p But in analysing concrete historical data, present-day bourgeois sociology cannot help operating with the conceptions of the social whole and of concrete unity. That is why Western sociologists keep juggling terms like “civilisation”, “culture”, etc. In present-day bourgeois sociology these terms have lost all concrete meaning and have become mere clichés. Behind them there is nothing except a vague notion of some unity of various aspects of social relations in this or that historical period and within some ethnic framework. The fact that these terms are being juggled merely shows that the alternation of various “cultures”, “civilisations” or “societies” cannot be eliminated from the historical process. There is no evading the vast array of facts accumulated by historical science. But if one turns a blind eye on production, the key sphere of human activity, if the mode of production, a cardinal conception, is eliminated from historical science, if the quantitative and qualitative growth of the productive power of human labour and the change of social relations are ignored, the historical process does, indeed, become a chaotic alternation of “civilisations”, “cultures” or “societies”.

p But how are these alternating periods, which qualitatively differ from each other to be defined, what is “civilisation” and “culture”? Culture is an aggregation of society’s achievements in its material and spiritual development. The conception of civilisation is usually referred chiefly to society’s achievements in the sphere of political and juridical development. Present-day bourgeois sociologists either use these conceptions as equivalent or contrast them, by investing “culture” with a spiritual content and “civilisation” with material content. Be that as it may, it is quite obvious that neither the conception of “culture” nor of “civilisation" can be scientifically tenable, unless they are based on a study of concrete socio-economic formations. I have already cited, in characterising Brehier’s stand, examples of the use of “culture” to designate the societies of Crete and Mohenjo-Daro. In this sense, the conceptions of “culture” and “civilisation” coincide with the concrete stages and epochs in the development of the slave-holding formation. But outside this context they lose all meaning, becoming empty idealistic abstractions, which at best do not advance our knowledge of the historical process at all, and at worst retard science.

p The prominent US philosopher and sociologist F. S. Northrop, realising that it is impossible to do without the conception of social whole, has constructed a peculiar conception of “cultural political units”, which he says are created by ideas, concepts and assumptions. Culture is based on a complex of “the basic concepts and assumptions agreed upon by its people for organising the data of their experience and ordering their relation to nature and to one another".  [359•11  Northrop holds that the “concepts and assumptions" determine the relation of one people or another to nature and to other peoples. He has lost sight of production, human labour which conquers nature and social relations, which arise in the process of production. Nothing but ideas remain.

p But even ideas are treated idealistically: they “organise the data of experience”. Consequently, there is no question of whether ideas give a correct or incorrect reflection of objective reality and whether, depending on this, they are capable or incapable of playing a progressive role in the history of society and of directing human activity along the right or wrong lines. No wonder Northrop ultimately reduces ideas, which “organise the data of experience" to religious notions or to idealistic philosophical trends which determine this or that “cultural political unit”.

p According to Northrop, the British “cultural political unit" is determined mainly by the “Protestant British empirical philosophical traditions”. Of course, the peculiar British Protestantism is a characteristic phenomenon of religious life in Britain, while empiricism is characteristic of British philosophy, but why should these two phenomena in Britain’s spiritual life, taken out of the general context, determine the whole “cultural political unity"? Northrop apparently seems to realise that such “definitions” are flimsy and so adds various other features of social life in Britain, which are just as arbitrarily picked, designating these as the “basic elements" of culture: classical education, British law and the Royal Family. This adds up to a hodge-podge of “elements” which defy logic. For all his arbitrary idealistic approach, Hegel did succeed in his Philosophy of History to discern the movement of the material world behind the movement of ideas. Present-day idealism, which has abandoned the idea of development, has doomed the sociologists to total subjectivism and extreme arbitrariness in dealing with social phenomena.

p Some bourgeois sociologists allied with semantic philosophy have gone even farther and have declared culture to be an aggregation of various “symbols” which are accepted by everyone belonging to that particular culture. Culture appears, therefore, as some set of rules for 360 the game of poker. Everyone accepting these rules is allied in a common culture. Of course, the advocates of such theories cannot say why men have “agreed” to observe these rules in the “game of life”, and not some other set.

p Here again, they have not gone beyond defining the “spirit of the times" on the basis of indicia which have been altogether arbitrarily selected. Thus, the Dutch sociologist Landheer, in a book analysing the relationship between “consciousness and society”, suggests the following succession of cultures in the West: I. 400-1500. Medieval society. Ascetic period; II. 1500-1850. New Era. Early hedonistic period; III. 1850-1914. Modern period. Hedonistic period. Period of Individualistic capitalism. IV. 1914-1939. Late-modern period. Late hedonistic period. Period of strong class conflict. V. Present structure of Western society. Neo-stoic period seeking of new equilibrium.  [360•12  Consequently, the epochs in the history of West European culture are marked by a succession of asceticism, hedonism and stoicism. Naturally, the author could hardly have succeeded in his attempts to force-fit into such a scheme the whole of cultural development, including economic doctrines, and the urge to subordinate even the development of the class struggle to an arbitrary succession of “leading ideas”.

