184

[introduction.]

p On November 8, 1917, the day after the October Revolution won out, Lenin spoke about the new political force which had emerged for the first time in history: “Our idea is that a state is strong when the people are politically conscious. It is strong when the people know everything, can form an opinion of everything and do everything consciously."  [184•55  These words of Lenin’s express the great turning point in the political, state activity of the people. The Soviet people’s success in building a new society helps everyone to gain a greater understanding of the tremendous power and potentialities of the people and the prospects for their development.

p The transition of vast masses of men from spontaneous participation in the historical process to conscious activity, and their conversion into active creators of this process is a characteristic feature of our time. In May 1918, Lenin spoke of the movement in the USSR of hundreds of thousands of men “who have hitherto lived according to tradition and habit, into the camp of the builders of Soviet organisations".  [184•56  At that time, the process was just beginning and only in one country. Today, the transition from the old order according to tradition and habit, handed down from ages of domination by the exploiters, to conscious historical action has swept not only the countries of the world socialist system, but also many peoples which had but recently been in colonial dependence. The present epoch is a turning point in world history in the activity of the masses, in their organisation, the effectiveness of their action and the pace of social development.

p For thousands of years the masses took no more than a spontaneous part in the historical process. Only with the emergence of the proletariat in the arena of the class struggle did the participation of the toiling masses in the historical process undergo a radical change. Lenin said that the proletariat had alone succeeded in uniting, rallying together, and forming disciplined ranks for carrying on a systematic struggle against capital. The nature of the participation by the working class in the 185 historical process is directly connected with their political organisation. Neither the slaves nor the serfs had been able to set up parties as a conscious vanguard of the whole class. Both the slaves and the serfs had set up temporary insurgent organisations which in structure and function were a far cry from political parties operating constantly and daily, instead of sporadically, rallying the whole class to struggle for the immediate tasks and the ultimate goals, and formulating these goals on the basis of an analysis of reality with the help of a revolutionary doctrine.

Another expression of the spontaneous nature of the working people’s movements in the slave-holding and the feudal periods was that these movements frequently rallied to religious ideas, their participants having no more than a vague and fantastic idea of the end of their struggle, which had no political programme clearly reflecting the class interests and the mature requirements of social development. The lack of the necessary consciousness and developed political organisation was also expressed in the relations taking shape between the mass and the leaders of the movement at the most revolutionary moments of history: the leaders of slave or serf movements were surrounded by an aura of sanctity and infallibility, because they were thought to be the instruments of Divine Providence, of Divine fate. There was as yet no clear understanding of the fact that the strength of the leaders of a movement lies in the consciousness and organisation of the masses and in their ability to express the collective will and idea. It was the Marxist-Leninist parties that introduced new and scientifically grounded forms of mass organisation and principles of leadership. Thanks to their activity the working class became the rallying point for other sections of the working people, while the concept of “masses” acquired clarity, giving rise to a political organisation of the masses which opened up real possibilities for their taking historical action with great effect.

I

p The ideologists of the capitalists and the petty bourgeois have always taken an incorrect view of the concept “people” and “mass”.

p The Narodniks spoke much about the people and even praised it in every way, but their view of it was far from being scientific. Their concept of the “people” remained vague because they did not see the existence of classes and the class struggle. According to such theories, which ignore the internal dynamic strength of the people, it takes some kind of external impetus to set masses of people in motion. Most frequently this external force is represented as a band of “heroes” ruling the “crowd”, an inert and faceless force. The individual was contrasted with the people and set up over and above them.

