Note

Class in Itself and Class Against Capital: Karl Marxand His Classifiers

EDWARD ANDREW University of Toronto

It has become almost a truism in Marxian scholarship that Marxdistinguished a class in itself1 from a class for itself,* Whetherscholars defend Marxs use of this distinction1 or criticize him formaking use of a problematic distinction,2 a consensus exists that Marxmade such a distinction.3 My position is that, if Marx had distinguishedclasses in themselves from classes for themselves, he would be open tothe charges of economic reductionism that Nicos Foulantzas and AdamPrzeworski find to be implicit in the distinction. However, despite theunanimity of his commentators, Marx never referred to classes inthemselves or distinguished a class in itself from a class for itself,

Of the writers who attribute class in itself and class for itself,"Dos Santos, Przeworski, Eisenstein and Zeitlin provide no textualevidence to support their attribution,4 Robert Tucker and Poulantzascite a passage in The Poverty of Philosophy which we shall shortlyanalyze.5 Kolakowski cites a passage in The Eighteenth Brumaire ofLouis Bonaparte which also will be examined to assess whether it will

I T. Dos Santos, The Concept of Social Classes, Science and Society 34 (1970), 181;Hal Draper, Karl Marx's Theory of Revolution: The Politics of Social Classes (NewYork: Monthly Review Press, 1978), 40-41, 349; G. A. Cohen, Karl Marx's Theory ofHistory: A Defence (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980), 73-76,

2 Nicos Poulantzas, Political Power and Social Classes (London: New Left Books,1973), 74-76, and Adam Przeworski, Proletariat into a Class: The Process of ClassFormation from Karl Kautskys The Class Struggle to Recent Controversies,*1Politics and Society 7 (1977), 343, 367.

3 Irving M. Zeitlin, Marxism. A Re-Examination (New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold,1967), 72, 103; Leszek Kolakowski, Main Currents of Marxism, Vol. 1 (Oxford:Clarendon Press, 1978), 356; Robert C.Tucker, The Marx-Engets Reader (New York:Norton, 1978), 218; Z. Eisenstein,Women as aSexual Class, paperdeliveredattheMarch I9S3 Marx Centenary Conference, University of Winnipeg.

4 See supra, footnotes 1, 2 and 3.5 See supra, footnotes 2 and 3.

Canadian JournaJ of Political Science / Revue ranadienne de science politique, XV|:3fSeplemtwri'Kcptembre 1983). Printed in Canada I Tmprimt au Canada

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support the attribution.0 Draper and Cohen cite both passages as sourcesfor the distinction but, whereas Draper asserts that "this distinction ismade mainly in/' Cohen more judiciously asserts that "the distinction istaken from" The Eighteenth Brumaire and The Poverty of Philosophy 7

Before looking at the passages cited as the textual source of thedistinction between a class in itself and a class for itself, let us clarifywhat the commentators mean by the distinction, Cohen provides aforceful defence of the distinction, thinking it essential to establish astrictly structural definition of class (in itself) distinct from any politicalor cultural expression of class identity (for itself). Cohen asserts that "aperson's class is established by nothing but his objective place in thenetwork of ownership relations, however difficult it may be to identifysuch places neatly. His consciousness, culture, and politics do not enterthe definition of his class position/'* Indeed, "not even his behavior isan essentia] part of a person's class identity. Przeworski, whodeprecates the distinction, accepts Cohen's view that the distinctionentails an opposition between the economic as objective reality and thepolitical and cultural as subjective expressions of the underlyingeconomic reality. Przeworski writes:

The difficulties encountered by Marxist theory in analysing the class structure ofconcrete capitalist societies had already appeared at the time of the formation ofthe socialist movement. Their roots are to be found in the formulation by Marx ofthe problematic in which the processes of class formation are seen asa necessarytransition from a "class in itself to a "class for itself/* a formulation in whicheconomic relations have the status of objective conditions and all other relationsconstitute realms of subjective actions.&

Thus the class in itself/for itself distinction presupposes that classesare constituted in the socioeconomic realm, prior to political or culturalengagements, and that political struggle and forms of culture andconsciousness are not constitutive or definitive of class structure butrather are symptoms, expressions, perhaps even necessary effects, ofthe socioeconomic class structure, or relations of production.

