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p Marxist sociology, created by Marx and Engels, provides a scientific analysis of social development. Marx and Engels led sociological thought out of the labyrinth of idealism, empiricism and scholasticism and proclaimed the basic principle of scientific sociology to be the study of material life of society, of social relations and social classes. In The German Ideology they wrote: “Where speculation ends—in real life—there real, positive science begins: the representation of the practical activity, of the practical process of development of men" [3; 38].

p The kernel of Marxist sociology is the study of the actual life and activities of the social classes in each particular epoch. Marx, Engels and Lenin traced the history of the emergence and development of all socio-economic formations, all the main and secondary classes of modern society.

p Between 1840 and 1890 Marx and Engels made a thorough investigation of the social processes and changes in England and Ireland, France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Russia, India and China. Lenin and his followers continued this work in the 20th century.

p General and specific features of socio-economic formations were revealed and the basic laws of the social process were discovered through a comprehensive study of factual material. Lenin wrote: “Taking as its starting point a fact that is fundamental to all human society, namely, the mode of procuring the means of subsistence, it connected up with this the relations between people formed under the influence of the given modes of procuring the means of subsistence, and showed that this system of relations (’relations of production’, to use Marx’s terminology) is the basis of society, which clothes itself in political and legal forms and in definite trends of social thought. 178 According to Marx’s theory, each system of production relations is a specific social organism, whose inception, functioning, and transition to a higher form, conversion into another social organism, are governed by specific laws" [1; 1,410].

p All these discoveries led to the creation of a scientific theory of social development, namely, historical materialism.

p Marxist sociology rests on a solid factual foundation, a veritable Rock of Gibraltar. But it is not a mere accumulation of raw and chaotic material, but a scientifically elaborated system of facts and conclusions, which in their entirety form the materialist conception of history.

p The development of society is based on material forces. Society changes in accordance with objective laws. Like any natural process, social development makes its way through a chaos of fortuitous events. The social process is a struggle of forces, conflicts and co-operation between classes, various forms of human activity. As a reflection of the natural development of material life man’s consciousness actively participates in this process, influencing the form, character and rate of its development.

p History is, however, subject to objective laws and in this sense is independent of man’s will and consciousness. Lenin wrote of the ideas of Marx and Engels: “When they described their world outlook they called it simply materialism. Their basic idea ... was that social relations are divided into material and ideological. The latter merely constitute a superstructure on the former, which take shape independent of the will and consciousness of man as (the result) the form of man’s activity to maintain his existence. The explanation of political and legal forms ... must be sought in the material conditions of life" [1; 1, 151]. Consequently, as Plekhanov wrote, “sociology becomes a science only to the extent to which it succeeds in understanding the origin of aims of social man (social ’teleology’) as the necessary effect of the social process conditioned, in the end, by the course of economic development" [14; III; 193].

p Historical materialism, which reveals the effect of objective laws at certain stages of social development is an analogue of this historical process. It is a theory of 179 social development revealing the true principles and motive forces behind historical events and the objective laws governing them. Historical materialism, is at the same time a methodology for understanding social phenomena and processes because it discloses the real connections between the material and ideal, the objective and subjective aspects of social life, and makes it possible to discover the meaning of events, their necessity, their laws and the main direction of their development. Engels wrote in this connection: “Not only for economics, but for all historical sciences (and all sciences which are not natural sciences are historical) a revolutionising discovery was made with this proposition, that ’the mode of production of material life conditions the social, political and intellectual life process in general’; that all the social and political relations, all religious and legal systems, all the theoretical outlooks which emerge in history, are to be comprehended only when the material conditions of life of the respectively corresponding epochs are understood and the former are derived from these material conditions" [2; I, 368]. That is why historical materialism forms the theoretical basis and the very kernel of sociology.

p By this method scientific sociology analyses the real process of life and activities of individuals in each epoch and, in this process, discovers new characteristics, properties and laws.

p As a science Marxist sociology arose as a natural result of specific and systematic studies of reality. It is not enough to formulate general laws governing social development, it is not enough simply to be aware of them. Knowledge of these laws is not the same as understanding their dynamic force, the way they interact, their manifestation, the concrete form in which they are realised, and the mechanism of their action. That is precisely why Marx, Engels and Lenin always based themselves on specific social research and used the results as an instrument for understanding reality. Their statistical analysis encompassed the world, individual nations, and small groups ( including family budgets of peasants and workers); they used questionnaires (Marx made out a programme of statistical studies of the working class in all countries), official sources, documents and their own observations.