186

p Petty-bourgeois theories, denying the existence of classes and the class struggle, could not conceal the anti-popular substance of the exploiters’ policy or correctly understand their attitude to the people. Many theorists of this stripe blanketed the exploiters and the exploited under the name of the “people”, thus reiterating the bourgeois views of the French bourgeois revolutionary period, when the bourgeoisie identified itself with the people, claiming that it was unthinkable for the working people to have their own legitimate interests distinct from those of the bourgeoisie. In effect, Narodnik sociology was unable clearly to distinguish the concept of “people” from that of “nation”.

p Present-day bourgeois philosophy and sociology have virtually abandoned the use of the term “the people”. Gone are the days when bourgeois theorists used to write the word with a capital P. They now prefer to use the word “masses” with a hint of contempt, although they make use of terms like “mass society" and “mass civilisation" to identify the present stage of social development. Philosophical and sociological theories of “mass society" are bound up with the political use and political organisation of bourgeois society in the imperialist period. This connection is inevitable, because nothing at all can be said about the role and potentialities of the masses unless we draw attention to their political organisation and the social structure of society which produces this organisation. However hard present-day bourgeois theorists may try to exorcise this fact, all of their reasonings merely serve to confirm it.

p Which political views of the bourgeoisie does this imply?

p Soon after the French Revolution of the 18th century, bourgeois theorists proclaimed that society did not consist of classes, social groups or organisations, but of individuals. That was an apology for bourgeois individualism, for a social and political system based on private-property relations. It was, in effect, an apology for the very real and absolutely unlimited rights of capital, with formal rights only held out to masses of people. The people came to be characterised as an assemblage of individuals deprived of any internal organisation. Encyclopaedic dictionaries said that “the people" were a mass of men and women inhabiting a country and living under the same laws. This mass, or “assemblage”, was united only by the state power operating on the given territory. The bourgeois contempt for the masses is simultaneously contempt for the individual and a trampling of his rights.

p What is the individual and what is his role in bourgeois society if he is deprived of private property, capital, which alone determine his weight? The bourgeois view of the masses justifies the rights of the property owner and the deprivation of the poor, who were told that they were themselves to blame for having failed to become “someone”. -

p The bourgeoisie, with its state power, was not at all inclined to accept the fact that the working man became strong only when he united with his mates in a political organisation. In theory and in practice, the 187 bourgeoisie preferred to deal with personified moneybags and a scattered group of “individuals”, deprived of any strength and organisation, lost like grains of sand in the vast dunes known as “society”. But against the will of the bourgeoisie and under its domination the working class began to organise itself, its consciousness was enhanced, it began a struggle for its rights and for that purpose made use of bourgeois-democratic freedoms.

p As society entered the period of imperialism, monopoly capital launched an offensive against the democratic rights of the people in an effort to establish its complete domination on the political scene. Hundreds of books and articles were written to prove that classes and the class struggle had disappeared, that the process of “integration” was going forward everywhere, and that society was becoming ever more “homogeneous”. These were apologetic writings extolling present-day capitalist society, which allegedly has the “legitimate right" to ban as useless and obsolete political parties of the working class and its democratic organisations. To this very day, writers in the USA who have sold out to the capitalists claim that the trade unions “hamper the individuals”, while strike-breakers champion “individual freedom”.

p Theories denigrating the people in every way haye become widespread, their authors insisting that “homogeneity” tended to dissolve the individual in the “mass” and that the “masses” in history were the greatest evil, and nothing but a “degradation of the human condition”. Numerous socio-psychologists of the Freudian school have tried to prove that by their very nature the “masses” could engage only in the lower forms of spiritual activity, exaggerating in every possible way the role of the unconscious and subconscious elements in the behaviour of the masses. Even the British historian Arnold Toynbee, who does not accept Freudian-type socio-psychological attitudes, in his vast work on the philosophy of history at one stroke dissected all civilisations that had ever existed in the world into two social sections: the “creative minorities" and the “uncreative majority”. Toynbee holds history to be a largely changing relationship between the inert, “uncreative majority" and the “creative minorities”. These reactionary and unscientific views were subsequently spun out in various theories of the “elite”, which must and does take charge of mankind’s history. The purpose of all these bourgeois theories is ultimately to try to keep the masses away from political activity, thereby helping to preserve capitalist relations.

