No war but class war?

Socialism proposes class as the single fundamental and determining metric by which to analyze and understand society and relations of power within it. The classical socialist definition of “class” revolves around what it calls the “means of production”, which are everything workers use to produce goods and services, such as land, machines, tools or resources. Socialism posits that in capitalism there are essentially two classes: The bourgeoisie or capitalist class, which owns the means of production, and the proletariat or working class, which does not own the means of production. It proposes that workers should own these means of production, that change being the essence of revolution.

The value of this metric is enormous. The class lens exposes the fact the working class makes a living from their own labor, while the capitalist class makes a living from the workers’ labors—a essentially parasitic dynamic that would accurately be labelled theft. It also highlights how capitalism allows the bourgeoisie class to accumulate wealth, which in turns allows them to monopolize the market, the media, clientelist networks and organizational capitalist—essentially monopolizing political decision-making. And it explains how separating the economic decision-making process from the production process alienates workers from their own work, a key factor in human unhappiness.

This said, limiting our analysis to class, or adopting the class lens as the sole analytical lens rather than a key one among others, fails to show the whole picture and is therefore not enough for a revolution. Here is a number of reasons why.

Other, non-economic metrics are relevant: For example, Jewish settlers have been ethnically razing Palestine from its indigenous population since 1948. This includes Jewish workers expulsing Palestinian bourgeois from their homes and lands, killing them, forbidding them to return, occupying their land (sometimes even living in their literal homes) and enforcing a system of apartheid against remaining Palestinians. Would we side with the occupying, settler working class against the ethnically razed bourgeoisie, or equate an occupying, settler worker with a genocided or displaced Palestinian worker? Capital is a—not “the”— determining driving force behind the creation and sustenance of the settler colony in Palestine, but class war is not the only war happening there. Religion, identity, and even psychological factors are also driving factors, sometimes used by capital, but also causing contradictions and conflict independently of it.

The economic situation, including classes, have changed so much that there is now huge inter-class inequality: For example, Lionel Messi earned more than $1 billion selling his own labor, which makes him, by definition, working class. Of course, such persons likely invest their money, making them capitalists—but supposing they don’t, how representative of reality would be to view them as being in the same class as other workers who earn the minimum wage, or to claim they are oppressed by small shop owners who employ a few persons and are therefore bourgeois?

The “means of production” lens makes less sense with technological progress: For example, in the 19th century, the means of production were generally quite costly—A factory would cost hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars in today’s currency—and therefore impossible for workers to own. Today, however, it is relatively easy to start up a business with very little capital. Freelancers in particular can fall completely outside the scope of capital—a significant percentage of jobs require no more than a personal laptop, free or cheap software and a home Internet connection.