Theories of Class

The chapter on class that concludes the third volume of Capital did not remain incomplete because Marx died at his desk. Capital presents the economic “anatomy of civil society” on the basis of a two-class model articulated by the relation to the means of production. Pre-capitalist remnants—be they such attitudes as racism or nationalism, or such modes of production as those of the artisan or the peasant—are swept away as capital fulfills its “civilizin...