Page 61 - DSOC401_SOCIOLOGICAL_THOUGHT_ENGLISH

Unit-10: Origin of Class and Class- Struggle

this era of ours, of capitalistic era is that it has made class struggle easier. In universal form, society notes
is getting divided in two large hostile groups; these two major classes, capitalist and proletariat, are
directly struggling with each other.”

Did You Know? Marx saying is that it is a historical truth that as opposed to land property,
capital always takes the shape of wealth.

The first concrete form of capital is wealth. After this, through purchase of labour of the labourers
by the capitalists at a price lesser than their actual price and in this way by accumulating extra prices
wealth is converted into capital. By buying those things from this capital, which are helpful in economic
manner in new production and which are brought to use as a source of production process, capitalist
people keep accumulating capital from the labour of the labourers or in other words, keep making
money from money. This capital, increasing continuously converts in such a living monster which
is harshly fertile and self growing and which slowly sucks the blood of the labourers. In this manner
according to Marx, capital is that wealth which is brought to use for exploitation of labourers. Through
this exploitation only, insemination of class struggle may take place.

Task What is class and class struggle? Describe briefly.

marx has mentioned the main results of this capitalist factory process in this manner that in factory
process production takes place on a large scale due to which often such situation is created from
excess production from which more and more business cycle or descent of trade crisis period becomes
natural. As a result of it capitalist with less capacity or mill owners of small level suffer losses and
slowly everything of theirs goes into the hands of big capitalists. Because of which more and more
centralisation of capital happens in the hands of few people. As a result small capitalists come out in
large numbers from capitalist class and get included in the labour class and more and more section
of the public becomes the servant of a very small numbered capitalist class. In each trade crisis period
capitalist reduces the prices of goods because by doing this it becomes possible to sell excessively
produced goods more and more. When prices of goods fall, wages of labours reduces automatically.
Labourers have to work more and more on fewer wages. This reduces the purchasing power of
labourers. They are not able to fulfil their primary needs also. Real producer of wealth or capital is
labourer but he is not able to receive its appropriate share. Capitals snatch the result of hard earned
money of the labourers cheating and injustice. This, according to marx is “exploitation of human by
human”. This increases dissatisfaction in the labourer class which is apparently expressed in form
of class struggle.

self assessment
Fill in the blanks—
1. Marx’s saying is that since always in each ______ there are two opposing classes- one exploiter
class and other the victimised class?
2. Till now history of all societies is the history of ______ only.
3. It has only given birth to new classes in place of old, new ______ of exploitation and new
types of struggles.

LoVeLY professionaL uniVersitY 55