Darwin 4 – Limitations of Class Analysis

By batsman 

Like Darwin’s ideas on evolution, class analysis has its limitations. Both are extremely powerful tools to understand nature and human society respectively. Unfortunately, if simplified too much or used indiscriminately, they can lead to serious mistakes in clarity of thought and understanding.

 

When Marx isolated himself in the British Library to work on his theory of capital, his condition must have affected his mood. He saw the development of bourgeois class society as mainly limited to the capitalist nation state. Even when he recognized the tendency of the British working class to be seduced by economic interests and the trade union struggle, he did not look beyond the confines of the British nation state. 

I submit this was an oversight that has big implications today. 

Even before Marx, globalization was already a major phenomenon. The English grew rich to a large extent by raiding Spanish treasure ships and later Dutch spice ships as well as engaging in the slave trade. The wealth flowing into England may be seen as some sort of foreign investment – only better as there was no repatriation of profits. 

The English gentlemen farmers who formed the backbone of the bourgeoisie during the English Civil War acquired their farms and their status in large part to wealth from investment in pirate ships or even serving as privateers raiding Spanish galleons or as ship’s crew in the profitable slave trade. This was wealth coming from abroad not generated by homegrown capitalist industry. Many English romantic novels talk about impoverished young men going abroad to make their fortune and coming back to woo the love of their lives. So it is even part of their literature. 

English capitalism was funded in large part by foreign sources over and above the productivity of capital itself and it enabled them to seduce their workers with better pay and conditions and confined them to trade unions. 

Marx in fact saw the people of the East as barbaric and uncivilized and never attempted to apply class analysis to these uncivilized nations, yet places such as India was called the “Jewel in the Crown”. Wealth poured from “uncivilized” nations into England and made the English powerful beyond their own capabilities. It contributed in large part in turning industrial capitalism into monopoly finance capitalism. 

I suspect it also explains why proletarian revolutions were never successful or never even occurred in the advanced capitalist countries. The capitalists were wealthy and powerful beyond their homegrown capabilities by loot from foreign sources. This allowed them to reduce the distress caused to their own workers. 

These days, with globalization an even bigger influence compared with the past, applying class analysis to a country has serious limitations since foreign influence is not only large but capricious and ever changing. The effect of foreign influences must be taken into account. 

It is no use looking for a national bourgeoisie if the country is dependent on and dominated by foreign capital. Workers who work for foreign companies actually earn up to 2 or 3 times more than their counterparts working for a local employer making them grateful servants who are fanatically loyal to their foreign employers. 

The slave trade has been replaced by immigration of free workers (at least the higher paid ones). What happened to those who have been human trafficked are only urban legends since even crime these days is international in scope and international criminals are often even more powerful than the police force of small countries (if some top policemen are not already in their pay). Migrants are expected to be grateful and loyal to the country that lets them in to work for higher wages than in their homelands. 

Patriotism it seems is even obsolete and most native people have been turned into grateful and loyal servants of powerful foreigners anxious to keep their employers happy. Foreign investment is now the cornerstone of many economic plans and policies of small countries – even big ones like China and Japan, so foreign investors have to be kept happy, otherwise money will stop trickling into the country and that would be a bad thing since lots of people will lose their livelihoods. 

The wealth that was stolen by force to enrich the western capitalists is now used to dominate and control the once already impoverished natives it once belonged to. In the colonies, foreign influence in the form of rapacious foreign soldiers is now back in the form of seductive foreign investors. So I submit foreign influences need to be taken into account in much greater depth and detail in any class analysis to give it a chance to be reasonably accurate. 

In addition to foreign influences, new developments should also be taken into account. 

In the past, political parties were uncommon. As recently as the early 1900’s, political parties were basically secret societies or in more peaceful settings, gentlemen’s social clubs. They have since become a powerful fact of life in all countries. 

This affects class analysis since in newly independent countries, political parties often confuse class lines and may be military based, race based, clan based, family based, tribal based or even gangster based. The power and wealth accessible to influential politicians attract all sorts to political parties. This means political parties have in a sense not gone far from their secret society roots. 

Add the fact that an extremely large part of production is in the hands of foreign investors (including financial clout) and political and bureaucratic power is wielded by gangster type politicians, judges and policemen what is left in terms of producers that may said to develop into traditional type classes is actually just petty traders, small hawkers, fishermen and farmers as well as small food processors. Supermarkets now meet most of the daily needs of those with some excess cash. 

In such a situation, traditional institutions such as religion may start to play a very different and more progressive role. This possibility cannot be discounted. Perhaps it is a hope – a faith rather than a fact. History will reveal all one way or another, hopefully not by people going to sleep and waiting for it to happen but making an extremely proactive effort. 

In the meantime there appears to be no acute class struggle in sight that is of any immediate significance. There are instead plenty of complications that involve racism and religious bigotry. Under these circumstances the struggle has to be targeted very specifically at corruption and abuse of power as well as racism and religious bigotry. The target is the gangsters that abuse power and their henchmen.