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p Without specific social research Marxist sociology could neither have emerged nor continuously developed. Engels resolutely opposed any attempts to sever the materialist conception of history from specific social research, from attempts to transform it into a ready-made scheme of inflexible dogma. He wrote: “Our conception of history is above all a guide to study, not a lever for construction after the manner of the Hegelian... . The conditions of existence on the different formations of society must be examined individually before the attempt is made to deduce from them the political, civil-law, aesthetic, philosophic, religious, etc., views corresponding to them" [10; 416].

p Marxist sociology has three irreconcilable antagonists— dogmatism, scholasticism and empiricism. Dogmatism and scholasticism are divorced from reality and consist of theoretical deductions, of attempts to make new facts and phenomena fit preset schemes and constructions. Dogmatists and scholasticists avoid any specific analysis of real phenomena and fail to take into consideration the continuous change of history, social progress and manifestation of new social factors and forces.

p Dogmatism is the theoretical base of Left-wing opportunists and, in a certain measure, revisionists. According to Lenin, the methodological basis of these “leftist” mistakes, the root of their dogmatism, is their absolutisation of relative truths, their failure to understand that the various Marxist propositions and formulas apply to specific historical conditions. He wrote: “Any truth, if ’overdone’ (as Dietzgen Senior put it), if exaggerated, or if carried beyond the limits of its actual applicability, can be reduced to an absurdity, and is even bound to become an absurdity under these conditions" [1; 31, 62].

p Dogmatism bars the way to creative development of Marxist sociology and transforms it into a collection of meaningless formulas. This, in fact, amounts to a revision of the very essence of Marxist doctrine. Dogmatism is a reiteration of general truths without connecting them with real life. Lenin warned that “general truths are inflated in such a way that they become untrue and are turned into declamation" [1; 27,49].

p Unlike dogmatism and scholasticism, Marxism and Marxist sociology rest on studies of specific situations. 181 Lenin emphasised that “Marxist dialectics call for a concrete analysis of each specific historical situation" [1; 22, 316].

p Sociological studies must also avoid the danger of empiricism. It is, of course, necessary to study facts, but it is absurd to expect the facts themselves to “suggest” or give rise to a theory. The correlation between empirical and theoretical knowledge is not so schematic and simple as it appears to the empiricists who subordinate and adapt the inductively collected empirical facts to general laws, by-passing the intermediate links and multistage transitions from the concrete to the abstract. In vulgar empiricism Marx saw the absurd side of dogmatism and scholasticism. He wrote: “Cross empiricism turns into false metaphysics, scholasticism, which toils painfully to deduce undeniable empirical phenomena by simple formal abstraction directly from the general law, or to show by cunning argument that they are in accordance with that law" [11; I, 87].

p Empiricism ignores theoretical thought and scientific abstraction in the process of social cognition. And yet the questions of the correlation between empirical and theoretical knowledge, the principal and particular methods of investigation, are connected with an understanding of the methodological fundamentals of sociology. Much empirical research shows that, however perfect the methods, the results are futile and of no scientific significance, precisely because they disregard the general theory of social development.

p Objectives of Marxist sociology are not limited to disclosing the general laws governing the development of society. One of its most important social functions is that it provides a’ scientific theory of society overall, as well as its various processes and phenomena; it fosters scientific, purposeful changes in social life in line with the objective requirements of social development.

