p Let us note that in 1844 Marx already criticised “crude communism" for its urge forcibly to abstract itself from talent, etc.  [119•48  The idea of the need to take account of human capacities is contrasted to egalitarian communism. Marx held that communism was “the genuine resolution of the conflict between man and nature and between man and man”. The entire movement of history is the birth act of this communism; on the other hand, for the thinking consciousness this movement is the comprehension of its becoming.  [119•49  While Marx was quite clear on his attitude to communism in that period as a trend of thought, he had yet to clarify the stages in the formation of the new society.

p In The Poverty of Philosophy (1847), Marx gave a more profound analysis of doctrinaire socialism, when he wrote: “So long as the proletariat is not yet sufficiently developed to constitute itself as a class, and consequently so long as the struggle itself of the proletariat with the bourgeoisie has not yet assumed a political character, and the productive forces are not yet sufficiently developed in the bosom of the bourgeoisie itself to enable us to catch a glimpse of the material conditions necessary for the emancipation of the proletariat and for the formation of a new society, these theoreticians are merely Utopians who, to meet the wants of the oppressed classes, improvise systems and go in search of a 120 regenerating science."   [120•50  Marx sought to discover the material conditions necessary for emancipating the proletariat and building the new society, and also to analyse the possibilities of the political struggle of the working class. The answers to these questions were given on the eve of the revolutionary storm of 1848 in the Manifesto of the Communist Party, which contained a profound analysis of the real ways in which the new society was to take shape, the need of the proletariat to make use of its political domination so as to wrest from the bourgeoisie the whole of its capital, to centralise all the instruments of labour in the hands of the state, that is, to organise itself as the ruling class and to boost the productive forces.

p Returning to the criticism of “doctrinaire socialism" in 1850, Marx observed that “the struggle of the different socialist leaders among themselves sets forth each of the so-called systems as a pretentious adherence to one of the transit points of the social revolution as against another".  [120•51  Scientific communism alone was capable of overcoming all these one-sided approaches because it had studied as a whole the problem of society’s transition from capitalism to socialism. What were the stages of this transition that Marx and Engels set out?

p In the Principles of Communism (1847), Engels replied to a question about whether it was possible to abolish private property at once, as follows: “No, such a thing would be just as impossible as at one blow to multiply the existing productive forces to the degree necessary for the creation of the community. Hence, the proletarian revolution, which in all likelihood is approaching, will only be able gradually to transform existing society, and will abolish private ownership only when the necessary quantity of means of production has been created."  [120•52  Engels further explained his idea as follows: “Once the first radical onslaught upon private ownership has been made, the proletariat will be compelled to go further, and more and more to concentrate in the hands of the State all capital, all agriculture, all industry, all transport, and all means of exchange."  [120•53  Thus, the development of the new society would be characterised by ever greater socialisation of the means of production: “All these measures work towards such results; and they will become realisable and their centralising consequences will develop in the same proportion in which the productive forces of the country will multiply through the labour of the proletariat."  [120•54  The development of the new society would be based on a growth of the productive forces, and this would carry society to full communism. “Finally, when all capital, all 121 production, and all exchange are concentrated in the hands of the nation, private ownership will automatically have ceased to exist, money will have become superfluous, and production will have so increased and men will have so changed that the last forms of the old social relations will also be able to fall away."  [121•55 

p We find here the first outline of the ideas which Marx was so brilliantly later to elaborate in the Critique of the Gotha Programme, with special emphasis on the development of production in the new society to the point at which it would be possible to go over to distribution according to need. With the development of the productive forces, wrote Engels, “society will produce sufficient products to arrange a distribution that will satisfy the requirements of all its members".  [121•56  Thus, as early as 1847, Engels clearly indicated the basic condition under which society would be able to go over to the communist principle of distribution. He stressed that “a communistically organised society will be able to provide its members with the opportunity to utilise their comprehensively developed abilities in a comprehensive way".  [121•57  That is when the contradiction between mental and manual labour and between town and countryside would disappear.

p Consequently, Marx and Engels clearly saw the task facing the proletariat once it had taken over. Lenin attached much importance to the following idea put forward by Engels: “Our task relative to the small peasant consists, in the first place, in effecting a transition of his private enterprise and private possession to co-operative ones, not forcibly but by dint of example and the proffer of social assistance for this purpose."  [121•58  It was Marx and Engels who provided the answer to the most important question of what was to happen to the peasantry: “Only the fall of capital can raise the peasant; only an anti-capitalist, a proletarian government can break his economic misery, his social degradation."  [121•59  This was the way for solving the problem which social thinkers had pondered without result over many decades. Thus, in place of the conjectures of the Utopian socialists and the Utopian communists about the future society there appeared a coherent theory of the emergence and development of the new social system, springing from capitalism and passing through these necessary and fundamental stages: socialist revolution, establishment of the proletarian dictatorship, a transition period, socialism as the first phase and communism as the higher phase of development.

