Karl Marx’s Theory of Class Struggle: The Working Class & Revolution
By
Eddie McCabe
May 5, 2018
25496
Two hundred years since Karl Marx was born and 170 years since his most famous work, The
Communist Manifesto, was published, Eddie McCabe looks at Marx’s theory of class struggle
and assesses its relevance for today. Originally published in Socialist Alternative, the political
journal of the Socialist Party (CWI in Ireland)
Without the labour power of workers, capitalists can’t make profits. The system can’t function.
Of all the things a capitalist can buy to build their business, only labour power adds value;
meaning the business can produce something worth more than the original cost of the
components that went into the finished product. The time, thought and energy applied by
workers in the production process – whose efforts are only partially compensated by the
employer who keeps the output – is the ultimate source of profit (or surplus value) in a capitalist
economy. Put simply, all profits come from the unpaid work of workers. And of course the drive
for profit is the beating heart of capitalism.1
This revolutionary discovery by Karl Marx paved the way for a comprehensive explanation of the
workings of the capitalist system – identifying exploitation, and therefore injustice, at its core. It
underlies the socialist understanding of the world’s economies and societies today; the
contradictions and antagonisms in social relations and the inherent instability and conflict arising
from the fundamental division of the world into those who own capital and exploit others, and
those who own little or nothing and are exploited; namely, capitalists and workers.
Workers and capitalists
Workers are those who have none of the necessary premises, equipment, materials, or the
money to acquire these things, that are needed to engage in production or exchange – to make
a living on the market – and can trade only their ability to work (labour power). Capitalists do
have the above, but to put them to use efficiently enough to make a profit they need other
people to work them. So they offer wages to workers that will (a) allow the workers to subsist,
and (b) allow the capitalist to profit from everything made after this subsistence is paid for. The
lower the wage and the more hours worked for that wage, the more the capitalist is exploiting
the worker, i.e. the more money they’re making at the worker’s expense.
It’s true that this arrangement is one that both the employer and the employee enter into freely,
and centuries of ideological sugarcoating have created the impression that this is a fair deal for
both parties. From a certain point of view, with a narrow focus on individuals, this can seem
reasonable – both worker and capitalist get paid at the end of the day. The problem is that they
both get paid from the work that only one of them engages in. This reality becomes clearer
when looked at from the perspective not of individuals but classes. When the above scenario is
generalised across the whole economy we find two main classes: (1) a majority-class of
labourers who do virtually all of the work and create all of the wealth, but own very little, and (2)
a minority-class who do very little work and create none of the wealth, but own virtually all of it.
Competition in the market and their insatiable need to make more profits compels the capitalists
to expand their enterprises by intensifying the exploitation and amassing greater numbers of –
increasingly restless – employees; who in order to defend and extend their rights and conditions
are likewise compelled to organise together. This instinctive desire on the part of both capitalist
and worker to push the rate of exploitation in opposite directions creates a constant tension in
capitalist society: the class struggle (with all its social manifestations in conflicting ideas,
organisations, institutions), the very existence of which is denied by right-wing ideologues: but
the class struggle, with its ups, downs, swings and roundabouts over time, in the last analysis,
decisively influences all social and historical change.
Recognising this ingrained friction (which heightens significantly in times of crises) and their
central role in production (which gives them huge potential power), Marx identified the working
class as key to challenging the rule of the exploiters; and moreover, establishing a society
where the wealth that’s produced collectively would be enjoyed collectively.
Backlash and confusion
For socialists, this analysis remains valid in its essentials. It has withstood not just the test of
time and the innumerable challenges from economic and political theorists from across the
spectrum, but has been reaffirmed by the history of the working-class movement in the century
and a half since Marx worked out his ideas. Conservative ideologues have always disputed the
validity of Marxism, fearing most of all its revolutionary conclusions. But over time and
increasingly – in the face of the failure to as yet achieve the aims of the socialist movement –
even those who are critical of the system and recognise its deep-rooted and insoluble problems,
deny the potential for revolutionary change and in particular the revolutionary capability of the
working class.
