404

p Bourgeois and petty-bourgeois theorists keep saying that the emergence of a new formation based on class antagonisms has always gone hand in hand with wars, expansion and the seizure of foreign lands. But socialism has a different policy to pursue in the world arena, and this the bourgeois politicians, who take a hostile attitude to Marxism-Leninism, cannot understand.

p Lenin’s main idea about the role of force and the importance of military strength for the victory of socialism was expressed in these few concise words: “Coercion is effective against those who want to restore their rule. But at this stage the significance of force ends, and after that only influence and example are effective."  [404•4 

p Lenin brought out two key tasks of revolution: to defend the working people’s power by means of armed force, and to set an example in building the new society. Economic activity reveals the fundamental superiority of the socialist system and this ultimatedly ensures the triumph of the new society over the old. The triumph of communism on a global scale is historically inevitable as a result of world development. The economic successes of socialism are a reflection of the historical regularity expressing the social structure of the new society, its advantages, development and strength of political organisation, and of 405 the state and the Party basing their policy on science and relying on the masses in everything. Economic successes also express the growing culture and development of science and technology, and the rising moral, political and cultural level of the working people. That is exactly what Lenin indicated when he said that the task of the new society was to raise labour productivity to the highest level.

p Lenin’s idea about the importance of creative successes in the new society was formulated with great clarity: “To defeat capitalism in general, it is necessary, in the first place, to defeat the exploiters and to uphold the power of the exploited, namely, to accomplish the task of overthrowing the exploiters by Revolutionary forces; in the second place, to accomplish the constructive task, that of establishing new economic relations, of setting an example of how this should be done. These two aspects of the task of accomplishing a socialist revolution are indissolubly connected, and distinguish our revolution from all previous ones, which never went beyond the destructive aspect.... Regarded from the international point of view, from the standpoint of victory over capitalism in general, this is a paramount task of the entire socialist revolution."  [405•5  Although these creative tasks are initially fulfilled in one country, they are of tremendous international importance, and are assessed by Lenin “from the standpoint of victory over capitalism in general”.

p Here Lenin stressed that these features make the Soviet revolution different from all the earlier ones in which the destructive aspect prevailed. Indeed, destruction was characteristic of bourgeois-democratic revolutions, because their task was no more than to destroy the superstructure which hampered the development of the productive forces in bourgeois society. The new bourgeois relations matured within the feudal system. Bourgeois revolutions have the task of destroying everything hampering the new system that has taken shape. Indeed, there is a creative element in such revolutions only in the sphere of the political organisation of society, and bourgeois and petty-bourgeois theories of revolution have always confined themselves to the political aspects of the revolution.

p By contrast, creative tasks prevail in the socialist revolution, which produces a new economic and social system that had never existed in the past. Any unbiased reader will see that the conception of the bourgeois theorists is a far cry from Leninism because they do not understand at all that the duty of the Communists in the socialist countries is to build a new society and to “show how this is done”. Bourgeois theorists refuse to see the influence exerted by the socialist example on the emergent nations. They refuse to understand that the world revolutionary process 406 can no longer develop independently of the example set daily by the Communists of the socialist countries in building the new society.

p The example set in building the new society has a big part to play in mustering the subjective factor and directing the energy of the masses in the countries taking the path of revolution along the right lines. That is why Lenin said that “socialism has the force of example" and that there is need to “show the significance of communism in practice, by example".  [406•6 

p Today, the spontaneous aspect of the revolutionary movement is disappearing. The clearer the awareness of the masses of the immediate and ultimate aims in their struggle, the more effective their action in the historical arena. The Great October Socialist Revolution set an example in overthrowing the power of the exploiters, and that is the greatest influence it has exerted on the consciousness of the masses, on their will to struggle, on the development of the subjective factor in the world revolutionary process. But to say no more would be to minimise its importance. In order to muster the subjective factor it is highly important to show the purpose for which the revolution has been carried out, what it has yielded for the workingman, and what the real successes and fruits in building the new society are. It is this highly important aspect that the CPSU has tirelessly emphasised and elaborated. Without this it is impossible today to try to muster the consciousness of the masses and their revolutionary energy. Those who fail to understand the depth of Lenin’s idea about the power exerted by example cannot hope to understand the key aspect in the development of the present-day revolutionary process. The world revolution today is no longer a spontaneous explosion like the peasant wars of the 16th century. To forget this is to slow down the world revolutionary process.

