PROGRESS PUBLISHERS
Moscow
[1] __TRANSL__ Translated from the Russian by David SkvirskyB. A<DAHACbEB HAYHHblfl KOMMYHH3M
Ha OIWAUUCKOM xsbiKe
PUBLISHERS' NOTE
This book offers a brief systematic outline of the fundamentals of scientific communism, reviewing its emergence and development, the three cardinal tasks in the building of communism---the creation of the material and technical basis, the formation of communist social relations and the moulding of the new man--- and the present-day revolutionary process.
__COPYRIGHT__ First printing 1967CONTENTS
THE THEORY OF SCIENTIFIC COMMUNISM
9
Chapter 1
FROM A UTOPIA TO A SCIENCE
13
1. Utopian Socialism and Its Place in History.......13
Utopians of the 18th Century---15. Great Utopian Socialists of the 19th Century- 18. Russian Utopian Socialists 2.'!. The Historical Place of Utopian Socialism 25.
2. The Evolution of Socialism from a Utopia to a Science. Karl
Marx and Frederick Engels.............28
Inevitability of the Revolutionary Replacement of Capitalism by Socialism---29. Essence of Man and the Trend of His Development---31. Emancipation of the Working Man---the Historic Mission of the Working Class--34. Social Processes Can Be Guided---37. Unity of Theory and Revolutionary Action- -40.
3. The Leninist Phase of Scientific Communism.......-44
Creative Nature of Scientific Communism 44. Theoretician of Scientific Communism-, 4(». Lenin's Theory of Socialist Revolution---47. Leader of the World Communist Movement---49. Fighter for the Purity of Marxism 50. Development of Scientific Communism After Lenin 52.
Chapter 2
NATURE OF THE MODERN EPOCH. GROWTH
OF THE SOCIALIST SYSTEM INTO THE DECISIVE
FACTOR OF WORLD DEVELOPMENT
54
1. The Modern Epoch................54
Main Content of the Modern Epoch---55. October Revolution,
[3]
Beginning of the Present Epoch---57. The World Revolutionary
Process and Its Main Driving Forces---59.
2. Emergence and Development of the World Socialist System . . 61 Formation of the World System of Socialism---61. New Type of Relations Between States---61. Closer Unity---63.
3. Decisive Force of World Development..........64
Basic Contradiction of the Present Epoch---64. The Revolutionising Force of Example-67. World Socialism and the Working-Class Movement---71. World Socialism and the National Liberation Movement---72. World Socialism and the Struggle for Peace---74.
Chapter 3
CONTEMPORARY CAPITALISM AND THE REVOLUTIONARY
WORKING-CLASS MOVEMENT
1. The Crisis of World Capitalism............76
The New, Third Stage of the General Crisis---77. State-Monopoly Regulation and the Working Class---80. Capitalism Versus Man---84.
2. Principal Features of the Revolutionary Struggle of the Working Class ...................89
Scale of the Strike Struggle -89. Combining Economic and Political Forms of Struggle---91. Enlargement of the Social Basis---92. Indissoluble Bond Between Democratic and Socialist Tasks---93. Closing the Split Is a Major Task of the Working-Class Movement---95.
3. Ways and Means of Accomplishing the Socialist Revolution 96
4. Present-Day Communist Movement..........10.1
At the Head of the Forces of Revolution---101. Strategy and Tactics---103. General Line---106.
Chapter 4
NATIONAL LIBERATION REVOLUTIONS
1121. Disintegration of the Imperialist Colonial System......112
Collapse of the Colonial System---a Feature of the Contemporary Epoch---112. Significance of the National Liberation Movement--- 114. The Danger of Neo-Colonialism---115.
1182. The National Liberation Revolution and Its Driving Forces Nature of the National Liberation Revolution---118. Driving Forces of the National Liberation Revolution---120.
43. Economic Independence...............124
New Stage of the Revolution---124.
4. Two Possible Ways of Development---Capitalist and NonCapitalist ...................127
The Liberated Countries and Capitalism---128. Experience of Non-Capitalist Development---129. Substance of Non-Capitalist Development---130. Liberated Peoples Choose Socialism---132. Factors Facilitating the Transition to the Non-Capitalist Road---135.
Chapter 5
THE WORLD REVOLUTIONARY PROCESS
AND PEACEFUL COEXISTENCE
137
1. Marxism-Leninism on Just and Unjust Wars......137
Causes of War---137. Just and Unjust Wars---139.
2. Peaceful Coexistence................140
Leninist Principle of Peaceful Coexistence---140. The Class Struggle and Peaceful Coexistence---144. The Ideological Struggle and Peaceful Coexistence---145. Problem of Disarmament---
148. Guarding the Gains of Socialism---149.
Chapter 6
SOCIALISM, FIRST PHASE OF COMMUNIST SOCIETY
151Indispensability of a Period of Transition........151
1. General Laws and Diversity of the Forms of Socialist Construction ....................152
Dictatorship of the Proletariat---the Decisive Condition for Socialist Construction---153. Economic Reforms---156. Reforms in National Relations---164. Cultural Revolution---166.
2. The Transition Period and the Non-Capitalist Road of Development ....................169
3. Socialist Society..................172
Socialism and Communism---Two Phases of the New Society---
172. Economy of Socialism---174. Class Pattern of Socialist Society---178. Political Organisation---179. C.P.S.U.---Vanguard of the People---183. Spiritual Culture of Socialism---184. Socialism and the Individual---185.
4. From Socialism to Communism. The Building of Communism 189
5Chapter 7
SCIENTIFIC DIRECTION OF COMMUNIST CONSTRUCTION
1911. Socialism, a Consciously Directed Society........192
2. Principles Underlying the Scientific Direction of Communist
Construction...................195
Objectivity and the Concrete Situation---195. Efficiency and Optimality---198. People's Interests and Requirements---200. The Main Link---202. Democratic Centralism---202.
3. Subject of Administration..............204
4. Improvement of the System of Administration---on Important Condition for the Success of Communist Construction . . . 208
Chapter 8
MATERIAL AND TECHNICAL BASIS
OF COMMUNISM
2121. The Function of the Material and Technical liasis .... 212
2. Features and Ways of Building the Material and Technical
Basis of Communism...............214
Automation and Mechanisation---215. Power Engineering Industry---216. Cheinicalisation---217. Agricultural Production---218.
3. Science as a Direct Productive Force.........220
The Modern Scientific and Technical Revolution and Its Significance---220. The Future of Science Is the Future of Production---223. All the Potentialities of Science for Production---225.
4. Man and Technology...............226
Evolution of the Man-Machine System---226. Will Machines Replace Man?---229. Demands Made of Man by Machines--- 233. Technology, Man and Nature---237.
5. Communism and Labour..............237
Communist Labour---238. The Conditions for Turning Labour into a Vital Necessity---241. Communist Division of Labour--- 243. Incentives for Work---244. Developing the Personality Through Creative Work---246. Leisure Time and the Development of the Individual---249.
Chapter 9
FROM SOCIALIST TO COMMUNIST SOCIAL RELATIONS
252 61. Towards Communist Distribution..........252
Capability---252. From Each According to His Ability---254.
Needs---256. To Each According to His Needs - 258. The Road
to Economic Equality---262.
2. Towards Social Equality..............265
Towards a Single People's Ownership- 2(>,">. Surmounting
the Essential Distinctions Between Town and Country---269.
Surmounting the Essential Distinctions Between Mental and
Physical Labour---274. Development and Drawing Together of
Nations---276.
3. Towards Social Self-Administration..........280
The Ability to Administer---a Feature of the New Man---280. Extension of Socialist Democracy---282. Enhancement of the Role of Mass Organisations---284. Growth of the Role of the C.P.S.U.---287. Withering Away of the State -288.
Chapter 10
MOULDING THE NEW MAN
2921. The Need for Communist Education..........293
Fundamental Principles of Education---296. Means of Communist Education---298.
2. Spiritual Culture and the Advancement of the Individual
3003. Scientific Philosophy and the Struggle Ayainst Hostile Ideology 303 Formation of a Scientific World Outlook---304. Atheistic Education---306. Struggle Against Bourgeois Ideology---306.
4. Education Through Labour.............308
Core of Communist Education- - 308. Inculcation of Respect
for All Useful Work---308.
5. Moral Education.................310
Communist Morality- 310. Basic Moral Principles of the Builder of Communism---311. Soviet Patriotism and Proletarian Internationalism---313. Survivals of Capitalism and Ways and Means of Surmounting Them---316. Morality and Knowledge
---318. Needs as a Factor of Man's Behaviour---321. Formation of Needs as a Principal Means of Moral Education---323.
6. Aesthetic Education................326
7. Physical Improvement...............329
78. Communism nnd Freedom of tlw Individual.......331
Freedom of the Individual under Communism---332. Freedom and Responsibility of the Individual-334. CommunismEmbodiment of Humanism---.'Wo.
FOR SOCIALISM, FOR COMMUNISM
338Society of Peace-338. Society of Labour---338. Society of Freedom---339. Society of Equalitj- 340. Society of Fraternity ---341. Society ot Happiness- 342.
[8] __ALPHA_LVL1__ THE THEORY OF SCIENTIFIC COMMUNISMProduction, science and technology, which are advancing with fabulous speed, have reached a level of development which today is high enough to give mankind immense power over the forces of nature and make it possible fully to satisfy the material and spiritual requirements of the world's entire population. It has been estimated that all the people inhabiting our planet could live comfortably if production capacities and scientific and technical achievements were used to benefit the whole of mankind without exception.
What then is the hitch? Whose fault is it that in the non-socialist world only one in ten people receives adequate nourishment and the rest are undernourished; that nearly half of the world's adult population is illiterate? Whose fault is it that blood was shed and continues to be shed in senseless wars fought in the interests of an insignificant minority; that the nuclear mushroom hangs as a sinister shadow over the earth; that vast sums of money are spent on preparations for a monstrous thermonuclear war? Whose fault is it that in a considerable part of the globe, Man, that most wonderful of nature's creations, who is endowed with the most diverse creative abilities, is not only denied the opportunity to deploy these abilities but also suffers from exploitation, social injustice, hunger and disease? Whose fault is it that in some countries, which pride themselves on their civilisation, a dark skin is regarded as a badge of inferiority? Whose fault is it that a huge part of mankind was harnessed to the yoke of colonialism, 9 which continues to rule the destinies of tens of millions of people?
The blame falls squarely on capitalism, which accentuated the contrast between poverty and wealth, and raised war, colonialism and racism to the level of official policy. It expends incalculable material and labour resources to please a tiny handful of monopolists, humiliates the working man and uses many of the latest achievements of science and technology to his detriment.
Definite social conditions are required in order to make it possible to utilise the tremendous wealth available to mankind, the mighty production capacities and the remarkable achievements of modern science and technology. Capitalism must be destroyed and superseded by a new society, whose lofty and only object is to provide all people with a happy and free life worthy of human beings and deliver them from wars.
This new society is communism, and the science giving an integral picture of the laws governing its formation and development is called the theory of scientific communism.
Let us analyse this brief definition in some detail.
No class antagonistic society has ever set out to promote the all-round development of the working man. The working man has always been used as a means for achieving other objects, for example, as under capitalism, for getting superprofits. Under communism, however, the working man comes forward as the ``end in itself" of social development (Karl Marx). The theory of scientific communism discloses the economic, social and cultural conditions under which the all-round, harmonious development of man can be promoted.