The weakening of the traditional working-class organisations (the trade unions and the social
democratic parties), both numerically and ideologically in the wake of the collapse of Stalinism
and the rise of neo-liberalism, has left a major political vacuum. In the years since then the
leaderships of these organisations in almost every country have made a wholesale
accommodation to the system, dumping even their nominal support for an alternative to
capitalism. As a result, the workers’ movement, which was a clear point of reference for millions
of workers and young people in the past, is now seen as a mere auxiliary to social struggles, not
its base and leadership.
On top of this the capitalist establishment, sensing this weakness, has gone on an offensive
against the ideas of socialism. Their aim has been to disguise the existence of a class divide at
all, but especially the existence of a potentially powerful class that can act independently, and in
the interests of all of those who struggle against the system. And they’ve had a real impact,
leading to much disappointment, frustration and confusion among the mass of workers and
young people in recent decades. However the current crisis of the capitalist system, which sees
no end in sight, is itself undermining ideological war against Marxism, as the (ever-present)
class struggle ratchets up again.
As we celebrate 200 years since the birth of Karl Marx, reviewing his ideas on the class struggle
and revolution will help us engage in the struggle all the better.
‘Oppressor and oppressed’
The Communist Manifesto opens with the declaration that, “The history of all hitherto existing
society is the history of class struggles.” Engels later clarified that this meant all ‘written history’,
since for the vast bulk our existence human societies were based, by necessity, on cooperation
and equality. Primitive conditions and an egalitarian ethos prevented the accumulation of private
wealth and property and the development of any significant hierarchy within social groups.
A revolution from this ‘primitive communist’ way of life took place with the domestication of
animals and the beginning of farming about 10,000 years ago. This allowed for the production of
a permanent surplus product for the first time, and from that – over hundreds or thousands of
years – came class divisions between those who had ownership of the surplus, who became the
rich, and those who didn’t, who became the poor. Other new features of the more complex,
technologically and culturally advanced class society included: wars for land and resources;
slavery for exploitation; the state with its armed bodies to protect property; the patriarchal family
to pass on privileges to next generations; and popular uprisings of the lower classes, including
at times, revolutionary movements.2
Class-divided society made inequality and injustice systemic, whereas before they were
irregular occurrences. Sections of society were now denied the fruits of their collective labour by
other sections, who developed institutions and ideological or religious justifications to maintain
their powerful positions. These elite minorities made up the ruling classes in pre-capitalist
societies: the pharaohs, emperors, kings, sultans, popes, tsars and their relations and ‘noble’
supporters. Beneath these supreme orders, in the societies and economies they ruled over, a
class struggle was in constant motion. “An uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight”, as Marx
and Engels put it, between “freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guildmaster and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed.”3
Marx wasn’t the first to see class division and struggle in human societies, but what he did
uncover was the relationship between the class struggle and “the particular, historical phases in
the development of production”,4 which was key to understanding how and why revolutions
happen.
Materialist view of history
For Marx, the study of human history and its development, just like the study of natural history,
should begin with the question of how humans beings live and reproduce themselves – how
they eat, drink and sleep, and stay warm, dry and safe in whatever environment they find
themselves in. These basic needs have to be met before any other creative endeavours, like
art, science or philosophy, can be pursued. So the starting point for analysing any society is
how it organises the production of whatever it needs to exist (the ‘mode of production’), and
then, if it can produce more than what is needed to exist, how those additional resources (and
indeed the means to produce them, the ‘forces of production’) are used. Or in class society, by
whom they are owned and controlled and from whom they are appropriated (the ‘relations of
production’).
Reviewing the history of class society, Marx noted that while a general trend of advancement in
civilisation was clear, it was not a simple, continuous, unswerving process, but included
regression and stagnation as well as progress (in the sense of advances towards a society that,
in theory, could produce enough to provide for everyone’s needs), and crucially that the
development of the productive capacity of society was the fundamental driver of that progress.