p Lenin kept stressing the international importance of the Soviet construction of socialism and frequently spoke about two aspects of this example, namely, the domestic and the international: “After proving that, by revolutionary organisation, we can repel any violence directed against the exploited, we must prove the same thing in another field by setting an example that will convince the vast mass of the peasants and petty-bourgeois elements, and other countries as well, not in word but in deed, that a communist system and way of life, can be created by a proletariat which has won a war. This is a task of world-wide significance. To achieve the second half of the victory in the international sense, we must accomplish the second half of the task, that which bears upon economic construction."  [406•7  Thus, Lenin once again clearly set the question about the two aspects of development in the new society: resisting the use of force by the exploiters, and setting an 407 example in construction. The second half of the victory on an international scale consists of successes in Soviet economic construction and the impact of the Soviet example on the working people of all countries. That is Lenin’s most important point.

p Again and again Lenin returned to consider the traditions of socialist thought, connecting with its history his conclusion that the socialist system must be a force capable of setting an example.

p “In the place of methods of the revolutionary overthrow of the exploiters and of repelling the tyrants, we must apply the methods of constructive organisation; we must prove to the whole world that we are a force capable, not only of resisting any attempt to crush us by force of arms but of setting an example to others. All the writings of the greatest socialists have always provided guidance on these two aspects of the task of the socialist revolution which, as two aspects of the same task, refer both to the outside world, to those states that have remained in capitalist hands, and to the non-proletarians of one’s own country."  [407•8 

p The strength of the CPSU lies in the fact that it has successfully tackled both tasks indicated by Lenin. With the growing successes of the new social system, its growing strength and development the second task came to the fore to become the major one. Such is the logic underlying the development of the new system. In May 1921, in opposition to Trotskyite views completely denying the importance of economic construction in the Soviet Republic and the very possibility of carrying on such construction, Lenin formulated the following key proposition to sum up what had been done and achieved:

p “We are now exercising our main influence on the international revolution through our economic policy. The working people of all countries without exception and without exaggeration are looking to the Soviet Russian Republic. This much has been achieved. The capitalists cannot hush up or conceal anything. That is why they so eagerly catch at our every economic mistake and weakness. The struggle in this field has now become global. Once we solve this problem, we shall have certainly and finally won on an international scale."  [407•9 

p History has shown, and will show again and again, the actual worldwide significance of the example of building a new society in a country like the Soviet Union. In economic’, geographical and ethnic terms the USSR is like a whole world, and that is why its example is many-faceted.

p It is, first, an example in transforming large-scale capitalist industry on socialist lines. Parts of the country like the coal and metallurgical areas of the south, like the highly developed and industrialised center 408 (Petrograd, Moscow) and various others, differed little, if at all, in economic and social structure from similar areas in capitalist Western Europe. By 1917, the country’s working class had already set an example in consciousness and organisation. The socialist transformation of the developed industry of old Russia will always serve as an example for the industrialised capitalist countries.

p Second, the Soviet people indicated the way of restructuring agrarian areas fettered with a web of semifeudal dependence and doomed by capitalism to backwardness. The USSR showed how such areas should be industrialised and taken onto the path of socialist development. This showed for the first time in history the great creative importance of the alliance between the working class and the peasantry, and the role of this alliance in progressive social development.

p Third, the Soviet Union showed how to build up and foster a working class, to raise socialist culture and develop technology in areas suffering from colonial dependence. Today, these are flourishing areas of Central Asia. This kind of experience is of great value for a majority of the peoples of the globe. The USSR also showed how to carry along the path of progress those peoples which capitalism had kept in Stone Age conditions. These are the peoples of the Far North, and they now have writers whose books have been translated into many European languages. Let us bear in mind that outside the socialist world the condition of peoples who lagged behind in their development has remained unchanged.

p In short, virtually the whole diversity of the modern world has been reflected in one way or another in the experience of the USSR, so that the Party founded by Lenin, which has always remained true to his doctrine, has had to tackle tremendous historical tasks. That is why the experience of the CPSU is of vast international importance for the whole of this epoch.

