ABSTRACT
The revolutions of Western society and those of Russia and China were based on a tradition of revolutionary culture and political organisation which transformed oppositional sentiments into full-blooded revolutionary politics. Western societies were based on some form of class stratification which is regarded as a condition of industrial development. While recent Marxist criticism of Orientalism has clearly achieved the work of demolition, the object of valid replacement has only been partially successful because of the theoretical difficulties which surround the analysis of social classes, ideological superstructures and modes of production. The chapter reviews a theoretical programme for analysing the ways in which the 'colonial mode of production' establishes the conditions within which the class struggle is situated. While Poulantzas asserts that the class struggle is crucial in explaining transformations of modes of production, the analysis of class struggle plays a secondary role to the characterisation of modes of production in his major publications.