Let us now examine the passages cited to support the attribution toMarx of the class in itself/for itself distinction. In The EighteenthBrumaire, Marx writes of the mid-nineteenth century French peasantry:

In so far as millions of families live under economic conditions of existence thatseparate their mode of life, their interests and their culture from those of theother classes, and put them in hostile opposition to the latter, they form a class,In so far as there is merely a local interconnection among these small-holding

6 See supra, footnote 3,7 Draper, Karl Marx's Theory of Revolution* 41; Cohen, Karl Marx's Theory of

History , 76,8 Ibid., 73. Emphasis in the original.9 FTzeworski, "Proletariat into a Class/* 343,

Abstract. This note argues that, widespread opinion to the contrary, Marx did not make adistinction between a class in itself and a class for itself but between a class against capitaland a class for itself, Marx's formulation of a 'class against capital exhibits a politicaldimension lacking in a class in itself; political institutions and arrangements arenot simply the instrument or the expression of a pre-existing class structure but rathercondition or shape the class structure. The implications of the erroneous attribution to thetheoretical understanding of class formation as well as practical politics are explored,

Resume, Malgne les opinions largement repandues Marx n'a pas fait de distinction entreune classe en soi et une classe pour soi, mais plutdt il a fait une difference entre une classecontre le capitalet une classe pour soi. La formulation marxienne dune * classe contre lecapital *a une dimension politique qui ne se retrouve pas dans une classe en soi ; lesinstitutions et compromis politique s ne sont pas sirnplement Tinstrument ou Texpressiond'une structure de classes pre-existente, mais plutdt ils faconnent ou conditionnent lastructure de classes. Dans eet article I'auteur evalue les consequences de la mauvaiseinterpretation decet aspect du marxisme sur la comprehension theorique de la formationdes classes ainsi que sur la pratique politique,

peasants, and the identity of their interests begets no community, no nationalbond and no political organisation among them, they do not form a class.10

Cohen uses this passage in support of his structural definition ofclass (distinct, as above noted, from any conscious, cultural, political oreven behavioural expression of class), and in opposition to E. RThompson, who, like Przeworski and Poulantzas, understands class asconstituted by a form of conflictive behaviour generated primarily butnot exclusively by common experiences in the production process.Cohen asserts: If Thompson were right, the French peasantry of TheEighteenth Brumaire could not be considered aclass/11 Clearly, Cohenhas not provided a decisive argument against the nonstructuraldefinition of class on the basis of the text itself. For Marx says that in onesense, the peasants form a class* and in another sense they do notform a class, This apparent contradiction demands linguisticclarification or a distinction in the sense of class in which peasants formone from that in which they do not. To avoid this apparent contradiction,Cohen and others introduce the distinction between a class in itself and aclass for itself; the French peasants then embody aclass in itself but notfor itself,

The other passage Cohen and Draper use for the distinctionbetween a class in itself and a class for itself derives from Marxsaccount of the effects of large-scale industry. Transforming therelatively isolated and self-sufficient character of peasant production,capitalist industrialization introduces a co-operative or socializedworking environment, facilitating the class formation of workers. In ThePoverty of Philosophy, Marx writes: Economic conditions had firsttransformed the mass of the people of the country into workers. Thecombination of capital has created for this mass a common situation,10 Kart Marx and Friedrich Engels, Collected Works (New York: International

Publishers, 1976), Vol, II. 187.II Cohen, Karl Marx's Theory of History , 76.

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common interests. This mass is thus already a class as against capital,but not yet for itself. In the struggle .... this mass becomes united, andconstitutes itself as a class for itself. The interests it defends becomeclass interests. But the struggle of class against class is a politicalstruggle.12

Tucker includes this passage in The Marx-Engeh Reader andcomments: "Note the Hegelian terminology in Marx's depiction of theproletariat becoming... a class not only in itself but also 'for itself.Indeed Tuckerdoes not put the "in itself1 in quotation marks as he doesthe "for itself' because the antithesis here is between a class againstcapital and a class for itself, (The original French reads, une classevis-a-vis du capital, mais pas encore pour elle-meme,'1 which Bernsteinand Kautsky translated as "eine Klasse gegeniiber dem Kapital, abernoch nicht fur sich selbst."14 Combined in opposition to theiremployers, industrial workers form a class against capital in a mannerthat nonunionized peasants do not. Peasants, dependent upon suchvagaries of nature and market as soil fertility, climate, irrigation andharvest times, lack the commonality of situation of factory workers.Peasants of one region may experience different conditions ofproduction than in another, may lack communication with one anotherand may share interests with the landlords and agricultural capitalists oftheir locality which they do not with peasants of another region. Unlikepropertyless workers, small-holding peasant proprietors do notconstitute * 'a class as against capital." While they may have grievancesagainst the system of taxation, against the interest or rent they may pay,peasants, Marx thought, are not opposed to capitalism itself, to theprivate property and market system. Peasants are more of a mass than aclass, people with amorphous grievances against financiers, rentiers andimposters (taxmen) rather than a specific group with articulatedinterests "against capital." Populists may be militant, particularly whendetermined to free themselves of pre-capitalist fetters to independentproprietorshipor when their small-holding is threatened by the capitalistmarket, but populist struggles are not class conflict, unless populistsparticipate in struggles for dominion between potentially hegemonicclasses.