p The Programme of the CPSU says: “As a result of the devoted labour of the Soviet people and the theoretical and practical activities of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, there exists in the world a socialist society that is a reality and a science of socialist construction that has been tested in practice. The highroad to socialism has been paved.  [408•10  This highroad has been laid for peoples living in different conditions. The Soviet example also applies to the highly developed industrialised countries, to agrarian countries and to areas where colonialism either continues to rule or has just been expelled. Therein lies the great worldwide historical value of the Soviet Union’s example. Its experience has been creatively assimilated by countries like highly industrialised Czechoslovakia, and agrarian countries in Eastern Europe and Asia. 409 Today, the peoples of Africa and Latin America look to its experience, for they face the question of how to start the construction of socialism in a backward country. They are faced with the alternative of turning to world capitalism for aid, and putting off socialist ideas for the future. This is, indeed, a highly important issue in present-day social development. The answer has been provided by the CPSU. Today, the USSR’s experience has been multiplied creatively by the world socialist system, consisting of the experience of many countries, many peoples of the globe, and of the whole world socialist system.

p Today, communism is being built on the boundless expanses of the USSR as the second phase of the new society. The main task is to build the material and technical basis of communism, and its successes in this sphere exert a great influence on every section of the world revolutionary process. Today this is a sphere in which the struggle has assumed global proportions, as Lenin put it.

p Some theorists say that the USSR’s start on communist construction is some kind of “subjective” and “supplemental” aspect of present-day social development. They fail to understand that this is a necessary stage in the whole world revolutionary process.. The development of the economic, social and political strength of the world’s first socialist country has an influence on the development of the world emancipation process. Those who ignore the interaction of all the elements of this process and the importance of the progressive development of socialist society distort the whole picture of the world revolutionary process.

p For the socialist countries, the example of communist construction shows the prospects for further advance along the socialist path. This methodological precept of Lenin’s becomes even more important in the period in which socialist construction is being completed. Today, the prospects for socialist construction are being implemented as a part of historical reality. Objective prerequisites are being created for the further consolidation of the socialist countries. This is being promoted by the growing economic potential of the country building communism. Soviet successes help to strengthen the world socialist system, to enhance its prestige and its role in world development.

p The development and improvement of the international socialist division of labour is a key historical task in this period. Capitalism overcame feudalism completely by creating its own international division of labour. Today, in its fight against socialism, capitalism still tries to derive utmost benefits from the international division of labour, by setting up blocs and alliances of monopolies like the Common Market. But its master-and-menial system has been condemned by history. The socialist countries have to show, and have been showing, that the emergent socialist international division of labour has fundamental advantages.

410

p World socialism is faced by world capitalism, an adversary which keeps manoeuvring on an international scale, and resorting to all manner of tricks and dodges so as to delay its demise. The international socialist division of labour stimulates the development of productive forces of socialism and brings on the victory of socialism in its economic competition with capitalism. To see only the political side of present-day alliances of monopoly capital, like the Common Market, and to ignore their economic and social aspect (the juggling of resources in the fight against the forces of socialism, within the capitalist countries, and in the world arena) is to forget the elements of Marxism and of materialism, and this means ideological, political and economic disarmament in face of capitalism. To suggest that in present-day conditions the socialist countries can develop their economy alone and separately, ignoring the requirements of the socialist division of labour is to ignore the fundamentals of Marxism-Leninism about socio-economic formations, their succession and triumph in struggle against the old.

p The building in the USSR of a society in which the social wealth is owned by the whole people exerts an influence not only on the countries in the socialist system, but on all the countries of the capitalist world, both “rich” and “poor”. This makes it no longer possible to claim that wealth is the privilege of the advanced capitalist countries. It is hard to exaggerate the importance of this great turning point in world history. For a long time, the highly developed capitalist countries boasted of their wealth, and bourgeois propagandists kept telling the technically underdeveloped countries that capitalism provided the only way to wealth. They kept telling the working people in the advanced capitalist countries that capitalism provided the only way out of poverty. Today, the capitalists are losing their “monopoly of wealth”. In the socialist world, wealth is being created which in its proportions will surpass that of the richest capitalist countries, because this wealth is in the hands of the whole people. In socialist society there is no room for spongers who seek to live at the expense of others. This has had a great influence on the minds of masses of men, the architects of history.

p This has also had a strong impact on the working-class struggle in the capitalist countries. But for the existence of the socialist Soviet Union, and other socialist countries, the proletariat would have been unable to secure even a faction of the concessions it has wrested from the capitalists, concessions which open up great vistas for continued working-class struggle. But there is more to it than that. With the growing achievements in communist construction in the USSR, the masses will see ever more clearly for themselves what communism has actually in store for them, and will be able to choose, to learn and to draw their own conclusions about the future of capitalism.

