G.P. FRANTSOV
__TITLE__ PHILOSOPHY and SOCIOLOGY __TEXTFILE_BORN__ 2007-06-06T01:54:09-0700 __TRANSMARKUP__ "Y. Sverdlov"Progress Publishers.
Moscow
[1] rTranslated from the Russian by YURI SDOBN1KOV
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__COPYRIGHT__ First printing 1975Georgy Frantsov (1903--1969) was a leading scientist who specialised in philosophy, history, scientific communism and sociology, an ardent propagandist of Marxism-Leninism, a prominent public figure and political leader, a gifted journalist and a man of great erudition and charm. He was a man of encyclopaedic knowledge. With his broad philosophical and, simultaneously, Party approach to problems in social development, he was able creatively to work on many key problems of historical materialism and scientific communism, and to produce a profound critical analysis of present-day bourgeois sociological conceptions. In his lifetime, he helped many young scientists to start out on the path of sociological research and criticism of bourgeois sociological conceptions. G.~P. Frantsov^^*^^ generously shared his knowledge, thoughts and plans with them. A man of great erudition himself, Frantsov sought to foster in his students a keen dedication to science.
He was well known and respected as a public figure, an organiser of scientific activity and training of personnel. He was Director of the Institute of International Relations, head of the Press Department of the USSR Foreign Ministry, Rector of the Academy of Social Sciences under the CPSU Central Committee, Editor-in-Chief of World Marxist Review, and Deputy Director of the Institute of Marxism-Leninism under the CPSU Central Committee, in all these posts revealing his brilliant personality and keen mind. Above all, G. P. Frantsov was a fighter for the cause of Marxism-Leninism.
His books, pamphlets and articles constitute a large and valuable scientific, literary and journalistic legacy, which in his lifetime commanded much interest among a large readership. The reason is that his writings were a blend of scientific and profound philosophical _-_-_
^^*^^ Many of his works were published under various pseudonyms, including Y. P. Frantsov and Yu. Frantsev.
7 analysis, and impassioned Communist Party spirit, for he took a militantly implacable stand on present-day reactionary bourgeois and petty-bourgeois trends. We find this in his capital scientific works and in his articles for the periodical press. Concise and short the latter may well have been, but they, too, were a blend of his scientific knowledge and brilliant skill of a Party journalist.The bulk of the book consists of his work, The Historical Path of Social Thought, which was first published in 1965. The author himself regarded it as summing up his research into the history of social thinking. It presents a broad panorama of the dialectics of social thought, closely connected with the advance of history itself, and with the class struggle, which permeates the whole history of human society. In this book, Frantsov displayed his talent of philosopher and historian, giving a profound summary of the prehistory of scientific ideology, and showing how progressive thinkers had probed their way to the truth, until the fundamental turning point in its evolution when the founders of Marxism gave scientific answers to the questions the course of history itself had posed.
The author shows the revolution in social science carried out by the founders of Marxism, and also the crisis of present-day bourgeois thinking, its reactionary and unscientific nature, its abandonment of the scientific approach to the analysis of social progress, and its theoretical impotence.
The sections of the book dealing with Lenin's development of the Marxist doctrine contain a wealth of concrete facts and scientific treatment of historical events. He shows the emergence of Leninism in the struggle with ideological and political bourgeois and petty-bourgeois trends, which were hostile to the cause of the working class and social progress as a whole. He shows very well the worldwide historical importance of Leninism as the ideological banner of social progress throughout the world, and the greatness of the world's first triumphant socialist revolution, exploding the attempts by our ideological adversaries to minimise its importance and confine its experience to a regional framework. He does this by giving a scientific analysis of the role of the principal and universal regularities governing socialist revolution. He also shows how the ideas of the October Revolution and its experience have been spreading across the globe and providing an inexhaustible and life-giving source of revolutionary thought and action.
The book includes chapters on the historical importance of the Marxist-Leninist doctrine and its role in the development of socialist culture and ideological struggle.
G. P. Frantsov gives a deep analysis of the development of the Marxist doctrine and shows very well how Lenin organically combined unbending loyalty to the scientific principles of the founders of the Marxist doctrine and a profoundly innovatory and creative approach, 8 together with boldness in generalising new phenomena and tendencies in world social practice throughout history.
G. P. Frantsov's articles on Marx and Lenin, the founders of Marxism-Leninism, and the problems of scientific communism were mostly written in the last few years of his life. Each of these is a well-rounded work in itself, but all are connected by a single line of thought which runs organically through them all. In these articles, G. P. Frantsov put forward many ideas, which were theoretically novel and practically important and which undoubtedly deserve further elaboration as independent studies. Some of these articles are presented in abridged form.
G. P. Frantsov was closely in touch with the practice of communist construction, and these pages show him once again as a scientist of great intellect and theoretical boldness, and an impassioned fighter for the communist cause.
[9] ~ [10] __ALPHA_LVL1__ INTRODUCTIONThe world is peering ever more intently into the future. The Programme of the CPSU has indicated the way along which the Soviet people are advancing into it. Once again, this puts one in mind of what Engels said in 1883: ``Russia is the France of the present century. To her belongs rightfully and lawfully the revolutionary initiative of a new social reorganisation...."^^1^^
The French revolution key noted the end of the 18th and a large part of the 19th century, including the period of the Paris Commune. The French revolution paved the way into the future. Marxism was tempered in the flames of the 1848 and 1871 revolutions, followed by the emergence of the Social-Democratic parties, which gained much experience in organising the working class. The early years of the 20th century were marked by the emergence in the arena of world history of the Leninist Party, which gave a lead to the masses and made the Russian proletariat---as Lenin had predicted at the beginning of the century---the vanguard of the international revolutionary movement. It was its initiative that sparked off major transformations of society and fresh advances in social thought.
Marx, Engels and Lenin attached much importance to revolutionary initiative and the power of example. Revolutionary initiative is highly important in helping the new elements that have matured to defeat the old in social development. Revolutionary initiative has helped to realise the historical possibilities that have been comprehended and to blend revolutionary thought and revolutionary acts.
A new stage has now been reached in mankind's long development and in the history of social thought. Marxism-Leninism has provided a scientific analysis of the prospects of social development and activity by masses of people in making a reality of the unfolding historical possibilities.
_-_-_~^^1^^ Reminiscences of Marx and Engels, Moscow, 1957, p. 205.
11To discover the objective dialectics of the historical process, to analyse social development, one needs to analyse its source and to study the self-movement of the social whole. Therein lies, in effect, the power of materialist dialectics, which has enabled it to revolutionise social thinking. The Marxist-Leninist doctrine of society is permeated with the historical approach and one of its great achievements is the establishment of the stages of society's development. Lenin used to stress that historical approach to social phenomena was typical of Marxism\thinspace``... not only in the sense of explaining the past but also in the sense of a bold forecast of the future and of bold practical action for its achievement".^^2^^ These remarkable words define the revolution in social thinking which Marxism has carried out. Creative Marxist thinking helps to bring out the potentialities of social development and, accordingly, to set new and concrete tasks in men's practical activity. Therein lies the importance of the political line pursued by the Marxist-Leninist parties. In this way, theory is transformed into policy, into a system of actions, into concrete tasks facing the historical movement of working mankind.
An understanding of the objective tendencies of development inevitably sets one thinking about the future, about the historical prospects and the possibility of man's taking vigorous action to realise these prospects. This is the touchstone for assessing the role of social thought in the objective historical process. That is why scientific communism is the supreme achievement in social thinking.
Once the possibility of changing the social state is recognised, one needs to consider the possibility of man's exerting a conscious influence on such change. The connection between the development of social science and revolutionary theory is not a casual or unnatural one, as bourgeois sociologists seek to prove by rewriting history according to their own lights. The history of social thought shows this growing connection, its emergence and development.
Social thought can originate and develop only when men do not regard the present as being lasting and immutable, for when social phenomena are taken to be fixed once and for all, the way to any reasoning about them is closed.
Man's conscious attitude to social development has its origins in his understanding that the existing order is not in any sense a lasting state, without beginning or end, established by the gods for all time. That is not an idea which emerged in history all at once. It marks the beginnings of social thinking, and it is the task of science to determine its stages.
The development of social thought is closely connected with an analysis of the past, an understanding of the present and efforts to divine the future, for a profound understanding of the present involves a clarification of tendencies and widening prospects. What do men need to _-_-_
~^^2^^ V.I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 21, p. 72.
12 do to translate into reality the potential of the historical process? The answer is provided by the historical and materialist approach to social phenomena.That is something bourgeois theorists today refuse to accept and in a chorus of discordant voices keep singing the old song: scientific analysis of reality, they claim, rules out consideration of the future, which remains a dim dream instead of being the object of scientific analysis. This is one of the important issues in the ideological struggle today.
Bourgeois theorists cannot admit that the true theory of social development is also a theory for the fundamental transformation of society. In the light of their class preconceptions, they have falsified the history of social thought, alleging that it comes to no more than a succession of diverse subjective wishes and armchair ideas and declaring war on any idea of a fundamental transformation of society.
Bourgeois scientists have written many books about the history of social thought but these have distorted the concept, giving it all sorts of twisted readings. But what is the real meaning of this concept? It includes trends in social thinking which seek to shed light on social development and tackle social problems. Of course, the history of social thought is closely bound up with the history of political thought, which mainly brings out various questions bearing on the political organisation of society, and also with philosophical trends. The main question thinkers have tried to answer over the centuries was that of the origin and essence of social and national oppression. That is a question social thinkers have tried to answer from time immemorial. At first, the answers were naive, for they were not based on science. As social science developed more and more data were available for a scientific answer that carried conviction. The true answer came only with the emergence of the proletariat, the grave-digger of capitalism, when history first posed the question of whether the exploitative system could be destroyed. Scientific communism has provided the answer.
Bourgeois theorists refuse to see the logic in the development of social thought and seek to distort its history in every way. They have done their utmost to twist the idea of the past, the present and the future of the working people. They want the working-class movement to have no historical prospect and to deceive the working people into thinking that they must be satisfied with capitalism, reformed and refurbished, because history allegedly offers no other alternative. To suggest the contrary is to draw charges of being a Utopian. The reformists have cursed scientific communism and branded it as utopianism, denying the possibility of socialist revolution and the dictatorship of the proletariat, and fabricating out of various elements of capitalism their own ``ideal society" which continues to have private property in the means of 13 production and capitalist free enterprise. Their ``socialism'' is nothing but an embellished capitalism at its last, monopoly stage. Bourgeois ideologists present the history of social thought in a light that suggests that they have provided scientific proof of a reformed capitalism being the final stage in the long development of society. They have tried to present the history of social thought in such a way as to suggest that socialism, once a Utopia, has never developed into a science, these allegedly being ``the two main streams" of social thinking---the Utopian and the scientific---with the latter not allowing any consideration of the future society.
Bourgeois ideology and capitalist society, which have produced these views, now confront a mighty and developing socialist system of society and its ideology, which corresponds to the new stage in mankind's social progress. The struggle between these two opposite ideologies on various aspects of social development is highly important, because it is a struggle over the issue of mankind's future. Now that the majestic edifice of communism, which is being built by the labour endeavour of millions of men, is acquiring ever more distinct contours, bourgeois ideology is being dealt its heaviest blow since the appearance of Marxism. The revolutionary initiative of the CPSU and the Soviet country, now building communism, have been exerting their transforming influence on millions upon millions of men and women in the struggle for a better future, for a new world. It has had a regenerating effect on the whole of mankind's political and spiritual life. Bourgeois views of social development now appear to all honest-minded men in their true colours, as vindicating stagnation and as urging regress.
Consider the praises sung by bourgeois ideologists to militarisation, which is a product of the rotting present-day capitalism. These praises show very well the reactionary nature of bourgeois ideology and the drag monopoly domination tends to exert on social development. Defence ministries are the most powerful clients ordering large consignments of rapidly obsolescent goods at high prices. This is a good business. Perhaps never since the period of feudal absolutist regimes have the military played such an important role in state machinery. Feudal monarchs and their vassals suffocated in fancy gold-braid military uniforms. Earlier on, slave-holding Rome, armed to the teeth, according to the standards of the age, had hoped that its legions would stop the tide of history. However, all of this is merely a sign of the old system going down to its destruction.
The outcome of the competition between the new and the old system was ultimately decided in production, the most important sphere of human activity. Indeed, this also gave the new system its military advantage. Today, the situation has changed in the sense that the new social system which has set the task of eliminating wars from the life of society, has also established its superiority in the military sphere, 14 thereby preventing the reactionaries from carrying the issue in the great historical contest between the new and the old world onto the field of bloody battles. The new system looks confidently to the future, well aware that it will win out in peaceful competition. The idea of lasting peace, also resulting from the long development of social thought, has been winning ever more supporters and active fighters all over the world. In the minds of masses of people this idea is being wedded to the ideas of communism, which advances under the banner of peace and carries peace to mankind.