However, before these conditions can be created, the old social system---capitalism---must be abolished by revolutionary means. This implies that scientific communism examines the question of the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism and the creation thereby of the prerequisites for the emancipation of man. It demonstrates that the downfall of capitalism is historically inevitable due to the operation of objective laws and its inner contradictions. It reveals the revolutionary forces that are undermining and destroying capitalism, and points to the socialist revolution and the dictatorship of the proletariat 10 as the indispensable means for putting an end to the old, capitalist society.
Problems linked up with the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism occupy an important place in the theory of scientific communism. Capitalism is destroyed to clear the road for the new, communist society. This poses scientific communism with yet another major problem, namely, that of bringing to light the laws of the formation of communist society and studying this society as a complex social organism. Man, with all his diverse relations and abilities, his inclinations and requirements and his creative and physical possibilities, stands in the limelight of communist society. That explains why the lofty humanitarian principle of ``everything for man, for the good of man" is the basic programme slogan of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. A science treating of a society in which prime concern is shown for man cannot help but deal with the creation of the economic, social and spiritual conditions for the moulding of fully developed people. Scientific communism studies man, generalising and synthetising all the available scientific data about him as a creative, social and intellectual being, as a link in the social system and in the system of nature.
It also studies economy---material production, exchange, distribution and consumption in communist society--- but only in the measure that this serves man as an economic condition for his all-round development. Social relations and spiritual life, too, are studied by scientific communism as a condition of man's social and cultural development, and as a manifestation of his creative activity.
Scientific communism studies the communist social and economic system, i.e. interrelation and unity of its economic, social and spiritual aspects, paying particular attention to how each of these aspects and all of them together serve man and help to achieve the highest degree of social development.
Society develops by virtue of the operation of objective laws. In the final analysis, however, this operation depends upon the people themselves, on the profundity of their knowledge of the substance of social phenomena, on their purposefulness and level of organisation, how 11 effeclively these laws are applied. The development of society is thus visualised as a complex intermingling and interrelation of objective laws and the subjective factor.
To achieve harmony between objective conditions and the subjective factor of social development, the working masses must understand objective laws and master the mechanism of their operation. They must learn to co-- ordinate their activities with the requirements of these laws M> that society can make effective use of them for the benefit of man.
This advances yet another important problem of the theory of scientific communism---that of finding the ways and means for co-ordinating the subjective activity of people with the requirements of objective laws and bringing to light the ways and means of utilising these laws in the interests of man. Scientific communism uses its knowledge of objective laws to disclose progressive trends or individual stages of social development, directs and regulates social progress in accordance with these trends, shows the obstacles impeding the attainment of one aim or another and helps people to remove these obstacles. In other words, it investigates how the conscious regulation of social processes and of communist construction operates.
Scientific communism is thus a science dealing with the ways and means of destroying capitalism, with the laws governing the creation of the new, communist society, and with the economic, social and spiritual conditions for the all-round development of man; it is a science dealing with communist society as a complex social organism; it is a science dealing with the conscious, purposeful direction of social processes in the interests of man.
This distinguishes scientific communism from the other components of Marxism-Leninism, i.e., from Marxist philosophy and Marxist political economy.
Like Marxism-Leninism as a whole, the theory of scientific communism did not emerge out of nothing. It inherited the communist ideas of the past, ideas that had been maturing for centuries in mankind's leading minds. We must, therefore, briefly review the history of communist thinking in the past and trace its growth from a utopia to a science.
12 __NUMERIC_LVL1__ Chapter 1 __ALPHA_LVL1__ FROM A UTOPIA TO A SCIENCE __ALPHA_LVL2__ 1. Utopian Socialism and Its PlaceCapitalism, which gave birth to conditions facilitating the rapid development of production, technology and natural science, replaced feudalism in a number of WestEuropean countries in the 16th-18th centuries. Factories, mills and mines dislodged the artisan workshops and the manufactories, while the energy of human muscles, of water and of wind was supplanted by the mighty energy of steam and then of electricity. Within the relatively short span of two or three centuries much more ground was covered in the development of production than in the entire preceding history of mankind. However, capitalism did not make the lot of the working man easier: exploitation remained as ruthless and inhuman as it was in slave-owning times and under feudalism, this all the more so since survivals of feudalism were still strongly entrenched and capitalist oppression was frequently supplemented with feudal oppression. This gave rise to growing dissatisfaction among the masses and the class struggle became increasingly more acute. These social changes could not but have their effect on the spiritual life of society. Socialist theories were advanced which mirrored the protest of the masses against the existing social system. Humanism---respect and concern for man---was the central idea of all these theories.
One of the first Utopian socialists was the English statesman and philosopher Thomas More (1478--1535).
Though capitalism was still in its infancy, he saw that it was a system of exploitation that was unable to ensure 13 a genuinely human life for the working people, that it was a ``...conspiracy of rich men procuring their own commodities under the name and title of the commonwealth''. Capitalism displayed no concern whatever for tillers of the soil, miners, day-labourers, draymen and workers, without whom, More believed, no society could exist. The rich ``invent and devise means and crafts ... to hire and abuse the work and labour of the poor for as little money as may be" and exploit them as though they were beasts of burden.
Thomas More's greatest service to progressive thinking was that in his book Utopia he drew the conclusion that equality and happiness, man's physical and intellectual development, social justice and an intelligent conduct of social affairs were inconceivable as long as private ownership existed, as long as the wealth created by the labour of the majority fell into the hands of a few, who led an idle life.
He advanced the profound and daring idea that private ownership had to be abolished and gave a picture of a single, democratically governed, organised society founded on collective ownership and collective labour.
In this society, which More sited on the imaginary Island of Utopia, people were not slaves to capital; they were not oppressed by the wealthy. They laboured collectively, engaging in both physical and mental work. They did not tolerate idlers and parasites, and delivered the fruits of their labour to public storehouses, from where they received everything they needed free of charge. More came close to understanding the communist principle of distribution according to requirements, although, as interpreted by him, these requirements were extremely limited, cover ing only bare necessities.
Due to historical reasons, his other views were similarly narrow. For instance, he made allowance for the existence of slavery---prisoners of war and criminals, who would perform the most arduous work; the Utopians had to believe in God as the creator of the world and in the immortality of the soul.
City of the Sun was the name Tommaso Campanella (1568--1639), who was prominent in the popular liberation movement in Italy, gave the future society. As on More's 14 Island of Utopia, there was no exploitation in the City of the Sun. The citizens were not slaves to capital. Everybody worked---the working day was only four hours long. The people devoted their leisure time to mental and physical development. Like More's Utopians, they delivered the fruits of their labour to public storehouses from where they received everything they needed. An extremely striking point was that Campanella sought to use science to conduct the affairs of society intelligently for the purpose of ensuring social progress. The City's ruler was a scientist with vast knowledge and long practical experience. The idea of organising society scientifically, of consciously directing social progress must be recognised as being remarkable despite its primitive nature. Like More, Campanella did not know how to set about building the new society; while turning to science he drew upon astrology.
The theories evolved by More and Campanella, who were the first to work out a system of social organisation, which excluded private property and exploitation, played a tremendous role in the criticism of feudal ideology and influenced the subsequent development of social thinking.
Gerrard Winstanley (1609-c. 1652), spokesman of the poor, chiefly of the proletarianised peasantry during the English bourgeois revolution of the 17th century, was a brilliant advocate of Utopian socialism. In his views the nascent proletariat's demand for the abolition of private property dovetailed with the demand of the peasants for equal rights to land. He believed that mankind could be delivered from poverty and exploitation and a new society built only after private property was abolished in town and countryside. His idea of this new society did not go beyond primitive, equalitarian communism. Moreover, many of his views wore the cloak of religion. Nonetheless, these were enlightened views inasmuch as they mirrored the basic demands of the poorest sections of English society.
__ALPHA_LVL3__ Utopians of the 18th CenturyIn France the revolutionary trend of utopian socialism was founded by Jean Meslier (1664-- 1729), who spent most of his life in the countryside and personally witnessed the benumbing poverty and suffering of the peasants, and their back-breaking, forced labour for the feudal lords. His Testament, a passionate, 15 merciless indictment of feudal exploitation, royal power and the Church, circulated first in manuscript form, and was published many years after his death. Meslier dreamed of communism, of a society without exploiters founded on publicly-owned property and collective labour. He was well aware that the oppressors would not voluntarily surrender their privileges, wealth and dominant position, and therefore called for the revolutionary overthrow of the existing system: ``Everybody unite in unanimous determination to achieve liberation from this hated and odious yoke. . .'' he exhorted. His great contribution to the development of socialist ideas was that he sought to inject communist ideals into the popular, peasant revolution.
However, he failed to give even a rough outline of the future society. A more or less detailed blue print is to be found in Code of Nature or the True Spirit of Her Laws (1755), written by the French Utopian Morelly, who opposed private ownership, which, he said, had perverted and spoiled man's nature. He drew up draft laws of the new society. The first of these laws abolished private ownership with the exception of ownership of articles of personal use; the second guaranteed the right to work and proclaimed that it was the duty of all to work; the third required people to benefit society to the best of their ability, in accordance with their strength, talents and age. The latter law was the first document clearly defining one of the basic principles of socialism, namely, the necessity of each person working according to his ability. Morelly also advanced the idea of distribution according to needs, but this was a primitive, equalitarian distribution. He sought to adapt society to the level of the medieval peasant's requirements, to his extremely narrow world outlook.
A considerable step forward in developing the communist principle of distribution was made by the French philosopher Gabriel Bonnot de Mably (1709--1785), who advocated the building of a society that would ensure to each citizen ``the largest possible sum of delight and happiness". This society could be built only after private ownership was abolished. Mably mourned for the ``Golden Age'', when private ownership was non-existent, and considered that the division of property, which put an end to 16 that age, was the greatest evil because it perverted people, arousing in them a lust for gain. But, alone, the lust for gain could not induce people to work. The striving to promote the well-being of society as a whole, respect for one's fellow citizens and honest competition could be much more powerful stimuli for industriousness than greed and vanity.
While recognising the right of oppressed people to accomplish a revolution, Mably believed that reforms enforced by a democratic republic would deliver man from the loathsome habits of proprietorship. He regarded this republic as a phase of the transition from a society of private ownership and exploitation to communist society.
He thus posed social thinking with the immensely important and complex problem of whether the new society should be achieved by revolution or by reforms.
The French revolutionary Gracchus Babeuf (1760--1797) and his supporters, known as Babouvists, replied that the solution lay in revolution and the forcible overthrow of the existing system by a group of fearless conspirators, devoted to the people and implacably hating exploitation and wealth.
Babeuf was the leader of a revolutionary peasant movement for the establishment of a nation-wide commune---a ``republic of equals''. In the 18th century many socialists confined themselves to criticising the falsehood, the injustice and the unreasonableness of the existing system. But in the case of the Babouvists, life prompted them to adopt the doctrine of insurrection and seizure of power. They witnessed and participated in the great French bourgeois revolution of 1789--93 and soon realised that this revolution had not abolished exploitation but only changed its form. Far from contributing anything to the people's happiness, the revolution forced the people to go on sweating and shedding their blood, which ultimately turned into gold for a tiny handful of rich men. The Babouvists maintained that the bourgeois revolution would be followed by a new, people's revolution during which the people would seize power, establish a revolutionary dictatorship and organise a ``society of equals''. In that society, founded on collective ownership, there would be neither rich nor poor, nobody would appropriate property, and each would __PRINTERS_P_17_COMMENT__ 2---2775 17 work for the common weal to the best of his ability. In their Manifesto the Babouvists wrote that equality implied primarily ``that everybody would work and equally share the fruits of their work".