p The building of communism exerts an influence on the working class and other sections of the working people mainly through the 411 revolutionary transformation of the process of labour itself. Even the relatively high wages in the capitalist countries cannot conceal the fact that there the workers are not satisfied with their work, which has become monotonous and exhausting, being deprived of any creative elements, initiative or innovation. In an effort to find a way to combat this evil, most Western sociologists have blamed technology and science, whose very development, they say, has consigned the workingman to this hard lot. This, they claim, is the inescapable price of progress. Socialism deals a crushing blow at this bourgeois dogma. The gravest crime of capitalism is a terrible spiritual devastation of productive labour, the key sphere of human activity.

p The liberal US weekly, The Nation, carried a lengthy article in August 1957 by a man who had worked in industry for a number of years. It was entitled “The Myth of the Happy Worker”, and said: “It is not simply status-hunger that makes a man hate work that is mindless, endless, stupefying, sweaty, filthy, noisy, exhausting, insecure in its prospects and practically without hope of advancement.

p “The plain truth is that factory work is degrading....

p “Almost without exception, the men with whom I worked on the assembly line last year felt like trapped animals. Depending on their age and personal circumstances, they were either resigned to their fate, furiously angry at themselves for what they were doing, or desperately hunting other work that would pay as well and in addition offer some variety, some prospect of change and betterment. They were sick of being pushed around by harried foremen (themselves more pitied than hated), sick of working like blinkered donkeys, sick of being dependent for their livelihood on a maniacal production—merchandising setup, sick of working in a place where there was no spot to relax during the twelve-minute rest period....

p “The worker’s attitude toward his work is generally compounded of hatred, shame and resignation."  [411•11 

p Communism invests labour with a great creative content, turns it into a great moral and intellectual value, and gives much ideological meaning to man’s whole labour activity. Labour becomes a moral value because man’s attitude to his work for the common good is a key criterion of the maturity of his moral consciousness. Labour becomes an intellectual value because it requires more and more application of brains and knowledge. Labour is a source of great moral satisfaction because the worker is fully aware of the great social tasks with which his day-to-day activity is connected, wherever he may work. In any sector of communist construction, labour enjoys the respect of society and each of its members. This marks a great change in the long history of labour. It is impossible to conceal by distorting or falsifying Leninism the 412 emancipatory importance for all mankind of the processes going on in the USSR in the period of communist construction. Only those who are hostile to Marxism-Leninism will deny the importance of this. Marxism-Leninism is the only scientific theory which has made a comprehensive study of labour and its role in the history of human society. It has shown the way along which mankind can advance to the emancipation of labour from the fetters of exploitation. The whole world outlook of scientific communism is infused with the idea of emancipating social labour and developing its vast creative potential. One of the key principles of scientific communism is to clear the path of human labour from all the obstacles that the exploitative system has erected and to create the most perfect forms of its organisation so as to erect a perfect social structure.

p Capitalism has directed man’s productive labour, equipped with modern science, largely to the detriment of man himself. That is a great crime. Communism turns to the benefit of man the greatest scientific and technical achievements going into the equipment of the productive labour. Therein lies the greatest historical importance of the USSR’s example.

p A whole generation of bourgeois revolutionaries joined in the struggle bearing in mind the idea that was well formulated in the opening lines of Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s The Social Contract: “Man is born free, yet everywhere he is in chains.” The leaders of the French revolution of 1789 knew these words by heart and swore to put right this historical injustice. After about two centuries of capitalism, the French economist Francois Perroux drew this uncomfortable conclusion: two-thirds of the people suffer from hunger, disease, ignorance and poverty. That is the lot of the bulk of mankind in an age when technological and scientific resources make it possible to live in real abundance.

p Modern social thought gives a direct reply to this question: what are the chains fettering man, why is he unable to use the available potentialities for economic and technical development? All men of good will and honest thought must ponder this question and seek an answer. It is a question which scientists in every field in the West ask themselves ever more frequently, because on the answer depend the prospects for the development of science and technology and mankind’s future. Scientific communism has proved that society’s erstwhile economic, social and political organisation has outlived itself and has become a fetter on mankind’s progressive development. Can men of labour establish a different form of social organisation that would be better? The USSR’s example says yes.

