Is Class Struggle the Motor of History?

[PTK]

“The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles”​

stated Frederick Engels and Karl Marx in The Manifesto of Communist Party.

Is this true?​

 

[chilango]

Yep.

More money for less work versus more work for less money.

At the heart of everything ever. (Well at least since wage labour and/or money was invented).

 

[Fozzie Bear]

It’s true since the formation of classes, yes. Whether society predates classes is one for the anthropologists I guess.

 

[JimW]

Perhaps you could say history starts when you get classes, before that we were just living (in the moment, not a phone in sight).

 

[chilango]

* Predictable Marshall Sahlins plug. *

 

[PTK]

What of the current civil war in Sudan?
Is that driven by class?

 

[chilango]

What of the current civil war in Sudan?
Is that driven by class?

Broadly speaking, yes.

 

[PTK]

Broadly speaking, yes.

I would have thought that the civil war in Sudan is a conflict between two factions of the state machine, sposorded by imperialist powers. I think that perhaps the capitalist classes in certain imperialist powers were concerend that the state in Sudan was getting closer to another imperialist power. It is not a class-based struggle, I would argue, but it is a product of a class-based system, capitalism.

 

[Idris2002]

I would have thought that the civil war in Sudan is a conflict between two factions of the state machine, sposorded by imperialist powers. I think that perhaps the capitalist classes in certain imperialist powers were concerend that the state in Sudan was getting closer to another imperialist power. It is not a class-based struggle, I would argue, but it is a product of a class-based system, capitalism.

Yes, but the two factions have different social bases, within the elites whose elite status is based ultimately on class factors.

 

[PTK]

Yes, but the two factions have different social bases, within the elites whose elite status is based ultimately on class factors.

Engels and Marx were writing about a struggle between an exploiting class and an exploited class. Is this what is happening in Sudan?

 

[Silas Loom]

History is narrative, so you can chose whatever you want to be the motor, but it seems pretty obvious that resource struggles account for far more of the interesting stuff than class struggles.

 

[Idris2002]

Engels and Marx were writing about a struggle between an exploiting class and an exploited class. Is this what is happening in Sudan?

Since Sudanese independence there have been elites and subalterns, exploiters and exploited, dominating and dominated groups of all kinds, including social classes. A few years ago, the oppressed masses nearly broke through and won - but they were not able to finish the job. Now a factionalized oligarchy murders them, as it fights over the corpse of the country. Not quite what Uncle Charlie and Fred were talking about, but not that different from it either.

I think it would be useful to reread the Eighteenth Brumaire now.

 

[chilango]

I may come back to this as I was in Sudan for, and witnessed first hand, the genesis of the current war back in the ashes of the last.

 

[Rimbaud]

The obvious retort to class being the driving force of history is to look at ethnic/tribal conflicts instead.

But what strikes me is the extent to which class is grounded in ethnicity. In the US this is obvious, with the legacy of slavery and so on making class very racially coded, but even in the UK it is true as well, with the elite overwhelmingly of Norman ancestry. If you've grown up in the UK you can probably recognise someone's social origins based simply on how they look. The privately educated posh students living in Jesmond in Newcastle stick out like a sore thumb to me even before I hear their accents.

I suspect this is a somewhat universal experience, with the classic origins of class society being the conquest of one tribe by another - e.g. Egyptian slave society almost certainly originated this way. Outside the New World this may have happened long enough ago to not be readily apparent today, but it's remarkable how often it still appears as a factor - e.g. Alawites in Syria.

 

[Red Cat]

As opposed to what? What are the alternative theories of social change?

That seems a better place to start than picking on a specific political conflict.

 

[The39thStep]

The obvious retort to class being the driving force of history is to look at ethnic/tribal conflicts instead.

But what strikes me is the extent to which class is grounded in ethnicity. In the US this is obvious, with the legacy of slavery and so on making class very racially coded, but even in the UK it is true as well, with the elite overwhelmingly of Norman ancestry. If you've grown up in the UK you can probably recognise someone's social origins based simply on how they look. The privately educated posh students living in Jesmond in Newcastle stick out like a sore thumb to me even before I hear their accents.

I suspect this is a somewhat universal experience, with the classic origins of class society being the conquest of one tribe by another - e.g. Egyptian slave society almost certainly originated this way. Outside the New World this may have happened long enough ago to not be readily apparent today, but it's remarkable how often it still appears as a factor - e.g. Alawites in Syria.

What strategy are you suggesting to rid us of the Normans and their eternal elitist rule?

 

[ska invita]

As opposed to what? What are the alternative theories of social change?

That seems a better place to start than picking on a specific political conflict.

Technological advances are the other big factor, but these don't happen in a vacuum of course

 

[A380]

What strategy are you suggesting to rid us of the Normans and their eternal elitist rule?

We need to learn to build our own mott and bailey castles. Then we’ll show em.

 

[Rimbaud]

What strategy are you suggesting to rid us of the Normans and their eternal elitist rule?

