These different classes may be rigorously separated.  In ancient India they range from the brahman to the sudra:  in the Europe of the Middle Ages, from the Emperor and the Pope to the feudatory and the vassal, down to the artisan, and an individual cannot pass from one class into another, as his social condition is determined solely by the hazard of birth.  Classes may lose their legal character, as happened in Europe and America after the French Revolution, and exceptionally there may be an instance of an individual passing from one class into another, analogously to the endosmose and exosmose of molecules, or, to use the phrase of M. Dumont, by a sort of “social capillarity.”  But, in any case, these different classes exist as an assured reality and they resist every juridical attempt at leveling as long as the fundamental reason for their differentiation remains.

It is Karl Marx who, better than any one else, has proved the truth of this theory by the mass of sociological observations which he has drawn from societies under the most diverse economic conditions.

The names (of the classes), the circumstances and phenomena of their hostile contact and conflict may vary with the varying phases of social evolution, but the tragic essence of history always appears in the antagonism between those who hold the monopoly of the means of production—­and these are few—­and those who have been robbed (expropriated) of them—­and these are the great majority.

Warriors and shepherds in the primitive societies, as soon as first, family and then individual ownership of land has superseded the primitive collectivism; patricians and plebeians—­feudatories and vassals—­nobles and common people—­bourgeoisie and proletariat; these are so many manifestations of one and the same fact—­the monopoly of wealth on one side, and productive labor on the other.

Now, the great importance of the Marxian law—­the struggle between classes—­consists principally in the fact that it indicates with great exactness just what is in truth the vital point of the social question and by what method its solution may be reached.

As long as no one had shown on positive evidence the economic basis of the political, juridical and moral life, the aspirations of the great majority for the amelioration of social conditions aimed vaguely at the demand and the partial conquest of some accessory instrumentality, such as freedom of worship, political suffrage, public education, etc.  And certainly, I have no desire to deny the great utility of these conquests.

But the sancta sanctorum always remained impenetrable to the eyes of the masses, and as economic power continued to be the privilege of a few, all the conquests and all the concessions had no real basis, separated, as they were, from the solid and fecund foundation which alone can give life and abiding power.