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Marx on the Peasantry: Class in Itself or Class in Struggle?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2009

Claudio J. Katz
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Extract

Despite its centrality to his work, Marx never offered a systematic analysis of the concept of class, leaving his interpreters to distill its meaning from his historical writings. Marx's usage of the term gave rise to a controversy over the respective roles played by objective conditions and subjective experiences in his definition of class. In one view, Marx defined class exclusively in structural terms by reference to the position of its members within the economy; in another, he incorporated their cultural traditions and consciousness into his definition of class. This article assesses this debate in light of Marx's studies of the nineteenth century French peasantry. Although one of the passages most often cited to illustrate Marx's notion of class concerns the peasants, his writings on the peasantry have received scant attention. I shall argue that these writings recommend against the structural reading in favor of the view that Marx assigned equal weight to objective and subjective determinations in his conception of class.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Review of Politics , Volume 54 , Issue 1 , Winter 1992 , pp. 50 - 71
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 1992

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References

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