True, the Babouvist notions of equality were primitive. Equalitarian consumption was one of their leading theo ries. No matter what work a man did, they argued, it did not make his belly any bigger. Hence their underestimation of skilled labour, education, art and science. If necessary, they wrote, let all art perish so long as real equality was preserved. They failed to appreciate the role of cultural progress and the need for an abundance of material and cultural blessings enabling man continuously to develop his abilities.
The Babouvists' idea of communism was that of a highly organised, centralised society founded on collective ownership and united on a nation-wide scale. Their idea of a centralised administration of society was of inestimable value.
They were spokesmen of the then nascent French proletariat, but the proletariat's immaturity and lack of organisation in those days were mirrored in their crude notions of a society of the future and of the ways of building that society. Their conspiratorial tactics and their weak link with the people doomed them to defeat. Members of the ``conspiracy of equals" were arrested, and Babeuf himself was guillotined.
__ALPHA_LVL3__ Great Utopian Socialists of the 19th CenturyIn the 19th century capitalism by no means wore tne festive attire in which it was clothed by bourgeois philosophers, historians and economists. It condemned the working people to appalling poverty and back-breaking toil at factories. At the same time, it produced the proletariat, which grad ually occupied an important place in society, and precipitated its dissatisfaction, initially impulsive, with the capitalist system. The resultant class struggle between labour and capital mounted and became the key driving force and content of the historical development.
The struggle of the proletariat against the bourgeoisie and its as yet only instinctive opposition to capitalist wageslavery was reflected in the theories of great socialists of 18 the 19th century---Claude Henri Saint Simon de Rouvroy, Francois Marie Charles Fourier and Robert Owen.
Claude Henri Saint-Simon de Rouvroy (1760--1825) came from an aristocratic family, but that did not prevent him from ardently championing the humiliated and the insulted. In one of his main treatises---Literary, Philosophical and Industrial Opinions---he dismisses the existence of a Golden Age in the past. He saw the Golden Age of mankind in the future, when oppression would be abolished and people would unite to harness nature and use her for their own good.
In the future socialist society, in an organised and consciously administered society, he accorded the central place to man, to his requirements and abilities. He considered that the best social system was one that gave the majority of the people a happy life and the maximum opportunity to ``satisfy their prime needs" and ``develop all their useful abilities".
He pictured the future socialist society as a free association, a ``large workshop'', in which people would collectively influence nature in order to build up universal wellbeing and prosperity. In this society each person would work according to his ability and receive according to his work. There would be no exploitation, no domination of the majority by a minority, while the function of government would be to direct all the work of society. The treatises of Saint-Simon and, in particular, of his disciples contain the idea that the new society would have a `` centralised economy'', that economic development would be planned. Moreover, Saint-Simon was the first philosopher to expound the idea of setting up a world-wide association of people in order to make the best possible use of natural resources. In developing this idea, Saint-Simon's foremost followers came to the conclusion that this world-wide association would put an end to all social and national antagonism and thereby ensure peace and uninterrupted progress.
Some of Saint-Simon's forecasts of the society of the future were brilliant, but by and large his theories were idealistic and Utopian. He failed to see the material foundations of social development and preached peaceful cooperation between the oppressors and the oppressed. He __PRINTERS_P_20_COMMENT__ 2* 19 felt that social development depended upon ideas, on the world outlook, and in his plans lor socialism he appealed to the conscience of enlightened industrialists and monarchs. He strove to ``induce monarchs to use the power given them by the people to enforce urgent political changes''. He was afraid of the class struggle and rejected the idea of a revolution, pinning his hopes on the preaching of fraternity among peoples, on the miraculous power of reforms carried out from above.
The strongest point of another French Utopian Socialist Francois Marie Charles Fourier (1772--1837), son of a wealthy but subsequently impoverished merchant, was his brilliant criticism of the capitalist system.
Fourier considered that the natural qualities and passions of man were a major factor of social progress. However, he held that these natural qualities had been trampled and crushed by capitalism, which had brought to ruin and poverty the bulk of the people while concentrating fabulous wealth in the hands of a few.
Capitalism, he wrote, is a ``world turned upside down, a social hell''. In that hell man was a toy in the hands of the elements, a victim of anarchy, of the trend towards ``anarchic production''. In that world, wealth was being accumulated by a few, while millions were denied the means of subsistence. With deadly sarcasm he stigmatised the hypocrisy and insincerity of the bourgeois system and of those who, having sacrificed themselves to the Golden Calf, were defending and embellishing it. He exposed the economic and state mechanism of bourgeois society, which ``is, in all respects, nothing but an art of robbing the poor and putting more money in the pockets of the rich".
Fourier was aware that an exacerbation of social contradictions could lead to a people's revolution that would sweep capitalism away. However, he was afraid of revolution, of independent political action by the masses, and therefore devised a peaceful way of consolidating the new system in which ``social harmony" would reign. He pictured this harmonious society as consisting of production associations, which he named phalanges. Each phalange would have 1,600-1,700 members, all of whom would live in a huge communal building, the phalanstery. The 20 main occupation would be farming but there would be small industries, primarily artisan crafts.
He paid particular attention to the question of the work of the phalange members. He considered that work was man's most important right and duty, and he contemplated ways and means of putting an end to the capitalist division of labour, which was mutilating man, of turning labour from an enforced and arduous occupation into a pleasure, into a source of joy, and of erasing the distinction between town and country. His view was that every member of the phalange should have the opportunity to choose his vocation, that he should not be chained to one form of work but should have the possibility of changing it freely. This could be achieved by promoting man's harmonious development. Inasmuch as the choice of work conforms with man's desires unity of the personal and the social is achieved in the phalange.
However, Fourier's ideas about the new society and the ways of achieving it did not go beyond the framework of utopianism. Also Utopian was his idea of harmony between the interests of the propertied and non-propertied. He made allowance for the existence of private property and capitalists in the phalanges, considering that the product of the labour of its members should be distributed not only according to work (5/12) and talent (3/12), but also according to capital investments (4/12). This, he felt, was the only way to achieve class harmony, an alliance between capital, labour and talent. Thus, Fourier did not reject either private property or the division of society into the rich and the poor. He thereby took a step back compared with other Utopian Socialists. A step back from Saint-Simon's views was Fourier's aspiration to decentralise society, to split it up into isolated production units--- phalanges. This excluded the possibility of consciously governing society. Also Utopian are Fourier's notions about the ways of achieving the new society. He believed that it could be achieved by expounding socialist ideas, by a gradual reform of capitalist society. He took his phalanstery plans to the feudal aristocracy, capitalists and monarchs, including Napoleon I, but received neither support nor sympathy.
Robert Owen (1771--1858) was the first Utopian Socialist 21 to dedicate himself entirely to the working class. He was active in the working-class movement and made his mark as an enlightener of the workers of his country. Frederick Engels wrote: ``Every social movement, every real advance in England on behalf of the workers links itself on to the name of Robert Owen.''
As manager of the large New Lanark textile mills Owen instituted improvements in the material and everyday life of the workers: he reduced the working day to ten and a half hours instead of the 13--14 hours then prevailing in England, organised the world's first nursery and kindergarten for the children of workers, opened a model school and set up a hospital fund. Later, when he was ostracised by official society for his communist ideas, he devoted 30 years to efforts to improve the life of workers. He organised a campaign in defence of workers' rights. The adoption of the first Factory Act limiting child and female labour was due largely to his elforts.
Owen sharply criticised the capitalist system, but considered that the social contradictions of capitalism stemmed from ignorance and delusion. He believed that capitalism could be done away with by enlightening society, by giving it a plan for an intelligent social system. With the spread of enlightenment people would become ashamed of the monstrous contradictions and absurdities of the existing system and turn their gaze to a new system that would ensure the best conditions for the life and moral improvement of man.
Owen regarded private properly, which ``has been, and is at this day, the cause of endless crime and misery to man'', the main obstacle to the creation of the new society. He firmly believed that the time would come when all items of personal use would become public property, when people would appreciate the incomparable superiority of public ownership over private ownership with its attendant evils. He founded his rational society on a community of property and a community of labour.
However, he was opposed to the attainment of this society by a class struggle and revolution. He feared the class struggle, feeling that it was necessary to prevent the destruction of social life, which was a possibility in view of the growing impoverishment of the working people, and 22 advanced plans for social reforms on communist lines. He submitted these plans to the sovereigns and governments of several countries, and sought to convince society that reforms could be accomplished by setting a good example. He spent a great deal of money and energy on organising communist communities, first at New Harmony, Indiana, U.S.A., and later at Harmony Hall, Britain. These social schemes failed and consumed his entire fortune. Nonetheless, his elforts to implement socialist ideas were of fundamental importance.
__ALPHA_LVL3__ Russian Utopian SocialistsThe theories of Utopian socialism made headway in Russia as well, particularly in the works of the revolutionary democrats Alexander Herzen and Nikolai Chernyshevsky.
Alexander Herzen (1812--70), a noted Russian writer and philosopher, bitterly criticised capitalism and was firmly convinced that socialism would triumph in Russia. He believed that unlike the West, Russia would achieve socialism through the village community without passing through the capitalist stage of development with its accompanying privations and sufferings. ``The community,'' he wrote, ``saved the Russian people from Mongolian barbarity and imperial civilisation, from the European hue of landowner and from German bureaucracy. Although it has been badly shaken, the communal organisation has withstood the interference of the authorities: it has safely lived to see the development of socialism in Europe.
``This is infinitely important to Russia.''
He pictured socialism as a peasant community in which people would respect one another. He failed to see that capitalism, which had destroyed patriarchal relations, had penetrated into the Russian community and had given birth to a working class, and that this class was playing a revolutionising role in society. Hence the Utopian nature of Herzen's communal socialism. However, he did not for a moment think that socialism would dawn in Russia of itself. He realised that it would be the outcome of an active political struggle. His socialist ideas were linked up with dialectical theories, which he regarded as the ``algebra of revolution".
No Utopian Socialist drew a more impressive and true 23 picture of communist society or was closer to understanding the ways and means of achieving it than the great Russian writer and philosopher Nikolai Chernyshevsky (1828--89).
He gave capitalism its due as being more progressive than serfdom and saw that it had penetrated Russia. But he believed that it would not last long, that it would be superseded by a new, communist system, in which property would be commonly owned and labour would be obligatory. ``We,'' he wrote, ``accept as an arithmetical truth the fact that with time man will gain the upper hand over external nature to the extent needed by him, that he will remake everything on earth in accordance with his needs, avert or harness all unwanted manifestations of external nature and make the utmost use of those of its forces that benefit him. With time this could lead to the eradication of the disproportion between human needs and the means of satisfying them. . .. Instead of being an onerous necessity, labour would become a light and pleasurable physiological requirement, such as enlightened people regard mental work.. ..''
He pictured the future socialist society as a federation of ``production associations" governed by the people themselves. In this federation, which would be free of exploitation, work would be obligatory. By agreement among themselves these associations would form a single political and economic complex, which would exclude overproduction and the accompanying crises, ensure the satisfaction of people's needs and promote their talents. Chernyshevsky believed that in this new society the emphasis would be on large-scale industry, technology and science in order to secure a high level of labour productivity and thereby advance the welfare of the people. As masters of their own life, the people of this society would work collectively with the aid of machines. They would remake the land, turning it into a flowering orchard in which they would enjoy all the pleasures of life.