Some of the more farsighted theorists in the West realise that the prestige of capitalism has been plummeting, while that of socialism has been soaring. More and more intellectuals in the West have been criticising capitalism, giving greater recognition to the forces of scientific communism. What bourgeois theorists fear most of all is that in the capitalist countries men cannot help thinking more and more about the objectively possible future, about the need to work for the triumph of the progressive tendencies carrying mankind forward. All of this means that men have been ever more active in taking a conscious attitude to social reality. The awakening of a conscious attitude to reality and correct assessment of the possibilities for massive activity are an important aspect of historical progress itself. We find evidence of this in the whole history of social thought.
That is why bourgeois ideologists seek to prove that any assessment of the prospects before social development has always been and will always continue to be subjective and never a scientific conclusion based on a profound analysis of historical tendencies. For roughly a century now, bourgeois theorists have tried hard to prove that the ultimate goals of the working-class struggle are not rooted in the objective course of social development. These old objections to the Marxist theory of social development are now being put forward in a somewhat refurbished form, because the ultimate aims of the working-class struggle have become practical tasks in the activity of millions of working people in the countries of the world socialist system. Indeed, bourgeois ideologists have appealed to dialectics to back up their objections to the Marxist theory of social development. Thus, Professor Georges Gurvitch of the Sorbonne wrote a book about dialectics and sociology in which he urges the need for applying the dialectical method if sociology is to develop successfully. That would, of course, be fine, but for the fact that Professor Gurvitch takes a curious view of dialectics and the dialectical method. He starts by extolling dialectics for its critical and revolutionary character, which makes it irreconcilable to any dogmas or preconceptions. But then he goes on to say that dialectics in sociology is incompatible with any idea of progress. However, for Marxism dialectics continues to be the line of man's ascent to a radiant future. Marx's dialectics is a triumphant march through revolution towards a 15 humanity finally rid of all servitude and reconciled with itself.^^3^^ Professor Gurvitch has, in effect, invented a special term for the dialectics which he cannot accept. He calls it the ``dialectique ascendante'', the ``ascendant dialectics''.
Like many other modern ``critics'' of Marx, Professor Gurvitch declares that ``Marx's 'historical dialectics' tends to cover up a 'philosophy of history' and serves to confound the reality of history, historiography (or historical knowledge) and an eschatological and Utopian view of the future of society".^^4^^ He adds that the Marxist theorist is aware of mankind's future even ``without dialectics" which is why Marx's ``historical dialectics" becomes ``dogmatic'', because it allegedly allows a preconception of the human destiny. Gurvitch also claims that this dialectics becomes ``the apology for the second phase of communism".^^5^^ I have quoted these assertions at some length because they appear to be typical of modern bourgeois sociologists who have been putting up a stubborn fight in face of the Marxist-Leninist offensive along the whole front of the social sciences.
Bourgeois theorists refuse to accept the incontestable fact that a great revolution in social thought took place a century ago. They refuse to be reconciled with the fact that socialism has ceased to be a Utopia and has become a science, and that scientific communism has emerged and is developing. The various forms of neopositivism, including Gurvitch's ``dialectical empiricism'', seek to assure men that the question of the direction the historical process is to take allegedly lies outside the framework of science. Neopositivism denies sociology any philosophical content and any connection between sociological theories and philosophical doctrines. But to deny human thought the right to make generalisations about the development of social life is to kill social thought itself, to deny it any future and to scrap its past.
It took centuries of efforts to produce a generalised picture of the development of social life, these efforts being naive, weak and Utopian so long as the working people's class struggle against the exploiters was being carried on at a low level. These attempts were idealistic and metaphysical until the emergence of revolutionary materialist dialectics, the weapon of the working class whose historic mission is to transform the world. This weapon has been sharpened in class battles. It is being used with great skill today in the working people's struggle against capital and in their construction of the new life.
Today dialectical materialism ousts bourgeois neopositivist conceptions everywhere, dealing them shattering blows. Some sociologists who have criticised the ``ascendant dialectics" inevitably ended up by denying _-_-_
~^^3^^ G. Gurvitch, Dialectique et sociologie, Paris, 1962, p. 155.
~^^4^^ Ibid., p. 149.
~^^5^^ Ibid., p. 149.
16 the very idea of development, assuming that the dialectics of the ascent from the lower forms to the higher in the history of society could not possibly serve as a basis for a scientific theory of society.From that standpoint, the history of social thought is a history of the gradual oblivion of the surges towards a radiant future, with these surges being replaced by positivist ``scientific'' formulas, which put a ban even on thinking about fundamental social change. Such is the bourgeois caricature of the history of social thought. Such is the bourgeois distortion of the role of social thought in the history of mankind's struggle for emancipation.
However, when social science ceases to shape men's convictions and their motivations for activity for the sake of progress, it begins to serve reaction, whatever its advocates may say concerning their claims to ``objectivity'', and the separation of ``science'' and ``ideology''. Of this some of the modern scientists in the West, who are not in any sense Marxists, are also aware.
Professor Alvin Gouldner, who delivered the report at the annual meeting of the Society for the Study of Social Problems in the USA, sharply attacked the fundamental tenets of the leading US sociologists who claim that it is not their business to assess the facts of social life, and who try to release the concept of sociology from value judgements so as to make sociologists indifferent to the moral conclusions suggested by their work. Professor Gouldner also attacked various objectivist claims which, he believed, sprang from the huckstering that determined the sociologist's status in this world, forcing him to supply ideologically neutral and purely technical studies which could be offered to any prospective buyer. Gouldner gave a reminder that before Hiroshima, physicists likewise claimed to be ``neutral'' with respect to social phenomena. Today, he added, many physicists are not as convinced of this. Gouldner held that concentration on the technical training of US students and the elimination of any responsibility for their ethical sense or lack of it could produce a generation eager to serve a future Auschwitz (Oswiecim). That was an excellent warning to those who take the neopositivist view of social science. A social science that does not serve the great cause of social progress ceases to be a science, for it abandons the quest for scientific truth, for the sake of which generations of forward-looking men went to the stake and the gallows. This kind of ``science'', said Professor Gouldner, can be no more than a checklist of technical rules.
However, Professor Gouldner failed to show the true and objective connectiop between human ideals and the dialectics of social development. Whereas Professor Gurvitch insists that the dialectics of social development should make do without ideals, Professor Gouldner considers various ideals outside the context of the dialectics of social development. But what is the real answer?
17There can be no depth to men's conscious attitude to their environment without a scientific knowledge of the facts, but this can be obtained only by connecting the facts to discover the regularities and trends of development. Any conscious attitude to existing reality rests on a scientific cognition of the potentialities, prospects and trends of historical development. Scientific cognition establishes the potentialities latent in historical reality and consequently gives a realistic definition of the potential possibilities in men's historical activity.
The less scientific the method of cognising reality, the less clearly are the real possibilities for massive historical action brought out. In the period when social thought was still forced to make do with a vague Utopia, it was unable to determine how precisely the masses were to act. Scientific communism showed the working people the real path of struggle.
Many social scientists in the West have been confused by the following ``argument'' in defence of the neopositivist, empirical approach to the study of social phenomena. Men in the West are taught at school that social theory should never allow any confusion between two types of judgement: judgement about the existence of facts and judgement about their value. Science, they are told, must operate only with judgement of the first type, for evaluation of the facts is a matter of personal convictions, which are subjective, and therefore arbitrary. Evaluations are best left to ``ideology'', because they belong to ethical and political convictions, to visions and Utopias.
The statement that ``so many per cent of the population in society are poor" is a judgement concerning the existence of a fact. But can social thought confine itself to stating the existence of such a social phenomenon? Does it not require the working out of a science-based attitude on man's part to the existence of such a phenomenon? These attitudes will differ in depth depending on the level of the class struggle. Only a high level of social development and the class struggle helps to provide a truly profound and scientific analysis of this phenomenon and to show its origins and trend of development, and the possibility of eliminating it depending on certain conditions. In a naive form these questions were also considered by social thought even in the prescientific period of its development, when it was dominated by various Utopian projects. But even then social thought developed on the basis of existing knowledge, however inadequate, leaving much room for imagination and invention. At the time, history was yet to pose the question of eliminating poverty in the world, for the force that could cope with the task was yet to emerge in society. The embryonic state of social life itself and the inadequacy of knowledge about it determined the level of social thinking at its prescientific stage.
When we say that capitalism must give way to socialism we express the necessity for social development, a historical regularity that has been 18 well established. At the same time, we determine, on the strength of this, our duty, the duty of the working class and of all the forward-looking forces. That is the way the notion of ultimate aim in the struggle is formed and the possibility of the working class taking historical action determined.
The class stand of the person concerned may either hamper or help him to gain a knowledge of social phenomena and their objective connections. That is the most important aspect of the Marxist-Leninist doctrine of the Party approach to social science. However, for that reason the phenomena and their connections do not become subjective, for they exist outside the cognising subject. Indeed, his social stand itself is ultimately a phenomenon determined by objective conditions and not merely a result of his subjective preferences, arbitrary approach or play of the imagination.
To return to the question of moral values, let us add that moral duty and moral inducement to activity can be fully developed only when man comes to comprehend existing reality.
Among modern Marxist theorists who have written on the subject, it was Antonio Gramsci who attached special importance to massive understanding of the need for the historical process. He wrote: ``The scientific base for a morality of historical materialism is to be looked for, in my opinion, in the affirmation that 'society does not pose for itself tasks the conditions for whose resolution do not already exist'. Where these conditions exist the 'solution of the tasks becomes ``duty'', ``will'' becomes free'.'' Morality would then become a ``search for the conditions necessary for the freedom of the will in a certain sense, aimed at a certain end, and the demonstration that these conditions exist".^^6^^ That is, indeed, one of the key tasks of social thinking. Cognition of historical necessity and the urgent tasks and purposes of social activity provides the basis for the moral activity of individuals, and the groups and classes to which these individuals belong. Man comes to comprehend what he must seek, which tasks are dictated by the epoch, which aims the given stage of social development sets before him. The deeper his comprehension, the firmer his convictions and the stronger the material and moral incentives, the more effective his activity. This is provided by social science, the scientific theory of social development. Therein lies the strength of the Marxist-Leninist parties, which formulate their sciencebased policies, the demands and the tendencies of social development, and mobilise the masses for historical activity in the fulfilment of urgent tasks.
The Marxist-Leninist parties' science-based political line is now the highroad for massive activity and development of social thought. Utopianism has been left to the reactionaries, and it is the theorists of _-_-_
~^^6^^ Antonio Gramsci. Selections from the Prison Notebooks, New York, 1973, pp. 409--10
19 imperialism who tend to produce more and more reactionary Utopias. Where utopianism has penetrated the minds of working people chiefly under the influence of petty-bourgeois trends in social thought, it hampers the advance of the masses in the present-day ideological struggle. The invasion of social science by reactionary utopianism kills its probing scientific thought. Science is also ruined by uninspired empiricism which is essentially an attempt to return social thought to stages it had passed long ago, a period in which science was still unable to shape man's convictions concerning his social environment.The following pages deal with some of the basic aspects in the formation of social thought, its development from Utopia to science, and the development of Marxist-Leninist science into a great force in the revolutionary transformation of reality on communist lines.
[20] __NUMERIC_LVL1__ Section One __ALPHA_LVL1__ SOCIAL THOUGHT SEEKSBourgeois sociologists today are inclined to start their account of the origins of social thought in almost any imaginable manner: by relating the myths of man's origin; the early guesswork about the origination of the power of kings, and so on. But they always avoid putting the question of great philosophical importance about how men came to realise that their social state was not something eternal and immutable, inexorably foreordained by nature.
That is the very idea Marx stressed with remarkable profundity and brilliance when analysing the spiritual world of the ancient rural communities. He wrote: ``...they subjugated man to external circumstances instead of elevating man to be the sovereign of circumstances, that they transformed a self-developing social state into never changing natural destiny.''^^1^^
There we find the essence of various mythological and religious conceptions in antiquity relating to men's social life. Strictly speaking, when applied to social phenomena the myth does not explain anything but merely transfers this or that phenomenon to hoary antiquity and ascribes its emergence to the will of the gods. Only a few of the features of any myth providing the framework for its basic anaemic idea bear the marks of the power of human observation, and the features of historical epochs and social relations. The answer any scientific history of social thought must provide is where and when these religious conceptions, fettering man's mind, were broken. Mankind's release from the harmful preconception that its social state is a foreordained natural destiny---that is one of the great achievements of awakened social thought.
Religious legends sanctified and gave religious sanction to existing social relations and consequently recognised the existing order as being immutable.
_-_-_~^^1^^ K. Marx and F. Engels, Selected Works, in three volumes, Vol. 1, Moscow, 1973, pp. 492--93.
23The earliest attempts to explain the origins of inequality, as the Soviet ethnographer L. Y. Sternberg has shown,^^2^^ were connected with religious ideology. In the period in which the primitive communal society disintegrates, men first developed the notion of inequality and of riches as resulting from a special ``benevolence of the gods": good fortune is bestowed by the gods on their favourites. Sternberg called this the ``divine election ideas" complex, which was largely stimulated by the fact that the emergent rich elite performed the functions of the priesthood and had a direct bearing on the cult and the realm of the supernatural. But this question inevitably arises: how and when does this group of ideas begin to disintegrate, how and when do men cease to regard oppression as a fate foreordained by the gods? That is the key question in the history of social thought.
