Crosland and Marx

Abstract

The conflict between labour and capital is central to Marx’s economics. Property-owners greedy for surplus value confront a surplus proletariat with nothing but its labour-power to sell. The affluence of the few presupposes the deprivation of the many; the workers become the impoverished victims of ‘misery, oppression, slavery, degredation, exploitation’;1 and the end of systemic antagonisms can only come with the abolition of private capital itself. To Marx, in other words, capitalism means capital and socialism is impossible unless and until ‘the knell of capitalist private property sounds. The expropriators are expropriated.’2 Capitalism to Marx means the private ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange. Socialism to Marx means the transcendence of the particular and the socialisation of the claims. Socialism to Crosland does not.