he writes, is the “control it wields over the essential means of production and
communication.” 1954: 19-20.
The focus of this study is the class struggle as the impact of the unequal treatment performed by the ruling class; hence there are six theories of many
theories in Marxism that will be employed in this study. They are theory of social class, panopticon, interpellation, class consciousness and class struggle.
a. Theory of Social Class
Nikolai Bukharin defines class as “a category of persons united by a common role in the production process, a totality in which each member has about
the same relative position with regard to the other functions in the production process
” 1969: 278-279. Meanwhile social class is “the aggregate of person playing the same part in production, standing the same relation toward other
persons in the production process, these relations being also expressed in things instrument of labor” 1969: 276. In other words the members of social class
consist of the people who bear the same relation in the society. For example, the textile workers and mine workers are in the same class because they share the
same relation to certain persons the owner that control their work. Likewise, for the owners of textile and mine, they are in the same class because of the common
position they have as the owner of textile and mine factories. According to Ralf Dahrendorf in Class and Class Conflict in Industrial
Society, The deter
minant of classes is “property”. Property, however, must not be understood in terms of purely passive wealth but as an effective force of
production as “ownership of means of production” and its denial to others 1966:20-21.
Thus, the ownership of property as the means of production determines the
classification of people in certain society. Those who own the means of production will be considered as the upper class, while those who do not have any
means of production belong to the lower class. Gary Day‟s Class asserts that, Marx called the class who owned the means
of production, the Bourgeois and the class who sold their labor power, the proletariat. According to Marx, these two classes have different interests. The
Bourgeois seeks for the highest profit and in order to reach that they pay the workers the lowest wage as possible while demanding the worker to attain the
highest level of productivity 2001: 7. In the Communist Manifesto Marx adds that
“our epoch, the epoch of the Bourgeois, possesses, this distinctive feature: it has simplified the class
antagonisms” 1967: 80. Society as a whole splitting into two great hostile camps, into two great classes, directly facing each other: Bourgeois and
Proletariat.
b. Theory of Panopticon
Panopticon was concept of building first established by English Philosoper and Social theorist Jeremy Bentham in the late 18
th
century. This concept afterward developed by Michel Foucault in his book PowerKnowledge. He
describes Panopticon as an implicit model of power 1980: 71. In his book, Foucault explains that panopticon is basically a type of
construction, sort of prison building where there is a perimeter in the form of ring and there will be a tower in the center of it where the overseer will be situated in
