a) Basic and Non-Basic Classes

p Those classes that are engendered by society’s dominant mode ot production axe its basic classes. Thus, the slave-owning mode nt production

p conditioned the existence of slaves and slaveowners, the feudal one that of peasants and landlords, and the capitalist system that of the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. The relations between the basic classes determine the essence of the society’s socio-economic system and the forms of 373 exploitation. When a society makes the transition from one formation to another, relations between the basic classes undergo radical changes. For the slave-owning system the typical relation between the basic classes was that the exploited (the slaves) were the property of the exploiters (the slave-owners). In feudal society, the landlord was no longer the peasants’ owner, but “was only entitled to their labour, to the obligatory performance of certain services"  [373•1 . With the transition to capitalism, non-economic coercion in relations between the classes had finally gone for good. The worker is legally free and independent of the capitalist, but having been deprived of the means of production he sells the capitalist his labour power and in this way becomes dependent on him.

There are no more than two basic classes in any class society_r but there are, besideg. other non^ basic classes. Their existence is determined by different socio-economic structures existing along with the dominant mode of production. For example, in slave-owning society, along with production based on slave labour, there were also handicrafts and small-scale farming. This gave rise to the non-basic classes of artisans and free peasants. Similarly, artisans, the emerging bourgeoisie and the proletariat associated with it, existed alongside the landlords and serfs under feudalism, and a class of petty urban and rural bourgeoisie exists along with the bourgeoisie and the proletariat under capitalism.

b) The Intelligentsia

p In capitalist society, besides the basic and nonbasic classes, there is another social stratum-the intelligentsia. Intellectuals, who are neither owners oi the means ot production nor direct producers of material goods, make up the intelligentsia, which includes researchers, engineers, writers, teachers, doctors, artists and some sections of white-collar workers.

p In capitalist society intellectuals and professionals come from various classes. Some of them serve capital by servicing capitalist production, and by elaborating and propagating the ideology which suits the bourgeoisie’s intersts. The other part of the intelligentsia in capitalist society throw in their lot with the working people: voice the latter’s interests and fight against the existing social system.

In socialist society the social nature of the intelligentsia changes. The overwhelming majority of the intellectuals take the side of the working class and join in building the new society. With society’s progress towards socialism, the ranks of the intelligentsia are replenished by representatives of the toiling classes, who help establish increasingly stronger links between the intelligentsia and the people, and centre the interests of the intelligentsia on building communist society.

c) The Estates

p Estates are social groups whose position in society is defined by a law specifying the rights and re$ponsiblities of each ot these groups. Since 375 estates are a form of class distinction, they presuppose the division of society into classes. In a society with several estates, the classes are related, as a rule, to different estates: the upper estates constitute the exploiting classes, while the lower estates make up the class of the exploited. At definite stages of historical development, however, a certain discrepancy emerges between class and estate divisions. For example, the bourgeoisie, which was quickly growing rich when feudalism was decaying, was a class of exploiters, yet it was not part of the upper estate. A division of society into estates was typical of the slave-owning and feudal socio-economic formations.

p Each estate has strictly defined rights and responsibilities, laid down and safeguarded by the state power. Thus, in tsarist Russia the nobility, considered as a “genteel” estate, was relieved of taxes and corporal punishment, and had the right to possess land and serfs, etc. The clergy also had special privileges: for instance, it was exempt from state duties and taxes.

p In contrast to the so-called upper estates, the lower estates (artisans, traders, peasants) had no privileges, but many duties. In particular, they paid various taxes and performed corvees. The right to belong to a particular estate was inherited.

Society’s division into estates disappears as it makes the transition to capitalism, since all citizens are then equal before the law. In fact, however, different classes occupy different positions 376 in society. Some of them (the bourgeoisie) hold power and use it to their own ends, while others (the proletariat and the peasantry) are deprived, as a rule, of the opportunity to express their will in the form of a law and are subjected to constant oppression on the part of the exploiting class and its state.

d) The So-Called “Middle Classes”

p While analysing the class structure of antagonistic society, the classics of Marxism-Leninism developed the notion of the middle classes, by which they meant the classes that hold an intermediate position between the basic classes. In feudal society it was the bourgeoisie that held an intermediate position between the feudal lords (or the aristocracy) and the working people. In bourgeois society, the middle class is represented by the urban and rural petty bourgeoisie, which is somewhere between the proletariat and the big capitalists. This class is made up of peasants, artisans and small traders. It is a specific feature of the middle classes that they lack a stable position in society and vacillate between the basic classes, alternately taking different sides.

p Describing the class of petty artisans and traders, Engels wrote, among other things: “Its intermediate position between the class of larger capitalists, traders and manufacturers, the bourgeoisie, properly so called, and the proletarian or industrial class, determines its character. Aspiring to the position of the first, the least adverse turn 377 of fortune hurls the individuals of this class down into the ranks of the second. ... Thus, eternally tossed about between the hope of entering the ranks of the wealthier class, and the fear of being reduced to the state of proletarians or even paupers; between the hope of promoting their interests by conquering a share in the direction of public affairs, and the dread of rousing, by illtimed opposition, the ire of a Government which disposes of their very existence, because it has the power of removing their best customers; possessed of small means, the insecurity of the possession of which is in the inverse ratio of the amount; this class is extremely vacillating in its views.”  [377•1 

p In recent years the problem of the middle classes has attracted the attention of bourgeois sociologists, who saw it as a factor supposedly refuting the Marxist-Leninist thesis of the class struggle and the revolution.

p By arbitrarily interpreting the concept “middle class”, bourgeois sociologists are trying to prove that capitalists and proletarians disappear in modern capitalist society, and that both these classes turn into one “middle class" which becomes the decisive force of modern society. Accordingly, they claim, capitalist society is changing into a society of the “middle class" with no class struggle and no dictatorship of the proletariat. “The history of industrialised societies,” writes Jessie 378 Bernard, “does seem to be in the direction of a ‘classless’ society, but not by way of the route predicted by Marx. ... The ‘classless’ society, then, is coming not through a transitional dictatorship of a proletariat, but by the enormous expansion of the middle class which tends to absorb those below it.”  [378•1 

p To define the middle class, bourgeois sociologists take various points of departure rather than the place people occupy in the system of social production or their relation to the means of production. The annual family income is often given as a criterion for placing people in the middleclass category. Moreover, the brackets of this income are so vaguely defined that both the capitalist and the worker may be included within the same middle class. Thus, for example, the US Department of the Treasury places all families with an annual income of between $3,200 and $100,000 in the middle class. As a result, this class covers, on the one hand, artisans, shopkeepers, white-collar office and commercial workers, wealthy farmers, skilled workers and, on the other, corporation executives, businessmen, landowners and other representatives of the big and middle bourgeoisie.

p A similar situation results when some other factor of the same kind is taken as the criterion 379 of the middle class. Some scholars, for instance, define the middle class on the basis of occupation, including in it technicians, shop assistants, teachers and small businessmen.

All these notions obviously have very little to do with science. The antithesis between the exploiters and the exploited, between the owners of the means of production and the people deprived of them, does not disappear, regardless of whether or not the businessmen who earn their living by exploiting the working people, and the workers who are exploited by capital, are included in one class. This being so, the talk about the disappearance of antagonistic classes under capitalism as they merge into a “middle class" is but another attempt at concealing the exploitative essence of capitalism and distracting the workers’ attention from the revolutionary struggle for changing the existing state of affairs.