p The two phases of the one communist formation have a common basis, and it is that the “proletariat represents and creates a higher type of social organisation of labour compared with capitalism. This is what is important, this is the source of the strength and the guarantee that the final triumph of communism is inevitable".  [270•9 

p The activity of the socialist state, which alone directs the national economy, is an expression of this high level of social organisation of labour. Ever since society divided into classes, the relations of production have inevitably produced a political superstructure which has a part to play in safeguarding and developing the social system. One aspect of the great transformation effected by the socialist revolution is that it works a fundamental change in the role of the political superstructure in the organisation of social labour. The original version of Lenin’s article entitled “The Immediate Tasks of the Soviet Government" said: “The task of administering the state, which now confronts the Soviet government, has this special feature, that, probably for the first time in the modern history of civilised nations, it deals pre-eminently with economics rather than with politics. Usually the word ‘administration’ is associated chiefly, if not solely, with political activity. However, the very basis and essence of Soviet power, like that of the transition itself from capitalist to socialist society, lie in the fact that political tasks occupy a subordinate position to economic tasks."  [270•10  The characteristic feature of development in socialist society is that its political organisation is geared more closely to the tackling of economic tasks, that is, tasks in developing production, the key sphere of human activity.

p Therein lies the profound distinction between the line of the Marxists-Leninists and that of the petty-bourgeois revolutionaries, who give least thought to construction, to production and economic activity. The consistent proletarian revolutionary cannot, of course, take a supercilious view of economic activity in the new society and the development of the creative power of human labour. Any attempt to neglect the growth of labour productivity as being some kind of 271 “economism" amounts to a revival of the petty-bourgeois theories of social development and a departure from the fundamental propositions of the Marxist-Leninist doctrine.

p Indeed, says Lenin, the boosting of labour productivity is the way to tackle this fundamental task when considering the construction of the new society. That is precisely the way the Soviet people have followed in building socialism, and fulfilling their five-year national-economic development plans one after the other. The Soviet people are still advancing along this path in building communism. That is the great historical meaning of Lenin’s formula: “Communism is Soviet power plus the electrification of the whole country.” This formula of Lenin’s above all implies a high level of organisation of social labour, which Soviet society has proved capable of establishing. It also implies a high level of technical equipment of labour and consequently a high level of productivity. It also, undoubtedly, means a steep rise in cultural and technical standards for masses of working people. The development of large-scale industry is a key political task of the society building up the new system and a necessary basis for growing labour productivity. In formulating the Party’s line, Lenin combined the highest achievements in the science of social development with the conclusions reached by advanced technical thought and natural science, gearing this to the revolutionary and constructive energy of the masses.

p The unity of the social and the natural sciences in the period of communist construction is expressed, first, in the common growth of their social importance, which is determined by the vital requirements of social development; second, the growing interaction between the natural and the social sciences on the basis of their common social role; third, the identical methodological, philosophical conception on which they rest. Scientific communism brings together the data produced by the science of nature and the science of society, because it indicates the ways for building the new society and shows how these data are to be applied on the strength of the motto: everything for the sake of man.

p In agriculture, the USSR has reached a point at which, the CPSU Programme says, its dependence on the natural elements has been considerably reduced and brought down to a minimum. Only agriculture organised on socialist lines is capable of tackling this task, which is of vast historical importance, considering the long history of agriculture.

p In an agrarian country like old Russia, the most complicated question facing the country was that of eliminating “the fragmentation of labour”, and switching the petty peasant farms, which daily and hourly generated capitalism, to organisation on socialist lines. Lenin devoted much attention to the problem of organising the socialist economy, and formulated a coherent theory of cooperation of the peasant farms and establishment of large-scale social property in the countryside equipped with advanced machinery and technology. In order to fulfil this plan 272 there was need above all to raise and develop socialist industry, the basis on which cooperative farms could score great successes, the countryside develop on socialist lines, providing a solution for the age-old problems which could not be compared with any other difficult problem in building the new society. Lenin stressed the importance of material incentives for productive labour among the peasantry, and criticised the “Left Communists”, who urged an instant switch to communes all over the country. Lenin stressed that it was possible to build the new society not by “directly relying on enthusiasm, but aided by the enthusiasm engendered by the great revolution, and on the basis of personal interest, personal incentive and business principles".  [272•11 

