Open Marxism, social class, and social and political movements

Abstract

Open Marxists argue that capitalist society is mediated through forms of alienated and dispossessed labour from the means of production. For Open Marxists, then, labour is fluid in its constitution because it is constantly struggling to various degrees in and against its alienated and dispossessed capitalist form. Static sociological concepts of social class therefore cannot fully grasp this fluid and antagonistic relationship between labour and capital. In this paper, we agree that the starting point for an analysis of class under capitalism is the dispossession of labour from its means of production. But we further argue that even at this relatively high level of theoretical analysis, it is still possible to isolate a more complex account of social class than many Open Marxists would accept. We then employ this alternative class perspective to highlight some weaknesses in respective Open Marxist accounts of class and social and political movements. Following these critical observations, and with the theoretical assistance of Gramscian analysis, we demonstrate how Open Marxism can develop a more robust account of the class nature of contemporary social and political movements.