Class Struggle: A Critical Review in the Field of Political Psychology Volume 45- Issue 2

Saeed Shoja Shafti*

• Emeritus Professor of Psychiatry, USA

Received: July 05, 2022;   Published: July 15, 2022

*Corresponding author: Saeed Shoja Shafti, Emeritus Professor of Psychiatry, New York, USA

DOI: 10.26717/BJSTR.2022.45.007161

Abstract PDF

Class struggle is typically defined as conflict between different classes in a community resulting from different social or economic positions and reflecting opposed interests. Class struggle, whether as a political subject, social issue or mental stressor, is a dilemma that, after the economic crisis in the last years, has again become people’s preoccupation in many areas. Many criticizers with radical viewpoints believe that social difficulties like addiction, illiteracy, educational failure, whoredom, robbery, smuggling, bribery, fraud and embezzlement may have a direct relationship with poverty, as one feature of class struggle. Moreover, at an individual level, there is a direct relationship between poverty and physical and/or mental health. So, in the last decades, the echo of class struggle in the field of behavioral sciences has been remarkable, especially by considering the overlap between philosophy, which tries to elucidate the connection between different elements of life, and psychology, which tries to clarify the cognitive and behavioral aspects of human beings, and sociology, which tries to describe the complexities of social arrangement. The evolutionary outlook, too, is another shared point amid the said evaluations. In the present article, the class struggle has been reviewed concisely to assess its various facets, based on different theoretic formulations, observable facts and contemporary events.

Keywords: Social Class; Class Struggle; Class Conflict; Class Warfare; Privileged Class; Underprivileged Class

Class struggle, whether as a political subject, social issue or mental stressor, is a dilemma that, after the economic crisis in the last years, has again become people’s preoccupation in many areas. It is a fact which was supposed once upon a time to be characteristic of capitalist systems. But, the shocking degeneration of apparently classless societies in the contemporary epoch, which was in conjunction with the universal collapse of their aficionada’s faiths, showed that human beings are more confusing than what was thought by known sociopolitical philosophers. The said event emphasized that psychological dynamics have a specific role in human judgments and deeds which, though are not independent from sociopolitical or economic influences and perform as a sensitizer of received effects, may act autonomously, as well, in reverse to ongoing expectations. Though such an inner regression, as well, can be molded by external influences that are not, frequently, benign desires, anyhow, it shows that the mental apparatus is not always a passive receiver of surroundings’ impulses, and may judge disrespect to economic class struggle. In the present article, the class struggle, as a shared theme in psychology, sociology, philosophy, history and politics, has been reviewed briefly, to assess its various aspects, based on different theoretical formulations and current historical events.

Philosophy, Politics and Class Struggle

In the economic and political ideas of Karl Marx, class struggle, also referred to as class warfare and class conflict, is an essential belief and a pragmatic means for causing radical sociopolitical modifications, and as said by him, the history of all hitherto existing human society is the history of class struggles, and the dialectical nature of history is expressed in class struggle. According to Marxist thinkers, the pyramid of capitalist structure is a simple visualization of class struggle [1]. As stated by Marx, a class is shaped when its members attain unity and class consciousness. This principally takes place when the associates of a class become cognizant of their exploitation and the clash with another class. A class will then apprehend their shared identity and joint benefits. Such a class will then take action in contrast to those that are abusing the poorer classes. Two basic classes, around which other less important classes are grouped, oppose each other in the capitalist system: the owners of the means of production, such as factories, agricultural land, and industrial machinery, or the bourgeoisie, which includes anyone who gets their income from the surplus value they appropriate from the wealth which is created by working class, and the workers, or proletariat, which includes anyone who earns their livelihood by selling their labor power and being paid a wage or salary for their labor time.

