49

p Anti-communism is the most vivid reflection of the degradation of bourgeois ideology. The socialist system, born of the Great October Revolution, has been exerting a tremendous influence on the whole course of history, and on the revolutionary liberation struggle throughout the world. More and more people are coming to realise that the new social order is just, and that Marxism-Leninism rests on a deep scientific basis. In 1928, there were only 1,680,000 Communists throughout the world; today there are almost 50 million. Working people on every continent watch with hope and warm sympathy the advance of socialist construction, whose attractive power has been steadily increasing. The bourgeoisie’s growing ideological resistance and its struggle against communist ideas is a natural defensive reaction to the successes scored bv socialism, which have exerted a decisive influence on the very content of this struggle. In the present conditions, the bourgeoisie, always inclined to resort to slander and falsification, has been using them ever more actively in the ideological fight against socialism and Marxism. Lenin wrote: “When the bourgeoisie’s ideological influence on the workers declines, is undermined or

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50 weakened, the bourgeoisie everywhere and always resorts to the most outrageous lies and slander.”  [50•1 

p It would, of course, be wrong to identify all the bourgeois ideology with anti-communism, which is a reflection of the extreme state of its degradation. However, let us note the fact that the very edge of modern bourgeois ideology is turned against communism, against Marxism, although this does not always appear on the surface as openly as in the instances when anti-communism, anti-Marxism, is immediately involved.

p The crisis of bourgeois ideology is expressed not only in the unseemly methods used in the fight against communism and Marxism, but in a peculiar ideological mimicry. The advocates of capitalism, which has outlived itself, no longer dare to call their client by its proper name, and have to invent various new names, asserting that it has already undergone a fundamental change or is bound to undergo one in the very near future. Capitalism is being advertised under a great variety of signboards, including “people’s capitalism”, “neocapitalism”, “the welfare state”, “statism”, “economic humanism”, and “the economic republic”. Most noise is being made over the idea of a “capitalist revolution”. Nor are all these merely a set of arbitrary inventions by the bourgeois ideologists; they are an expression of the deep-going crisis processes in ideology which spring from the objective tendencies of a social system on the way out.

p Even before the October Revolution, Lenin remarked on the tendency for the advocates of capitalism to defend it by referring to its reformation, a tendency which he connected with the progress of capitalism and the growth of the working-class movement. He wrote: “Instead of waging an open, principled and direct struggle against all the fundamental tenets of socialism in defence of the absolute inviolability of private property and freedom of competition, the bourgeoisie of Europe and America, as represented by their ideologists and political leaders, are coming out increasingly in defence of so-called social reforms as opposed to the idea of social revolution. Not liberalism versus socialism, but reformism versus socialist revolution—is the formula of the modern, ’advanced’, educated bourgeoisie.”  [50•2 

51

p Today this tendency has been further intensified. Not only have the reformist theorists become captives of bourgeois ideas, but the bourgeois ideologists themselves have become captives of reformism. However, the “reformation” itself is now presented as a “revolution”, and this with good reason. Over vast expanses of the globe, the free peoples are working heroically to erect the magnificent edifice of a new world, which is the result of revolutionary struggle. Accordingly, bourgeois propaganda cannot afford to ignore the attractiveness of the term “revolution”, and to refrain from using it in its own interests through mimicry. And so we find bourgeois reformism wearing a new mask, that of peaceful “capitalist revolution”.

p The current scientific and technical revolution is also too extensive to fit into the framework of capitalist relations, and impels capitalism to evolve in such a way that private capital is alone no longer equal to the task, and there is need for ever wider participation by society as a whole in economic life. Lenin wrote: “State-monopoly capitalism is a complete material preparation for socialism, the threshold of socialism, a rung on the ladder of history between which and the rung called socialism there are no intermediate rungs.”  [51•1  At this point, “people’s capitalism”, the “welfare state”, and similar other speculative theories are brought up.

p The Great October Socialist Revolution inaugurated the revolutionary transformation of the world on the basis of socialism, and has led to an unprecedented acceleration of social progress. The pace of history in the 50 odd years since the October Revolution has never been equalled in any other period of the past. Henceforth, “social progress” and “socialism” are inseparable concepts.

p What effect has this acceleration had on bourgeois social science? The fact that the working class has taken over the banner of social progress has markedly deepened the crisis phenomena in bourgeois sociology. These are, perhaps, their most vivid expressions.

