p In Marxist-Leninist literature there is a generally accepted terminology for designating the original and peculiar features in the manifestation of the general laws Jboth of the socialist revolution and of socialist construction. In the first instance Marxists speak about the diversity of ways to socialism. As to socialist construction under the different concrete conditions, Marxists most often speak about differences in forms and methods. A lot has been written in Marxist literature about the diversity of forms of proletarian dictatorship, about different methods of socialist industrialization, about different methods or ways of socialist reconstruction of petty agriculture, as well as 162 about the various forms of socialist agricultural enterprise—Sovkhoz. kolkhoz, cooperative farm etc.

p Under the impact Of the ever wider use of modelling as a method in the social sciences, the question has arisen of late whether it would not be correct to use the term ’model of socialism’ to designate the sum total of general laws and specific features which characterize the structure and functioning of the socialist society in different groups of countries and even in individual countries.

p Many of the revisionists, however, aided by the bourgeois pluralizers of Marxism, also use the term ’model of socialism’, lending it an anti-scientific and indeed diversionist meaning. The same anti-scientific content that we find in the pluralist term ’variants of Marxism’, is also given by the revisionists to the term ’different models of socialism’. On the one hand, the character of the real socialism set up in the USSR and under construction in other states is presented distortedly as a ’worthless model’. On the other hand, different deformations and even caricatures of socialist society are extolled as genuine, humane, democratic, etc. ’models of socialism’. Moreover, it is in a spirit of pluralism that the ‘Marxologists’and revisionsits seek and find profound differences and contradictions in principle between the different ’models of of socialism’.

p Such ’pluralist models of socialism’, which differ fundamentally and are mutually contradictory, do not exist either in reality or in Marxist theory, nor are they at all possible. They are an anti-scientific concoction brewed by the bourgeois ‘Marxologists’ and revisionists.

p Irrespective of this, however, many Marxists have good reason to use the term ’model of socialism’ in a positive sense, and point out that it is a necessary term. A.P.Butenko writes, for instance: ’In connection with the tremendous part played by the subjective factor, the problem of models of socialism assumes great importance, i.e. the problem of the logical constructions of the socialist society, created on the basis of the general principles of socialism, taking due account of 163 the real conditions and potentialities of a given country (or group of countries)’. (23, c. 14), After rejecting, with good reason, the attempts of the bourgeois, reformist and revisionist theoreticians to replace the integrated scientific theory of socialism with ’different models of socialism’, Y. Kronrod stresses: ’There can be no doubt that every truly scientific model of one or another objective phenomenon or process, including the economic phenomena or processes, is an important means of attaining scientific knowledge’ (45, c. 22). Mitryu Yankov also thinks that the terms ‘models’ and ‘modelling’, though in their ’non-specific sense’ ( according to the author), may be applied in an analysis of the problems of socialism, provided this takes place from the standpoint of Marxism-Leninism. We have also given certain reasons why it would be expedient to use the term ‘model’ and to apply the method of modelling in the social field and, more specifically, why the concept of ‘models’ is justified (43, c. 33-37).

p We think that we can accept as satisfactory the following definition of a model by V.A.Stoff: ’a mentally presented or materialized system which, in reflecting and reproducing the object, is capable of replacing it in such a way that its study may give us new information about the said object’ (84, c. 19).

p Y.Kronrod rightly objects to any attempt to equate the model with the theory. Taking into account the role of the model as an important means of attaining scientific knowledge, he underlines that ’the model in itself never replaces and cannot replace theory’. (45, c. 22). Agreeing fully with this view, we think that one more step should be taken to point out that the place of the category ‘model’ is between the categories ‘theory’ and ‘concept’.

p The concept contains the most essential features of each one of a. multitude of homogeneous objects under study. Theory gives us an integrated knowledge of the origin, the laws of functioning and devlopment, the structure, etc. of many objects. And the model gives us the average, typical object as an integrated system of 164 its subsystems and components and reveals the structure and mechanisms of its functioning.

p Proceeding from the place of the model in the system of categories, which has been thus defined, we think that on the basis of a given theory ideat models can be created on three levels:

p a) a general theoretical model, representing as a system what is central to the structure, the principles and mechanisms of the whole class or the whole multitude of objects reflected by the theory; 

p b) a model on the level of the particular, for greater or smaller groups of objects, which besides the features common to the whole multitude also have certain additional features, which are typical of the individual groups, and 

p c) in case of need, models of individual objects can also be created, each one of which should contain: the general structure and mechanisms which are typical of the whole class or multitude; the features specific of a given group (submultitude) to which the object belongs; those specific individual features which are typical only of the single object being modelled, without which features the model could not be a substitute or prototype for this specific object.

p Let us now apply these general reasonings specifically to the problem in which we are interested: the socialist society, socialism as a social system. How many and what models of socialism can exist or be created?

p The general theoretic al model of socialism and socialist society does exist. This model was forecast by Marx and Engels as a first phase of the communist society, on the basis of tne theory of scientific communism created by them.

