week, few could subsist a month, and scarce any a year without employment. In the long-run the workman may be as necessary to his master as his master is to him, but the necessity is not so immediate." (The Wealth of Nations, volume I, ch. 8, paragraph 12)

Going beyond Smith, the interests of the wealthy are seen to conflict (often dramatically and violently) with the interests and needs of classes without power.

Corporations are seen to function as a vehicle for combination of individual capitals, transcending the bounds of mortality and liability that accompany an individual-owned enterprise. There are similarities between the class warfare that existed between the Victorian era monarchy and the common public, and a modern corporation and its workers. A corporation (usually known in the United Kingdom and Ireland as a company) is a legal entity (distinct from a natural person) that often has similar rights in law to those of a Civil law systems may refer to corporations as moral persons; they may also go by the name... In the most general sense, a liability is anything that is a hindrance, or puts one at a disadvantage. ... Places where monarchies maintain rule appear in blue. ...

In any class society, each of the two main classes has its own divisions, so that neither is monolithic. Concerning capitalism, Marxist theory argues that the working class has both an "objective" class interest as a collective group, and a large number of individual interests of workers. Class interest may thus differ from "trade union consciousness", economism, and the like. Similarly, the capitalist class may be driven by the difference between the long-term collective interest of the class and the profit-seeking of individual capitalists. In a revolutionary situation, convergence of individual interests and class interests is expected; this might be seen as a polarization of society. Economism is an ideology in which supply and demand are the only important factors in decisions, and literally outstrip or permit ignoring all other factors. ...

The empirical manifestation of class antagonisms depends on the specific (concrete) historical situation in which they operate. For example, other social divisions -- concerning issues of nationality, ethnicity, religion, language, and gender -- can interact with, confuse, and/or mute class tensions. Sometimes class can be simultaneously moderated by ethnic issues (as between white proletarians and capitalists in apartheid-era South Africa) and intensified by them (as between blacks and whites there)..

Class in the Soviet Union and similar societies

Some argue that in a system such as that which existed in the Soviet Union, the leaders of the ruling political party form a powerful bureaucratic stratum -- sometimes termed a "new class" -- that controls the means of production. This type of system is referred to by its detractors as state capitalism. A political party is an organization that seeks to attain political power within a government, usually by participating in electoral campaigns. ... In sociological theories, bureaucracy is an organizational structure characterized by regularized procedure, division of responsibility, hierarchy, and impersonal relationships. ... Goldenville Strata exposed at a quarry in Bedford, Canada. ... The new class is a term to describe the privileged ruling class of bureaucrats and Communist party functionaries which typically arises in a Stalinist communist state. ... There are multiple definitions of the term state capitalism. ...

To counter this, Trotskyists propose solutions that include what they claim would be a democratic state, putting state power (and thus, also the control of the means of production) in the hands of the people. They reject the idea of "socialism in one country" as a solution; in their view, a truly grassroots socialist system would have to be world-wide in order to work. They also maintain that to avoid establishing new single-person or small-group (as opposed to class) dictatorships, all revolutions would have to come from popular forces rather than being imposed from above, or from outside, a country. Trotskyism is the theory of Marxism as advocated by Leon Trotsky. ... Democracy is, literally, rule by the people (from the Greek demos, people, and kratos, rule). The methods by which this rule is exercised, and indeed the composition of the people are central to various definitions of democracy, but useful contrasts can be made with oligarchies and autocracies, where political authority... In the context of international relations and diplomacy, power (sometimes clarified as international power, national power, or state power) is the ability of one state to influence or control other states. ... The means of production are physical, non-human, inputs used in production. ... Socialism in One Country was a thesis put forward by Joseph Stalin in 1924 and further supported by Bukharin that given the catastrophic failures of all communist revolutions in Europe from 1917-1921 except their own, rather than relying on the idea that an underdeveloped and agrarian country like Russia... Grassroots is a political movement for individual constituents of a community to voice their ideas and opinions. ... Social class refers to the hierarchical distinctions between individuals or groups in societies or cultures. ... A communist revolution is a social revolution inspired by the ideas of Marxism that aims to replace capitalism with communism, normally with socialism (public ownership over the means of production) as an intermediate stage. ...

