277

p Marxism-Leninism is the only scientific theory which has shown, through a comprehensive study of labour and its role in the history of human society, the way leading to the emancipation of labour from the fetters of exploitation, and to the construction of a free communist system. The ideas which shed a comprehensive light on the question of labour abound in all the three component parts of Marxism. The development of labour, of the conditions and forms of production, is the fundamental problem of Marxist political economy; the study of social labour has produced scientific sociology; Marxist philosophy and ethics would have been inconceivable without a philosophical comprehension of man’s labour activity. The whole of Marxist-Leninist theory is closely bound up with the explanation of the great role of the working people in history and with the indication of the way in which they are to secure a happy future for themselves. The doctrine of communist labour crowns the great edifice of the theory of scientific communism. Lenin’s immortal achievement is his formulation of the principles of this doctrine, which gives a profound insight into the phenomena of the present and indicates the way to the future.

p Lenin witnessed the earliest joyous signs of the emergence of the communist attitude to work in the Soviet Republic, but his brilliant thought did not stop at these embryonic forms and projected the prospect for the further development of communist labour, showing its substance and profound qualitative distinction from all the earlier stages in the development of mankind’s labour activity.

p Ever since Lenin first raised the question about the importance of the working people’s creative initiative in socialist society and drew the Party’s attention to the need to study and foster the advanced experience 278 in labour which, he said, produced a triple productivity of labour as compared with ordinary productivity, several decades have passed. At the time, Lenin stressed that “from the theoretical point of view the subbotniks are the only manifestation we have to show that we do not only call ourselves Communists, that we do not merely want to be Communists, but are actually doing something that is communist and not merely socialist".  [278•22 

p The CPSU Central Committee calls for the closest and most painstaking attention to the new, communist forms of labour, to the seats of advanced experience and innovation. The vast energy of the masses, which is expressed in every sector of communist construction, must be correctly organised and directed to the attainment of great goals. A most important commandment adopted by the Communist-labour shockworkers and collectives, a movement sweeping the whole country, is: “Learn, work and live the communist way.” In every branch of production and the services you will find communist-labour collectives, advanced workers and innovators, men displaying bold creative initiatives. The point now is to organise and direct all the working people to a deep study and mastering of advanced experience.

p Among Lenin’s many statements about the substance and character of communist labour, our attention is drawn above all to his proposition, which appears to be cut in granite: “Communism is the higher productivity of labour—compared with that existing under capitalism—of voluntary, class-conscious and united workers employing advanced techniques."  [278•23  These words of Lenin’s define communism as a qualitatively new stage in the long history of labour, a new stage in the improvement of society’s greatest productive force.

p In showing the substance of communist labour and giving its basic features, Lenin emphasised above all the high level of consciousness of the working people in the new society.

p In Soviet conditions, labour itself is a most important means of communist education. It is a primary task to foster the young generation, which is not only actively engaged in building communist society, but will live under communism. The measures taken by the Party and the Government to reorganise the schools, to enhance its bonds with life and production, are a brilliant embodiment of Lenin’s ideas about communist education, about the education of the new man as he works for the common good.

p Among the organic features of the communist attitude to work, which is conscious and purposeful, are a broad political outlook and communist efficiency, the ability to appreciate the importance of the labour effort of one’s collective and one’s own contribution to the common cause.

279

p In his work, man has always set definite tasks and goals and has grown accustomed to achieve them. But communist labour is characterised by the fact that every technological and production assignment is connected with the great tasks being tackled by society at a given stage and the aims set out by the Party. The worker must be aware of what the people must do to fulfil the Party’s decisions designed for the common welfare, and assess his own efforts and the efforts of his comrades accordingly. That is what gives our leading workers such great strength in their skilful assimilation and successful application of special knowledge, accumulation of valuable experience and the ability to see the broad prospects and to consider every task from the standpoint of the state.

p Let us emphasise that the demands made by society on the conscious approach to one’s work are not fixed in any sense, but tend to grow from one stage of communist construction to another. The labour activity which used to satisfy society yesterday, becomes inadequate today. The working person is now required to have an even broader outlook, much more knowledge and greater skills. That is what determines the nature of socialist emulation and that is a source for the steady development of communist labour.

