The transition out of feudalism to capitalism in Europe, mostly from the 17th to the 19th centuries, took multiple forms.  It was uneven as well, happening in different ways at different rates in different places.  Marx studied that transition's various dimensions because they offered valuable lessons for the different transition he was interested in: out of capitalism to socialism and communism.  One such lesson needs restatement now.

Richard D. Wolff, "Althusser and Hegel: Making Marxist Explanations Anti-essentialist and Dialectical," in Antonio Callari and David F. Ruccio, Editors. Postmodern Materialism and the Future of Marxist Theory. Hanover and London: Wesleyan University Press, 1996, pages 150-166.

Robert Pollin, Editor. Capitalism, Socialism, and Radical Political Economy: Essays in Honor of Howard J. Sherman. Cheltenham, UK and Northhampton, MA, USA:  Edward Elgar Publishers, 2000, pages 154-176.   Monopoly refers to a power or political process, whereas class refers to economic processes. This paper offers a systematic examination of the diverse possible relationships between monopoly power and class structure. The conceptual differentiation of power from class is central to the logic of our argument (Resnick and Wolff 1987, especially chapter 3).

Since 1917 analysts have debated what kind of economic system existed in the USSR and the PRC. They mostly juxtaposed `socialism' there to `capitalism' in Western Europe and the USA. The two sides were defined chiefly in terms of private versus state property and markets versus planning. We challenge this debate by means of Marx's focus on the organization of surplus labor. That is, we distinguish capitalism, socialism, and communism according to how these systems differently organize the surplus.

Class analyses are both very old and quite new. This essay argues that Marx contributed a new class definition and analysis focused on the production, appropriation, and distribution of surplus labor. Yet, that innovative, new class analysis was lost by being dissolved into either pre-Marxian conceptualizations of class in terms of property and power or later social theories in which class was determined by people’s consciousness and self-identifications. In this context, the essay pays special attention to the recent work of E.O. Wright.

Class analysis predates economics. Long before modern economics emerged, ancient Greek thinkers, for example, analyzed their society by classifying people into groups by wealth. They viewed understanding the relationships between classes as crucial to improving their society and debated whether wealth should be distributed equally. While class analysis has a long history, no single definition of class has prevailed.

We begin with production and wealth. They grew fast in the US over the last 25 years, as capitalism’s boosters (from Bush on down) constantly celebrate. Yet polls show most people in the US to be unhappy—and wisely so—about the economy now and fearful about tomorrow. Real wages and salaries (i.e., adjusted for the prices people pay) in the US stopped their historic 150-year rise in the 1970s and have fallen since. Meanwhile, those same workers’ productivity rose; they produced ever more but got no more for doing so.

An immediate problem faces any discussion of environmentalism and Marxism today. The first topic is popular across many different political perspectives; it engages journalists; and it "concerns" the general population. The second topic has become once again unpopular; journalists treat it as an object of obituary; few seem "concerned" about it. Yet, to ignore Marxism today makes no more sense than ignoring environmentalism did for most of the twentieth century.

Class analysis predates economics. Long before modern economics emerged, ancient Greeks, for example, analyzed their society by classifying people into groups according to the wealth they owned or the incomes they received. Understanding relationships between rich and poor classes (and possible middle classes) struck them as crucial to improving their societies.