In the social production of their existence, men inevitably
enter into definite relations, which are independent of their
will, namely relations of production appropriate to a given
stage in the development of their material forces of
production. The totality of these relations of production
constitutes the economic structure of society, the real
foundation, on which arises a legal and political
superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of
social consciousness. The mode of production of material life
conditions the general process of social, political and
intellectual life. It is not the consciousness of men that
determines their existence, but their social existence that
determines their consciousness. At a certain stage of
development, the material productive forces of society come
into conflict with the existing relations of production
or—this merely expresses the same thing in legal
terms—with the property relations within the framework
of which they have operated hitherto. From forms of
development of the productive forces these relations turn into
their fetters. Then begins an era of social revolution. The
changes in the economic foundation lead sooner or later to the
transformation of the whole immense superstructure. In
studying such transformations it is always necessary to
distinguish between the material transformation of the
economic conditions of production, which can be determined
with the precision of natural science, and the legal,
political, religious, artistic or philosophic—in short,
ideological forms in which men become conscious of this
conflict and fight it out. Just as one does not judge an
individual by what he thinks about himself, so one cannot
judge such a period of transformation by its consciousness,
but, on the contrary, this consciousness must be explained
from the contradictions of material life, from the conflict
existing between the social forces of production and the
relations of production. No social order is ever destroyed
before all the productive forces for which it is sufficient
have been developed, and new superior relations of production
never replace older ones before the material conditions for
their existence have matured within the framework of the old
society. Mankind thus inevitably sets itself only such tasks
as it is able to solve, since closer examination will always
show that the problem itself arises only when the material
conditions for its solution are already present or at least in
the course of formation.