p The practical and theoretical activity of the Marxist-Leninist parties has been developing in implacable struggle against such views and practices of the bourgeoisie. Marxism-Leninism has given a strictly scientific explanation to the concept of “people”, for otherwise it is impossible to carry on correct and effective revolutionary activity. Only 188 by separating the concept of “people” into classes has Marxism produced a truly scientific view of the people, of the masses, as a real force in historical progress. In the first place, it was necessary to bring out the working class, which these theorists had wanted to dissolve in the general concept of “people”, an extremely vague notion as used by bourgeois and petty-bourgeois theorists. That was done by Marx and Engels, who also pointed out that the proletariat was the leader of all the working people in the revolutionary process.

p Lenin developed the doctrine of the alliance between the working class and the peasantry, of a merger of peasant movement and the struggle of the working class, and of the proletariat’s leadership of the revolutionary struggle of the nonproletarian sections of the working people. He elaborated the proposition concerning the fundamental vital interests of the working class and the toiling peasantry, whose alliance alone could and did attract the best men from the intelligentsia and all the healthy elements of the nation. The further development of this alliance and its growing strength and organisation determined the future of the historical process.

p The main thing is that the core of the alliance and its leader, the working class, should be highly organised and capable of giving a lead to all the other, nonproletarian sections of the working people. Such an alliance ensures the victory of the socialist revolution and then the success of socialist construction, in the course of which the other sections of the people draw ever closer to the working class; in this way, the people is increasingly consolidated, acquiring unity and cohesion in the fight against the exploiters and in building the new society.

Lenin’s ideas were tested in the flames of revolutionary battles. Modern history has shown that it is Lenin’s theory that ensures success in practice and makes it possible to pursue a viable and realistic policy capable of fulfilling mature historical tasks. Lenin’s predictions have been borne out by the emergence in modern history of massive political forces like the popular front. Thus, Marxism-Leninism has alone produced scientific concepts of the “people” and the “masses” in place of the old ones which presented the masses as something quite amorphous and deprived of inner social and political organisation. The people, that is, the working class, rallying the peasant masses and the nonproletarian sections of the working people round it, is a great social force capable of changing the whole social system. Such is the incontestable conclusion of history. What is more, it is the most characteristic feature of the whole content of the present-day historical process, which is determined by the growing active and conscious participation of masses of people. The higher forms of such participation exert an influence on the other elements of the historical process. That is why the transformation of the CPSU into a party of the whole people, and of the Soviet state into a state of the whole people, together with the 189 real successes scored by the Soviet people, which show how effective the participation of the masses is in fulfilling the tasks of social development, are of great importance that transcends the boundaries of the USSR.

II

p The organisation of the people as a conscious social force is a most important historical task today. This task is being fulfilled by the working-class Party, which is structured on the organisational principles of Leninism and which is guided by revolutionary theory. Its most important principle is that the Marxist-Leninist Party carries on its work in the masses, involving “all the best forces without any exception, at every step verifying carefully and objectively whether contact with the masses is being maintained and whether it is a live contact. In this way, and only in this way, does the advanced contingent train and enlighten the masses, expressing their interests, teaching them organisation and directing all the activities of the masses along the path of conscious class politics."  [189•57 

p The Party teaches the masses to organise, for that is the only way to express their conscious strength. The Party educates and enlightens the masses, carrying on its organisational work in their midst, and expressing in its activity the interests of the working people and the urgent requirements of social development. Therein lies the great strength of the Party, whose emergence and development works a change in the whole course of world history and in the participation of the masses in the historical process.

p Once the power of the exploiters has been destroyed, the people, united by the working class, displays its mighty creative forces to the full. The working-class Party organises and directs the construction of the new society, and its constant and living bonds with the masses are of tremendous importance. In this context, Lenin said: “Our victories were due to the direct appeal made by our Party and by the Soviet government to the working masses, with every new difficulty and problem pointed out as it arose; to our ability to explain to the masses why it was necessary to devote all energies first to one, then to another aspect of Soviet work at a given moment; to our ability to arouse the energy, heroism and enthusiasm of the masses and to concentrate every ounce of revolutionary effort on the most important task of the hour."  [189•58 

p There Lenin reiterated his idea about the strength of the Soviet state, something he had said on November 8, 1917. In effect, he formulated a 190 key principle underlying the activity of the whole political organisation of Soviet society, both the Party and the State. To tell the masses the truth about the existing difficulties and to show the ways of overcoming them was not only a moral principle of Party activity but an imperative of real politics and of the whole materialist world outlook. Fulfilment of this requirement multiplied the strength of historical action by the masses. That is why the Party attaches such importance to this requirement, and condemns boasting, idle talk and administration by fiat.

