Denomination of class

[Devotat]

I understand that in the case of a capitalist society the relation of production materialises into something that, in historical materialism, means the following, if I cannot explain the (base) substructure without the superstructure, if the relation of production materialises in the class struggle, I can only conclude that everything that has to be explained must be explained from the point of view of the class struggle. Marx said: "class struggle is the motor of history". That is, based on the class struggle that I can understand why things are as they are. The class struggle is a hidden workshop of causalities that explain the phenomena of the world. The class struggle is not balanced, it is unbalanced and that is why it will acquire another denomination of class.

[ckaihatsu]

[I]f the relation of production materialises in the class struggle

The class divide has been present since the agricultural revolution and its initial production of a material surplus.

So, to be precise, I'd say that the relations of production (like that of capitalism with its private expropriation of surplus labor value), manifest in *class*, rather than in *class struggle* (which is concomitant anyway).

The class struggle is a hidden workshop of causalities that explain the phenomena of the world. The class struggle is not balanced, it is unbalanced and that is why it will acquire another denomination of class.

Your meaning with your use of the term 'denomination' isn't clear. (Perhaps you mean that a new kind of ruling class comes to power whenever a new paradigm of relations of production emerges, like the bourgeoisie accompanying market relations, over the aristocracy that accompanied feudal relations.) (And, if this is what you mean, you're being *fatalistic*, implying that the next mode of production, or relations-of-production, will also be class-divided, and *won't* be class-transcending world socialism.)

[Blake's Baby]

I'm making some assumptions about what you're actually trying to say here devotat because it isn't clear.

Every previous class society has been one where a minority class has imposed its rule. For this reason, it has kept a coercive system in place to guarantee its own dominance. Revolutionary classes in previous societies were also property-owning classes - the bourgeoisie were revolutionary in so far as they opposed feudalism, but reactionary when they opposed the rising working class. Their power depends on exploiting the working class.

The proletarian revolution is different because the working class doesn't have another class to exploit. It is ridiculous to expect that the workers could become a 'new bourgeoisie' exploiting the present bourgeoisie - there are billions of workers and the bourgeoisie is tiny. There's no way that a couple of billion ex-workers can survive on the production of a few million ex-bourgeoises. It's not a feasible way of considering the future organisation of society.

The working class is the first class that is both exploited and revolutionary. It's also the first revolutionary class that can at least claim to be a majority. Because of these factors, the proletarian revolution must result in the liberation of everyone. There's just no-one left to be exploited in a socialist society. To put it another way, if anyone is being exploited - because the revolution doesn't result in the general liberation of humanity, and there is still a working class - then it hasn't succeeded by definition.

Classes will no longer exist when we all have the same relationship to production, because a 'class' is a sub-set of the whole. When the revolution is successful, when we all (worldwide) control production and distribution, we all have the same relationship to property and thus there are no sub-sets in society, So, no more class domination: the working class completes its revolution by generalising its own condition (productive labour) to the point where it ceases to be a 'class' and becomes the whole of humanity.