Glossary: class
We try to use class in a pretty consistent and precise way.
Here is the definition employed by historian
G.E.M. de Ste. Croix in his methodologically rigorous
The Class Struggle in the Ancient Greek World:
Class (essentially a relationship) is the collective social expression of the fact
of exploitation, the way in which exploitation is embodied in a social structure. By
exploitation I mean the appropriation of part of the product of the labour of
others: in a commodity-producing society this is the appropriation of what Marx called
'surplus value'.
A class (a particular class) is a group of persons in a community identified by
their position in the whole system of social production, defined above all according to
their relationship (primarily in terms of the degree of ownership or control) to the
conditions of production (that is to say, the means and labour of production) and to other
classes. Legal position (constitutional rights or, to use the German term 'Rechtsstellung')
is one of the factors that may help to determine class: its share in doing so will depend on
how far it affects the type and degree of exploitation practiced or suffered -- the condition
of being a slave in the ancient Greek world, for example, was likely (though far from
certain) to result in a more intense degree of exploitation than being a citizen or even
a free foreigner.
The individuals constituting a given class may or may not be wholly or partly conscious
of their own identity and common interests as a class, and they may or may not feel
antagonism towards members of other classes as such.
It is of the essence of class society that one or more of the smaller classes, in
virtue of their control over the conditions of production (most commonly exercised through
ownership of the means of production), will be able to exploit -- that is, to appropriate
a surplus at the expense of -- the larger classes, and thus constitute an economically and
socially (and therefore probably also politically) superior class or classes. The
exploitation may be direct and individual, as for example of wage-labourers, slaves,
serfs, 'coloni', tenant-farmers or debtors by particular employers, masters, landlords or
moneylenders, or it be indirect and collective, as when taxation, military conscription,
forced labour or other services are exacted solely or disproportionately from a particular
class or classes (small peasant freeholders, for instance) by a State dominated by a superior
class.
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I use the expression class struggle for the fundamental relationship between classes
(and their respective individual members), involving essentially exploitation, or resistance
to it. It does not necessarily involve collective action by a class as such, and it may or
may not include activity on a political plane, although such political activity becomes
increasingly probable when the tension of class struggle becomes acute. A class which
exploits others is also likely to employ forms of political domination and oppression against
them when it is able to do so: democracy will mitigate this process.
de Ste. Croix goes on to note the important clarification that particular individuals may
belong to more than one class. He sites the example of Greek or Roman slaves who were
allowed by their masters to accumulate considerable property, including perhaps slaves of
their own. de Ste. Croix notes that one of these class identities is likely to be more
important than any secondary ones. And in any case, the class identities of particular
individuals is not usually what matters in determining what makes history tick.
We attempt to use class in this rigorously-defined, consistent way.
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