True, even Chernyshevsky failed to go beyond the framework of Utopian socialism. He did not understand the laws of social development and could not appreciate the role of the working class as the maker of the new society. Like Herzen, he believed that in Russia socialism would 24 be achieved through the village community, whose underlying principles would spread to the towns and to industry. At the same time, he did not think the community was a finished form of socialism, and was far from the idea that socialism could be built on the basis of philanthropy, much less through voluntary agreement between the classes. Besides being a theoretician of socialism, he was a revolutionary, who linked the development of socialism up with the people's revolution. His works, which, as Lenin put it, breathe with the spirit of the class struggle, passionately call for a struggle against the tsar and the landowners, for a new social system. In his theories utopian socialism merges with revolutionary democratism.
__ALPHA_LVL3__ The Historical Place of Utopian SocialismUtopian socialism underwent a considerable evolution under the impact of historical development, the aggravation of the antagonisms in exploiting society, and the class struggle of the oppressed against the oppressors. The works of the Utopians mirrored not only actual social development but also trends that, as Lenin wrote, forestalled this development.
Let us briefly analyse what the Utopian Socialists gave to human development and the place occupied in history by Utopian socialism.
First, the leading Utopian Socialists searchingly criticised the capitalist system, revealed its vices and lack of vitality and sought to prove that the downfall of capitalism and its replacement by a new, communist society were inevitable. Most of them linked the establishment of this new society up with the abolition of private ownership, which they regarded as the major cause of exploitation and other evils besetting the working man, and with the institution of collective, public ownership, which alone could serve as the foundation for genuine freedom, equality and fraternity. They raised the question of the ways and means of demolishing exploiting society. Leading exponents of Utopian socialism like Meslier, Babeuf and the Russian revolutionary democrats saw that socialism would triumph as a result of a political struggle, of a people's revolution.
Secondly, with the insight of genius, the Utopian Socialists anticipated some of the features of the society of the 25 future. Their plans for an ideal society sprang from profound humanist motives, and their main concern was to give the people of the new society the conditions for a real human existence, for developing and improving their abilities and talents. In the works of some of them we find profound ideas about man, about his abilities and the ways of improving these abilities, about labour as the principal benefit, right and duty of each person, about work according to ability, about turning work into a vital necessity and a pleasure, about abolishing the ugly distinction between mental and physical work and between town and country, and about a just distribution according to work and needs.
Thirdly, the Utopian Socialists were the first to raise the question of guiding social processes consciously and purposefully, linking up the possibility of providing this guidance with the establishment of public ownership, with the creation of a single, centralised planned economy ( Babouvists, Saint-Simon and his followers, Chernyshevsky).
They thus raised many basic problems that were later scientifically resolved by Marx, Engels and Lenin. The formulation of key problems of scientific development and the attempts of the Utopian Socialists to find an answer to them were highly appraised by the classics of scientific communism. The great Utopians brilliantly `` anticipated innumerable things, the correctness of which is now being scientifically proved by us''.^^*^^ It was, therefore, no accident that Utopian socialism, particularly the utopism of the 19th century, was one of the ideological sources of Marxism, a direct predecessor of scientific communism.
While giving a high evaluation of the works of the Utopian Socialists, the classics of scientific communism showed their historical narrowness and criticised the idealistic principles underlying their theories. They pointed to the crude equalitarianism and the universal asceticism preached by the great Utopian Socialists of the West, and to the Utopian, unrealisable nature of the ways and means suggested by them for achieving socialism. The Utopian Socialists saw the antithesis between the class interests of the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, but they rejected the _-_-_
^^*^^ Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 5, p. 371.
26 idea that the proletariat could be a decisive force in history, failing to realise that this was the very force that could attain the lofty communist ideals. Many Utopian Socialists were opposed to the class struggle and the revolution, coming out against not only revolutionary but all political action.Many of them felt that society could be remade by reforms, by the preaching of abstract plans for reorganising society, by the establishment of impracticable `` communist" communes. They sought not material foundations for the emancipation of the proletariat but the creation of a social science, which, when it was assimilated by the people, would of itself bring mankind to the cherished goal. Failing to appreciate the social role of the proletariat, they appealed to the conscience of all classes, primarily of the ruling classes, and urged the achievement of a harmony of class interests.
Nothing came of their efforts because they isolated themselves from the people, from the working class, ignored the material conditions of social life, knew nothing of the laws of social development and relied solely on ideas, on enlightenment and education. The abortiveness of their ideas was due to the social and historical conditions of their day---the immaturity of social relations and the embryonic nature of the proletariat, which had not yet taken shape as a class and, therefore, could not perceive its own position and the great mission that had been charted for it by history. Engels wrote: ``To the crude conditions of capitalistic production and the crude class conditions corresponded crude theories.''
Yet time marched on. Social relations grew ever more mature, the antagonisms of capitalism became ever more obvious, and the proletariat increased numerically and became steeled in revolutionary struggle, gradually developing into the decisive force behind social progress. History set social science the tremendously important task of evolving a theory that could serve the revolutionary classes as a guide to action. This theory, the theory of scientific communism, was created by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels.
27 __ALPHA_LVL2__ 2. The Evolution of Socialism fromKarl Marx (1818--83) and Frederick Engels (1820--95) embarked upon their scientific and revolutionary activities in Germany in the 1840s. This was a period of rapid development of capitalism, which had firmly established itself in some European countries and North America, and of the growth of a new class, the industrial proletariat, and the beginning of its revolutionary struggle.
The bourgeoisie had deposed feudalism, and its optimism about its own future knew no bounds. It firmly believed that private ownership would be perpetual.
Yet in 1848, like a bolt from the blue, when it seemed that the world was destined to be ruled by the bourgeoisie for ever, came the words of the Communist Manifesto. In this Manifesto, on behalf of history, Marx and Engels passed sentence on capitalism. They showed that capitalist society with its private ownership and exploitation would give way to a society without exploitation or slavery, to a communist society, just as inevitably as it had itself replaced feudalism and that mankind was moving towards a great communist revolution. ``Let the ruling classes shudder in face of the communist revolution,'' Marx and Engels declared. The Manifesto ended the epoch of utopian socialism and ushered in the epoch of scientific socialism.
Utopian socialism, as we have seen, was founded on humanism. This inspired the Utopians to devise a society that would conform to the nature and dignity of man. But they were unable to conceive a lucid picture of the nature, of the very substance of man. They saw man abstractly, as an aggregate of thoughts and passions and, besides, they had an extremely vague idea of the source of these human passions and thoughts. The great 19th century Utopians had inherited from the Enlighteners the profound theory that man was a product of the social environment, of his surroundings, but they had no notion of this environment or its laws and driving forces. Hence, they had no idea of human development. In spite of that, they firmly believed that the capitalist system, the system of 28 oppression and private property, which was mutilating man, had to be destroyed. They imagined the evolution of environment as the evolution of human passions and ideas. This gave rise to a vicious circle: thinking man was the product of his environment, and the environment was the product of man's ideas.
This vicious circle had to be broken, for as Marx and Engels wrote: ``If man is shaped by his surroundings, his surroundings must be made human.''^^*^^ These surroundings could be made ``human'' only by laying bare the real laws governing the development of the social environment and skilfully using them for the benefit of man. But to reveal the substance of social laws meant showing the substance of man, who was the product of social relations. In other words, the abstract ideas of Utopian humanism and the ideas of creating a society worthy of man had to be transferred to the soil of reality.
The basic difference between scientific and Utopian socialism is that the former rests not on speculative ideas and good intentions but on the soil of reality, on a scientific understanding of the laws of social development and of the substance of man himself.
Counterposing a scientific, dialectical-materialist understanding of social development to the idealism of the Utopians, and showing the historical inevitability of the revolutionary replacement of capitalism by socialism, Marx and Engels turned socialism from a Utopia into a science.
__ALPHA_LVL3__ Inevitability of the Revolutionary Replacement of Capitalism by SocialismCapitalism initiated a rapid growth of the productive forces, created a powerful economy in the more developed countries, swept away feudal partitions, gave rise to a world economy and spread the system of exploitation throughout the world, making it particularly onerous and ruinous to the majority of the peoples, who became colonial slaves. The productive forces grew swiftly due to capitalist relations of production, which engendered capitalist profit as an incentive for developing production. In pursuit of profit the bourgeoisie expanded production, and improved machines and technology in industry and agriculture. However, _-_-_
^^*^^K. Marx and F. Engels, The Holy Family, Moscow, 1956, p. 176.
29 these relations gave rise not only to an unprecedented growth of production but also to productive forces that threatened the capitalist system with destruction. Marx and Engels compared capitalism with a magician, whose incantations had called into action forces that had become much too powerful for him to cope with.The greatest service rendered by Marx and Engels was that they brought to light the basic contradiction of capitalism---the contradiction between the social nature of the process of production and the private capitalist method of appropriation. Under capitalism, production is of a markedly social nature; millions of people, concentrated at the large enterprises, take part in this production, but the fruit of their work is appropriated by a small group of big proprietors. This contradiction, which is a concrete expression of the antagonism between the productive forces and the relations of production, gives rise to crises and unemployment and calls forth an irreconcilable class struggle between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, a struggle which ends with the socialist revolution, with the replacement of capitalism by socialism.
The socialist revolution thus has a definite economic foundation---the contradictions in capitalist production--- and comes forward as a historical necessity. This necessity springs from the development of production, which is cramped by capitalist relations of production, and by its nature, being collective, demands the abolition of private capitalist ownership and the establishment of public, collective ownership.
A materialist understanding of history and an analysis of the objective laws of social development, of the objective dialectics of capitalism and its inner contradictions, brought Marx and Engels round to the theory that the socialist revolution was not only necessary but also the only means of replacing capitalism by socialism, a necessary prerequisite for the emancipation of man and the creation of conditions for his real development. This scattered the illusions of the great Western Utopian Socialists about turning capitalism into socialism by reforms, by achieving a ``harmony'' of class interests.
Interpreted from the materialist standpoint, history has made it possible not only to elicit the real essence of the 30 social surroundings in which man lives and develops and show the ways and means of changing these surroundings for the benefit of man, but also to reveal the essence of man himself, his place in the system of social relations, within the framework of the social whole to which he belongs. This smashed the vicious circle concerning the relations between man and his surroundings, the vicious circle that had defied pre-Marxian social thought.
__ALPHA_LVL3__ Essence of Man and the TrendEvery man is a biological being, but that does not comprise his essence. Naturally, to shape man, nature uses definite biological material, but the turning of this material into a human organism is the result of social factors, primarily of labour. Labour, Engels wrote, created man. It is incarnated in the organisation of the human body. Man is man not because he consists of organs, tissues and cells, and not because he breathes with his lungs and feeds his children with milk, but because he can work, think and talk, because he can produce imple ments of labour and, with their help, influence his surroundings, nature, because in the process of labour he can enter into social relations with other men.
Marxism rejected the cult of abstract man, of man in general, regardless of time and space. Man has always been concrete, belonging to a historically definite social whole---a social system, a definite social group (class, nation, and so forth). He has always been a link in a definite system of social relations.
Marx wrote: ''. . .The human essence is no abstraction inherent in each single individual. In its reality it is the ensemble of social relations.'' This very ensemble of social relations, the social environment in which man develops, engenders the entire diversity of manifestations of his life.
Thus, the material, production activity of society, the economic relations that form in the process of production, determine whether a man is a slave or a slave-owner, a peasant or a feudal lord, a worker or a capitalist. In other words, the economic life of a definite society engenders manifestations of the economic life of a concrete man and, therefore, his place in the system of social production. The manifestation of man's life in the economic sphere comprises the foundation of all his other manifestations, 31 features and peculiarities. A definite collective- class, nation, and so forth---gives rise to the national, class and other features of man or, in short, to manifestations oi his social life. Lastly, intrinsic in man are manifestations of spiritual life, which mirror the economic, the production relations inherent in society.