p The demands made upon the conscious attitude to one’s work tend to grow not only because technology is improved and rises to a higher standard. There is a growing demand on labour as social activity, with a greater understanding of one’s social duty connected with labour (the transfer of experience, help to those who lag, etc.), and the ability to bring out and seek new reserves and potentialities. That is why it is not right to say that production can be enlarged only with new capital investments. Communist labour also results in greater returns from the means of production produced earlier, from their adaptation and improvement as a result of creative quest, and from the organisation of production on new lines.

p It would be wrong to think that a communist-work team, having secured this high title, needs to do no more than keep up the level it has achieved. Actually, the award of the title merely means a fresh start for the collective. Communist labour is ceaseless creative quest in which there are no boundaries in improving both elements of the productive forces: the working man and the implements of labour.

p There is growing awareness of the high level of consciousness displayed by man in his work. Because initiative and advanced experience in the labour process become an organic quality of communist labour, labour activity calls not only for skilful hands but also for a searching mind and a broad horizon. In communist labour, the working man’s moral and mental makeup are not a matter of indifference because various features of the human personality exert an influence on the labour process. A high standard of morality and a correct 280 understanding of one’s social duty can induce man to perform great feats of labour. Inadequate moral stability will tell on the labour process and harm the collective and society. Persistence, consistency, the ability to overcome difficulties, features of the mental makeup which characterise leading Soviet workers, help them to modify the labour process and score fresh victories in communist labour. That is why it is quite natural that the obligations undertaken by communist-work teams should contain moral and educational requirements. If a man is not in the habit of being honest and truthful in his personal life, is there any guarantee that he will not take the wrong path in his work within the collective? There are any number of examples to show that today the production collective extends its educational influence on the individual, seeking to foster the communist consciousness in all things, educating the new man with an integral personality capable of working the greatest revolution in the labour process. After all, communist labour does not involve some little part of man, like his hands, and does not induce him merely to become a ready reckoner, if he is a bookkeeper, for instance. The labour process involves the whole of man, together with his conscience, morality, his mind and capacity for observation, his persistence and set of principles. That is why it is so vastly important for the further development of Soviet society and its productive forces to foster the working people in a spirit of honesty and truthfulness to the Party and the people, in a spirit of high responsibility for each assignment.

p The conscious attitude to labour means fulfilment of the requirement to work according to one’s abilities. But this, for its part, means, first, the need to develop one’s capabilities in the process of labour for the common good. After all, one’s capabilities will dim and dull unless they are developed. The requirement to work according to one’s abilities is highly dynamic because it implies the development of man’s capabilities in labour and systematic improvement of his knowledge and skills. Second, it implies an urge to put one’s all into one’s work and the ability to employ one’s capabilities in practice. This has a bearing on what Lenin stressed was the voluntary nature of communist labour. Indeed, it implies an expression of man’s free will, as he gives of his capabilities and his experience to society without coercion, displaying his capabilities in work for the common good to the fullest extent. That is a characteristic feature of our best workers, who set a shining example for all the other working people. Lenin wrote about the vast importance of the fact that the communist subbotniks were organised by the workers on their own initiative. Lenin’s remarkable work about these subbotniks is entitled “A Great Beginning”. Lenin emphasised the importance and power of such beginnings when he spoke of socialist emulation. Massive activity and initiatives in labour are inherent in communism.

p When dealing with the conscious and free attitude to labour under communism, Lenin remarked on the fact that the workers must pool 281 their efforts. Communist labour is not a series of scattered efforts by individuals, but implies a growing complexification of organisational work, which is to coordinate all these efforts, gearing them to a single goal, multiplying the great power of labour by its organisation and the organisation of individuals and collectives into one mighty effort in communist construction.