He identified three primary modes of production – with various hybrid offshoots also common –
these were:
One, the Ancient Mode, in which ‘masters’ literally owned slaves who they exploited in these
largely agricultural economies where trade also took place, the type of societies that existed in
ancient Greece and Rome for example; Two, the Feudal Mode, a more advanced and
widespread agriculture-based economic system, where the main relations were between lords
who owned land that was worked for them by serfs who also worked for themselves, the mode
of production in most of Europe until the 18th century; and three, the Bourgeois Mode, where
industry and trade is dominant and where the main contending classes are capitalists and
wage-workers.
Each distinct mode of production had its exploited classes and its ruling classes. And each
mode contributed, in its own way and for a definite period, to the evolution of the productive
forces. The ruling classes, by establishing the supremacy and expansion of their system for
their own selfish interests, also oversaw a break with the old ways of operating. In this sense
they played an historically progressive role. But at certain points in time, when the right
conditions came together, further technological and scientific breakthroughs were made,
opening the way for new, more efficient ways of organising production – but which were
inevitably constrained by the existing class relations that were specially suited to a particular
(now outmoded) economic and social structure. At this point the progressive character of the
ruling class was no more. Marx put it like this:
“At a certain stage of their development, the material productive forces of society come in
conflict with the existing relations of production, or – what is but a legal expression for the same
thing – with the property relations within which they have been at work hitherto. From forms of
development of the productive forces these relations turn into their fetters. Then begins an
epoch of social revolution.”5
(It’s worth noting how this applies to the capitalist world we live in today. Take just one example,
agriculture, where the productive forces actually produce 50% more than what would be needed
to feed everyone on the planet,6 and yet 815 million people went hungry and malnourished in
2016.7 The reason for this comes back to the relations of production under capitalism, which
mean that the profits of the capitalists, and not the needs of the majority in society, are all that
matter. In this sense they are clearly a block on so much potential. Only a socialist,
democratically planned economy could harness the productive capacity and potential that exists
to actually provide for everyone.)
To be sure, the beginning of an ‘epoch of social revolution’ does not necessarily conclude in a
revolutionary transition from one mode of production to another. A rising social class has to exist
that can move the situation on and challenge the class in power, and even then “the common
ruin of the contending classes” is always a possibility. Hence, a mechanical interpretation of
Marx’s stress on production as the motor force of history is one-sided and wrong. As he wrote
elsewhere, “History does nothing, it ‘possesses no immense wealth’, it ‘wages no battles’. It is
man, real, living man who does all that, who possesses and fights.” The outcome of an epoch of
social revolution, therefore, depends on the class struggle.
The role of the Bourgeoisie
What Marx’s materialist conception of history proved is that nothing is fixed, ordained or
inevitable. Empires, dynasties and whole social systems that seemed at one time all-powerful
and everlasting have in fact disappeared. To invoke Heraclitus, one of Marx’s favourite
philosophers, change is the only constant in history. Marx was keen to convey the implications
of this for the social system that was predominant in his own time – capitalism. And to that end,
his orientation was to the emerging class of wage-labourers, which “of all the classes that stand
face to face with the bourgeoisie” he considered to be the only “really revolutionary class.”8
What was it that led him to this view? Well Marx was, in the words of his close friend Engels,
“before all else a revolutionist.” What made him a revolutionist, from an early age, was an
instinctive revulsion at all the injustice in the world, and being the studious type(!), he naturally
put his inquisitive mind to work trying to understand that world. Quickly enough he located the
root of inequality in class-divided society itself and its modern incarnation, ‘bourgeois’ society,
which in the course of its relatively short reign, had shown itself to be incredibly dynamic, and
just as brutal. However, Marx and Engels, in their collaborative investigations came to realise
that this dynamism is both capitalism’s main strength, and at the same time, its main weakness.