p Lenin also pointed to another important condition for the development of socialist society: “...a condition for economic revival is the raising of the working people’s discipline, their skill, the effectiveness, the intensity of labour and its better organisation."  [272•12  Lenin and the Communist Party carried on a persistent struggle for the triumph of “proletarian conscious discipline over spontaneous petty-bourgeois anarchy".  [272•13 

p Stressing the importance of nationwide accounting and control for the development of socialist relations, Lenin said that this was a fight “to break with the rotten past, which taught the people to regard the procurement of bread and clothes as a ‘private’ affair, and buying and selling as a transaction ’which concerns only myself—... a great fight of world-historic significance, a fight between socialist consciousness and bourgeois-anarchist spontaneity".  [272•14  The restructuring of the working people’s consciousness was to start with a change in their attitude to work, to production, to the task of supplying the people with consumer goods. Men developed the habit of regarding production, the key sphere of their activity, as a social undertaking combining their personal material incentives, the interests of the given labour collective and the interests of the whole of society, the national and state interest, without whose satisfaction it is impossible to satisfy the personal interests of the working people either. Capitalism had habituated them to regard this as the private business of individuals working to secure a living. That amounted to an apology of the bourgeois anarchism and bourgeois individualism.

p Bourgeois ideas were at the basis of anarcho-syndicalist notions. Lenin wrote: “It is now particularly clear to us how correct is the Marxist thesis that anarchism and anarcho-syndicalism are bourgeois trends, how irreconcilably opposed they are to socialism, proletarian dictatorship and 273 communism."  [273•15  The attempts to push the question of producing grain and clothing into the background and to turn this into a minor question of scientific communism amounted to a relapse into the bourgeois view of production and labour.

p In contrast to the petty-bourgeois phrase-mongers, Lenin taught the people to work for a scientific organisation of production, with the use of scientific achievements and the best systems of accounting and control, etc. The development of socialist society is closely connected with its efforts to enhance its organisation and cohesion in all its work, production in the first place, efficiently to organise the whole of social labour on strictly scientific principles, and to establish an efficient system of control with extensive participation by masses of working people.

p In many of his works, Lenin warned against idealistic and voluntaristic attempts to leap over to communism, bypassing its first stage, socialism, and stressing that the new society, and above all its material basis, had to be built brick by brick. “From capitalism mankind can pass directly only to socialism, i. e., to the social ownership of the means of production and the distribution of products according to the amount of work performed by each individual."  [273•16 

p That is why “there still remains the need for a state, which, while safeguarding the common ownership of the means of production, would safeguard equality in labour and in the distribution of products".  [273•17  For the state completely to wither away there is need for full-scale communism, Lenin wrote. But after the socialist revolution the political organisation of society undergoes a change, and as a result of the triumph of socialist relations the very nature of the state is modified. “All citizens become employees and workers of a single country-wide state ‘syndicate’."  [273•18  The development of this “syndicate” and its transformation into a state of the whole people is a necessary historical process.

p Considering the transition from the first to the second phase of the new society, to communism, Lenin stressed the decisive importance of the basis of social development, the growth of the productive power of highly organised and highly conscious human labour. Lenin did not tolerate any concessions to idealism which were so characteristic of petty-bourgeois theorists, who hoped to build a new society by reforming man’s mentality.

p To say nothing about these precepts of Lenin’s would amount in effect to a revision of Leninism on the key questions of the theory of social development, the theory of socialist construction.

Thus, the mainstream of social progress today consists in eliminating every type of exploitation and then in further improving the social organisation of society. Accordingly, the main line in the progressive development of the political organisation of present-day society consists in abolishing the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie and establishing the dictatorship of the proletariat, which is transformed into a state of the whole people as the new society develops. The way to the future lies through the utmost development of social self-government.