NOTES ON THE CONCEPT OF CLASS therefore a fierce social struggle around the question of ownership, which is nothing else but class-struggle, since classes are defined precisely in relation to the ownership over the means of production. Putting it differently, successful class-struggle constitutes an enabling condition for success in all other terrains of struggle. On the other hand, the struggle over the question of ownership is, by its very nature, not just a "domestic affair" but necessarily entails international participation. Herein lies an important difference between class-struggle and other kinds of struggle in the context of our societies, namely, that the former necessarily involves confronting global capitalism in a manner that none of the latter, as long as they are detached from class-struggle, do. The "privileging" of class-struggle in societies like ours arises in other words from the fact that of all the different struggles essential for social advance it is the most arduous, the most daunting, and yet the most decisive. NOTE This is the text of a talk given, with the aim of initiating a discussion, to the first year M.A. students of economics and sociology at the Delhi School of Economics sometime in the early nineties.