NOTES ON THE CONCEPT OF CLASS history of class-struggles. This far from exhausts the content of the Marxist perception which also says that these struggles occur in the context of a certain unfolding story of the man-nature dialectic. Secondly, the recognition of this context of the man-nature dialectic, in all its ramifications, necessarily introduces into Marxism a system of determinations (may be "in the last instance"). Interpretations of Marxism which do away with this system of determinations in other words are implicitly depreciating the role of the man-nature dialectic. The specific society whose class-structure has been the focus of attention, both for Marx as well as for the Marxists in general, is of course capitalism (some Marxists, notably Karl Kautsky, have even suggested that the concept of class is applicable only to capitalism and what precede it are "estates" rather than classes). This is entirely as one would expect, since, as I suggested above, the point of departure for the concept of class is praxis rather than speculative theory, and Marxist praxis has been concerned with transcending capitalism. Two propositions advanced by Marx and Engels in the Communist Manifesto have in particular been much discussed. The first is whether there is a tendency under capitalism for society to get increasingly polarised into two classes, i.e. whether there is a tendency for various intermediate classes between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat to progressively disappear. While the Manifesto asserted that there was indeed such a tendency, Marx himself came to hold a different view in his later years as is evident from several passages in the Theories of Surplus Value where he talked of the "increasing size of the middle class". The implications of this for the socialist movement have been a matter of concern for the Marxists. The second proposition also mentioned in passing in the Manifesto but developed subsequently by Lenin is that class-consciousness, in the sense of a political, i.e. "socialist" or "revolutionary", consciousness can not be spontaneously acquired by the proletariat but has to be brought to it from "outside", a proposition which provides the theoretical basis for the Leninist Party. The proletariat on its own can develop only a trade union consciousness (or what Lenin elsewhere called an "elementary" class consciousness) but not a political class consciousness. (Lukacs' distinction in History and Class Consciousness between an empirically existing class and a class imbued by a consciousness appropriate to its objective situation, which alone enables it to undertake historically significant actions, is in some ways parallel to this Leninist distinction, though based clearly upon Hegelian foundations.)