introduction to marxism and politics, with vivek chibber
lecture 1 -- class

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why is class important? synonymous with "marxism," of course--but made so by the degeneracy of "left" culture (used to be the way any self-respecting marxist thought about capitalism, vivek is arguing)

part of the reason class has been so singularly associated with "marxism" has to do with the history of the Stalinization of the workers' movement.

vivek is stressing, though, that Marxists don't have a monopoly on the concept of class. nothing here is specific to Marx, himself--almost any 19th and 20th century socialist would recognize its importance.

nonetheless, why do we give class this importance? we still have to justify this.

it has to do with the issues that the Left is animated around--all those things which afflict vast numbers of people (poverty, disease, inequality, etc.)--all these things are maintained by people in power.

what the Left found, was when it tried to organize for better wages, etc., it found that it met with resistance. social justice is not going to be something that the well-endowed will agree to.

so, (a) the Left had to understand why the powerful resist / (b) what is the source of their power?

this is what leads, ultimately, to the recognition of class. the view on the marxist left has been that the central arbiter of power is class. and the reason that this is the case is because wielding power requires resources; and class is the chief distributor of resources in a capitalist society (indeed, in any society).

resources include: money, time, space, etc. -- again, the unequal distribution of resources translated into an unequal distribution of power, which facilitates the perpetuation of the status quo.

it's surprising, vivek is saying, how few people can justify the importance of class--it should never be a doctrinal commitment. we need to justify our attentiveness to class.

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we come, then, to the question of how class appears and reproduces itself--and how does it bring about these inequalities.

surplus

class is not just any old social relation. class is associated with inequalities. what vivek wants to argue, though, is that not all inequalities are class inequalities. only certain kinds give you class relations of inequality.

inequalities that come about through exploitation.

most of human history has lacked "social surplus," don't forget. for exploitation to occur, surplus is a precondition.

imagine an agrarian society--everybody owns a small plot of land, big enough to grow enough food for the family unit. if they live in a village, then there's some common land, as well. after each agrarian cycle, there may be enough surplus to be stored in case of disaster. but basically they consume what they produce.

in a society like that, we can say that there's nothing left after people's needs are met. and thus: a group exercising structural and systematic power will not emerge.

maybe a priesthood will emerge--these priests won't work, will appropriate some of the surplus in the name of the ancestors, etc.

the difficulty, however, will be this, of course--where will the crops/produce come from in order to enshrine these classes. the only way in which such a group can emerge, is if the producers make enough to satisfy their own needs and the desires of an extractive class.

here, historically, in the emergence of this parasitic class, we see the birth of armies, retainers, etc. you will invariably meet a lot of resistance when you ask people to give things up.

therefore, this is also a question of technology--the state of the productive sources has to allow such a situation.

for classes to exist, there must be a social surplus. this is what the surplus does.

already we know two things:
(1) classes that are in power, do so by extracting a surplus produced by others
(2) they maintain that power via other institutions, armies and the State.

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let us think, a bit, about how class worked during feudalism, in order to understand better the emergence of capitalism.

imagine a society in which there is a bit left over in the form of a surplus. a group of people arise to lay claim to that surplus. the feudal lords, who live of the labor of their peasants. the question, here, is how this happens.

a lord says to the peasants--"it's a bad, rough, mean world. all these other lords will come around with their retainers and seize your produce. i will protect you, at a price."

the basis, then, for taking some of the crop is a direct threat to the peasant. feudalism was simply "organized violence--knights as the guys that busted kneecaps." distinct from what your landlord will do if you don't pay rents to, today--violence was much more direct, overt. the threat of bodily harm underlay this system, always and constantly.

what are the ways in which lords actually obtain this surplus?

serfdom: how did serfs produce the surplus? the month is divided into days you work on your own land (which the lord is indirectly laying claim to), and days that you work on the lord's. it looks like a "rental" payment, but "rent" is more obviously a fiction in feudalism. (obviously, productivity has to be high enough in order to produce his necessities in the three or four days that he's working on his own land). there is absolutely no hiding the fact that the lord is getting fat off of the labor of the peasant. how can it be justified? (god made it this way? not coincidental that the ruling ideology was religious--it is very helpful that the church, itself, was a gigantic feudal lord. the priests, the pope, none of them did any labor, don't forget.)