In his Lectures on the History of Philosophy, Hegel correctly pointed to the distinction between philosophy and religion which lay in the fact that truth needs to be cognised, whereas for religion it is already given, although we do not know where it comes from, so that it only remains for man to accept its truths in all humility. Reference to the will of God and to Divine Providence amounts to no more than an unfounded assertion that the principles of social life are primordeal and that their origins cannot be explained. It is impossible to eliminate the contradiction between blind faith and knowledge from the history of human consciousness, just as from the history of social thought.
Let us also recall this idea of Marx's about another obstacle which emergent social thought met on its way and which it subsequently overcame. Marx wrote that in antagonistic class society ``the social power ... appears to these individuals, since their co-operation is not voluntary but has come about naturally, not as their own united power, but as an alien force existing outside them, of the origin and goal of which they are ignorant...".^^3^^
With the emergence of class society the notion of social force assumed the distorted form of notion of power, of domination by the exploiters. Religious legends were told about the origins of this power, deifying the oppressors and investing them with supernatural antecedents. The great achievement of human thought in the process of social development was the destruction of the idea that the social force was a kind of supernatural power standing over and above men and oppressing them.
Examination of the historical facts also allows us to consider the time at which the science of society emerged. Indeed, today, we have detailed _-_-_
~^^2^^ See L. Y. Sternberg, Primitive Religion in the Light of Ethnography, Leningrad, 1936, pp. 140--78. See also the journal Ethnography, 1927, No. 1 (in Russian).
~^^3^^ K. Marx and F. Engels, The German Ideology, Moscow, 1964, p. 46.
24 studies of the early stages in the emergence of the science of nature. It is well known that natural science and materialistic philosophy arose in a single process. Following the initial period in which empirical knowledge about nature was being accumulated came a period in Ancient Greece, China and India, in which the first scientific philosophical theories were propounded, including the atomic theory, which had a great future before it. But how are we to determine the date at which the science of society emerged? This question has been extremely confused by bourgeois theorists who, as I have said, have sought to find the origins of scientific knowledge about society in religious views, in mythology and in mysticism.The prominent 19th-century historian and ethnographer, Heinrich Schurtz, wrote the following about the development of primitive culture: ``The odds with the demands of society at which one's ego frequently finds itself makes one think and, however frequently ossified custom may be taken as something immutable, however frequently the sequence of logical thought may have broken off to be replaced by some myth or fable lulling the strident question of the causes, mankind nevertheless entered upon the path which will ultimately carry it to self-awareness. There is a growing understanding of the difference between the immutable laws of nature and the transient customs and usages of men."^^4^^ There is here one erroneous assumption: like all other social conflicts, the conflict between the individual and society sprang only in the period when class society was taking shape. The primitive communal society had no such conflicts. Engels compared life in primitive communal society and in class slave-holding society and stressed: ``There the mode of production of the means of subsistence, which, year in and year out, remained unchanged, could never give rise to such conflicts, imposed from without, as it were; to antagonism between rich and poor, between exploiters and exploited."^^5^^ With the disintegration of communal relations under which the way of life remained unchanged, man's attitude to his social being tended to change with the development of class differentiation and the class struggle. Life posed before him more and more questions. A number of ancient literary memorials describe the break up of communal relations, the rupture of tribal bonds, the crisis of patriarchal morality and the emergence of an order in which some men plundered others, when violence reigned everywhere, and when some were all-powerful and others without rights. However, these changes were accepted as divine punishment, as divine retribution.
Nor is Schurtz right in saying that the history of social thought began with the contrast between the immutability of nature and the historical _-_-_
~^^4^^ Heinrich Schurtz, Urgeschichte der Kuttur, Leipzig und Wien, 1912, S. 639.
~^^5^^ K. Marx and F. Engels, Selected Works, in three volumes, Vol. 3, Moscow, 1973, p. 278.
25 mutability of men's life. Actually, the process ran a different course. The fact is that both natural and social phenomena ceased to appear to men as being immutable and as being subject only to the arbitrary acts of some supernatural force, some fate or the gods.Science stems from scattered knowledge. But as this is accumulated it is arranged in a system in accordance with the aspects of objective social life and the regularities they express. This gives rise to the individual social disciplines. Generalisation of all the concrete social sciences is contained in historical materialism which means an application of the principles of dialectical materialism to social phenomena.
However, it does not mean that there were no initial attempts to generalise this inadequate social knowledge. Very early on, knowledge ran into conflict with blind faith.
At the early stages of slave-holding society, the social and political orders were declared to be an extension of the order established by nature and the gods. They it was who had appointed the rulers to rule, just as they had created plants, animals and the whole world. They too were to blame that people on the earth were divided into the happy rich and the unhappy poor. That was the overriding idea that the order established by Divine Providence was immutable. Any violation of this order by men was considered to be a sin, which was frequently regarded as being the result of intervention by evil supernatural forces. It is wrong to regard these notions as the starting point for the development of social thought, as the idealists insist. On the contrary, social thought has its beginning in the overthrow of this social theological dogma.
Spontaneous materialism developed in slave-holding society and dealt a blow at these rigid religious notions. In a naive form, it asserted that there was no divine will in the world, either in nature or in society. The world developed in accordance with its own laws. Men had to shed their fear of divine power and the so-called world to come. ``Songs of the Harpist'', a text popular in Ancient Egypt, urged that men should arrange their affairs on earth. Similar ideas were developed in Ancient China, India and then in Greece. The idea was gradually shaped in men's minds about a common regularity which operated in nature, society and all over the world. In Ancient Greece, this was designated as Logos. On that basis, men hazarded all kinds of guesses about the origination of various social phenomena and institutions, and this paved the way for the accumulation of more knowledge about social relations.
Heraclitus appeared to be close to discovering the idea that the struggle of opposites reigned not only in nature but also in society. Some remarkable conjectures about the origins of some social phenomena were hazarded by Democritus. Lucretius, taking his ideas from Epicurus, essayed a history of social development. There is no doubt at all that all of these were the beginnings of the science of society, embryonic ideas evaluating social phenomena. All these thinkers sought 26 to purge ethics from the influence of faith in the supernatural and insisted that the will of the gods had nothing to do with the standards of human behaviour.
However, spontaneous materialism did not consider the relationship between consciousness and being, for it assumed its materialistic principles to be given. But without an answer to this question it was impossible to understand men's conscious activity, and consequently the development of society. Once the question of the relationship between consciousness and being was posed, the thinkers of the ancient world saw the world as being split into the spiritual and the material, into the celestial and the terrestrial. What came to prevail was the idealistic explanation of human activity, the habit of starting from consciousness in order to explain the ``works of the hands'', as the Egyptian priests put it.
However, it would be wrong to assume that knowledge of social relations, phenomena and processes disappeared or that it was no longer being accumulated. The idealistic approach hampered the correct generalisation of this knowledge but could not eliminate it. Life set before man more and more questions as the class struggle developed and life itself gained in complexity.
Social thought is not in any sense rooted in the ``supersensual'', which is the sphere of faith, but in practice, in the social life of men. This does not contradict the fact that initially social thought was unable firmly to rely on science, to give a scientific prospect for social development and largely had to deal in fantasy and Utopia.
Bourgeois philosophers and sociologists have been unable to explain the prescientific and the scientific stages in the development of social thought, preferring to consider two forms, instead of two stages, of social thought, which they metaphysically separate from each other. The first, prescientific form is frequently designated as ``ideology'', in contrast to scientific knowledge, a division which rests on the positivist contrast of philosophical thought and empirical knowledge. From this standpoint, philosophy is not a generalisation of available knowledge, but something extraneous to this knowledge. The actual relationship between social thought and social science is a totally different one.
Before any truly scientific theory of social development evolved, men still strove to comprehend social phenomena, and the less knowledge of social phenomena they had, the more they were guided by their everyday notions, and the more they succumbed to illusion and fantasy.
The history of social thought, that is, the history of men's conscious attitude to social phenomena and their own social condition has its beginning in their struggle against the exploiters, which they initially carried on instinctively and with very little awareness. This struggle inevitably carries within itself doubt about the given social condition 27 having always existed. This inevitably made men think about whether it would last forever. Consequently, the very assumption of the possibility of social change is of tremendous revolutionary importance.
On the one hand, such an assumption was impossible without marked changes in men's social being, changes which would impel men to think along these lines. When the struggle of the exploited against their exploiters is in its early stages, it is spontaneous and involves no more than an embryonic awareness. On the other hand, in that period social science itself was embryonic and was still unable to be of effective assistance in that struggle. The development of social science implies a relatively high level of social development and class struggle, and the emergence of social forces with a stake in scientific knowledge about society so as to establish the prospects and trends of its development.
It is wrong to assume that the growth of scientific knowledge about social phenomena and the development of the class struggle are two unrelated processes. Actually, the growth of the class struggle poses the most important questions in social thinking. At first, social thinkers try to answer these questions merely on the basis of their fragmentary knowledge and observation, using their imagination to fill in the gap.
Historically speaking, the idea of a self-developing social state in contrast to the age-old notions of its foreordainment by nature, fate or the gods did not, of course, arise in the abstract form of ``social state in general''. In antiquity, men's first concern was to decide their attitude to that social state, but recently inaugurated, in virtue of which some were plunged into the bestial life of slaves while others wallowed in riches and luxury. Some insisted that this order had been ordained by the gods, and others claimed it to be the handiwork of nature itself, both being no more than references to a divine will or a fatal predestination by nature. Indeed, if social thought had been satisfied with that kind of answer it would have remained in the cradle for all time. However, social thought was powerfully stimulated by life with its social cataclysms, the transformation of free men into slaves, the ruin and destruction of some men and the triumph of others, who amassed vast wealth. Social life did not develop as a result of some accidental falling away of scales from men's eyes, but as a result of class battles flaring up in society across its history.
__ALPHA_LVL3__ SOCIAL THOUGHT IN ANTIQUITYThe early successes of spontaneous materialist thinking, denying the creation of the world by the gods and the existence of any divine Providence, created an important prerequisite for the advance of social thought. The materialists of Ancient Greece helped to destroy the 28 religious notions of nature and had some brilliant insights about development and change in human life.
The thinkers of antiquity tried to explain social phenomena on the strength of their naive materialist conceptions according to which the social order had not been created by the gods and that social phenomena were not ruled by supernatural forces. Blind faith was being pushed into the background and the field cleared for the activity of social science. But that is as far as the social thinkers of antiquity ever went.
The idea that social change was possible in contrast to the idea of social immobility implied this question: were the relations of lord and master, oppression and slavery in the human community everlasting? That is a key question that the social thinkers of antiquity did not pose, because the real conditions in which such questions are posed were yet to develop. The condition of slavery also provided the foundation for all the social theories developed in antiquity, including Utopian dreams of a better society.
The transition from primitive communal society to slavery was the most powerful social upheaval in the lifetime of several generations in ancient society. The great swing from preclass society to slave-holding society left a deep and peculiar mark on the minds of masses of men and on their legends and traditions.
That is the period which produced the fairy tale of a ``golden age" allegedly lying somewhere in the hoary past. The legend about a happy life having existed on the Earth some time in the past before giving way to the fierce realm of evil and violence is a reflection of the emergence of slave-holding society, where antagonistic classes first arose in history. That was perhaps the first dim notion of social change. The myths of the primitive communal society bear no comparison with these notions, although one must admit that even the myths were a record of realistic observations about men's social relations. But these myths ``explained'' through the medium of faith in supernatural forces the emergence of various social institutions, etc. The new legends were an attempt by men to contrast two major stages in the history of society---the primitive communal system and the slave-holding system---in an effort to comprehend and evaluate the transition from the one stage to the other. Those who had fallen into slavery were nostalgic over the state of men in the tribal system that had gone for ever. When thinking of the future they had visions of nothing but the past.
The legend of the ``golden age" suggested that the happy life of men was either a thing of very distant past or had been lost somewhere in the boundless expanses of the land or the sea, a place some fortunate traveller had once stumbled on by chance. Since then the way to that country had been lost. Such legends were known in antiquity and the Middle Ages.
29With the emergence of the first more or less correct data about the primitive system the ``golden age" legend was discovered to be untenable, for it tended to obscure the fact that slave-holding society brought with it a flourishing of culture as compared with its state in the primitive period. That is a fact the early scientific thinkers of antiquity re-established, but that is a point beyond which they never went.
The ``golden age" legend, as we have it from Ovid, for instance, not only stressed the idea that in that earlier period men had lived without coercion, revenge or retribution but also that they had not had to do arduous labour, because ``the earth itself bore them fruit of everything''. That was clearly an idealisation of the past, a fantastic distortion of the real historical picture. This notion was at once shaken by scientific thought, but there remained the vision of a ``golden age" and the question posed by the legend---whether this age should be sought in the past or in the future---remained unanswered.
