The impossibility of socialism: part 1. Class kaleidoscope

The article is devoted to the study of social and class contradictions in modern society. The author shows that, despite growing economic inequality in developed countries, the prospect for uniting all the exploited and oppressed in order to fight for socialist society, equality and justice is becoming increasingly vague. There are many grounds for asserting the impossibility of socialism (in the foreseeable future) and the high probability of a new antagonistic stage in the development of society. The first part argues for two of the article’s four theses: 1) the richer the society, the more disagreements and conflicts between representatives of the class of hired workers and those who express their interests, and not between capitalists and the proletariat; 2) the development of productive forces does not at all lead to an uprising of the exploited against the class of exploiters, but to the emergence of a large and influential social stratum of post-materialists, whose interests are contrary to the interests of a significant proportion of people who lack the means of subsistence.