“Write short note: Class-in-itself and class-for-itself.” (2003)
Karl Marx used the pair Klasse an sich and Klasse für sich, borrowing G. W. F. Hegel‘s language of “in itself” and “for itself”, to separate two moments of class formation: an objective category produced by the economy, and a conscious collective actor produced by struggle.
Meaning
| Basis | Class-in-itself | Class-for-itself |
|---|---|---|
| Defined by | Common relation to the means of production | Same relation, plus awareness of shared interest |
| Consciousness | Absent or fragmented; interests seen as individual | Class consciousness; interests seen as opposed to another class |
| Organisation | Unorganised aggregate | Unions, party, political programme |
| Action | Sporadic, local, economic | Collective, political, aimed at state power |
| Marx’s text | Peasants in The Eighteenth Brumaire (1852) | Workers in struggle, The Poverty of Philosophy (1847) |
- In The Poverty of Philosophy, Marx says economic conditions turned the mass of people into workers with common interests, a class as against capital, but it becomes a class for itself only in struggle, when the fight turns political.
- In The Eighteenth Brumaire, French peasants lived in similar conditions but in isolated plots, with no national bond, like potatoes in a sack. They were a class in one sense and not in another.
Conditions of the transition
Marx expected capitalism to supply them: workers crowded into large factories, skills levelled by machinery, living standards pressed down, and communication improved. Against these stands ideology, through which the ruling class presents its interests as universal. Friedrich Engels called the result false consciousness.
Later debate
- Georg Lukács argued that consciousness does not arise spontaneously and must be articulated by a party.
- Antonio Gramsci showed that ruling classes win consent through civil society, so workers can remain a class-in-itself amid prosperity and democracy.
- Max Weber held that a shared class situation leads to communal action only under specific conditions, such as visible opponents and intellectual leadership; status and party often mobilise people first.
Indian relevance
- Over 31 crore unorganised workers have registered on the e-Shram portal. Scattered across farms, homes, streets and platforms, they are the largest class-in-itself in the world.
- B. R. Ambedkar held that graded caste inequality divides labourers against each other, so the passage to class-for-itself in India runs through caste. Dalit and Left movements have long debated whether caste and class struggles can be fused.
- Historical instance: the Telangana peasant struggle (1946–51) turned scattered tenants and agricultural labourers into an organised force against landlords, a regional case of an in-itself group becoming for-itself.
Conclusion
The pair remains a sharp analytical device: it explains why objective exploitation does not automatically produce revolt. Whether a class becomes “for itself” depends on organisation, leadership and the cross-cutting pull of identity, not on economic position alone.