I people think about das in ther here seem to be two main ways
daily experience, both of which appear as types of "common sense". On the one hand, people are very aware of class in Britain.
For example, we recognise a whole set of connotations in the terms "middle class" and "working class", and we can relate these terms to our daily experience. On the other hand, we will also sometimes deny the importance of class. We often prefer to think of people as "just people", whom you can relate to on an individual basis, as equals, as human beings equipped with reason, morals and feelings.
These attitudes carry through into how we regard institutions in our societies, such as parliament, or universities, or the state. On the one hand we often want to think of political parties, government and the police as just a bunch of people trying to do their best for all of us, even if they are sometimes mistaken or there are some "bad apples" among them.
But this is again contradicted by daily experience. Currently the lack of opposition from MPs to the war in Iraq or top-up fees makes people question the honesty and integrity of politicians in general - in other words, you frequently meet with the idea that the whole barrel is rotten, not just a few apples - and the people who run things are not the same as us, they live in a different Join the international • Anti-capitalism Anti-imperialism Women's Liberation Transgender Liberation
Class and exploitation
Marxists argue that what is wrong with this society and its institutions is that it is based on the rule of one class - the capitalists. This capitalist minority run things in their own interests, not in the interests of the majority of the population.
In Britain, and other countries with a significant industrial and service sector, the majority is principally formed by the working class, or in Marx's terminology, the proletariat. The working class is composed of all those who sell their labour power.
The wealth of the capitalists is based on the exploitation of this labour power. This dependence of capitalists upon the working class needs to be stressed, because there is always the myth that such and such a capitalist is "self-made", someone who has reaped the rewards for his "energy" and "risk-taking".
In fact, our generosity to these people is astounding. Wercould work fewer hours than we do now and still produce enough economic value to cover our living costs But we work for longer than is socially necessary to do so.
The difference between the economic value that we need to produce in order to live and the value we actually produce is called "surplus value", and this is the basis of profit.
This is how capitalist society has produced more wealth over the last two centuries than
ever before in human history. resistance against capitalism! FOURTH INTERNATIONAL YOUTH • Fighting for Lesbian Gay Bisexual and Close to the Pyrenees mountains and uneven. But there is a constant struggle between the capitalists and working class over the amount of surplus value that can be extracted. Workers find many
O ways of resisting - including fighting collectively for more wages, or time-off, or help with childcare costs. This is the class strugThe capitalist class is prepared to sanction murder to defend its interests. In Chile in
the 1970s, socialists were democratically voted into office, but overthrown by the