First, modern bourgeois sociology has characteristically abandoned the broad historical approach to social phenomena, and denies the law-governed nature of social development. This has led to a highly peculiar modification in the bourgeois ideologists’ attitude to the idea of social progress,

52 which is either altogether denied, or the prospects of social development are geared to vindicate the capitalist system, or are reduced to mere quantitative changes.

p Second, bourgeois sociological science is being increasingly converted into a branch catering for the state-monopoly bureaucratic machine. Catering for the needs of the bourgeois state machine and of private corporations amounts to the rendering of protective assistance to the ruling class in its efforts to produce the illusion of democracy and class peace, the illusion that the social structure of capitalism is being transformed on the basis of “truly scientific means”.

p Let us look in somewhat greater detail at these processes which are highly characteristic of modern bourgeois sociology.

p The denial of progress by many bourgeois sociologists was a natural continuation of diverse distortions of the concept of progress in the past. One need merely recall Comte’s view of progress as the impact of moral ideas on the world towards the realisation of a moral ideal depicted as a state of harmony between the capitalists and the workers with a simultaneous condemnation of revolutionary transformations, or Spencer’s concept of social revolutions as harmful attempts to upset the existing equilibrium.

p It was Spencer who substituted the notion of “evolution” for “progress” without, however, emphasising that development naturally tends to move upwards. A close look at the history of bourgeois sociology from Spencer’s day to our own reveals a steadily growing tendency to obscure the substance of the concept of “progress”. This is something bourgeois sociologists themselves admit.

p Concerned for the future of capitalism, the reactionary ideologists of the bourgeoisie now frequently seek to erase from their sociological views not only the word “progress”, but the very notion of evolution. Some declare, for instance, that the terms “progress”, “evolution” and “development” should altogether be expunged because they imply admission of the inevitable succession of social formations.

p This admission, more than anything else, testifies to the actual metamorphosis that has taken place. In the epoch of their fight against feudalism, and in the periods before and during bourgeois revolutions, the ideologists of the bourgeoisie put forward ideas which, however limited, were bold and abounded in optimism and faith in mankind’s advance. To this day progressive mankind has profound respect for the 53 great French enlighteners, Voltaire and Montesquieu, and the French 18th-century materialists, among them Helvetius, Holbach and Diderot, who worked for the establishment of a more progressive social system. Today, the ideologists of the bourgeoisie deny the objective character of social progress in their efforts to defend the social system which history has doomed to destruction. The concept of “progress” has been supplanted by the idea that progress in itself is neither good nor evil but is merely a fact which may have different and even contradictory results, depending on its economic and social contexts.

p However, it would be wrong to assume that there is nothing but naked denial of social progress in bourgeois social science. In the last ten years, there has been a wide spread of sociological concepts which distort rather than deny the idea of “progress”.

p As has been said, the fight waged by present-day bourgeois sociologists against social progress is not so much theoretical as purely practical. Bourgeois ideologists have been producing theories designed to “arrange relations” between the workers and the employers, engaging in a peculiar “visitation with the people”, and frequently acting as advisers and consultants for employers in industry.

p No wonder the capitalists have been providing generous funds for concrete sociological research. At the Fourth International Sociological Congress, the French sociologist, Stoetzel, observed that three-quarters of the sociological research in the USA is financed and directed by industrial and commercial outfits.

p Another fundamental expression of the crisis of bourgeois ideology is its increasing betrayal of the truth, a fact that can be seen from a study of bourgeois philosophy.

p Bourgeois philosophy has always given a distorted reflection of reality, but never with such distortions and as such a far cry from true scientific knowledge as today. The main tendencies in the development of bourgeois philosophy testifying to its entry into a phase of irreversible crisis, and distinguishing it from the bourgeois philosophy of the period of rising capitalism, are these: 1) the sway of idealism, and abandonment of the materialistic and dialectical propositions it once advocated, even if in a limited way; 2) development of irrationalism in every form, including mysticism and fideism; and 3) development of philosophical research of a 54 narrowly formalistic type, seeking to evade or eliminate altogether the most important philosophical problems of outlook.

