READ AND DISCUSS:

Who are the middle class?

As discussed in the last lesson, those better-paid ‘white-collar’ workers who might consider themselves ‘middle class’ are really just part of the proletariat, with no alternative but to sell their labour power to their employer to pay their bills. Actually, and perhaps not surprisingly given the deteriorating pay and conditions in offices, public services etc., Social Attitudes surveys in the UK show that “even despite the growth in white-collar jobs, more people identify as working than middle class ²².”

When Marx and Engels are talking about the ‘middle class’ they mean the genuine ‘petty bourgeois’, people who earn a living through the small amount of capital that they own, or perhaps through being self-employed with a specialised trade.

Lesson Five has already quoted from the opening paragraphs of the Manifesto where Marx and Engels state that “society as a whole is more and more splitting up into two great hostile camps, into two great classes directly facing each other – Bourgeoisie and Proletariat”. In these later paragraphs, the Manifesto explains how those with just a small amount of capital - the genuinely middle class ‘petty bourgeois’ – are gradually squeezed out by competition with the big capitalists and pushed down into the proletariat. Small peasant farmers find they are unable to compete with the agricultural giants, small shopkeepers cannot compete with the big supermarket chains, and so on.

1. In the first paragraph quoted from the Manifesto, what examples are given of people who form part of the ‘lower strata of the middle class’?

Why are they not a revolutionary class?

Marx and Engels state clearly that “the proletariat alone is a really revolutionary class” able to lead the struggle to change society.

Their Manifesto warns that the middle classes are “not revolutionary, but conservative” because, in their fight against the big capitalists, they are attempting to do the impossible and “roll back the wheel of history” in a vain effort to try and preserve their rights to own their little bit of property against the might of capitalist property. In order to really defend their livelihoods, Marx and Engels argue that they need to throw in their lot with the working class and fight for a future where capitalist exploitation of both workers and the poor can be brought to an end.

It’s worth bearing Marx and Engels’ warning in mind, because the same point was made by Leon Trotsky in his ‘Theory of Permanent Revolution’. He stressed that, even though the Russian working-class was small, it would need to take the lead in the impending revolution and pull the petty bourgeois peasantry behind it. That prognosis was entirely borne out by the events of 1917. But these points were later seized upon by his Stalinist opponents to argue that he wasn’t really a genuine Marxist or Bolshevik!

Trotsky answered his critics as follows: “One of the favourite arguments of certain circles during recent times [is] that I ‘underestimate’ the role of the peasantry. Ordinarily, their argumentation boils down to allusions to the theory of the ‘permanent revolution’ … an expression of Marx which he applied to the revolution of 1848. … For Russia, this theory signified: what we need is not the bourgeois republic as a political crowning, nor even the democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry, but a workers’ government supporting itself upon the peasantry and opening up the era of the international socialist revolution. Thus, the idea of the permanent revolution coincides entirely with the fundamental strategical line of Bolshevism. … The Mensheviks founded their whole argument against the seizure of power by the proletariat on the enormous number of peasants and their immense social role in Russia [and] categorically rejected as … nonsense, the leading role of the proletariat with relation to the peasantry. ²³ ”

2. Who would Marx and Engels have agreed with, Trotsky and the Bolsheviks – or the Mensheviks (and the Stalinists)?

What is the ‘lumpenproletariat’?

Marx and Engels used the term ‘lumpenproletariat’ – the “dangerous class” – to describe the ‘lowest layers’ who are unable to find paid employment and have to resort to begging, crime, robbery etc. - whatever is necessary to continue to survive in the face of capitalist robbery.

The unemployed black youth on which the Black Panther Party largely based itself showed that these sections of society can take determined action. However, the eventual demise of the Panthers also shows the necessity of building amongst the working class itself. However, just as the Manifesto warns, these desperate and angry layers can also fall prey to reactionary forces. The desperate lumpenproletariat helped to provide the forces that enabled fascism to come to power in Germany and elsewhere, their anger being directed towards the smashing up of workers’ organisations, instead of against the capitalist class.

3. The Manifesto suggests that these ‘lowest layers’ could be “swept into the movement by a proletarian revolution” or, more likely, be used as a “tool of reactionary intrigue”. What examples are given above that illustrate both these possibilities?