The class struggle in the 21st century and its expression in the new Latin American social movements (1989-2015)

Abstract

The theoretical analyzes in social movements, emphasizing that emerged in Latin America as a renewed expression of class struggle in the XXI century. Based on the classic Marxist definition of class, this paper considers the theories explaining contemporary social movements, incorporating Latin American versions of those theories. A broad concept of working class is assumed, defined as the various social groups in one way or another suffer the oppression of capital, and not just factory workers. The crowd concept, which does not dissipate the historical function of the class struggle and the principle of class as such, allows explaining the reality in which we are living. The social movements of the last decade express the struggle of new political actors facing the neoliberal capitalist offensive both in the peripheral countries and major central economies. They are factory workers in the unemployed peers in the peasants, women, indigenous, Afro-descendants and the whole multitude of political demonstrations that insurge simultaneously against neoliberalism. Latin American social movements have again revived the class struggle as an inherent expression of the capitalist system, not only as a defense to certain conditions of life and work, but also finding a more humane way of thinking about social organization.