Explanation:
Marxists, following the historical-materialist lead of our ‘founding fathers’ Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, point to five basic types of society which have thus far existed in human history:
Primitive communism: A pre-historic socio-economic formation, predating the emergence of class society, in which the means of production (land, tools, raw materials) were owned in common. All of the tasks necessary for the survival of the community were performed co-operatively and the fruits of this collective labour were distributed equally.
Slavery: The type of society exemplified by classical Greece and Rome, where ‘citizens’ and ‘freemen’ relied on the unpaid labour of slaves for their existence. This represented the establishment of class society and, inevitably, class struggle.
Feudalism: This social formation — a decentralised, largely agrarian one — was characterised by the feudal lords (the ‘barons’) living off the labour of indentured peasants who were tied to the land. A peasant in Europe would typically work five days a week growing crops for the lord and the remaining two for himself.
Capitalism: Readers will be most familiar with this socio-economic formation, as it (sadly) still exists on most of our planet, despite the fact that is has far outlived the progressive rôle it once played in ushering in global trade and world-changing technology. The system is based on the hidden exploitation of the working class, where capitalist profits are exclusively derived from a worker being paid far less than the value of the commodities s/he produces.
Socialism: Long a dream of progressive thinkers, socialism could only become a material reality with the emergence in the 19th century of an industrial working class whose historical interests such a mode of production would serve and whose members would bring it about through their own revolutionary efforts. Socialism — the abolition of capitalism and of the exploitation of man by man — was first established as a result of the Great October Socialist Revolution in Russia (1917). The effectiveness of socialism in practice is amply demonstrated by the fact that the Soviet state, with its worker-led, planned economy, had completely abolished unemployment by 1936 and had remained immune from the effects of the Great Depression ravaging the capitalist world.
There is a third mode of production, a third socio-economic formation, which we must of necessity discuss here. It has never yet existed but its name is Communism.
After the seizure of state power by the working class and its allies, the resulting dictatorship of the proletariat (socialism) sets its hand to gradually eliminating class divisions altogether. The final victory of this process leads to actual Communism, where the state — always an instrument of class oppression — withers away, and the coersion of people is replaced by the collective administration of things.
Those readers who live in Britain, and who would like to join the struggle for a socialist and communist society, are warmly invited to join the Communist Party of Great Britain (Marxist-Leninist). Check us out at cpgb-ml.org.
