The way the society is theoretically divided in classes or in strata, and the definition of these classes or strata depends on the political perspectives.

The usual division of society by the income levels, for instance, that we find in mainstream economics, acknowledges only quantitative differences between classes. The same happens in common parlance with the high-, middle-, and low- classes. To this kind of social division corresponds a reformist policy of revenues’ distribution and an economics focused in consumers’ problems. In this way of thinking the contradictions can always be conciliated mending the distribution of wealth.

Totally different is the marxist definition of social classes, determined by the exploitation question. If the society is divided in exploiters and exploited, there are no ways of solving the antagonism without transforming the society.

But there exists a very dangerous ambiguity in the marxist definition of social classes.

The criterion used by the majority of marxists is the ownership of the means of production. This is the theoretical viewpoint of a policy that transformed the juridical relations at the property level, and meanwhile maintained the old social relations at the economic level. For the mainstream marxism keeping the old ways of the working process is so important that the factory’s discipline has even been eulogized as the model of the new society. And socialism has been misunderstood as a politics of nationalizations, in a moderate form, or in a more extreme form, as state capitalism.

However, some radical marxists adopted the question of the control over the working process as the main criterion to define the social classes. In this perspective the aim of socialism is to destroy the capitalist discipline that prevails in the production and commercial enterprises, as this discipline is the basis of all capitalist social life. And the collectivism and solidarity that results from the struggles in the shop floor inspire the model of a new society. The way these struggles are conducted is the link between life under capitalism and a possible life after capitalism. If the workers do control the struggles and keep free from trade union or political bureaucracies interference, they prepare themselves to control afterwards the society. If they loose the control of the struggles, they will loose one day the control of the society, and again socialism will be misunderstood as nationalizations or as state capitalism.

The centre of the ambiguity in the marxism is the question of the managers (in a broad sense, including technocracy and bureaucracy) as a social class. For mainstream marxism the juridical property, that defines bourgeoisie, is the only way of owning the means of production. But for radical marxists the control is also a way of appropriation. I define two capitalist classes. The bourgeoisie have private property, transmitted by heritage, and represent the more particularistic aspects of capitalism. The managers appropriate the capital collectively, transmit it collectively by way of co-optation, and represent the more global aspects of capitalism. The social struggles under capitalism are not a simple two-sides affair opposing bourgeois and workers. They are much more complex, as to the fundamental antagonism between exploiters and exploited is superimposed a triangle opposing bourgeois, managers, and workers in a three-sides struggle. Paradoxically, the division of the managers’ class between the bourgeois’ and the workers’ camp only reinforces the managers as a class, always on the victorious side. Without exception, all the great historical defeats of the proletariat were provoked by loosing direct control over the economic process and giving it to those managers that during the struggle took the workers’ side. Afterwards, and very quickly, many or even most of the managers who were on the wrong side discover the beauties of the winning side. This reunification of the managerial class concludes the workers’ defeat and is the most sure foundation of state capitalism. During this process the political elites of the working class use the left wing parties and the trade unions to promote themselves to the managerial class. The division of the managers between the bourgeois’ and the workers’ camps makes much more difficult the identification of the managers as a social class. Among the political right, the most important steps in the theory of the managerial class happens when the internal transformations of the capitalist system provokes clashes between the traditional factions of the bourgeoisie and the progressive managers.

Among the political left, it is when the workers place in the foreground the question of direct control over the struggles and, in a more advanced step of the process, of direct control over the economy, that the managers are identified as a class and defined as a capitalist class.

---