GUIDE TO THE PHILOSOPHY 1938 - 1947.pdf - Rare Books at ...

670 XTHIC8 AND POLITIC!: THE MODERNS
Class Basis of Society. (a) During the period of
recorded history, the relationship between men and men
has remained fundamentally the same. This relationship
is one of exploitation, and, because of it, society is divided
into two antagonistic classes. But though it remains the
same in fact, this relationship of exploitation assumes a
variety of different guises. By reference to the variations
in its form Marx distinguishes three main phases in the
historical development of societies. These are the phases
exemplified respectively by slave-holding societies, feudal
societies, and capitalist societies. In the first two, the relation
of exploitation is clear. Whether it assumes the form
of the relation of owners to slaves, or of feudal lords to
serfs, it is unconccalcdly a relation between those who
own the raw materials of wealth and as a consequence
possess economic and political power, and those who,
whether as slaves or as serfs, transform these raw materials
into usable commodities. This second class pays to the
first a tribute which takes the form of what Marx calls
"surplus value", in return for the permission to operate
the raw "materials which the first class owns, and receives
as payment for its labour only a bare subsistence wage.
Under Capitalism the relation between the two classes
remains fundamentally unaltered, but it is cut across and
obscured by a miscellany of confusing facts the feet, for
is for sale rather than for im-
example, that production
mediate use, the introduction of the middleman as a link
between producer and consumer, the growth of political
freedom symbolized by the concession of the vote to the
exploited classes. All these developments obscure what,
Marx insists, remains the fundamental fact in every
capitalist society, namely, that most men are only allowed
to work on condition that they pay tribute to the
owners of the means of production.
f Society, (3) Thirdly, that which
development from one phase of society to
another is a change in the relationship between men