p The Communist parties, says the CPSU Programme, “have demonstrated the vitality of Marxism-Leninism and their ability not only to propagate the great ideals of scientific communism, but also to put them 413 into practice".  [413•12  Consequently, the spread of communist ideas now assumes a new character, for it is closely connected with the communist construction in the USSR and other countries of the world socialist system and becomes propaganda by fact, by example. The Communist Party is the highest form of the political organisation of the working class, which leads the other working people, and in the USSR it has awakened the greatest social energy of the masses for the performance of truly fabulous advances in the sphere of material production and intellectual development, and which with the full and final victory of socialism has become the Party of the whole people.

p The attempts to denigrate the Soviet Union’s experience and to reduce the power of its historical example is the main content of present-day anti-communism. That is why for some time now the propagandists of anti-communism have sought to invest socialism with capitalist features, to discover class antagonisms in society, etc. It was the Right-wing Social Democrats who first put forward the idea in their fight against the Communists that socialism tends to engender new bourgeois elements. This invention has been taken up and bourgeois theorists came to label socialism as “state capitalism”. This theory was invented to fight socialism.

p But the socialist period differs from the transition period in that it ceases to engender—and cannot in fact engender—capitalism because the petty-commodity sector and private property in the means of production have been abolished and social property reigns supreme. Of course, we still have idlers, spongers, hooligans and people tainted with bourgeois ideas, but to regard these as a class or as a definite social section would be to suggest that the existence of classes depends on the thinking of men.

p All reasoning on these lines about the vestiges of the exploiting classes existing under socialism and preparing to restore capitalism, all the inventions about the emergence of “new bourgeois elements" allegedly engendered by the socialist system, have no grounds. This theory does not express any social processes going forward in Soviet society and, in effect, contradicts these.

p The struggle against falsification of the facts and achievements in communist construction now has a great part to play because the power of example now exerts a tremendous influence. This struggle, which began with the emergence of Bolshevism, a struggle against the vulgar view of socialism and vulgarisation of its great ideas in the new historical conditions, a struggle which has brought great successes to the Soviet people, is being carried on by the CPSU in the international arena in the interests of advancing the world revolutionary process and the triumph of communism. The Communists have carried on this struggle not only 414 with words, but—and this is especially important—with deeds, with the example of building communism. That is why it is safe to say that the whole Soviet people and every Soviet citizen are now taking part through their day-to-day labour effort in the great ideological battle of our day for communism.

p Even some spokesmen of anti-communism have to admit that the Soviet example exerts a powerful influence. One of them, Alec Nove, in a chapter of his book entitled “Force of Example”, says: “There is a tendency in some quarters to view the Soviet danger too exclusively in terms of some specific actions—military, ’economic penetration’, etc.—by the USSR and her allies. Yet an important part of our difficulties arise from the psychological effects of Soviet achievements on the climate of opinion in underdeveloped countries."   [414•13  The objective conditions in the modern world are ripe for the example of communist construction to yield fruitful results.

p The historical situation today, even according to bourgeois theorists, calls for a wholesale revolution, if technical progress is to be realised. Bourgeois society cannot cope with such a revolution which is inexorable. Socialist society puts the most important achievements in science and technology at the service of social development, thereby setting an example of the utmost use of the scientific and technical revolution for the common good.

p Alec Nove adds: “It is in this context that the political appeal and the force of Russia’s example must be seen. This is why gradualist or conservative proposals tend to be regarded as affording no solution to the country’s problems."  [414•14 

p In other words, technical progress, especially the task of involving the developing countries in it, now requires revolutionary methods, revolutionary thinking, and resolute struggle against conservatism of every stripe. That is the demand of the times, such are the urgent requirements of society and these have to be faced. But how can one, in that case, refuse to see the experience gained by the socialist system and the Soviet Union in the broad application of modern technology? To ignore it would be to ignore the competition with capitalism and the introduction into the Soviet national economy of the most advanced methods, technologies and scientific achievements, all of which amount to building the material and technical basis of communism.

p For a long time, bourgeois sociologists said that capital alone took the “risk of innovation" and that it alone had the “spirit of enterprise”. Actually, labour in socialist society increasingly includes innovation and creative thinking by the organiser and worker aimed to improve the 415 process of production and its organisation. This spirit of initiative, creativity, rationalisation and innovation has served the whole of Soviet society and has become one of the key factors behind the rapid and steady development of production. This is an indication that Soviet society has entered an epoch in which, as Marx put it, “the development of the social individual operates as the basic principle of production and wealth".  [415•15  It is the period of full-scale communist construction, marking the most resolute moment in the competition between socialism and capitalism.