The slave-holding states were surrounded by various barbaric tribes. Comparing the life of the two, thinkers of antiquity realised that there were two stages in social development, and one of the most striking achievements in the social thinking of the period was the juxtaposition of barbarism and civilisation (a concept that was taking shape, even if the term had not yet been established). Then came the early theories of the state, of political activity and political struggle. However, in all these slave labour was the inevitable basis of society, of civilisation and of men's political activity.
Thinkers of antiquity did not assume that slavery would disappear and be replaced by another social system. They envisaged no other stages in the development of society. Beyond the narrow horizon of the relations based on slavery it was still impossible to discern mankind's subsequent future or to imagine other kinds of social relations between men. This is well illustrated by Plato's (4277--347 B.C.) discourse about a better society, which never went beyond the framework of slave-holding. In his ideal state, which is ruled by philosophers and warriors, the condition of artisans and farmers is little better than that of slaves. Academician V. P. Volgin is quite right when he says that ``in Plato we find that the members of the communist society do not work, while the working people live outside the communist system".^^6^^ That was an attempt to usurp the idea of the ``golden age" in the interests of the slave-owners, closed castes of aristocrats and military men who stood at the head of Plato's ideal state. It was a vision of a better and more rational life for the slave-owners. Even so Plato's work exerted some influence on the development of the Utopian ideas in the 16th and 17th centuries.
Plato did not even try to produce a historical picture of social _-_-_
~^^6^^ V. P. Volgin, ``Campanella: Communist''. See T. Campanella, City of the Sun, Moscow-Leningrad, 1934, pp. 11--12 (in Russian).
30 development and was concerned only with his logical scheme. His idea of the everlasting ``division of labour" between men was designed merely to establish that in any future society inequality of social status and the social functions performed by men would remain. Indeed, the more one considers Plato's conception, the clearer it becomes that it did not contain even in embryonic form any idea of a self-developing social state. On the contrary, his conception was designed to back up the idea that slavery as a social state had been predestined by nature itself, a state which Plato transferred into the future society in a slightly modified form. Soviet scientists, in their polemics with advocates of the patently bourgeois view of Plato's theory, have long since established that his Utopian views tend to restore the social relations which by the early 6th century B. C. had already worked themselves out and which had been characteristic of early Greek history. Other Greek thinkers likewise proposed a caste structure for the ideal society, being inspired by the social order at the early stages in the development of slave-holding society in the Ancient East. They did not look to the future, but to the past, to a re-establishment of this or that order which had gone down in history. Having failed to decide on the ultimate destiny of exploitation, social thinkers in that period lost their bearings and became superficial, so being condemned in one way or another to provide an apology for the existing state of things.It is true that Aristotle (384--322 B. C.), who discerned a general regularity in the transition of the peoples from family life to urban life and then on to the establishment of big states, inquired into whether the establishment of slavery had not done violence to nature. The question itself was an indication of the awakening of social thought. But having taken this timid step, it began to mark time. Aristotle's answer was unequivocal: some were born to rule and others to be ruled, and this was necessary and useful, because some were destined by birth to submit and others to dominate. It is a curious fact that the US sociologists H. E. Barnes and H. Becker comment on Aristotle's idea as follows: ``There can be no doubt that Aristotle was much nearer the truth than certain democratic writers of later days, particularly those of the eighteenth century and after, who discoursed about the natural biological equality of all men."^^7^^ Indeed, the slave-owners of our day appear to be seeking support among the slave-owners of antiquity.
The most striking insight into the history of society will be found in the writings of Titus Lucretius Carus (99--55 B. C.) one of the great materialists of antiquity. His poem, De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of Things), gives a picture of the change in men's lives from a state of barbarity to the beginnings of culture and men's domination of the forces _-_-_
~^^7^^ H. E. Barnes and H. Becker, Social Thought from Lore to Science, Vol. I. Washington, 1952, p. 189.
31 of nature. Here we find the beginnings of scientific knowledge of the history of society and an insight into the idea of development, of ascent from the lower forms of social life to the higher. The ``golden age" legend gives way to a true picture of the hard and barren life primitive men had actually led. But that was only one aspect of the matter.Lucretius was delighted with mankind's successes in its ascent from the state of barbarity to ancient civilisation, and had none of the doubts which Rousseau subsequently expressed about men having lost their precious equality of the primitive period by entering the epoch of civilisation.
Thinkers in Ancient Greece and Rome looked only to the past and the present in an effort to connect the first two stages in the development of society. The present had been prepared by the long and arduous effort of the past---that was the fruitful idea without which there could have been no notion of social development even in the most primitive form. However, the great minds of antiquity did not consider the future state of mankind. What they did note was that by their time men had travelled a long way, having mastered what then looked like many kinds of skills and knowledge. The mental horizon of the thinkers of antiquity was limited to the past epoch of barbarism, followed by a period dominated by slave-holding relations, carrying with it civilisation, a flourishing of science and art, the rule of law and state power.
Thinkers who could not or would not praise the present as being lasting and immutable ended up by denying any further development of society. In the writings of the materialist LucretiusTwe find hints of an inevitable end of the world, a disaster threatening mankind in some distant future. The Pythagoreans, a school of idealists, developed this expectation of a world disaster into a theory of cycles, each of which started afresh and ended with another cataclysm.
Some thinkers wanted to re-establish the ``golden age" legend, but they could not add anything to it and it remained a fairy-tale dream. It took ages for this legend to give way to Utopias, the first projects for a future society which tackled the question of the essence and ultimate destiny of exploitation.
There was no class in ancient society capable of making a marked advance in social thinking. Whenever social thought begins to look to the future, this means that social groups have emerged in society to which the future belongs. In ancient society, neither the slaves nor their masters had any future to look to, for with the emergence of the new, feudal system, both these classes were doomed. The slaves had visions of a return to the past to regain their lost freedom. The slave-owners could not conceive of a society or civilisation resting otherwise than on slavery.
There arose various theories, like the one about the origin of religion and the state, theories oriented mainly upon the past. Some contained 32 very keen observations about the present state of society and the current social struggle, and these beginnings of social thought were broadly used in the subsequent period. But in the ancient world social thought did not go beyond its first beginnings.
The future was dealt with by the writers of fiction. Virgil, the Roman poet, had visions of the future veiled in religious obscurity: he suggested that the ``golden age" could return with the miraculous arrival of a man elected by the gods. This idea of supernatural deliverance was very popular among the early Christians. The dim visions of a return of the ``golden age'', of equality in distribution and consumption, including a community of wives, urged men to live in the ``sanctity of poverty'', to renounce the sinful world with all its riches and luxuries, and to live as the birds of the air do, relying in all things on the supernatural force, on the redeemer, on divine salvation. While these ideas may have appeared rebellious, they did not in any sense present a danger to the exploitative system. As time went on and men from the upper classes joined the Christian community, these fantastic and rebellious attitudes, expressive of the impotence of the exploited, were suppressed and replaced by a law which referred to the same supernatural force and which ordered slaves to obey their masters.
Social thinking in ancient society shows that the prospects of social development constitute the key question in the theory of society. To inderstand the present, there is need to discern in it its tendencies of development. The present paves the way for the future. An analysis of the present is inevitably bound up with evaluations of the past and the possibility of looking into the future. Such is the logic of the theory of social development. When thinkers in ancient society insisted that slavery was a lasting state and could disappear only with the disappearance of the world itself they were, in effect, testifying to the fact that the idea of a self-developing social state did not exist in the ancient world.
__ALPHA_LVL3__ MEDIEVAL THEORIESIn the Middle Ages, social thought was strongly influenced by official Christian doctrine, which declared that men were absolutely unable to make any changes in society at will. Beginning with St. Augustine (354--430), the Church insisted on a theological conception of social development which boiled down to the idea of a gradual establishment of the ``Kingdom of God'', that is, the establishment and triumph of the power of the Church in all secular matters. Augustine's main idea was that the whole of history was predetermined by God, a supernatural power, that all the defects of social life resulted from the Fall, and that it was a part of Divine Providence to convert men into __PRINTERS_P_33_COMMENT__ 3---594 33 slaves. Perhaps never before was the ancient idea that the social state had been foreordained by divine fate expressed with such repugnant straightforwardness as in the writings of the ``fathers of the Church".
Thomas Aquinas (1225--1274) asserted that human society was based on inequality, to which men had to reconcile themselves. The ruling classes had the duty to deal mercifully with their inferiors, while the latter, for their part, had the duty to exercise patience and humility. Inequality was not in any sense the result of the Fall, and was inevitable because God had willed it so.
For centuries, the Church drove home to the working people that they could expect a happy life only in the world to come, and that in this world their lot was patience and humility, because no power on earth was capable of changing their social state which had been supernaturally foreordained.
Nevertheless it would be wrong to assume that human reason had entirely reconciled itself with this medieval dogma. Men rebelled against it as the oppressed intensified their class struggle. It is true that religious illusions, faith in a supernatural deliverance and hope of miracles were also major ingredients of the visions of a ``millennium of justice" among the medieval rebels. Here is what a 19th-century Russian historian wrote about medieval ideas: ``Just as the individual's spiritual activity does not cease even in sleep, while assuming fantastic forms, so in the dark period of the Middle Ages man's spirit did not for a moment cease to work and, just as dreams reiterate what man sees in his waking hours, so it retains some connection with the ideas of sounder epochs."^^8^^ It was the idea of God's will, of a supernatural force allegedly holding sway everywhere in nature and society that prevented the rebel mind from arriving at a true understanding of the social and political principles on which the landowners' secular power was based. It appeared that the most radical way out was intervention by the supernatural force in human affairs in the form of a chastising ``Hand of God'', which alone was able to establish justice on earth.
It is true that now and again this chastising divine force put in an appearance in the form of peasant bands armed with axes and scythes. However, this was only the very beginning of the break with the idea that the social state was foreordained by some divine power. While the idea of changing the social order did emerge, change itself was still inconceivable without ``divine succour'', because the idea of a social force had yet to be realised, and its real potentialities were still being minimised.
The religious integument covering the hopes and aspirations of masses of people tended to break whenever the tide of peasant and plebeian _-_-_
~^^8^^ M. Stasyulevich, The Philosophy of History in Its Principal Systems, St. Petersburg, 1902, p. 106 (in Russian).
34 movements against the rule of the landowners and the Church reached a high point.However, the more spontaneous the mass revolutionary movement, the less evidence we find in it of any positive programme, of any clearcut notions of the goals of the struggle or the possibilities of social reform. Thus, Fra Dolcino, who led a peasant uprising in Northern Italy in the early fourteenth century, did not consider the abolition of private property in general, but confined himself to the requirement that the leaders should adopt an ``apostolic'' way of life, have no property of their own, and ``set for others an example of the holy life, that is, a life without property as an ideal, a life in poverty, an apostolic life as the perfect life".^^9^^ At the same time, Dolcino urged that all churchmen, clericals and monks should be punished by a ``cruel death" (morte crudelissima). There alone his programme is extremely concrete. Consequently, the whole attack was aimed to eliminate the top section of society.
The positive programme put forward two centuries later by Thomas Miinzer, who led a peasant war in Germany, has much more gist than Dolcino's programme, but his ideal---the establishment of the `` Kingdom of God" on earth---is still very vague and merely includes the demand to destroy oppression, private property and power which holds sway over men. Indeed, the leader of the peasant uprising seems to have a vague notion of a social system without estates or class distinctions and private property, or a government alien to the people. Subsequently, this vague urge and general ideas were to be unfolded in various versions of Utopia in the form of more or less detailed scenes of human life to which the working people aspired.
About these spontaneous movements of the urban poor and the peasantry, Engels said: ``There were theoretical enunciations corresponding with these revolutionary uprisings of a class not yet developed: in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Utopian pictures of ideal social conditions; in the eighteenth, actual communistic theories (Morelly and Mably)."~^^10^^ This is of great importance for the history of social thought. Utopians from the 16th to the 18th centuries should not be presented as daydreamers, head in the clouds and out of touch with reality. Indeed, their visions and extreme utopianism were determined by the level of the class struggle in that period.
That was precisely Lenin's approach in analysing the development of social thought in Russia in the first half of the 19th century. Reactionary theorists who published their writings in the Vekhi (Milestones) collection held the ideas expounded by Belinsky and other enlighteners to be expressive only of the views of the intelligentsia, the upper section of _-_-_
~^^9^^ S. D. Skazkin, ``Dolcino's First Epistle''. In the collection: From the History of Socio-Political Ideas, Moscow, 1955, p. 129 (in Russian).
~^^10^^ F. Engels, Anti-Duhring, Moscow, 1959, p. 27.