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the question then, arises: how in capitalism does exploitation arise? how is it reproduced? (remember: the key in feudalism is that plots of land were, nominally, in the posession of the peasant; the village unit is intact, as well. a fundamental fact, here, is that peasants don't need their lords; lords enforce their right to appropriate surplus through coercion.)

it seems, in capitalism, that there's nothing unfair going on. the serf is told to work on the lord's land, "or else." in capitalism the oppression is more subtle, hidden. in feudalism, the lord seeks out the peasant; in capitalism, the worker has to continuously seek out the capitalist. there doesn't seem to be the same kind of coercion. moreover, workers are free to quit. and thirdly, when workers come in, they agree on a wage.

nobody is being forced to work for any particular employer. they negotiate over their conditions of work, etc. so what's the problem? where's the exploitation? these are the foundations of the ruling ideology, don't forget. so we must be prepared to define exploitation in spite of this.

so we need to ask: is there a surplus in capitalism? where and how is it appropriated?

how does a factory work? how does the capitalist run his factory?

he sells a product for $100. out of that, wages account for 60$. means of production would be, say, $15. rent and overhead account for $10. his profits, then, are $15.

you might say to yourself--alright, you call call the profit a surplus, but so what? the worker is getting his wages, and the capitalist his. where is the devious plot? the capitalist gave them a job, for god's sake. he used his assets to give workers jobs. and they all go home. why would you call that exploitation?

what do economists say about the labor supply curve? what's the fiction about this relationship that we have to expose?

it's true that workers go looking for the capitalist, in a sense. it's absolutely true that he was not ordered to go to Wal-Mart, etc. BUT: the worker is not free to extricate himself from the production process, in toto. and when they negotiate with the capitalists, their independence is not of equal weight. the worker will last days without the capitalists; the capitalist will last for months. the capitalist has assets, that he can alienate to survive, if forced. workers have nothing to fall back on--they depend on selling their labor-power.

so workers need not work for any particular capitalist, but he still needs to work for Capital.

mainstream counter-argument--(1) capitalist has got the skills, (2) he's in possession of the assets (and that took money).

but let's look at it from a systemic level. a class of people with the assets are putting the workers to work. those assets have not been given to you through free exchange--how can it be simply the fact of ownership that entitles you to those profits? that ownership did not fall from the heavens. (political philosophy in the 20th century has failed to justify the unequal distribution of assets, absent the fiction of free exchange).

and the first defense? what are the skills that the capitalist possesses? most of these skills are acquired, and how? you do so by buying them, from business schools, or whatever. that means that the unequal distribution of skills simply reflects the unequal distribution of wealth.

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capitalism is unlike feudalism in one very crucial respect--peasants have some control over the means of production (their own land). capitalism is different--the first time in human history where the private possession of the means of production is generalized. (and here, of course, we can tell also the story of "primitive accumulation")

the monopolization of the means of productions means that capitalists no longer need to coerce the workers--and, what's more, capitalists set the terms because of their superior structural position.

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mainstream notions of class associate the concept with income, absolutely -- if someone is making x thousands of dollars, they are assigned to a specific class.

but here, we have defined class such that it precedes the concept of income. we are relating it to the process of production--your place in the class structure, in this sense, determines your income. and you will not fight poverty without fighting the class structure.

you're not a capitalist because you're rich. you're rich because you're a capitalist. it's not because you're poor that you're working class. it's because you're working-class that you're poor. moreover, there's a causal connection between one's wealth and the other's poverty. (and all this, of course, is maintained, in the final analysis, by force).

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so, there is exploitation transpiring in capitalism. and this appropriation is rooted in domination and coercion, in the final analysis. (workers have to show up to work--they are not free to not work. the capitalist, moreover, can imposes these conditions because he owns the assets).

we've shown that class exists, then, and that it depends on exploitation.

exploitation is not simply a moral problem, it is a material fact. as long as these classes exist, you will have inequality (and conflict).

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vivek is here making a further distinction between the not-exploited (permanent unemployed, lumpen elements, etc.) and the exploited (in whom the capitalist class still has a stake, don't forget--it needs Labor, and it can never forget this fact)

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what differentiates classes, fundamentally, is their relation to the means of production, and the powers that flow from that fact.