Remarks Concerning Some Problem of Marxist Class Theory

Abstract

As an introduction the scientific status of Marxism is discussed and the Marxian thesis concerning the discrepancy between productive forces and relations of production is interpreted as a cultural lag hypothesis. The discussion of class- theory is based upon a contextual analysis of the way Marx and Mao-Tse-Tung used the class-concept. It is shown that Marx uses several concepts. Finally a two-dimensional class-model is developed, where power and class-consciousness are used as classificatory variables yielding six different classes. Some theoretical problems connected with this model are discussed.