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Our method has better explanatory power for their impact
Revolution
Capitalism’s ruthless exploitation can only be dismantled by revolutionary class analysis

Islamophobia

Anti-captialist education in places like debate is crucial to the development of political struggles – race is an integral part of these struggles the alt’s starting point of classism is bad

Kelsh 10 (Deborah, Associate Progessor in the Department of Teacher Education at the College of Saint Rose, “Class in Education: Knowledge, Pedagogy, subjectivity,” https://books.google.com/books?id=3cmLAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA35&lpg=PA35&dq=Class+in+Education:+Knowledge,+pedagogy,+and+subjectivity&source=bl&ots=uQcuu4dyLS&sig=VncTciM6HakZg5ylRfVMxRHpMQc&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CDQQ6AEwA2oVChMIyJSYv8LqxgIVg0uSCh1mfw40#v=onepage&q=Class%20in%20Education%3A%20Knowledge%2C%20pedagogy%2C%20and%20subjectivity&f=false, JHR) Part 5: the role of education In contemporary societies, we are in many ways being globally miseducated. The Bush and Blair administrations’ propaganda war about “weapons of mass destruction,” aimed at masking New Imperialist designs and capital’s global quest for imperial hegemony and oil, is a key example. Conditioning the discourse is only half the story. “Education” has become a key component in the profit-making process itself. Tied to the needs of global, corporate capital, “education” worldwide has been reduced to the creation of a flexible workforce, the openly acknowledged, indeed lauded (by both capitalists and politicians) requirement of today’s global markets (Cole 2007). Corporate global capital is in schools, both in the sense of determining the curriculum and exercising burgeoning control of schools as businesses. An alternative vision of education is provided by Peter McLaren. Education should, McLaren argues, following Paulo Freire, put “social and political analysis of everyday life at the center of the curriculum” (McLaren 2003: xxix). Racism should be a key component in such an analysis. Following through the thrust of this chapter, we argue that, in order for racism to be understood, and, in order for strategies to be developed to undermine it, there is a need first to reintroduce the topic of imperialism in British schools; second to initiate in schools a thorough analysis of the manifestations of xeno-racism and xeno-racialization. We will deal with each in turn. The reintroduction of the teaching of imperialism in schools10 Reintroducing the teaching of imperialism in schools, we believe, would be far more effective than CRT in increasing awareness of racism, and crucially linking racism to capitalist modes of production. British imperialism was taught for a number of years in British schools in ways that exalted the Empire (e.g. Cole and Blair 2006). If we are to return to the teaching of imperialism, past and present, with integrity in British schools and universities, the syllabus must, we would argue, incorporate a critical analysis of the actual events of imperialism themselves. In addition to this, we would argue for the implementation without delay of the following further inputs to the curriculum. First, we believe that it is helpful for today’s students to understand how British imperialism was taught in the past, and why. This will enable them to make connections between the treatment meted out to those in the colonies and the experiences of Asian, black and other minority ethnic communities in Britain from World War II onwards. Second, and allied to the above, students need media awareness. They need the critical faculties to critique pro-British imperialist and/or racist movies and/or TV series, still readily available in the age of multiple channel, digital TV. They also need to be able to understand manifestations of nationalism, racism, xeno-racism and xenophobia, such as that engendered and fostered by the media hype surrounding popular events, such as international football where nationalism is implicated in the coverage. Third, at a national level, students are entitled to a critical awareness of how British imperialism relates to and impacts on racism and racialization, both historically and in the present. The curriculum should include contemporary racism directed at both the Asian, and