What Kinds of Class Struggle Existed Prior To Capitalist Society

Discussion

Kojin Karatani:

"when we view feudal societies in terms of relations of production, we expect to find class struggle between feudal lords and serfs—and yet instances of this are hard to find. When struggle did occur, it was mainly due to misgovernment by the feudal lord. In other words, when he failed to meet his obligations under bilateral mode of exchange B. Accordingly, even when struggle emerged, it could only take place within the terms defined by mode B. In the middle ages, cases of class struggle that transcended mode B were those between feudal lord and city people. In other words, resistance to mode of exchange B came from mode of exchange C, which emerged in the cities. In sum, the ‘class struggle’ that took place during the medieval period was not an issue of modes of production; it was a conflict between mode of exchange B and mode of exchange C, which was spreading from the cities. And in the end, it was the latter that won out. That being the case, this may have been a ‘struggle between classes,’ but it was not a ‘struggle to abolish class in itself.’ In fact, these various struggles did harbor within themselves elements that could ‘sublate class in itself.’ That is what rendered these struggles into epochmaking ‘class struggles.’ But those elements were never realized and in the end only aided in replacing one ruling class with another. For example, the French Revolution with its slogan of “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity” ended in the realization of capitalist society. That being the case, where does the movement to ‘sublate class in itself’ come from? Generally, it seems, this arises from the dimension of religion and thought. In other words, not from the economic base, but from the ideational superstructure. In my view, however, these actually come from the economic base—that is, from modes of exchange—but in form of a mode of exchange that is different from A, B, and C, and that in fact aims to sublate them. Moreover, 18 unlike a simple concept or idea, these has its own ‘power’ of compulsion. I will discuss this again below. What is clear by now is that the class struggles we can identify from the premodern period arise not from mode of production, but rather mode of exchange. And we can say the same thing with regard to class struggle in capitalist society. For example, as I noted above, Engels observed the class struggle in 1840s England and from this hit upon the idea of ‘historical materialism,’ but in 1848 when revolutionary movements swept across Europe, the quickest cessation of class struggle was seen in England. Moreover, this happened not because of the defeat of the Chartist Movement—but rather because of its partial victory. After this, the labor movement in England was legalized and before long there appeared the so-called labor aristocracy. What emerged subsequently was Fabian Socialism (Social Democrats). In sum, the class struggle that occurred in England disappears with the victory, to a certain degree, of the working class. Why? The disappearance of class struggle at this time did not mean the disappearance of the capitalist mode of production. As a result of the struggle, it became legal for labor unions and others to engage in negotiations over wages. Seen from the perspective of modes of exchange, this means that the relations of capitalists and laborers, which had resembled modes B or A, started to move towards mode C. Looking back from this perspective, the fierce class struggle of the Chartist Movement arose not from ‘relations of production’ or ‘contradictions between productive forces and relations of production,’ but rather from the emergence of a new mode of exchange that was in the process of replacing the previously dominant mode. And when this was achieved, the labor movement became an accepted part of the labor market—that is, of the capitalist market economy. And with this, while it appeared that the class struggle continued, in 19 fact any ‘consciousness to sublate class in itself’ had vanished. In the advanced capitalist countries, class struggle and socialist revolutionary movements were destined to fade away after an initial period of activity. Faced with this situation at the end of the nineteenth century, following the death of Engels, Engel’s desciple Bernstein proclaimed the end of Marx-Engels revolutionary theory. But Lenin concluded that because the proletariat would naturally come to acquire a bourgeois-like consciousness and lose its class consciousness that would abolish class in itself, and for that reason believed that class consciousness had to be introduced from ‘outside.’ Lukacs’s History and Class Consciousness (1923) aimed to provide the philosophical basis for this. In their case, the ‘outside’ meant the ideas provided by vanguard intellectuals (or the vanguard party). But this was no different from Plato’s philosopher-king, and in the end its result was to legitimize dictatorship by the party. By contrast, from early on Ernst Bloch pointed out the limitations of historical materialist theory, and in Thomas Müntzer as Theologian of Revolution (1921) he attempted to link the socialist revolution with religion. Lukacs criticized this as a deviation from correct Marxism, but what I want to point out here is that already in 1848, Engels had confronted the same problem and adopted the same point of view. At the moment when ‘class struggle’ in England had died away, he revisited the question of how class struggle or even socialist revolution might be possible. This could not be resolved from an approach centered on ‘productive forces and relations of production.’ In other words, the person who was the first to propose this approach was also the one who came to this realization about its limitations. Specifically, he began to research peasant movements from sixteenth-century Germany (The Peasant War in Germany, 1850). In this work, he tried to find ‘communism’ in the thought of the millenarian movement leader Thomas Müntzer.

Engels’s previous position was that the 20 ‘power’ that drives socialism and movements to sublate class in itself comes from the economic base (contradictions between productive forces and the relations of production). But here he acknowledged that these come instead from the ideational/religious dimension. He would then launch into a study of the history of primitive Christianity that would continue until the end of his life. It is also true, however, that he was never able to go beyond this stage and bring this question to its logical conclusion.14 Bloch was in many ways the heir to this approach. He would write that, “Only a athiest can be a good Christian; only a Christian can be a a good atheist.”15 (Atheism in Christianity). Even before this, the Christian theologian Karl Barth would write that, “A well-known theologian and author has recently argued that these two ought not to be joined together as they are in our topic: ‘Jesus Christ and the movement for social justice,’ for that makes it sound as if they are really two different entities which must first be connected more or less artificially. Both are seen as one and the same: Jesus is the movement for social justice, and the movement for social justice is Jesus in the present.”16 We can say that these thinkers were confronting the same problem that Engels had faced. Through a paradoxical logic, they were trying to repair the rupture between religion and social movements—in other words, the rupture between ideational superstructure and economic base. But this problem can be resolved if we view the economic base in terms of modes of exchange rather than modes of production."

(http://www.kojinkaratani.com/en/pdf/An_Introduction_to_Modes_of_Exchange.pdf)