Asif Rashid
Karl Marx imagined a world where capitalism would fall apart under the weight of its own contradictions, with the working class rising to build something classless and just. Yet here we are, capitalism growing stronger, the rich getting richer, and inequality becoming almost a norm.
Marx was not entirely wrong. Our lens has been too narrow, too binary to notice what’s really going on. We live in a social condition that isn’t simply rich or poor, free or bound. Much like quantum physics where a particle can exist in many states until measured, society now holds strange combinations, moments that feel classless within systems still shaped by class. Marx’s analysis remains relevant; the issue lies in how we update the tools we use to understand him.
Material Contradictions and Complex Realities
Marx’s framework rested on materialism and dialectical conflict. He believed that capitalism carried the seeds of its own end; exploitation would push the working class to revolt, leading eventually to a classless structure.
Traditional social theories expected this transformation to be direct and final. But the reality we live in today does not work that way. Systems don’t just flip like switches. A person may experience equality in one aspect of life and deep inequality in another. These contradictions do not cancel each other out; they live alongside each other. It is not one or the other. It is both. Like the uncertain state of a quantum object, class today both exists and somehow does not.
Classlessness in Fleeting Moments
Let’s look at the everyday. A teenager in a small town streams the same videos and reads the same blogs as someone in an expensive city apartment. For a moment, there is no difference, no class.
But then comes the power cut, the poor infrastructure, the local job market, and the illusion dissolves. Or picture two children laughing on a playground. There, they are just children, no hierarchy. But those same kids will return home to wildly different conditions. These brief scenes point to a reality that traditional sociological models do not quite catch. Inequality and equality do not alternate like lights blinking on and off; they co-occur, blend, and fade in and out
Mead and the Shape-Shifting Self
George Herbert Mead, the symbolic interactionist, introduced a dual notion of the self: the part formed by social expectations called the “me” and the spontaneous, unpredictable “I.” Class belongs to the “me.” It is how society sees you. But the “I” resists, adapts, and breaks the mold. It is not trapped in categories.
This suggests that class, though socially assigned, can be stretched, played with, and even evaded. It is not fixed. Yet much of sociology still treats it as something solid and unchanging, missing the way people move between identities, shift their positions, and sometimes live outside those labels entirely.
Technology and Its Strange Social Echoes
In today’s digital world, class lines can be blurred but never quite erased. Someone sitting in a village might freelance for a client overseas, participating in a form of global labor that feels removed from traditional class categories. But these platforms come with their own hierarchies controlled by algorithms, corporations, and unseen gatekeepers.
You gain access, yes, but also become part of a new kind of system that mimics freedom but operates on hidden rules. It is not full liberation, nor is it full oppression. It is both. That is what makes it hard to study with classical models.
Culture as a Moving Target
Culture, too, has become slippery. On one side, we see a global youth culture shaped by shared memes, music, and experiences. On the other hand, elite tastes, institutions, and events remain deeply class-marked, such as opera houses, art auctions, and literary festivals. The boundaries do not disappear; they just shift.
As Bauman once said, we live in a liquid modernity where nothing stays firm for long. Class gets mixed up in this fluidity. It flows, re-emerges, and adapts. The trouble is, we are still using measuring tools designed for solid ground.
The Dark Turn of Utopian Dreams
Marx envisioned revolution as a path to liberation. But history is full of dark irony. Stalin’s purges and Mao’s Cultural Revolution were supposed to be steps toward equality but ended in surveillance, violence, and fear. Nietzsche warned us that those who fight monsters may become them. Does this mean Marx was wrong? Not necessarily. He offered a diagnosis, not a prescription. The failure is not in the idea of justice but in how we pursue it. Often, power simply takes a new shape. The revolution devours itself. Yet it is unfair to hold Marx accountable for how others misused the dream.
Blaming Marx: A Misguided Game
Critics often say that class still exists and Marx was wrong. But this misses the point. Marx did not promise a utopia on a deadline. He described a process full of internal contradictions, reversals and delays. Even when capitalism seems triumphant, the same contradictions he described such as alienation, exploitation and concentration of wealth are all still active. In fact, they are more visible than ever. The presence of inequality does not disprove Marx; it confirms him. But to see that, one must read him not as a prophet but as a critic of systems that constantly reinvent themselves to survive.
Sociology’s Own Blind Spot
Perhaps the real problem is not Marx but sociology itself. Much of it remains stuck in rigid models: class against class, order against conflict, this or that. It clings to tidy categories while ignoring messy realities. It wants clarity where there is none. We need a sociology that can live with contradiction, with partial truths, with shifting lines. Like Kuhn suggested about science, maybe sociology too is waiting for a paradigm shift. One that allows us to study social life as it actually is and not as we wish it to be.
Was Marx Really Wrong? Or Did We Ask the Wrong Question?
Maybe the wrong question is whether Marx succeeded or failed. That kind of thinking assumes history has winners and losers. But life is more complicated. Marx gave us a way to look at systems, to spot their cracks, their patterns, their lies. He did not predict everything, but he gave us language for what many people still feel today: that something is off, that the system is not made for them, that dignity is being bartered for survival. And maybe that is enough. Maybe that is where Marx is still alive.
The author is pursuing a postgraduate degree in Sociology at the University of Kashmir.
Comments are closed.