ABSTRACT
On the basis of his central concepts of surplus value and exploitation, Marx argued that relations between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat in capitalism must be objectively antagonistic. Subjective class consciousness grows out of, and in a dialectical relationship with, the development of objective forces: relationship to the ownership of the means of production, exploitation, polarization, and conflicts between labor and capital. Capitalism would be destroyed by an inexorable mechanism functioning both independently of and through human influence, that is, by a combination of deterministic and voluntaristic elements. Prominent among the latter is the development of class consciousness, the emergence of a class-for-itself from a class-in-itself.