p These processes (on the one hand, the theologisation of philosophy, and on the other, the positivist negation of its importance for outlook) result in bourgeois philosophy losing its own subject, and departing from its immediate function of gaining a scientific knowledge of the world as a whole.

p Religious ideas, claiming integration with science, command a growing influence in irrationalist philosophy. Thus, the Catholic neo-Thomist philosophy propounds a rationalism which claims that the laws governing the universe are a manifestation of Divine Reason, and the idea of God is put forward as the supreme principle of being. “Back to the Middle Ages” is the motto of religious irrationalism.

p Existentialism, another trend in philosophical irrationalism, claims to comprehend individual human existence without recourse to science. It isolates man from the crucial social contradictions of reality, severs him from society and the cognition of the objective process of social development, thereby reflecting the confusion and casting about in face of the advancing new world, which is inherent to the capitalist system, and depicts the contradictions of its own surrounding reality as a consequence of the insuperable tragic nature of man’s existence itself, which does not present any encouraging prospects.

p All these tendencies deprive bourgeois philosophy of its principal role of outlook, because they either dissolve philosophy in logic and semantics, or sink it in the bowels of the abstract human individual isolated from society, or again, integrate it with religion. But the divorcement of bourgeois philosophy and its proper subject does not do away with the question of its class essence, of its party attitude, and merely hampers their identification so long as there is no consideration of its attitude to Marxism. The party stand and the class substance of bourgeois philosophy usually appear quite clearly whenever Marxism is considered.

p Modern positivism says, for instance, that materialist philosophy has no scientific meaning; religious deism frequently protests against “atheistic materialism”, and both join hands under the flag of anti-communism. Existentialism, as an expression of extreme subjectivism and individualism, which sever the human individual from society, is also 55 objectively an adversary of Marxism, and benefits no one but the bourgeoisie. Some philosophical schools (like pragmatism) openly serve directly to vindicate the anti-communist reactionary policies of adventurism and voluntarism. The class substance of present-day bourgeois philosophy corresponds to the condition and world outlook of the historically doomed bourgeoisie. Therein lies the main reason for the belittlement of thinking, the departure from the truth and from reason, and the hostility to the historical approach which are the hallmark of present-day philosophical systems.

p More evidence of the crisis of present-day bourgeois philosophy comes from the growing discontent with it among scientists, and its inability to explain the surrounding world and to meet the requirements of the natural sciences, which are in headlong development.  [55•1 

p Crisis processes are also eroding bourgeois ethical and aesthetic thinking, assuming forms specific to these fields. Capitalist society itself is in a state of profound moral crisis, breeding evils and crimes and implanting racial discrimination. In a peculiar form, present-day ethical theories reflect the same break with the best traditions of classical bourgeois ethics, a fact that is also characteristic of present-day bourgeois philosophical thinking as a whole, resting as it does on the tendencies of irrationalism and formalism.

p The main credo of bourgeois ethics, individualism, which is based on the principle of private property, once used to be historically justified, but today, like the other principles of the bourgeois outlook, it has outlived itself and has become 56 a drag on social progress. Bourgeois ideologists themselves admit that there is a crisis of moral awareness in capitalist society, and that this is a basis for the spread of mental disease, hard drinking, and immorality in public and in private life. Of course, the moral crisis of capitalism is not allembracing: today, new moral rules and ideals are being moulded by the progressive circles of bourgeois society in their struggle against reaction.

p Present-day bourgeois aesthetics is marked by decadence, that is, an aggregate of anti-realistic and anti-humanistic tendencies, which assume diverse and occasionally contradictory forms. The so-called mass culture has been spreading inartistic concoctions designed for immature and degraded tastes, and extolling violence and brutality. Modernism, another form of decadence, is, by contrast, designed for the elite. Bourgeois aesthetics as a rule refuses to make broad philosophical generalisations. Here, as in other spheres of bourgeois thinking, there is evidence of growing mysticism and irrationalism, and the sway of abstractionism. The latter is essentially a refusal to depict the material world and to express any definite attitudes and emotions about it. The abstract form—immaterial art—has absolutely definite class purposes: it is to distract men from real and vital problems and to stop them from thinking and seeking after the truth.