Therefore, they have little choice but to work for capital, since they typically have no independent way to survive. On the word of Marxist theorists, the bourgeoisie creates its own grave-diggers and the fall of the bourgeoisie and the triumph of the proletariat are similarly unavoidable [2]. As stated by Marx, the chief mission of any government is to sustain the power of the dominant class; but without any classes there would be no requirement for a government. That would bring about a classless, stateless communist society. This class warfare typically takes the form of a struggle over the value of wages, hours of work, cost of consumer goods, division of profits, control over bureaucracy or parliament, and economic inequity. Deaths from poverty and starvation, illness and unsafe working conditions, economic coercion such as the threat of unemployment or the withdrawal of investment capital, legal and illegal lobbying, and bribery of legislators are claimed as the consequences of the said class struggle and exploitation. On the other hand, while Max Weber agreed with the fundamental ideas of Marx about the economic causes of class struggle, he claimed that class warfare can, as well, stem from prestige and social position of one’s parents, authority, schooling and social linking. Other models of class conflict include Kropotkin’s formulation, which believed that the disposal or inheritance of goods after death in pre-class or hunter-gatherer societies has produced early class divisions and conflict. Fascists, who have often opposed horizontal class warfare in favor of vertical national conflict and, instead, while promising to preserve the existing social classes, have attempted to appeal to the working class, and have offered a substitute concept known as class collaboration, Charles Comte and Charles Dunoyer, who claimed that class conflict came from groups that managed to gain supremacy. So, the governing class includes the groups that take hold of the power of the government to accomplish their political schema, and submissive classes are then taxed and regulated by the state on behalf of the benefit of the dominant classes. Also, some thinkers like Moses Hess have discussed that race conflict is primary, while class warfare is secondary. So, with the ending of race antipathy, the class conflict will also come to a cessation, and the equalization of all classes of society will necessarily follow the liberation of all the races. Herbert Marcuse, as well, did not formulate history in the frame of a class fight, but that as a battle against repression of our instincts. He claims that capitalism is inhibiting us from becoming a non-repressive society based on fundamentally different existential relations, a fundamentally different relationship between man and nature, and a fundamentally different experience of being [3].

Social Vulnerability, Individual Wellbeing and Class Conflict

According to sociological and criminological criticizers, social difficulties like addiction, illiteracy, educational failure, whoredom, robbery, smuggling, bribery, fraud and embezzlement may have relationships with poverty [4]. Moreover, at an individual level, there is a direct relationship between poverty and physical and/or mental health [5]. In line with existent data, people with low socioeconomic states, in comparison with the upper social class, suffer more from medical illnesses like hypertension, arthritis, pulmonary diseases, communicative disorders, and ophthalmic diseases, and, in general, have shorter life-expectancy [5]. Furthermore, a positive correlation exists between socioeconomic status (SES) and mental health; namely, high SES persons have better mental health than do persons of low SES [5]. Accordingly, with regard to the incidence of psychopathology, some studies have found a slightly higher than usual percentage of bipolar I disorder among high SES persons and a greater number than usual of schizophrenic people in low SES groups [5]. The sequence between unfortunate mental health and poverty in low-income countries has been detected in a number of studies [6-8]. For example, more than 85 percent of suicides occur in low- or middle-income countries [9], and suicide is more common in areas of high unemployment, socioeconomic deprivation and social fragmentation [10]. Likewise, great increases in unemployment have been linked to a rise in deaths from alcohol abuse [11]. Hence, it can be concluded that poverty is expected to, adversely, affect well-being, particularly mental health [12], while people with severe mental ailments have a higher prevalence of physical diseases and higher mortality from physical complaints, too [13]. Furthermore, standard social, educational and health indexes in capitalist systems are unalike in different social classes, a fact which is usually concealed in unabridged approximations.

