>From Lenin "A Great Beginning" , Collected Works,
Vol. 29, p 421:
"Classes are large groups of people differing from each other by the place they occupy in a historically determined system of social production, by their relation (in most cases fixed and formulated by law) to the means of production, by their role in the social organization of labor, and, consequently, by the dimensions of the share of social wealth of which they dispose and the mode of acquiring it. Classes are groups of people one of which can appropriate the labour of another owing to the different places they occupy in a definite system of social economy."
Charles Brown
Detroit
>From the market to the Marxit
>>> "Sven Buttler" <sven.buttler at metronet.de> 09/24 5:07 AM >>>
Comrades,
I have one question for the list. Where can I find an exact definition of the term 'class' by Marx/Engels and Lenin?
Comradely regards, Sven
>>> <JKSCHW at aol.com> 09/25 12:27 AM >>>
In a message dated 98-09-24 05:06:23 EDT, you write:
<< I have one question for the list. Where can I find an exact
definition of the term 'class' by Marx/Engels and Lenin?
>>
In Marx's case, famously, you cannot. The treatment of class in Capital Vo;. 3 breaks off after a page. Marx's notion has to be constriucted contextually from its role in the theory. There is no reason to think that Engels' notion differs from Marx's. This notion, very roughly, has an objective side, involving an understanding of class position in terms of an individual's control or lacxk of it over (a) her own labor power and (b) means of production, and a more complex social and subjectyive side, involving awareness of the objective aspect and common bonds of solidaroty with others similarly situated. Lenin defines class variously in different places depending on his purposes.
--jks