35 society. In response, Lenin wrote: ``Perhaps, in the opinion of our wise and educated authors, Belinsky's sentiments in the letter to Gogol did not depend on the feelings of the serf peasants? The history of our publicist literature did not depend on the indignation of the popular masses against the survivals of feudal oppression?"^^11^^ Social thought is fed and given powerful impulses by the attitude of the mass of working people fighting against the exploiters. An inadequate level of development in the class struggle is expressed in the immaturity and utopianism of social thought.In his work, What Is To Be Done? Lenin wrote this about the spontaneous element in the working-class movement: ``Even the primitive revolts expressed the awakening of consciousness to a certain extent. The workers were losing their age-long faith in the permanence of the system which oppressed them and began ... I shall not say to understand, but to sense the necessity for collective resistance, definitely abandoning their slavish submission to the authorities. But this was, nevertheless, more in the nature of outbursts of desperation and vengeance than of struggle."^^12^^
Social thought has its beginnings and powerful impetus for development in the emergent awakening of consciousness in spontaneous popular revolts, an awakening which is expressed in the fact that the working people begin to see that the oppressive order is not immutable. This takes the form of visions about a social system free from such oppressive elements. In the minds of masses of people this vision does not at first acquire any definite contours or elaborate forms, which first appear in the early Utopias. But these too boil down to the announcement of what their ideal society is free of, namely, oppression, money and private property. Social thought had to travel a long way before it produced the systematic answer to the question of what the ideal and rationally structured society should be free from, including the social order which had but recently appeared to be quite solid.
Of course, that does not yet amount to a theory of social development, however embryonic, but it was a suggestion that another social order could exist. The feudal order was being eroded by time, which carried society closer to the inevitable victory of bourgeois relations. Ultimately, this determined the great changes in world outlook which were characteristic of the 16th and the 17th century. The spiritual atmosphere was largely determined by the discovery of Copernicus and the revolutionary advances in natural science, which also heralded a new society with its new requirements. As the ``motionless'' Earth began to rotate round the Sun, the idea that all things terrestrial and celestial were immutable began to lose ground. The solidly entrenched age-old social _-_-_
~^^11^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 16. p. 125.
~^^12^^ Ibid., Vol. 5, pp. 374--75.
36 order in the form of a hierarchy of ranks and powers running from the intricate hierarchy of feudal lords to the angels and archangels in the skies---all this was shaken. The order on earth was likewise subject to change. The feudal, medieval outlook quavered and shook as the chain of rigid dogmas was broken at one of its key links. But changes in the views of the social process did not follow all at once. The idea of social development had to make headway through a thick veil of age-old preconceptions. __ALPHA_LVL3__ ATTEMPTS TO PRODUCE A SOCIAL THEORYPresent-day bourgeois social scientists willingly start the history of modern social thought with Niccolo Machiavelli (1469--1527), and his views open a work published by two prominent US sociologists. Why is that so? Because, H. E. Barnes and H. Becker tell us, ``Machiavelli's analysis was frankly based upon the premise that intriguing self-interest and insatiable desires constitute the mainsprings of all human activity".^^13^^ The explanation is that Machiavelli's epoch marked the start of capitalism's sanguinary advance heralding the rule of hard cash, the advent of the period of primitive accumulation, one of the most terrible periods in human history. That is what suggested the idea of self-interest and insatiable desires as the mainsprings of history. One cannot deny the great importance for social science of the exposure in exploitative society of self-interest as the method behind social action, but if it was to become truly scientific there was need to bring out the existence of classes and their conflicting interests and to understand that exploitation was the basis of that society. What Machiavelli had was no more than individuals in the grip of insatiable lust, leaving in the dark the main point of exploitation, of private property and social inequality. Indeed, it was not Machiavelli but other men who blazed the trail for advanced social thought and a theory of social development, going much farther in bringing out the motives behind the individual's social action.
The emergence of bourgeois relations carried great calamities for the people. Those who saw this in the 16th and 17th centuries reasoned on lines different from those of Machiavelli's, who made insatiable lusts legitimate by deriving them from human nature. These other men came out against the bloody world of private property, a world in which everything was up for sale.
Forward-looking social thinkers in the 16th and 17th centuries were still to discover the possibility of human society existing without exploitation. How was this discovery made and in what terms?
_-_-_~^^13^^ H. E. Barnes and H. Becker, Social Thought from Lore to Science, p. 302.
37The sharp criticism of the system of exploitation and oppression and yearning hopes for a better life and happy, future were expressed in the Utopias which emerged in the epoch in which capitalism was taking shape. These writings first expressed the vision of social justice and the idea that an order under which there were rich and poor was unjust. Some Utopian writings reflect the idea of egalitarian communism, as an expression of the peasant ideal of social relations under which all goods were equally shared out. But Utopian writings also suggested that society could exist without private property, and that its elimination would not result in the destruction of mankind, but in its prosperity. That was, in that period, the main advance in social thought. It is hard to overrate the vast importance of this idea, however abstract and naively expressed. It showed that the notion of society had, even in the form of a vision, gone beyond the framework of private-property relations.
At first, this idea was expressed in the form of a logical assumption. Even in that period, some thinkers felt that bourgeois relations, which were taking over from feudal relations, held no promise of happiness for the people. These thinkers got to thinking about the kind of social system that would truly bring happiness to men. It is safe to say that in the history of social thought the Utopias were the forerunners of the theory of society's progressive development. In one form or another, they contained criticism of the contemporary order, and of private ownership as a principle of social life, and suggested that men could arrange their social life without the bonds of private property, gross self-seeking or money-grubbing.
At the dawn of capitalism, Machiavelli saw self-interest as the motive force behind society's advance, while the authors of the great Utopias asked themselves whether this force could be eliminated, and what would happen to society if it were. But at the time, no one was yet prepared to say that this kind of social order was inevitable, let alone suggest a real way for reaching it. Nevertheless, the very approach to this question sprang from the conditions of social being, in the great period of the breakup of social relations.
Thomas More's (1478--1535) main idea was expressed in these words in the first book of his Utopia: ``Thus I doe fullye persuade me selfe, that no equall and juste distribution of thinges can be made, nor that perfecte wealthe shal ever be among men, onles this propriety be exiled and bannished. But so long as it shal continewe, so long shal remaine among the most and best part of men the hevy, and inevitable burden of poverty and wretchednes."^^14^^
How did More arrive at this radical conclusion? His line of reasoning in the Utopia shows that he was a man of humane instincts and profound _-_-_
~^^14^^ Thomas More, Utopia, L.J.M. Dent & Sons LTD, 1935, p. 44.
38 sensitivity to social matters. According to his contemporaries, More had obtained an excellent knowledge of property relations through his work at the bar. What is more, he had given much thought to the relationship between property, wealth and power. He had a good knowledge of the law, had penetrated deep into the secrets of government, and had the keen critical mind to assess its substance. Starting out from humanistic principles, he compared these with reality. ``Is not this an unjust and an unkynde publyque weale, whyche gyveth great fees and rewardes to gentlemen, as they call them, and to goldsmythes, and to suche other, [elsewhere More adds usurers to this list---G. F.] whiche be either ydle persones, or els onlye flatterers, and devysers of vayne pleasures: And of the contrary parte maketh no gentle provision for poore plowmen, collars, laborers, carters, yronsmythes, and carpenters: without whome no commen wealthe can continewe?"~^^15^^ Considering the period, that was an idea worthy of a genius. He goes on with equally telling force: ``Therfore when I consider and way in my mind all these commen wealthes, which now a dayes any where do florish, so god helpe me, I can perceave nothing but a certein conspiracy of riche men procuringe theire owne commodities under the name and title of the commen wealth....^^16^^ These devises, when the riche men have decreed to be kept and observed under coloure of the comminaltie, that is to saye, also of the pore people, then they be made lawes."^^17^^ Can there be any doubt in anyone's mind that in his Utopia More comes down on the side of the ``pore'' against the ``riche''? Of course, at the time the notion of a ``third estate" was just taking shape in contrast to the idlers and the spongers from among the aristocracy, so that More's ``riche'' are the elite of the absolutist feudal state, the noblemen, the usurers, and all the servants and menials catering for the royal court and its entourage. More had no illusion about the nature of the absolutist feudal state which issued its laws on behalf of both rich and poor but favouring only the rich, and which constituted a peculiar and legalised conspiracy of the rich against the people. Wealth and idleness undermined the very basis of society---the working people, without whom there can be no society. That is a view which may have been accepted by many of those who, like More, came from the midst of the bourgeoisie. But More went much farther, for he did in effect proclaim that society could exist and develop without the idlers and the rich.Another tragic question More posed in his Utopia was whether a man with such radical views could achieve anything with the use of political means, as we would now put it. This is a matter which causes More to have doubt and do some serious thinking. The only way to influence _-_-_
~^^15^^ Ibid., p. 112.
~^^16^^ Ibid.
~^^17^^ Ibid.
39 politics is to be a state councillor, but More is aware that not much can be gained in that way.In the first book of his work, More shows the tragedy of the radical-minded and well-educated man of the 16th century. He himself rose high in government office, but expressed his distaste for the absolutist feudal monarchy by supporting Catholicism, when the King of England himself came into conflict with the Catholic Church. This cost More his life. He failed to find a political line that would accord with his radical views. He supported Catholicism and opposed Luther and the Reformation in Germany. His political credo seems to boil down to the view that while the King should not abuse his power, the people should not be too wilful. He was aware that this was a makeshift, but failed to find any outlet for his radical views in politics.
The thoughts of Tommazo Campanella (1568--1639) ran on somewhat different lines. The outlook of this Dominican monk was highly contradictory, including both visions of a communist society and plans for the establishment of a religious and political unity of the contemporary world which he hoped to achieve mainly with the aid of Catholicism. Together with an element of materialism and a passionate faith in the power of human knowledge we find him believing in astrology, which he held to be the most important science, and still clinging to some elements of scholastic philosophy. In that contradictory age this kind of outlook was fairly widespread, so that the fierce advocate of atheism, Lucilio Vanini, who was burnt at the stake in 1619, believed that the stars had an influence on human destiny. On the strength of his astrological findings, Campanella predicted an early end of the old world and the advent of a ``golden age''. He regarded as remarkable the invention of printing, firearms and the use of the magnet, which he believed to be the means for integrating humanity. He was proud of the fact that there were more developments in his century than had occurred all over the world over the preceding 4,000 years; that more books had been published in his century than over the preceding 5,000 years.^^18^^
He has a strong premonition of great changes but ascribes these to the juxtaposition of planets and stars, ``which promote ... new navigations, new realms and new weapons'', and under whose influence ``there will be a transformation and renewal of the laws and sciences".^^19^^
How did Campanella come to have such ideas? Academician V.P.Volgin says th;il Campanella may have been influenced byDoni, the 16th-century Florentine writer, who produced one of the earliest outlines of Utopia. In a preface to Campanella's City of the Sun, Volgin says that in the late 16th and early 17th centuries there emerged a _-_-_
~^^18^^ See Tommazo Campanella. City of the Sun, MOSCOW, 1954, p. 120 (in Russian).
~^^19^^ Ibid.
40 ``stratum of intellectuals who had no place in the existing social hierarchy, who were naturally sharply opposed to it, and were accordingly highly sensitive to the sufferings of the people".^^20^^Campanella says: ``Those have honour as the noblest and the most deserving who have studied more arts and crafts and who are able to apply these with much knowledge. That is why they ridicule us for calling craftsmen ignoble and regarding as noble those who know no craft, who live in idleness and keep a great many servants for their idleness and debauchery."^^21^^ The City of the Sun is a republic of working people, and has no idlers or spongers. Campanella's main idea is that society can be organised on a scientific basis with scientists at its head, so that even children would be able to learn much merely by looking at the drawings of stars, plants and animals on the walls in the city. Let us note, however, that Campanella's scientific basis also includes astrology.
As a youth, Campanella took part in a revolutionary plot in Calabria, in the south of Italy. The plot was discovered, and Campanella spent almost 25 years in prison. The plotters had ties with the people and had hoped to rouse the peasants to revolt. At that time, much was being said about the early Christians, and of the apostolic life without wealth or public honours. These ideas were interpreted in the spirit of peasant egalitarianism and equal sharing. These ideas are echoed in Campanella's work, and he refers to Christian writers and explains his demand for a community of wives by the early Christian tradition. He says that in the society in which he lives ``property originates from and is maintained by the fact that each has his own individual home and his own wife and children'',^^22^^ whence the efforts to amass riches and to leave them to one's children, etc. Campanella's writing was also influenced by Plato's ideas, especially his presentation of marital relations.
In many respects, Campanella's work falls short of the level of elaboration and thought that we find in More's Utopia, but it was still an advance on the latter. More was a radical-minded humanist, a great thinker who was incapable of applying his views to political reality. Campanella was the first exponent of the ideals of Utopian communism, a man of passionate convictions and seeking to convince others of their truth. It is true that Campanella did not find any real ways to implement his ideals either. No wonder he had recourse to astrology. Like More, he was a Catholic and hostile to Protestantism. But in his criticism of Protestantism he levelled his attacks on the dogma of predestination and the denial of free will. Of course, he himself was not altogether clear on this question, for he was influenced by the will of God and by astrology. _-_-_
~^^20^^ Tommazo Campanella, City of the Sun, Moscow-Leningrad, 1934, p. 15 (in Russian).