p To direct the development of society scientifically, its processes and phenomena, it is not enough simply to know the major laws of the social process, the forms in which these laws appear. This knowledge makes it possible to determine the chief direction and aim of the social process. A scientific direction of social development requires, however, concrete knowledge of the mechanism of the 182 general laws of social development in given conditions. This mechanism is only revealed by specific social research undertaken by sociologists and their colleagues in other social sciences.

p Engels always stressed the need to consider facts very seriously, especially when they led to significant conclusions, when facts aspire to basic principles and when they involve the interrelations of whole classes rather than the status of various small groups.

p The importance of concrete facts was repeatedly emphasised by Lenin. We remain dialecticians when we struggle against sophisms not by denying the possibility of any transformations in general, but by concretely analysing a particular situation in its development. Lenin emphasised that true dialectics investigate inevitable turns, proving their inevitability on the basis of detailed studies of development in all its concreteness. He held the basic proposition of dialectics to be the fact that there is no abstract truth, that truth is always concrete.

p Marx, Engels and Lenin conducted by the dialecticalmaterialist method extensive studies of the social relations in the society of their time. K. Marx’s Capital, F. Engels’s The Condition of the Working Class in England and V. I. Lenin’s Who Are the Friends of the People and How They Fight the Social Democrats?, Development of Capitalism in Russia, and A Great Beginning offer examples of how the development of general theory must be combined with concrete social investigations of a large number of most diverse social processes.

p The founders of Marxism conducted concrete social investigations which were always imbued with a Party spirit, with a spirit of the class struggle. Thus in the Prospectus Gesellschaftsspiegel (Society’s Mirror) F. Engels wrote: “To find and use measures aimed at a fundamental and final elimination of the different evils of our social life, it is, first of all, necessary to study these evils. The Gesellschaftsspiegel will therefore subject to its judgement all the ills of the social organism, will print general descriptions, monographs, statistical notes and descriptions of individual characteristic cases which will be able correctly to elucidate the social relations of all classes and to help the unions emerging for the purpose of eliminating the 183 social evils; it will base itself entirely on facts, print only facts and judgements which are based on facts, the conclusions from which are again obvious facts.”

p Noting the decisive importance of studying the condition of the working class in establishing the essential features and regularities of capitalist society F. Engels wrote: “We shall consider the spiritual, mental and moral, as well as the physical condition of the workers. The most purposeful for the Gesellschaftsspiegel in this respect are:

p “1) Large cities which cannot exist without a numerous poor class congested in a small space. In addition to the usual general consequences of poverty we shall deal with the influence exerted by this centralisation of the population on the physical, mental and moral life of the labouring classes. We should therefore like to have descriptions, statistical, medical and other information, as well as various facts which throw light on the usually concealed bad quarters of our large and small cities.

p “2) Industrial and manufacturing districts whose existence also presupposes a numerous poor class. Here, in addition to other points, we want to draw the attention of our contributors to the following points:

p “a) The character of labour in itself; the different forms of labour which by their nature or excessively long hours are harmful to health; children’s and women’s labour in factories and its results; careless treatment of the working and non-working children and wives of proletarians, breakup of the family, supplanting of the labour of adult men by women’s and children’s labour, accidents caused by machines, etc.

p “b) Dependence of workers on their employer. As regards this point we shall deem it our particular duty to protect the interests of the defenceless working class against the authorities and in particular, regrettably, against the too frequent abuses of capitalists. We shall relentlessly subject to social censure every individual case of oppression of workers and shall be very grateful to our correspondents for the most accurate information on this point, including the name, place and date. ...”

p Then Engels enumerated the various possible forms of abuses on the part of the manufacturers and the different systems of exploitation and forms of oppression. He wrote: 184 “We shall make public, to the smallest detail, every violation of the laws intended to protect the poor from the rich.”