the black, and other minority ethnic communities, encompassing both “seemingly positive” but potentially racist images of black people (e.g. in the media, pertaining to popular music and sport). Fourth, at a global level, students will need skills to evaluate the New Imperialism and “the permanent war” being waged by the United States with the acquiescence of Britain. Boulangé (2004) argues that it is essential at this time, following the inauguration of the Bush and Blair “war on terror,” and Islamophobia worldwide reaching new heights, for teachers to show solidarity with Muslims, for “this will strengthen the unity of all workers, whatever their religion” (Boulangé 2004: 24), and this will have a powerful impact on the struggle against racism in all spheres of society, and education in particular. In turn, this will strengthen the confidence of workers and students to fight on other issues. According to neoconservative Niall Ferguson (2003): Empire is as “cutting edge” as you could wish … [It] has got everything: economic history, social history, cultural history, political history, military history and international history – not to mention contemporary politics (just turn on the latest news from Kabul). Yet it knits all these things together with … a “metanarrative.” (n. p.) For Marxists, an understanding of the metanarrative of imperialism, past and present, does much more than this. Indeed, it encompasses but goes beyond the centrality of “racial” liberation in CRT theory. It takes us to the crux of the trajectory of capitalism from its inception right up to the twenty-first century, and this is why Marxists should endorse the teaching of imperialism, old and new. Of course, the role of education in general, and teaching about imperialism in schools in particular, has its limitations and young people are deeply affected by other influences and socialized by the media, parents/carers, and by peer culture (hence the aforementioned need for media awareness). The question of reintroducing in the British education system a historically all-sided evaluation of imperialism presents a choice: that between a continued enslavement by an ignorance of Britain’s imperial past, or an empowered acknowledgment of it. Such awareness would also begin a process of understanding the New Imperialism currently being waged in earnest. Unlike Marxism, CRT does not explain why Islamophobia, the “war on terror” and other forms of racism are necessary to keep the populace on task for “permanent war” and the accumulation of global profits. The manifestations of xeno-racism and xeno-racialization Marxism most clearly connects the Old and New Imperialisms with capitalism. It also provides an explanation for xeno-racism and xeno-racialization. While CRT certainly reminds us that racism is central in sustaining the current world order, and that we must listen to the voices of people oppressed on grounds of racism, it does not and cannot make the necessary connections to understand and challenge this racism. Indeed its advocacy of “white supremacy” as an explanatory metanarrative is counter-productive, particularly, we would argue, in the school and university context, in the struggle against racism. Xeno-racism and xeno-racialization in the UK and the rest of Europe need to be understood in the context of the origins of the EU, and globalization generally. With respect to the EU’s current enlargement, connections need to be made between the respective roles of (ex-)imperial citizens in the immediate post-World War II period, and migrant workers from Eastern Europe today (both sources of cheap labor). An analysis of the way in which the media portrays asylum-seekers and refugees on the one hand, and migrant workers on the other, would also foster an awareness of the processes of xeno-racism and xeno-racialization. Education does not have a merely institutional dimension; it is also about formal and non-formal self-education, resistance and struggle. According to Marxism, in this collective struggle, education achieves its true potential and its ultimate emancipatory purpose with nothing less than the demise of global neoliberal capitalism and imperialism, and its replacement by a new world order based on human need and not on corporate profit. Only then do the conditions exist for the final eradication of racism and racialization.