They wrote:
“Modern bourgeois society, with its relations of production, of exchange and of property, a
society that has conjured up such gigantic means of production and of exchange, is like the
sorcerer who is no longer able to control the powers of the nether world whom he has called up
by his spells… The productive forces at the disposal of society no longer tend to further the
development of the conditions of bourgeois property; on the contrary, they have become too
powerful for these conditions… they bring disorder into the whole of bourgeois society,
endanger the existence of bourgeois property. The conditions of bourgeois society are too
narrow to comprise the wealth created by them.”
Capitalism’s aggressive and unruly ways are the product of acute internal contradictions, which
also result in periodic economic crises. But unlike crises in the past which stemmed from
scarcity, these crises of competition come as a result of too much being produced, too fast,
such that the market is overwhelmed, profits decline and investments dry up. Then the familiar
effects of scarcity are felt as human and material waste piles up, while the market tries to adjust
itself. As The Communist Manifesto explains:
“And how does the bourgeoisie get over these crises? On the one hand by enforced destruction
of a mass of productive forces; on the other, by the conquest of new markets, and by the more
thorough exploitation of the old ones. That is to say, by paving the way for more extensive and
more destructive crises, and by diminishing the means whereby crises are prevented.”
And then comes the kicker:
“The weapons with which the bourgeoisie felled feudalism to the ground are now turned against
the bourgeoisie itself. But not only has the bourgeoisie forged the weapons that bring death to
itself; it has also called into existence the men who are to wield those weapons – the modern
working class – the proletarians.”9
Does Marx’s proletariat still exist?
Famously, Marx and Engels went on to assert that, “What the bourgeoisie therefore produces,
above all, are its own grave-diggers.”10
Before looking at what are the particular characteristics of the working class that make this so,
it’s worth dealing briefly with an all-too-common assumption made about Marx and his view of
the working class and struggle: specifically that the working class that Marx knew, in the
factories of Manchester and London in the mid-19th century, no longer exists and looks nothing
like the working class in Manchester and London today, for example; and consequently, that his
theories about the role that the working class would or could play, whether they were ever valid,
are outdated and not applicable in the modern world.
Of course it’s undeniable that capitalism has gone through many changes in the 150 years since
Marx wrote Capital, and naturally the working class has likewise, whether in its size, location or
composition. These changes are real, tangible and in some cases significant, and absolutely
have to be assimilated by serious Marxists today. But it also has to be said that, had Marx
experienced the last 150 years, it’s unlikely he would be terribly surprised that such changes
have occurred. In fact, incorporated into his theory of the working class is the expectation that
its size, location and composition will continually evolve. After all he wrote, “All previous
historical movements were movements of minorities, or in the interest of minorities. The
proletarian movement is the self-conscious, independent movement of the immense majority, in
the interest of the immense majority,”11 at a time when the working class made up only about 23% of the world’s population. And the largest section of the proletariat in England when he lived
were not burly industrial workers, but domestic servants – predominantly women. His view of
the working class was based on much more general considerations than the specific conditions
and experiences of any particular sector of workers.
It’s also a fact that the Dickensian conditions faced by workers in Marx’s time are still very much
in place in certain regions. For example, corporate exploitation of child labour remains rampant
– affecting 168 million children in 2012; whether in the sweatshops of Bangladesh, where they
work 11-hour days for the $22 billion garment industry, or in Peru for the $3 billion gold mining
industry.12 And Victorian conditions are commonplace even in high-tech companies like
Amazon, where staff work 55-hour weeks and are forced to set up camp in the warehouses
because there isn’t enough time between their shifts to travel home.13
The precariat: a new class?