p Artificial sociological schemes run into contradiction with the vast amount of data accumulated by social science. Today the scientists find an unparalleled diversity of cultures, together with hitherto unknown cultural interactions. Thor Heyerdahl, sailing on his raft across the ocean and leading an expedition to Easter Island, brought back interesting material on an ancient culture apparently allied with America. Our knowledge of the culture of the Maya in America is becoming deeper and more distinct. New data on the medieval and ancient culture of the peoples of Africa have been brought to light. Remarkable monuments of art dating back to the Stone Age have been discovered in the Sahara. In the past 30-40 years, our knowledge of the history of world culture has been markedly enlarged, giving rise to new problems which require solution and to questions about the historical connections and interactions of people. But the subjective-idealist method makes it impossible to tackle all these problems.

p The development of culture today presents an even grander picture. The majestic edifice of socialist culture is being erected. The national cultures of the peoples which have thrown off the yoke of colonialism are being created and developed. Many apologists of capitalism now also have no doubt that bourgeois culture is plunged in the most profound crisis. The scientist has to identify the tendencies in the cultural 361 development of present-day mankind, but being fettered by the dogmas of idealism, he cannot tell us anything convincing. Indeed, what can one say about culture if one ignores its earthly roots, its social nature, and the intricate and contradictory process of mankind’s cultural development which is determined by its social being? One can perhaps make a few observations and nothing more.

p The conception of “civilisation”, which present-day bourgeois sociology has so willingly accepted, is shot through with idealism and is, for that reason, absolutely unscientific. When operating with it, bourgeois scientists usually take some concrete historical state entity, like Egypt or Greece in the ancient world, the Western Roman Empire or Byzantium in the medieval epoch, etc. Bourgeois sociologists ignore the socioeconomic nature of the state entities they call civilisation. In order to characterise these “civilisations” they take some arbitrary combinations of the features of the political and ideological superstructure. The emergence of this or that state is declared to be the start of a “civilisation”, and the decline of that state to be the “death of that civilisation”. Here it is quite impossible to draw a line between the conceptions of “culture” and “civilisation”. The West German Dictionary of Sociology does not, in effect, make a distinction between the terms of civilisation and culture.  [361•13 

p The term is also used in a much broader context: thus, “Western civilisation" means both medieval and capitalist Europe and sometimes even the age of antiquity. Very often this conception is contrasted with “Eastern civilisation”. The content of both these conceptions is usually very vague, and every idealist philosopher is free to invest it with his own meaning. The colonialists had used the contrast in an effort to downgrade the peoples of the East. Today, this unscientific terminology is also used by other theorists who contrast the “culture of the East" and the “culture of the West”, by substituting bourgeois nationalism for the class approach.

p Liberal-minded theorists hold “Western civilisation" to mean European bourgeois-democratic, political and cultural traditions, chiefly of the 18th and 19th centuries. An attempt was recently made to introduce the term “Atlantic civilisation" into scientific usage on the plea that America had been settled by Europeans and that their culture was subsequently closely allied in economic, political and ideological terms with Europe. Of course, such ties have existed, but the introduction of a term of this kind shows an urge to distinguish these ties which was later used, in particular, in order to trace in history the “roots” of the present-day military-political bloc and the organisation known as NATO.

p Many facts show that bourgeois sociologists, having abandoned the 362 idea of studying the material basis of social life, have been quite arbitrarily constructing their conceptions of “civilisation” and “culture”, with political motives becoming the only basis for such constructions, and for the invention of empty abstractions which are of no scientific value at all.

p A group of West German bourgeois sociologists, whose recognised leader for many years was Alfred Weber (1868-1958), seem to have realised the arbitrary manipulations of the terms “civilisation” and “culture” and did much to put the study of both spheres in modern bourgeois sociology “in order”. As a result of numerous “amendments” and “explanations” they produced a fairly involved sociological scheme according to which the individual civilisations fitted into a “general stream”, while a kind of structure supporting the diversity of social phenomena stood out within each civilisation. The architects of this system hinted that they were acquainted with Marxism, but did not accept its proposition about the definitive influence of social being on social consciousness. Having borrowed some elements from Marxism, they then proceeded to set things on their head to suit their idealistic conceptions.

