Marxism and Problems of Linguistics - From Marx to Mao

sists not in serving one class to the detriment of other classes,but in equally serving the entire society, all the classes ofsociety. This in fact explains why a language may equallyserve both the old, moribund system and the new, risingsystem; both the old base and the new base; both the exploitersand the exploited.It is no secret to anyone that the Russian language servedRussian capitalism and Russian bourgeois culture before theOctober Revolution just as well as it now serves the socialistsystem and socialist culture of Russian society.The same must be said of the Ukrainian, Byelorussian,Uzbek, Kazakh, Georgian, Armenian, Estonian, Latvian,Lithuanian, Moldavian, Tatar, Azerbaijanian, Bashkirian,Turkmenian and other languages of the Soviet nations; theyserved the old, bourgeois system of these nations just aswell as they serve the new, socialist system.It cannot be otherwise. Language exists, language has beencreated precisely in order to serve society as a whole, as ameans of intercourse between people, in order to be commonto the members of society and constitute the single languageof society, serving members of society equally, irrespective oftheir class status. A language has only to depart from thisposition of being a language common to the whole people, ithas only to give preference and support to some one socialgroup to the detriment of other social groups of the society,and it loses its virtue, ceases to be a means of intercourse betweenthe people of the society, and becomes the jargon ofsome social group, degenerates and is doomed to disappear.In this respect, while it differs in principle from the superstructure,language does not differ from instruments of production,from machines, let us say, which are as indifferent6