p The aesthetic thought of the class ruling bourgeois society cannot allow the artist to make an objective reflection of reality, that is, to depict the true direction of its development, which is why bourgeois aesthetics extols formalism. The disintegration of content, the absolutisation of form, and the subjective idealist exaggeration of the role of symbols are the marks of the crisis in bourgeois aesthetics.

p The crisis in bourgeois social thinking and its close connection with the anti-democratic domestic and foreign policy of imperialism are most vividly reflected in bourgeois political theories. The main trends in bourgeois political ideology, showing that it has outlived itself in historical terms, that it has no future before it, and that it is fighting the future tooth and nail, are expressed in: 1) the attempts to justify the use of force as an instrument of domestic and foreign policy; 2) the legal doctrines trampling on bourgeois democratic legality; and 3) the system of politico-sociological conceptions whose edge is turned straight at the main motive forces of social development—the world socialist system, the 57 international communist and working-class movement, and the national liberation struggle.

p The doctrine of “political realism” is the bourgeois ideologists’ main conception used to justify violence and the “positions-of-strength” policy. This conception is centred on categories like force, interest, and political reality. Its reactionary essence is revealed most clearly in an analysis of the adventurist character of imperialist policy, which relies on the cult of force. At the same time, the striving to pursue a policy of strength, covered up with slogans about freedom and democracy, and the catchwords of the old bourgeois liberalism, merely goes to emphasise the historical impasse in which both the policy and the ideology of imperialism now find themselves.

p The imperialist ideologists’ patently negative attitude to socialism and communism, an attitude which is predetermined by the class interests of the imperialists, constantly leads them to make serious miscalculations in their political prognoses. That such miscalculations do occur has been admitted, among others, by US political experts. Fred Warner Neal, one-time consultant at the US State Department, said in a pamphlet, US Foreign Policy and the Soviet Union, published by the US Centre for the Study of Democratic Institutions, that the USA had failed to anticipate any of the major events in the USSR, including the October Revolution and its success. It had also expected socialism to be repudiated, had treated it on a par with fascism, had given the Soviet Armed Forces only six weeks before they collapsed in face of the nazi drive, had not expected the USSR so rapidly to rehabilitate its economy, to catch up in missile construction, etc.

p Are not these systematic errors of judgement and constantly mistaken prognoses visual evidence of the state of crisis in bourgeois political thinking?

p The Great October Socialist Revolution and the whole halfcentury of experience in socialist construction have shown that socialism and peace are indivisible, and that the whole of socialist policy is based on true democratism. The October Revolution set the world a practical example of complete national liberation of peoples, and opened up real prospects for national liberation revolutions. The break-up of the colonial system of imperialism and the new stage in the national liberation movement now going forward in a sizable part of the countries provide epoch-making evidence of the 58 viable force of the ideas generated by the October Revolution.

p What can the ideology of imperialism present to counter all this? Is it the profound conflict between the “elite” and the “lower classes”, the futile attempts to stop or slow down the liberation process, or the global or local strategy of aggression? All these manifestations of the essence of imperialism show that in the political sphere imperialism is a denial of democracy in general, as Lenin put it.

p The first foreign-policy act of the Soviet State was Lenin’s historic Decree on Peace, adopted on October 26 (November 8), 1917. This Decree closely connects the struggle for peace with the struggle for the working people’s basic interests. This Leninist line—the struggle for peace and social progress—has been pursued, and is being pursued, by the Soviet Union firmly and undeviatingly.

p The principle of peaceful coexistence between states with differing social systems, designed to create the most favourable conditions for communist construction, has gone hand in hand with all-round support for the peoples’ struggle for national liberation and social emancipation.

p The ideologists of reaction realise that socialism is inseparable from the struggle for peace. A rabid anti-Communist, Walter Schlamm, admits that “communism flourishes in peace, it wants peace, and triumphs in peace”.  [58•1  Hence, the special hatred for the propaganda of peace, hence the defence of militarism and even attempts to prove that thermonuclear war is lawful on the part of the spokesmen for the most aggressive imperialist circles. The ideological arms-bearers of militarism, like Herman Kahn, have worked out the doctrine of “escalation”, which is essentially based on recognition that a world thermonuclear war is fatally inevitable; some ideologists of the “hawks” who have lost their nerve have been issuing open calls on the USA to deliver the first strike in a world war, in view of the growing advantages of socialism, while one-time Presidential candidate, Barry Goldwater, has tried to pacify public opinion by declaring that the main thing is total victory over communism, even if this means having a nuclear-missile war.  [58•2 

p However, the open man-hating advocacy of a world 59 thermonuclear war has done nothing .to make its advocates more popular. It is not surprising, therefore, that in the capitalist West some ideologists of imperialism have been spreading other theories calling for recognition of the need of peaceful coexistence, provided, of course, that social progress is outlawed.

