Contradictory class locations in the Rural Environmental Movement: a theoretical examination of Marxist class analysis

This study theoretically investigates the possibility of using class analysis in environmental politics, specifically in rural areas. Amid promising developments at the praxis level, environmental politics still need solid collective imagination to pinpoint capitalism, the root of environmental degradation and conflicts, as the main problem. At the same time, class analysis in Marxism, the strongest anti-capitalist current in academia, has been underdeveloped in the fields relating to environmental politics. Departing from a general question on the possibility of applying Marxist class analysis in understanding class dynamics in rural politics, this study question further the way Marxist class analysis could situate diverse class locations and class structures in rural environmental politics and to what extent that diversity affects internal dynamics and external dynamics in organizational level in terms of politics, strategy, and ideology. To answer those questions, this study examines Erik Olin Wright’s theory of class via his Contradictory Class Location in a narrow environmental political context, namely the Rural Environmental Movement (REM). As a result, this study offers two level of analysis, by situating CCL in location of interest of individuals actors involved in REM, whether as actor in direct interest of actor in indirect interest. This study also offers the theoretical to understand the position of REM in class struggle.