Was class just Marx's idea

[bricolage]

In terms of class as a relationship to the means of production was Marx the only person to have come up with this theory or did others do similar work beforehand/at the same time?

Cheers.

[RED DAVE]

Marx was anticipated in this, although crudely, by Owen, Proudhon and early utopian thinkers. Since thier thought reflects an earlier form of industrial development and an earlier stage of the development of the proletariat, their theories are much less clear than his.

RED DAVE

[dty06]

Class had been very obvious and out in the open until the time that capitalism began to be the dominant form of life and production. If you were a peasant, you were a peasant. If you were a noble, you were a noble. That was that.

Capitalism made the difference more transparent, but people still knew that they had to work 120 hour weeks to survive or they never had to work to survive. The description of class society was best described by Marx, and his description is still the best i've come across.

[Kléber]

Prior to Marx and Engels, the classes had already been defined by English economists.

Marxism is the combination of English political economy (class analysis by the bourgeoisie), German philosophy (the Hegelian dialectic of historical evolution) and French utopian socialism.

The Three Sources and Three Component Parts of Marxism (http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1913/mar/x01.htm)

[Искра]

Max Weber also had class system.

[Tower of Bebel]

In the "Renegade Kautsky" Lenin explains that using the word class doesn't make you a Marxist because (back then) liberals, in the foodsteps of early British economists as Kleber wrote, also used to speak in terms of classes.

[RED DAVE]

Max Weber also had class system.Weber came after Marx.

RED DAVE

[chegitz guevara]

The understanding of class predates Marx by thousands of years.

The idea of class struggle is from the 17th Century, discovered by an Italian named Vico.

Marx was the first, iirc, to understand it was class struggle that drove history.

[syndicat]

Marx was initially influenced by French workers in the 1840s in adopting class struggle ideas. But the idea of class and class conflict goes all the way back to Aristotle's Politics, 2,300 years ago.

Also, it is vulgar Marxism to say class is "about the relations to the means of production." Class is defined by "the social relations of production", which stratify society into classes. Class, in other words, is a power relation in social production between groups of people. Capitalists own the means of production and workers don't but this is insufficient to define the classes. In a society made up of self-employed artisans and farmers and no wage-workers, people would own the means of production, but it wouldn't be capitalism. Having a relative monopoly of ownership over the means of production enables the capitalists to force propertyless wage-workers to accept the conditions of the wage contract.

[Wolf Larson]

Babeuf was an inspiration for Marx and Henri de Saint-Simon and of course Owen but socialism or egalitarian societies and the class struggle/class awareness had existed for generations in western society between feudal lords and the 'peasnats' who lived on common land. Western mans natural tendency towards [primitive] communism was beaten, burned and murdered out of us by feudal lords especially during the early transitional capitalist expropriation phase when land was taken over by various peoples of wealth [besides feudal lords but under their power] after which people were forced into serving not feudal lords but landlords and bosses which was the rise of embryonic capitalism/primitive accumulation. The nature of the social paradigm changed from a very very small elite 'noble' class to a larger but still minority property class ruling over the masses. After people began to see the common land enclose around them [private property] in so excluding them from accessing the means of life unless they pay rent to a landlord and work for a boss is when they began the more 'scientific' evaluations of what was going on but class awareness has existed for some time before Marx and the means of production was usually land/livestock/natural resources.

The scientific critique began a generation before Marx but he and Engels took it to a new level. I think Rousseau, in Discourse on Inequality, may have been one of the first to critique property which led to Proudhon's critique of property and Marx obviously benefited from the works - hell, you can go back to the Robin Hood story to see the class struggle manifest :) Before that the Buddha was preaching socialism. I think the Jesus story was even advocating socialism as if you look at the bible [I'm not a christian] the only time Jesus lost his temper was when he went into a rage screaming and throwing things at "money changers". The means of production back then was land or the ability to harness and control natural resources/surplus goods but the class dynamics of a minority elite ruling over a lowly majority were the same. I'm not saying Jesus existed I'm saying when it was written, whoever wrote the new testament was aware of class. Class has always been related to the means of production as the materialist critique of history dictates. The first ruling class being the "Big Men" in post hunter gatherer tribes who gained control of the surplus goods derived from early agriculture societies on and up through the future to the property class. Class was first rooted in agriculture then property both requiring a state to legitimize enforce so class or inequality is what created the state concept.

[Die Neue Zeit]

Prior to Marx and Engels, the classes had already been defined by English economists.

Marxism is the combination of English political economy (class analysis by the bourgeoisie), German philosophy (the Hegelian dialectic of historical evolution) and French utopian socialism.

The Three Sources and Three Component Parts of Marxism (http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1913/mar/x01.htm)

Actually, it was a critique of those three "sources."

These days, it should be a critique of:

1) French Philosophy. "The Society of the Spectacle" far outweighs any post-Hegel German philosophy today and can give Hegel's corpse a run for the money.
2) Scottish Political Economy. Since I like to see the UK break up into separate EU constituents, it should be noted that there has been little if any English/Anglo-Saxon contribution. Most if not all the big hitters, like Adam Smith, were Scottish.
3) Hispanic Socialism. This is far more advanced than the French utopian socialisms criticized by Marx in the day. Alo Presidente indeed!

[StalinFanboy]

No one came up with the idea of classes. They just articulated reality.