Behavioral Sciences and Class Struggle

Marx had previously come up with the idea of “alienation of the laborers” in his economic and philosophical manuscripts - an alienation that is born of a capitalist system in which the worker no longer functions as a free being involved with free and associated labor. So, relinquishment from personal rights and proprietorship of own labour (i.e. a process that can change the world) is equal to self-alienation and disheartenment. The other aspect of such a deficiency, also, could be described as ‘commodity fetishism’, because it could imply that the manufactured goods are alive and the labors should accommodate their conduct with merchandise; an outcome which had been termed ‘false mentality’ by Engels. The said made-up mind-set, as well, is linked with a series of fabricated beliefs, which are announced by the ruling class as perpetual and universal mottos. In his ‘Theses on Feuerbach’, Marx criticizes philosophy (which was later substituted by psychology in the realm of behavioral sciences) as a field that existed up until his period because it focused on concepts and surveys and could not consider pragmatic keys to social amendment. What is a person? On the word of Marx “the essence of man is no abstraction inherent in each single individual. In reality, it is the ensemble of social relations.” For Lenin, psychology was not hypothetical but a matter of practical and radical movement. For instance, he held that, as a representative of the exploited and oppressed masses, animosity against the capitalist class is actually the beginning of all wisdom’ or insight and the origin of turning fury into a transforming dynamism, which can change the world. Accordingly, an inclination for formulating a scientific psychology, based on the Marxian attitude, gradually appeared [14]. In this regard, Ivan Pavlov summarizes such a psychology as follows: “Only science, exact science about human nature itself, and the most sincere approach to it by the aid of the omnipotent scientific method, will deliver man from his present gloom, and will purge him from his contemporary shame in the sphere of inter-human relations [15].”

Deterministic inclination of the said psychology had pushed it toward a belief in behaviorism, exclusion of free will, and accepting as true that our choices and actions result from our brain responding to its environmental stimuli. Also, in accordance with evolution and materialism, as the appropriate means for understanding the world, it believes that the mind is no more than the physical activity of the brain, and human beings are seen only as stimulus receptors and creatures that respond in one encoded way to any given set of situations in our surroundings. Likewise, as said by Skinner, a scientific analysis of behavior dispossesses the self-governing man and turns the control he has been believed to exert over to his surroundings. The person is controlled by the world around him, and in large part by other people. Accordingly, the environment not only stimulates, it chooses. It acts similar to natural selection, though on a very different time scale. So, if the environment chooses people, people are not free agents to make their own choices. As stated by Skinner and other behaviorists, the hypothesis that man is not free is essential in the implementation of a systematic style in investigation of human behavior [16,17]. But Marxist psychology declares the theories of J.B. Watson or B.F. Skinner as traditional behaviorism and mechanical materialism, because contrary to the Marxist dialectical worldview, which sees humanity in a conscious struggle to achieve a communist society, traditional behaviorism’s rejection of our free will runs counter to and would, in fact, preclude the will of the proletariat to revolt and overthrow the oppressive upper class [14]. Marx, who existed before the development of behavioral concepts, acknowledged the conflict and tried to resolve it by claiming that the materialist doctrine that men are the creation of surroundings and edification overlooks that situations are, as well, altered precisely by men [18]. In the dialectical view, our behavior is determined by the clash between our free will (thesis) and the forces in our surroundings and society (antithesis). The basis for this view is in Marx’s declaration that while men make their own history, they do not make it under conditions chosen by them, but under statuses directly faced, given and transferred from the past [14].

Lev Vygotsky, also, as the founder of the cultural - historical school of psychology, devoted much of his research to the study of this transformation from the outer world to the inner processes. He extended Marx and Engels’ analysis of the tool as the essential mediating factor that makes hard work a humanizing process, to culture as a system of signs and symbolic “tools” that mediate activity in the creation and manifestation of higher mental processes. So, social historical processes in these studies were represented as “culture”, which in turn was seen as a system of social bonds and individually important symbols and signs. So, for Vygotsky, the language became the principal representation of culture, and of social relations. Accordingly, activity is seen as culture on the individual level, personified in the symbolic forms of speech, play and gesture. Likewise, the conventional implications of culture are transmuted by activity into the personal sense of individual thought and speech processes. For Vygotsky and Aleksej Leont’ev, this distinction between meaning and sense became the way of analyzing the relationship between a person and society.

