7.2.1: Karl Marx: The Means of Production

 7.2.1: Karl Marx: The Means of Production 

As we discussed in Chapter 1, as agricultural society gave way to an industrial one, masses of peasants were displaced from their traditional lands and occupations. Fleeing to cities, they competed for the few available jobs. 

Paid only a pittance for their labor, they wore rags, went hungry, and slept under bridges and in shacks.

 In contrast, the factory owners built mansions, hired servants, and lived in the lap of luxury. Seeing this great disparity between owners and workers, Karl Marx (1818–1883) concluded that social class depends on a single factor: people’s relationship to the means of production—the tools, factories, land, and investment capital used to produce wealth (Marx 1844/1964; Marx and Engels 1848/1967). 

Marx argued that the distinctions people often make among themselves—such as their clothing, speech, education, and paycheck, or the neighborhood they live in and the car they drive—are superficial matters. These things camouflage the only dividing line that counts. There are just two classes of people, said Marx: the bourgeoisie (capitalists), those who own the means of production, and the proletariat (workers), those who work for the owners. In short, people’s relationship to the means of production determines their social class. Gallery

The only distinction worth mentioning, then, is whether a person is an owner or a worker. This decides everything else, Marx stressed, because property determines people’s lifestyles, establishes their relationships with one another, and even shapes their ideas.

Marx did recognize other groups: farmers and peasants; a lumpenproletariat (people living on the margin of society, such as beggars, vagrants, and criminals); and a middle group of self-employed professionals. Marx did not consider these groups social classes, however, because they lacked class consciousness—a shared identity based on their relationship to the means of production. In other words, they did not perceive themselves as exploited workers whose plight could be resolved by collective action. Marx thought of these groups as insignificant in the future he foresaw—a workers’ revolution that would overthrow capitalism. As the capitalists grow even wealthier, Marx said, hostilities will increase. When workers come to realize that capitalists are the source of their oppression, they will unite and throw off the chains of their oppressors. In a bloody revolution, they will seize the means of production and usher in a classless society—and no longer will the few grow rich at the expense of the many. What holds back the workers’ unity and their revolution is false class consciousness, workers mistakenly thinking of themselves as capitalists. For example, workers with a few dollars in the bank may forget that they are workers and instead see themselves as investors, or as capitalists who are about to launch a successful business.

These photos illustrate the contrasting worlds of social classes produced by early capitalism. The photo on the left was taken in 1890. These homeless boys who spent their nights sleeping on the sidewalk did not go to school. They made their living by selling newspapers. The children on the right, Cornelius and Gladys Vanderbilt, are shown in front of their parents’ estate. They had private tutors and did not work. You can see how the social locations illustrated in these photos would have produced different orientations to life and, therefore, politics, ideas about marriage, values, and so on—the stuff of which life is made. Credit: Bettmann/Getty Images