Chapter Nineteen. Developments in marxist class analysis

Abstract

During the efflorescence of Marxist theory during the 1960s and 1970s, class analysis emerged as one of the central objects of debate and discussion. This chapter examines developments in class analysis along three dimensions central to its deployment as an analytical and political category: class structure, the labour process, and class formation/class struggle. Class structure refers to the location of social agents in the basic property relations, or production relations of an economic system. The labour process describes the organisation of production, in which is produced the surplus that the dominant class appropriates from the direct producers. Class formation explains the process through which agents located in differed classes organised around their interests. Class struggle is what happens when agents engage in the contentious pursuit of their interests. Keywords: class formation; class structure; class struggle; labour process; Marxist class analysis