p The Party’s vast organisational and educational effort is designed precisely to bring out to the utmost every man’s capability for work, to induce mass initiative and activity on the strength of the growing and enriching experience of the masses and their active participation in fulfilling the plans formulated by the Party so as to accelerate the advance of communism, the radiant future. The Party’s organisational effort blends with its educational work. The capabilities communist labour fosters and requires bear on man’s most diverse qualities, and not only those of one’s mind but also of one’s character, like the ability systematically to work for a great goal as set by society and the Party, honesty and a refusal to tolerate one’s own shortcomings and those of others. Communist labour increasingly involves man’s whole personality in the labour process, calling for the exercise of all his capabilities and exerting an influence on the shaping of his character and moral makeup. Communist labour is the process in which the new man is shaped and it calls for vast organisational and educational work by the Party in every collective and at every enterprise, making new and steadily growing demands on executives.

p Lenin stressed the vast importance for the triumph of communist labour of the use by class-conscious workers of new hardware and technology as a key condition for the rapid growth of labour productivity. In the early communist subbotniks, the embryonic shoots of communist labour, he discerned and emphasised the great increase in labour productivity as one of its most important features. In his article, “A Great Beginning”, Lenin considered the ways of consolidating the new social system and remarked on the exceptional importance of the new organisation of labour, which combined the latest scientific and technical achievements with a massive association of class-conscious workers.

p In the course of its development, capitalism has killed the working man’s initiative and enterprise, converting the improvement of skills in labour into a simple “adaptation” by man to his “technical environment”, as bourgeois theorists themselves admit. It is true that capitalism has recruited the labour experience and technology resting on accumulated labour experience and stimulating the further development of the means of production. But this pbwer has been used in the interests of the exploiting class. Bourgeois sociologists present this process in their own 282 light: between the inventor and the scientist and the renewal of hardware and technology there is, they claim, a middleman in the form of the “spirit of enterprise”, which accepts the “risk of innovation”. It cannot be gainsaid that this “spirit of enterprise" is a very powerful force, though not a supernatural one, in capitalist society, for it not only subordinates the application of inventions, and the inventors themselves, but also enslaves labour.

p The development of labour under capitalism intensifies the system of exploitation and converts the working man into an appendage of the machine. In so doing, capitalist society has made less and less use in the labour process of man’s capabilities, his inclinations and the various aspects of his personality. No wonder the theorists of the bourgeoisie now urge the need to “humanise” labour, because man’s technical environment is being dehumanised. The whole point, they claim, is how fast and well the working man tends to “adapt” to this “technical environment”. “Humanising” labour should help in such adaptation and facilitate it. The theorists of “humanising” labour merely confirm that the capitalist use of machines converts man into a mere appendage of the machine. That is why sociologists in the capitalist world now see their task in better “adjusting” man’s mentality to the operation of the machine. The development of capitalist technology serves visually to confirm what Lenin said about the human mind and genius being converted into an instrument of violence over man himself, an instrument of exploitation. Even technology, mankind’s great achievement, has been converted into an instrument of violence over the working man, distorting his capabilities and dulling his mind.

p Labour at the capitalist enterprise is a far cry from communist labour, because the former in effect involves the use of the worker by the new machine. Communist labour implies the use of advanced technology and hardware by conscious workers, which means that the worker regards the machine as his own, and makes improvements in the technological process. Characterising the highest stage in the development of the labour process, Marx said that at that stage labour appears not so much as being included in the process of production as labour under which man acts in the process of production itself as its controller and regulator. Labour includes within itself not only the process of production but also the worker’s rationalisation and creative thinking aimed to organise and improve the process of production. This creative thinking, interwoven into production, is not practised by a handful of individuals, but becomes a characteristic feature of the activity of all the working people, which develops purposefully and in a balanced manner, thereby ensuring the achievement of a new level in the development of the productive forces.

p The process of change and improvement in labour skills, which in precapitalist formations led to spontaneous changes in the instruments of 283 labour, and in the capitalist epoch, specifically in the period of imperialism, became no more than the elaboration of labour skills in application to new machinery and the worker’s adaptation to new machines, acquires a totally new character in socialist society. It embraces the whole of the working class, all the working people, and becomes a key factor working for the most rapid and sustained development of the productive forces.

