p Lenin used to say that Marx’s doctrine was all-powerful because it was true. It is invincible because it is based on a knowledge of the objective laws of social development, and because it studies the social movement as a natural-historical process, because it studies and draws the lessons of the experience of mass revolutionary struggle of the working class and 148 the leading social forces. When men master the Marxist theory they cease to be slaves of destiny, because it gives them a scientific guide to action, the science of emancipation from social oppression, the science of building a new life.

p That is why the enemies of the working class have set themselves, as their most important task, the aim to undermine the prestige of Marxism, and to refute its scientific character. Perhaps this intention has been best expressed by Bertram D. Wolfe, the well-known US “Marxologist”, who says that Marxism’s “real staying power lies in the fact that it is also ... a faith. It is a deeply emotional faith.... The party born of that ism makes its dogmas the test of truth. Truth, and all pronouncements concerning it, must be approached in the party spirit which the Russian Communists call partiinost.”  [148•1  There it is: Marxism is not a science but a faith based on dogma. Wolfe, in an article in a voluminous collective work, repeated this idea when he said that Marxism was a “creed. .. charged with emotion”.  [148•2 

p Professor Alfred G. Meyer also insists that MarxismLeninism is “religious because it is not fully scientific. In contrast to other religions, it is a secular religion; and the social scientist should criticise it not for being secular but for being a religion.”  [148•3  A great many “specialists” in MarxistLeninist ideology have been actively spreading such views, among them the Austrian theologist Gustav Wetter, the English philosopher A. G. Maclntire, the French Jesuit H. Chambre, the West German neo-Thomist J. Fetscher, and the political scientist M. Lange. All these and many others seek to prove that Marxism is not a scientific outlook but the doctrine of a religious sect adhering to various dogmas.

p But what are the facts? The Marxist outlook emerged as a theoretical generalisation of mankind’s historical experience. Marxism’s scientific propositions reflect the steadily developing reality, in its principal forward, progressive direction. Lenin wrote: “There can be no dogmatism where the supreme and sole criterion of a doctrine is its conformity to the actual process of social and economic development.”  [148•4  Naturally, such a doctrine cannot mark time, but must 149 develop, being constantly enriched, in its creative innovative quest. Lenin observed: “We do not regard Marx’s theory as something completed and inviolable; on the contrary, we are convinced that it has only laid the foundation stone of the science which socialists must develop in all directions if they wish to keep pace with life.”  [149•1 

p Lenin, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, and the international communist movement have steadily given creative development to Marxism on the strength of a scientific analysis of changing reality. Thus, under pre-monopoly capitalism Marx and Engels were quite right in saying that socialism could not win out in one, separate country, and that it had to win simultaneously in most of the developed countries of the world. But a new historical situation took shape under imperialism. In 1915, Lenin wrote: “Uneven economic and political development is an absolute law of capitalism. Hence, the victory of socialism is possible first in several or even in one capitalist country alone.”  [149•2  Lenin’s scientific analysis proved, and practice has borne out that in the new historical conditions the world revolutionary process advances as individual countries fall away from capitalism, as the revolutionary situation and the subjective prerequisites for revolution mature within them.

p Relying on the Marxist-Leninist doctrine and on scientific analysis, the CPSU and the international communist movement have given the answers to numerous new questions posed by life itself. For instance, on the strength of an objective assessment of the balance between the forces of peace and war in the international arena, the world communist movement has reached the conclusion that it is possible to avert another world war, despite the fact that the threat of one continues to be present so long as imperialism exists. Consequently, it is not faith but profound scientific generalisation of every new historical situation, and on that basis further creative development of Marxist-Leninist theory, that is an integral principle of the international communist movement, which is fundamentally hostile to dogmatism.

p To “prove” that Marxism-Leninism is unscientific, 150 bourgeois ideologists have fallen back on various speculations over the concepts of “science” and “ideology”.

p Because ideology has a class character, they argue, it is a biased and “unobjective” system of views, which makes Marxism-Leninism unscientific, because science must be strictly objective.

p This is an attempt to obscure the fundamental distinction between bourgeois ideology and socialist ideology.

p Every ideology, including bourgeois ideology, is a generalised system of ideas, an aggregation of views and concepts of the world, of relations between man and society and between each other, and every ideology reflects social being through the prism of class interests. In a class society there can be no coherent ideology common for all classes. That is why every ideology has a party character, but not every ideology is scientific. The party character and scientific character are incompatible when the interests of a given class do not coincide with the objective laws of social development, when they clash in antagonistic contradiction with the objective requirements of social progress. The interests of the working class, the architect of the future society, fully agree with the objective course of social development. Marxist social science reflects this advance of history, which is why the party spirit, and the class character of proletarian ideology, far from clashing with science, in fact imply its scientific character. Consequently, Marxist ideology is scientific, and Marxist science has an ideological character. This is quite natural because the essence of Marxism-Leninism is a blend of the scientific view, of the world with a scientific programme for its transformation, a programme which gives a scientific clarification of the ways and means of carrying out this transformation.