p Some ideologists of imperialism, while claiming to be “peaceable” and ostensibly condemning the plans for a world nuclear-missile war, have been asserting the need to prevent the “spread of communist influence”. They have tried to present the imperialist interventions in countries where the national liberation movement is on the upgrade, as being designed to contain “communist imperialism” and mount “defence” against “communist aggression”. In fact, such policies and the ideological doctrines backing them up constitute the policy and ideology of exporting counter-revolution, and a clear refusal to recognise the democratic principle of national sovereignty.

p Imperialism found itself powerless in face of the mighty upswing in the national liberation movement, which overthrew colonialism. The disintegration of the colonial system of imperialism, which went forward on the basis of the worldwide transition from capitalism to the new social formation, created a new situation and a new balance of forces, and exerted an influence both on the content and form of the political ideology of present-day imperialism. In this sphere, there has been an important restructuring which showed the deep-going crisis of bourgeois ideology, an ideology which had once proclaimed the ideas of national sovereignty and the equality of nations, and is now a sworn enemy of these ideas. The principle of national sovereignty has been declared an “outdated intellectual construction” and all the bourgeois sciences today have made a point of mustering “arguments” against this principle. The fundamental reason for this metamorphosis is that the right of nations freely to choose the forms and methods of their economic, political and cultural development now presents a threat to the interests of imperialist exploitation.

p The reactionary class urge of the imperialists to keep the developing countries within the capitalist world economy, and their urge to prevent them from taking the non-capitalist way are at the root of all the political, economic and other conceptions produced by bourgeois ideologists specialising in the 60 problems facing these countries. These conceptions essentially amount to social reaction, preservation of the old in the new conditions, and a striving to prolong the life of colonialism, by converting it into neocolonialism. Of course, these reactionary efforts by imperialism, which has suffered a historical defeat, are still capable of inflicting much suffering and grief on the peoples of the whole world, but they are ultimately doomed to fail, together with the political ideology supporting them.

p Among the weapons in the ideological armoury of imperialism today are chauvinism and racism, although the forms in which the idea of the inequality of races is expressed differ considerably both from “classic” racism, as propounded by the apologists of colonialism, and from the Hitler, fascisttype of racism, which was dealt a crushing blow as a result of the victory scored by the Soviet people in the Great Patriotic War. The views of the ideologists of present-day imperialism on the national question are marked by a combination of chauvinism, the gross aggressive form of nationalism, and cosmopolitan-type national nihilism, which signifies the repudiation of the bourgeoisie’s democratic legacy of the period of rising capitalism.

p The hopeless idea of perpetuating the exploiting system and stopping the social transformation of human society add up to the main line of bourgeois social thinking as a whole, with its internal trends differing mainly on the ways of achieving this goal: some want to have a finger on the Abomb trigger, and claim this suicidal idea to be a matter of “self-defence”, others recommend, on the one hand, the utmost step-up in capitalism’s political integration, and on the other, the utmost efforts to “erode” socialism, that is, for all practical purposes to step up subversive activity in the world socialist community, and in each of the socialist countries individually. The defective practices undertaken in accordance with this or that line breed fresh alarm.