p Of course, the way in which the two key elements of the productive forces—the workers and the instruments of labour—are combined are common to both phases of the communist formation, but in the period between the first and the second phase the productive forces undergo considerable changes: the material and technical basis of communism is created, the working people themselves undergo change and their cultural and technical standards rise. The workers take a more active and creative attitude to the instruments of labour; innovation and new ideas among the workers are broadly developed; the worker’s keen thinking, combined with his skilful hands, becomes an active force in technical progress. There is a change in the character of the development of society’s productive forces, its pace is quickened, and labour productivity grows, reaching levels that are inaccessible under the capitalist system.

p The creation by society of a new unprecedented productive force, and of producers who are developed in every way proceeds during the construction of the material and technical basis of communism and is one of the most important results of the period of full-scale communist construction.

p The advance of scientific and technical thought, together with the solution of problems like reduction of working hours, simplification of operations, etc., is bound increasingly to reckon with the worker’s active attitude to the means of production, advancing along new ways and leaving capitalist technical development well behind. Reality has suggested the need for ever closer ties between collectives of designers, on the one hand, and collectives at enterprises, leading workers, organisers of production and economist-planners. This kind of connection makes projects more efficient and economical and helps more fully to study every aspect and to reckon with the social importance and progressive social role of any achievement in the sphere of technology and planning.

p Evidence of the extensive scale on which this tendency in the development of the productive forces is expressed comes from the vast growth of inventions and new ideas among workers and the mass emergence of various forms of new initiatives together with the growing efficiency of massive creative activity.

p The time has long passed when the level in the development of the productive forces required that the worker should have no more than 284 elementary technical knowledge. In present-day conditions, the production training of workers cannot be confined to a technical-minimumknowledge programme but must include elements of engineering and technical training. This process has been developing at a very fast pace and has engendered new forms in which each worker acquires new knowledge. Indeed, much attention is being devoted in industry to various aspects of the effort to raise the working people’s cultural and technical standards, for this is an important prerequisite for the development of communist labour.

p Conscious use of advanced technology by workers is an active process resulting in higher cultural and technical standards of the workers involved and leading to further changes in the hardware and technology themselves. The progressive changes in technology and hardware require a further rise in the cultural and technical standards of the working people, stimulating their creative thinking and inducing the working man to take an active attitude to the machinery which, in turn, results in fresh changes in the machinery. That is why we do not say that the worker “adapts” himself to the new hardware but masters it, thereby emphasising the active and creative nature of this process. That is one of the key aspects in the development of the productive forces under communism.

p Lenin said: “Communist labour in the narrower and stricter sense of the term is labour performed gratis for the benefit of society, labour performed not as a definite duty, not for the purpose of obtaining a right to certain products, not according to previously established and legally fixed quotas, but voluntary labour, irrespective of quotas; it is labour performed without expectation of reward, without reward as a condition, labour performed because it has become a habit to work for the common good, and because of a conscious realisation (that has become a habit) of the necessity of working for the common good—labour as the requirement of a healthy organism."  [284•24 

p This characteristic of communist labour by Lenin shows the very important role moral incentives have to play in labour. At the same time, Lenin repeatedly stressed that it is impossible to build the new society merely on mass enthusiasm, and pointed to the vast importance of material incentives to labour in socialist society.

p The material incentives to labour continue to play the decisive role in the period of full-scale communist construction, and the distribution of material goods is still based on this guiding principle: “From each according to his abilities, to each according to his work.” Distribution according to work makes men take a material interest in the results of 285 production and stimulates the growth of labour productivity, the raising of skills and improvement of production techniques.

p In his work, The State and Revolution, Lenin pointed to the key importance of the struggle against any element of parasitism: when idlers, the sons of gentlemen, swindlers and suchlike “guardians of capitalist traditions" will find it immensely hard to dodge nationwide accounting and control, when this becomes a rare exception and will go hand in hand with swift and serious punishment, “then the door will be thrown wide open for the transition from the first phase of communist society to its higher phase".  [285•25  Society must be structured in such a way that the idler will find it impossible to exist, and this can be done if the principle of payment according to work is fully and strictly observed.