The social environment to which man belongs thus engenders in him definite ``manifestations of life"---his diversity of features, behaviour and actions, thoughts and aspirations, needs, talents and other psychical qualities (character, temperament, feelings, habits, and so forth). In their totality and interaction all these features, these manifestations of life, form concrete man as a whole. Taken separately, they are specific manifestations of a definite social relation. Together they are a manifestation of the entire diversity of relations in society. In this context, the human essence is the sum total, the qualitative knot, an aggregate of social relations.
Why, one may ask, is there such a diversity of human individualities in one and the same environment, in one and the same society? Why does one individual or another not embody all the features of the social whole, and why is there such a difference in the features that he does embody? The answer to this is that each person develops in a specific environment (``micro-environment''), i.e., his speciality, occupation, features of the production or other collective, family, ``street'', and so on.
One can easily appreciate that the ``micro-environment'' is the prism through which is refracted the influence of the general social surroundings---economic and other social relations, the spiritual life of society. Inasmuch as the factors comprising the ``micro-environment'' are extremely diverse, this diversity spreads to persons even though they live and work in one and the same society, in one and the same social environment.
Thus, the features of each concrete person are determined by the general social environment through the medium of the ``micro-environment''. This gives expression to the general law of human development, of man's mode of existence, which, Marx wrote, ``is a more particular, or more general mode of the life of the species".
The individual constantly changes, develops in 32 accordance with the changes in the social environment. In the process of development he loses some of his old features, acquires new ones, and develops and toughens still others. It should be taken into consideration that the social environment itself is not homogeneous: in it there always are foundations of the present, survivals of the past and embryos of the future. It turns out that man represents the sum total of the social manifestations of the given environment (to it belongs the decisive role in forming the features of the individual), the environment that has receded into the historical past and the environment that is superseding the present.
When we say that man is the product of his surroundings we mean that the individual does not dissolve in society. Man is not a weak-willed screw of the social mechanism but its key functional link. He is the product of society, of circumstances, but he forms society itself. One must not forget, Marx wrote, ``that circumstances are changed by men''. Man moulds society and, together with it, he moulds himself by his labour and political activity, and his influence on the environment, on society, increases with social progress.
While bringing to light the social essence of man, the founders of scientific communism also showed the main trend of his development in the process of historical progress---the growth of the range of features, of manifestations of life, and their uninterrupted enrichment and development linked up with social progress, with the improvement of social relations, and the rise of the standard of material and spiritual culture. The achievement of free development and the fullest expression of all manifestations of human life, the achievement of their absolute harmony, their best and unconstrained (natural) utilisation in the interests of society and, thereby, of man himself, is the trend of the development of human history. This trend manifests itself fully only under communism, where, as Marx wrote, ``begins that development of human energy which is an end in itself, the true realm of freedom'', and conditions are created which are most worthy of and adequate to human nature. Communism moulds a new man, for whom material wealth is not an end in itself but solely a means for the fullest manifestation and __PRINTERS_P_34_COMMENT__ 3---2775 33 development of his creative capabilities. Here man himself, all sidedly, harmoniously developed, becomes the greatest social wealth. Under communism, in contrast to capitalism with its economic wealth of the ruling classes and Ihe poverty of the working people, Marx wrote, ''. . .come the rich human being and the rich human need. The rich human being is simultaneously the human being in need of a totality of human life-activities---the man in whom his own realisation exists as an inner necessity, as need".
__ALPHA_LVL3__ Emancipation of the Working Man---the Historic Mission of the Working ClassTwo antipodal types of man--- the exploiter and the working man---form in a class-- antagonistic society on the foundation of private ownership. This antithesis becomes especially marked in capitalist society, where, in the person of the bourgeoisie, the most unambiguous expression is acquired by individualism and egoism, by the attitude to any other human being as an object for the extraction of benefit---profit or pleasure. The bourgeoisie monopolise the right to development, to the satisfaction of their requirements and whims. The case is different with the working man, whose lot is to work. The capitalist division of labour dooms the proletariat to ugly, lop-sided development. Capitalism seeks to turn him into a cog of the economic mechanism, a cog denied all rights. Under capitalism the worker is forced to perform a single, narrow production function, to which he has to sacrifice all his other abilities and talents.
Nonetheless, in capitalist society the man of labour, the worker, has achieved much. Due primarily to his efforts, nature has been conquered and mighty productive forces have been built up which have made it possible to create unprecedented material and spiritual wealth. This has given rise to the first condition for creating a society in which he himself is the aim and purpose. But the worker has to create the second condition for the emancipation of man and his labour: he has to liberate labour, the man of labour from the tenets of capitalist relations, from the relations of capitalist ownership. ``The labouring classes have conquered nature; they have now to conquer man''.^^*^^ _-_-_
^^*^^ K. Marx and F. Engels, On Britain, Moscow, 1962, p. 417.
34 The working class is the social force, engendered by capitalism, that is called upon to accomplish Ihe socialist revolution and thereby win man over, liberate him from oppression and exploitation. The great historic mission of the working class is to emancipate the working man by means of the socialist revolution, eradicate capitalism and build a genuinely human society---socialism. ``The chief thing in the doctrine of Marx,'' Lenin wrote, ``is that it brings out the historic role of the proletariat as the builder of socialist society.''The first and cardinal task of the socialist revolution is to overthrow the supremacy of the bourgeoisie, sweep away the old state machine and create a new state, the state of the dictatorship of the proletariat.
Why had Marx and Engels come to the conclusion that the proletariat was the class with the great mission of emancipating the working man and all mankind?
First and foremost because the proletariat is the most revolutionary class of capitalist society. It is denied private ownership of the means of production and is the most exploited class of that society. Since it does not own property, it is compelled to work for the capitalists, to wear the yoke of capitalist exploitation. The worker's hands are his only wealth. Hence, his life and the life of his family, of his relatives and friends, depend upon blind destiny, on whether there is a demand for his labour, for his skill.
For that same reason, the proletariat, more than any other class, is interested in the abolition of private ownership and exploitation, and this means that it is the most revolutionary class and the most irreconcilable to capitalism. The socialist revolution, whose aim is to destroy capitalism and consolidate socialism, is the vital cause of the working class, its cherished objective and purpose. In revolution it has nothing to lose except its chains, but on the other hand it stands to win the whole world---the means of production and political power, and, together with them, the right to enjoy all the achievements of material and spiritual culture.
Another reason why the proletariat is the most revolutionary class is that it is linked up with a progressive form of economy -large-scale machine production. The 35 future belongs to this form of production and, consequently, the working class is linked up with the future of production, with the future of all mankind. The proletariat possesses the strength of the masses, the power of one of capitalist society's numerically strongest classes.
But that is not all. The very conditions in which production develops make the proletariat the most organised, the most disciplined and the most politically-conscious class. Having created a large-scale industry, the bourgeoisie has concentrated the workers in huge cities, at giant factories and mills. The workers work together, in large collectives, and, therefore, when they combat the bourgeoisie they very soon begin to perceive the need for organisation and the most rigid discipline. They see that they work and live in deplorable conditions and that everywhere they are opposed by one and the same exploiter---the capitalist. Hence the emergence and development of their class consciousness, their striving to unite not only on the basis of production but also on a national and then international basis. The working class sets up its own organisations--- co-operatives, insurance funds, trade unions and, lastly, a political party, which directs its struggle.
Due to the conditions in which it works and lives, the proletariat, more than any other class, is able to appreciate advanced revolutionary ideas and master advanced theory. True, the workers themselves have neither the time nor the means, nor sufficient knowledge to evolve this theory. This brings to the fore the task of injecting socialist consciousness into the working-class movement, to unite socialism with that movement. This important task is fulfilled by the political party of the working class.
In its struggle to achieve its ideals, the working class is not alone. Other classes and sections of the population that likewise suffer from exploitation---the working peasants, the artisans, the petty urban bourgeoisie and working intellectuals---enter into a close alliance with it in this struggle. Marx, Engels and, later, Lenin attached the utmost importance to the alliance between the working class and the peasants. They regarded this alliance as the social force called upon to accomplish the revolution and build socialism. While liberating itself from capitalist slavery, the 36 working class emancipates all other working people, the whole of society, from oppression.
It is important to note that the struggle of the working class is not confined to national boundaries. It is mternational. The nature of the working class is such that none of its interests engender hostility between peoples. It opposes the bourgeoisie, which is united on a global scale, by its internationalist unity, by the concerted struggle of peoples against the society of private ownership and exploitation.
__ALPHA_LVL3__ Social ProcessesHaving formulated the concept of a socio-economic system, shown the place occupied in it by various social relations and singled out economic relations as the most important and determining relations, Marx and Engels revealed the laws of social development and, thereby, gave the key allowing social processes to be guided scientifically for the benefit of man and all mankind.
To guide the development of society, in which millions upon millions of people live and work, is an extraordinarily intricate process. Its cardinal prerequisite is a correct policy, correct strategy and tactics conforming with the progressive trends of social development, with the interests of the foremost class, of the masses, who are the makers of history.
Marx and Engels, who were the first to bring the laws of social development to light, showed that as a result of the operation of these laws capitalism must yield its place to socialism, to a society without private property and without exploitation of man by man. Moreover, they particularly emphasised that socialism docs not supersede capitalism of itself, automatically. Perceiving in the working class a social force capable of establishing the new society and liberating man, they made it plain that the proletariat could fulfil its great historic mission only in the process of the class struggle and the socialist revolution.
The collapse of capitalism and the consolidation of socialism stem not only from the operation of objective laws but also from the subjective activity of people, as a result of a conscious and purposeful remaking of society, of the guidance of social processes. By consciously 37 promoting and organising the class struggle in capitalist society, the working class and its party accomplish mainly a negative, destructive task. However, if they do not fulfil this task, if they do not destroy capitalism they cannot initiate creative work, the building of socialism.
The founders of scientific communism demonstrated that there must be a directing authority in every society engaged in more or less large-scale production. There is, therefore, a directing authority in capitalist society as well.
``All combined labour on a large scale requires, more or less, a directing authority in order to secure the harmonious working of the individual activities, and to perform the general functions that have their origin in the action of the combined organism, as distinguished from the action of its separate organs. A single violin player is his own conductor; an orchestra requires a separate one.''^^*^^
At the same time, they stressed that under capitalism the functions of the directing authority are limited to a narrow field. The bourgeoisie is capable of giving efficient and even exemplary guidance to individual or groups of enterprises and even to entire branches of economy on a nation-wide scale or on the scale of groups of countries. However, it is unable to direct socio-economic processes, the development of society as a whole, by plan. This is due to private ownership, anarchy of production, the unpredictable nature of the market and competition, which rule out the possibility of planning social development.
It becomes possible to direct social processes and society as a whole scientifically only after the socialist revolution, after the dictatorship of the proletariat is established, private ownership abolished and production in all spheres of economy socialised. Production ceases to be sporadic and planned economic development is ensured only after socialist reforms are carried out. The economic foundation of socialism, public socialist ownership, unites people, turning the masses of scattered people consumed by capitalist competition into a ``collective man'', into ``associated producers''. In Capital, Marx wrote: ``...socialised man, the associated producers, rationally regulate their _-_-_
^^*^^ K. Marx. Capital Vol. I. Moscow, 1965, pp. 330--31.
38 interchange with Nature, bringing it under their common control, instead of being ruled by it as by the blind forces of Nature; and achieving this with the least expenditure of energy and under conditions most favourable to, and worthy of, their human nature.''Marx saw the ``real realm of freedom" of society and man in the conscious direction and regulation of production and of all spheres of social life, emphasising that this realm can flourish only on the foundation of objective laws of social development cognised by man and used for his benefit.