Anti-Revisionist critics of state capitalism reject the idea of "Permanent Revolution" and counter that Trotsky himself had at one time thought it acceptable that socialism would come to be in a single country alone as long as that country was industrialized, but that in regards to Russia, he considered the country too backward to achieve what it later in fact did achieve — mostly through his archenemy Stalin's Five Year Plans. In their own right, anti-revisionists also acknowledge that the Soviet Union contained a "new class" or "red bourgeoisie, but they generally place the real beginning of the formation of that class on Nikita Khruschev and his successors. Therefore, in anti-revisionist circles, there is very little talk of class conflict in the Soviet Union before 1956, except when talking about specific contexts such as the Russian Civil War (when some agents of the former feudal ruling class tried to retake state power from the Bolsheviks) and World War II (fought in that country and elsewhere between, in their view, communists and fascists, the latter of which Marxists consider to be one of the more developed or "in crisis" forms of capitalism). In the Marxist-Leninist communist movement, an anti-revisionist is a communist who favors a stricter interpretation of the ideology in accordance with the teachings of Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Stalin. ... Permanent Revolution, (permanent in the sense that it must be continuous until final victory) is the theory that the bourgeois democratic tasks in countries with delayed bourgeois democratic development cannot be accomplished except through the establishment of a workers state, and further, that the creation of a workers state would... 1915 passport photo of Trotsky Leon Davidovich Trotsky (Russian: Лев Давидович Троцкий; also transliterated Trotskii, Trotski, Trotzky) (October 26 (O.S.) = November 7 (N.S.), 1879 - August 21, 1940), born Lev Davidovich Bronstein (Лев Давидович Бронштейн), was a Bolshevik revolutionary and Marxist intellectual. ... Iosif (usually anglicized as Joseph) Vissarionovich Stalin (Russian: Иосиф Виссарионович Сталин), original name Ioseb Jughashvili (Georgian: იოსებ ჯუღაშვილი; see Other names section) (December 21, 1879[1] – March 5, 1953) was a Bolshevik revolutionary and leader of the Soviet Union. ... Five-Year Plans or Piatiletkas (пятилетка) were a series of nation-wide centralized exercises in rapid economic development in the Soviet Union. ... bourgeoisie is basically a trem that meens middle class. ... Nikita Khrushchev in 1962 Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev (Russian: Ники́та Серге́евич Хрущёв) (nih-KEE-tah khroo-SHCHYOFF) (April 17, 1894 – September 11, 1971) was the leader of the Soviet Union after the death of Joseph Stalin. ... 1956 (MCMLVI) was a leap year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar. ... The Russian Civil War was fought from 1918 to 1922. ... Feudalism comes from the Late Latin word feudum, itself borrowed from a Germanic root *fehu, a commonly used term in the Middle Ages which means fief, or land held under certain obligations by feodati. ... In Marxian political economics, the ruling class refers to that segment or class of society that has the most economic and political power. ... Bolshevik Party Meeting. ... Combatants Allies: Poland, United Kingdom, Soviet Union, France/Free France, United States, China, Canada, India, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Greece,Norway and others Axis Powers: Germany, Italy, Japan, Bulgaria, Finland, Romania, Hungary, Burma, Slovakia Casualties Military dead: 17 million Civilian dead: 33 million Total dead: 50 million Military dead... This article is about communism as a form of society, as an ideology advocating that form of society, and as a popular movement. ... Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler Fascism (in Italian, fascismo), capitalized, refers to the right-wing authoritarian political movement which ruled Italy from 1922 to 1943 under the leadership of Benito Mussolini. ... Marxism is the political practice and social theory based on the works of Karl Marx, a 19th century philosopher, economist, journalist, and revolutionary, along with Friedrich Engels. ...

Other socialist critics of Soviet-style societies, such as the libertarian socialists and the syndicalists, argue that the solution is for factories and offices to be run by the workers who work in them. In this view, merely changing who controls the state is insufficient; the nature of the work process itself must also be changed. In the syndicalist and anarchist views, in fact, there is generally no state apparatus at all, but rather a network of councils coordinated by informal larger gatherings at which policies for the wider society are collectively decided. Libertarian socialism is a political philosophy dedicated to opposing coercive forms of authority and social hierarchy, in particular the institutions of capitalism and the state. ... Syndicalism refers to a set of ideas, movements and tendencies which share the avowed aim of transforming capitalist society through action by the working class on the industrial front. ... A workers council is a council, or deliberative body, composed of working class or proletarian members. ... A state is an organized political community, occupying a territory, and possessing internal and external sovereignty, that enforces a monopoly on the use of force. ... Human relationships within an ethnically diverse society. ...

Contents

Classes under capitalism GA_googleFillSlot("encyclopedia_square");

Class in the Soviet Union and similar societies

See also

Further reading

Classes under capitalism