p Many bourgeois sociologists claim that, in modern capitalist society, classes and class distinctions have disappeared, and that, nowadays, one 387 should talk not of class distinctions, but of distinctions between people. They assert that social differences are gradually disappearing and only individual distinctions remain. In particular, they draw this conclusion by alleging that, since many workers have bought shares, they have become coowners of industrial enterprises with the result that the workers’ interests completely coincide with those of the capitalists, while capitalism itself has become people’s capitalism.

p The hard facts show, however, that capitalism has always been and still is anti-popular, and that the interests of the monopolies and of the working masses can never coincide, because they are diametrically opposite. The fact that some workers buy shares does not change the overall picture. According to statistics, some 98 to 99 per cent of all workers have no shares at all, while even those who have a few shares, are naturally in no position to exert any influence on the company’s affairs. The ones who control the means of production and the output are the capitalists who own the bulk of shares.

p There is no doubt that in the industrialised capitalist countries the objective conditions are ripe for the abolition of antagonistic classes, but they cannot wither away under capitalism, where private ownership of the means of production holds sway.

p What are the conditions necessary for classes to disappeear and what form should this process take?

p Society will be divided into classes as long as social labour yields output that barely exceeds 388 the most basic means of subsistence and until this labour consumes all, or almost all, the time of the bulk of the members of society. Besides the nation’s majority, totally occupied with the production of material values, there emerges a class which is free from direct productive labour and is engaged in politics, law, science, arts, and the like.

p With the attainment of a higher level of development of the productive forces, when they can produce sufficient material goods to meet the requirements of all members of society, the existence of classes is no longer a necessity, since it not only discourages social progress, but even retards it. Under such conditions, the division of people into classes can be eliminated. The abolition of classes “presupposes, therefore, the development of production carried out to a degree at which appropriation of the means of production and of the products, and, with this, of political domination, of the monopoly of culture, and of intellectual leadership by a particular class of society, has become not only superfluous but economically, politically, intellectually, a hindrance to development. This point is now reached.”  [388•1 

p Thus, one of the conditions for the disappearance of classes is a high level of development of the productive forces, but one such condition is not enough in itself. The existence of classes is associated not only with a definite level of 389 development of the productive force, but also with definite production relations determined by this level, in particular with production relations based on the private ownership of the means of production. In order to do away with antagonistic classes, private property must be abolished. “The abolition of classes,” Lenin wrote, “means placing all citizens on an equal footing with regard to the means of production belonging to society as a whole. It means giving all citizens equal opportunities of working on the publicly-owned means of production, on the publicly-owned land, at the publicly-owned factories, and so forth.”  [389•1 

Certain other conditions are also required for the complete abolition of classes. Quite substantial differences took shape, accumulated and consolidated on the basis of the economic and political distinctions between classes over many centuries. They concern, in particular, differences in education, morals, aesthetics, and so forth. It is the triumph of communism that is needed for these differences to be wiped out. To sum up, the abolition of classes is linked with socialist revolution and the building of communist society.