13

Whereas Marx's concept of a class against capital does not allowthe analytic separation of class from class conflict, the concept of a classin itself does. Whereas organized opposition against a united enemyconstitutes the essence of class in Marxs writing, not even behaviourantagonistic to other classes is essential to Cohens class in itself.Perhaps Cohen's concept is a useful tool to analyze those societieswithout manifest class conflict or to describe economic groups, such as12 Marx and Engels, Collected Works , VQI. 6+ 211.13 Tucker, The Marx-Engets Reader, 218.L4 Karl Marx, Oeuvres, Economic, 1 (Paris; GaHimand, 1963), 135; Karl Marx and

Friedrich Engels, Werke, Bd. 4 (Berlin: Dietz Veriag, 1974), 181.

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the nineteenth century French peasantry which seemingly do and do notform a class,

Or could we simply say that there are social formations in whicheconomic classes do not constitute political classes, that the peasantryof The Eighteenth Brumaire is an economic but not a political class?Indeed, despite his tendency to abstract the political content fromMarx's class analysis, Cohen recognizes that Marx often meant by classa contender for political power. Cohen cites a few of Marx's statementssuch as . . .the proletariat can act as a class only by constituting itself asa political party11 and every moment in which the working class comesoat as a class against the ruling classes and attempts to force them bypressure from without is apolitical movement?'15Cohen points out thatwhat fails to act or come out as a class is nothing other than the workingclass. Thus, like the peasantry, the industrial workers who fail to be aclass for itself are merely a class in itself. However, The CommunistManifesto states: The organisation of the proletarians into a class, andconsequently into a political party, is continually being upset again bythe competition between the workers themselves?'16 Do competingworkers constitute a class? In The German Ideology, Marx and Engelswrite: The separate individuals form a class only insofar as they have tocarry on a common battle against another class; otherwise they are onhostile terms with each other as competitors?'17 This formulationsuggests that individual proletarians only constitute a proletariat or aworking class on condition that they are organized in trade unions andpolitical parties. Thus Marx's texts do not unambiguously supportCohens structural definition of class or his view that the structure ofcapitalist industry forms the working class (as distinct from Thompsonsand Przeworskis view that workers actively contribute to the making ofthe working class). Cohens representation of historical materialismthen is an attempted clarification rather than a faithful reproduction ofMarxs views on class,

The analytic distinction of aclass in itself and aclass for itself allowsCohen to distinguish one's class position from any political or culturalexpression of ones class identity. This distinction does not seem toparallel Marxs distinction in The Eighteenth Brumaire regarding theFrench peasant forming an economic class but not a political class. ForMarx says that the French peasants form a class insofar as millions offamilies live under economic conditions of existence that separate theirmode of life, their interests and their culture from those of the otherclasses, and put them in hostile opposition to the latter. That is,Cohens class in itself excludes culture as a component of class whereasMarx's presentation of the peasant class includes it. Moreover the15 Cohen, Karl Marx's Theory of History, 76. Emphasis in the original.16 Marx and Engels, Collected Works, Vol, 6, 493.17 Ibid., Vol. 5, 77,

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hostile opposition" to others integral to a class conforms more closelyto The Poverty of Philosophy's class against capital than to Cohensclass in itself*

However, other adherents to the class in itself/for itself dichotomydo not exclude culture as an element of a class in Itself. For example,Dos Santos does not exclude culture as acomponentof a class in itself tothe extent that the attitudes, habits of thought and behaviour, feltinterests and aspirations (which comprise what he calls classpsychology) are illusionary rather than realistic, ideological rather thanscientific. Dos Santos writes:

Insofar as this class psychology fails to express the reality of these relations in asignificant sector of the individuals that make upa class, these human aggregatesmay be thought of as a class in itself.

But it will be a classfor itself in a social situation in which it becomes awareof these relations in the form of a political ideology that clearly defines the realconditions of its existence and the contradictions between those conditions andits interests as a social class, and which proposes the means of overcoming thissituation.1*

4 L

Thus a class in itself is a class deficient in social awareness, anaggregate composed of individuals who are unacquainted with, orunreceptive to, Marxist science. Following Lenin and Lukacs we couldeven say that class consciousness must be "imputed" to workers fromoutside the working class by the Marxist intelligentsia*19 Working classconsciousness is thus distinct from the empirical psychology of workers*No worker has ever thought or felt or will ever think or feel what Lukacsdescribes as proletarian class consciousness. Nor is there the slightestindication that Lukacs would find interesting the responses to theempirical survey of workersattitudes that Marx sent to workmen**0 Forif we distinguish a class in itself from a class for itself, class psychologyfrom class consciousness, merely empirical investigation is irrelevant tothe larger issue of class consciousness*