p It is quite obvious that without a profound scientific analysis of the urgent tasks of social development the Party cannot explain to the masses why and how this task can be solved, and cannot organise or direct the revolutionary efforts of the masses. The Party’s whole policy is based on a study of the objective course of development.

p It is also necessary to have a profound knowledge of the moods prevailing among the masses, to be able to approach the mass and to win its absolute confidence for the Party, which expresses its interests and aims, in tackling any important tasks.

p Summing up the experience of guiding the masses in Soviet society, Lenin put forward the following principles:

p “Bonds with the mass.
Living in its midst.
Knowing its mood.
Knowing everything.
Understanding the mass.
The right approach.
Winning its absolute confidence.
The leaders not losing touch with the masses they lead, the
vanguard—with the whole army of labour.
...No flattering of the mass, no losing of contact with the mass.”  [190•59 

p Guided by these principles, the Party has won the greatest confidence of the people. But that is not to say, of course, that these principles are now outdated. Their constant implementation and the further strengthening and extension of ties with the masses help the Party to attain to a more profound scientific analysis of the mature tasks and to formulate the methods for fulfilling them.

p In maintaining close ties with the people, the Party absorbs the experience of the masses, studies and generalises it, and enriches its revolutionary theory. In his “Speech at the First Congress of Economic Councils" Lenin gave a clear characteristic of the role of mass experience in building the new society. He said that scientific analysis of capitalist society helped to bring out the tendency of its development and 191 the historical inevitability of the swing away from the domination of private property to the domination of social property. In this way, theoretical analysis had helped to determine the main line of social transformation. Lenin added: “We knew this when we took power for the purpose of proceeding with socialist reorganisation; but we could not know the forms of transformation, or the rate of development of the concrete reorganisation."  [191•60 

p What is the source of the Party’s knowledge of the concrete forms of transformation and the realistic rates of this process as it directs the greatest reorganisation of society?

p Lenin’s answer is quite clear: “Collective experience, the experience of millions can alone give us decisive guidance in this respect, precisely because, for our task, for the task of building socialism, the experience of the hundreds and hundreds of thousands of those upper sections which have made history up to now in feudal society and in capitalist society is insufficient."  [191•61  The task of building a new society requires the involvement of the whole mass of working people in construction, for this alone will produce effective results and enrich experience.

p In those conditions, the role of the creative principle inevitably grows and the role of the Marxist-Leninist Party is enhanced and complexified. It has to make a scientific generalisation of the experience to select from it what is most important for historical progress, everything that most deeply expresses the requirements of social development and its fundamental line. The Party’s task is to awaken the creative energy of the masses and to channel it into the solution of urgent problems. That is why the Party so resolutely condemns any neglect of mass experience and any hasty recommendations which fly in the face of practical experience.

p The Party’s great organisational effort among the Soviet people is complex because the solution of the tasks of building a new society requires that the masses should be so organised as to provide that every person fits into his proper place.  [191•62 

p History operates with great numbers and calls for masses running to many millions. But that does not mean that the mass is faceless and that it does not consist of individuals. On the contrary, every individual who is a part of the mass must be an active conscious builder, for this multiplies the creative energy of the masses in every sphere of social life. The Party insists that the legitimate interest of every working person should be constantly reckoned with, so that his material incentives to work should not be reduced but increased.

