Though it is full of fallacies, so-called Marxian “class” analysis still pervades much popular and political discourse. This divisive worldview unnecessarily exacerbates conflicts between groups (so-called “classes”) and is a convenient worldview for the political state because it empowers it to treat all differences between groups as moral inequities and “problems” to be solved by treating groups unequally in the name of equity, justice, and fairness.
Previously, I have written about Marx’s “class analysis” and what I call the “ideological fallacy”—if all argumentation is necessarily biased special pleading on behalf of one’s “class,” then Marxism itself is admitting non-objectivity as just another class-biased ideology. In that case, Marxism cannot be an objective science; or, if it claims that objective truth and persuasion through argument is possible between “classes,” class consciousness and analysis are bogus.
Whenever someone claims, “All people are slaves of ideological bias,” then they have two options—either their statement does apply to them (and is not to be trusted as objective), or it does not apply to them (and the theory is not true). The consistent arguer of ideological bias and Marxist class warfare is inviting you not to believe him either way! Additionally, if the Marxist arguer of ideological bias and class conflict truly believes what they argue—that no one can be convinced against their class interest and no one can objectively stand outside their ideology, then the logical conclusion is clear, “Shut up!” This is the error of polylogism, that is, the self-defeating argument that different groups of people (“classes”) have fundamentally different different logics.
Marx’s Sleight of Hand: “Class”
This article attempts to expose another fallacy within Marx’s theory—his sleight of hand regarding class conflict. Marx engages in a form of the fallacy of equivocation, that is, he argues with one definition, but then switches the definition, or what it designates, in the conclusion. His shell game is subtle, especially because it actually begins with a statement that is largely true historically,
The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles. Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guild-master and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another…
So far, this is true. These were state-imposed legal castes. They involved the creation of legal categories imposed by the state. Ralph Raico distinguished, however, that “these opposed pairs turn out to be, either wholly or in part, not economic, but legal, categories.” In short, Marx borrowed the coherent libertarian class-caste analysis—that various groups attempt to use state power to privilege themselves and/or to restrict others. This was used to establish his point only to quickly smuggle in a voluntary-contractual relationship as if it was also obviously one of class-caste conflict: capitalists and workers.
Class versus Caste Analysis
“Marx obfuscated the problem by confusing the notion of caste and class.”—Mises, Theory and History
Libertarianism has a rich tradition of class-caste analysis, in fact—focusing on the key distinction between political elites and state-connected cronies on the one side (the “few”), and the productive public on the other (the “many”)—caste analysis is key to libertarianism. Furthermore, Marx simply borrowed these concepts and wording from classical liberals (though he equivocated on the definition). Marx even admitted in an 1852 letter,
…no credit is due to me for discovering the existence of classes in modern society or the struggle between them. Long before me bourgeois historians had described the historical development of this class struggle and bourgeois economists the economic anatomy of the classes.
But Marx took a voluntary-contractual, intertemporal exchange—that between the capitalist-entrepreneur and the wage-earner—and placed it into the category of exploitation with other exploitative relationships (land-owner/serf, slaveholder/slave, etc.), applying the slippery concept of “class conflict” to both. This is akin to creating two categories with accepted definitions—squares and triangles—followed by a list of square-shaped things only to include a triangle-shaped item in the square category.
Because of this confusion and ambiguity in the concept of “class,” we are now treated to a seemingly-endless, ever-growing list of neo-Marxist “classes” in conflict—race, sex, gender, religion, sexual orientation, etc. For example, see the Intersectionality Wheel of Privilege and Power. Virtually every perceived and actual difference between peoples puts them into some sort of intersectional “class.” These differences are patent evidence of injustice and require the political state elites—in actuality, the most privileged class!—to treat unequal peoples unequally in order to achieve “equity.”
