For a historical and dialectical materialism understanding of the class concept: a resumption of the classical works of Marx and Engels and of the productions of E.P. Thompson

Abstract

Social Class it´s one of the main concepts in the Marxist tradition and one of the key concepts of the Social Sciences. The relevance of this concept to the analisys of contemporaries identities and societies it´s currently debated and problematized, gaining prominence in the debate between marxists e post-marxists, as well as in the supposed emergency of a “new Brazilian middle class” in the Lula years (2003-2011). This article seeks to contribute to the qualification of this debate in so far as it resumes the notion of social class in the Marxist tradition, explaining different treatments of this concept in writtens of Marx and Engels, and mobilizing the English historian E. P. Thompson Lopes to exemplify how an member of an “historical materialistic” approach of the Marxist tradition continued to mobilize and make sense to the social class concept.