p At the same time, a key aspect of the Party’s activity in rallying the 192 working people is to foster a sense of the common cause, which creates bonds between all members of society, a sense of the common interest, without whose satisfaction it is impossible to satisfy the personal interests of every working person. The Party expresses the social interest, the common cause of the whole working people building the new society. The same purpose is served by the state organisation of the new society. The Soviets are a form of involving the masses in state construction, having sprung from revolutionary experience of the masses and helping to accumulate and enrich it. The trade unions, the young people’s organisations and the farming cooperative movement have much experience in mass creative effort. But without the organising and leading role of the Party in the very midst of the masses their experience would not have developed on that historic scale. A specific feature of the activity of a political organisation like the Party is that it exerts an influence on the masses not by administrative measures but carries its ideas and its advanced theory into the mind of every working person by involving him in active conscious work.

p “In revolutionary activity the changing of oneself coincides with the changing of circumstances”,  [192•63  which means that in the course of man’s revolutionary activity he ceases to regard social conditions as being immutable, as being predetermined by blind fate. This also means that man comes to realise that his social activity and the real possibilities for changing the existing situation are objectively determined, instead of engaging in illusions and fantasies. The CPSU fosters among the working people a correct notion of man’s social activity, of the role of the subjective factor and objective reality.

p Accordingly, its policy includes two key elements: scientific analysis of the regularities and tendencies of social development, and generalisation of the conclusions which natural science makes it possible to apply to production and the development of social labour. The knowledge of nature and of society is blended in a scientific basis for the historical activity of the masses, promoting progressive social development.

The Party’s main requirement is that every task in the activity of the masses should be scientifically substantiated, and it resolutely condemns any departure from this principle and all empty and meaningless statements. That is the only way to make the whole effort in building the new society practical and efficient.

III

p The historical change in the nature of the activity of the masses and in their thinking is expressed above all in their attitude to production.

p The attitude to production fostered in the minds of men over the 193 centuries dominated by private property suggests that it is the business of the individual to secure his food and clothing. At first, there was almost no difference between “my” business and interest, and the “common” business and interest. The contradiction between the individual and the social interest emerged with the disintegration of primitive society and the appearance of classes and private property. With the disintegration of the commune in slave-holding society the new attitudes already made themselves felt and continued to develop in the feudal period, reaching their peak under capitalism. In spontaneously developing society, man’s own activity appears to him as an alien and countervailing force which oppresses him. Attitude to work, to the labour process and production is a key aspect in the development of social consciousness and individual consciousness. Only with the emergence of the new society, as socialist consciousness combats the bourgeois-anarchist approach, does man’s distorted attitude to production begin to disappear, together with the habit of regarding the effort to secure food and clothing as a “private” matter.

p In place of the social connection in production which expressed the employer’s self-seeking interest, men structured their social relations on new lines. The accursed past, personal interest, Marx said, reduced man’s requirements to possession, although appropriation is not in any sense a universal expression of human interest. He wrote: “Private property has made us so stupid and one-sided that an object is only ours when we have it.... In the place of all these physical and mental senses there has therefore come the sheer estrangement of all these senses, the sense of having."  [193•64  This, says Marx, leads to an “absolute impoverishment" of the individual. Even the need of other men, beginning from the slave-holding period, is converted into an urge to take possession of the other man.

p Imperialism has almost entirely deprived production, labour, the key sphere of human activity, of its spiritual content, and has reduced the working man to the status of an appendage of the machine.

p Specialists in industrial sociology have said a great deal about the “despiritualisation of labour”, an insoluble problem under capitalism and its crime before mankind. By depriving the working man of the joy of creative work, capitalism seeks to convert him into a soulless automaton producing surplus value.

p In socialist society, labour has been released from the fetters of exploitation and private-property greed and has become a great force in the development of the people themselves. That is why the solution of the problems arising in the correct organisation of social labour is of primary importance in the USSR. That is why the CPSU devotes so 194 much attention to these matters. The main requirement in organising social labour in the period of communist construction is that every working person should display initiative and new ideas in his work, for this results in profound changes in man’s mentality and helps to develop his capacities and requirements.

p The best minds have always wanted work to be an endeavour giving scope to the development and application of human capacities and satisfying their growing requirements. Over thousands of years in the course of world history work did not meet the necessary requirements of social justice. Following a fundamental revolution in the social system, with the triumph of the socialist revolution, labour, free from the fetters of exploitation, enables man to apply and improve his capacities. That is what makes the new society so strong. The Party’s policy is to build up and multiply this strength.

