p The history of antagonistic class societies is the history of the class struggle. “Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guild-master and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended, either 241 in a revolutionary re-constitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes.”  [241•* 

p The struggle of antagonistic classes is irreconcilable because of the basic differences in their economic and political status in society. For countless centuries the working people, whether slaves, peasants or industrial workers, have been brutally exploited by the ruling classes and it is natural that they should struggle against oppression and strive for a free and happy life.

p A class society has basic and non-basic classes. The basic classes are those connected with the mode of production prevailing in society. In an antagonistic class society they are, on the one hand, the class owning the means of production and, on the other, the oppressed class standing in opposition to it. Slaves and slave-owners in slave-owning society, peasants and feudal lords under feudalism, the proletariat and the bourgeoisie under capitalism—these are the basic classes in antagonistic societies.

p Antagonistic societies also have non-basic classes which are not directly connected with the prevailing mode of production (free artisans in slave-owning society, peasants in capitalist society and others), and also various social groups (the intelligentsia, clergy and others).

p The class struggle in an antagonistic society takes place above all between the basic social classes. The non-basic classes and social groups usually have no line of their own in this struggle, vacillate and in the long run side with one of the basic antagonistic classes and defend its interests.

p The class struggle is a mighty driving force, the source of development of an antagonistic class society. This struggle determines the development of an antagonistic society both in relatively “peaceful” periods and particularly in periods of revolutionary storms and upheavals.

p In capitalist conditions the class struggle is an important factor in the development of the productive forces. Were it not for the struggle of the workers, for example, the capitalists would be less concerned with the development of technology. It would be much simpler and cheaper for them 242 to extract profit by such tried and tested methods as prolonging the working day and cutting wages. But the stubborn struggle of the workers, in addition to competition between the capitalists, forces the latter to introduce new machinery and advanced technology. “...Almost all the new inventions were the result of collisions between the worker and the employer.... After each new strike of any importance, there appeared a new machine,” Marx wrote.  [242•* 

p The class struggle is even more important in the political life of an antagonistic society. The struggle of the working class in the present period, for example, undermines the positions of imperialism. It is an important obstacle in the way of the imperialists’ aggressive schemes, of their efforts to crush the national liberation movement, truncate or eliminate democratic freedoms and thereby retard society’s progressive development.

p Without the class struggle there would be no social progress. Society’s progressive development is usually taster, the more stubborn and organised is the struggle of the exploited against the exploiters. The social revolution, the highest form of the class struggle, plays a particularly great part in social progress and results in the destruction of the old and the establishment of a jiew, more progressive social system.

p The history of class-divided societies is one of struggle between the exploited and the exploiters.

p There was a bitter struggle between the slaves and the slave-owners in slave-owning society which took on the most diverse forms from breaking tools to mass uprisings, like that led by Spartacus (first century B. C.) involving more than 100,000 slaves.

p The class struggle intensified under feudalism, where the peasants and the feudal lords were the main contending classes, and the urban working people, specifically the artisans, often sided with the peasants. Uprisings turned into peasant wars in which hundreds of thousands of people were involved. These wars often spread over vast territories and lasted for many years, like Wat Tyler’s Revolt in England (14th century)-, the Jacquerie in France (14th-15th 243 centuries), the Peasant War in Germany (16th century), the uprisings headed by Bolotnikov and Razin (17th century) and Pugachev (18th century) in Russia, the Taiping Rebellion in China (19th century), and so on.

p The uprisings of the oppressed in slave-owning and feudal societies, however, could not put an end to exploitation, because the conditions were not yet ripe for this. The level of production did not permit the shift to a system without exploitation and oppression. These uprisings were spontaneous and at times the rebels had no clear idea either of the common aims of the struggle or the ways of achieving them and went into battle either under a religious banner or with slogans demanding a “good monarch”. They had no progressive theory to illuminate their road, nor their own party. As we shall see later, these conditions are only created under capitalism.

Nevertheless, the slave and peasant uprisings played a big and progressive part in history. The slaves undermined the mainstays of slave-owning society, and the serfs were one of the principal forces which brought about the fall or feudalism and the transition to the more progressive capitalist system.