~^^21^^ Tommazo Campanella, City of the Sun, Moscow, 1954, p. 50.
~^^22^^ Ibid., p. 45.
41 But Campanella, an impassioned fighter, who had withstood torture, wrote the following towards the close of his book about the views of the citizens of the City of the Sun: ``Man is free, and it is said that if in the course of fierce torture lasting for 40 hours to which a respected philosopher was subjected by his enemies [meaning Campanella himself---G. F.] they failed to get him during the interrogation to utter a single word in admission of what they wanted him to admit, because in his heart of hearts he had decided to say nothing, it follows that the stars, which exert their influence softly and from afar, cannot make us act against our determination either."^^23^^ The voice of Campanella was that of a fighter, which comes to us for the first time in the history of Utopian communism through the then conventional roar of the waves of mysticism, astrology and Catholic scholasticism.The idea that had made More and Campanella write their works was that men will not be happy so long as private property is there, so long as the public wealth falls into the hands of the few, while masses of men and women are doomed to poverty.
More's Utopia and Campanella's City of the Sun are the first two well-considered schemes for a society without private property and exploitation, and that is why they have gone down in history. Even the abstract assumption that society could exist without private property naturally impelled men to consider ways of social development, especially in view of the fact that both writers constantly drew analogies between the present and the social order to come.
__ALPHA_LVL3__ THE IDEAL OF PROGRESSAt the great historical breaking-point between feudalism and capitalism, the vision of a fair social system continued to be no more than a vision. The very notion of regularity in mankind's historical development was just emerging, supplanting the theological notions of predestination.
By the 17th century vast knowledge of social history had been gained, and there were many facts not only about antiquity, but also about the tribes living in primitive society. Earlier on, at the beginning of the 16th century, there appeared some fundamental reports about the customs and usages of various tribes and peoples,^^24^^ containing fairly detailed descriptions of primitive society. In their works, the English materialists of the 17th century used such descriptions of the way of life and mores _-_-_
~^^23^^ Tommazo Campanella, City of the Sun, Moscow, 1954,p. 45.
~^^24^^ P. Saintyves, ``Les origines de la methode comparative et la naissance du folklore. Des supersitions aux survivances'', Revue de I'histoire des religions, t. CV, No 1, Paris, 1932.
42 of tribes inhabiting America and had a knowledge of tribal and patriarchal communities. Thus, Locke refers to the life of the peoples in Brazil, Peru and Africa. In the 17th and 18th centuries many books were published about the ``innocent savage'', and the happy life of men who as yet had no knowledge of government or wealth. The point was whether man was good by nature, or whether he was in need of the harsh bridle of power and man's domination of man.^^25^^ For its criticism of the exploitative system, mankind was already in possession of the historical experience of the primitive commune and the peasant commune, which had survived until the Middle Ages. This experience suggested the image of a society based on the peasant egalitarianism and equal sharing which the leaders of peasant uprisings had looked to.Maxim Kovalevsky, the 19th-century Russian sociologist, was quite right when he said the following about the social order reflected in the Utopias of More and Campanella: ``This order was apparently quite similar to the family communes which at one time were known not only among the Southern Slavs as zadrugas or common kupas, but also among the West European people under various names."^^26^^ Kovalevsky also points out that the Utopians had a preference for the ``city-republic or a federation of city-republics'',^^27^^ notions which must have arisen from a knowledge of ancient history. Neither More nor Campanella could have been inspired in their visions of better societies by the absolutist feudal state which had taken shape by that time. These forward-looking thinkers saw no way of changing these feudal states, and so transferred their visions of a new system to distant lands lost in the ocean.
By contrast, the advocates of the rising bourgeoisie praised private property and extolled the state, an instrument in the hands of the ruling class. Their theory of society was perhaps most clearly formulated by Thomas Hobbes: the state, a peace-making power which saves men from the condition of war of everyone against everyone, from lack of government and total chaos, and leads mankind out of a semisavage state. The ideologists of the bourgeoisie campaigned for unlimited domination by the upper classes, having abandoned the medieval theories of the ``divine'' origin of the state, and having divested all political institutions of the aura of sanctity. That was of course a step forward from the theories of ``divine'' predestination in the political organisation of society and the historical process as a whole.
Relying on the knowledge already gained by then, the rising _-_-_
~^^25^^ See R. Y. Vipper, Social Doctrines and Historical Theories in the 18th-19th centuries, Moscow, 1908, pp. 19--30 (in Russian).
~^^26^^ M. Kovalevsky, From Direct Popular Rule to Representative Rule and from the Patriarchal Monarchy to Parliamentarism, Vol. I, Moscow, 1906, p. 500 (in Russian).
~^^27^^ Ibid., p. 483.
43 bourgeoisie proclaimed the idea of a ``natural'' advance of mankind, which was not subject to god's will, but bourgeois society was the ultimate goal of that movement. The works of Jean Bodin, Thomas Hobbes and many other bourgeois writers were keynoted with the idea that the pillars of the exploitative society and the state ^were unshatterable. More and Campanella refused to accept this idea', and abandoned the present for a vision of Utopia contrasted to reality.In the early 18th century, the idea of law-governed social development occurred here and there in the writings of the Neapolitan philosopher Giovanni Battista Vico, who refused either to sing the praises to the new age of the bourgeoisie or to entertain any visions of a happier society. Indeed, his theory of social development had no future. Vico's world history goes through three main stages: the divine period, the heroic period, and the human period. The initial period is described in mythology, a chronicle of mankind's early advances in culture; the second period is that of Homer's epic poems and the rule of the aristocracy; the third opens when the people become stronger and the domination of those of ``noble'' birth comes to an end. However, the ``human age" is once again followed by decline, and the whole cycle is repeated.
Bourgeois historians of social thought have written many absurdities about this ``mysterious'' thinker, but have studiously obscured the main point that helps to explain Vico's attitude. What were the historical conditions for the emergence of Vico's ideas? Italy, Vico's native land, was then in a state of decline, which is why he did not become a troubadour of the rising bourgeoisie and of capitalist civilisation. In history, this Italian thinker saw not only progress, but also decline.
What were the notions of history and its periods that Vico had to deal with? The humanist writers were using the term ``Middle Ages" to denote the interval between the ancient world and the epoch of the Renaissance, to which they themselves belonged. In the 16th and 17th centuries, this division of history was being ever more widely accepted with the Middle Ages regarded as a period of regress, while the Renaissance opened a ``golden age''. Voltaire subsequently said that the Middle Ages had to be studied for noother purpose than to be despised. Among the works which appeared in the late 17th century some were entitled Ancient History, History of the Middle Ages from the Period of Constantine the Great to the Sack of Constantinople by the Turks, and Modern History.^^28^^ In the latter the Renaissance was at first given pride of place, and attention was centered on Italy, with the whole of this period regarded as an age of its glory. But the thinking Italian was coming to realise that by the 18th _-_-_
~^^28^^ See V. N. Lazarev, ``The Problem of the Renaissance as Described by Renaissance Writers and `Enlighteners'\thinspace''. In the collection: From the History of Socio-Political Ideas. Moscow, 1955 p. 137 (in Russian).
44 century that period, for Italy at any rate, had come to a close and that a new dark period had begun. This question arose: was this only the individual lot of Italy or was the ``human age'', which had opened in Italy in a flood of light, entirely to be lost in the twilight?Vico was faced with two fatal enigmas in social development. How did it happen that mankind, having advanced from barbarism to Greco-Roman civilisation, had then come to lose itself in the barbaric Middle Ages? Italy, which in the age of the Renaissance was the cynosure of all the progressive minds, and which had proudly been the first to enter the ``human age'', was it too moving into decline? In other words, why was the civilisation of the 17th-18th centuries, that is, bourgeois society, emerging with the stamp of doom, of acute contradictions and patent imperfection?
Vico was sure that the ``human age" was in no sense a period of lasting prosperity: morals and manners were deteriorating, while self-seeking and the lust for power were spreading. Beyond the horizon of this age once again lurked barbarism, which had once advanced to replace Roman civilisation. With evidence of barbarism in the new ``human age'', Vico reached the conclusion that the seeds of decline and destruction were also latent in that period of history. This was a new idea voiced by a lone individual in the midst of general jubilation over the entry of society into the ``human age''. But Vico saw no way leading to the future; history had to reverse its advance. Consequently, the visions of More and Campanella were not to be realised.
However, the Enlighteners of the 18th century, who reflected the views of the rising bourgeoisie, did not believe it possible for history to reverse its march and to give way to another epoch of decline, and accordingly insisted on the idea of mankind's boundless progressive advance. This social development, they asserted, was not a divine but a natural process. In the 17th century, Spinoza already insisted that man was a part of nature, that reason impelled man to pool his efforts with other men and that the banding of men into society was a natural process, while the state expressed the power of the men it brought together.
Montesquieu's L 'Esprit des Lois (The Spirit of the Laws) appeared in 1748 and gave even greater depth to the idea of natural causes underlying the existence and change in state and society. In explaining the development of human society, Montesquieu laid emphasis on geographical conditions, the nature of the soil and the climate, but he was still far from conceiving the idea of social development, for his thoughts were concentrated on political institutions, state power in the first place.
The idea of mankind's boundless development was propounded in his own way by Turgot. He was not entirely free of Machiavelli's influence and in his Discourse on Universal History (1751) said that ``through the alternation of agitation and calm, of good and evil, the total mass of the 45 human race keeps marching ceaselessly towards its perfection".^^29^^ Another French Enlightener, Condorcet, spoke of progress in virtue of which man ``has been able to enrich his mind with new truths, to cultivate his intelligence, to develop his faculties, to learn them better to employ them both for his own wellbeing and for the common good".^^30^^
Nor was the idea of boundless social progress alien to the men of the German Enlightenment, among them Herder, a thinker of the second half of the 18th century, who first clearly expressed the idea that social development was a process rooted in nature. The men of the German Enlightenment believed that if history did have an epoch of decline---the Middle Ages---it had ultimately nevertheless served to educate mankind, for the substance of world history was man's education and the unfolding of his spiritual potentialities. However, social progress was a question that remained obscure.
The stumbling block for the emergent theory of social development was idealism. Notions of the historical process were made rigid by the too straightforward and metaphysical approach. All the Enlighteners were agreed that progress manifested itself in the advances of science, the spread of knowledge and the decline of superstition and prejudice, which gave way to reason overcoming darkness. That is the main idea of the theory of social development propounded by the French Enlighteners. Generations of thinkers in the 17th and 18th centuries showed the vast importance for mankind's development of science and knowledge which helped it to conquer nature. They also pointed to the relation between mankind's moral and intellectual progress but reduced the whole idea to the view that the spread of knowledge ultimately also determined the changes in the sphere of ethics.
Apart from spiritual improvement, progress, they held, included the development of political institutions, notably the state, which were stripped of the medieval aura of supernatural, divine origin, being now regarded as the handiwork of man. This put on the order of the day the question of society's political development, but the thinkers of the rising bourgeoisie believed that the progress of society's political organisation was ultimately connected with the spread of knowledge, the moderation of morals and manners, and the development of the intellect.
The social organisation of society was a concept the 18th-century Enlighteners identified with its political organisation, with the state. The early notions of the ``civil society"---as the social structure was being increasingly designated---were just being formulated, but there were no clear-cut ideas on this point and the term ``civil society" itself remained very vague. The basic question of social theory---the origins of man's exploitation of man and his lot in the development of society---had not _-_-_
~^^29^^ H. E. Barnes and H. Becker, Social Thought from Lore to Science, Vol. I, p. 413
~^^30^^ Ibid., p. 474.
46 been posed, leaving a great number of unsolved problems which failed to fit into the scheme of straightforward progress.That is when Jean-Jacques Rousseau, one of the great Enlighteners of the 18th century, sounded his warning. His first dissertation, presented at the Academy of Dijon, sharply criticised culture and civilisation, which he believed, were in no sense an unmixed blessing. Wealth was a great evil, while science and art sprang from wealth and luxury. Rousseau's reasoning once again echoed the legend of a ``golden age" lying somewhere in the past, of the ``happy savage'', both echoing idealised epochs of the distant past.
Rousseau's writings show that there was no plain sailing for the bourgeois theory of straightforward progress. Indeed, if progress did exist why did it carry with it domination by the strong and suppression of the weak?
Was society capable of escaping from the tight grip of social injustice?
Rousseau did not issue a call for a return to the ``golden age''. He wrote:\thinspace``What then are we to do? Are we to destroy society? To annihilate the thine and the mine, and to return to a life in the forest alongside the bears?"^^31^^ Rousseau had no positive answer to that question. He believed that man had to advance and not retreat if he was to solve the difficult problem posed by history. But which way was he to advance? His only answer, as he peered into the future, was improvement of the political structure of bourgeois society and the establishment of a democratic bourgeois regime.
