Comment on Marx and Engels's thesis that the history of every society so far is a history of class struggle

Introduction

The unit gives the statement as Marx's own, and it sums up the Marxist philosophy of history. To comment on it is to explain what it asserts, show the theory behind it and judge how far it holds.

Marx's method: dialectical and historical materialism

Marxism is the body of ideas that centres on Karl Marx and includes Engels and their followers; Marx called his own socialism scientific because it explains the causes of exploitation through a method and offers a mechanism of change, in contrast to the utopian socialists (Owen, Fourier, Saint-Simon) whose diagnosis was right but whose remedy was impracticable.

Dialectical materialism is the method. From Hegel Marx took dialectics, the movement of thought by thesis, antithesis and synthesis, in which contradictions drive development until they are resolved. But he turned Hegel the right way up: matter and not the idea is primary, and social existence determines consciousness. The economic base, made up of the forces of production, which change as technology develops, and the relations of production, forms the mode of production; society, polity, religion, morals and values are a superstructure shaped by it.

Historical materialism applies the method to history. As technology develops, forces of production outgrow the relations of production, and the contradiction is resolved by revolution. History therefore passes through primitive communism, slavery, feudalism and capitalism. In each class society a property-owning class exploits a propertyless class, and the state is created to protect the interest of the former.

Class struggle and revolution

For Marx the history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggle. Except in primitive communism, every epoch has been marked by the antagonism between a dominant class that owns the means of production and a dependent class that carries out production but sees its product taken away, with just enough returned for survival: master and slave, feudal lord and peasant, bourgeoisie and proletariat. Because the interests of the contending classes are irreconcilable, the contradiction is resolved only by the annihilation of the exploiting class.

Class struggle is long and imperceptible; revolution is short, swift and violent, and it is what delivers each new social order. Each epoch-making change has been brought about by a revolution: the feudal revolution ended slavery, the bourgeois revolution ended feudalism, and the proletarian revolution will end capitalism. It occurs when the forces of production have matured and no longer fit the relations of production; no stage can be skipped.

The claim itself. It is a thesis about history, not just a description. It brings together the Marxist account of the state as an instrument of the dominant class, the explanation of social change by class conflict and the prediction of a classless society. The unit itself excepts primitive communism, which had no private property and so no class division and no class struggle. Its limits are weighed in the evaluation below.

Evaluation of the claim

In its favour. The idea explains why change in history has taken the form of conflict between those who hold the means of production and those who work them, and it gives an account of the state as a class instrument. It remains a powerful tool for social analysis, and it gives a voice to the exploited and oppressed. Later thinkers have applied the idea to other conflicts: feminists to the conflict of sexes, Black feminists to the interplay of class, race and gender.

Against it. (1) Class division is not as simple as two classes: society is complex and has a large and growing middle class, and the predicted merger of the middle class with the proletariat did not occur. (2) Not all social change has class conflict at its root; economic determinism is questioned because polity, culture, religion and values also influence the economy, as Gramsci accepted. (3) Capitalism has proved adaptable, while socialist systems have collapsed. (4) Class is not the only source of political identity: the post-Marxists Laclau and Mouffe argue that identities are built through many discourses, of women, black people, immigrants, consumers and ecologists among others, and not through class alone. (5) Marx's forecast of a classless society free of the state has not been borne out.

Conclusion

The statement is a bold generalisation, which captures a real force in history but overstates it as the sole one. It is best taken as a guiding hypothesis that class conflict is a central driver of social change, and not as a complete law of history.