p But where, one may well ask, are the great ideas of the ideologists of the capitalist world? Take a book entitled The Great Ideas Today, published in de luxe edition in the USA in 1969. What do these amount to? The extracts from the works of famous scientists of the 19th century (W. Humboldt, John Stuart Mill, and others) apart, the bulk of the books is devoted to a discussion of the problems facing the universities and technology. What is the authors’ approach to these 61 problems? It is one of alarm. US philosopher Mortimer J. Adler, writing in an article entitled “A Catechism for Our Time”, addresses the rebellious students in these words: “Twentieth-century America has no monopoly on folly and vice.. . . First, one should ask whether or not the object of attack are simply human folly and vice. Second, to put these attacks or criticisms into historical perspective... . Third, one should ask whether those who criticise their country, and their fellow countrymen have the moral wisdom.”  [61•1 

p Professor John G. Burke, a well-known specialist on the history of technology, is likewise concerned. He urges the need to intensify Federal Government control over private enterprise, the Department of Defence, and so on.  [61•2  All these amount to mere rejoinders in response to the difficulties facing the social system rather than an ideological standard for mankind’s development. There remains the article by the well-known religious philosopher, Etienne Gilson, entitled “The Idea of God and the Difficulties of Atheism”. The article in fact reveals the author’s own difficulties, for he admits quite frankly: “I am certain that there is a God, but that certainty does not rest on any demonstration of his existence.”  [61•3  The “great ideas” announced on the cover of the book remain a promise unfulfilled.

p The general crisis of capitalism, which makes present-day bourgeois ideology reactionary, unscientific, false and hopeless, also causes deep cracks in its very edifice. The crisis of bourgeois ideology is most pronounced in the behaviour and in the frame of mind of the bourgeois ideologists themselves, and is evident above all in the ever greater division of their ranks.

p One of the most vivid expressions of the crisis of the bourgeois outlook is the fact that outstanding modern intellectuals have gone over to the side of communism. This is epitomised by the large group of leaders of French culture and science who joined the ranks of the Communist Party, among them Anatole France, Paul Eluard, Louis Aragon, Jean Richard Bloch, Pablo Picasso, Fernand Leger, Paul Langevin and Frederic Joliot-Curie. Here is what the outstanding 62 French physicist and materialist philosopher, Paul Langevin, said: “The more I learn, the more I feel myself to be a Communist. This great doctrine formulated by Marx, Engels and Lenin has clarified for me some of the things which I had never understood in my own field.”  [62•1 

p The best men in the capitalist world are abandoning capitalism, while the extreme reactionaries are already taking an open stand as neoconservatives and neofascists, playing an active part as the heralds and arms-bearers of imperialist reaction. Some bourgeois figures who style themselves as scientists, like the US philosopher Sidney Hook, the specialists in political and military strategy Stefan Possony, Herman Kahn and others like them, are among the ringleaders of international anti-communism. However, they have managed to win over to their side only reactionary-minded men or those who have been duped by anti-communist slanders and lies.

p A large section of the bourgeois intelligentsia has no sympathies for anti-communism, and many are gripped by doubt, vacillation and alarm. There is wide-spread social pessimism and a sense of hopelessness and despair. Now and again bourgeois scientists and publicists say that human culture is in decline, and that they have a growing presentiment of inevitable collapse. They see the decline of capitalism as sounding the death knell for the whole civilisation.

p The sharp aggravation of the contradictions of capitalism and the increasingly obvious inability of the imperialists to slow down the advance of human society are a cause not only of fear and confusion in the ranks of the bourgeois ideologists. The ugly realities of monopoly capitalism impel bourgeois intellectuals to draw the most diverse conclusions. Some of them plunge into irrationalism and mysticism, others seek salvation in extreme individualism. Some accept at face value the various demagogic or Utopian plans for reforming capitalism, and now and again sincerely hope that social life can be renewed if psychological relations between men are changed or if various schemes for a new social or political order on a regional or world scale are implemented.

p But ever greater sections of the West European and 63 American intelligentsia display critical tendencies. They condemn anti-democratic political practices, sometimes showing great courage. They seek to sort out the various problems in the present-day ideological and political struggle in the international arena, and refuse to put their trust in primitive anti-communist propaganda. It is true that they also show mistrust of communism, but this is due either to their ignorance of its theory and practice, to the influence exerted by the powerful and ramified anti-communist propaganda machine, or fear of possible reprisals.

p However, the striking contrast between democratic talk and anti-democratic practice impels many of them to give thought to the true character of domestic and foreign policy in the Western countries. After all, one needs only draw a comparison between the elementary democratic principles and the realities of domestic and foreign policy to cast doubt on the myth about the “free world”. The arms drive, racial discrimination, the dictatorship and the oppression of the monopolies, growing taxes, lack of certainty in the future, millions of men “free” from work at home, and the simultaneously ever more extensive use of force in the practice of international relations will make even the most sincere supporters of bourgeois democracy refuse to act as apologists for present-day imperialist policy.

