1. Class Struggle and Social Movements

Abstract

This chapter discusses Marxism’s approach to social movements framed by a theory of ‘class struggle’ . Marxists thus face a series of theoretical and practical-strategic problems. The social revolution demanded for two reasons. (1) No other method could separate the ruling class from their property and power. (2) Only active participation in a revolutionary movement could enable the oppressed to get rid of ‘the muck of ages’ and transform themselves into subjects capable of remaking the world. The term encompassed revolutions, trade unionism, suffrage movements, nascent feminism, emerging socialist and utopian ideas, demands for national independence and unification, and peasant pressure for land. All these, taken together, constituted a single reality: ‘the social movement’, a notion with a loose class reference, indexing political and social organisation by ‘the poor’, ‘the plebs’, ‘the working classes’, all those contesting ‘the social question’. Keywords:class struggle; Marxists; political; revolution; social movements