Our method has better explanatory power for their impact

Mike Cole and Alpesh Maisuria’s Chapter 5 contests the valorization of “race” over class in discourses that prioritize “white supremacy,” arguing that it limits the development of an understanding of racism in relation to capitalist accumulation. In opposition to understanding racism in terms of “white supremacy,” they argue that the Marxist concept of racialization has the capacity to explain both the increase in Islamophobia in Britain, and also the existence of a contemporary form of noncolor-coded racialization, what the authors, following Cole’s (see Chapter 5, 2004b) theorization of it, call xeno-racialization. Both the increase in Islamophobia and the existence of xeno-racialization need to be understood in the context of changes in the capitalist mode of production. The Marxist concepts of racialization and xenoracialization and their connections to class form the basis for their suggestions for an alternative vision of education.

Revolution

The alt is a prior question – we must engage in a universal struggle

Valerie Scatamburlo-D’Annibale and Peter McLaren ‘3, *Associate professor in the Department of Communication, Media and Film at the University of Windsor, **Distinguished Professor in Critical Studies, College of Educational Studies, Chapman University, Co-Director of the Paulo Freire Democratic Project, (“The Strategic Centrality of Class in the Politics of “Race” and “Difference,” http://pages.gseis.ucla.edu/faculty/mclaren/mclaren%20and%20valerie.pdf)

Kovel's remarks raise questions about the primacy given to class analysis and class struggle—a debate that continues unabated in most leftist circles. Con- trary to what many have claimed, not all Marxian forms of class analysis rele- gate categories of difference to the conceptual mausoleum. In fact, recent Marxist theory has sought to reanimate them by interrogating how they are refracted through material relations of power and privilege and linked to rela- tions of production. Marx himself made clear how constructions of race and ethnicity are "implicated in the circulation process of variable of capital." To the extent that "gender, race, and ethnicity are all understood as social con- structions rather than as essentialist categories," the effect of exploring their insertion into the "circulation of variable capital (including positioning within the internal heterogeneity of collective labor and hence, within the division of labor and the class system)" must be interpreted as a "powerful force recon- structing them in distinctly capitalist ways" (Harvey, 2000, p. 106). Unlike contemporary narratives that tend to focus on one or another form of oppres- sion, the irrefragable power of historical materialism resides in its ability to reveal (a) how forms of oppression based on categories of difference do not pos- sess relative autonomy from class relations but rather constitute the ways in which oppression is lived/experienced within a class-based system and (b) how all forms of social oppression function within an overarching capitalist system. This framework must be further distinguished from those who invoke the terms classism and/or class elitism to (ostensibly) foreground the idea that "class matters" (cf. hooks, 2000) because we agree with Gimenez (2001) that "class is not simply another ideology legitimating oppression" (p. 24). Rather, class denotes "exploitative relations between people mediated by their relations to the means of production" (p. 24). To marginalize such an understanding of class is to conflate individuals' objective locations in the intersection of struc- tures of inequality with individuals' subjective understandings of how they are situated based on their "experiences."7 Another caveat. We are not renouncing the concept of experience. On the contrary, we believe that it is imperative to retain the category of lived experience as a reference point in light of misguided post-Marxist critiques that imply that all forms of Marxian class analysis are dismissive of subjectivity. We are not, however, advocating the uncritical fetishization of "experience" that tends to assume that personal experience somehow guarantees the authenticity of knowledge and that often treats expe- rience as self-explanatory, transparent, and solely individual. Rather, we advance a framework that seeks to make connections between seemingly iso-lated situations and/or particular experiences by exploring how they are consti- tuted in, and circumscribed by, broader historical and social conditions. They are linked, in other words, by their "internal relations" (Oilman, 1993). Expe- riential understandings, in and of themselves, are initially suspect because dia- lectically they constitute a unity of opposites—they are at once unique, spe- cific, and personal but also thoroughly partial, social, and the products of historical forces about which individuals may know little or nothing. A rich description of immediate experience can be an appropriate and indispensable point of departure, but such an understanding can easily become an isolated difference prison unless it transcends the immediate perceived point of oppres- sion, confronts the social system in which it is rooted, and expands into a com- plex and multifaceted analysis (of forms of social mediation) that is capable of mapping out the general organization of social relations. That, however, requires a broad class-based approach.

Rather than being a utopian theory, revolutionary anti-capitalist pedagogy exposes the contradictions of capitalism and galvanizes class consciousness for successful resistance

McLaren et al., 4 – Distinguished Professor, Critical Studies, Chapman University (Peter, Gregory Martin, Ramin Farahmandpur, and Nathalia Jaramillo, “Teaching in and against the Empire: Critical Pedagogy as Revolutionary Praxis,” Teaching Education Quarterly, Winter, 141-144, http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ795238.pdf)//SY

