Conza

… The crucial point is that Marx’s definition of ‘class’ and ‘class conflict’ under capitalism is hopelessly muddled and totally wrong. How can capitalists, even in the same industry, let alone in the entire social system, have anything crucial in common? Brahmins and slaves in a caste system certainly enjoy a common class interest in conflict with other castes. But what is the common class interest of the ‘capitalist class’? On the contrary, capitalist firms are in continual competition and rivalry with each other. They compete for raw material, for labour, for sales, and customers. They compete in price and quality, and in seeking new products and new ways to get ahead of their competitors. Marx, of course, did not deny the reality of this competition. So how can all capitalists, or even ‘the steel industry’, be considered a class with common interests? Again, in only one way: The steel industry only enjoys common interests if it can induce the state to create such interests through special privilege. State intervention to impose a steel tariff, or a steel cartel with restricted output and higher price, would indeed create a privileged ‘ruling class’ of steel industrialists. But no such class having common interests pre-exists on the market before such intervention comes about. Only the state can create a privileged class (or a subordinate and burdened class) by acts of intervention into the economy or society. There can be no ‘capitalist class’ on the free market.