SOCIAL CLASSES: THE ARTICULATION OF INSTANCES
Analysis of a social formation, which means clearing up the problems of the generation and circulation of the surplus within this formation, throws light on the question of “classes” and "social groups.” Each class-divided mode of production determines a pair of classes that are both opposed and united in this mode: stateclass and peasants in the tribute-paying mode, slaveowners and slaves in the.slavedwning mode, feudal lords and serfs in the feudal mode, bourgeois and proletarians in the capitalist mode.
Each of these classes is defined by the function it fulfils in production. This essential reference to the production process cannot be reduced to “ownership” of the means of production. The state-class in the tribute-paying mode does not own the land, which belongs to the community. Tlie feudal lord enjoys only dominium eminens over the soil, with the community retaining the right to use it. But both the state-class and the feudal lord organize and plan production, and in this way “dominate” the production process. The communal and simple commodity modes of production each determine a class of producers, which is in fact a social class, that is, a group defined by reference to the production process: the class of those peasants belonging to the village community, and the class of free petty-commodity producers (peasants and craftsmen). By reference to the circulation process of the surplus, when this takes the commodity form one can define another class, the merchants. When the surplus does not circulate in commodity form, it is the dominant class of the given mode that assumes this function by levying tribute through the agents of the state-class or by requiring the peasants to pay rent in kind directly to their lord.Since a formation is a group of modes of production, every society actually presents the picture of a complex group of more than two classes: feudal lords, serf-peasants, free peasants, commodity-producing craftsmen, and merchants in feudal Europe; imperial court and “gentry” officials, communal peasants, free petty craftsmen, wage-earning craftsmen employed by entrepreneurs to produce commodities, and merchants in imperial China; slaveowners and slaves, free or communal small peasants, and merchants in Classical Antiquity; bourgeois, proletarians, and ρetty-commodity producers in the modern capitalist world.
A society cannot be reduced to its infrastructure. The way the latter (in other words, its material life) is organized requires that certain political and ideological functions be carried out relevant to the dominant mode of production and the linking-together of the various modes that make up the given formation. These functions may be carried out directly by the classes that have been defined above, or else by social groups that are dependent upon them. The actual structure of the particular society will be strongly marked by these groups. The most important of them is the “bureaucracy,” which ensures the operation of the state: it has a civil branch (tribute collectors, police, and judges), and other branches (military, religious, etc.). But a bureaucracy defined in this way must not be confused (even in a broad sense) with the state-class of the tribute-paying mode, or the “state bourgeoisie” of state capitalism.5 The bureaucracy does not fulfil functions of direct domination of the production process, whereas the state-class directs this process itself, planning and organizing production, as in China and Egypt. The same is true of state capitalism, in which the state bourgeoisie directs the enterprises, deciding what is to be produced and how. The internal struggles between “technocrats” and “bureaucrats” in Russia reflect this distinction.
This example of conflict between a class and the group that is supposed to be in its service shows that there is still another problem to be clarified, namely, that of the relations between the different “instances” of a mode of production. Since society cannot be reduced to its infrastructure, how are the relations defined between the latter (the economic instance) and the superstructure of society (the politico-ideological instance)? These relations are not the same in all modes of production. Of course, whatever the mode of production may be, the economic instance is the determining one in the last analysis, if we accept the fact that material life conditions all other aspects of social life — in other words, that the level of development of.
the productive forces, by determining the relative size of the surplus, conditions the level of civi- Iization. Nevertheless, it is important to distinguish between this determination in the last analysis and the question of whether the economic or the politico-ideological instance is the dominant one in a given case.In all precapitalist modes of production the generation and employment of the surplus are transparently obvious. The producers can therefore agree to levy from themselves this surplus that they produce, and know that they produce, only if they are “alienated,” and believe such a levy to be necessary for the survival of the social and “natural” order. The politico-ideological instance thus necessarily assumes religious form and dominates social life. In cases of this kind, moreover, if the surplus levied is not used "correctly,” that is, so as to maintain, reproduce, and develop the state and civilization, if it is “squandered” by plundering invaders or by a “bad king,” the producers rise in revolt in order to impose a “just government,” since natural order and divine laws have been violated. When the maintenance and development of this social order require that specific social groups, such as the civil or military bureaucracy, or the theocracy in the service of the tributelevying state-class, shall function properly, then these groups occupy a central position in the political history of the given society. Empirical observers of this history who imagine that what they see is the outcome of ideological or political struggles are falling victim to the same alienation as the society that they are studying.
Under the capitalist mode of production, on the contrary, generation of the surplus takes place obscurely, opaquely. As Marx said, the main thing in Capital is its demonstration of how surplus value is transformed into profit. Narrow-minded “economists” have seen in this transformation a formal contradiction (the alleged contradiction between Volume I and Volume III of Capital}.
This ■simply shows that they are victims of economistic alienation. For the effect of the transformation shown by Marx is to cause the origin of profit in surplus value to vanish, and “capital,” a social relation, to appear as a “thing” — the means of production in which this social power is embodied. This “thing” is endowed with supernatural power, being held to be “productive.” The term “fetishism” that Marx applies to this process is highly appropriate. On the plane of appearances, under the capitalist mode, capital thus seems to be productive, just like labor. Wages seem to be the “fair” reward of labor (whereas in fact they represent the value of labor power), and profit to be compensation for “services” rendered by capital, (risk, saving through abstinence, etc.). Society is no longer in control of the evolution of its material life: the latter appears as the result of “laws” that dominate it in the same way as physical, natural laws. “Economic laws” — supply and demand in relation to commodities, labor, capital, etc. — bear witness to this alienation. This is why “economic science” emerges as an ideology — the ideology of “universal harmonies” — reducing the “laws of society” to the status of laws of nature that are independent of social organization. While the economic' instance is hidden in mystification, politics is demystified: it no longer takes the form of religion. The true religion of capitalist society is “econo- mism,” or, in everyday terms, the worship of money, the cult of consumption for its own sake without regard to needs. The entire crisis of present-day civilization lies here, insofar as this ideology shortens the time prospect of society, making it lose sight of its future. At the same time, politics becomes a domain where openly asserted rationality prevails. The social groups that carry out functions at the level of this instance are naturally and obviously in the sendee of society and never appear as its masters.Analysis of the way the instances are linked together complements that of social formations. Taken together, these analyses enable us to understand the dynamic of classes and social groups. Empirical analysis detects social “categories” in numbers that are arbitrary: two (the “rich” and the “poor”), or three (adding the “in-betweens”), or fifteen or twenty (occupational categories, or income brackets). Taking this method to extremes, one arrives at one category per individual, thus conforming to the individualistic requirement of the ideology that takes the place of social science.
,' The dynamic of society then becomes incomprehensible.
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