Critical pedagogy is, of course, all about revolutionary ideas. Just as we need to explore the way in which dominant ideas about capitalism are linked to their conditions of production within the context of the dominant social class, we need to connect the revolutionary ideas of critical pedagogy to the existence of a revolutionary class of educators. These educators are preoccupied with questions such as: What are the contradictions between prevailing notions of capitalist democracy and the manner in which democracy is lived in the streets by social agents with competing class interests and who exist within vastly different social conditions? We have found that in our own classrooms, teachers from working-class backgrounds (often students of color) are the most favorably disposed to critical pedagogy. Our work in critical pedagogy constitutes in one sense the performative register for class struggle. Whilst it sets as its goal the decolonization of subjectivity, it also emphasizes the development of critical social agency while at the same time targeting the material basis of capitalist social relations. Critical educators seek to realize in their classrooms social values and to believe in their possibilities — consequently we argue that they need to go outside of the protected precincts of their classrooms and analyze and explore the workings of capital there. Critical revolutionary pedagogy sets as its goal the reclamation of public life under the relentless assault of the corporatisation, privatization and businessification of the lifeworld (which includes the corporate-academic-complex). It seeks to make the division of labor coincident with the free vocation of each individual and the association of free producers. At first blush this may seem a paradisiacal notion in that it posits a radically eschatological and incomparably “other” endpoint for society, as we know it. Yet this is not a blueprint but a contingent utopian vision that offers direction not only in unpicking the apparatus of bourgeois illusion but also in diversifying the theoretical itinerary of the critical educator so that new questions can be generated along with new perspectives in which to raise them. Here the emphasis not only is on denouncing the manifest injustices of neo-liberal capitalism and serving as a counterforce to neoliberal ideological hegemony, but it is also on establishing the conditions for new social arrangements that transcend the false opposition between the market and the state. In contrast to postmodern education, revolutionary pedagogy emphasizes the material dimensions of its own constitutive possibility and recognizes knowledge as implicated within the social relations of production (i.e., the relations between labor and capital). We are using the term materialism here not in its postmodernist sense as a resistance to conceptuality, a refusal of the closure of meaning, or whatever ‘excess’ cannot be subsumed within the symbol or cannot be absorbed by tropes; rather, materialism is being used in the context of material social relations, a structure of class conflict, and an effect of the social division of labor (Ebert, 2002). Historical changes in the forces of production have reached the point where the fundamental needs of people can be met — but the existing social relations of production prevent this because the logic of access to ‘need’ is ‘profit’ based on the value of people’s labor for capital. Consequently, critical revolutionary pedagogy argues that without class analysis, critical pedagogy is impeded from effecting praxiological changes (changes in social relations). We need to learn not only how to educate, but how to be educated in terms of ripening class antagonisms. Teachers disqualify themselves from historical struggle when they fail to locate their own formation as educators within the degenerative process of contemporary capitalist society and the enduring and intractable classdriven social arrangements: to wit, within the agonistic arena of class struggle. As the science of the inherent contradictions of capitalism, Marxism in our view