Marx and Engels scientifically settled the basic questions that the Utopian Socialists only raised. Firstly, rejecting speculation in favour of the real laws of social development, of an analysis of the objective dialectics of capitalism, they showed that capitalism would inevitably be superseded by socialism. Secondly, they brought to light the fact that in alliance with other working masses the proletariat had the great historic mission of destroying capitalism and establishing the new, socialist society. Thirdly, they demonstrated that capitalism would be destroyed and the new society established through the class struggle and the socialist revolution. Fourthly, they revealed the social essence of man, his place in the system of social relations, showing the trend of human development and pointing out that communist society was not an end in itself but only a means of emancipating the working man and promoting his all-round development, that man himself was the objective of communism. Fifthly, they proved that social processes could be directed, that they could be subordinated to the will of man, that the very process of the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism and the building of socialism and communism was a conscious, purposeful process of directing social development, a process of the advance of man and mankind towards the realm of real freedom.
It goes without saying that these are far from being all the problems raised and solved by the founders of scientific communism.
We must note yet another feature of scientific communism, namely, its organic tie and unity with revolutionary action, with practice.
39 __ALPHA_LVL3__ Unity of Theory andIn contrast to the Utopian Socialists, most of whom were theoreticians isolated from the struggle of the working masses, Marx and Engels were not only theoreticians but also the leaders of the growing revolutionary movement of the proletariat, of all working people. They devoted their brilliant intellects, mighty creative energy and outstanding abilities as organisers to the noble cause of emancipating the working people, to the cause of establishing socialism and communism. Having sided with the oppressed class, with the proletariat, they evolved a theory, which provided the working class with a spiritual weapon in its revolutionary struggle against capitalism, against social conditions that humiliate and mutilate man, with a powerful vehicle for transforming reality by man for man. The strength of scientific communism lies in its organic tie with revolutionary action, with practice, in the fact that it serves the proletariat and all working people in their struggle against capitalism, for socialism and communism.
This theory springs from a profound study and generalisation not only of science but also of socio-historic practice, of the revolutionary action of the masses in which its creators were directly and actively involved.
In 1847 Marx and Engels set up the League of Communists with the purpose of uniting the scattered communist groups, politically enlightening the workers and helping them to master communist ideas. The Communist Manifesto, drawn up by them on instructions from the League, proclaimed the birth of scientific communism. Besides its purely theoretical importance, it was the first programme of the world's first Communist Party. Explaining the substance of the new teaching in simple language, it called upon the workers to unite for the struggle to emancipate man, to destroy capitalism by revolution.
The Manifesto slated that in order to be strong enough to achieve victory at the decisive moment, the proletariat must create its own political party. As the vanguard of the working class, this party spreads communist ideas among the workers and organises and leads them in the revolutionary struggle.
Marx and Engels were leaders of the International 40 Workingmen'.s Association---the First International (1864--72). Founded by them in September 1864, it was the first organisation of the workers of several European countries. There were Russian revolutionaries in it, who in 1870 set up a Russian Section. Marx represented this section in the General Council.
The First International laid the foundation for an international organisation of the working class with the aim of preparing for the revolutionary struggle against capitalism. In the Inaugural Address of the First International it was stressed that the great mission of the working class was to seize political power, and that this could only be achieved if there was unity in its ranks, if it was organised, if in its revolutionary actions it was guided by the scientific theory of social development.
The Second International was set up in 1889 with the active participation of Engels. Initially, it too helped to unite the workers' parties and spread Marxist ideas among the masses.
Marx and Engels closely followed the revolutionary actions of the masses. After generalising the experience of the bourgeois-democratic revolutions of 1848--49 in Western Europe, they wrote that the working class should not entertain the illusion that the supremacy of capital over labour could be broken by a bourgeois republic. They maintained that a bourgeois revolution could be followed by a proletarian revolution, which would alone emancipate the working man. Their study of the experience of revolutions led them to the highly significant conclusion that the bourgeois state machine had to be smashed. This became one of the cornerstones of the theory of scientific communism.
This conclusion gave birth to another extremely important problem, namely, what would replace the bourgeois state machine after it was smashed? The solution was prompted by practice, by the revolutionary experience of the masses. In the spring of 1871 the revolutionary proletariat of Paris accomplished the world's first proletarian revolution, which established a working people's state, the famous Paris Commune. It was the prototype of the state of the future that could accomplish the transition from the old to the new society. ``Look at the Paris 41 Commune,'' Engels wrote. ``That was the Dictatorship of the Proletariat.''
The Paris Communards implemented the demands of the Communists. They sought to put an end to the old, rotten and outworn capitalist world and establish the rule of the working man, to do away with exploitation of man by man and make it a firm principle that work was the duty of all people. The Commune brought to life unparalleled initiative by the masses, who, to attain their lofty ideals, were, as Marx and Engels put it, prepared to storm the heavens. Marx and Engels did not hold aloof from this struggle. They offered the Communards advice and directed their activities.
The Commune came to grief for a number of reasons, primarily the organisational and theoretical immaturity of the working class, the absence of a proletarian Party and the lack of contact with the peasant masses. However, its value to the theory and practice of scientific communism is inestimable.
While evolving the theory of scientific communism and providing the working-class movement with practical leadership, Marx and Engels waged a relentless struggle against bourgeois ideology and against those who dragged at the back of the movement behind a screen of loud communist phraseology or, willynilly, brought grist to the bourgeois mill. They spoke sharply against petty-- bourgeois opportunism and sectarianism, whose aim was to tear the working class and its Party away from the broad masses. They repeatedly emphasised that in the mortal struggle against capitalism the working class could be victorious provided it rallied the masses to its banner.
At the head of the Communist League they resolutely opposed the ``Leftists'', who demanded immediate revolutionary action without taking the trouble to analyse the real balance of class forces. They combated adventurism and conspiratorial tactics that paid no heed to the need for serious and comprehensive preparations for a revolution, for thoughtful and painstaking work among the working people.
The founders of scientific communism also opposed the successors of Utopian socialism, who clung to the obsolete theories of the Utopians, failing to see the tremendous 42 changes that had taken place in social life, particularly the growth of (he revolutionary activity of the working {•lass, and ignoring the tasks that these changes had put before the proletariat. Particularly serious harm was being inflicted on the working class by the appeals to reform capitalism without hurting its economic and political foundations.
During the initial years of the First International Marx and Engels thus waged a struggle agaist the followers of the French petty-bourgeois politician Pierre Joseph Proudlion (1809--65). Calling themselves Proudhonists, they were opposed to the political struggle and the setting up of a dictatorship of the proletariat, believing that the growth of the co-operative movement of petty proprietors would transform capitalism into socialism without a revolutionary struggle or a revolution. They could not see that under capitalism the co-operative movement did not liberate the working people from exploitation.
After they had ideologically crushed the Proudhonists, Marx and Engels levelled their criticism against a new threat to the working-class movement---against pettybourgeois revolutionism, particularly anarchism, one of whose founders and leaders was the Russian emigre Mikhail Bakunin (1814--76). Bakunin and his followers claimed they were not opposed to revolution, but in fact they inflicted enormous harm on the revolutionary movement. Their conspiracies and demands for immediate insurrection doomed the unprepared workers to defeat. They ignored the economic prerequisites for a revolution, declaring that for a revolution to be successful it was enough for the working people to believe in their rights and for a small group of leaders to display the maximum will-power. The Bakuninists held that the state and not capitalism was the chief evil, and were, therefore, opposed to the setting up of the dictatorship of the proletariat. They regarded communism as a conglomeration of unchangeable and eternal primary cells and associations that were not subject to the operation of the laws of social development. In their criticism of the Bakuninists, Marx and Engels showed that subjectivism, disregard for the laws of social development and absolutisation of the human will were incompatible with revolutionary reforms, with a conscious 43 direction of social processes. They saw that the success of a revolution depended not on the determination of a handful of conspirators nor on political fireworks, but on painstaking and persevering efforts to unite the working class, on the proletariat's revolutionary consciousness and on efficient organisation.
Thanks to their efforts, scientific, communism became predominant in the international revolutionary movement of the working class as early as the 1870s. The working class has fixed its gaze on Marxism, which has become its powerful ideological and theoretical weapon.
__ALPHA_LVL2__ 3. The Leninist Phase of ScientificLike Marxism as a whole, the theory of scientific communism is not a collection of immutable, fossilised principles accepted as a faith. It is a developing and creative science, which mirrors objective reality, social life with all its contradictions and complexities, in its movement and development. It is not a stagnant science. It moves forward, keeping in step with constantly changing life, daily becoming enriched with the latest achievements of science and practice. It closely scrutinises life, reality, profoundly studying all aspects of the processes in the capitalist and the socialist worlds, and developing and specifying theoretical conclusions and bringing them into line with the requirements of life.
While studying and generalising the development of capitalist society, the aggravation of the contradictions in that society, and the growth of the communist and working-class movement and of the national liberation struggle and the struggle for democracy, scientific communism works out the ways and means of overthrowing capitalism with due consideration for the constantly changing conditions and the concrete situation. It studies the development of socialist society, the experience of building socialism and communism in different countries, and the role and importance of the Communist Parties in building the new society, with the purpose of working out the ways and means of building that society in conformity with 44 the concrete stage of history. In this work scientific communism rests on the achievements of other social sciences, synthesises these achievements and uses them in the revolutionary practice of reorganising the world along communist lines. This intimate unity with life, with practice determines the creative nature of scientific communism and of Marxism-Leninism as a whole.
Scientific communism emerged when capitalism was on the ascendant. Deep-going changes took place in the world at the close of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century. Capitalism reached its last stage of development---- imperialism. The economic and social contradictions in it became unprecedentedly acute. A period of relative peace gave way to a period of social storms, of revolutionary upheavals.
The period witnessing radical changes in social relations approximately coincided with the period when mankind embarked upon a new scientific and technical revolution sparked off' by phenomenal achievements in science and technology---the discovery and utilisation of atomic power, large-scale penetration by science, particularly chemistry, into production, the development of automation, electronics, rocketry, and so forth. These advances made it unmistakably clear that capitalism was falling behind the times, that it was becoming a growing obstacle to social, scientific and technical progress. The historical need for replacing capitalism by socialism was becoming more and more urgent. The new conditions, quite naturally, demanded a new approach to the cardinal social problems and a creative development of Marxism. The new experience of the revolutionary working-class movement, the experience of the national liberation and democratic movements and the latest scientific and technical achievements had to be generalised. This became all the more necessary in view of the fact that forces hostile to Marxism were reanimated under the new conditions, and they became particularly savage in their attacks on the theory and practice of scientific communism, which was winning the hearts and minds of more and more working people throughout the world.
At the close of the 19th century, the centre of the international revolutionary and, in particular, the working-class 45 movement began to shift to Russia, which had become the focus of the contradictions of imperialism. The socialist revolution matured in Russia, which became the home of Leninism, of Marxism enriched and developed in the new historical conditions. The further creative development of Marxism, of scientific communism is firmly linked up with Vladimir Ilyich Lenin (1870--1924), the great leader of the Russian and international proletariat, of all working people.
Lenin's work in scientific communism is so vast and many-faceted that it comprises an entire phase of the development of communist ideas, a phase embracing the entire period from the close of the 19th century to the present.
__ALPHA_LVL3__ Theoretician of ScientificThere is every ground for saying that virtually every problem of scientific communism has been creatively dealt with by Lenin.
