p In order to explain the people’s role as the makers of history we must first be clear about what we mean by the people.

p The people is not something which is immutable, that stands outside of history and is fixed once and for all. Nor is it a grey, disorderly “mob”, “the rabble”, hostile to any civilisation and progress, as the ideologists of the exploiting classes claim.

p The people above all arc those who work; in an antagonistic class society they are the exploited. In slave society they were chiefly the slaves, and in feudal society they were the serfs and artisans. In capitalist society the people include the working class, the peasants, the working 226 intellectuals and other groups which contribute to social progress.

p In an antagonistic class society the people constitute the majority of the population, but not the entire population. In contemporary capitalist society, for example, opposite the people stand the reactionary imperialist upper strata.

In socialist society the entire population—the working class, peasants and intelligentsia—are the people.