ARTICLES

Rethinking the Revolutionary Agent

This text intervenes in the debate over the historical social change. A revamped conception of dialectical materialism is proposed as the tool through which this historical development should be understood. The central argument here is that our societies are shaped by the general social consciousness which always reflects the social relations that stem from the means of material reproduction. As a consequence, this work dismisses the notion of class consciousness and argues that revolutionary social upheavals are the result of general ideological changes that gradually permeate the entire society. The approach proposed in this text has wider implications regarding the potential revolutionary transition to Communism. Above all, it renders superfluous all search for revolutionary classes and agents. Rather, it is suggested that one should focus upon the way the development of material social productivity shifts the society’s ideological superstructure.