Guillotines are the tried and tested method I believe.

 

[Humberto]

Guillotines are the tried and tested method I believe.

A Tutsi - Hutu scenario, ya bollock (who usually makes good posts).

 

[Rimbaud]

A Tutsi - Hutu scenario, ya bollock (who usually makes good posts).

It was a French Revolution joke about beheading the monarchy, not actually advocating race war about stuff that happened 1000 years ago.

 

[Humberto]

It was a French Revolution joke about beheading the monarchy, not actually advocating race war about stuff that happened 1000 years ago.

nah

 

[xenon]

when all you have is a hammer, et cetera.

 

[Humberto]

.

 

[redsquirrel]

Technological advances are the other big factor, but these don't happen in a vacuum of course

It would be possible to write quite a history of the inventions, made since 1830, for the sole purpose of supplying capital with weapons against the revolts of the working-class

These two threads 1, 2 cover much of what I'd say re technology and class struggle so I'll just add if technology is the defining factor why did the capitalism first arise in England? Was the technology of England so different (advanced?) to that of France?

Engels and Marx were writing about a struggle between an exploiting class and an exploited class. Is this what is happening in Sudan?

I'd say it would be better not to use exploited/exploiting here, the passage goes on (my emphasis)

Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guild-master(3) and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now 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.

I'd argue oppressed covers a wider sphere than exploited. Though actually I prefer the language Meiksins Wood uses - appropriators and producers

In the Greek polis and the Roman Republic, appropriators and producers in the citizen body confronted one another directly as individuals and as classes, as landlords and peasants, not primarily as rulers and subjects. Private property developed more autonomously and completely, separating itself more thoroughly from the state. A new and distinctive dynamic of property and class relations was differentiated out from the traditional relations of (appropriating) state and (producing) subjects.

 

[JimW]

I'll just add if technology is the defining factor why did the capitalism first arise in England? Was the technology of England so different (advanced?) to that of France?

There's a bit of a cottage industry for historians writing about why capitalism didn't happen first in China, with advanced economies like along the Yangtze delta and a long history of trade and finance plus advanced technology.

 

[redsquirrel]

There's a bit of a cottage industry for historians writing about why capitalism didn't happen first in China, with advanced economies like along the Yangtze delta and a long history of trade and finance plus advanced technology.

If you've got any articles/references I'd be interested in reading them.

In fact if you could recommend a good general history of China that would be great - I'm really ignorant on this.

 

[NoXion]

Class conflict certainly seems to me to be a significant factor in historical events. Environment would also seem to be an important influence, at least on a macro-scale. Agricultural societies took off in places like Mesopotamia and the Indus valley rather than say, eastern Siberia. The general phenomenon of modern humans living settled agricultural lifestyles as part of a heavily material culture probably owes a lot to the advent of the most recent (and still on-going) interglacial period within the current ice age.

There's probably other factors that are important, but the environment certainly seems to me like it should be a consideration. If class struggle is considered the text of the historical narrative, then the environment (I think there might be a broader term I should be using, but it's the one that immediately comes to mind) could be considered to be the context of the historical narrative. Perhaps the third important factor, whatever that might turn out to be, could be the subtext of the historical narrative?

I'm not a big history reader, so these are not educated musings and maybe someone better-read will be along shortly to explain why it's perfectly sensible to believe that only one "thing" turns the wheel of history. But it certainly seems overly reductive in my view as a total amateur.

 

[Pickman's model]

History is narrative, so you can chose whatever you want to be the motor, but it seems pretty obvious that resource struggles account for far more of the interesting stuff than class struggles.

History is not narrative and tbh only someone who has never given the matter a moment's thought would say it is. Whose narrative is it, why do they include some things and not others, who is it written for are but three questions about narrative histories.

 

[brogdale]

Class conflict certainly seems to me to be a significant factor in historical events. Environment would also seem to be an important influence, at least on a macro-scale. Agricultural societies took off in places like Mesopotamia and the Indus valley rather than say, eastern Siberia. The general phenomenon of modern humans living settled agricultural lifestyles as part of a heavily material culture probably owes a lot to the advent of the most recent (and still on-going) interglacial period within the current ice age.

There's probably other factors that are important, but the environment certainly seems to me like it should be a consideration. If class struggle is considered the text of the historical narrative, then the environment (I think there might be a broader term I should be using, but it's the one that immediately comes to mind) could be considered to be the context of the historical narrative. Perhaps the third important factor, whatever that might turn out to be, could be the subtext of the historical narrative?

I'm not a big history reader, so these are not educated musings and maybe someone better-read will be along shortly to explain why it's perfectly sensible to believe that only one "thing" turns the wheel of history. But it certainly seems overly reductive in my view as a total amateur.

I can see what you're saying about longer timescales offering the epochal parameters within which what is regarded as human history would sit, but any analysis that is environmentally deterministic inevitably has limitations. Environmental determinism has a pretty checkered and dubious pedigree and certainly offers nothing to undermine the notion that “The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles”.