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Revision as of 15:56, 17 October 2004
Class conflict is both the friction that accompanies exchanges between members of different social classes and the underlying tensions which exist in society. Class conflict is thought to play a pivotal role in history by Marxists who refer to it as class struggle. Regardless of the truth or utility of that ideology, class conflict exists and is expressed both in daily life and politically.
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 revolutionary atmosphere that prevailed in pre-revolutionary Russia.
Representing a political group of working people with a common interest, Labour unions have revolutionised health and safety standards in industrial economies.
Communist ideology
Class warfare is a term long-used by Communists and Marxists to describe social and political conflicts between classes which they see to be focused on the means of production.
Their view of capitalism, is that there are the wageworkers (which they call the proletariat) and the business owners or capitalists (which they call the bourgeoisie). The wageworkers in their view do not own or have control over the means of production, and sell their labor power to the capitalists. The capitalists own and control the means of production, and subsist by exploiting surplus labor value from what are seen to be the wealth-creating workers.
Their view is that a socio-political imbalance exists between individuals of extreme wealth or power and those with little or no wealth. The interests of the wealthy are seen to conflict with the interests and needs of classes said to be without power.
Corporations are seen to function is as a vehicle for business enterprise, while transcending the bounds of mortality and liability that accompany an individual-owned enterprise.
Trotskyites
Many argue that in a Stalinist dictatorship such as the Soviet Union, the leaders of the ruling party form a "new class" that controls the means of production.
Some communists, such as the trotskyists, see this as an essential problem which creates exploitation of a similar kind as the one present in capitalism, and they propose solutions that include a democratic state (for the purpose of putting the power over the state, and thus the control of the means of production, in the hands of the people), possibly coupled with the so-called "permanent revolution".
Other Communists
Other critics, such as anarchists and syndacalists, say the solution is that factories and offices be run by the workers who work in them.
See also
- class envy
- class struggle
- economic stratification
- exploitation
- labor union
- No War But The Class War
- sharecropping
- social class
- taxation
Further reading
- Class & Class Conflict in Industrial Society,Ralf Dahrendorf, Stanford University Press, 1959, trade paperback, 336 pages, ISBN 0-80470-5615 (also available in hardback as ISBN 0-80470-5607 and ISBN 1131155734 Catagory:Sociology Catagory:Economics