It is true that now and again Rousseau spoke of a state and a society which were ``better organised''. In his Social Contract he wrote: ``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."^^32^^ Latter-day thinkers concerned with problems in social development, its tendencies and prospects were influenced by such just and profound ideas. But neither Rousseau nor those who came after him knew what had to be done to produce an abundance of ``public welfare" for each individual to draw on and to lay aside his ``private concerns''. More and Campanella had already realised that that could not be done without the establishment of public property. But they did not know either how the historical process was to lead to such a state, or whether it would do so at all. That is a question which they, too, were in effect unable to answer. Rousseau held that to bring _-_-_
~^^31^^ Collection complete des oeuvres de J. J. Rousseau, Geneve, 1782, tome premier, p. 209, Note 9.
~^^32^^ J. J. Rousseau. Le Control social, Paris, Livre III, Ch. XV. p. 305.
47 about the welfare of men one need merely avoid the extremes of wealth and poverty, for which purpose private property had to be equally distributed. That was the vain ideal of the petty bourgeoisie. We find, therefore, that neither Rousseau nor his followers considered the all-important question, that of exploitation, private property and what to do with it.Rousseau's followers saw a way out in spreading the ideas of abstract, nominal bourgeois equality and freedom. They believed that changing political institutions would do the trick. Many leaders of the French revolution of 1789 were inspired by these ideas, and the ideologists of the bourgeoisie sang paeans of praise in many voices to its ``millennium'', calling it an era of freedom, equality and even brotherhood. They declared that the new system held in store constant happiness for the human race, exhausted and languishing in the fetters of feudalism and the Middle Ages. The brotherhood of men would be established once the proud and impregnable castles of the feudals and the bishops were destroyed, their walls razed to the ground, and their moats filled up. All one had to do to establish equality among men was to abolish the monstrous privileges of the feudal lords, for apart from the Lords Spiritual and the Lords Temporal everyone else belonged to the ``third estate''. The bourgeoisie, which had not yet had much opportunity to show its true colours, was not expected to do much harm to those who toiled, and so was not considered apart from the general notion of the ``people''. Because the question of man's exploitation of man had not been sharply formulated, the notions of social development and its prospects were also hazy and vague.
The bourgeois slogans of freedom in effect meant freedom only for private enterprise, and the abolition of rights which sprang from feudal landholdings, while the slogans of equality amounted to no more than a proclamation of formal rights, which workers and toiling peasants had no actual possibility of enjoying.
The 18th century was one of the most important periods in the history of social thought. The bourgeoisie was preparing to storm the pillars of the feudal system with masses of people under the banner of progress, claiming that the new social system to be established in place of feudalism would meet the requirements of reason and historical justice. That is an important idea because it implied the possibility, the necessity of transforming the social order, and had the future on its side. It marked the first important advance in the emergent theory of social development, which is inseparable from the historical, revolutionary activity of the masses. From then on, the history of social thought consisted in the blasting of illusions, in the course of the class struggle, about the capability of capitalism to establish freedom, equality and brotherhood, thereby opening the way to the real triumph of progress and social justice.
48 __NUMERIC_LVL2__ Chapter Two __ALPHA_LVL2__ HARBINGERS OF THE GREAT FUTURE __ALPHA_LVL3__ [introduction.]However, even in the 18th century, the boldest minds in the society emerging from the entrails of feudalism strove to peer into the future, beyond the period which was becoming historical reality. While discussing freedom, equality and brotherhood and the possibility of changing the social order, these thinkers once again considered the possibility of eliminating man's exploitation of man and class-based inequality. They had visions of a different social system which was to do away with the age-old division of men into rich and poor, into the haves and the have-nots. In the period when the bourgeois revolutions in Britain and France were being prepared, and when the peasantry and the plebeian elements of the towns were set in motion, giving scope and strength to these revolutions, the best minds of the period were necessarily influenced by the people's moods and aspirations. That was of tremendous importance for the theory of social development and the quest for ways of historical progress. These thinkers appeared to say: if the new society being discussed on every hand is bound to appear, if it is to meet the requirements of human nature, there is need to go beyond the proposals of many advocates of a new society.
__ALPHA_LVL3__ EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY UTOPIAN COMMUNISTSOne of the boldest minds of the 18th century was the French writer Morelly, who in his Utopia made use of a new form of ``ready-made draft laws divided into articles".^^1^^ This was a peculiar feature reflecting the historical period which lies between Morelly's Utopia and those of More and Campanella. It was a time of great social and political change, and thinkers began to clothe their visions in the form of legislative acts ensuring the transformation of society.
Academician Volgin is quite right when he says that Morelly first formulated one of the basic principles of socialism: each must work according to his abilities, for the common weal. Morelly also inclined to the idea that distribution had to be in accordance with requirements. Volgin also observes that this idea also appears between the lines in the Utopias of More and Campanella. Thus, humanism, which started out by demanding the release of the individual from the fetters of feudalism, inevitably advanced to a new demand: the individual must have the _-_-_
~^^1^^ V. P. Volgin, ``Morelly's Communist Theory''. See Morelly's book, The Code of Nature, or the True Spirit of Its Laws, Moscow-Leningrad, 1956, p. 36 (in Russian).
__PRINTERS_P_49_COMMENT__ 4---594 49 opportunity to develop his endowments, to use them for the common weal and to satisfy his requirements. Unless there is room for the expression of man's capabilities, unless his requirements are satisfied, there can be no question of individual development. That was a logically necessary stage in the development of humanism.Here, social thought is on the threshold of formulating one of the key principles of communism, the fundamental demand for social justice. But the question that remained unanswered was: when and how the new system was to be established, with the law that each was to work according to his abilities and to receive according to his needs?
The discussions of communist society still remained in the realm of speculative abstractions, some holding that communism was logically impracticable because it contradicted human nature, while others said that it was possible because it accorded with the demands of social justice and human nature. By contrast, Morelly argued that it was private property that had spoiled and distorted human nature. Having gone through the peculiar ordeal of the Fall---the introduction of private property---men would come to realise their mistakes and were bound to return to the order of the ``golden age''.
While these debates may have been speculative they were a necessary stage in paving the way for a new view of the historical process and the key problems of mankind's social development. The vision of social justice and a society without exploitation also flared brightly in the minds of masses of men, as it did, for instance, during the 17th-century Digger movement for common landownership. The working people hoped that the downfall of the absolute monarchies would usher in social emancipation, but this was no more than an abstract possibility because the real conditions for it were yet to be created. However, it marked an important advance in mankind's social thinking: the idea of revolution, of the opportunities open to revolutionary power, and the idea of social justice were moving closer together.
Two of the most radical trends in the English revolution were the Levellers, who stood for political equality, and the Diggers, who wanted the lands to be owned in common, with the people holding the land as social property. This movement first emerged in the early 17th century, when the peasants destroyed marks of property like hedges and ditches, in an effort to turn the land into common property. In 1607, they issued a proclamation which said: ``Encroaching tyrants ... grind our flesh upon the whetstone of poverty so that they may dwell by themselves in the midst of their herds of fat wethers. They have depopulated and overthrown whole towns and made thereof sheep pastures nothing profitable to our commonwealth."^^2^^ The views of the Diggers were set out _-_-_
~^^2^^ W.H.R. Curlier, The Enclosure and Redistribution of Our Land. Oxford, 1920, p. 132.
50 as a more or less coherent system later, in the course of the revolution.In his Law of Freedom (1652), Gerrard Winstanley, depicted a society in which ``all the labours of husbandmen and tradesmen within the land, or by navigation to or from other lands, shall be all upon the common stock".^^3^^ From the common stock each was to have ``according to his need''. He wrote: ``And as everyone works to advance the common stock, so everyone shall have a free use of any commodity in the storehouse for his pleasure and comfortable livelihood, without buying and selling, or restraint from any."^^4^^ Social property is to prevail in the republic. Let us note that Winstanley, like Morelly, but a century earlier, presents his Utopia as a project to be carried out by an authority set up by the revolution.^^5^^ Winstanley pins his hopes for a republic on measures to be taken by the Cromwell Government, whereas in Morelly's Utopia it was not at all clear who was to put through the new laws. But both hoped to help carry society from the feudal order under an absolute monarchy to a communistic order ushered in by means of legislative enactments. Naturally, this kind of leap remained in the realm of the imagination. Winstanley hoped that the collapse of the absolutist feudal order in England could pave the way for fundamental social change, an idea that also gained ground in France as it approached the period of decisive battles for the overthrow of the absolutist feudal order. These early hopes for a fundamental transformation of the social system flickered and died.
The important thing about Winstanley's Utopia is that it was directly connected with massive revolutionary struggle. In the 18th century, social thinking also entered a new stage in France, where the connection between Utopian communist ideas and massive revolutionary struggle for the overthrow of the absolutist feudal system was ever more pronounced. Jean Meslier, a rustic clergyman, witnessing the ruthless exploitation of the French peasants and their sufferings, set out in his Testament his vision of a communist new system without oppressors or oppressed, insisting that revolutionary struggle was the only way to deal with the private property system of oppression and injustice under which a handful of rich men ruled the working people.
Professor B. F. Porshnev says in his work about Meslier's views that ``all the popular disturbances, riots and uprisings, however immense the variety of the causes and circumstances in which they occurred, centered on questions of property and over the matter of property''. In _-_-_
~^^3^^ Gerrard Winstanley, Selections. Law of Freedom, London, MCMXLIV, p. 179.
~^^4^^ Ibid., p. 179.
~^^5^^ See M. A. Barg, ``Winstanley's Social Utopia''. In the collection: A History of Social Doctrines, Moscow, 1962, pp. 58--88 (in Russian).
51 all these riots ``it is hard to imagine that any of those who took part in sacking the manor-houses or castles should have regarded themselves as robbers and should not have sought to justify their actions to themselves and to their kith and kin, in the form of notions, however vague, of the injustice and illegitimacy of the wealth, itself plundered from the people, etc."^^6^^ These vague feelings and fragmentary ideas were brought together into a system and elaborated by Meslier. Porshnev stresses that while the popular aspirations may have been spontaneous and negative, they hinted at the idea of a victory for the popular uprising, overthrow of the existing authority and establishment of the people's power, an idea expressed and developed by Meslier. The peasant uprisings were a ``breach of the most solemn ban established by church and faith, the ban on rebellion''. These anti-clerical and anti-religious attitudes were elaborated by Meslier on a materialistic basis, and he himself ended up with an atheistic outlook.A further important advance in social thought and action was made in the period of the 18th-century bourgeois revolution in France. The conclusion that it would take a revolution to establish a communist society and the rule of justice was considerably enriched and developed. There appeared the idea of a revolutionary dictatorship. The Diggers pinned their hopes for social justice on Cromwell's dictatorship. Meanwhile, the French revolutionaries had already abandoned such illusions. The followers of Gracchus Babeuf, who expressed the aspirations of the preproletariat, the poor of Paris, the plebeian elements of the towns, hoped to establish a revolutionary dictatorship to reorganise society on communist lines.
The Manifeste des egaux, written by the poet and philosopher Pierre-Sylvain Marechal on behalf of a group of ``Equals'', said: ``The French revolution is only the front rider of a grander and more majestic revolution that will be the last one.... Equality has been nothing but the fine and sterile figment of the law'', and the task now was to secure actual equality, the Babouvists insisted. This idea of a coming revolution was vastly important. Indeed, the ``Enrag\'es'' were already aware that the 1789 revolution had produced a strata of ``nouveaux riches" and had failed to bring about social justice. One member of this group said that a bourgeois and commercial aristocracy had been installed in place of the nobility and the clerical aristocracy.^^7^^ Thus, the ``Enrages'' had already shaken the hope that the elimination of the clerical and aristocratic privileges would usher in the rule of the ``people'' _-_-_
~^^6^^ B. F. Porshnev, ``The Popular Sources of Jean Meslier's Outlook''. In the collection: From the History of Socio-Political Ideas, pp. 221--22 (in Russian).
~^^7^^ See M. Zakher, ``Concerning the Importance of the Views of the `Enrages' in the Prehistory of Socialist Ideas''. In the collection: A History of Socialist Doctrines, p. 136 (in Russian).
52 and establish equality. But they did not draw the radical conclusions of the Babouvists.The primary demand put forward by the group of ``Equals'' said: ``No more individual property in land, the land does not belong to anyone''. They declared that men could be ``content with the same portion and the same quality of food".^^8^^ The Babouvists' main idea was that the revolution was not yet over, that there was need to prepare a fresh revolution to take power; actual equality was still to be established, all members of society were to be made to work, there were to be neither rich nor poor, and no one was to appropriate either landed or industrial property.
``The projects of the Babouvists, the first revolutionary group to proclaim the establishment of communism as the aim of revolution, were emphatically centralist."^^9^^ Their programme contained the following planks: 1. All the existing wealth was to be taken over by the Republic. 2. All able-bodied citizens were to be made to work, each in accordance with his abilities and habits.^^10^^ For a long time, projects for social reconstruction were characterised by the fact that ``a small economically independent community" was the economic unit and administrator of common property".^^11^^ = __NOTE__ Two close double-quotes but only one open double-quote for the above quotation. Let us recall the same idea in the context of the Utopias proposed by Morelly and Campanella. This outdated notion was discarded by the Babouvists, who suggested social property on the scale of the republic.