An essential topic for Vygotsky, and for all subsequent discussions, is naturalism, that is, the hypothesis common to psychological ideas, that the individual is basically a natural being, living in a social environment. For Vygotsky, psychology must explain the alteration of the natural to the human, because though the individual as an organism is natural, the individual as a psychological being is wholly social and all inner processes are culturally based. For example, in human development, the higher functions supersede the lower, natural processes such as simple attention and perception. Here we have the first attempt in this tradition to formulate a dialectical relation between the natural and the sociocultural [19]. But for Leont’ev, though inner mental life was still seen as a transformation of outer processes, he attempted to base the theory on actual material operations and relations, not on symbolic and cultural forms as did Lev Vygotsky. So, he saw this as restoring the activity concept to a materialist foundation, and in returning to Hegel’s formulation, Leont’ev analyzed activity as a development process of objectification and acquisition. He traced the origin and development of the psyche from the irritability of the most primitive life forms through higher human mental processes, based on the transition from the natural to the social world.

From the lowest to the highest, the life process is active in its essence-an engagement with the environment [20]. So, Leont’ev had seen human action as a result of biological as well as cultural evolution and, drawing on Marx’s materialist conception of culture, stressed that individual cognition is always part of social action, which in turn is mediated by man-made tools (cultural artifacts), language and other man-made systems of symbols, which he viewed as a major distinguishing feature of human culture and, thus, human cognition [21]. Activity has now become what Leont’ev called a “molar concept”, referring not to thought processes in a cultural context, but to the functioning of the individual as a whole, in the context of social historical reality as a whole [22]. After a while, Critical theory appeared, which was a social theory oriented toward critiquing and changing society as a whole, in contrast to traditional theory oriented only to understanding or explaining it. According to critical theorist Max Horkheimer, a theory is critical in so far as it seeks “to liberate human beings from the circumstances that enslave them”.

Core concepts of Critical theory include:

1. That critical social theory should be directed at the totality of society in its historical specificity (i.e. how it came to be configured at a specific point in time), and

2. That critical theory should improve understanding of society by integrating all the major social sciences, including political science, sociology, history geography, economics, anthropology, and psychology [23]. Likewise, critical theory was the basis for the appearance of critical psychology, which was a psychological outlook that had roots in the said principles. Critical psychology, which has sometimes been labeled as radical psychology and liberation psychology, has confronted mainstream psychology and attempted to understand social change as a means of preventing and treating psychopathology. According to critical psychology, conventional psychology fails to consider or purposely overlooks the way power differences among groups and social classes can influence the mental and physical health of persons or groups of people. It does this, partly, for the reason that it means to explain conduct at the level of the individual.

Critical psychology should consist of the following four modules: Methodical examination of how some varieties of psychological experience and action are preferred over others; How schools of “psychology” may operate ideologically and in the service of political power; Study of the ways in which all psychological schools are culturally - historically constructed; How various psychological schools may confirm or resist ideological suppositions in conventional models; Study of forms of self-regulation and surveillance in ordinary life and the ways in which cultural habits operate beyond the boundaries of academic and professional practice; and Exploration of the way conventional psychology organizes theoretical and professional work in psychology and how ordinary activities might provide the basis for resistance to current disciplinary practices [24]. Similar fields with, more or less, critical orientations include health psychology, community psychology, anti-psychiatry, critical psychiatry and community psychiatry [25]. Another comparable paradigm was Freudo-Marxism, which sought to synthesize the psychoanalytic theory of Sigmund Freud with the philosophy and political economy of Karl Marx. Freudo-Marxism sought to use the viewpoints of psychoanalysis to diagnose the troubles of society. Just as Freudianism views a person’s ego and super-ego as molded by his unconscious id, Marxism views a society’s institutions and culture as shaped by its underlying economic system. Therefore, a society’s economic system and its relations of production function as its unconscious id; a society’s culture functions as its ego; and a society’s legal system, police and military function as its super-ego. From this point, Freudo-Marxism aimed to reveal the ailment of a society’s underlying economic system by analyzing its cultural products [14]. Also, the Frankfurt School, along with a neo-Marxist standpoint, took up the task of choosing what parts of Marx’s philosophy might serve to explain social problems which Marx himself had never perceived. So, they drew on other schools of thought, like psychoanalysis, philosophy and sociology to fill in Marx’s observed slips [26].

