Marx’s view of the development of the major classes of capitalist society was not a theory of stratification or a head count of the new classes. The two major classes that arise with capitalism do so in relation to one another, and that relation is characterized by conflict from the start. As Marx and Engels wrote in The German Ideology:
The separate individuals form a class only in so far as they have to carry on a common battle against another class; otherwise they are on hostile terms with each other as competitors. On the other hand, the class in its turn achieves an independent existence over and against the individuals.3
In The Poverty of Philosophy Marx puts the question of the mutual development of the two classes and their conflict even more sharply. He wrote:
In proportion as the bourgeoisie develops, it develops in its bosom a new proletariat, a modern proletariat: it develops a struggle between the proletarian class and the bourgeois class, a struggle which, before it is felt, perceived, appreciated, comprehended, avowed and loudly proclaimed by the two sides, only manifests itself previously by partial and momentary conflicts, by subversive acts.4
In this work, for the first time, Marx talks about the actual struggles of the working class, its trade union or “combinations,” and Chartism.
Some of these formulations have led a number of Marxists to believe that the working class only has an existence if it is conscious and organized. Ralph Miliband, for example, wrote that “for Marx, the working class is not truly a class unless it acquires the capacity to organize itself politically” and “when it acquires consciousness.”5 Clearly, there must be a material social formation before acquiring and, indeed, in order to acquire these capacities. And that is what Marx believed when he wrote in The Poverty of Philosophy, “The domination of capital has created for this mass of people a common situation with common interests. This mass is already a class, as opposed to capital, but not yet for itself.”6
To some readers this formulation will bring to mind the well-known duality of a class “in itself” versus one “for itself.”7 Although familiar, the “in itself” phrase is not Marx’s.8 His formulation, “a class, as opposed to capital” is far more dynamic and typical of the relational concept of class Marx developed. Any simple duality of this sort violates Marx’s view of capitalism and the social formation that characterizes it as a historical process that arises, as Thompson put it, “at the intersection of determination and self-activity.”9 That is, class formation is determined both by the development of capital itself and by the self-activity of the working class in creating its organizations and consciousness through struggle. That Marx saw no such simple duality is clear from the fact that he eventually dropped the term “for itself,” with its Hegelian overtones, as Hal Draper pointed out.10
The Communist Manifesto, penned by Marx and Engels in 1848, presented the most familiar picture of the development of the working class: “With the development of industry the proletariat not only increases in number; it becomes concentrated in greater masses, its strength grows, and it feels that strength more.” At the same time, the conditions of the working class pushed down wages, obliterated differences within the class, and drove the workers to “form combinations against the bourgeoisie.” In the end, the bourgeoisie had produced “its own grave-diggers.” 11 The story was as compressed as it was inspiring.
When, two years later, the dust had settled on revolutionary Europe, the specter of communism had not yet taken on flesh and blood. Reaction ruled; Marx was forced to admit that “the proletariat passes into the background of the revolutionary stage”12 and to take a more long-range view. To those among his comrades who wanted to provoke revolution by an act of will, Marx had to caution, “We tell the workers: If you want to change the conditions and make yourselves capable of government, you will have to undergo fifteen, twenty or fifty years of civil war.”13 The idea that the working class had to prepare itself for power through prolonged struggle is key to understanding the uneven formation of class consciousness. It is a process that has had to be repeated over and over, under changing historical circumstances, as wars, moments of relative prosperity, and whole or partial defeats that characterize the class struggle undo the progress of years.
In the long period of relatively low levels of class conflict that followed the revolutions of 1848 to 1850, Marx’s conception of class was deepened (though never codified in a single presentation) and made more complex. While the defining point of origin of capital and labor as social classes remained their relations at the point of production, the parameters of working-class life were spelled out in greater detail and depth in Capital, Volume I. Essentially, there are three major conditions here that define the social position of the working class. Providing the context, Marx wrote: “The capitalist process of production, therefore, seen as a total, connected process; i.e., a process of reproduction not only of commodities, not only surplus value, but it also produces and reproduces the capital-relation itself, on the one hand the capitalist, on the other the wage-laborer.”14
The first of the three conditions, historically as well as logically, is the need to sell one’s labor power in order to live. Here Marx somewhat ironically notes that the workers are “free” “in the double sense that they neither form part of the means of production themselves, as would be the case with slaves, serfs, etc., nor do they own the means of production, as would be the case with self-employed peasants.” 15 The sale is for “a definite period of time” at the value of the worker’s labor power, which is composed of “the value of the means of subsistence necessary for the maintenance of its owner,” which in turn is determined by “the level of civilization attained in a country” and contains “a historical and moral element.”16 In other words, “subsistence” is not mere existence or absolute poverty. It is in the labor market that the worker faces competition from other workers. At the same time, here “the silent compulsion of economic relations sets the seal on the domination of the capitalist over the workers.”17
The second condition, in many ways the very heart of Marx’s analysis of class, is exploitation. He spells this out briefly in Capital:
The owner of the money has paid the value of a day’s labor-power; he therefore has the use of it for a day, a day’s labor-power belongs to him. On the one hand the daily subsistence of labor-power costs only half a day’s labor, while on the other hand the very same labor-power can remain effective, can work, during a whole day, and consequently the value which its use during one day creates is double what the capitalist pays for that use.18
Put simply, the worker produces more value than he or she requires to reproduce his or her labor-power by working longer than it takes to create that value. Facing competition and the need to expand his business, the capitalist, as we shall see, naturally does everything possible to reduce the labor time necessary for the worker’s subsistence and increase the rate of exploitation.
To enforce and aggrandize exploitation, the capitalist must discipline the workers. Thus the process of valorization, of creating an expanding surplus value, “in form . . . is purely despotic.” To administer this despotism as the scale of production grows, Marx writes,
He [the capitalist] hands over the work of direct and constant supervision of the individual workers and groups of workers to a special kind of wage-labor. An industrial army of workers under the command of a capitalist requires, like a real army, officers (managers) and NCOs (foremen, overseers, etc.), who command during the labor process.19
Thus the working class is defined not by income layers or education or status but by its conflict-ridden relation to capital and the three major conditions it faces. These conditions of working-class life are important not only as a way to define who is and isn’t working class, but also in terms of the more complex and ongoing process of proletarianization that affects people once thought of as “middle” class.
Three additional points are needed to fill out our understanding of the working class. The first is that “it is the collective worker, formed from the combination of the many specialized workers,” or “labor-power socially combined,” that produces surplus value. 20 Second is that the working class obviously also includes the family and other dependents. Marx writes, “The value of labor-power