p Material incentives to labour in socialist society are, consequently, of great educational importance. They are closely bound up with a high moral appreciation of labour efforts, the ability to put all of one’s capabilities into one’s work and to serve society by one’s labour. The “he who does not work neither shall he eat" principle expresses society’s moral consciousness and its attitude to labour as man’s most important duty. The broad extension of this principle and its profound assimilation by all the members of society make attitude to labour the basic moral value and pave the way for the habit, which is characteristic of communism, of working for the common good, the habit about which Lenin spoke. In the period of communist construction the members of society are fostered in the habit of finding the satisfaction of their material and moral requirements in work for the common good. The fostering of this habit requires that everyone should develop respect for the common wealth and an understanding that man can satisfy his material requirements and obtain a high sense of moral satisfaction only by multiplying this wealth, instead of squandering it.

p The habit of working for the common good does not at all mean that labour in communist society will become instinctive. Marx criticised Fourier for saying that labour in communist society would become an entertainment, a kind of game. That will never happen. Work for the benefit of society under communism will become a prime necessity, and in that sense it will become a habit without which man will be unable to imagine his own existence. In much the same way, the creative initiative in labour and broad emulation will also become habitual and an absolutely necessary condition for every kind of man’s labour activity.

p The example provided by thousands of communist-work collectives show very well that the free and active attitude on the part of workers, who regard themselves as being masters of production, to every aspect of life in their collective has become part and parcel of their everyday life. The regular holding of public inspections of the organisation of 286 labour, discussion of various aspects in enhancing labour productivity, organisation of production, economies on raw materials, labour discipline, help to the lagging, mutual control over each other’s work and study, the study of experience gained by best workers and collectives and many other forms of active participation by men and women in the life of their production collectives—all provide vivid examples of voluntary and free activity for the common benefit, showing very well how communist labour has been rapidly growing and establishing itself in Soviet life before our very eyes.

p In the period of full-scale communist construction, the division of labour has not yet been abolished. Lenin said that the development of the new society will afford an opportunity to “proceed, through these industrial unions, to eliminate the division of labour among people, to educate and school people, give them all-round development and an all-round training, so that they are able to do everything. Communism is advancing and must advance towards that goal, and will reach it, but only after very many years."  [286•26 

p This process has qualitative distinctions at different stages in building the new society, developing from embryonic forms to more perfect ones. In the period of full-scale communist construction new content is given to the remaining old trades which, however, now require all-round training and development of capabilities on the part of the working people.

p As labour is filled with a high spiritual content, as it is converted into social activity, with the elimination through mechanisation and automation of the most arduous works, the essential distinctions between mental and manual labour and between labour in the countryside and in the cities tend to be increasingly obliterated. In a sense, communist labour gradually fuses these distinctions, so that there are no longer any essential distinctions between the truly communist attitude to labour of workers in the countryside and in industry. On the other hand, the labour that we call manual increasingly requires mental activity and serious training and knowledge, apart from a broad political horizon.

p The development of various forms of communist labour in the Soviet Union is of tremendous international importance. The growing experience of the Party and the whole Soviet people helps to enrich the treasure house of the world socialist system. Implementation of Lenin’s great ideas and the living creative activity of the masses help to win for communism the sympathies of the working people of the world. In the political, economic and ideological struggle for the triumph of communist ideas the Soviet people’s labour efforts and achievements are a key factor. The political and economic might of the Soviet Union and all the countries of the world socialist system has been growing, the cause of 287 peace is being consolidated, and the final victory of socialism in the peaceful economic competition with capitalism is at hand. The ideological positions of communism in the struggle against bourgeois ideology are being consolidated, and working mankind has an ever clearer view of the way into the future, realising the prospect of social development, for which there is need to work. The fog of bourgeois views, preconceptions and prejudices is being dispelled. Today, the power of example, the power of real facts, showing that communism in the USSR is becoming a reality, has become a key force helping to spread the ideas of communism.

Lenin used to contrast the victories of the militarists and the imperialists with the Soviet people’s victories in labour. The communist subbotniks staged by the railway workers of the Moscow-Kazan Railway, he said, were one of the cells of the new society carrying to all the peoples of the world release from the yoke of capital and from wars. With these words of Lenin’s we are now confidently striding forward to the triumph of communist labour.