enables capitalism to be uncovered in all of its protean, complex materiality and is in a singular position to uncover the ontological dimension of capitalism by beginning with the real, messy world of everyday social life. Marxism helps to critique suprahistorical theory that severs its connections to the material work of social struggle. Marxism is grounded in the contextual specificity of the global universe of capital in which we find ourselves today, where we are witnessing the internationalization of antagonism between exploiters and producers, where globalization is presided over by a ruling class of individuals with proprietary rights over the means of production; where power, wealth, and income are not allocated fairly; where the capitalist class increasingly extracts unpaid labor time from the direct producers, the workers and peasants; where neoliberalism is disarticulating the social base of the left, depotentiating it, by dividing the classes against each other. John Holloway (2002) has made some interesting points with respect to Marxism. First, that it is not a theory of society, but a theory against society; Marxism is not in the business of providing a better social science but is mainly concerned with a critique of the bourgeois social sciences (i.e., a critique of political economy) and with locating the fault lines or weak points of the rule of capital. He notes — rightly in our minds — that Marxism is not a theory of capitalist oppression but of the contradictions of that oppression. So that Marxism is able to articulate the contradictory positions in which individuals and groups are engaged. It is also able to locate the contradictions within the oppressive social relations that are created by capitalist representatives and their organizations. Marxism begins with the premise that everyday social life within capitalist society is contradiction-ridden and Marxism highlights these contradictions and explores their origins and effects in order to free us from the oppressions of everyday social relations, and in doing so it provides us with a philosophy of praxis and a deep resolve in our participation in anti-capitalist struggles. The Open Marxism of Holloway, and others, is essentially an immanent critique, meaning that any social form of life, social relation, or institution is both in and against forms of capitalist power. It explores the various social formations that make up the unity of capitalist society, with particular attention given to those social forms suppressed in capitalist society. In this sense, labor has the power of being independent of capital, but only within non-capitalist societies. Marxists ask: What are the origins and effects of living within the contradictions of capitalist society and what are their implications for struggling against capital? Marxism provides an understanding of the concrete, empirical, conditions of class struggle by elucidating capitalist social relations within which class struggle can obtain and unfold. The contradictions within capitalism provide a space for critique and transformation of the social relations that create the contradictions. In these current times of deep divisions between the classes, when the acerbity and virulence of the antagonisms between them has not grown less intense, especially in recent years, we cannot afford to demote class struggle to the category of ‘socio-economic status,’ which drains the concept of class struggle of its history within capitalist society and turns it into a synonym for a ‘natural state’ in a necessarily imperfect society underlain by principles of meritocracy. True, calling for the abolition of capitalism in the United States is not realistic in the short term given the current outlook and psychology of the working class. Only deluded sectarians could possibly imagine that the road ahead is straight and narrow. But at the very least such calls can expose the injustices of capitalism and help to galvanize the fresh forces of the low paid, youth, and the growing ranks of the unemployed who are increasingly being cast into the pit of pauperism.

