Part 81 of Karl Marx’s alternative to capitalism.

The abolition of capitalism and the social revolution that would make society the expression of the needs of the majority would quickly and radically start to reduce inequality and alienation.  This would be the result of the relations of production between individuals being transformed from class relations of exploitation to cooperative relations between individuals.  It would eliminate the material basis for the huge inequality arising from the monopoly ownership of productive resources that skews production and consumption on behalf of the capitalist class, while it would allow production to be directly planned for the needs of the majority.

This control would begin to eliminate the alienation that exploitation, atomisation and lack of solidarity create while developing the bonds of cooperation based on the basis of a cooperative economy that allows the conscious determination of social priorities.  Reducing material inequality through creation of mechanisms that enable everyone to engage in setting future needs would reduce social alienation and antagonism upon which social problems and certain patterns of individual harmful behaviour are created.

In this context the division of the working class, now no longer a class but a society of associated producers, would no longer have any interest in division and conflict based on race or nationality or any other particular individual attribute that is irrelevant to the cooperative solidarity of society.  The development of the forces of production that will erode and then erase inequality will be the product of associated producers for whom race, nationality, sex or sexual orientation etc. will not be socially or politically relevant. 

Inequality will not be abolished all at once, as the forces and relations of production develop but remain insufficient and the effects of capitalism on the consciousness of the working class persist, with its quota of ignorance and prejudice.  However, the working class/associated producers will no longer have the same material interests in reproducing the oppressive divisions that currently exist and which the existence of a capitalist class and its state foment.

All this is not the product of the creation of a preconceived ideal society but will be a process created by revolution through which many of the best characteristics of solidarity must already have been created for such a revolution to be achieved.  The social revolution required is a transformative leap, in which the achievement of political power is the decisive enabler, but it is not one without necessary prior development or with continued evolution thereafter.

In the Preface to a contribution to the Critique of Political Economy Marx wrote that ‘The totality of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation, on which arises a legal and political superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness. The mode of production of material life conditions the general process of social, political and intellectual life.’  Engels also wrote that the abolition of classes will also make possible “a really human morality which stands above class antagonisms and above any recollection of them.” (Anti-Duhring)

The creation of a cooperative economy will thus be the basis for the transformation of all of society including the mass consciousness that will arise from it.  Not only will economic and social inequality and oppression be eroded and erased, but the state as a mechanism of force and oppression will suffer the same fate as its useful society-wide functions become those of society itself, now governed and controlled by the associated producers.  Upon this basis reactionary ideas can recede and shrivel along with the oppressive behaviours they express. 

The continued existence of capitalism limits and impedes richer forms of individual self-realisation and higher forms of social development.  The unfettering of the forces of production will spur the more or less rapid transformation of the current stunting division of labour, including the division between those who make decisions and those subject to them.  Engels argued that removing capitalist relations of production would ‘secure for every member of society . . . an existence not only fully sufficient materially, and becoming day by day more full, but an existence guaranteeing to all the free development and exercise of their physical and mental faculties”

No other element, section or part of society can institute new relations of production that have the potential to abolish class exploitation and oppression, reduce material inequality and develop the forces of production in a way that can permit this free development, whether this be increased consumption, the protection of humanity from climate change, freedom from “non-class” oppression, increased healthy longevity, cultural development, or free time to pursue individual ambitions.  To the greatest degree the decisive force of production is the working class itself, and its development is the transformation of the working class by its own actions.

It would be obtuse to counterpose the rights of specifically oppressed groups – often misleadingly called minorities – to this perspective, for these ‘minorities’ consist of the majority of the working class, not just in world terms but in every society.  Socialism and the revolution needed to bring it about must be their creation, or it will not be at all.  It is hardly conceivable that particular needs within this majority will not be part of the objective of universal emancipation. The problem is not what the ending of class exploitation will do for women, people of colour, or the millions of poor in the world etc., but why this majority would not seek liberation and emancipation for themselves, as constituting the majority of the working class, through making this revolution and creating a new society.

Only through these ‘minorities’ liberating themselves can there be a united working class and only by a united working class can their liberation be achieved.  Domination and exploitation constitutive of “non-class” oppressions, such as those based on sex, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, etc will not be ended within capitalism while the theoretical possibility that it could be would still leave them subject to all the domination and subjugation of their class compatriots.

That the majority of those subject to “non-class” oppression are working class or poor is illustration of the universal nature of the working class, and that the general erasure of inequality and reactionary consciousness is only possible under a cooperative socialist society is another.

That Marx did not develop a fuller understanding of the specific character of many “non-class” oppressions is no reason to believe that the working class emancipation he sought was for white men only.  This idea is absurd.  His championing of the struggle against slavery and his, and Engels, many comments on the oppression of women are testament.  When they speak of the free and full development of rich individuality this could not possibly be restricted to only some types of individuals.

The criticisms of what Marx didn’t write about women, racial subjugation and national oppression join a long list that includes finishing his life’s work Das Kapital; writing a book on dialectics; clarifying his ideas about what he meant by class; heading off future criticisms of ‘eurocentrism’ by developing his study of non-Western societies, and writing up an analysis of nationalism.  You could add to the list, but it wouldn’t get you any nearer to a decisive critique of him that you might seek to make.  Marx was notorious for missing deadline’s – wanting to read everything before committing to paper, but then, who knows what he would have come out with without doing so? One may as well ask why he didn’t have a more robust constitution and live longer.

The real point is not that Marx did not leave all the answers, as if new questions would not arise after his death, but that what is now referred to as his research agenda was good enough to open many questions and point to persuasive answers, and that these do not include a lot of the rubbish that some (many!) of his self-declared disciples have published later.

The relationship between “non-class” oppression and ‘the economical emancipation of the working classes’ as ‘the great end to which every political movement ought to be subordinate as a means’ is not settled by the above, and nor is the nature and scope particularly of women’s oppression, which we will come to later.  What the treatment above does is summarise the overall project of Marx and Engels that sustains their claim.

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