“Class” Categories
Classes are categories of things that have some attribute in common which differentiates them from other things. There are all sorts of similarities and differences between things (and persons) that allow them to be categorized and classified—male and female, age, geographical location, income, marital status, etc. While there is a tendency to prefer status quo and similarity, and potential for prejudices and conflict because of differences, there is no necessary and inherent commitment to any particular “class,” especially on a free market. In fact, people necessarily belong to many intersecting classes. (This is one observation that “intersectionality” does get right.) But there is no requirement that any classes of persons be in conflict with any other classes while they are free to homestead, produce, interact, and associate peacefully with whom they will. Writes Rothbard,
A ‘class’ is a set of entities with one identifiable thing in common. Thus there is a class of ‘bald eagles’ or of ‘geraniums’, and such a class can be widened or narrowed: e.g., the class of ‘geraniums growing in New Jersey’. A ‘social class’ is a class of human beings with one thing in common. The number of identifiable social classes is virtually infinite. Thus: there is the ‘class of people over 6 feet 4 inches in height’, the ‘class of people named Smith’, the ‘class of people weighing under 160 pounds’, etc. ad infinitum. Some of these classes will be useful for certain types of social analysis (e.g. the ‘class of people over 65 years of age with diabetes’), for medical or insurance or demographic purposes. But from our point of view, in a study of the Marxian theory of class, these classes are all worthless because there is no inherent conflict between them. In the market economy, in the international division of labour and exchange of products, there is no inherent conflict between short and tall people, people of various weights and names, etc. All classes live in harmony through the voluntary exchange of goods and services that mutually benefits them all. Furthermore, there is no reason for an individual in a free society, or in a market economy, to act on behalf of ‘the interests of his class’ rather than, or even as a surrogate for, his own individual interest. Will a person, when deciding at what job to work, or what investment to make, first and foremost consult his ‘class interest’ as the member of a ‘class over 6 feet tall’? The very idea is absurd. (italics added)
Caste—Government, Plunderers, & Producers
The coherent concept of “class” is rather caste analysis. Exploitation takes place when one person or group expropriates the production of another person or group by coercion. Exploitation can take place between individuals, but a caste is created through state legal power. A caste is created when a class is “privileged or burdened by the state.” Rothbard wrote, “Where government intervenes, on the other hand, caste conflict is thereby created, for one man benefits at the expense of another” (italics in original).
Marx tried (and failed) to demonstrate expropriation between the capitalist and the worker through the alleged extraction of “surplus value” from the worker by the capitalist. This was due to his failure to understand time-preference and the intertemporal nature of the exchange between a factory owner (capitalist) and the worker. The worker contracts for a guaranteed, upfront wage in the present, and is paid according to his discounted marginal value product (DMVP) as opposed to being paid after the product sells on the market. Conversely, the capitalist-entrepreneur arranges inputs in the present, pays for factors of production in the present (including wages to laborers), and reaps a greater return in the future if the final consumer goods sell at a profit (where revenue exceeds the costs).
While understanding the universal disutility of labor, and whatever a contracted wage-laborer may think of his alternatives (e.g., “freedom to starve”), this capitalist-worker exchange is not coercive exploitation by any meaningful definition. Such an exchange simply represents individuals homesteading, producing, contracting, and exchanging on a voluntary basis. To claim otherwise pushes the concept of exploitation into absurdity. Thus, according to Mises,
…it is nonsensical to classify the members of a capitalistic society according to their position in the framework of the social division of labor and then to identify these classes with the castes of a status society.
Unnecessary conflicts between different ill-defined “classes” of people benefit the state. Bastiat called the state “the great fiction” by which everyone tries to use the state to plunder everyone else. This simultaneously enriches and empowers the political caste and its beneficiaries and gets the people to conflict with each other rather than the political caste.
While proudly claiming to protect us from “class conflict,” the government and its beneficiaries are the ultimate privileged “classes” and creators of caste conflict. While on the perpetual and revolutionary quest to make every “class” equal (an impossibility), the political caste and its beneficiaries create and exacerbate caste distinctions while acting as neutral “rearrangers” of resources in order to reach “fairness” and “equality.” Unfortunately, many are still defrauded from Marx’s shell game.