p There also exists the Soviet model of socialism. This contains without exception all principles and features which characterize the theoretical model of socialism created by Marx and Engels. This is a fact of tremendous theoretical and practical significance, on the one hand, because the truth of the entire Marxist-Leninist theory, a deduction from which the theoretical model of 165 the socialist society was, has thereby been brilliantly reaffirmed. On the other hand, because the socialist society built up in the first country, which embodies all the basic principles and laws contained in the theoretical model,has now obtained an advantage over the original model—the advantage of being a concrete reality. Now it is not solely—not mainly—the theoretical forecast made 120 years ago by Marx and Engels that is a standard for what constitutes socialism but above all it is the basic content of Soviet reality.

p The Soviet model of socialism contains certain special features, besides the general laws, which will be typical of all other countries with conditions similar to those obtaining in it: a multi-national character, predominantly agricultural, etc. However, the Soviet model of socialism also has some unique features, typical only of the October Revolution and of socialist construction in the USSR, which most probably will nowhere else be repeated in the same form. These unique, individual features are connected with the fact that Russia was the first country to blaze the trail to socialism, and her special situation placed her for a long time in Hostile capitalist encirclement.

p Side by side with the Soviet model, there also exists a people’s democratic model of socialism. This also contains all the laws and features typical of Marx’ and Engels’ theoretical model, implemented in the Soviet Union. In this model of socialism we have all those special features—reflecting the different conditions as compared with the time of the Great October Socialist Revolution—under which the people’s democratic revolutions triumphed after the Second World War and which were reflected mostly in the people’s democratic form given to the superstructure in those countries.

p Among the group of countries in which the socialist revolution triumphed in a people’s democratic form, there are differences of one kind or another, resulting from the degree of their economic and social development, their historical traditions, as well as the degree of maturity of the main subjective factor—the Communist Party Insofar as in some "of these countries 166 certain specific national elements assume majoi significance, without eclipsing or negating the general laws and features typical of socialism as such, i.e. of the theoretical model (which also means the Soviet model) or the general features of people’s democracy (in the first place—the presence of fatherland, people’s united, etc., fronts)—the sum total of the general features and laws of socialism, plus the special features of people’s democracy, plus the specific national features, all taken together, may be called national forms or national models of a socialist society.

p In a further development, after the triumph of the socialist revolution in still more countries, we may expect the appearance of other forms and models of a socialist system.

p When we put the question in this way—and in our opinion only putting it in this way is justified by the objective character of socialism as a non-antagonistic social system—there can be no question of any counterposing or of‘pluralism’ in the relations between the individual socialist countries, or between the different forms and models of socialism. Because not only the general laws, but also the differences between them, properly understood, dictate cooperation and fraternal assistance, and do not lead to antagonism.

p Proceeding from the above theoretical a,nd methodological considerations, we think that the concept ’model of socialism’ can be adopted and can assume the place which it deserves in Marxist terminology and in scientific research, after the anti-scientific meaning which the revisionists and the bourgeois pluralists have tried to attach to it has been rejected.

p It is necessary in this connection to specify one more point. When the bourgeois ‘Marxologists’ and revisionists spread the conception of a ‘pluralization’ of Marxism with respect also to socialist society, the term ‘pluralism’ is used by them in its two main meanings. First, the thesis is put forward that there exist, or ought to exist, radically different kinds or variants of socialism, i.e. models and forms of socialist society differing in principle from one another. Moreover, there is a 167 logical connection between ’variants of Marxism’ and ’models of socialism’: a certain ‘variant’ or ‘model’ of socialist society ought to correspond to each different ’variant of Marxism’.

p Secondly, the pluralist idea is applied to socialist society to designate the ‘pluralist’ structure of the socialist system in general. The non-scientific bourgeois idea, ’which we have examined, that capitalist society has a pluralistic structure, is also transferred to socialist society.

p The view of the pluralist structure of socialist society itself appears as one of the ‘variants’ or ‘models’ of socialist society. In other words, in this instance again, as in philosophy, there is ambiguity in the use of the term ‘pluralism’. The ‘model’ or ‘variant’ of socialist society which is adjudged ’the best’ by the majority of pluralists, and which is recommended by them to all socialist countries and workers’ movements, is a ‘variant’ or ‘model’ with a ‘pluralist’ structure of the socialist society, irrespective of whether this is stressed by its individual champions.

We have seen that the ‘pluralizers’ of Marxism are in the first place the bourgeois ideologists from the ranks of the so-called ‘Marxologists’, i.e. the specialists in the struggle against Marxism-Leninism and communism. The representatives of revisionism, with but small exceptions, are to a greater or lesser degree propagandists and champions of the bourgeois idea of the pluralization of Marxism, but part of the ‘leftist’ revisionists are formally opposed to it. As to the pluralization of socialist society, however, and more particularly as to the defence of the view that there exist radically different and contradictory ’models of socialism’, it is the revisionists who work up the greatest ‘creative’ activity. The bourgeois ‘Marxologists’ in this connection mainly play second fiddle to them—making use of the theories of the revisionists for their own anticommunist aims and purposes. That is why we shall focus our attention above all on the contemporary revisionist theorizings concerning the pluralization of socialism.