His great service to history is that his theoretical work was inseparably linked up with the revolutionary struggle of the proletariat and with the building of socialism in the U.S.S.R. He enriched the theory of scientific communism, raised and solved a multitude of new theoretical problems and directed the implementation of the principles of scientific communism. He drew up the programme for the building of socialism and communism in the U.S.S.R. and, to his last day, headed the people and the Party, who were carrying out this programme. The Soviet people's achievements in the building of the new society are indissolubly linked up with his name.
The new epoch posed the working class and its Marxist party with the task of remaking society by revolution, of destroying capitalism and building socialism. That made Lenin devote much of his time and energy to studying the laws of social development, particularly the essence of imperialism and its contradictions, and to working out the ways and means of resolving these contradictions by the proletarian-led revolutionary forces. He evolved the theory of socialist revolution and elaborated the theory of the modern world revolutionary process embracing not only the socialist movement of the working class but also the national liberation movement and all kinds of democratic movements spearheaded against imperialism. In keeping 46 with the features of the revolutionary movement in the new epoch, he worked out the strategy and tactics of the proletarian class struggle, of the world communist movement.
He developed the Marxist theory of the dictatorship of the proletariat and the forms of this dictatorship, of the tasks of the proletarian state, of the destiny of a stale under socialism and communism, and of socialist democracy. He created the teaching about the new, revolutionary type of party and showed its place and role in uprooting the old and building the new society.
Lenin always focussed his attention on the working man, on devising ways and means of emancipating him, of enabling him to develop and assert himself. In enriching and developing the Marxist theory of socialism and communism, he regarded the new society not as an end in itself but solely as a condition, as a means of emancipating and improving man. He sought to place the economy and the achievements of science and technology in the service of the working man, to improve social relations in the interests of the working people, and to organise society's spiritual life in such a way as to ensure man's intellectual blossoming and the fullest development of his boundless creative possibilities.
Lenin worked out the relation between objective conditions and subjective factors of history during the building of communist society, and formulated the principles underlying the most effective application of the objective laws of social development in the interests of the working man. While developing the Marxist theory of scientifically directing social processes, he worked out the fundamental principles for guiding communist construction.
An important place in Lenin's works is occupied by the theory of socialist revolution, which has had a tremendous impact on the further development of society, on the course of world history.
__ALPHA_LVL3__ Lenin's Theory ofFirst and foremost, Lenin defined the place occupied in history by imperialism, showing that it is moribund, decaying capitalism. In the era of imperialism the basic contradiction of capitalism, that between social production and private appropriation, 47 reaches its bursting point. Imperialism, Lenin wrote, ``leads up to the most all-sided socialisation ol' production" but retains the proprietor principle ol distribution; private ownership relations form ``...a shell which no longer fits its contents, a shell which must inevitably decay . . . but which will inevitably be removed''.^^*^^ Imperialism is, thus, the eve of the socialist revolution. Under imperialism, the socialist revolution is not only possible but necessary and inevitable, becoming the direct task of the day for the working class.
A key element of the theory of socialist revolution is Lenin's brilliant thesis that socialism can triumph initially in one country taken separately. To substantiate this thesis, Lenin showed that in the capitalist countries development proceeds unevenly, sporadically. Some countries, that had formerly lagged behind, overtake and outstrip the leading countries in both the economic and political spheres. The balance of forces is thus broken, with the result that conflicts break out and the united capitalist front is shaken: the position of world capitalism grows weaker, giving rise to the possibility of breaking the chain of imperialism in its most feeble link.
``The development of capitalism,'' Lenin wrote, ``proceeds extremely unevenly in different countries. It cannot be otherwise under commodity production. From this it follows irrefutably that socialism cannot achieve victory simultaneously in all countries. It will achieve victory first in one or several countries, while the others will for some time remain bourgeois or pre-bourgeois.''^^**^^
Lenin regarded mankind's transition from capitalism to socialism not as a single act but as an entire epoch.
He took the extremely complex picture of the world of his day into consideration: the existence not only of bourgeois but also of pre-bourgeois countries, where the bourgeois-democratic system had not been firmly established; the existence of various classes and social groups in each country, and so forth. This led him to the conclusion that ``pure'' socialist revolutions cannot be accomplished in the epoch of imperialism. One cannot think, he _-_-_
^^*^^ Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 22, p. 303.
^^**^^ Ibid., Vol. 23, p. 79.
48 wrote, that an army assembled in one place says, ``~`We are for socialism,' and another, somewhere else says, 'We are for imperialism,' and that that will be a social revolution!... Whoever expects a 'pure' social revolution will never live to see it. Such a person pays lip-service to revolution without understanding what revolution is.'' Lenin pictured the revolutionary process as an outburst of mass struggle by all oppressed and dissatisfied people. This process embraced the working-class struggle, the peasant movement, the national liberation movement and all democratic movements against imperialism.In this connection, Lenin emphasised that there had to be a firm alliance between the working class and all revolutionary forces undermining imperialism, and emphatically opposed sectarianism, the isolation of the proletariat from other working people and democratic forces. Here he meant not an alliance in general, but an alliance in which the working class as the main revolutionary force played the role of vanguard.
He did not by any means consider that any revolutionary explosion in any country must necessarily be a socialist revolution, which would lead to the dictatorship of the proletariat, although in the case of some countries this possibility was not ruled out. On the other hand, in prebourgeois countries, in colonial countries or countries with strong survivals of feudalism, as well as in countries where bourgeois-democratic reforms have not been completed, the socialist revolution may be preceded by a bourgeois-democratic or national liberation revolution, which, given favourable conditions, develops into a socialist revolution. The question of the growth of the bourgeois-democratic revolution into a socialist revolution was dealt with by Lenin in Two Tactics of Social-- Democracy in the Democratic Revolution. In this work he advanced the thesis that non-capitalist development was possible in pre-bourgeois countries, provided socialism triumphed in other countries.
__ALPHA_LVL3__ Leader of the WorldLenin organised a new type of Party, a revolutionary Communist Party, firmly believing that when the objective prerequisites for a revolution have matured, a subjective factor of history, namely, the 49 political consciousness and organisation of the proletariat and other working people, plays the decisive role. As the vanguard of the proletariat and as its most politically conscious and organised contingent, the Party ensures the unity and organisation of the working class and arms it with advanced revolutionary theory, strategy and tactics. This proposition was borne out in Russia, where, led by the Communist Parly, the workers and peasants overthrew capitalism and created the world's first socialist state.
Lenin was the leader not only of the Russian but of the international working class, of the working people of the whole world. He dedicated himself to the modern world communist movement, which he built up and directed. He stood at the mainspring of the Third, Communist International, which replaced the Second International, whose leaders wallowed in the mire of opportunism and slid into betrayal of the working class. Exposing the treachery of social-reformism, Lenin underlined the internationalist nature of the communist movement and called for unity of the communist forces on a world scale.
The First (Inaugural) Congress of the Third International, which gave tremendous impetus to the world communist movement, was held on March 2-6, 1919, in Moscow. The Third International united the communist forces of the world on the ideological foundation of Marxism-Leninism, worked out the strategy and tactics of the working-class movement in the new conditions, helped to mould and enlarge the young Communist Parties, enriched them with revolutionary experience, and combated opportunists of all shades and hues. It influenced the national liberation movement and the struggle of the masses for democracy, and was in the centre of the struggle of the peoples for peace.
__ALPHA_LVL3__ Fighfer for the PurityWhile developing the theory of scientific communism and directing the revolutionary struggle and the building of socialism, Lenin consistently upheld the purity of Marxist theory against bourgeois ideology and its accomplices, against idealism and clericalism, against opportunism, in short against all those who distorted and falsified Marxism, and those who, having distorted it, 50 attempted to use it to further the interests of the bourgeoisie.
At the outset of his political activities, Lenin denounced the ideology of the Russian liberal Narodniks of the 1880s-90s. The Narodniks refused to recognise that the emergence of capitalism in Russia was a natural process, opposed the proletarian class struggle against the bourgeoisie and rejected the idea that the working class played a revolutionary role in society. They pinned their hopes chiefly on the peasants, regarding them as the only champions of socialism, without realising that the peasants could achieve liberation from landowner oppression solely under the leadership of the proletariat. They interpreted history from an idealistic standpoint, rejecting the decisive role of economic factors in the historical process and declaring that history was made not by the people but by ``heroes'', by outstanding personalities.
Showing that Russia's capitalist development was a natural, law-governed process, Lenin revealed the social stratification of the peasantry, and worked out the tactics of the working class towards the different sections of the peasants. He saw that the peasants would be staunch allies of the proletariat against the capitalists and, later, in the building of socialist society.
Lenin's struggle against Right and Left opportunism, trends hostile to Marxism, did much to further the theory and practice of scientific communism.
He characterised Right opportunism, or revisionism, as ``petty-bourgeois reformism, i.e., servility to the bourgeoisie covered by a cloak of sentimental democratic and `Social'-- Democratic phrases and fatuous wishes''. Revisionism breaks with the economic and philosophical teaching of Marxism, removes its revolutionary substance and replaces it with bourgeois reformist theories. It rejects the Marxist theory of classes and the class struggle, of the socialist revolution and the dictatorship of the proletariat, and deliberately misrepresents the Marxist teaching about the Party and the ways of building socialism. It is characteristic that all this is screened by the false claim of defending Marxism, of furthering its development. The danger of revisionism was especially great early in the 20th century, when it gained momentum on a world scale, penetrating all the Socialist Workers' Parties and becoming, __PRINTERS_P_50_COMMENT__ 4* 51 practically speaking, the official ideology of the Second International.
In contrast to Right opportunism, Loll opportunism does not preach reformist ideas. On the contrary, it boasts of its revolutionism, paying no attention to historical conditions and the balance of class forces.
Despite this outward difference, there is much that Right and Left opportunism have in common: petty-bourgeois mentality and hostility to Marxism, to scientific communism, to the revolutionary working-class movement. Both trends seek to plant bourgeois influence among the working class. The reformism of the Right opportunists and the ultra-revolutionism and, essentially, adventurism of the Left opportunists, the absence in both these trends of proletarian firmness, organisation and discipline seriously harm the revolution, the cause of socialism by foredooming the working class to capitulation to the bourgeoisie, to defeat.
This conciliatory, capitulalory substance of opportunism was countered by Lenin with creative, revolutionary Marxism. He combated not only the Russian opportunists of the Right-wing (Economists, liquidators, Mensheviks) and Left-wing trends (olzovists, ``Left Communists'', Trotskyites), but also opportunism in the world workingclass movement. This struggle serves as an example of a lofty Party approach to theory and, to this day, it inspires Communists in their struggle against contemporary opportunism.
__ALPHA_LVL3__ Development of ScientificAfter Lenin died the theory of scientific communism was and continues to be furthered by the C.P.S.U. and fraternal Communist and Workers Parties. A large contribution to this has been made by the decisions passed by congresses and conferences of the C.P.S.U., plenary meetings of the C.C. C.P.S.U., and of other fraternal parties, and decisions adopted at international meetings of Communists. These documents represent a skilful application of this theory's propositions and conclusions to analyses of the present world situation, to the practice of the revolutionary struggle and to the building of socialism and communism.