p Lastly, concerning the third group of questions in which the journal was interested Engels pointed out: c) “General neglect of workers by society when the former are left without any means of subsistence owing to competition or introduction of improved machinery, employment of women and children or fluctuations in the course of trade or foreign competition, or as a result of disease, mutilation or old age of the no longer ablebodied, as well as any deterioration in the condition of workers due to a drop in wages.

p “We shall describe the internal and external conditions of both the poor and the propertied classes. We shall show proofs that free competition of private proprietors without an organisation of labour and trade leads to impoverishment of the middle class by concentrating property in the hands of a few and thus indirectly restoring monopoly, and that the break-up of large-scale landownership ruins the small landholder and indirectly restores large-scale landownership and that the competitive struggle in which we become increasingly involved undermines the foundations of society and by its gross selfishness demoralises all of society".

p While collecting material for his book Development of Capitalism in Russia, Lenin studied the state, regional and district statistics as well as the budgets of individual peasant households. He analysed the zemstvo statistics of Novorossiisk, Samara, Perm, Orel, Voronezh, Nizhny Novgorod and several other regions. He supplemented the second edition of the book, published in 1907, with data on the horse population, crop statistics, 1897 All-Russia census, new factory statistics, etc. On the basis of these data he drew a conclusion on the character and motive forces of the First Russian Revolution.

p He wrote: “A concrete analysis of the status and the interests of the different classes must serve as a means of defining the precise significance of this truth when applied to this or that problem. The opposite mode of reasoning frequently met with among the Right-wing Social- Democrats headed by Plekhanov, i.e., the endeavour to look for 185 answers to concrete questions in the simple logical development of the general truth about the basic character of our revolution, is a vulgarisation of Marxism and downright mockery of dialectical materialism" [1; 3, 32].

p The question of concrete social investigations is a question of closer relations with life and the practical struggle for transformation of society on new, communist principles. This feature is the essence of Marxist-Leninist sociology which developed and is developing on the basis of a generalisation of man’s social labour activities and a concrete solution of the theoretical problems of communist construction.

p To conduct concrete social investigations, is to study— with the aid of the Marxist-Leninist theory and methodology and by using a special technique and methods of concrete sociological analysis—documents and archival materials, regional and factory statistics, systematically to observe social phenomena”, and talk with workers, peasants and the intelligentsia in order to gain a deep insight into life and effect a generalisation on the basis of scientifically collected and scientifically systematised primary material.

p Application of the Marxist theory of social development to cognition of concrete social processes in all the multiformity of their manifestation under the concrete conditions of a given socio-economic formation must apparently form the basis of these investigations.

p Concrete social study is theoretical work aimed at a practical solution of most important social problems. Noting this factor in relation to capitalist society Lenin wrote that under capitalism theoretical work must be directed toward “the concrete study of all forms of economic antagonism in Russia, the study of their connections and successive development; it must reveal this antagonism wherever it has been concealed by political history, by the peculiarities of the legal systems or by established theoretica] prejudice. It must present an integral picture of our realities as a definite system of production relations, show that the exploitation and expropriation of the working people are essential under this system, and show the way out of this system that is indicated by economic development" [1; 1,296].

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p Enumerating the main propositions by which the People’s Commissariat of Education was to guide itself in drawing up a draft decree of the Council of People’s Commissars “On the Socialist Academy of Social Sciences" Lenin wrote down in May 1918: “a series of social investigations to be made one of the primary tasks" [1; 27,404]. In 1920, during the discussions on trade unions Lenin proposed to conduct a number of inquiries and examinations, compare them with the objective statistical data and on that basis work out practical, businesslike proposals for the future.

p The characteristic features of concrete social studies are that they: a) are conducted comprehensively, i.e., the problem in question is investigated thoroughly, in all its connections and relations, b) are conducted under concrete conditions of an industrial enterprise, a collective farm, etc., and rest on scientificially gleaned and systematised facts and data, c) result in new theoretical inferences and practical proposals.

