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p To educate a person in the spirit of communist morality means to teach him to behave in accordance with the principles underlying this morality. On what does the behaviour of a person depend? Man is a thinking being and his behaviour and actions are conscious and purposeful. Before undertaking any action, a person creates in his mind an ideal image of this action. However, his needs are the direct source of this ideal action and, in the long run, of his practical behaviour. Conscious needs turn into a conscious objective resting on knowledge, interests, desire and so forth, which directly govern man’s behaviour.

p The fact that needs are regarded as the main factor governing a person’s behaviour by no means belittles the significance of psychical acts. However, these acts become a stimulant of behaviour only because they are founded on one need or another. Needs are the inner foundation of all motives behind human actions.

p The circumstance that inducements play a considerable role in man’s behaviour is definitely not denied by the founders of Marxism. On the contrary, they considered that ideas acquire tremendous material force when they capture the minds of the masses. However, this happens only when these ideas and theories express the needs of the masses. “In every people theory is implemented only to the extent it represents the implementation of this people’s needs.. .. Will theoretical needs become direct practical needs?”

p Marx and Engels criticised the protagonists of the materialist theories preceding them for regarding ideal motives in the behaviour of people as the end and only causes of social developments instead of investigating what lay behind these motives and analysing what induced these ideal inducements. Pre-Marxian materialist philosophers failed to understand that socio-historical practice for the sake of satisfying needs was the foundation of human activity. Engels wrote: “Men became accustomed to explaining their actions from their thoughts instead of from their needs (which in any case are reflected in their thoughts, come to consciousness in the mind).”

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p The assertion that needs are the key factor governing man’s behaviour does not in the least belittle the determining role played by the social environment and, in particular, material production in man’s development, including the growth of his needs. Production and social conditions comprise the prime cause and end foundation of man’s behaviour. However, production cannot influence man and his behaviour except through his needs. Production creates the material for the satisfaction of needs as well as the forms of their satisfaction and thereby (through needs and the satisfaction of these needs) determines man’s behaviour and actions. Production awakens needs in the consumer and thereby stimulates (through needs) his labour, political and spiritual activity aimed at creating the means for satisfying these needs.

p Hence, the system of factors stimulating man’s behaviour may be described as follows: natural and social surroundings (production, class and other social relations, ideology and the corresponding institutions and organisations, system of education, culture, and so forth), needs (material, spiritual, and so forth), the consciousness of needs (in the shape of interests, desires, aspirations, objectives, and so on), motivation for action, decision to act, and action.

p In this system of factors the primary, decisive role is played by the social environment, which not only gives rise to needs but also to the conditions for satisfying them. Needs arise as a result of man’s interaction with his surroundings and are the outcome of the influence of these surroundings on him. The last link in the system of stimuli consists of action (behaviour), in which decision is realised and which is likewise directed towards the surroundings with the purpose of satisfying needs.

p All the links in the system of factors governing jman’s behaviour are interrelated and interacting. The environment engenders needs; needs, in their turn, give rise to individual consciousness in the form of definite interests, aspirations, inclinations, purposes, and so on. Consciousness gives birth to motivation; motivation leads to decision. Decision is followed by action. For its part, being directed at the environment, action changes it. At the same time, this changes the personality itself, inasmuch as the changed environment engenders new needs, which in their turn 323 give rise to a new consciousness. Every link of this system not only acts on the next link but also influences the inducement giving rise to that link. For example, springing from a need, consciousness itself influences the formation of that need. Through the above-mentioned links, a need governs action, which in turn ensures the satisfaction of that need, and the latter leads to other needs, and so on.

In organising man’s moral education, it is important to take into account the interaction of all the factors governing his behaviour and not solely the factor stimulating consciousness as is frequently done. For instance, in teaching people to take a communist approach to their work it is not enough to make them aware only of the fact that work is an objective need, a sacred duty and a matter of honour and heroism. Had this been the sole requirement, it would have been possible to consider that already today every Soviet citizen had adopted a communist attitude to his work because he knows these general principles. The principal and ultimate goal of labour education is to turn labour into a habit so that the need to work for the benefit of society is the motive behind labour activity. The same may be said of the objective of moral education, namely, that the standards of communist morality, which are at present followed out of a sense of duty and, sometimes, by compulsion, should become an inner inducement, i.e., that they would be fulfilled as an inner need.