Revolutionary pedagogy does not become a tool of oppression in itself – it instead spurs students to effectively struggle against capitalist exploitation

McLaren et al., 4 – Distinguished Professor, Critical Studies, Chapman University (Peter, Gregory Martin, Ramin Farahmandpur, and Nathalia Jaramillo, “Teaching in and against the Empire: Critical Pedagogy as Revolutionary Praxis,” Teaching Education Quarterly, Winter, 149-151, http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ795238.pdf)//SY

Our starting point is that socialism is not a discredited dream. It is a current that runs through periods such as the menacing present and is animated by and in struggle against all forms of oppression and exploitation. Whilst the anti-war movement will undoubtedly have to overcome certain internal problems to grow much larger and to curb future wars in Syria, Iran or Venezuela, what we are seeing today is the emergence of a completely new quality of social consciousness that could provide the concrete basis for an internationalist political movement (Bloom, 2003). What matters here is that against the backdrop of U.S. imperialism, the only way students are ever going to win lasting ‘peace’ or the right to a decent education or job is through the linking of their struggles with all the victims of the vicious ruling class, including workers whose blood, sweat and toil is the living fuel that makes the economy run (Bloom, 2003; Rikowski, 2002). In creating the conditions for social change, then, the best pedagogy recognizes the limits of traditional ‘pragmatist’ reformist pedagogical practice by prioritizing the need to question the deeper problems, particularly the violent contradictions (e.g., the gap between racism and the American Dream), under which students are forced to live. This means confronting the anti-intellectual thuggery that pervades teacher education programs, particularly the kind that “rejects ‘theory’ (the knowledge of totality)” (Zavarzadeh & Morton, 1994, p. 3). Acknowledging that capitalist education acts as a drag on the development of ‘critical’ or ‘class’ consciousness by presenting a lifeless world empty of contradictions, we argue for a Marxist theory of the ‘big picture,’ which enables people to translate their daily free-floating frustrations with the ‘system’ into a set of ideas, beliefs and practices that provide the basis not only for coherence and explanation but also action (Zavarzadeh & Morton, 1994, p. 3). Against tremendous odds, the challenge over the last several decades has been to humanize the classroom environment and to create pedagogical spaces for linking education to the praxiological dimensions of social justice initiatives and to that end we are indebted to critical pedagogy. Yet, faced with the urgency for change, approaching social transformation through the optic of revolutionary critical pedagogy ratchets up the struggle ahead. Revolutionary critical pedagogy dilates the aperture that critical pedagogy has struggled to provide teachers and students over the last several decades by further opening up the pedagogical encounter to its embeddedness in globalized social relations of exploitation and also to the revolutionary potential of a transnational, gender-balanced, multiracial, antiimperialist struggle. A revolutionary critical pedagogy raises the following questions for consideration by teachers, students, and other cultural workers: How can we liberate the use value of human beings from their subordination to exchangevalue? How can we convert what is least functional about ourselves as far as the abstract utilitarian logic of capitalist society is concerned — our self-realizing, sensuous, species-being — into our major instrument of self-definition? How can we make what we represent to capital — replaceable commodities — subordinate to who we have also become as critical social agents of history? How can we make critical self-reflexivity a demarcating principle of who we are and critical global citizenship the substance of what we want to become? How can we make the cultivation of a politics of hope and possibility a radical end in itself? How can we de-commodify our subjectivities? How can we materialize our self-activity as a revolutionary force and struggle for the self-determination of free and equal citizens in a just system of appropriation and distribution of social wealth? How can we make and remake our own nature within historically specific conventions of capitalist society such that we can make this self-activity a revolutionary force to dismantle capitalism itself and create the conditions for the development of our full human potential? How can we confront our ‘producers’ (i.e., social relations of production, the corporate media, cultural formations and institutional structures) as an independent power? Completely revolutionizing education does not depend upon the great white men that capitalist education teaches us are our presidents, heroes and role models. It relies upon the broad masses of people recognizing that the whole system is worthless and must be transformed to reflect their interests. This is the strength of a revolutionary critical pedagogy, that it is an orientation of fighting for the interests of the multi-racial, gendered working class and indigenous peoples all the way through. It seeks to transform schools into political and cultural centers, where crucial questions — from international affairs to education policy — are debated and struggled over openly. It is a pedagogy that not only conjures up the audacious urges of the oppressed but also enables them to fight back against the system’s repeated attacks by raising people’s understanding of their political opponents and developing their organization and fighting position. It is a call to battle, a challenge to change this monstrous system that wages permanent warfare against the world and the planet, from cost-effectiveness state terror in the ‘homeland,’ to the dumping of toxic chemicals on Native American lands and communities of color and the devastating bombing campaigns against sovereign nations. It is a pedagogy of hope that is grounded in the unfashionable ‘reality,’ history, and optimism of oppressed peoples and nations inside and outside of this country. It is a pedagogy against empire. Because of this, we will settle for nothing less.

Only the alternative’s revolutionary critical pedagogy against capitalism can address exploitation – that aff’s resistance inevitably fails

Capitalism’s ruthless exploitation can only be dismantled by revolutionary class analysis

Hill, 9 – Professor, Education Policy, University of Northampton (Dave, Nigel M. Greaves, Alpesh Maisuria, “Does Capitalism Inevitably Increase Inequality?,” Inequality in Education: Comparative and International Perspectives, Vol. 24, 63-65, http://sociology.sunimc.net/htmledit/uploadfile/system/20110226/20110226124548655.pdf#page=85)//SY

