Class struggle

In political science, class struggle means the problems that can happen between different social classes. This happens because these groups often want different things, like money, jobs, and power. Some examples from history include slave owners and slaves, lords and their workers, and factory owners and their employees.

Many thinkers who support leftist, socialist, and communist ideas think class struggle is very important. They believe it can help change society so that more people, especially the working class, have a better life. This idea is also a big part of studying how societies and governments work.

Class struggle can show up in many ways. Sometimes it leads to big events like revolutions or fights for control. Other times it is quieter, like workers going on strikes or people not buying things from certain companies (boycotts). It can also involve politics, like trying to change laws, or using ideas to persuade others (propaganda). Even small actions, like workers slowing down their work, can be part of class struggle.

Usage

When Marxists talk about class struggle, they think about groups of people based on how they use things like factories or farms. Anarchists, such as Bakunin, look at classes more broadly, including how some groups have more power in politics and culture, not just money. Bakunin believed that if less powerful groups worked together, they could change society to remove ruling groups and create a world without governments or libertarian socialism.

Marx's theory of history says that in different economic systems like capitalism and feudalism, the fight between different groups is very important for how society changes. In the Communist Manifesto, it is said that the history of all societies is the history of these group fights. Many Marxists believe that, under plutocratic capitalism, the working group will eventually succeed.

Oligarchs versus commoners in Ancient Greece

Where societies have differences in wealth or status, classes form and sometimes lead to conflict. This pattern has been seen since ancient times.

The writer Thucydides told about a fight in the city of Corcyra between ordinary people who supported Athens and wealthy people who supported Corinth. The wealthy people, fearing they would be attacked, set fire to buildings.

The philosopher Socrates was one of the first to talk about class conflict. He said that every city is really two cities: one of the poor and one of the rich.

Aristotle studied why classes clash. He suggested treating enslaved people with fairness.

Plutarch shared stories of Greek leaders who tried to help ordinary people.

Patricians versus plebeians in Ancient Rome

Keeping peace between the upper-class patricians and the lower-class plebs in Ancient Rome was hard. After the king was removed, tensions grew. The lower-class people felt they had too little say in government and were treated poorly.

Some leaders tried to help the lower classes. One man named Tiberius Gracchus spoke up for ordinary soldiers, saying they had no homes and had to move around with their families. He changed laws so that judges came from a different group, not just the wealthy class. Another leader, Julius Caesar, was seen as helping common people, though some rich people opposed him.

The rich patricians sometimes tried to keep all the power for themselves. A man named Coriolanus stood against giving grain to the poor, which made many people angry at him. These struggles between the rich and poor classes caused conflict in Ancient Rome.

Enlightenment era

Many smart thinkers from long ago talked about how different groups of people sometimes have problems because of money and power. For example, in Europe before factories and big businesses, people like Jean-Jacques Rousseau and James Madison wrote about how rich people and poor people didn’t always get along well.

Rousseau believed that leaders should help poor workers. Thomas Jefferson, another important American leader, worried that big differences between rich and poor could hurt new countries like the United States. He thought free news could help reduce these problems. James Madison also wrote about how differences in wealth could cause groups in society to clash.

Capitalist societies

Class conflict can happen in places where some people are richer and more powerful than others. This conflict often appears in disagreements between business owners and the people who work for them. These disagreements can be about work hours, pay, sharing profits, and other issues.

Some thinkers, like Adam Smith and Karl Marx, talked about how these conflicts happen. Smith thought that when a few people own a lot, it can cause problems and unfairness. Marx believed that workers might eventually see they are being treated unfairly and work together to make changes. Other writers have also shared ideas about these conflicts and what might happen.

Twentieth and twenty-first centuries

Soviet Union and similar societies

Some thinkers believe that in societies like the Soviet Union, a new group of leaders formed a class by controlling important resources. They were part of the ruling political party and were different from the rest of society. These ideas were discussed even before the Soviet Union began in 1917.

United States

Class conflict has been part of the United States since its early days, especially between those who owned slaves and the slaves themselves. After slavery ended, class conflict often showed up in fights between workers and their bosses. Some people, like investor Warren Buffett, have said that wealthy people are winning these conflicts.