The construction of the new society signifies a fundamental change above all in production, the most important sphere of the activity of the masses, and in their attitude to work. For the first time men begin to work consciously and freely on building the economic basis of society, whose creative tasks are accepted as the chief ones in the activity of all the members of society. The CPSU helps to realise the greatest historical mission, by setting up big and small well-knit collectives within society and transforming all working people, the whole of society into one vast, conscious and creative collective, a solidly united people building a new life and performing a titanic patriotic achievement.

IV

p It took ages for the three spheres of human activity—production, the socio-political sphere and the ideological sphere—to be differentiated and developed. More centuries passed before the working people eliminated by their struggle man’s exploitation of man, the main barrier in the development of these three spheres of massive activity.

p Socialist society opens up the vast social potentials latent in men and shows the real possibilities for pooling their efforts in transforming nature and perfecting social relations and men themselves. It fills labour with a high spiritual content and bridges the gap between production and the socio-political sphere. Production tasks become the political tasks of the masses and the whole of social activity is aimed above all at ensuring the development of production. In the USSR the working man is a good worker in production and is at the same time a public figure, who has a say in society and whose production activity consists in doing his public duty, and this is duly appreciated by the whole people.

p As socialist society develops, participation in socio-political life becomes a right and a duty of every citizen. The socialist state of the 195 whole people expresses this in its legislation, and the Communist Party works to develop consistent democracy so as to allow every working person to be active, to display initiative and work consciously for the benefit of society. That is what marks the start of a new stage in man’s socio-political activity, which transforms his own nature as well.

p With the development of socialist society, Marxist ideology becomes the ideology of the masses, so working a radical change in man’s spiritual activity. Never before in history has progressive thought been adopted by such broad masses of people. That is a most important characteristic of our day. The task now is to make scientific Marxist ideology adopted as the world outlook by every member of society.

p We live in a great period because it marks the end of the age-old isolation between man’s mental activity and his manual work. All the spheres of human activity are being harmoniously blended, and production is no longer separated by a Great Wall from the mental sphere. On the contrary, it requires of man a high level of intellectual activity, knowledge, a wealth of spiritual power, including a high moral standard. Nor is socio-political activity separated from production or farmed out to a privileged minority: it belongs to the whole people, to the state of the whole people, and to the Communist Party. Socio-political activity is closely bound up with every aspect of spiritual activity, because in socialist society all its forms amount to serving the people and doing one’s social and civic duty. The Party works to raise the level of massive activity, in a titanic endeavour in the midst of the masses, in every collective, seeking to involve every working person.

p What is the state of these three spheres of massive activity in present-day capitalist society? I have already said that bourgeois theorists themselves admit that production and labour are being “despiritualised”. Whenever imperialism manages to add “depolitisation" of social life to the “despiritualisation of labour" it does so to the utmost extent, and that is a vivid expression of the stagnation of capitalism.

p Bourgeois sociologists have written a great many books about the “depolitisation” of present-day capitalist society, especially in the USA. They give figures to show that citizens stay away from the polling booths, while the public opinion polls show a decline of interest in political affairs. What they fail to say is why this is so. But the causes and those to blame are easily identified. When the political arena is entirely occupied by two powerful concerns, by two parties, as it is in the USA, and when the working people are invited from time to time to choose between these concerns, whose basic programmes do not differ from each other, how can the masses be active? Everywhere the monopolies seek to convert the country’s political life into a bog and to oust all the democratic forces on the political arena.

