Class consciousness

In Marxism, class consciousness is the set of beliefs that persons hold regarding their social class or economic rank in society, the structure of their class, and their class interests. According to Karl Marx, class consciousness is an awareness that is key to sparking a revolution which would "create a dictatorship of the proletariat, transforming it from a wage-earning, property-less mass into the ruling class".

Although Marxists tend to focus on class consciousness (or its absence) among the proletariat, the upper classes in society can also think and act in a class-conscious way. As Leonard Fein wrote, "The very rich have been well aware of their class privilege and have labored mightily to protect and defend it".

Marxist theory
Early in the 19th century, the labels "working classes" and "middle classes" were already coming into common usage: "The old hereditary aristocracy, reinforced by the new gentry who owed their success to commerce, industry, and the professions, evolved into an "upper class". Its consciousness was formed in part by public schools (in the British sense where it refers to a form of private school) and universities. The upper class tenaciously maintained control over the political system, depriving not only the working classes but the middle classes of a voice in the political process."

While Karl Marx rarely used the term "class consciousness", he did make the distinction between "class in itself", which is defined as a category of people having a common relation to the means of production; and a "class for itself", which is defined as a stratum organized in active pursuit of its own interests.

Defining a person's social class can be a determinant for their awareness of it. Marxists define classes on the basis of their relation to the means of production, especially on whether they own capital. Non-Marxist social scientists distinguish various social strata on the basis of income, occupation, or status.

Whereas Marx believed that the proletariat would naturally gain class consciousness as a result of experiences of exploitation, later orthodox Marxism, in particular as formulated by Vladimir Lenin, believed that the working class, by itself, could only develop "trade union consciousness", which Lenin characterized in What Is to Be Done? as "the conviction that it is necessary to combine in unions, fight the employers, and strive to compel the government to pass necessary labour legislation." To overcome this (in Lenin's opinion) limited worldview, a vanguard party of the most politically advanced section of the working class was needed to help replace trade union consciousness with class consciousness.

Criticism
The Polish political philosopher Leszek Kolakowski disputed the notion that class consciousness could be instilled from outside by a vanguard party. In Main Currents of Marxism and his other writings, he stated that in order to achieve a unity of theory and praxis, theory must not only tend toward reality in an attempt to change it; reality must also tend towards theory. Otherwise, the historical process leads a life of its own, while theorists make their own little theories, desperately waiting for some kind of possible influence over the historical process. Henceforth, reality itself must tend toward the theory, making it the "expression of the revolutionary process itself". In turn, a theory which has as its goal helping the proletariat achieve class consciousness must first be an "objective theory of class consciousness". However, theory in itself is insufficient, and ultimately relies on the struggle of humankind and of the proletariat for consciousness: the "objective theory of class consciousness is only the theory of its objective possibility".

Austrian School economist Ludwig von Mises argued that "Marx confus[ed] the notions of caste and class". Mises allowed that class consciousness and the associated class struggle were valid concepts in some circumstances where rigid social castes exist, e.g., when slavery is legal and slaves thus share a common motive for ending their disadvantaged status relative to other castes, but that class is an arbitrary distinction in capitalist society where there is equality before the law. Mises believed that under capitalism, one's wealth does not very much affect how one is treated by legislators, law enforcement or the courts.

Mises' follower Murray Rothbard argued that Marx's effort to portray workers and capitalists as two monolithic groups was false as workers and capitalists routinely compete within themselves, such as capitalist entrepreneurs competing against each other for market share, or native workers competing with immigrant workers for jobs. Rothbard argued that if there is constant conflict amongst different members of the same class (like, for example, amongst landowners, nobility or slaveowners), then it is absurd to claim these landowners, nobles and slaveowners can also have objective interests with one another against another class like their workers, peasants or slaves.

Examples

 * 1819 Balloon riot
 * Haymarket affair
 * 1934 West Coast waterfront strike
 * Zoot suit riots
 * Major League Baseball collusion