Breaking down the question
The question is set squarely within Marx's theory of history, so the candidate must first sketch that framework and then draw a precise contrast between two of its stages. In Karl Marx's scheme of historical materialism, human societies pass through a succession of modes of production — primitive communism, ancient (slave) society, feudalism, capitalism and, prospectively, socialism and communism — each defined by a distinctive way of producing and by a characteristic form of class antagonism.
The command "how are they different from each other" requires a structured comparison of the slave and feudal modes, not two separate descriptions. The differences must be drawn along clear axes: the dominant classes, the legal and social status of the direct producer, the manner in which surplus is extracted, the ownership of the means of production, and the form the class struggle takes. Both are class-divided, exploitative and pre-capitalist, but they exploit in different ways.
The wider treatment of how work has been socially organised across modes of production is developed in the note on the social organisation of work.
How to approach it
Begin with a brief statement of the materialist premise — that the mode of production shapes the social order and that history advances through class struggle as productive forces outgrow existing relations of production. Locate slave and feudal society as two successive antagonistic modes.
Then organise the comparison thematically. Contrast the principal classes (master and slave against lord and serf); the status of the producer (the slave as property, the serf as a legally subordinate but not owned person); the mechanism of surplus extraction (direct ownership of the labourer against bondage to the land and obligations of rent and service); the relation to the means of production; and the form of exploitation and resistance. Close with a note on the transition — how the internal contradictions of the slave mode gave way to feudalism, and feudalism in turn to capitalism.
Model answer
In Marx's materialist conception of history, the foundation of every society is its mode of production — the combination of the forces of production (tools, techniques, labour) with the relations of production (the way ownership of the means of production divides people into classes). Each historical epoch is characterised by a dominant mode and a corresponding antagonism between an owning class that appropriates the social surplus and a producing class that creates it. Slave society and feudal society are two of these successive antagonistic modes, both pre-capitalist and both exploitative, yet organised on distinct principles. Comparing them clarifies the specific logic of exploitation in each.
Slave society, which Marx associated above all with the ancient world of Greece and Rome, rests on the direct ownership of the labourer. The two great classes are the masters and the slaves. The slave is not merely a subordinate worker but a piece of property, a "speaking instrument", owned outright by the master and bought and sold as a commodity. The means of production and the producer alike belong to the master. Surplus is extracted in the most direct manner possible: since the slave is owned, the whole of what the slave produces beyond bare subsistence accrues to the master. The slave has no legal personality, no rights, and no independent household economy; exploitation is total and coercion overt.
Feudal society, which Marx located in medieval Europe following the decline of the ancient world, rests on a different arrangement. Its principal classes are the feudal lords, who own the land, and the serfs or peasants, who work it. The serf, crucially, is not owned as property in the way the slave is. The serf is a person with a household, tools and customary rights, bound not by outright ownership but by ties to the land and by obligations of dependence upon the lord. The dominant means of production is landed property, and the relation is one of bondage rather than chattel ownership.
From this flows the central difference in the mode of surplus extraction. In slavery the master appropriates the surplus by owning the producer entirely. In feudalism the lord appropriates surplus through rent — in the form of labour on the lord's demesne, or of a portion of the produce, or later of money — extracted from a producer who works his own holding but owes dues and services fixed by custom and enforced by the lord's authority. The serf therefore retains a partial control over the process of production and a stake in his own subsistence plot that the slave wholly lacks.
The status of the direct producer thus differs sharply. The slave is a thing, without freedom or standing; the serf is an unfree but juridically recognised person, tied to the soil and subordinated to the lord yet possessing customary protections and a family economy. Exploitation under slavery is unlimited and rests on naked force; under feudalism it is bounded by custom, mutual obligation and the ideological cement of religion and personal loyalty, which soften and legitimise the relation of dependence.
The form of class antagonism differs accordingly. The characteristic conflict of the ancient world was between freeman and slave, expressed in slave revolts such as that of Spartacus; the characteristic conflict of the feudal world was between lord and serf, expressed in peasant risings against dues, services and enclosures. In each case, for Marx, the struggle between the exploiting and exploited classes is the motor that eventually dissolves the mode of production.
Finally, the two modes stand in a definite historical sequence. The slave mode, weakened by its own contradictions — the inefficiency and unrest of forced labour, the exhaustion of conquest as a source of slaves — gave way to feudalism, in which serfdom bound labour to the land under a decentralised structure of manorial authority. Feudalism, in turn, was undermined by the growth of towns, trade and money, giving rise to capitalism and the modern antagonism of bourgeoisie and proletariat.
In sum, both slave and feudal societies are class-divided, exploitative and pre-capitalist, but they differ fundamentally in the status of the producer (owned chattel against bonded peasant), in the ownership of the means of production (the labourer himself against landed estate), and in the method of surplus extraction (total appropriation through ownership against rent and service secured through customary bondage). These differences make them two distinct stages in Marx's account of the development of human society.
Examiner's perspective
The examiner is testing command of Marx's stage theory and the ability to compare two modes precisely. Weak answers describe slavery and feudalism in separate paragraphs without contrasting them; the top band belongs to scripts that hold the two side by side along explicit axes — classes, status of the producer, ownership, and above all the mechanism of surplus extraction.
Accurate use of the vocabulary of historical materialism — mode of production, relations of production, surplus, class antagonism — signals genuine understanding, as does a closing remark on the transition between the modes. Illustrations such as the slave revolts of antiquity and peasant risings of the middle ages add texture. The commonest error is to blur the crucial distinction that the slave is owned outright while the serf is bonded but not owned.