Here I must give certain formulae.
Granted the conditions of the development of labor and the instruments
appropriated to it, the economic structure of society, that is to say,
the form of production of the immediate means of life, determines, on an
artificial field, _in the first place and directly_, all the rest of the
practical activity of those associated, and the variation of this
activity in the _processus_ which we call history, that is to say:--the
formation, the frictions, the struggles and the erosions of the
classes;--the corresponding regulations relative to law and
morality;--and the reasons and modes of subordination and subjection of
men toward men and the corresponding exercise of dominion and authority,
in fine, that which gives birth to the State and that which constitutes
it. It determines, _in the second place_, the tendency and in great
part, _in an indirect fashion_, the objects of imagination and of
thought in the production of art, religion and science.
The products of the _first_ and of the _second stage_, in consequence of
the interests which they create, the habits which they engender, the
persons whom they group and whose spirit and inclinations they specify,
tend to fix themselves and isolate themselves as independent entities;
and thence comes that empirical view, according to which different
independent factors, having an efficacy and a rhythmic movement of their
own, contribute to form the historic _processus_ and the social
configurations which successively result from it. It is the social
classes, in so far as they consist in differentiations of interests,
which unfold in definite ways and in forms of opposition (--whence come
the friction, the movement, the process and the progress--), which have
been the factors--if it was ever necessary to employ this
expression:--the real, proper and positive factors of history, from the
disappearance of primitive communism until to-day.
The variations of the underlying (economic) structure of society which,
at first sight, show themselves intuitively in the agitation of the
passions, develop consciously in the struggles against law and for law,
and become realized in the shaking and in the ruin of a definite
political organization, have in reality their adequate expression only
in the change in the relations which exist between the different social
classes. And these relations change with the change of the relations
which previously existed between the productivity of labor and the
(legal-political) conditions of co-ordination of those who co-operate in
production.
And finally, these connections between the productivity of labor and
the co-ordination of those who co-operate in it are changed with the
changing of the instruments--in the broad sense of the word--necessary
to production. The _processes_ and the progress of technique, as they
are the index, are also the condition of all the other _processus_ and
of all progress.
Society is for us a fact, which we cannot solve, unless it be by that
analysis which reduces the complex forms to the simpler forms, the
modern forms to the older forms: but that is to remain always,
nevertheless, in a society which exists. History is but the history of
society--that is to say, the history of the variations of human
co-operation, from the primitive horde down to the modern State, from
the immediate struggle against nature, by the means of a few very simple
tools, down to the present economic structure, which reduces itself to
these two poles; accumulated labor (capital) and living labor
(proletarians). To resolve the social _complexus_ into simple
individuals, and to reconstruct it afterwards by the acts of free and
voluntary thought; to construct, in fine, society with its reasons, is
to misunderstand the objective nature and the immanence of the historic
_processus_.
Revolutions, in the broadest sense of the word, and in the specific
sense of the destruction of a political organization, mark the real and
proper dates of historic epochs. Seen from afar, in their elements, in
their preparation and their effects, at long range, they may appear to
us as moments of a constant evolution, with minute variations; but
considered in themselves, they are definite and precise catastrophes,
and it is only as catastrophes that they are historic events.