In the social production of their life men enter into definite relations that are indispensible 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 productions 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 consiousness.
The mode of production of material life conditions social, political and intellectual life in general . It is not theconsciousness 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 cnflict with the existing relations of production, or- what is by a legal expressions 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 fitters.
Then begins an epoch f social revolution . with the chage of the economic foundation the entire immense superstructure is more or less rapidly transformed. In cosidering such transformations
a distinction should always be made between the material transformation of the economic conditions of production, which can be determined with 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 contrdictions of material life, from the existing conflict between the social productive forces and the relations of production.
