Class

“Classes are large groups of people which differ from each other by the place they occupy in a historically definite system of social production, by their relation (in most cases fixed and formulated in laws) to the means of production, by their role in the social organization of labor, and, consequently, by the dimensions and method of acquiring the share of social wealth that they obtain. Classes are groups of people one of which may appropriate the labor of another owing to the different places they occupy in the definite system of social economy.” (Lenin, Selected works. Vol. IX, pp. 432-33.) The historical origin of classes is connected with the rise and development of the division of labor and the appearance of private property in the means of production. Slave owners and slaves—these were the fundamental classes in that ancient world which has come to be referred to as “slave” society. Landowners and the oppressed and exploited serfs were the fundamental classes of feudal society. Capitalists who own plants and factories, and proletarians who work in such plants and factories, are the fundamental classes of capitalist society. The exploited classes through their labor create all social wealth, the lion’s share of which the exploiters none the less appropriate to themselves. The contradictions among classes lead inevitably to a struggle between them. The key position in the history of class society and class struggles is occupied by the proletariat. The struggle of slaves and slaveowners, and of serfs against feudal landowners, merely served to replace one form of exploitation by another. The proletarian revolution, abolishing the capitalist system and establishing socialism, ends private property in the means of production and thereby ends forever the exploitation of man by man.