In his 1859 Preface to An Introduction to the Critique of Political Economy, Marx gives a brilliantly concise formulation of the dialectical and materialist conception of history:
“In the social production of their life, men enter into definite relations that are indispensable and independent of their will, relations of production which correspond to a definite stage of development of their material productive forces. The sum total of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation, on which rises a legal and political superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness.

The mode of production of material life conditions the social, political and intellectual life process in general. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but, on the contrary, their social being that determines their consciousness.

At a certain stage of their development, the material productive forces of society come in conflict with the existing relations of production, or — what is but a legal expression for the same thing — with the property relations within which they have been at work hitherto. From forms of development of the productive forces these relations turn into their fetters.

Then begins an epoch of social revolution. With the change of the economic foundation the entire immense superstructure is more or less rapidly transformed. In considering such transformations a distinction should always be made 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, aesthetic or philosophic — in short, ideological forms in which men become conscious of this conflict and fight it out. Just as our opinion of an individual is not based on what he thinks of himself, so can we not judge of such a period of transformation by its own consciousness; on the contrary, this consciousness must be explained rather from the contradictions of material life, from the existing conflict between the social productive forces and the relations of production.

No social order ever perishes before all the productive forces for which there is room in it have developed; and new, higher relations of production never appear before the material conditions of their existence have matured in the womb of the old society itself. Therefore mankind always sets itself only such tasks as it can solve; since, looking at the matter more closely, it will always be found that the task itself arises only when the material conditions of its solution already exist or are at least in the process of formation.
In broad outlines Asiatic, ancient, feudal, and modern bourgeois modes of production can be designated as progressive epochs in the economic formation of society. The bourgeois relations of production are the last antagonistic form of the social process of production — antagonistic not in the sense of individual antagonisms, but of one arising form the social conditions of life of the individuals; at the same time the productive forces developing in the womb of bourgeois society create the material conditions for the solution of that antagonism. This social formation brings, therefore, the prehistory of society to a close.”

In this-short space is compressed an enormous wealth of ideas, at least a few of which call for some explanatory remarks.

What is meant by relations of production and forces of production? The former refers to the economic relations among people engaged in production (also in distribution, which includes exchange, i.e., buying and selling). To have a practical idea of this, just look around. In a factory you find ten or hundred or a thousand workers working on plant and machinery provided by the owner, who supervises the process of production either directly or through his paid representatives – supervisors, engineers, managers. The relation between the workers on one hand and the owner(s) on the other is a production relation: one of exploitation and struggle. The relation among workers themselves is also a production relation: one of camaraderie. In a class society production relations thus take the form of class relations. These relations together constitute the economic structure (also called “base”) of society on which rises the political cultural “superstructure”. A feudal economy thus gives us the monarchy, a capitalist economy — the parliamentary system. All such state forms serve to systematise the rule of exploiting classes over exploited ones (e.g., of feudal lords over peasants, of capitalists over wage-workers); and in each case we have a corresponding value system, socio-cultural discourse etc. (“feudal values”, “bourgeois culture” — as we commonly call them).

The term ‘productive forces’ on the other hand covers means of production (such as machines, production sites and factories, instruments of labour from hammers and ploughs to tractors and computers), production techniques or technology, and labouring people with requisite knowledge and skill (peasants, workers, artisans etc.) The forces and relations of production together constitute the “mode of production” (feudal, bourgeois etc.)

Challenging the dominant idealist conception of history which saw historical changes as resulting from changes in the realm of ideas, here Marx emphasises the primacy of the “base” over “superstructure”, of people’s material life conditions over their social consciousness. But this should not be understood in a one-sided way. As Engels explained in a letter to Joseph Bloch dated 21-22 September, 1890, “... the ultimately determining factor in history is the production and reproduction of real life. Neither Marx nor I have ever asserted more than this. Hence if somebody twists this into saying that the economic factor is the only determining one, he transforms that proposition into a meaningless, absurd phrase. The economic situation is the basis, but the various elements of the superstructure — political forms of the class struggle and its results, such as constitutions established by the victorious class after a successful battle, etc., juridical forms, and especially the reflections of all these real struggles in the brains of the participants, political, legal, philosophical theories, religious views and their further development into systems of dogmas — also exercise their influence upon the course of the historical struggles and in many cases determine their form in particular.” (Marx and Engels, Selected Correspondence, pp 394 -95)