Precariousness is one feature of the workforce today that has been emphasised by many as a
break with the ‘classic’ working class. Economist, Guy Standing, is probably the leading
exponent of the new ‘precariat’ who goes so far as to insist that the modern low-paid, insecure,
transient worker is part of a new class, or “a new class in the making”, with “distinctive relations
of production, relations of distribution and relations to the state” and consequently, separate
interests to those in decent-paying, stable employment. He says:
“The precariat [is] not part of the ‘working class’ or the ‘proletariat’. The latter terms suggest a
society consisting mostly of workers in long-term, stable, fixed-hour jobs with established routes
of advancement, subject to unionisation and collective agreements, with job titles their fathers
and mothers would have understood, facing local employers whose names and features they
were familiar with.”14
Standing’s view of the proletariat, then, is at odds with the Marxist view, since he has,
somewhat arbitrarily, narrowed the definition of the proletariat to exclude a majority of those who
sell their labour power to make a living. It seems his definition is influenced by a traditional,
cultural view of the working class as it was in the 1950s and 60s in the advanced industrial
world, not as it was before then or is in reality today. To the extent that secure, unionised
workplaces were prevalent then, it still only represented a certain snapshot in time and even
then there existed many precarious workers. Indeed the benefits and rights these workers
enjoyed, which many still enjoy, were won through struggle by the equivalent of the ‘precariat’ of
the 1920s, 30s and 40s, and they have been defended by organised workers ever since.
Precarity has always existed for workers under capitalism; firstly because the contradictions in
the system produce periodic crises that can put even ‘stable’ jobs at risk; and secondly because
of the existence of a reserve army of labour in the form of the unemployed and underemployed.
The hardship faced by the unemployed is counter-posed to the ‘privilege’ of those with jobs. The
latter, it’s argued, would be unwise to risk their lot when they can, if necessary, be replaced.
The negative conditions Standing describes, of ‘casualisation, informalisation, agency labour,
part-time labour, phoney self-employment and the new mass phenomenon of crowd-labour’ are
very real for many workers, especially young people and migrants. The increased
precariousness experienced by workers today is a direct result of the neo-liberal policies
advanced by right-wing governments the world over and likewise the glaring deficiency of trade
union organisation.
Highlighting these issues and focusing on the particular plight of ‘the precariat’ is not in itself a
problem. Much needs to be done to grapple with the task of organising these workers. Where it
becomes a problem, however, is when a false division is created between sections of workers
who do have, regardless of sectional differences, shared interests best summed up in the old
labour movement slogan, “an injury to one, is an injury to all.” Standing’s assertion that the ‘old
proletariat’ is no longer capable of being revolutionary because it has been bought off by
‘pensions’ and ‘labour rights’ – which are actually under sustained attack by the same neoliberal forces – is simply false.
Workers of the world today
The truth is that the Marxist definition of the working class, as outlined at the beginning, which
includes all those who sell their labour power in order to live and who produce surplus value,
encompasses a majority of the planet’s active workforce, which the International Labour
Organisation now puts at 3.4 billion people. Within the three main sectors of the economy
(services, industry, agriculture), this category breaks down as follows:
 75 million are employers: big and (mostly) small capitalists who make up roughly 1% of
the world’s population, though obviously only a fraction hold the real wealth and power
 1500 million are classified as vulnerably employed: ‘own account workers’ or selfemployed people who don’t employ others. Also included are 400 million unpaid family
workers who are related to these self-employed people. This huge group makes up most
of the world’s poor.
 1800 million are workers who earn a wage or salary: 200 million of whom are currently
unemployed, many more are under-employed or part-time. Some are paid exorbitant
salaries and don’t associate with the rest, but this immense mass can be considered to
be the core of the workers of the world.15
However the working class in its totality also includes retired workers, workers on disability,
workers in bogus self-employment (and some other forms of self-employment) and all those
also dependent on those paychecks – stay-at-home parents, carers, young people etc. As a
class that exists in itself, simply as raw material for exploitation (not conscious of its place in the
system or its potential power if organised), it is in fact larger now than it’s ever been and it
continues to grow. Urbanisation and industrialisation, particularly in developing countries in the
last 30 years or so, has seen the size of the working class increase by more than a third.