In sum, there is a recognized need among Marxists: firstly, to restate the epistemic foundation of Marxism; and, in so doing, secondly, to reclaim the authentic voice of the left-wing critique of capitalist education practices and their ideological justification though a class-based ontology (Hill 2008; Kelsh & Hill 2006). Restating Class For Marxists, class is not an arbitrary or abstract concept. Rather, it is a verifiable feature of certain human life processes. According to The German Ideology, written by Marx and Engels in 1845-6, human society passed through different productive epochs and in each there were opposing groups of people defined according to the objectively different relationships they had to the means and products of material production. That is, in every epoch, economic practices structure human society into “classes” with diametrically opposed interests rooted in relations of ownership to the means of production. These relations of ownership to the means of production constitute what Marx calls the “relations of production” and this is an arena of perpetual tension and struggle (1977, p.179). When the relations of production are combined with the “forces of production” (factories, workplaces, plant, equipment and tools, and knowledge of their use) we arrive at a “mode of production” or “economic base” (Marx 1977, pp.161, 168). This productive “infrastructure” forms the organizational rationale and dynamic for society in general and these are reflected in the social institutions (e.g., the state) that spring up and become established in accordance with the needs of productive relations. However, the techniques and technologies of production under capitalism dictate new working practices which exert pressure for change. The institutions which attempt to guard the existing relations of production from crises (principally the state) then begin, precisely and contradictorily by attempting to guard those relations from crises to obstruct the further development of the forces of production and eventually the pressure of contradictions rooted in the class contradiction becomes too great and the established institutions are transformed by revolution. At that point, new social and political institutions appropriate to new relations of production are developed, and these must accord with the further free development of the material forces of production. The German Ideology constitutes Marx’s attempt to depart from the metaphysical abstraction of the Hegelian idealist method and locate the motor of historical change in living, human society and its sensuous processes. For later thinkers, such as Lenin, the significance of Marx’s transformation of dialectics is the identification of the concept of “class struggle” as the essential historical dynamic. In any era, and most certainly in the capitalist, society is locked in conflict, while the needs of a certain group in the productive process are always subordinated to another. Marxists hold that this social conflict cannot be truly reconciled with the source of its economic causation, and this perpetual tension is the seedbed of revolution. The capitalist era is both typical of human history and at the same time unique. It is typical in that its production techniques involve the exploitation of one human being by another; nonetheless, it is unique in history in terms of its advancing this principle to unprecedented levels of efficiency and ruthlessness. For Marx, writing in the Preface to A Critique of Political Economy of 1859, known simply as the “Preface,” the capitalist era marks the zenith of class struggle in history and human exploitation cannot be taken further (1977, p.390). The only redeeming feature of capitalism is its assembling its own social antithesis in the “proletariat” or “working class” which is destined to rise up against the bourgeoisie (profiteering or ruling class) and abolish class and exploitation and thus bring “the prehistory of human society to a close” (1977, p.390). What do Marxists mean by capitalist “exploitation”? In the first volume of Capital, Marx argues that workers are the primary producers of wealth due to the expenditure of their labor in the production of commodities. However, the relationship between the owners of the means of production (the employers) and the workers is fundamentally exploitative since the full value of the workers’ labor power is unreflected in the wages they receive. The difference between the value of the labor expenditure and the sum the worker receives is known as “surplus value,” and this is pocketed by the employer as profit. Marx saw surplus value as the distinguishing characteristic and ultimate source of class and class conflict within the capitalist system (Cuneo 1982, p.378). However, for Marx, surplus value is not merely an undesirable side-effect of the capitalist economy; it is its motive force and the entire system would readily collapse without it. Technically, while surplus value extraction is not wholly unique, historically, all capitalist systems are characterized by it. Marx is thus able to offer a “scientific” and objective definition of class in the capitalist epoch based on which side of the social equation of surplus value one stands and to show, moreover, that this economic arrangement is the fundamental source of all human inequality. Class is therefore absolutely central to Marxist ontology. Ultimately, it is economically induced and it conditions and permeates all social reality in capitalist systems. Marxists therefore critique postmodern and post-structural arguments that class is, or ever can be, “constructed extra-economically,” or equally that it can be “deconstructed politically”—an epistemic position which has underwritten in the previous two decades numerous so-called “death of class” theories—arguably the most significant of which are Laclau & Mouffe (1985) and Laclau (1996).

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