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Class conflict

Class conflict, also class war or class warfare, is both the friction that accompanies social relationships between members or groups of different social classes and the underlying tensions or antagonisms which exist in society due to conflicting interests that arise from different social positions. Class conflict is thought to play a pivotal role in history of class societies (such as capitalism and feudalism) by Marxists who refer to its overt manifestations as class war, a struggle that is viewed by them as a product of capitalism.

Class conflict can take many different shapes. Direct violence, such as wars fought for resources and cheap labor; indirect violence, such as deaths from poverty, starvation or unsafe working conditions; coercion, such as the threat of losing a job or pulling an important investment; or ideology, either intentionally (as with books and articles promoting anti-capitalism) or unintentionally (as with the promotion of consumerism through advertising).

It can be open, as with a lockout aimed at destroying a labor union, or hidden, as with an informal slowdown in production protesting low wages or unfair labor practices.

Definition of Classes and Class Conflict

Class conflict is a term long-used mostly by socialists, Marxists, and anarchists, to describe social conflicts between two or more social classes. Marxists and many anarchists define a 'class' by its relationship to the 'means of production' --- such as factories, land, and machinery. From this point of view, the social control of production and labour is a contest between classes, and the division of these resources necessarily involves conflict and inflicts harm.

Class conflict in pre-capitalist socities

Where societies are socially divided based on status, wealth, or control of social production and distribution, conflict arises. This conflict is both everyday, such as the common Medieval right of lords to control access to grain mills and baking ovens, or it can be exceptional such as the Roman Conflict of the Orders, the uprising of Spartacus, or the various popular uprisings in late medieval Europe. One of the earliest Marxist analyses of these conflicts is Frederick Engel's German Peasants War. One of the earliest analyses of the development of class as the development of conflicts between emergent classes is available in Peter Kropotkin's Mutual Aid where he analyses the disposal of goods after death in pre-class societies, and how inheritance produces early class divisions and conflict.

Class conflict in Capitalism

The typical example of class conflict described is class conflict within capitalism. This class conflict is seen to occur primarily between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, and take the form of conflict over hours of work, value of wages, cost of consumer goods, the culture at work, control over parliament or bureaucracy, and economic inequality. The particular implementation of government programs which may seem purely humanitarian, such as disaster relief, can actually be a form of class conflict. Apart from these day to day forms of class conflict, during periods of crisis or revolution class conflict takes on a violent nature and involves repression, assault, restriction of civil liberties and murderous violence such as assassinations or death squads.

Class conflict in the Soviet Union and similar societies

A variety of predominantly Marxist and anarchist thinkers argue that class conflict exists in Soviet-style societies. These arguments describe as a class the bureaucratic stratum formed by the ruling political party (known as the Nomenklatura in the Soviet Union)-- sometimes termed a "new class". -- that controls the means of production. This ruling class is viewed to be in opposition to the remainder of society, generally considered the proletariat. This type of system is referred to by its detractors as state capitalism, state socialism, bureaucratic collectivism, coordinatorism, or new class societies.