p The clear demarcation of the stages of the single process in which the 122 new social system took shape and developed was a great contribution by Marxism to the history of revolutionary thought and revolutionary action.

p Marx said that with the proletariat’s takeover, its enemies or the old organisation of society would not yet disappear, which is why the proletariat must apply measures of force, that is, government measures; if it itself still remains a class and the economic conditions in which the class struggle and the existence of classes have not yet disappeared, they need to be forcibly eliminated or transformed, and the process of their transformation must be forcibly accelerated.  [122•60  Such is the transition period.

p Marx drew a distinction between socialist society “as it is when it has just emerged after prolonged birth pangs from capitalist society”,  [122•61  and communist society, which develops on its own basis. Consequently, the development of the new society includes: 1) its emergence after long birth pangs from the entrails of capitalist society, 2) the creation of its own basis, and 3) its further development on this basis.

p Lenin gave a remarkably profound insight into the substance of Marx’s work on the questions of the future social system in contrast to Utopian socialism. He wrote: “There is no trace of utopianism in Marx, in the sense that he made up or invented a ‘new’ society. No, he studied the birth of the new society out of the old, and the forms of transition from the latter to the former, as a natural-historical process. He examined the actual experience of a mass proletarian movement and tried to draw practical lessons from it."  [122•62  On the question of communist society Marx also started from materialist dialectics, from the doctrine of development. Lenin wrote: “The great significance of Marx’s explanations is that here, too, he consistently applies materialist dialectics, the theory of development, and regards communism as something which develops out of capitalism. Instead of scholastically invented, ‘concocted’ definitions and fruitless disputes over words (What is socialism? What is communism?), Marx gives an analysis of what might be called the stages of the economic maturity of communism."  [122•63  This idea of development, the idea of stages in the economic maturity of communism is the basis of the whole of Marx’s work on the problem of the future society.

p Marx clearly pointed out the direction in which social development would run after the socialist order was established and how the economic maturity of communism would be realised. “In a higher phase of communist society, after the enslaving subordination of the individual to 123 the division of labour, and therewith also the antithesis between mental and physical labour, has vanished; after labour has become not only a means of life but life’s prime want; after the productive forces have also increased with the all-round development of the individual, and all the springs of co-operative wealth flow more abundantly—only then can the narrow horizon of bourgeois right be crossed in its entirety and society inscribe on its banners: From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs!"  [123•64 

p Marx subjected to withering criticism the reactionary idea that the essence of the new social system would be a legalised sharing out of the whole aggregate social product, which society would entirely consume. Marx strongly attacked the demand for “labour’s uncurtailed income”. Exposing this proposition as being Utopian and unscientific, he wrote that from the aggregate social product it would be necessary to deduct the outlays for compensating the means of production consumed by society. Without this production itself was impossible. Furthermore there would be need to deduct that part that was necessary for extended production. Without this, the economy and society could not develop. There would also be the need to put aside a reserve fund as insurance against accidents and natural calamities. The costs of administration and other social needs would also be deducted. Without all this the progressive economic development of the new society was impossible. Only after all these deductions were made would there come the turn of individual distribution for the personal use of every member of society of the aggregate social product that remained.

p When dealing with the satisfaction of personal requirements, Marx said that the share of the aggregate social income earmarked for the satisfaction of common social requirements would increase instead of decreasing. Thus, everything that was deducted from the producer as a private person would directly or indirectly be returned to him as a member of society. Marx clearly saw that as society advanced towards communism the importance of social funds and institutions of which all members of society had joint enjoyment would increase.

p Thus, what Marx so brilliantly expressed was the idea that the development of socialist society implied an improvement of social organisation on the basis of a development of the productive forces and a growing importance of the aggregate, collective wealth and development of social property. This would also ensure the economic maturity of communism that would ultimately enable society to satisfy all the reasonable requirements of every one of its members.

p In the fight against the “vulgar socialists”, as Marx called the epigones of Utopian socialism, he criticised all these harmful and unscientific 124 views. He backed up the idea of socialist society’s indivisible fund, showing that the first phase—socialism—was a period in which the aggregate, collective wealth of society was accumulated. The “vulgar socialists" reduced the whole theory of socialism to distribution, and distribution to a sharing out, presenting the social revolution as a disintegration and fragmentation of the national economy.

In elaborating the theory of socialist society, Marx switched the emphasis to an analysis of production, the basis on which the collective wealth was created and multiplied. This dealt a crushing blow at the theories of “vulgar socialism”. In the Critique of the Gotha Programme Marx wrote: “Vulgar socialism (and from it in turn a section of the democracy) has taken over from the bourgeois economists the consideration and treatment of distribution as independent of the mode of production and hence the presentation of socialism as turning principally on distribution."  [124•65  In order to disprove these harmful views, Marx had to put in a vast amount of effort in studying production and the laws of its development, and analysing social labour.