In radical psychoanalysis, as well, there were thinkers like Alfred Adler, who was in search of social reasons for mental disorders, and believed that neurosis, as a reduced ability to function in the fields of work, love and knowledge, is associated with the inhibited aggression formed by internalized class-based repression, and the separation of the worker from the means of production. As said by him, healthy aggression may be released in the working class by appropriate party-political institutions. This aggression, which had been repressed by the capitalists in the interest of exploitation, could be released in the service of the higher civilization that Marx analyzed as gestating in the womb of capitalism [26]. Alder noted that inferiority feelings in the workforce, produced by exploitation and class oppression, could be compensated in a person and group by social action in the class struggle. This strengthened bio-psychological health in both the individual and the group. He developed the concept of social feeling, which included empathy and mutual aid, as the highest expression of solidarity between workers in the dawning society [27]. Wilhelm Reich, also, who broke with Freud over the biological origin of neurotic symptoms, believed that repressed sexual energy fueled neuroses, and there is an inherent work democratic structure that develops between freely associated labor without the necessity for labor bureaucracies or vanguard parties. Accordingly, he stated that every social order creates character forms which it needs for its safeguarding. Also, he created biotherapy to release the masses from the conformist class structure and to enable people to function in a fully radical way [28,29]. Herbert Marcuse, as well, hypothesized a biological need for freedom from the repression of the class-structure [30,31].

Class struggle is typically defined as conflict between different classes in a community resulting from different social or economic positions and reflecting opposed interests [32]. In Marxist thought, the struggle for political and economic power carried on between capitalists and workers [33]. The political activism of the 1960s brought with it activism in the mental health field, generally defined as antipsychiatry movement. Incorporated in this social phenomenon are R.D. Laing and his associates, radical critiques of mainstream psychiatric practices, mental patients’ rights activists, feminist therapy and movements against psycho-technological abuses such as psychosurgery. Some features of this wide-ranging movement have been directed or influenced by Marxist outlooks. This broad-based criticism of mental health ideologies and practices not only impacts the mental health field, but also affects general Marxist social theory, which adds feminist issues and the politics of personal and family life as new concerns to traditional Marxism [34]. According to some radical intellectuals, class conflict is not only material, it is spiritual-psychological [34], because capitalists are using the same kind of psychological conflict natively that they use against foreign people to dispirit them and inhibit the masses from knowing the truth. For instance, high joblessness is used to depress and devitalize the workforce. The other side of the same coin, sweatshop settings for both blue- and white-collar labor, further destroys the mental health of the folks.

This places unbearable stress on the household, often resulting in alcoholism and child/spousal mistreatment. In addition to these direct bio-psychological attacks, capitalists, through mass media, control and refine public opinion and rely on it to produce acquiescence and passivity in the population, which is necessary for ongoing exploitation [34]. According to some radical intellectuals, class conflict is not only material, it is spiritual-psychological [34], because capitalists are using the same kind of psychological conflict natively that they use against foreign people to dispirit them and inhibit the masses from knowing the truth. For instance, high joblessness is used to depress and devitalize the workforce. The other side of the same coin, sweatshop settings for both blue- and white-collar labor, further destroys the mental health of the folks. This places unbearable stress on the household, often resulting in alcoholism and child/spousal mistreatment. In addition to these direct bio-psychological attacks, capitalists, through mass media, control and refine public opinion and rely on it to produce acquiescence and passivity in the population, which is necessary for ongoing exploitation [34]. According to some radical intellectuals, class conflict is not only material, it is spiritual-psychological [34], because capitalists are using the same kind of psychological conflict natively that they use against foreign people to dispirit them and inhibit the masses from knowing the truth. For instance, high joblessness is used to depress and devitalize the workforce.