p The scientific conception of communism is indissolubly connected with the living, practical activities of the masses of the people in the revolutionary transformation of society. Scientific communism differs from bookish- dogmatic communism and high-flown phraseology in that it attaches decisive importance to a more perfect organisation of production, workers’ and peasants’ working conditions, increased output of goods required to raise the living standards of the people, and formation of communist relations among the people in life and work.

p To conduct concrete social investigations is to study social facts or phenomena under concrete conditions of life; examine and analyse all the constituent elements of the given social situation; reveal the most important factors of the given social situation, generalise the results obtained and work out concrete theoretical and practical solutions of the problems concerned.

p Society is an aggregate of social phenomena and social mechanisms. The social mechanism as a whole can be controlled only on the basis of the control of concrete social mechanisms and systems of these mechanisms. The social mechanisms form a most complex network of structurally and functionally interdependent factors. The 187 task of sociology as a science of governing social life consists, in the given case, in disclosing, on the basis of a concrete analysis, the content and character of interaction of the various aspects of the social phenomenon (or group of interdependent phenomena) concerned and the structural and functional interrelations determining the operation of the mechanism of this phenomenon, and in correlating the functional consequences (actual or possible) with the general objective aims conditioned by the objective process of development of the given society.

p A concrete study of the structural and functional interdependences makes it possible to reveal definite deviations of the functional consequences of the given social phenomenon from the general aims of social development and on this basis to elaborate practical recommendations for the purpose of setting up the necessary conditions favouring effectuation of such structural changes as will result in functional consequences coinciding to the utmost with the general aims of social development.

p The materialist conception of human history forms the general theoretical basis for consciously regulating the operation of the social mechanism as a whole and the different subsystems of the social mechanisms. Man and the social relations, in the system of which both the production and non-production activities are carried out, are products of concrete conditions and circumstances, of the operation of a mass of various social factors. In conducting concrete sociological investigations on the basis of this initial materialist prerequisite it is necessary to remember that, firstly, these circumstances and factors (i.e., all social phenomena and their mechanisms) are concrete forms of manifestation of the regularities of social development; secondly, these conditions, circumstances and factors are, in turn, concrete products of human activity under the given conditions and more or less reflect the requirements of the general regularities of social development; thirdly, owing to this they impede or hasten the formation of new, more progressive social relations, etc.

p V. I. Lenin wrote: “By examining the totality of opposing tendencies, by reducing them to precisely definable conditions of life and production of the various classes of society, by discarding subjectivism and arbitrariness in the 188 choice of a particular ’dominant’ idea or in its interpretation, and by revealing that, without exception, all ideas and all the various tendencies stem from the condition of the material forces of production, Marxism indicated the way to an all-embracing and comprehensive study of the process of the rise, development and decline of socio- economic systems. People make their own history, but what determines the motives of people, of the mass of people, i.e., what gives rise to the clash of conflicting ideas and strivings? What is the sum total of all these clashes in the mass of human societies? What are the objective conditions of production of material life that form the basis of all of man’s historical activity? What is the law of development of these conditions? To all these Marx drew attention and indicated the way to a scientific study of history as a single process which, with all its immense variety and contradictoriness, is governed by definite laws" [1; 21,57].

p The most important task confronting sociology is the study of the multifarious human activities in connection with life’s concrete circumstances and forms of education.

p By studying life the scientist does not shun theory. Only in close connection with life, on the basis of concrete social investigations can the scientist achieve scientific success.

p An internal and indissoluble unity of concrete and theoretical sociological investigations is the prime basis for the fruitful development of Marxist sociology. This is to say that in the course of investigations not only the general regularities of social development but also the concrete forms and life’s circumstances, under which these regularities manifest themselves, must be studied.

It is the duty of sociologists to help the Communist Party in elaborating the scientific principles of all its multifarious activities and in the scientific solution of concrete national economic, organisational and ideological problems. It is the task of sociologists to investigate not only the general, but also the particular regularities of communist construction, and, what is the most important, to work out ways and means of putting them into practice.