The dynamics of capitalism and the return of classes

Abstract

The growing social inequality and the abandonment of the welfare-state model raise the question of the return of classes to the historical arena. The author argues that the contemporary society can be characterized as capitalist due to its main structural element - a pattern of striving for profit; at the same time, the contemporary capitalist society has changed the vector of making profit from external expansion (search for new markets and centers of production) to internal intensity (automatization, increased exploitation, total commodification, removal of institutional barriers to profit). Today, capitalism has exhausted the possibilities of external expansion and is changing its strategy to the restructuring of social systems and its actors, which is accompanied by the abandonment of the welfare-state model and by the growing instability in labor relations. This leads to the situation in which middle classes disappear and social inequality grows. The concept of classes developed by K. Marx has regained its importance, since the theories created in the middle of the 20th century no longer correspond to the contemporary realities. The article revises the Marxist class model, in particular the author argues that the type of ownership is no longer a key differentiating criterion, and capitalists and proletarians are no longer the main classes of the contemporary society. The classes of employers and precariat are more relevant for describing the contemporary society. The ideas of these two classes also differ: the precariat strives to preserve social guarantees and labor rights; while employers, on the contrary, strive to maximize profits by reducing social guarantees and violating labor rights.