The other side of the same coin, sweatshop settings for both blue and white collar labor, further destroys the mental health of the folks. This places unbearable stress on the household, often resulting in alcoholism and child/spousal mistreatment. In addition to these direct bio-psychological attacks, capitalists, through mass media, control and refine public opinion and rely on it to produce acquiescence and passivity in the population, which is necessary for ongoing exploitation [34]. According to some radical intellectuals, class conflict is not only material, it is spiritual-psychological [34], because capitalists are using the same kind of psychological conflict natively that they use against foreign people to dispirit them and inhibit the masses from knowing the truth. For instance, high joblessness is used to depress and devitalize the workforce. The other side of the same coin, sweatshop settings for both blue- and white-collar labor, further destroys the mental health of the folks. This places unbearable stress on the household, often resulting in alcoholism and child/spousal mistreatment. In addition to these direct bio-psychological attacks, capitalists, through mass media, control and refine public opinion and rely on it to produce acquiescence and passivity in the population, which is necessary for ongoing exploitation [34]. According to some radical intellectuals, class conflict is not only material, it is spiritual-psychological [34], because capitalists are using the same kind of psychological conflict natively that they use against foreign people to dispirit them and inhibit the masses from knowing the truth. For instance, high joblessness is used to depress and devitalize the workforce.

The other side of the same coin, sweatshop settings for both blue- and white-collar labor, further destroys the mental health of the folks. This places unbearable stress on the household, often resulting in alcoholism and child/spousal mistreatment. In addition to these direct bio-psychological attacks, capitalists, through mass media, control and refine public opinion and rely on it to produce acquiescence and passivity in the population, which is necessary for ongoing exploitation [34]. According to some radical intellectuals, class conflict is not only material, it is spiritual-psychological [34], because capitalists are using the same kind of psychological conflict natively that they use against foreign people to dispirit them and inhibit the masses from knowing the truth. For instance, high joblessness is used to depress and devitalize the workforce. The other side of the same coin, sweatshop settings for both blue- and white-collar labor, further destroys the mental health of the folks.

This places unbearable stress on the household, often resulting in alcoholism and child/spousal mistreatment. In addition to these direct bio-psychological attacks, capitalists, through mass media, control and refine public opinion and rely on it to produce acquiescence and passivity in the population, which is necessary for ongoing exploitation [34]. Class struggle, which was previously based on merely economic ranking and now is based on socioeconomic categorization that considers societal and scholastic physiognomies in addition to economic status, may be known as a byproduct of actual or supposed inequality. From a Marxist perspective, the social situation and educational grade, themselves, are consequences of economic position and subordinate to it. On the other hand, class struggle is the cause and effect of past and present political economy, because, firstly, the general outline of political economy can be formed, passively, by the social pyramid of hegemony, and subsequently the said hegemony tries, actively, to protect and continue the primary fabricated system. So, political economy, as an outline for production and distribution of commodities and source of revenue among inhabitants, and as an overall schema for present and future socioeconomic endeavors, can be accounted as the catalyzer of class struggle. Anyhow, whether from a traditional stance or a modern outlook, class struggle is a multidimensional event, which could not have a perfect solution in real life through the last decades after the formulation of anticapitalist paradigms.