196

p In these conditions the sphere of the spiritual activity of the masses contracts in an ugly way. Unless man is aware of his social ties and the urgent tasks of social development, his spiritual world is poor and inadequate. It remains for him to live in a world of illusion because the incentives coming from social life or man’s mental activity are weakened. In the sphere of spiritual activity it becomes ever more evident that the framework of reality in which man lives is extremely limited by his personal and everyday interests which are not realised as being a part of an intense and full-blooded social life. In these conditions, the impulses to consideration of the great problems in human life inevitably tend to weaken.

p The Communist and Workers’ parties in the capitalist countries have a great historical mission to perform. They express and multiply the strength of the tendencies and the forces acting for an awakening of the masses for great creative activity. The revolutionary energy of the masses and their activity in the socio-political sphere in exploitative society are aimed to destroy its foundations and to create the prerequisites for a grand creative effort in the subsequent period. That is the aim of the organisational and educational activity of the MarxistLeninist parties in capitalist society, and that is the substance of the socio-political activity of the masses under capitalism.

p Under the leadership of the Marxist-Leninist parties the working class has been fighting against all the barriers set up by the exploitative system in the way of the creative initiative of the masses and seeks to awaken them to political activity. The Communists in the capitalist countries rely on the successes scored by the CPSU, directing the vast creative activity of the masses, and by the other fraternal parties in the socialist states. More and more democratic forces and intellectuals, including those who are not yet aware of the fact that it is the communist movement that has awakened them and has impelled them to start their first and difficult search for the truth, have been following the Communists in the capitalist countries. The democratic elements cannot develop and become an impressive force in the social life of the developed capitalist countries without a strong Communist party. Such is the logic of history. The political organisation of the working class, and the rallying round it of all the working people, together with the extension and deepening of the Communist parties’ activity and the spread of their influence on all the democratic forces make up an important element of present-day world history.

p The world communist movement directs the class economic, political and ideological struggle of the masses for the achievement of the same goal—socialism and communism—so tackling an urgent task in social development. The truly scientific revolutionary theory stands for the unity of the economic, political and ideological struggle of the working class, a requirement which has a profound philosophical backing and 197 whose fulfilment introduces consciousness into every sphere of the working people’s activity. In their struggle, the Marxist-Leninist parties are guided by this requirement, combining organisational and ideological activity in the masses, leading them to struggle to attain their immediate goals dictated by the historical situation, and for the achievement of the ultimate aims of the working class. Marxist-Leninist theory equally rejects the contemplative and passive approach, admiration of spontaneous movements and every kind of voluntarism and subjectivism, which inevitably lead to adventurism. 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."  [197•65  This is a key principle of the scientifically grounded philosophical theory of mass revolutionary activity.

p Leninism, the outlook of the Communist Party, for whose victory among the masses it carries on its struggle, asserts that man’s moral duty and his sense of responsibility to society can develop only if the requirements of social development and the urgent requirements of society have been correctly understood. Only then can man determine what he has to do and how he has to act. This understanding grows as a result of the Party’s activity as it studies the requirements of social development, and formulates the tasks for the masses to fulfil, without which it is impossible even to determine the meaning of individual life in concrete historical conditions.

p The creation of the political organisation of the working class—its Communist party—marks not only an important stage in the activity of the masses and in their social reality, but also in its cognition. The pooling of the efforts of the working class and of all the working people is simultaneously a summing up of the experience of struggle gained by many contingents of the army of labour. Experience in the struggle includes the effective use of known uniformities and the discovery of new objective prerequisites for the historical activity of the masses, which make it possible to gain a deep understanding of the objective conditions of social being. Lenin’s ideas are great and the congresses of the CPSU and the documents of the meetings of Marxist-Leninist parties are of abiding importance because they are based on a comprehensive knowledge of social reality and the historical practice of the masses and direct the masses’ conscious activity on scientific principles.

The spiritual horizon of Soviet people goes beyond the boundaries of one country, for whatever they do they are aware of the need to tackle international tasks in supporting the world liberation movements. Thanks to the organisational and educational work of the CPSU, Soviet people have a sense of being in step with the times, of being members of 198 a collective which includes all the fighting national contingents, of being fighters in the great army of labour which on various sectors carries on its struggle against exploitation, and for the triumph on the globe of new social relations, which open up boundless scope for expressing the social energy of the masses. That is the substance of the historical endeavour of the Communist Party and the whole Soviet people.