Letter: Class and the Individual (1975)

Letter to the Editors from the April 1975 issue of the Socialist Standard

Class and the Individual

Being one who glories in the uniqueness of the individual, and who believes, at the end of the day, there are two fixities in this world—the individual and the world—all other relationships are created by man himself, I sometimes wonder where your concentration on the “class” leaves the individual. What will his part and his place be in the Socialist Society? The lessons of modern China repel me.

R .Thomas

Llanberis.

Reply:

Certainly an individual is unique—by definition. Having said that one is no further forward—one has learnt nothing, clarified nothing, explained nothing. Our emphasis on class is an important part of our analysis of society. History shows that all propertied societies have been divided into economic (and social) classes each of which has a different relation to the means of production. In capitalist society there are two classes—owners and non-owners of the means of life. We call these classes capitalists and workers respectively.

The class to which any individual belongs is determined objectively by his relationship to the means of life. No matter how unique he is as an individual, if he is a member of the working class he will have interests in common with other workers, interests which conflict with those of the unique individuals who make up the capitalist class. The most obvious clash of interests being the price at which labour-power is bought and sold. This is the interminable wages struggle which is inseparable from capitalist ownership.

The expression of one’s unique individual personality is viciously limited by economic circumstances. For many people at present the highest aim in life is simply to be the same as everyone else. Look round you at the armies of workers churned out by the so-called education process as machine minders and office fodder. Millions of passive participants in the labour process stripped of virtually all individuality by the need to conform to a system of class exploitation. Your example of China (which is not Socialist but state-capitalist) is just as repellent as anything the “free” west has to offer.

Only Socialism can give the individual the freedom to develop his personality and abilities to the full, unrestricted by today’s profit-seeking and measurement by money. When we have established common ownership the individual will take his place as a free and equal member of society, able to give of his best secure in the knowledge that society is being run in a harmonious way for the benefit of all its members.

Editors.