Class struggle, which is generally between high-income and low-income social classes, has psychological and physical aspects that are not necessarily parallel to each other. They are not parallel because there were communalist regimes that have been collapsed surprisingly or melodramatically, while apparently they were successful with respect to enactment of equality and fairness in social welfare. Accordingly, maybe social equality with regard to worldly matters is not integrated mechanically with social justice, at least in folks’ frame of mind. So, in addition to money-oriented conflicts, there is a psychological struggle, as well, which depends on peripheral observations and internal inferences. Disregarding the rightness or falseness of subjective inferences, such extrapolations seem to be sufficient for the creation of further conflicts between inhabitants and the dominant system. Such kinds of conflicts, if remains disregarded or undetected by the administration, gradually distorts individual’s judgment and turns a proponent into an opponent. So, academically, the deterioration of socialist or communist regimes was due to a series of unanswered mental pressures and worries, not materialistic necessities that had been distributed impartially. So, at this point, a question may arise: Other than income, health, and general safety, what further dynamics may stimulate an unexpected rebellion? It seems that a real injustice or a sense of unfairness can be an imperative reason that may slowly turn a complaint into a shout and a stone into a shot.

The resulting sense of inequality, unless explained ideologically or resolved actually, if magnified massively, can bring about serious complications or social unrest. Maybe, the prevailing and systematic tyranny in the said regimes, whether in the form of proletarian dictatorship, which should be ended supposedly after the establishment of desired communes (a fantasy or decree that never happened or due to various pressures reasons could not materialize), fascism [35], or monocracy had upraised the real and/ or supposed sense of unfairness so enormously and produced a gap between people and governments so distantly that ultimately neutralized the decency of classlessness, which was customarily the primary motivation for revolution or coup d’état. On the other hand, the said biased or despotic political process creates gradually a new sociopolitical class (oligarchy), which is economically energized by totalitarian policies. As a result, the said new class brings about novel polarity and conflicts. Therefore, the class struggle is not limited to socioeconomic categorization and includes a series of conflicts that maybe financial, cultural, political or any combination of them. Dialectically, conflict is part of natural life, whether organic vs. inorganic processes, life drive vs. death instinct, masculinity vs. femininity, selfishness vs. selflessness, microorganisms vs. macroorganisms, heartlessness vs. kindness, destruction vs. construction, rightness vs. wrongness, Machiavellianism vs. humanity, short vs. tall, black vs. white, and so on.

Though class struggle, in its abstract and classical definition, can be accounted for as the engine of historical materialism, cultural variations and social arrangements, its termination is not philosophically supposable, and its cessation is not equal to the end of history, which was the belief of Fukuyama [36]. Alternatively, historical movements are not reducible to only money matters, a deduction which has been revealed in some way by Frederick Engels, too [37], who stressed provision and maintenance of real life, including nutrition, health and housing, for enabling everyone to follow science, art, and politics. By and large, struggle is manifest in the Oedipus complex during infancy, in sibling rivalries, in family atmospheres, in occupational competitions in workplaces, in jealousness among relatives, in party-political challenges, nationally, and in transnational brawls, internationally. So, it is an inborn element of natural life. All of the aforementioned conflicts may involve numerous impacts, morbidities and mortalities, as well. Bloody or devious transnational antagonisms intended for the acquisition of rare or vital resources on behalf of augmentation of national security or social welfare, are commonly taking place with disregard of class struggle. Though some wars may be ascribed theoretically to expansionism, colonialism or domination, or be formulated abstractly as a struggle between universal capitalism and the worldwide working-class, most wars have clear explanations in the minds of contestants, which are usually around safety or profits on behalf of their nations, in total.

