Marxism differs from all other socialist theories in the remarkable way it combines complete scientific sobriety in the analysis of the objective state of affairs and the objective course of evolution with the most emphatic recognition of the importance of the revolutionary creative genius, and revolutionary initiative of the masses—and also, of course, of individuals, groups, organisations, and parties that are able to discover and achieve contact with one or another class.

(V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 13, p. 36.)

p A characteristic feature of the spiritual development of mankind today is that people in various parts of the world are coming ever more closely to understand that the Soviet Union has been tackling highly important tasks in production, the use of the forces of nature, the development of social relations and the education of man. The greater the awareness of these tasks by the masses, the clearer are their prospects of historical development and of their own activity and struggle for the future. When dealing with the ideological struggle in our day, we must say that our adversaries of every stripe seek first of all to minimise in every possible way the historical importance of the Soviet people’s labour effort in tackling their grand tasks.

p At the dawn of modern history, as society was shedding the fetters of serfdom, it was faced with some complicated problems that no one was capable of solving at the time. The answers suggested merely revealed a vague anticipation of man’s vast potentialities that were to be expressed centuries later.

p In the course of man’s long struggle with nature, towards the end of the Middle Ages, there arose the question of whether it was possible to change the properties of substances and to invest them with new and required properties. Men were aware of the great power of fire, they had developed casting, and they suspected that the mixture of different substances resulted in qualitative changes. The alchemists spent days and nights with their test tubes and furnaces in the hope of obtaining gold by artificial means. They were hopeful of a miracle, and this was a far cry from science and its laws. They believed that all one had to do was to find the miraculous “philosopher’s stone" that would make it possible to produce gold. At the time, gold enabled one to buy and sell anything, for the cash nexus had already started its triumphal and terrible advance. Greed glowed and flared in the souls of men like the coals in the furnaces of the alchemists.

p But one bold mind, that of the 16th-century English humanist Thomas More, conceived a story about a distant and happy island without private property, poverty or oppression. He insisted with fierce irony that over there men used gold to make nightpots. This suggested a world in which money had no power. There arose the idea of releasing society from the ugly greed generated by private property. But at the time, the vision of a fundamental change in the social system was as vague as the hope of changing the properties of matter.

p At that time, another bold vision was suggested by the Czech educator of the 16th-17th centuries Jan Amos Komensky, who claimed that it was possible to change the qualities of man himself. He had given thorough thought to the possibility of a general improvement of men to divest them of any trace of corruption. That, too, was no more than a vague bit of guesswork about the future. Bourgeois thinkers subsequently discussing the question found themselves in a vicious circle: to change human nature, they reasoned, one had to change the “environment”, but to change the environment one needed to change man.

p Modern history tells us about mankind’s abandonment of the idea of finding the “philosopher’s stone”, and going on to create the science of nature and then a true science of the development of society and of man as a social being. The three visions were blending into a single one: the remoulding of nature in man’s interests, the remoulding of the social system also in the interests of the working man, and the remoulding of man himself as the old moral and mental wounds inflicted on him by the exploitative society are healed. There appeared a philosophy which brought together these three tasks, providing a theoretical substantiation and indicating the practical way of fulfilling them. Marxism has proved that man cannot truly harness the forces of nature so long as he is fettered by the chains of wage slavery. He can become its master when he sets up a system for which exploitation will be just as barbarous a practice as cannibalism is for civilised nations. That is when man himself will change, opening up a new era in the history of society, the history of science and technology and man’s own development. That was the origin of the scientific theory of progress, comprising economic, social, political, intellectual and moral progress in society.

p The working class and the other working people also learned how mankind was to solve the problems posed by history.

p Lenin formulated the answer in these few lines: “For many centuries and even for thousands of years, mankind has dreamt of doing away ’at once’ with all and every kind of exploitation. These dreams remained mere dreams until millions of the exploited all over the world began to unite for a consistent, staunch and comprehensive struggle to change capitalist society in the direction the evolution of that society is naturally taking. Socialist dreams turned into the socialist struggle of the millions only when Marx’s scientific socialism had linked up the urge for change 147 with the struggle of a definite class. Outside the class struggle, socialism is either a hollow phrase or a naive dream."  [147•1 

p Thus, with the emergence of Marxism socialism became a science because it linked up the aspirations for change with the struggle of the working class to change capitalist society in the direction in which that society was itself developing. Marxism showed that any solution of the problems in society’s progressive development inevitably implied a solution of the problem of the relationship between economics and politics, that is, a clear-cut definition of the behaviour and action of the masses that were to transform the world.