This is evidenced by the rapid growth of the world’s urban population. Since 1950 it has more
than quintupled from 746 million to 3900 million, now making up 53% of the entire population.16
Revolutionary character of the working class
The actual or relative size of the working class today is an important thing for socialists to be
aware of. Though being a majority, or even just being very big is not what gives the working
class its revolutionary character – again something Marx and Engels identified when the
working class was still dwarfed by a much larger peasantry. But what the size and the continued
growth of the working class today do illustrate is the increasingly powerful position it holds in the
dynamics of the capitalist system’s development; something to which no other social force can
compare and which is key to breaking down the system and building something new.
Marx explained that capitalism, by its very nature, first makes the working class, and second,
makes the working class revolutionary. So what are the special characteristics that bestow on
the working class its revolutionary potential? In no particular order, they can be summed up as
follows:
1) Capitalism concentrates workers into large towns and cities based around workplaces where
the exploitation for surplus value takes place. The organising and collective struggle against this
exploitation is likewise concentrated in ways that isn’t possible for peasants who are tied to plots
of land spread out across the countryside. More broadly, working-class communities understand
that they can resist only by linking with their neighbours who are in the same position. These
processes produce a collective class-consciousness, far beyond what most atomized slaves or
serfs ever could.
2) The capitalist economic model instills workers with a sense of discipline, cooperation and
organisation, in two ways. First, a certain degree of regimentation and teamwork is demanded
of workers by management who are tasked with extracting as much labour as possible within
the timeframe of the working day. Second, in order to mitigate the worst excesses of this same
regimentation and the adverse impact of recurring economic crises, workers have always
instinctively moved to form their own organisations – trade unions and then also independent
political parties – to safeguard and fight for their economic and political rights.
3) The advancements made by the capitalist system in science and technology means that
production and exchange are more complicated arenas, requiring the mass of producers and
distributors attain a higher level of basic skills (literacy and numeracy) and knowledge in order
for society to function. On top of this, workers have fought for the right to education on a higher
level again, for themselves and their families.
4) The world market is based on a global division of labour that connects all workers. Most of
the commodities that we use in our everyday lives are the products of labour by not one, but
many workers, using diverse skills and from completely different parts of the world. The struggle
of the working class is a global one.
5) The liberation of the working class – that is the successful culmination of its political and
economic struggle – can only come about by ending the exploitation of its labour under
capitalism. As Engels put it: “The slave frees himself when, of all the relations of private
property, he abolishes only the relation of slavery and thereby becomes a proletarian; the
proletarian can free himself only by abolishing private property in general.”17
6) The working class is the only social force with the power to challenge the rule of the capitalist
class. No other class, group or demographic has the necessary weight, cohesion, or
organisation to take on the might of the capitalists, and their ideological and physical apparatus
(including the surveillance state with its intelligence agencies, police and armies).
Here it’s worth underlining that the above imbue the working class with revolutionary potential
only, as it goes without saying the working class is far from being in a revolutionary state at all
times. Capitalism has also built up its defences to stave off any threats to its rule. At base is the
state apparatus itself (the armed bodies of people, just mentioned), but its more sophisticated
defence is the ideological hold it maintains through the prevailing morality, culture and social
practices which accept the legitimacy of its rule (not to mention its control of the mass media,
education etc.). As Leon Trotsky put it once, “He who owns surplus-product is master of the
situation – owns wealth, owns the state, has the key to the church, to the courts, to the sciences
and to the arts.”18 It also consciously stokes and exploits divisions among the workers and
oppressed peoples, to weaken its natural opponents.
All of which produces unevenness in the consciousness – the moods, attitudes and awareness
– of the working class, which counteracts its unity, confidence and revolutionary power.
Of course the working class is also not a homogeneous mass. Since its very emergence there
have always been different layers of the working class, most obviously skilled and unskilled. Its
evolution involves absorbing sections of the middle class on the one hand and the urban and
rural poor on the other. Its mass character means that it is animated by multiple genders,
nationalities, religions, ethnicities and sexual orientations; all of which leads naturally to many
shades of political opinion, identity etc. But this diverse, lively and colourful working class is
organically united by a common exploitation by a common enemy, which it can only challenge
through unity and solidarity in a common struggle.
