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been history, since there were the institutions of feudalism, and in these institutions of
feudalism we find quite different relations of production from those of bourgeois society,
which the economists try to pass off as natural and as such, eternal.
Feudalism also had its proletariat serfdom, which continued all the germs of the
bourgeoisie. Feudal production also had two antagonistic elements which are likewise
designated by the name of the good side and the bad side of feudalism, irrespective of the
fact that it is always the bad side that in the end triumphs over the good side. It is the bad
side that produces the movement which makes history, by providing a struggle. If, during
the epoch of the domination of feudalism, the economists, enthusiastic over the knightly
virtues, the beautiful harmony between rights and duties, the patriarchal life of the towns,
the prosperous condition of domestic industry in the countryside, the development of
industry organized into corporations, guilds and fraternities, in short, everything that
constitutes the good side of feudalism, had set themselves the problem of eliminating
everything that cast a shadow on the picture serfdom, privileges, anarchy what
would have happened? All the elements which called forth the struggle would have been
destroyed, and the development of the bourgeoisie nipped in the bud. One would have set
oneself the absurd problem of eliminating history.
After the triumph of the bourgeoisie, there was no longer any question of the good or the
bad side of feudalism. The bourgeoisie took possession of the productive forces it had
developed under feudalism. All the old economic forms, the corresponding civil relations,
the political state which was the official expression of the old civil society, were
smashed.
Thus, feudal production, to be judged properly, must be considered as a mode of
production founded on antagonism. It must be shown how wealth was produced within
this antagonism, how the productive forces were developed at the same time as class
antagonisms, how one of the classes, the bad side, the drawback of society, went on
growing until the material conditions for its emancipation had attained full maturity. Is
not this as good as saying that the mode of production, the relations in which productive
forces are developed, are anything but eternal laws, but that they correspond to a definite
development of men and of their productive forces, and that a change in men's productive
forces necessarily brings about a change in their relations of production? As the main
thing is not to be deprived of the fruits of civilization, of the acquired productive forces,
the traditional forms in which they were produced must be smashed. From this moment,
the revolutionary class becomes conservative.
The bourgeoisie begins with a proletariat which is itself a relic of the proletariat of feudal
times. In the course of its historical development, the bourgeoisie necessarily develops its
antagonistic character, which at first is more or less disguised, existing only in a latent
state. As the bourgeoisie develops, there develops in its bosom a new proletariat, a
modern proletariat; there develops a struggle between the proletarian class and the
bourgeoisie class, a struggle which, before being felt, perceived, appreciated, understood,
avowed, and proclaimed aloud by both sides, expresses itself, to start with, merely in
partial and momentary conflicts, in subversive acts. On the other hand, if all the members
of the modern bourgeoisie have the same interests inasmuch as they form a class as
against another class, they have opposite, antagonistic interests inasmuch as they stand
face-to-face with one another. This opposition of interests results from the economic
conditions of their bourgeois life. From day to day it has becomes clearer that the
production relations in which the bourgeoisie moves have not a simple, uniform
character, but a dual character; that in the selfsame relations in which wealth is produced,
poverty is also produced; that in the selfsame relations in which there is a development of
the productive forces, there is also a force producing repression; that these relations
produce bourgeois wealth i.e., the wealth of the bourgeois class only by continually
annihilating the wealth of the individual members of this class and by producing an
ever-growing proletariat.
The more the antagonistic character comes to light, the more the economists, the
scientific representatives of bourgeois production, find themselves in conflict with their
own theory; and different schools arise.
We have the fatalist economists, who in their theory are as indifferent to what they call
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