p A fundamental restructuring of society requires that the working class should be in possession of political power, fundamentally modifying the political organisation of the society that caters for the power of capital. Consequently, in order to have a clear view of the path of progress and confidently to advance along it, there is need for a most precise analysis not only of the developing conflict between the productive forces and the relations of production in the new historical conditions but also of the whole sphere of politics, including the arrangement of social, class forces at every stage of social development. There was need to decide on the relationship between revolution and war, to decide when the socialist revolution inevitably assumed the form of armed uprising and when it could assume peaceful forms. These were all questions of mankind’s progressive development, and the answers were provided by Leninism.

p In the course of profound political conflicts countries and peoples among whom capitalism has reached a high stage of development move on to socialist revolution. That was demonstrated by Marx and Engels. But which is the way to take for the peoples still variously fettered with the chains of feudalism and capitalism?

p The answer to this question bears on the destiny of the bulk of mankind, and it has also been provided by Leninism. The answer was found through a study of historical experience in a country with a highly developed, class-conscious and organised working class, capable of leading the working people to socialist revolution, but on the whole encumbered with numerous feudal fetters, and with industrial centres still no more than islands in a vast sea of small and scattered peasant farms. That country was Russia, and the working class there was led by Lenin and the Bolshevik Party. It is Russia’s historical experience that has helped to find the answers to the basic questions arising in the progressive development of the whole of mankind, the advanced capitalist countries with their developed working class and the peasant countries retarded in their technical and economic development. 148 The theory of progress, the theory of the historical process and the theory of the world revolutionary process were blended in a single theory.

p Its key question, which had a bearing on every aspect of social development, was that of the course and stages of the world revolutionary process involving the population of the globe. Pettybourgeois revolutionaries saw the world revolutionary process as a series of separate acts by isolated armed uprisings. Marx and Engels showed these ideas to be unscientific, and said that revolution was to win out in several advanced capitalist countries. That was an approach determined by the epoch of premonopoly capitalism. In the period of imperialism, when the uneven development of capitalism was tremendously intensified, there appeared a real possibility for the socialist revolution to win out initially in one country, while the possibility of its winning out simultaneously in all the advanced capitalist countries disappeared. At the same time, there also appeared a new arrangement of the forces fighting for socialism. The working class finds it easier to win out in a country where the bourgeoisie has fewer possibilities to corrupt the top section of its working class. Russia in the early decades of the twentieth century was just such a country, and the historic possibilities it offered were discovered and used to the utmost by Lenin and the Bolsheviks, who showed the path of progress to all mankind.

p An equally important question of progress was how mankind was to advance after a contingent of the world’s working class had broken through the chain of imperialism. Leninism had to answer this question in the course of historical development. The uncontestable conclusion was that the destinies of mankind and of the world revolutionary process were inextricably bound up with the destiny, development and consolidation of the system of social property which had arisen on a part of the globe. How was socialism to be transformed into a world system? Which way was the world socialist system to develop from there on and what was its influence on the world revolutionary process? Without an answer to these questions there could be no modern theory of progress to illumine mankind’s advance. Bourgeois and petty-bourgeois ideologists have tried in every way to minimise the importance of the world socialist system for the historical process as a whole. Practice shows that the world socialist system, including highly industrialised countries, can exert a decisive influence on the whole course of world developments. Some would also like to destroy the prospects for the development of the socialist system. On the plea that it is now impossible for all countries simultaneously to move into the second phase of the new society—-communism—they have proposed that this transition should be delayed even where it has matured. They have contrasted the development in breadth to the advance forward, failing to understand that today 149 progress applies to both directions, so that unless socialism advances its development in breadth it is bound to be slowed down. Such is one of the key formulas of modern progress.

p The advance to communism is a solution of the key problems of progress. There are, first, the problems of using the mighty forces of nature for the benefit of all society and for every individual, the problems which, in other words, involve the construction of the material and technical basis of communism. This provides the solution for the key problem of economic progress, while laying down the direction of the scientific and technical revolution through which mankind is now going. There are, second, the problems of developing communist social relations, doing away with the distinctions between town and country, and between mental and manual labour, in a society without classes. This also paves the way for a system of communist social selfgovernment which substitutes for state power. This helps to solve the problem of social and political progress. There are, third, problems in educating the new man, that is, fundamental problems of intellectual and moral progress. The construction of communism is a key stage in society’s progressive development, helping simultaneously to put the finishing touches to the scientific theory of progress. Without this mankind can no longer advance, because the period of blind groping is over, having given way to a period in which masses of people, led by the working class, are involved in highly conscious historical activity.

In the next few chapters, I shall try to deal briefly with all these problems, which have been posed and solved by modern social thought.