While it is widely recognized that Marxist science is theprecondition for the level of awareness of a "class for itself," it is not asreadily acknowledged that a class in itself' only exists for thoseinitiated in Marxist analysis. The conception of a class against capitalsuggests an empirical understanding of manifest opposition, struggle orconflict as definitive of class whereas Cohens class in itself denotes adefinitive structure underlying experience and behaviour* Visiblestruggles are appearances or phenomena to be explained by thenoumenal structure of class in itself But what a class is in itself, in itsIS Dos Santos, The Concept of Social Classes," 181. Emphasis in original.19 Vr |, Lenin, Collected Works , VoL 5 (Moscow; Foreign Languages Publishing, 1961),

373, 384-87; Gyorgy Lukacs, History and Class Consciousness (London; Merlin,1971), 51.

20 T. B. Bottomore and Maximilien RubeJ, Kart Marx: Selected Writings in Sociologyand Social Philosophy (London: Watts, 1956), 203-12.

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inner truth or abjective reality, is inaccessible for those who hold by theoutward appearance of class conflict, the acting out of a class identity inopposition to other organized groups or classes* Once the class in itselfhas been identified (with all the rigor and difficulty that Dos Santos andCohen acknowledge) one can then deduce the nature of the class foritself or what the politics and consciousness of that class ought to be(which lamentably will diverge from what the political culture of thatclass in fact is)*

Further, does a class in itself remain unaltered in the course of itspolitical engagements, in its class alliances and class struggles? Is theclass structure simply to be viewed as the causeof political practices andstate institutions* and political parties merely the effect or theexpression of the balance of class forces? Are states and parties merelythe instruments of pre-existing classes or is the political realm a spherefor the formation, deformation and reformation of classes? If politicalengagements alter the class structure (a point that any political activistwould be hard pressed to deny) and are not merely the expression orinstruments of a pre-established class structure, the class in itself hascome out of itself. Przeworski, who sees classes as the effects ofstruggles conditioned by a conjuncture of economic, political andideological factors, wishes to reject the formulation of class in itself andfor itself and replace it with a concept of a class in struggle.formulation, Przeworski thinks, will emancipate classical Marxism fromeconomic determinism, opening Marxism up to a more pluralistunderstanding of social development. All I would point out in oppositionto Przeworski is that Marx's formulation was aclass against capital and aclass for itself and that Przeworski's class in struggle is similar insignification to Marx's class against capital*

The antithesis of the class against capital and the class for itselfpresents less ambitious claims upon the social theorist than theantithesis of the class in itself and the class for itself. However it isperhaps questionable whether a class, without a sustained period ofsocial hegemony, could exist for itself, that is, articulate its ownunderstanding of the world, legitimate its interests and aspirations asnorms of conduct and forms of cultural expression, free of the ideologyof hitherto dominant classes. But then a class for itself is notnecessarily the pre-condition for a revolutionary seizure of power. If theEnglish gentry or the French bourgeoisie required the scientific realismof DosSantoss,Cohen's or Draper's class for itself," we would still beawaiting the revolutions of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries*The capitalist class only existed "for itselfthat is, represented itshegemony in its own terms independent of patriarchal relations,authoritative rather than market forms of allocation, codes of honour,hereditary status and other marks of pre-capitalist societya good21 Przeworski, "Proletariat into a Class," 367+

**21 This

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many years after the revolutions in Britainand France , As aclass againstthe aristocracy but not yet for itselfstill dependent upon politicaland cultural forms of the aristocracythe bourgeoisie, constantlychanging its character and composition, rose to social and politicaldominance. By analogy, as a class against capital but not yet foritselfstill dependent upon political and cultural forms of thebourgeoisiethe working class, constantly changing its character andcomposition, organized and disorganized on sectoral, regional, ethnicand sexual lines, will have to engage in prolonged struggle for social andpolitical dominance, For class consciousness is as much the effect as thecause of class struggle.

The In itself/for itself dichotomy may well represent a seriousbarrier to working class self-definition and to the formation of aneffective politics of labour* A class in itself is constituted by theeconomic structure prior to political and cultural engagements ratherthan constituting itself in partisan combination and combat* As distinctfrom the self-definition of a class against capital, a class in itself isdefined by a vanguard, armed with the science to grasp objectiveprocesses, which then define class consciousness on the basis of itsunderstanding of the objective (but never specified) interests of theworkers. The for itself is imputed to workers by intellectuals ratherthan emerging in the course of the workers struggle against capital. Themisattribution to Marx of the dichotomy of class in itself/for itselfrepresents a Leninist constriction of Marxist politics and a doctrinallimitation to empirical application of class analysis.

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