marxism

In capital volume 1, Marx frequently refers to individuals in his narrative, but it is always after first assuming that an individual is an average, representative member of their class. E.g. many of the examples assume that a laborer works with average skill and intensity.

Later discussions, such as productive and unproductive labor, the assumption of homogeneous value production on an individual basis is questioned. How does the analysis change if some workers do not produce value, but nevertheless receive wages? And the analysis continues forward dialectically as usual, re-treading the same ground with a different set of assumptions to see how things appear to change, before reflecting on those changes relative to the first perspective and integrating the new perspective into the theory.

The important takeaway is that, as a class, the proletariat are collectively exploited and that, as a class, the bourgeoisie are collectively exploiting. This doesn’t mean every single labor must mechanically produces a linear amount of surplus-value each hour in order to “count” as exploited. Nor does it mean that every single capitalist must receive an amount of surplus-value each hour — or even turn a profit! The theory is oriented toward the aggregate of society, the understanding of class dynamics as a whole and the large-scale structure of society’s relations of production.

It is already a well established part of Marxist theory that there are intermediate classes such as the petty bourgeoisie. However Marx and Engels insisted that the defining struggle is between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, and that the proletariat is the class with revolutionary potential. (It should be noted that, in the context of China, Mao included also the lumpenproletariat as a revolutionary class.) The intermediate classes are typically ephemeral and historically unimportant relative to this larger struggle.