p Alec Nove gives a fairly authentic picture of the thinking in the national liberation movement of the countries of Asia and Africa: “Russia, they argue, was one of us, and has become a great industrial power....

p “All this does not necessarily lead the reformers to become Communists; but it does lead to impatience with old ways, a willingness to listen to extremists.... The experience of Western countries seems simply irrelevant: their social and economic situation was and is totally different, and their experience cannot be applied."  [415•16  What does this suggest? First, it shows that the objective situation and the course of historical development tend to enhance for public opinion the role of Left-wing, progressive elements, relying on Soviet experience. Second, the experience of Western countries increasingly appears to be irrelevant, because it has failed to show the developing countries the way to social progress. Such is the tendency of the historical process today.

p The more perspicacious Western observers have realised that with the Soviet engineers and machinery going to the countries of Asia and Africa comes Soviet experience in transforming social and economic life. The US journal, Business Week in its issue of April 18, 1959, assessed the importance of the Soviet Union’s construction of the Bhilai Works in India and said that it was a “real Soviet achievement in the field of economic competition”, stressing that the competition has run not only on technical but also on humanistic lines. It added that the activity of Soviet specialists, their way of life and their relations with their Indian colleagues have~“impressed the Indian steel workers and even some of the genuine anti-Communists in the Indian government and business community”.

p Business Week is a journal which does not ordinarily deal with philosophical or sociological matters, but in that report it went to the very root of the current struggle between the two ideologies. The power of Soviet economic example is closely bound up with socialist social 416 relations, with socialist ideology and Soviet moral values and ideas. The economic competition inevitably implies political and ideological struggle, and the editors of the bourgeois journal sensed this with their class instinct.

p Over the past decades, social thought in the countries of the East had painfully probed for an answer to this question: what is the way out of the terrible and hopeless need and poverty? The apologists of capitalism kept saying that the bourgeois way of development was the only way, that it was inevitable, and that history had no other ways. Some bourgeois intellectuals in the Asian countries suggested that their poverty was better and nobler than the greedy drive for profit. Indeed, some have started to praise backwardness, “holy indigence" and “noble poverty”. That was a peculiar path for social thought to take, because it led nowhere. Today, social thought in the countries of the East has been leaving this lonely path to take the highroad leading to scientific communism, and there is no return to the ideas of “holy poverty”, however hard the advocates of present-day petty-bourgeois socialism may try. History is moving in quite a different direction.

p Whatever the various “advisers” from the Right and the “Left” may say to the people of the East about Soviet experience in building socialism and communism being irrelevant to their countries, the truth of life cannot be concealed. When Soviet people had to grit their teeth to overcome the tremendous difficulties of laying the foundation of socialism stone by stone in an encirclement by strong enemies, some Western theorists gloated over the difficulties of Soviet growth and tried to scare the backward working people with similar prospects. A great many speeches were delivered and reams of paper written on the subject. But what can they say now that the Soviet people, in a short historical period, have fundamentally changed the face of their country and the conditions of their own being? The engineering and metalworking industry of the Soviet Union now turns out in one day what it took a prerevolutionary Russia a year to produce. Before the revolution, 80 per cent of the population in the country was illiterate; by the beginning of the sixties 40 per cent of the workers and 23 per cent of the collective farmers had a secondary and higher education; the Soviet Union trained three times more engineers than the USA. These facts exert a revolutionising influence and are material arguments in favour of communist ideas.

p The once backward Eastern fringes of tsarist Russia have become advanced socialist republics with a modern industry and a collectivefarm system. By the beginning of the sixties, the output of large-scale industry products in Kazakhstan and the Central Asian republics had increased by over 60-fold. Kazakhstan’s industrial output per head of the population was equal to that of Italy; it generated as much electricity as Japan and more than Italy. In Uzbekistan there were 417 twice as many people with a higher education per 10,000 of the population than there were in France, 7 times more than there were in Turkey and 28 times more than in Iran.