Post-2008 financial crisis

After the financial crisis in 2008, class conflict grew stronger. This led to many protests around the world, like the Occupy movement, which said "We are the 99%" to show they were against the rich and powerful.

Arab Spring

The Arab Spring, a series of protests starting in 2011, was also influenced by class conflict. People were unhappy with leaders who kept most of the wealth and did not share it fairly. Young people especially wanted change.

Relationship to race

Main article: Intersectionality

Some ideas in history say that things like race or gender can distract from the big fight between groups of people who have more power and those who have less. These differences might make it harder for people to work together for shared goals. But others think that race, gender, and class are all linked.

Some thinkers believe that race is the most important issue, while others say that class matters more because people of all races face similar problems at work. Scholars still talk and argue about how these ideas connect to each other.

Chronology

Nationalist movements are not included.

Classical antiquity had events like the Gracchi Tribuneship, the Social War from 91–88 BC, the Gallic Wars and the death of Julius Caesar, the Conflict of the Orders, the Roman Servile Wars, and the Yellow Turban Rebellion from 184–205 AD.

The Middle Ages had movements such as the Popular revolt in late medieval Europe, the Ciompi in Florence in 1378, the Peasants' Revolt in England in 1381, the Jacquerie in 14th-century France, and the Saint George's Night Uprising.

The modern era has many events like the German Peasants' War starting in 1524, the Shimabara Rebellion from 1637–1638, the English Civil War from 1642–1651, and the French Revolution beginning in 1789. Other events are the Old Price Riots in 1809, the July Revolution in 1830, the Canut revolts in Lyon from 1831, often seen as the start of the modern labor movement, and the June Rebellion in 1832. The list continues with the American Civil War from 1861–1865, the Taiping Rebellion from 1850–1864, and the Paris Commune in 1871.

Later events include the Johnson County War from 1889–1893, the Coal Wars from 1890–1930, the Donghak Peasant Revolution in Korea from 1893–94, and the 1905 Russian Revolution. The 20th century had many uprisings and revolutions, such as the 1907 Romanian Peasants' Revolt, the Mexican Revolution from 1910–1920, and the Revolutions of 1917–1923, including the 1917 Russian Revolution and the German Revolution of 1918–1919. Other moments were the Limerick Soviet in Ireland in 1919, the Seattle General Strike of 1919, the General Strike of 1919 in Spain, the Winnipeg General Strike in 1919, the Ruhr Uprising in Germany in 1920, the Kronstadt rebellion in 1921, the Battle of Blair Mountain in 1921, and the Hamburg Uprising in 1923.

The list also has the 1926 United Kingdom general strike, the 1934 West Coast waterfront strike, the Spanish Civil War from 1936–1939, the Land Reform Movement (China) from 1947–1950, and the Communist insurgency in Myanmar from 1948–1988. More recent events include the Uprising of 1953 in East Germany, the Telangana Rebellion, the Cuban Revolution from 1953–1959, the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, the Poznań 1956 protests, the Naxalite-Maoist insurgency from 1967–present, and the Protests of 1968, including May 68 in France and the Prague Spring.

The chronology continues with the Hot Autumn in Italy from 1969–70, the Communist rebellion in the Philippines from 1969–present, and several strikes by coal miners in the United Kingdom. Events from the late 20th century and early 21st century include the Winter of Discontent from 1978–79, the Nicaraguan Revolution, the Poll tax riots in 1990, the 1993 Russian constitutional crisis, the 1999 Seattle WTO protests, the 2006 Oaxaca protests in Mexico, the Bolivarian Revolution, the 2008 Greek riots, the Kyrgyz Revolution of 2010, the Egyptian Revolution of 2011, the World Social Forum, the World Economic Forum, Occupy Wall Street in 2011 and the Occupy movement, the Jasic Incident, the Rojava Revolution, Protests against Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines from 2016–2022, Protests against Bongbong Marcos in the Philippines from 2021–present, the Yellow vests movement in France from 2018–2020, and the 2019–2020 Chilean protests.