p More than a century ago, Karl Marx and Frederick Engels pronounced these words, which may by rights be termed a scientific prediction: “In times when the class struggle nears the decisive hour, the process of dissolution going on within the ruling class, in fact within the whole range of old society, assumes such a violent, glaring character, that a small section of the ruling class cuts itself adrift, and joins the revolutionary class, the class that holds the future in its hands. Just as, therefore, at an earlier period, a section of the nobility went over to the bourgeoisie, so now a portion of the bourgeoisie goes over to the proletariat, and in particular, a portion of the bourgeois ideologists, who have raised themselves to the level of comprehending theoretically the historical movement as a whole.”  [63•1 

p In our epoch we are witnesses to processes of this kind. These do not develop simply or straightforwardly, but are 64 highly complex and appear to make headway in the form of a series of diverse but interconnected and fully visible tendencies. It is true that so far only on very rare occasions do individual members of the bourgeois intelligentsia rise to “the level of comprehending theoretically the historical movement as a whole”. In this context, there is the highly eloquent example of William Du Bois, American scientist, impassioned fighter against war, racism and colonialism, who joined the Communist Party of the USA at the age of 93. There are still few men with such strength and courage, capable of making such a radical break and joining the ranks of the leading fighters for social progress. But the new deep-going trends in the ideological life of the capitalist West create ever more favourable conditions for a search after the truth, for the triumph of truth and reason, and for the further growth of progressive tendencies among the bourgeois intelligentsia, student youth and scientists.

p What are these tendencies?

p The first and most wide-spread progressive tendency among thinking intellectuals in the capitalist world is criticism of the reactionary foreign and domestic policy of imperialism, criticism in the light of bourgeois democracy. It is a profoundly natural development. Monopoly capitalism has run into acute conflict with democracy, even with the bourgeois democracy under whose banner the bourgeoisie had at one time fought against feudalism. The anti-democratic nature of imperialism has been most pronounced in the aggressive foreign policy pursued by the USA, the main citadel of present-day monopoly capitalism, and it is against this policy that the sharp edge of critical thinking by a number of prominent bourgeois ideologists is now directed.

p The well-known British historian, Arnold Toynbee, cabled a message of greetings to The Emergency Committee for Peace and Self-Determination in Vietnam, which held a demonstration and a meeting of protest against the US aggression in Montreal, Canada, on February 18, 1966. His cable was read out at the meeting. It said: “The Viet Cong and the North have covered themselves in glory by baffling the strongest military power in the world. . .. After this experience neither the United States nor any other Western power is likely to burn its fingers in Asia again.”  [64•1 

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p An article by Bertrand Russell, a prominent philosopher of the bourgeois West, contains these words: “The United States government... is engaged in an endeavor to obtain the government of the world, if possible, by financial means. If these means fail, then by force of arms.... What can be done to prevent the disasters which threaten the world if the United States’ policy continues? I think it is necessary that American majority opinion should change, and I think that propaganda should be mainly addressed to this end. But, at the same time, it is important to remember that the United States at most times is more or less influenced by opinion in the rest of the civilised world, and that, for this reason, it is important that the world outside the United States should understand the reasons for disapproving of the policy at present adopted by the United States. I think it should be made known as widely as possible, that in all countries subjugated by the United States the puppet governments they established consist of cruel and corrupt despots—-I think that resistance to the United States, if it is to be fruitful, will have to be, if possible, unarmed. But where, as in Vietnam, this has become impossible, then it is our duty to support the armed resistance taking place.”  [65•1 

p Bourgeois scientists are not always consistent in their criticism of imperialist domestic and foreign policy, and frequently stop short of going to its social roots. Nor have they put forward any clearly formulated, positive programme for fighting the reactionary forces. Their criticism amounts to no more than a search for ways of struggle. But in the course of this search they frequently express views that are right and bold, and that amount to a judgement against the capitalist system itself.