Providing a livelihood all over the country is the duty of every government, disregarding the form of system, which is an in-house issue, not outsiders’ interest. Dissimilarity of systems results in different gains by various social classes, and don’t have anything to do with the general source of revenue or means of support. Challenges between empires are, as well, with regard to overall resources, not class-specific profits. Also, as is known, the typical formulation of Marx, which believed in an eventual socialistic revolution upon cumulative struggle between the assumed antagonist classes, has not occurred characteristically or was rarer, hitherto, than what had been supposed before by the related theoreticians. Such a challenge, which has been mentioned by Frederick Engels, as well, could have undermined the required synchronization between people and regime via lack of proper political insights [37]. Moreover, collapsing of a system usually demands prior administrative cleavage or active external support, in addition to domestic riots. Street brawls are not usually enough for regime change, though it may change that.

Nonetheless, class struggle may be an important factor for destabilization of any system because it can be the basis of internal criticism, or a weakness which can be abused by nasty outsiders. Likewise, since characteristic class struggle, especially in capitalist systems, doesn’t have any definite solution, and needs to be controlled by repression, mitigated by subsidy, or justified by philosophy or spiritualism, its ignominy or trouble cannot be passably and everlastingly fixed. Hence, it is like a wound that neither kills nor heals, but always irritates. On the other hand, while class conflict is an essential part of our life that categorizes our social position and is an important factor, it is not unchangeable. Brawl for gaining better or more advantages, assets, mates, and offspring is a derivative of primary narcissism, as an essential part of life instinct, which is intended for human reproduction, proximately, and continual survival, ultimately. Such a competition, which is the main cause of jealousness, rivalries, and combat, is never-ending because it has an instinctual configuration that is genetically determined. On the other hand, while a struggle is in actual fact ineradicable, like all pleasure-seeking desires, it is manageable, like every social norm. Accordingly, while management of social conflict is not absolute, it is tunable. Such tuning has a side effect, also, which results from the subtraction of stress of social inequality from the threshold of personal patience, particularly when modern communicative technology has boosted acutely individual and social comparisons by means of indefinite delivery of data and news bulletin.

The psychopathologic consequences of such an ‘appraisal vs. toleration’ may include anxiety and depression in vulnerable persons, whether as a primary psychiatric problem or as a secondary psychological consequence. Perhaps the operative strategy, at this juncture, may include a sensible economic and administrative fairness re source of revenue and social services, rather than full elimination of class struggle, which doesn’t seem to guarantee a system’s stability or to be a realistic blueprint. Maybe, Marx’s ambivalent attitude about capitalism, as an important basis for sociocultural and scientific development, and concerning capitalists, as historical catalysts for the disintegration of Feudalism and progression of modernity and technology, and his opinion that exploitation in capitalism should not be considered unfair, because capitalists cannot, essentially and deterministically, act in contrast to their current system, may, a bit, have a comparable insinuation [38].

Practically, class struggle can be accounted for as an understandable reason for treacherousness, insurgence, revolution, warfare, and collapse, in the realm of political affairs, exploitation in the field of economics, and inferiority complex, hatred and misconduct, in the realm of psychology. On the other hand, it can be accounted for as a motivation for constructive criticism, sublimation and positive competition. Also, it can be a motive for genuine or false devotedness of lower class (wage earners) to upper class (owners), which can be based on gratification of basic needs, on the word of employees, or supply of income and creation of jobs, on the word of businesspersons. Historical events have shown that, first of all, neither socioeconomic classification nor classlessness may guarantee sociopolitical stability, and, furthermore, class struggle is not the only motor of history. Also, classlessness is not routinely equivalent to egalitarianism and there are extra dynamics in addition to economic causes, though it is not deniable that economics is an important substructure, which influences various sociopolitical aspects, whether singly or en masse; a fact which is not overlooked by free-market theorizers, as well, who are in search of national prosperity by capitalist economical plans. Anyhow, while it seems that class struggle is not limited to financial conflicts and other struggles like sociocultural clashes are equally important, it can be known as an innate component of every society, which effects dynamically and ceaselessly; it is a volcano which demands watchfulness and fine-tuning by brainy politicians, a task that is not achievable by egocentric administrators, who take advantage of class struggle.

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