When does society move forward from one mode of production to another, higher mode? At a point when, from being “forms of development of productive forces”, production relations “turn into their fetters”. What happens is this. In the initial stage of a new mode of production (say feudalism following slavery) the correspondence between the “forces” and “relations” prevails over an inherent conflict, which however gradually comes to the surface and reveals itself as the principal aspect in this “unity of opposites” in proportion as the room for continued development of the “forces” within that mode, that social order, gets exhausted. Then, and not before that (see above: “No social order ever ... itself”), begins an “epoch” (mark the protractedness implied here) of revolution. Thus it was that bourgeois revolutions in Europe took place when the old feudal production relations (typically characterised by lords and serfs, guild-masers and journeyman artisans) proved too narrow for the tremendous growth of productive forces, such as plant and machinery geared to mass production. A similar situation is ripening today, and that in a particular form, as Marx observed in Capital:

“One capitalist always kills many. Hand in hand with this centralisation, or this expropriation of many capitalists by few, develop, on an ever extending scale, the co-operative form of the labour process, the conscious technical application of science, the methodical cultivation of the soil, the transformation of the instruments of labour into instruments of labour only usable in common, the economising of all means of production by their use as the means of production of combined, socialised labour, the entanglement of all peoples in the net of the world market, and with this, the international character of the capitalistic regime. Along with the constantly diminishing number of the magnates of capital, who usurp and monopolise all advantages of this process of transformation, grows the mass of misery, oppression, slavery, degradation, exploitation; but with this too grows the revolt of the working, class, a class always increasing in numbers, and disciplined, united, organised by the very mechanism of the process of capitalist production itself. The monopoly of capital becomes a fetter upon the mode of production, which has sprung up and flourished along with, and under it. Centralisation of the means of production and socialisation of labour at last reach a point where they become incompatible with their capitalist integument. Thus integument is burst asunder. The knell of capitalist private property sounds. The expropriators are expropriated.” (Vol. 1, pp. 714-15)

As we shall see later, Lenin took this as the point of departure for his thesis on imperialism and showed that the latter constitutes the highest stage of capitalism, and the eve of socialist revolution. Just as the nascent and at the time progressive capitalist class tore asunder the feudal fetters and established the rule of capital, so will the proletariat — representing the socialisation of production — demolish the shell or straitjacket of monopoly capitalism and usher in socialism.

No less significant is the distinction Marx makes between two kinds of transformations: the one in economic structure (e.g., that accomplished in Lenin’s Russia) which is quite tangible and accurately measurable; and the other in ideological superstructure, which is more subtle, delicate and protracted. Here Marx anticipates, it would seem, Lenin and Mao who in their own ways drew attention to the special importance of cultural revolution.

If these are the general laws of motion of human society, in what concrete forms have they expressed themselves on a world scale? Marx gives us a general outline (variations in specific cases being presumed) of the major stages (“epochs”) society has so far passed through. Among these, we are familiar with feudal and bourgeois modes of production. As for the categories “Asiatic” and “Ancient”, the former generally refers to social formations characterised by communal (as distinct from private) ownership of land; self-sufficient and largely secluded village economies based on integration of handicrafts and agriculture; vast, state-run irrigation networks etc; found very early in India, China, Java and many other lands (partly also in Russia). “Ancient” refers in the main to the ancient Greco-Roman societies based on slavery. However, it should be remembered that [a] the pre-feudal stages have been described in more ways than one both by Marx and Engels and their followers (to get a broad idea of the whole thing, see Lenin’s lucid narration in The state as excerpted below), and [b] different modes often coexist or overlap, giving rise to mixed types like semi-feudalism in India.

The term “prehistory” is worth pondering over. The implication seems to be that the true history of humans begins in full glory only in socialism — with society at last rid of age-old antagonisms, with people no longer branded by class stigma; and viewed from that vantage point, the entire range from slavery to capitalism is but a prehistory of antagonistic production relations.

Well, for now only this much on the genesis and general principles of Marxism. We must thoroughly grasp the basics and for that we must read and re-read the classics. But that is not enough. We must learn to apply these in understanding our own society, our own milieu. We must be good at what Lenin called “concrete analysis of concrete conditions.” Take a particular phenomenon or process, see how it evolved historically, and in which direction it is moving. Examine its various dimensions — say economic, cultural, political, etc. Study its internal contradictions and multiple interconnections with other phenomena and processes surrounding it. Very briefly, this is our method of combining the general with the particular.

A concomitant method is the combination of theory with practice, as Mao used to stress:

“Discover the truth through practice, and again through practice verify and develop the truth. Start from perceptual knowledge and actively develop it into rational knowledge; then start from rational knowledge and actively guide revolutionary practice to change both the subjective and the objective world. Practice, knowledge, again practice, and again knowledge. This form repeats itself in endless cycles, and with each cycle the content of practice and knowledge rises to a higher level.”