Nasser Paydar, February 2013
Society is a concrete level of the process of development of the material mode of production. The social division of labour, classes, form of property, state, morality, ideas, laws, traditions and conventions of each historical period are the consequences and superstructures of the dominant mode of production or the remnants of previous historical formations but floating in the superstructures of production. The general characteristic of the revolutions of previous periods has been that they have replaced one form of exploitation with another. They have established a new form of property in place of the previous form. They have replaced certain social classes in place of the previous classes. They have provided the necessary political and social grounds for the establishment of one type of class state in place of another and finally they have created a new class society in place of the old class society. Socialism is a type of society or form of life based on the complete separation of man from all forms of exploitation, oppression, inequality, private property, the state, the commodity nature of labour power and the product of labour, the market, exchange, and the separation of humans from the products of their labour. In order to free itself from the yoke of exploitation and injustice, the working class is forced to end all forms of exploitation and injustice. Marx explained this point very well in the first steps after the radical break with Hegelian idealism, in conditions where the process of separation from Feuerbachian imperialism had not yet been completed, and in the first course of political and class praxis with the historical position and role of the proletariat. He says in this regard: “A class with fundamental constraints that is the dissolution of all classes. A class in civil society that is not of civil society. A sphere that enjoys a universal character due to universal suffering, that does not claim a special right because the injustice that is done to it is not a special injustice but a general injustice. A sphere that cannot claim a historical title unless this title is a human title. Not unilaterally against the consequences of the political system, which is comprehensively against the foundations of the system. And finally, a sphere that cannot free itself unless it frees itself and, consequently, other spheres of society. In a word, a realm that is the complete loss of humanity and can therefore only be revived by the complete revival of humanity. This dissolution of society as a special class is the proletariat.
(Introduction to Hegel’s Critique of Philosophy and Law)
The characteristics that Marx mentions here for the proletariat do not describe the position of this class only in terms of the tolerance of exploitation and all forms of political and social lawlessness that surround it. The basic features of his opinion are a certain historical capacity that the proletariat and not any other class has. This capacity that can end any kind of exploitation and destroy the real foundation of all lawlessness, inequality and alienation. The true architectural capacity of a kind of life and social system in which there is no ground for exploitation, classes, government and the black days of class society. Marx’s emphasis on components such as the requirement of a human title instead of a historical one, a radical clash with the foundations of the existence of the ruling system, the inherent entanglement of the liberation of the proletariat with the liberation of humanity or the revival of humanity is precisely to highlight this aspect of existence or this special historical capacity of the working class. It is clear that the representatives of the inferior or exploited classes, before the emergence of the proletariat, have always set the ideal of establishing a society consisting of free, equal and free human beings, without the existence of exploitation or atrocities and deprivations, and have fought for its realization. Their main problem has been the iron material and historical obstacles on the way to the realization of these ideals. Peasant, bourgeois or communist utopias of the conscious people of the previous classes in the world of backwardness, poverty, hunger and the lowest level of human social life were like utopias that, apart from being utopias, did not bring anything beyond the achievements of the developing mode of production of the time, namely the wage slavery system, to the lives of human beings. From the depths of the serfdom system and feudal relations or the pre-capitalist commodity economy, neither the material preconditions required for the establishment of socialism emerged, nor was any class responsible for the mission of human liberation born. In the depths of those forms of production and that period of material development of history, only a new form of exploitation and a new exploiting class found the opportunity to develop. The most important characteristic of the proletariat is that, firstly, its liberation from exploitation, suffering, oppression and injustice depends on the emergence of a society free from all forms of exploitation, domination, oppression and inequality, and secondly, it enjoys all the necessary conditions for building such a society. The model of socialism of the proletariat and its socialist movement must be judged by these criteria. The socialist organization of labour of the working class is the manifestation of a kind of planning of labour and production and the conditions of human social life that in all aspects of its existence proclaims the unity between man and labour, the product of labour, and the destiny of his life. It guarantees his freedom from any kind of constraint or from any institution and will beyond him. This collective organization of labour and production and social order, in the most general lines of its existence, has the following basic characteristics.