Class warfare

Class warfare is a Marxist notion that people in different social classes must necessarily be in conflict with each other, the rich seeking to keep the poor down and the poor seeking to take away what belongs to the rich.

"'Class warfare' first entered the political lexicon primarily as an attack by liberals against conservatives," but is now used by both political sides.^[1]

Marx

The apocalyptic language of Marx's class warfare argument is articulated in Vol I of Das Kapital. Few modern economists believe there is any scientific basis for Marx's dark forebodings, yet some sociologists and political scientists remain dedicated to varying twists of Marx's emotional appeal.

Hand in hand with this centralization, or this expropriation of many capitalists by few, develops…the entanglement of all nations in the net of the world market, and with this, the international character of the capitalist régime. Along with the constantly diminishing number of the magnates of capital, who usurp and monopolize all advantages of this process of transformation, grows the mass of misery, oppression, slavery, degradation, exploitation; but with this too grows the revolt of the working class, a class always increasing in numbers, and disciplined, united, organized by the very mechanism of the process of capitalist production itself. The monopoly of capital becomes a fetter upon the mode of production, which has sprung up and flourished along with it, and under it. Centralization of the means of production and socialization of labor at last reach a point where they become incompatible with their capitalist integument. This integument bursts. The knell of capitalist private property sounds. The expropriators are expropriated.^[2]

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