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To approach the role of class struggle in a dynamic mitreux we will focus exclusively on Latin America over the past two and a half decades 1990 2014, a period of significant changes in economic models, political regimes and class structure
Class struggle is the motor-force of History
Karl Marx
Introduction
One looks in vain among the writings of historians and social scientists for any systematic study of the role of class struggle in the determination of economic systems, class structures and state power.
Yet social classes are everpresent in each and every discussion of the distribution of income, the concentration of property, representation in the state and in establishing the lead actors in economic paradigms.
To move beyond class analysis as simple points of reference in static structures and to see classes as changing, dynamic actors whose action shapes and reshapes the social, political and economic institutions through which they act and react, we have to turn from passive class analysis (seeing classes as the recipients of economic goods, state decisions and social action) to classes-in-action, specifically class struggle. In the course of our analysis of class struggle, we will extend class to mean social communities, indigenous people, unemployed and informal workers.