p Weber’s followers find three “layers” of phenomena or a combination of three “social processes" in each civilisation. The first process is a technico-civilising one, which includes production; the second is a social one and creates a definite social structure of society; and the third is a cultural movement. One will easily find some Marxist ideas in this scheme, but “amended” by means of bourgeois sociology. However, as a result of this “amendment” the meaning of the Marxist theory has been altogether distorted. The three “spheres” develop independently, but influence each other, determine each other, “coincide” in their development or do not “coincide” but do not have a common basis in social being. Idealism has been salvaged, but sociological thought has run into another dead end, even farther away from the scientific view of the historical process.

p First, the scientific criterion for identifying definite stages in the historical process disappears. Sociologists of this school present this picture of the world historical process: Egyptian-Babylonian civilisation as the “first stage”; Persian-Judean and antique civilisation—the “second stage”; Byzantine-Slavonic-Oriental, Islamic and Western civilisation—the “third stage”; in the offing is a “fourth stage”, with some terrifying features borrowed from the Apocalypse. Such schemes are, naturally, empty of content and arbitrary in construction. One may well ask where, for instance, is the end of the “first stage"? Does Egypt present a new “Persian-Judean” stage after the Persian conquest, or is it still at the “Egyptian-Babylonian” stage? Why did “Persian-Judean” civilisation at all become a separate and independent stage despite the fact that any historian who has a knowledge of the culture of the ancient 363 world is aware of the close interpenetration of the Judean culture with that of Egypt and Babylon, and knows how difficult it is to understand the culture of Ancient Persia without a study of the culture of Babylon and Assyria. Where is the watershed between these cultures? Further, what is the Western “third stage"? Is that the period of Charlemagne, Philip II of Spain and also the period of the Paris Commune? It is impossible to answer these questions. Concrete history does not fit at all into this artificial scheme. It is quite impossible to support this kind of division with historical facts.

p Second, why do these civilisations develop, what is the motive force and stimulus of the development? Why does the first stage give way to the second, and that in turn to the third? The three “spheres” existing in each civilisation explain nothing. Once the contradictory unity of the productive forces and the relations of production has been rejected, the sociologist is left with no other alternative than to appeal to the “will of God”, to the “collective will”, and to substitute an idealistic figment for actual social relations.

p Thus, the West German sociologists’ “amendments” did nothing to improve the defective idealistic methodology which distorts the historical process. All these are “substitutes” which bring out in even greater relief the absence of any real spiritual nutriment in the capitalist West. This kind of methodology makes it possible arbitrarily to divide the historical process into separate civilisations, structuring a “stage of Persian-Judean" civilisation or any similar artificial stages in the history of society, “without noticing" that Ancient Egypt, Babylon, Persia and a number of other states belonged to the slave-holding formation with all its regularities and specific features.

p Despite all the attempts to divide the historical process into separate consistent stages arbitrarily designated, history continues to be a chaotic agglomeration of civilisations because there is no uniformity in the succession of these stages. Indeed, every attempt to break out of this vicious circle with the aid of modern idealistic methodology is doomed to fail. An interesting example in this context was provided by S. Casson’s prewar work, Progress and Catastrophe, in which he tried to consider the separate periods of world history, the destiny of peoples and states, without seeking to discover the uniformity of the historical process. He regards every society only as a definite type of civilisation, a peculiar way travelled by the given people. He regards world history as a laboratory of experimental civilisations.  [363•14 

p Egypt’s ancient culture was a peculiar experiment in which the aristocracy had the leading role to play. Another experiment was the culture and civilisation of the Hittites of Asia Minor; its architects ignored the sea and concentrated on the land, which is why their 364 civilisation was destroyed by the invasion of seafaring peoples. By contrast, the civilisation of Ancient Crete was maritime, but the time for such an experiment had not yet come, and so that state was unable to withstand the invasion of its enemies, because it had shown scant concern for its defences. That is Casson’s line of reasoning, because he regards world history as something like a collection of exhibits. The substance of these views was summed up by the prominent British historian Professor Gooch, who wrote: “Each civilisation makes its own experiences, and is subject to the processes of growth and decay. Here again there is ... but a series of efforts, of varying degrees of significance and success. If the past is to be our guide, we can expect nothing more than a continuation of this sequence of experiments."   [364•15 

Thus, world history becomes a disorderly accumulation of diverse and ultimately futile experiments. That is a philosophy of history produced by men who see no prospects for the future and who have lost Ariadne’s thread which could help them to get out of the labyrinth. However, the “experiment” theory was not accepted because it ignored the fact that social phenomena tend to repeat themselves, and did not bring out the internal logic even of the individual experiment, merely remarking on its mistakes and ultimate failure. This kind -of theory was of no use in fighting Marxism-Leninism, which had discovered the most profound laws governing the development and decline of the ancient world and feudalism, and the forthcoming debacle of capitalism.