If it can achieve this, in the right conditions and with the necessary organisation and leadership,
then it can make a revolution – the very experience of which is the key to the socialist
transformation of society. Wrote Marx and Engels:
“Both for the production on a mass scale of this communist consciousness, and for the success
of the cause itself, the alteration of men on a mass scale is necessary, an alteration which can
only take place in a practical movement, a revolution; this revolution is necessary, therefore, not
only because the ruling class cannot be overthrown in any other way, but also because the
class overthrowing it can only in a revolution succeed in ridding itself of all the muck of ages and
become fitted to found society anew.”19
The struggle ahead
In truth, the validity of Marx’s theory of class struggle has been borne out by the history of the
working-class movement. Under capitalism the class struggle has intensified. The 20th century
saw far more revolutionary movements than any other, including the first successful socialist
revolution in Russia in 1917 (a revolution that was later betrayed, but nevertheless happened).
The 21st century has already experienced a profound crisis for the capitalist system, and indeed
has seen its fair share of significant mass mobilisations of workers, poor and young people
around the world. These movements resemble movements of the past in many ways, but in
many other ways are completely novel, which brings with it new challenges for Marxists.
Today we are seeing significant and militant strike action by teachers in the US and lecturers in
Britain, reflecting a widespread process of ‘proletarianisation’ in which professions that were
once considered to be in some way privileged, have been ground down by neo-liberal assaults
on conditions and forced to organise. Strikes by teachers and lecturers would have been
unheard-of in Marx’s day, as would the ‘feminist strike’ of five million workers in Spain on
International Women’s Day in 2018, which followed the example of women in Poland defending
abortion rights in 2016. These examples, and many more just like them around the globe, show
that the working-class methods and traditions of organisation and struggle will redevelop, in new
forms and on a higher level, as working-class people clash with the same unequal, violent,
oppressive system that led them to struggle in the first place.
Nothing is surer than that the greatest (and most trying) events in the history of the class
struggle lay ahead of us, not behind. But it’s worth remembering that the aim of the socialist
movement for Marx and Engels was to engage in the class struggle on the side of and as part of
the proletariat, which they sought to make “conscious of the conditions of its emancipation” – to
finally bring the class struggle to an end by sweeping away “the conditions for the existence of
class antagonisms and of classes generally… [and] In place of the old bourgeois society… we
shall have an association, in which the free development of each is the condition for the free
development of all.”20
This is the socialist world the workers have to win.
Notes
1. For a clear exposition of this theory see Karl Marx, 1865, Value Price & Profit
2. See Friedrich Engels, 1884, The Origin of the Family, Private Property & the State
3. Marx & Engels, 1848, Manifesto of the Communist Party
4. Marx to J. Weydemeyer in New York, 1852
5. Karl Marx, 1859, A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, Preface
6. Eric Holt Gimenez, 18 December 2014, “We Already Grow Enough Food For 10 Billion
People”, Huffpost
7. United Nations, 2017 – The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World (SOFI) Report
8. Marx & Engels, 1848
9. Ibid
10. Ibid
11. Ibid
12. Ashley Tseng, 26 June 2014, “Child Labour: A Global Scourge”, www.wsws.org
13. Monika Janas, January 2018, “Understanding Wealth Inequality”, The Socialist, Issue 113
14. Guy Standing, 2011, The Precariat: The New Dangerous Class, Bloomsbury Academic, p.6
15. International Labour Organisation, Global Employment Trends 2014: supporting data sets,
www.ilo.org
16. United Nations, World Urbanization Prospects: The 2014 Revision
17. Engels, 1847, Principles of Communism
18. Leon Trotsky, 1939, Marxism in Our Time
19. Marx & Engels, 1846, The German Ideology
20. Marx & Engels, 1848
 All Marx’s writings listed above can be found online at: www.marxists.org