3. The Marxist theory of the class struggle differs
from all other theories of the class struggle in that it
weights the component of economic class membership
more heavily than any other theory in relation to other
social groupings and associations, and in its expectation
that economic class struggles will cease when the social
instruments of production are collectivized. Although
economic class interests and struggles play a large and
indisputable role in political, social, and cultural life,
on crucial occasions nationalist and religious ties have
exercised greater weight. Although the international
Marxist movement was pledged to a general strike
against war, when World War I broke out, French
workmen, instead of making common cause with
German workmen against their respective ruling
classes, joined their “domestic exploiters,” the French
capitalists, in a common “national front” or “sacred
union.” The same was true in all major countries.
National allegiance almost always proves stronger than
class allegiance when national interest and class interest
conflict. The union of capitalist Great Britain and
United States supporting the socialist USSR against the
invasion by capitalist Germany not only constitutes a
difficulty for the theory of historical materialism—since
the mode of economic production here was not deci-
sive—but also for the theory of the class struggle, since
the differences between the economic interests of the
capitalist class as a whole and those of the USSR, espe-
cially in its opposition to capitalism declared from its
very birth, are obviously far greater than the differ-
ences among the capitalists themselves. Even within
the culture of a single capitalist country the Marxist
theory of the class struggle fails to account for the
degree and extent of class cooperation. The organized
American labor movement seems just as hostile to
collectivism as an economy and to communism as a
political system as is the National Association of Man-
ufacturers.
With the advent of collectivist economies in the
Soviet Union and elsewhere, class struggles have not
disappeared but have taken on a new form, sometimes
expressed in strikes that are legally forbidden, in wide-
spread pilfering, the use of a private sector to buy and
sell, growth of bureaucratic privileges that some ob-
servers regard as indicia of a new class, and disparities
in income and standards of living that are not too far
removed from the upper and lower ranges of earned
income in some capitalist countries. V. Pareto and
Robert Michels, who agreed with Marxism that class
struggles rage in society but disagreed with Marxism
in holding that these struggles would continue even
after Marxists came to power in what they call a
socialist society, seem to have been justified by events.
Very little was done to solve some of the obvious
difficulties in using the concept of class consistently
with its definition, viz., the role played by individuals
in the mode of production. In ordinary discourse, the
various meanings of class take their meanings from the
varied contexts in which they are used. One would have
expected an attempt by Marxists to show that the chief
uses of the term “class” that are different are derivative
from the central Marxist one. Even more important
was the failure to relate the concept of class interest
to individual interest. Marxism is not a theory of human
motivation, and especially not a theory of self-interest
or egoism. The question remains: how does class inter-
est get expressed? Classes are not individuals. They are
abstractions. Only individuals act in history. On the
Marxist theory of class, regardless of whether individual
members of the class are selfish or unselfish, the inter-
ests of their class presumably get expressed. How does
this happen and through what mechanisms? Is there
an implicit statistical judgment that describes the be-
havior of most members of a class or are there repre-
sentative leaders who speak for the class? These are
some of the questions that remained unexplored, with
the result that the concept of class interest, often in-
voked, appeared as vague and mystical as “national
interest,” “the spirit of the times,” “the spirit of the
people,” and similar expressions.
