THE MARXIST THEORY

The import of the Marxian theory as far as achieving basic needs for all is concerned is that only
if organized labour leads the other poor strata in actions can meaningful changes occur in living
standards.
Hyman (1975) explains that capitalism constitutes a complex of work and social relations of
production. The main features of the capitalist structure of work relations consist of the
following: private ownership of productive forces; concentration of ownership in the hands of a
small minority, the obligation of the majority of society to sell their labour power as a
commodity; the domination of profit as the fundamental motive of economic activity; and topdown hierarchical control over production processes by the few owners or their managerial
representatives. The structure of the capitalist work relations thus presents an exploitative
relationship the wages and salaries paid to the employees represent only a portion of the value
they collectively produce.

The remainder is appropriated by the employer as profit. The

capitalist context of production is therefore an inherently conflictual class relation. Given the
employee status (as opposed to a producer status) of the worker in the capitalist context of
production, the workers, individually and collectively, are alienated from having a say in what is
produced (product or service), how what is produced is produced (that is, the process) and
deciding on the allocation of resources or profit, the surplus value.
Based on the capitalist structure of work relations, Marxists consider that capitalist societies are
increasingly characterized by two major antagonistic classes, defined by their economic status.
These are the ruling class (capitalists) and the subject-class (workers). Capitalists own and/or
control the means of production, distribution, consumption and exchange, as well as the means
of political domination. The workers on the other hand are the subordinate class who neither own
nor control significant property, but are subjected to the servitude of the interest of the ruling
class, and is thereby politically, economically, and socially exploited and dominated.

Bukharin explains that based on the exploitative and conflictual class relationship, the capitalist
system is by nature a violent system. Any system based on the exploitation of the overwhelming
majority by a tiny minority can only survive by repressing the other class violently. A system
that thrives by the imposition of the interests of the minority on the entire society can only
engender social chaos, turbulence and war. To Bukharin, the capitalist society is unthinkable
without armaments, as it is unthinkable without wars. He posits that war is nothing but another
method of competition at a specific level of development and that conflictual economic interests
give rise to the inevitability of the existence of arms and wars (See IST in Africa, 2007)
The Marxian theory of the state maintains that the state is an instrument of class domination.
Whichever class wields political power uses it to advance the interests of its members by
oppressing the other class. In a capitalist society, the state is the executive committee of the
bourgeoisie; it protects the property of the capitalist classes and adopts whatever policies,
including violence, to sustain the status-quo. Within the capitalist context, the property-less class
is taught to understand that it is in its interest, and within the limits of its capability, to revolt, in
the striving to defend its interests by fighting against political and/or economic exclusion. Hence,
to Marx and Engels, classes seek to protect the self interests of their members:
The bourgeoisie has left remaining no other nexus between man and man than
naked self-interest, than callous cash payment. It has drowned the most heavenly
ecstasies of religious fervor, of chilvarous enthusiasm, of philistine sentimentalism, in
the icy water of egotistical calculation (Marx and Engels, 1933:62).

Friedrich Engels expresses similar idea in explaining that social classes pursue the self-interest of
their members:

Bare-faced covetousness was the moving spirit of civilization from its dawn to the
present day; wealth, and again wealth, and for the third time wealth; wealth, not of
society, but of the puny individual was its only and final aim (cited in Bober, 1948:72).

The foregoing underscores the reality of life that in class societies, the ruling class struggles to
retain political power and protect the economic wealth of its members while the
expropriated, the disadvantaged are compelled to struggle to end their exploitation and
repression. Therefore, the source of development and general wellbeing of the ordinary
people in a capitalist society like Nigeria is not the ruling class but organized labour both
the waged and unwaged when they form joint platforms for struggles. That is why Ake
(1989:43) argues that development is agency-determined: somebody has to determine that
development is desirable, that a particular kind of development should be pursued and in a
particular kind of manner. This shows that desirability of development, the kind of development
and the manner of attainment are neither accidental nor objectively determined. According to
Ake (1989), since the capitalist state is a specific modality of capitalist domination, the ability to
maintain the capitalist hegemony on society and the capacity of the dominated and
oppressed classes to deploy effective counter force in reaction to their domination goes a
long way to condition the possibility of development. The degree of resistance put up by the
dominated tends to determine the extent to which the state uses scarce resources, which should
have been invested in developmental programs into maintaining opulence for the bourgeoisie and
building the arsenal of terror and a militarized state.
From the Marxian perspective, the State, contrary to the claim of pluralist advocates, is not
an organisation for the interest of the whole society but an instrument to coerce and

repress in the sectional interest of the economically dominant class. According to Lenin, the
state is an organ of class rule, an organ for the repression of one class by another (Lenin, 1970).
Any ruling class uses the State apparatus of repression to defend, in the final analysis, the system
of the property relations from which it derives its wealth, influence and power and indeed its
very existence as a class. Therefore, all classes whose interests are not served by the existing
system of production relations, in other words, all classes which stand in antagonism to the
ruling class are inevitably driven into (political) class struggle, if not to take over political power,
then at least to modify and influence those who wield State power in their own interest. This is
why as Marx and Engels (1971) wrote in the Communist Manifesto, every class struggle is a
political struggle. Therefore, the question for any trade union or unionist is not whether or
not to be involved in politics, the question is which type of politics: politics to influence
those in government or politics to seize political power?
Marxism explains that at every acute stage of capitalist crisis when the capitalist system cannot
guarantee bare existence to the working class, only organized labour can take society
forward: Of all the classes that stand face to face with the bourgeoisie today, declared Marx
and Engels (1971), the proletariat alone is a really revolutionary class. Unlike other sectional
groups, only the working class, by virtue of its position in the economy has the nationwide
organisational continuity and experience (Adesina, 1994) to develop an economic programme
which represents the interest of all the oppressed strata; a programme which is not
antagonistic to the interest of the other deprived sectional groups. Thus, the labour movement (as
opposed to the narrow trade union movement) is usually not concerned with only the sectional
demands of the workers. Rather, depending on the quality of leadership, it tends to act as the
tribune of the people, reacting to every manifestation of tyranny and oppression, no
matter where it appears, no matter what situation or class of people is affected (Lenin, 1970:
423).