Class struggle

Class struggle is class conflict looked at from a Marxist, libertarian socialist, or anarchist perspective. To Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, "The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggle" (Communist Manifesto, 1848). (The bracketed word reflects the footnote that Engels added later, noting that pre-class societies existed.)

"Minor" classes

Marx noted that other classes existed, but said that as time (and capitalism) moved forward, these other classes would disappear, and things would become stratified between until only two classes remained, which would become more and more polarized as time went on. Other classes are:

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• the self-employed (petty bourgeoisie) — these are people who own their own means of production, thus work for themselves. Marx saw these people swept away by the march of capitalism – such as family farms being replaced by agribusiness, or many small stores run by the owner being replaced by Wal-Mart, and so forth.
• managers, supervisors, white-collar staff, and security officers – these are intermediaries between capitalists and the proletariat. Since they are paid a wage, technically they are workers, but they represent a priviledged stratum of the proletariat, typically serving the capitalists' interest. Interestingly enough, in the United States, Congress made it illegal for managers and security guards to join workers' unions. This is seen as being done because the managers and guards, although workers, are there to represent the capitalist interests.
• the lumpenproletariat – the chronically unemployed. These people have at most a tenuous connection to production. Since Marx, many states have tried to compensate for the difficulties experienced by workers due to cyclical unemployment. Unfortunately there is also a growing structural unemployment and some people are ending up permanently dependent on welfare programs (or living off of their employed relatives). They form the lumpenproletariat. Also, thieves and con artists of various kinds depend on crime for their income. Marx saw the problem of unemployment growing more acute as capitalism went on, so this class would exist prior to the foreseen revolution. Marx deemed the lumpenproletariat as unimportant, and not playing a major role in the labor/capital class struggle. Since they would benefit in his view from a revolution, they would be on the side of the proletariat. But he did see them as unreliable, since they were likely to be mercenary in their attitudes. This view was revised by some followers of Marx such as Mao Zedong who saw a greater role for the lumpenproletariat in class struggle.
• domestic servants, who often had a better standard of living than the proletariat, but who were considered by society as by nature dependent upon their literal masters, and so male servants were not considered worthy of granting the vote to.
• peasants, who still represented a large part of the population well into the twentieth century. Capital for such workers, for example, a tractor or reaping machine, was in most countries for a long time unthinkable, so they were not considered some sort of rural proletarians. Ironically, the collectivization of farming under the Bolsheviks was to force them to produce for the industrial workers and not to meet any desires for a more equitable society.