p To get a clearer picture of the arguments used by the enemies of socialism, let us consider the views of the wellknown anti-Marxist neo-Thomist philosopher, I. M. Bochenski, who says that the party character of philosophy and science implies a denial of any objectivity. He contends that Marxist philosophy is a “weapon in the party’s struggle, which is why it can be neither neutral nor objective”.  [150•1  A similar line of argument is to be found in a book by the 151 Jesuit Gustav Wetter, Director of the Vatican’s Russicum Collegium, which has been repeatedly published abroad. It is entitled Dialectical Materialism. Its History and System in the Soviet Union.  [151•1  Like many other bourgeois “ Marxologists”, Wetter seeks to prove that the scientific objectivity of Marxism is allegedly upset by the party principle, whereas “impartiality” is the fundamental condition of science.

p This is a new version of the old argument about the alleged incompatibility of the party and the scientific spirit, to which is added this argument: scientific character implies objectivity, and objectivity—neutrality and impartiality, so that because Marxism is not neutral, it is unobjective and consequently unscientific.

p To see the falsehood of this argument let us turn to Lenin and his brilliant expose of objectivism in his work “The Economic Content of Narodism and the Criticism of It in Mr. Struve’s Book”, where Lenin draws a clear line of distinction between objectivity and objectivism.

p The bourgeois party approach does not normally operate in the open, but is camouflaged with “neutrality” and the “supra-class”, “human” approach, while essentially taking a class stand. This is objectivism, which has nothing in common with scientific objectivity. Lenin showed the fundamental distinction between the objectivity of the materialist and the objectivism of the pseudo-scientist. He wrote: “The objectivist speaks of the necessity of a given historical process; the materialist gives an exact picture of the given socialeconomic formation and of the antagonistic relations to which it gives rise. When demonstrating the necessity for a given series of facts, the objectivist always runs the risk of becoming an apologist for these facts: the materialist discloses the class contradictions and in so doing defines his standpoint. The objectivist speaks of ’insurmountable historical tendencies’; the materialist speaks of the class which ’directs’ the given economic system.... Materialism includes partisanship, so to speak, and enjoys the direct and open adoption of the standpoint of a definite social group in any assessment of events.”  [151•2  Thus, the materialist is more consistent than the 152 objactivist in carrying through a full, profound and objective scientific analysis, while maintaining his party stand.

p The critics of Marxism, seeking to prove that MarxistLeninist theory is “unscientific”, now and again try to create the impression that their arguments are based on the authority of Marx himself. Their logic runs roughly along these lines: Marxism is an ideology, and any ideology, they have Marx saying, is illusory. He did say that it is a false and distorted consciousness; ergo, Marxism is a “false consciousness”, and is therefore unscientific. That is precisely the line taken by Henri Chambre, who insists that “ideology appears as an aggregate of illusions, mystifications, false notions, which men have of themselves: a more or less conscious, a more or less illusory disguise of the true nature of a situation”.  [152•1  He assures us that from Marx’s standpoint ideology “has a class character, and is consequently false”  [152•2  and that Marxism “attaches to the concept of ideology the coefficient of a pejorative value”.  [152•3  However, the references to Marx do not at all back up Chambre’s conclusions. Anyone who takes the trouble to read the corresponding passages in Marx’s works will realise that wherever Marx attaches to ideology the coefficient of a pejorative value, he is dealing with bourgeois ideology, or philosophical idealism, and not with ideology in general. And this helps to clarify matters and to show up the flimsy attempts to present a truly Jesuit-type “argument” to prove that Marxism is “unscientific” by quoting its founders.

p The West German neo-Thomist Fetscher contributing to a collective work, entitled Christians or Bolsheviks, also tries to prove that Marxism is “unscientific”.

p Fetscher seeks to deny that Marxism is scientific by insisting that there can be no scientific outlook in application to politics in general, because it is allegedly impossible to obtain a knowledge of the meaning and value of social phenomena to which ideology lays claim. The theoretical roots of such views go back to the unscientific concepts spread by the German neo-Kantians Wilhelm Windelband and Heinrich Rickert, who said that there was an impassable gulf between the natural and the social sciences, and who asserted that only the natural sciences were true sciences. Of course, 153 considering the historical process as an aggregation of individual and unique facts, that is, as the neo-Kantians see it, science is indeed deprived of the possibility of establishing the objective regularities of social development. But there is no ground for taking such a view of history. Life itself has confirmed the correctness of the Marxist view that the life and history of society is not a mere accumulation of accidental happenings, but a law-governed process.

p The Marxist outlook is the theoretical generalisation of the whole of historical development. It is constantly enriched, and is creative and innovative. Lenin wrote: “The whole spirit of Marxism, its whole system, demands that each proposition should be considered (a) only historically, (P) only in connection with others, (7) only in connection with the concrete experience of history.”  [153•1 

All the contingents of the international communist movement in the socialist community and in the capitalist countries take part in creatively developing Marxist-Leninist theory, formulating the forms and methods of the working-class struggle which are most appropriate in the given concrete conditions. The Marxist outlook always remains a scientific outlook, that is, an outlook which starts from objective laws and tendencies in social development and, simultaneously, a party outlook, that is, one which starts from the fundamental interests and requirements of the working class, a leading progressive force of modern society. The unity of the party character and scientific objectivity of the Marxist outlook is a pledge of its invincibility.