p Lenin said that large-scale industry was an important condition for raising the vast and backward countryside which still surrounds the capitalist “seats of civilisation”. He wrote: “We speak of a flourishing large-scale industry, which is able to supply all the goods the peasants are in urgent need of, and this possibility exists; if we consider the problem on a world scale, we see that a flourishing large-scale industry capable of supplying the world with all kinds of goods exists, only its owners do not know how to use it for anything but the manufacture of guns, shells and other armaments, employed with such success from 1914 to 1918. Then industry was geared to war and supplied mankind with its products so abundantly that no fewer than 10 million people were killed and no fewer than 20 million maimed."  [417•17  Mankind has produced another industrial power, which is socialist and which has been growing steadily. The time is bound to come when this flourishing large-scale industry will be capable of supplying the peasant countries with all they need to advance along the socialist way. Meanwhile the growing strength of the socialist system has been hampering the imperialists in making use of their industry for military purposes. The socialist world has been pushing capitalism towards disarmament requiring that it should turn its resources to industrialising the underdeveloped areas of the globe. Such are the historical prospects being opened up by the further strengthening of the socialist countries’ economic strength.

p However, it is important that the flood of industrial goods directed to the developing countries should set in motion a mechanism effectively impelling these countries along the path of progress. The fragmented and impoverished small farms cannot make effective use of this flood of goods. There is need for a different social organisation, and here mankind already has considerable historical experience. Of vast importance in this context is the Soviet example in tackling the agrarian problem, one of the key problems of social development. A. Nove says: “The Soviet Union’s collectivisation of agriculture is frequently seen by Asian intellectuals as a model relevant to their needs. In their own countries, agriculture is generally handicapped by social, legal, and technical patterns which urgently require change, and Soviet collective farming is often regarded as a progressive form of rural cooperation.... The need to reform drastically the agriculture of these countries is urgent, and purely negative criticism of the Soviet record would probably be ineffective unless an alternative road is advocated, which is more suitable to the special needs of farming in those areas. A few, too 418 few, Western experts are doing just that."   [418•18  But the point is that history has no other ways but the capitalist and the socialist. There is no other way out of agrarian poverty but the cooperation of agriculture.

p Industrialisation and collectivisation, which helped to develop a flourishing socialist economy, are the way for the social, cultural and economic upswing for nations escaping from bondage. The emancipation of nations involves the building of an economic foundation for their free development. Economic achievements have a great impact on the minds of men because they show how to tackle the national question, to help nations draw closer to each other, and to establish relations of sincere and profound friendship on the basis of their common cause and basic mutual interests.

p In order to decide which aspect of communist construction is most valuable for all countries, let us recall Rousseau’s excellent idea, which was quoted in the opening pages of this book: “The better the constitution of the state, the more public affairs prevail in the minds of citizens. Indeed, there are fewer private affairs because out of the sum total of common welfare a more considerable portion is being provided for the welfare of each individual, so that it remains for him to seek less in his private concern."  [418•19  That is the historical path along which the Soviet people are advancing, and there is no doubt that their experience is of great value for every working person and for the whole of mankind.

p Under capitalism the working people can have no social guarantee of a secure individual existence, however hard bourgeois ideologists may boast about individualism. In many important areas the USSR has long since secured incontestable advantages for the workingman as compared with the most developed capitalist states. Free education, free medical service and guaranteed employment have become commonplace in the USSR. The Programme of the CPSU says: “There is now every possibility to improve rapidly the living standards of the entire population—the workers, peasants, and intellectuals. The CPSU sets forward the historically important task of achieving in the Soviet Union a living standard higher than that of any of the capitalist countries."  [418•20  The Programme contains clear-cut indications of how this can be achieved. Thus, the idea of the “common good" must be attractive for the working people of the capitalist countries, including the “richest” among these, because in the society dominated by the blind forces of capital, masses of people daily experience a sense of insecurity. The working peoples’ urge to save all they can is an expression of the insecurity of an individual existence. The prominent US sociologist, Robert K. Merton, writes: “To say that the goal of monetary success is entrenched in 419 American culture is only to say that Americans are bombarded on every side by precepts which affirm the right or, often, the duty of retaining the goal even in the face of repeated frustration."  [419•21  This principle of bourgeois culture and civilisation is being steadily overcome, and the working people will ultimately realise that wealth is being created in the socialist countries which will surpass that of the developed capitalist countries and will mean abundance of material and spiritual goods for everyone.

p However, the capitalist world does not consist only of rich imperialist powers like the USA, but also of countries which have failed to reach the highest level of capitalist development. In these countries, the working people are being constantly told that they must rise to the same level as the USA, for that is allegedly the only way to prosperity and happiness. For that purpose they are frequently pushed into colonial wars, their democratic rights are curtailed, and they are offered the prospect of a strong government to take control of all things and carry the country onto the way of capitalist prosperity.

