Class warfare / Political economy

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The term class warfare is used, in order to explain the social and political conflicts between the social classes (class contrasts) and to describe the change of these social conditions.

After Karl Marx was so far history the history of class warfares. Only in the Urkommunismus there was still another classless society. This was however born no conscious decision of the society from the emergency. Since hardly multi-product was produced, rather all members of the society fully in production for the vitally necessary to take part had to develop, could no large hierarchy differences in the society. Marx points out once that the first kind of class company was the relationship of the two sexes of men and women, when the men began to exploit the women. Otherwise the emergence of the class warfare with the developing of the class company is together seen. By finally succeeding to the society to develop the productive forces further and in such a way to create for times of distress a multi-product, also the necessity developed to defend these emergency supplies in emergency also against the direct needs of the society so that not in the first emergency equal everything was up-eaten. Thus a special power came to a minority, which itself more and more. Thus the dominant class developed opposite directly the working. The production way of the Urkommunismus made place for the production ways of the different sequential class companies. Hegelianisch spoken is negated the classless society by the class companies.

With the development of the productive forces the historical necessity for the dominant in each case class is questioned again and again. The lower classes feel the dominant class more and more as redundant, while this seeks to defend their privileges. According to historical materialism the probability grows by revolution every time the productive forces by dominant production conditions with the respective dominant class is obstructed, what results sooner or later, the further the productive forces develop further. The old dominant class is fallen, a new class seizes power. Like that the history of mankind is a history of successive class companies. The last class company is to be capitalism, develop in the process its development the productive forces so far that the possibility of a classless society develops, this time in contrast to the Urkommunismus as a more or less consciously caused society (negation of the negation).

Class warfare in capitalism

Karl Marx regarded the class warfares of the current society more near. It finds itself in constant contradiction, which itself thus in capitalism in a conflict between the owners of the worker - which proletarians so mentioned - and the owners of means of production - which capitalists so mentioned - expresses, what to the class warfare leads.

The theory of the class warfare continued to develop after Marx. In particular disputed, whether trade unions and parties are suitable organization forms, in order the interests that was to be represented dependently persons employed, or whether her promotes or or prevents their self organization.

After Karl Marx is the lasting starting point for the class warfare in capitalism the economic interest of the capital to let the relationship fail between the work time altogether the person employed and the paid work time as largely as possible. The increase in value rises from the difference between value created by the workers (that the capitalist heard as owners of means of production) and the wages paid for the order over their worker. From this the constant "hot hunger of the capital rises after additional work": For the increase of the increase in value rate wages in relation to the yield of the work are lowered.

The simplest form is thereby the extension of the working day with equal lasting wages (absolute increase in value). There these on physical and legal - the technical progress pushes, becomes barriers the lever of the class warfare: The work to make more productive - to let spend and more intensively - serves reducing the worker (relative increase in value in price). The technical progress affects the working processes and production conditions.

By the change in the production forces and because they live still at the edge of the poverty, the members of the working class become conscious that they are used based on the possibilities, which offer the productive forces in the meantime. First they demand only times "only" their portion of the value created by them. By this conscious in economic class warfares itself the working classes will engage in a common political action.

The capitalist class - as owners of the legal, political and economical "building of over" - is not ready for its part to be received concessions toward a general change.

According to Marx such a constellation can lead to nothing different one, than to a constant class warfare between the working class with the desire for a change of production conditions and the capitalist class with the desire for preservation of the status Quo. Succeeds falling the working class the capital and to introduce the classless society, then this time hegelianisch spoken the class company is negated again by the classless society. This would be then the second negation in the history of the class warfares, a negation of the negation in the sense of dialectic.

The class warfare does not only exist between poor and richly. In the knowledge company new and higher mental demands are made again and again against the population. Those, which become fair these requirements to belong to the elite (Germany). In the German policy a Mainstream has itself which at the left wing party to recognize broadly is: Without sufficient education humans are not a factor for the economy, rather Balast. One has however first of all no desire to be occupied with the fewer absorptive ones and secondly wants one not that they emerge in the picture of the rising German and/or or European society. The class warfare like it Marx described changed itself of the income difference to the different Intilligenz. If the left one says, she wants to help the Proletariat, then she should entakademisieren their only once.

Class warfare as mainspring of the social evolution

See detailed in historical materialism.

In addition the term seems to "class warfare" also in the economic liberalism; it means here, which between the different conditions a "fight" breaks off, who has possession and who not"

Literature

by Karl Marx

The German ideology (common with Friedrich Engels), 1847
The communist manifesto (common with angel), 1848
To the criticism of the political economics, 1859
The capital, 1867

Secondary literature

Louis Adamic, dynamite: History of the class warfare in the USA (1880 - 1930). [Over. from the Amerikan.: Thomas Schmid and Joschka Fischer], Munich: Trikont Verl., 1974 (classical representation of the militant class warfares in the USA)
Cajo Brendel, Anton Pannekoek - philosophers of the revolution, Freiburg: Irish Republican Army publishing house 2001, ISBN: 3-924627-75-4
Peter Decker/Konrad Hecker: The Proletariat ISBN 3-929211-05-X
Jaime Semprun, the social war in Portugal, Hamburg 1975, new edition: Vienna: Edition o.J.
Leo lined (editor), Class Struggle and Resistance in Africa, new Clarion press 2002