The Declaration of the 1957 Meeting of Communist and 52 Workers' Parties of socialist countries, the Statement of the I960 World Meeting of Communist and Workers' Parties, the decisions of the 20th, 22nd and 23rd congresses of the C.P.S.U., and the Party Programme adopted at the 22nd Congress of the C.P.S.U. are major milestones in the development of Marxism-Leninism, of the theory of scientific communism. These documents show a creative approach to basic problems of the world liberation movement and of the building of socialism and communism. They deal with the nature and contradictions of the present epoch, the main revolutionary forces of the modern epoch, the possibility of averting another world war, the strategy and tactics of the world communist movement, the diversity of the forms of transition from capitalism to socialism and the dictatorship of the proletariat, the general laws of the building of socialism, the development of socialism into communism, the scientific direction of economic and social processes, the ways and means of building the material and technical basis of communism, the formation of communist social relations, the upbringing of the new man, and so forth.
The theory of scientific communism is a Party science, which, consequently, mirrors the interests of the working class and all other working people. It develops in irreconcilable struggle against bourgeois ideology, primarily anticommunism, which has become the principal ideological and political weapon of imperialism. Anti-communism slanders socialism and misrepresents the policy and objectives of the Communist Parties and the theory of MarxismLeninism. The bourgeoisie spends enormous funds and has built up a mammoth apparatus to combat communism, but life and practice demonstrate the great vitality of communist ideas. History convincingly shows that scientific communism is triumphing. The future belongs to it,
[53] __NUMERIC_LVL1__ Chapter 2 __ALPHA_LVL1__ NATURE OF THE MODERN EPOCH.Today socialism is more than a science or a theory. It has become a reality, a real society built on vast expanses of the earth. It has become established in the U.S.S.R. and a number of other countries. The transition to socialism and communism is the road of development of all mankind. Ours is an epoch of progress towards the bright communist future. Let us elucidate the nature of our epoch and examine its main revolutionary forces.
__ALPHA_LVL2__ 1. The Modern Epoch __ALPHA_LVL3__ [introduction.]The evolution of society cannot be regarded as an instantaneous replacement of one system by another in all the countries of the world. By virtue of the fact that in each country the internal and external conditions of development are different, the transition from one socioeconomic system to another is not accomplished at one and the same time on a world-wide scale. Thus, at any given stage of its development, society, as a whole, represents a complex picture of different but interlacing socioeconomic systems and ways of life, of classes, social groups, nations and states acting on each other and often engaged in bitter struggle with each other. Take contemporary mankind. One-third of it is building socialism and communism, while the remaining two-thirds live in non-socialist countries. Among the latter are countries with developed 54 capitalism and imperialism, countries at pre-capitalist stages of development, and so forth. Moreover, millions of people, chiefly Africans, continue to languish under the colonial yoke. This state of society as a whole at a definite stage of development is expressed by the concept epoch. This concept covers a diversity of phenomena of human history and it stresses, mainly, that which is basic, general and typical in this diversity. Lenin required that we should distinguish the ``typical'' and the ``different'' in each epoch. He constantly analysed this ``typical''. To find what is typical, objectively basic in historical phenomena, i.e., to determine the predominant trend of social development at a given stage, to show which class champions this trend is a major requirement for defining a concrete epoch. ``We cannot know,'' Lenin wrote, ``how rapidly and how successfully the various historical movements in a given epoch will develop, but we can and do know which class stands at the hub of one epoch or another, determining its main content, the main direction of its development, the main characteristics of the historical situation in that epoch. ...'' In order to elucidate the nature of a given epoch we must, first and foremost, determine in what direction mankind is moving and which class personifies this movement.
__ALPHA_LVL3__ Main Content ofBlinded by their class interests and lacking a scienific method of cognition, the ideologists of the bourgeoisie, which is leaving the stage of history, are unable to understand the diversity and complexity of the social development of our time. Some of them openly state that it is impossible to define the nature of our epoch or establish in what direction modern civilisation is developing because social events arc indefinite and fluid and do not lend themselves to an objective, unbiased assessment. Extremely typical in this respect is the stand of the authors of Where Are We Today?, published in the Federal Republic of Germany. One of these authors, Helmut Schelsky, maintains that to answer the question of ``Where are we today?" i.e., to define the nature of our epoch, means primarily to find that by which we must judge the historical place of mankind today. But, according to Schelsky, this ``that'' is so elusive and indefinite that it is useless to try and define it. Hence, people are unable correctly 55 to evaluate their epoch and to act in accordance with its spirit, i.e., to resolve vital contemporary problems.
Another group of bourgeois sociologists seeks to prove that the nature of the modern epoch is determined by technical discoveries, chiefly by the discovery of atomic power. No more and no less than the atom bomb is re garded as being at the hub of the modern epoch, which these sociologists call the ``technical age'', the ``nuclear age'', the ``age of the atomic bomb''. For example, the West German philosopher Karl Jaspers writes: ``A new situation has been created by the atomic bomb.'' Yet the development of society cannot be reduced to technology, to technical discoveries, despite the fact that the present scientific and technical revolution plays an immense role in social development. In order to assess the role of technology it must be remembered that it influences the historical process not by itself but through an intricate system of social relations, primarily of the relations of production, which are predominant in society. Chiefly these relations and the class forces behind them must be taken into consideration when we analyse the modern epoch.
Marxism-Leninism is the only science that reveals the nature of the modern epoch, whose content consists in the ``abolition of capitalism and its vestiges, and the establishment of the fundamentals of the communist order... .''^^*^^
As we have already pointed out, Lenin saw the revolutionary transition from capitalism to socialism and communism not as a single act but as an entire epoch of struggle between the two antipodal social systems. He legitimately considered that the international working class is the standard-bearer of this new epoch, whose beginning he linked up with the Great October Socialist Revolution, that was the first to set up the dictatorship of that class. He was convinced that the dictatorship of the proletariat, which had triumphed first in only one country would grow from a national into an international organisation, that more and more peoples and countries would gradually take the road of socialist development.
Lenin's definition of the modern epoch was further developed at the Moscow Meeting of Communist and _-_-_
~^^*^^ Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 31, p. 392.
56 Workers' Parties in November 19(50 and in the Programme of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. ``Our epoch,'' the C.P.S.U. Programme states, ``whose main content is the transition from capitalism to socialism, is an epoch of struggle between the two opposing social systems, an epoch of socialist and national liberation revolutions, of the breakdown of imperialism and the abolition of the colonial system, an epoch of the transition of more and more peoples to the socialist path, of the triumph of socialism and communism on a world-wide scale. The central factor of the present epoch is the international working class and its main creation, the world socialist system.''This definition of the modern epoch is corroborated by the development of contemporary society and by the practice of the revolutionary liberation struggle of the peoples. It mirrors the decisive events of our times---the victory of the socialist revolution in a large group of countries and the growth of socialism into a mighty world system, the decline and crisis of imperialism and the collapse of the colonial system.
__ALPHA_LVL3__ October Revolution,November 7 (October 25 according to the Julian calendar then in use), 1917, when in alliance with the working peasants the Russian workers set up the dictatorship of the proletariat, has entered history as the dawn of the present epoch of transition from capitalism to socialism. In this connection, Lenin wrote: ``...we have a right to be and are proud that to us has fallen the good fortune to begin the building of a Soviet state, and thereby to usher in a new era in world history, the era of the rule of a new class, a class which is oppressed in every capitalist country, but which everywhere is marching forward towards a new life, towards victory over the bourgeoisie, towards the dictatorship of the proletariat, towards the emancipation of mankind from the yoke of capital, and from imperialist wars.'' The winning of the right to build the new society involves formidable difficulties. The grim struggle against the autocracy, the landowners and capitalists in the years preceding the Revolution cost the people and the Party the lives of many of their best sons. The Communist Party 57 rallied the working class and all other revolutionary forces, organised and tempered them and led them against the exploiting system. The Russian workers and peasants passed through a stern school of struggle before accomplishing the Revolution under the Party's leadership. They had to exert a still greater effort and suffer prodigious sacrifices to uphold the great gains of the October Revolution, to defend the world's first working people's state. The struggle of the Communist Party, the proletariat and other working people of Russia against the old system is, to this day, an example for all fighters for the new, socialist future.
In itself the October Revolution was a Russian revolution, a revolution that triumphed in one country, and in that context it is the internal, national affair of the peoples of Russia. At the same time, it stretched far beyond the boundaries of one country and had a tremendous impact on the entire course of world history. It raised and successfully solved a number of social problems, which are to this day being tackled by the proletariat and other working masses in the non-socialist countries. It gives practical confirmation of the reality of Marxism-Leninism and has provided the proletariat and other working people of all countries with experience of struggle against capitalism, for socialism. It opened for mankind the road to the new, socialist society, put an end to the undivided rule of capitalism in the world, and split the world into two opposing systems---the capitalist and the socialist---as a result of which the entire course of history has been changed.
The triumph of the October Revolution drove capitalism into a sustained general crisis caused by the exacerbation of all its contradictions and the narrowing down of the sphere of capitalist exploitation. Having acquired a mighty ally and a reliable assistant in the person of the first proletarian state, the working people of the whole world received greater possibilities for their revolutionary struggle.
The October Revolution powerfully stimulated the international working-class movement. Under its direct influence workers rose to the struggle against the exploiters in different parts of the world. Revolutions broke out in 58 Germany, Austria-Hungary and other countries, and revolutionary actions of the proletariat swept across Europe and America.
After the example set by the Russian Communist Party and under the influence of its victories, Marxist parties sprang up in Europe, Asia, Africa and America, and these united organisationally and ideologically in the Third, Communist International, which laid the beginning for the contemporary communist movement and was, for the Communists of the whole world, a fine school of revolutionary struggle against the bourgeoisie.
The October Revolution awakened the peoples of colonial and dependent countries, across which swept a mighty wave of national liberation revolutions. That sparked off the disintegration of the colonial system of imperialism and created the prerequisites for the complete liberation of the oppressed peoples.
The main revolutionary forces of the modern epoch are coming to the forefront as a result or under the direct impact of the October Revolution, and the main thing is that the Revolution laid the foundation for their unity in a single world revolutionary process that is undermining and destroying imperialism.
__ALPHA_LVL3__ The World Revolutionary Process and Its MainThe modern world revolutionary process is a movement of mankind from capitalism to social ism and represents a single torrent of struggle against imperialism, a torrent into which merge:~
the efforts of the peoples of the socialist system who are building socialism and communism;~
the revolutionary movement of the working class of the capitalist countries;~
and the national liberation movement, the struggle of oppressed peoples against colonialism, for national sovereignty and economic independence.
The classes and sections of society participating in these movements tackle their own specific tasks and utilise specific methods and means to carry out these tasks; all of them undermine the foundations of imperialism. The earnest of success of the great cause of peace, progress 59 and socialism lies in the unity of the contemporary revolutionary forces.
The peoples of the socialist countries are building socialism and communism, blazing for mankind the road to the new society. They are competing with the world capitalist system in the economic field, demonstrating the advantages of the new system and securing the world's highest level of labour productivity and the highest standard of living. They embody the mighty material and spiritual forces opposing imperialist reaction and defending peace, socialism and social progress.
The working class of the capitalist countries is taking advantage of the favourable international and internal situation (the change in the balance of forces in the world in favour of socialism, the deep-rooted dissatisfaction of the masses with the reactionary policy of imperialism, and so forth) to push forward the struggle against the economic and political supremacy of the monopolies, for socialism, peace and security, for broad democratic reforms. By undermining the foundations of capitalism in, so to speak, its own house, they are preparing and accelerating the final destruction of world capitalism.
The peoples of the developing and the colonial and dependent countries are perseveringly struggling for political and economic independence, for prosperity and social progress, smashing the colonial system of imperialism, undermining its immediate rear echelons, depriving it of sources of raw material and manpower, markets, military bridgeheads and sources of cannon fodder, and thereby likewise accelerating the downfall of capitalism and mankind's progress towards socialism.
At the core of the contemporary revolutionary forces are t