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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, feudalism, etc. 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.

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 work slowdown in production that protests low wages or an excessively fast or dangerous work process.

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).

Communist theory

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 ownership and control of means of production.

Their view of capitalism, is that there are the wage-workers (which they call the proletariat) and the business owners or capitalists (which they call the bourgeoisie). The wage-workers in their view do not own or have control over the means of production, and must sell their labor-power to the capitalists to survive. The capitalists own and control the means of production, and subsist by exploiting labor from what are seen to be the creators of social wealth, the workers or direct producers.

Their view is that a socio-political imbalance exists between individuals of extreme wealth or power and those with little or no claim on material wealth. This imbalance was recognized by Adam Smith:

"The masters , 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 with the interests and needs of classes said to be without power.

Corporations are seen to function is as a vehicle for combination of individual capitals, transcending the bounds of mortality and liability that accompany an individual-owned enterprise.

In a 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 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 riven 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 posited; this might be seen as polarization of societey.

Actually-existing "socialist" societies

Many argue that in a Stalinist dictatorship such as the Soviet Union, the leaders of the ruling party form a powerful bureaucratic stratum -- sometimes termed a "new class" -- that controls the means of production. In many ways, this kind of hierarchy recreated the kind of class antagonisms seen as prevailing under capitalism.

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. They reject the idea of "socialism in one country" as a long-lasting situation, so that sooner or later a democratic socialism would have to be world-wide. However, to avoid establishing new dictatorships, world revolutions would have to come from popular working-class forces rather than being imposed from above or from outside a country.

Other critics, such as libertarian socialists and syndicalists, say the solution is for factories and offices to be run by the workers who work in them. Merely changing who controls the state is insufficient in this view. The nature of the work process must also be changed.

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

• Socialism
• Sociology
• Economics