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p Comprehensively mechanised and automated communist labour will be distinguished for its extremely high productivity. The attainment of a productivity level higher than in any capitalist country is the prime condition for the triumph of communism, and not only because this high level will make it possible rapidly to create and constantly maintain an abundance of material blessings and thereby satisfy the requirements of all citizens. Highly productive labour will give the people the maximum free time, which is so necessary for the development of all their intellectual and physical capabilities.

p A large measure of leisure time is that priceless wealth that the working man could not even dream of in an exploiting society. “Then,” Marx wrote, “the criterion of wealth will no longer be working time but leisure time.”

p Leisure time should not be confused with non-working time, i.e., time free from work directly in production. In one way or another, part of a person’s non-working time is linked up with production, for example, the time spent in going to and from work, the time needed to turn the work over to the new shift, and so on. Another part of this non-working time is spent on matters concerning dayto-day life and on the care for children. Yet another portion is spent on satisfying the organism’s natural requirements (eating, sleep, toilet, and so forth). The time left over after the discharge of production and family duties and the satisfaction of physiological requirements is leisure lime proper.

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p When we speak of leisure time we must, first and foremost, note its influence on labour productivity and, correspondingly, on the formation of an individual’s personal qualities. The quantity of leisure time depends on the productivity of labour. In its turn, labour productivity depends to a certain extent on the quantity of leisure time, because part of this time is spent by people on improving their production skills, their intellectual and physical development and their cultural level, which unquestionably help to boost labour productivity and stress its creative, intellectual aspect.

p Moreover, leisure time enables people to engage in social activities and thereby learn to direct social affairs, which is extremely important in communist society, and also to follow interests in science, technology or art, or take up physical culture and sport, and so on, thus improving themselves culturally and physically. Leisure time opens the door to science, art and sports. “As less and less time is spent on material production,” states the Programme of the C.P.S.U., “the individual is afforded ever greater opportunities to develop his abilities, gifts and talents in the fields of production, science, engineering, literature and the arts. People will increasingly devote their leisure to public pursuits, cultural intercourse, intellectual and physical development, scientific, technical and artistic endeavour. Physical training and sports will become part and parcel of the everyday life of people.”

p The Communist Party and the socialist state are steadily increasing people’s leisure time by shortening the working day and helping them to use their non-working time more rationally. However, many of the potentialities for increasing leisure time and, consequently, developing the personality are not used. These include reducing the time needed to travel to and from work by sensibly siting places of work and residential districts and improving the transport system; mechanising and more efficiently organising household work, which is unproductive and extremely arduous; reducing the time spent on everyday service establishments, shopping and meals by opening more service centres, shops and restaurants and introducing greater efficiency in their work; reducing the time spent on caring for children by opening more children’s institutions. 251 Particularly great reserves of leisure time are to be found in household work, which on a nation-wide scale annually consumes nearly 100,000 million man-hours or the equivalent of a year in the lives of 12 million people.

p By itself leisure time only provides the possibility for the individual’s all-round development. Therefore, the main thing is to make the best use of this time. In the old days it used to be said that time was money. Today we can say that time, particularly leisure time, is dearer than money, for by wasting his leisure time man robs himself, impoverishing himself intellectually and physically.

The profitable use of leisure time is thus an important condition for moulding the all-sicledly developed individual.