Classless society
The classless society is a central concept of Marxism .
According to the Marxist theory, primitive society as primordial communism was classless , ie everyone was fairly equally wealthy and practiced in principle the same activities (level of “savagery”). With the transition to agriculture and animal husbandry, in the course of the development of the productive forces, the opportunity arose for the first time to produce a surplus product , i.e. more than each individual needs to live. According to Marxism, this was also made possible by class society , since the surplus product could serve to feed a ruling class that was not itself involved in the immediate production process. For example, the surplus product was kept in special storage rooms for times of need, which then had to be guarded, and especially when a time of need broke out, people were necessary to defend these supplies against the immediate fears of the population so that everything was not eaten up in the first emergency has been. These people were thus empowered to decide the fate of their fellow citizens, since they were the only ones who had the authority to distribute the surplus products. They had to be powerful, more powerful than the bulk of the population. The ruling class and class society were born ( negation of classless society by class society, first negation). At the end of the development, according to Marx, there should again be a classless society (level of “ freedom ”) which negated class society, second negation or negation of negation , to put it in Hegelian terms.
This society should be organized as the cooperative association of free producers who are owners of the means of production and at the same time their own employees. There is no longer any private ownership of the means of production. The means of production are social property. Because all questions can be decided on a grassroots level, the state is no longer necessary as an instrument of class rule and, if it really became superfluous, it would wither. Because after the proletarian revolution, the economy was no longer forced to go wrong by competition and crises, production increased tremendously. Agriculture is also being rationalized because it is done on a large scale and not on small, private plots. It would be possible to eliminate the deficiency so that it would ultimately be possible to provide for every person according to their (reasonable) needs. Provided that the dictatorship of the proletariat has been established all over the world and that the capitalists have been expropriated and that everything develops favorably, then because of the existing overproduction it should be possible for people to follow their inclinations at work and not have to have permanent jobs , but instead could decide at short notice, depending on their interests and their own understanding, which activity they wanted to pursue and which would make sense. The work is no longer alienated , but an expression of personality.
Already after the revolution in the course of the development of socialism ( dictatorship of the proletariat ), as a result of the appropriation of the means of production and technical progress ( industrial methods in agriculture , automation ), the class differences between workers, peasants, intelligentsia and other strata disappear . Equal rights and duties imprint themselves from or created by law (eg., 8-hour day, like holiday regulations, aligning the wages of all classes and strata ), until finally gradually according to Marxist theory no classes could be distinguished more and a classless society prevails.
In Marxism, the abolition of human exploitation and private ownership of the means of production is seen as a prerequisite for a classless society . This in turn presupposes a high level of development of the productive forces, which , however, is fundamentally achieved within capitalism , since competition forces the capitalists to keep increasing labor productivity. This is also referred to by Marx as the “historical mission” of capital, earlier “modes of production” were characterized by less technical progress.
In the practice of the “communist” states (the character of which is controversial within Marxism), the state was of course not superfluous, especially because of the lack of world revolution , but also contained a great deal of power because of the sovereignty over the economy. Despite the lack of world revolution and other difficulties, the goal of the classless society was retained as the ideal to be striven for.
See also
literature
- Friedrich Engels : The origin of the family, private property and the state . In: Karl Marx / Friedrich Engels - Works , Volume 21, 5th edition, Dietz Verlag, Berlin 1975 ( online )