p The working people in these countries now increasingly realise that there is another way, the way to socialism and communism, which helps to tap mighty and inexhaustible sources of social wealth and popular welfare and to establish an international brotherhood of nations free from oppression. That is a perfectly realistic way. It is an expression of the revolutionising influence of the Soviet economic successes in building communism. Soviet experience has a great message for the working people in other countries, because the world capitalist system, the CPSU Programme stresses, is on the whole ripe for a substitution of capitalism by the higher, communist system.

p For long decades, various ideologists and politicians in the West have distorted the way along which the USSR advanced, building socialism in the most complicated conditions of a hostile capitalist encirclement, wars and dislocation. Today, it is clear to everyone that the historical conditions have changed. The unparalleled difficulties and vast privations are behind us. The seeds sown in those extremely difficult conditions have yielded abundant fruit. Socialism is becoming ever more attractive even for those masses of people who are still far from having a socialist ideology. The time is at hand when the way to socialism will become the highroad of social development for all countries.

p Even bourgeois theorists, whose main concern is to rescue the “idea of capitalism" in the historical competition between capitalism and socialism, have to ponder the Soviet example and experience. One of them, Raymond W. Miller, has reached this conclusion: “It is communism that is gaining.... In many of the newly developing countries of Africa, Asia and South America—capitalism is looked upon almost 420 with scorn."  [420•22  In analysing the causes of the success of communism, Miller makes an important point: “The word ‘we’ has become the keystone of the success of the communist world."  [420•23  He draws attention to socialist collectivism and the socialist system of social property.

p Miller’s speech appears in a popular edition which has the highly characteristic subtitle: “The Best Thought of the Best Minds on Current National Questions”. Miller’s reasoning seems to be of interest to readers at large. Here is what he says: “The whole idea of capitalism is lost when we get so busy trying to make money and to gain economic security that we can think of nothing else."  [420•24  But such is the essence of capitalism, so that Miller’s reasoning is no more than a peculiar confirmation of the fact. The USSR’s economic successes really show the great importance of the national interest, which springs from social property. The power of this concept of “we” lies in the fact that it emerges in production and labour, and that relations between men in production do not divide but unite the whole people. The influence of Soviet economic successes is at the same time the influence of collective labour.

p When we think of what Lenin said about the importance of the example in the successful construction of socialism it becomes clear that the progressive development of mankind today largely depends on the power and depth of the influence of this example and its assimilation by the rest of mankind. Therein lies the most important aspect of the historical process today.

p Modern man has been impressed by two objective lines of world development: the socialist and the capitalist way. This leaves an imprint on the ideological struggle as a whole. That is the light in which social events are now regarded by men, so acquiring a political importance.

p Lenin taught us to see the great political importance of every ton of grain, every ton of coal produced against the background of the struggle between the newly emergent social system and the forces of the old, obsolete and reactionary system. Today there are no longer any “purely economic" or “purely technical" successes in the socialist countries: their every success goes to their credit in the competition between communism and capitalism, and each has a political significance, helping to enhance the prestige of communist ideas, increasing the role of the community of socialist countries in the world arena, and raising the authority of the Marxist-Leninist parties.

p So long as two opposite and competing social systems exist, men are bound to compare them and their results. A comparison of the facts 421 leads to generalisation and conclusions, and to consideration of the prospects for the development of the two systems. That is an inevitable process in social thought today. The Communists have been carrying on an ideological struggle to help men draw the right conclusions from the facts, to help them see things in a clearer light and boldly to look into the future. Meanwhile, bourgeois propaganda has been trying to cover up the contours of reality, to distort the facts or to misinterpret them, in order to maintain or even to increase the influence of the old and effective views, so as to lead men away from a correct understanding of the phenomena and processes in social life. The ideology of communism has been spreading across the globe, being accepted by more and more men and women, because it is backed up by the achievements of the Soviet Union and other socialist countries, and by the great ideas of Marxism-Leninism.

Mankind is now crossing the great historical divide between the ages dominated by private property, private-property notions of what is “mine”, that is, more important than anything else, and the domination of social property and the ideas of collectivism, the common good and happiness for all. In the Soviet Union, the forms of social property are being steadily improved as the country advances to communism. In the world socialist system as a whole, social property has been established and has continued to develop. History has posed the question of the ways of transition to social property in all the other countries of the world. In these conditions, the growing economic, political and ideological influence exerted by the successes in developing social property is a key feature of the world historical process. Such is the inevitable conclusion drawn by present-day social thought.