p However, the reactionaries do not as a rule forgive those who dare to carry their criticism to a point at which they ask whether the capitalist social structure itself has any legitimate right to exist. One of those who was hounded by the reactionaries was the progressive American sociologist, C. Wright Mills. He had issued a wrathful expose of the anti-democratic character of imperialist policy, and refused to accept the illusions about “people’s capitalism” and “social harmony” in capitalist society. A book issued in the USA in his honour says that “he was not a critic of this or that 66 particular aspect of American society, of this or that evil in American life—he was against the American condition as a whole, against the way America went about making a living, against the way it treated people, against the way it conducted its political affairs, against the values, rhetoric apart (indeed, rhetoric included), by which it was guided; he was against what America was doing to itself, and what it was doing to the world.”  [66•1 

p Of especial interest is C. Wright Mills’s book, The Power Mite (1957), which was translated into Russian in 1959. This book, like the whole of his scientific and publicistic endeavour, simultaneously reflected the powerful protest by a sage, courageous and honest man against the anti-humanism of the capitalist system, and the weakness of the bourgeois scientist, who had failed to shed all the influences of idealistic theories and of anti-communist propaganda.  [66•2 

p Many other critically-minded scientists in the bourgeois West are variously afflicted with the same weaknesses, but one must note that this critical line, the criticism of the policy of imperialism, of bourgeois social science and the muchvaunted “way of life” in the capitalist West, is becoming ever more pronounced.

p The second equally important and characteristic tendency among bourgeois intellectuals is the growth of civic consciousness, an awareness of their responsibility to society, and ever more active participation in political struggle aimed against the extreme Right-wing aspirations and manifestations of the reactionary policy of present-day imperialism. In fact, some of the scientists opposing this policy have been putting forward practical proposals and tried to formulate a definite positive programme.

p Alongside the social and political differentiation of the intelligentsia in the capitalist West, there is a growing tendency towards its ideological differentiation. Thus, for instance, in the recent period there have been signs that progressive intellectuals are seeking a way out of the impasse of reactionary imperialist policy through pacifism, construction of new social Utopias, and so on. However, their 67 best intentions are defeated by the fact that such projects have a flimsy ideological basis.

p The ideologists of the middle and the petty bourgeoisie and bourgeois intellectuals frequently direct their criticism against the monopolies as well, putting forward all manner of Utopian projects and plans for reducing the scale and segmenting the monopoly corporations or establishing a system of public control over them.

p Of course, the anti-monopoly attitudes among bourgeois scientists are not always consistent, and now and again contain Utopian elements. Some who criticise the antihumanistic laws of capitalist distribution propose that it should be modified, without cutting at the roots of the capitalist mode of production, and leaving private property intact. However, the need for fundamental change is an idea that is being ever more frequently expressed.

p Many bourgeois scientists and thinkers are deeply discontented over the state of the social sciences in the capitalist countries, and remark on the inability of the existing philosophical and sociological schools to explain the changes taking place in the world. Some of them have sharply criticised bourgeois philosophy, sociology and political science.

p The great interest in Marxism among intellectuals and students is a highly indicative fact. In the USA, for instance, an institute for the study of Marxism has been set up, and it is in touch with dozens of universities across the country and involves hundreds of scientists.

p One mark of present-day capitalism is the growing contradiction between the monopoly bourgeoisie and the urban middle sections, who have been giving ever more active support to the revolutionary working class. The progressive intelligentsia is coming to play an ever more important role among the proletariat’s allies. The scientific and technical revolution has accelerated to an unprecedented extent the stratification within the intelligentsia, turning a sizable part of it into wage-workers, who are subjected to refined exploitation and find their interests and status increasingly drawing closer to those of the working class.

p The fold-up of bourgeois democracy and the tendency to adopt autocratic methods of administration, which are evident in the countries of the capitalist West, are bound to continue increasingly to alienate honest workers in culture and science

5*

68 from imperialism. The dialogue with critically-minded intellectuals in the capitalist countries must become one of the elements in the formation of a broad anti-monopoly front. That is also a sign of the times, a mark of the epoch, and a manifestation of the deep crisis of bourgeois ideology.

Reaction all along the line continues to be the prevailing tendency of imperialism. Its ideological expression is anticommunism in its most diverse lines and forms, ranging from blatant and gross neo-fascist type manifestations, to the most subtle and veiled ones. This is what I intend to deal with in the following chapters.