Thus, the vision of another and grander revolution which was to establish social justice throughout the world emerged in the course of the 18th-century bourgeois revolution in France. A revolutionary dictatorship was to be established as a result of the revolution, but the ``Equals'' believed that this great revolution could be started instantly by a group of conspirators. They had only the vaguest notions about which classes were to carry out the revolution and on what class basis the new revolutionary authority was to be established.
Still, the Babouvists played a great part in the history of social thought. In his synopsis of The Holy Family, by Marx and Engels, Lenin made this entry: ``The French Revolution gave rise to the ideas of communism (Babeuf), which, consistently developed, contained the idea of a new Weltzustand [world order---Ed.]."^^12^^
In summing up some important ideas of social development advanced in the 18th century, let us note, apart from the theory of progress, the following. At the dawn of history there was a social system without _-_-_
~^^8^^ Philippe Buonarroti, Gracchus Rabeuf et la conjuration des egoiix, Paris, 1869, pp. 69--70
~^^9^^ V. P. Volgin.\thinspace``The Legacy of Utopian Socialism''.\thinspaceIn the collection:''A History of Socialist `Doctrines,'' p. 10.
~^^10^^ Ibid., p. 17.
~^^11^^ Ibid., p. 9.
~^^12^^ V. L. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 38, p. 40.
53 private property. It was a system in which social property prevailed and it accorded with the dictates of nature. The division of property was a major evil in the history of mankind. Equality alone accorded with human nature and created the conditions for normal individual development; inequality had an ugly effect on men and destroyed them. Private property was the root of all evil. This important proposition in the theory of social development had been established, but there remained the paradox, formulated by Rousseau, that the centuries under private property had produced the benefits of civilisation, art, science and culture. Would not the abolition of private property stem this advance of culture and civilisation? The Utopian communists believed that the new system could be established on the basis of ``saintly poverty''. The question of developing and multiplying social wealth, which was to flow in great abundance, was not yet being considered. The right answer was to be obtained only through a study of economic development and production. Consequently, in the 18th century, the fundamental problems of social development were not solved and even appeared to be insoluble.The new age that followed upon the French bourgeois revolution inherited the vision of a social system which was to practise the principle of ``each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs''. The French Abbe de Mably believed that there was, in effect, no straight way to that kind of social system, so that there was need to put through partial reforms so as to curb the inordinate greed of the private-property owners. The men who took part in the ``conspiracy of equals" insisted that the system could be introduced right away through revolution and a revolutionary dictatorship. It was up to the thinkers of the 19th century to sort out the question and express their views on mankind's future.
Accordingly, Mably entitled one of his main works as follows: Doubts Set Out for Philosophers and Economists Concerning the Natural and Basic Order of Political Societies (1786), in which he considered the question of how it was possible to advance from the contemporary political order to an order based on social property and egalitarian communist distribution, an order that, he was sure, accorded with human nature and that was the origin of the history of society. Mankind had blundered by sharing out the land and introducing private property.
Mably believed the oppressed had the right to rise up in ``defence of mankind's rights'', the right to stage a revolution. He said: ``Will anyone fail to see that our societies are divided into different classes of men, which, because of the existence of landed property, of their avarice and of their vanity have interests which are, I do not say different, but contrary to each other?" With such contradictory interests of the propertied and the propertyless, ``how are you to go about making those who have nothing, that is, the great majority of citizens, believe that they evidently live in an order in which they are able to find the greatest 54 possible amount of enjoyments and happiness?"~^^13^^ This idea of the ``greatest possible amount of enjoyments and happiness" as the communist ideal sets Mably apart from the other Utopian communists who had visions of a system equally satisfying the minimum requirements of all.
Mably also sought to discover how the ``golden age" was to be achieved, believing that the centuries under private property had so corrupted men that it was impossible right away to abide by the laws of nature and directly to introduce the communist system.
In order to foster men's needs, to strike at the passions generated by private property, there was need to regulate the law of inheritance, to put through a land reform limiting the right to own land, and to establish a democratic republic. Here Mably came close to an idea expressed by Rousseau, but went beyond it when he said that the democratic republic implementing partial reforms was to be an intermediate element between the period of unbridled private-property domination and the communist Utopia. In his Utopia he sought to meet the objections of those who, like the Physiocrats, insisted that private property provided the only powerful incentive for men to work. Mably suggested that those to be offered incentives for emulation were ``the farmers whose fields were the most fertile, the shepherds whose herds were healthiest and most prolific; the hunters who were most adroit and best habituated to withstand the fatigues and inclement changes of the seasons; the most industrious weavers; the women busiest at their household chores; the fathers of families most dedicated to the instruction of human duties in the family, and the children with the greatest application for lessons and the most willing to imitate the virtues of their elders".^^14^^
Mably strongly criticised the idea of men's ``natural inequality" allegedly resulting from their different capabilities and the urge for the accumulation of wealth as the only incentive to labour.
However, Mably did not yet give thought to the problem of the members of the new society being paid according to the quantity and quality of their work, and took the egalitarian-communist approach. Still the idea of society's rewarding outstanding effort for the common weal was a harbinger of the Utopian socialist idea in the nineteenth century of men working to the best of their abilities and bieng rewarded according to their work. This was seed that fell on fertile soil. Decades later, Saint-Simon and Fourier would consider the problem, with the followers of Saint-Simon clearly formulating the principle of socialism: ``From each according to his ability, to each according to his work''. Mably's attempt to find a formula for social life that would pave the way to communism was also of great importance. Social thinkers in the 19th _-_-_
~^^13^^ Oeuvres completes de I'abbe de Mably, Paris, 1818, t. VI, pp. 26--27.
~^^14^^ Collection complete des teuvres de I'abbe de Mably, t. 11, Paris, 1895, p. 384.
55 century were confronted with the question which Mably formulated in the most general terms. Indeed, was mankind bound to travel the long way of reform, as Mably believed, to reach the new system? Saint-Simon and Fourier followed Mably each in his own way. However, there was another way which was still to be discovered. Engels valued Mably very highly. When dealing with 18th-century communist theories in his Anti-Duhring, he mentioned only the names of Morelly and Mably, the two minds paving the way for 19th-century social thought. __ALPHA_LVL3__ VISION OF LASTING PEACEMably was perhaps one of the first to combine the vision of a social reconstruction of life with the vision of lasting peace among nations. He declared peace to be a ``natural state" for men to live in, and private property and the self-seeking interests it generated to be the source of plunderous, aggressive wars. His democratic republic was the mainstay of lasting peace, where aggressive war was regarded as a crime. Only defensive wars were allowed in face of enemy attack, when the republic issued a call on all its citizens to take up arms and display high martial valour. In general, Mably's democratic republic pursued a foreign policy determined by the vital interests of its citizens and aimed at peaceable relations with other states. It marked a new stage in the development of the notions of lasting peace.^^15^^
The vision of establishing lasting peace in the world originated in the Middle Ages in Europe, which had been an arena of constant fights between the feudal lords. It originated as an idea to put an end to the feudal strife and naturally suggested the possibility of ending wars in general. There we find the origins of the Western ideas of an international order abiding by the rules of international law.
Meanwhile, the official and prevailing view, expressed, among others, by the Catholic Church, was that war was either a boon or a bane, both being ultimately caused by Divine Providence. St. Augustine held that the Romans had been enabled to carry on their aggressive wars through God's mercy.^^16^^ While the suggestion that men should use political means to end all wars at will may have been Utopian at that time, it did have a part to play in emancipating social thought.
Some historians believe that the earliest project for a political union of European states originated during the Crusades in the 13th century. A lawyer, Pierre Dubois, was saying that Christians should not fight Christians, and proposed a union of Christian rulers to be headed by a _-_-_
~^^15^^ See S. Safronov, ``Mably's Political and Social Ideas''. In the collection: From the History of Socio-Political Ideas, p. 258 (in Russian).
~^^16^^ See N. Golubtsova, ``The Ideological Struggle in Rome in the 4th-5th Centuries''. In the collection: From the History of Socio-Political Ideas, pp. 70--71 (in Russian).
56 council consisting of spiritual and temporal lords. The same ideas were developed in the 15th century by Marini, who urged the establishment of an international court to sort out conflicts. All of these were, in effect, projects for a union of European states under the ideological and political influence of the Catholic Church. These projects reflected the idea of peace no more than indirectly, through the peculiar prism of the political consciousness of some medieval ruling circles. But these projects also revealed the first attempts to establish the usage of international legal standards so as to be rid of the rule of might and the constant bloodshed among the feudals.^^17^^In the 16th century, Vitoria and Suarez held that war was legitimate only when all peaceable means had proved futile. Both were Spanish monks and lawyers and their writings contained ideas of ``natural law''. Without abandoning the notions produced by the absolutist feudal order, they believed there was need to moderate this order by putting some limits on the arbitrary acts of autocrats.
In the 16th century, the humanists came out against war. In 1515, Erasmus Roterodamus, the prominent humanist and a friend of Thomas More's, issued his work under this characteristic title: War Is Sweet to Those Who Have Not Tasted of It. Erasmus started from the concept of a ``human'' relationship between men and criticised war in the light of humanism. In another one of his works, The Complaint of Peace (1517) he wrote: ``War is the primary cause of all calamities and evils, a boundless ocean which engulfs all without distinction. Because of war, all that is flourishing stagnates, all that is healthy dies, all that is sound collapses, all that is beautiful and useful is destroyed, all that is sweet becomes bitter."^^18^^ We also find Erasmus condemning war from the standpoint of social justice. He said: ``Today, princes start wars and remain in safety, their military commanders become great men, while the largest part of the burden of all the evils is borne by the tillers of the land and the common people, who had not intended the war and had not given any cause for it.''~^^19^^ His writing breathed with indignation and accusation: ``The bulk of the people hate war and pray for peace. Only a few whose welfare depends on the people's misfortunes want war.'' He issued this call: ``Try to understand the great power that lies in the concord of the multitude resisting tyranny."^^20^^
However, this idea does not become the overriding one, because Erasmus believed that it is the wisdom of princes and not the will and the power of the people that will put an end to war. The main thing is the moral condemnation of war.
_-_-_~^^17^^ G. Bouthoul, Les guerres. Elements de polemologie, Paris, 1951, p. 482.
~^^18^^ Erasmus Roterodamus, Quereta pads, 1641, p. 10.
~^^19^^ Ibid., p. 54.
~^^20^^ Ibid., pp. 75, 73.
57In the 17th century, Emeric Cruce wrote his discourse, Le Nouveau Cyn\'ee, on ``the opportunities and means of establishing universal peace and liberty of commerce for the whole world''. The book came out in 1623 and unequivocally condemned war, with the author coming down most resolutely against the feudal concept of ``honour'', which ``is a miserable thing if it has to be bought at the price of bloodshed''. But the author was most concerned with the development of commerce and the growth of wealth. Men should engage in useful endeavours, build roads, dig canals, and do everything that promotes commerce. His Utopian project envisaged the establishment of an assembly of states to include the rulers not only of Europe, but also of China, Japan, Persia, the Tatars and the Great Mogul. The assembly first takes the gentle approach but uses force, whenever the need arises.^^21^^ The reasoning had changed, but the recipes for lasting peace remained the same.
In the 17th century, the humanistic ideas of universal peace were elaborated and substantiated in greater detail by Jan Amos Komensky (1643--1670), the great Czech thinker, who also gave thought to the idea of a union of states. He produced a voluminous treatise whose main idea was the eradication of all inhumanity. Truly human relations should be based on three principles: first, the principle which condemns dissent, strife and abuse among men; second, the principle ruling out the use of force in imposing on other men one's own philosophical, theological and political ideas; and third, the principle of general accord on what is good for all. Komensky hoped for an end of all dissension among men in the three basic spheres: philosophy, religion and politics. He holds that each kingdom or republic should have ``guardians of wisdom'', ``guardians of faith" and ``guardians of peace''. To each of these spheres one of the worthiest men should be elected in Europe, in Africa and so on. States ``should become a true bond uniting human society'', and an effort should be made that in its diverse ties and relations human society should not give up the laws of wisdom.^^22^^ This was the first time in the history of social thought that the idea of social bonds was set forth with such clarity, although, of course, the author still had a long way to go in discerning the basis of these social ties. His Utopian project for universal peace, which included the establishment of various interstate councils, in a sense put the finishing touches to the ``elements of social or personal security''. Komensky wrote: ``Universal peace and security are the aim of human society.'' As far as we are aware, Komensky was the first to propose the ``prohibition of weapons ... guns should be used against predators ... cannons should be recast into bells".^^23^^
The idea of lasting peace in Europe was substantiated in legal terms, _-_-_
~^^21^^ G. Bouthoul, Les guerres. Elements de polemologie, p. 483.
~^^22^^ See Treatises on Lasting Peace, Moscow, 1963, p. 78 (in Russian).
~^^23^^ Ibid., p. 80.
58 with concern for the development of commerce and the economic prosperity of countries, by the American Quaker William Penn (1644--1718), after whom the state of Pennsylvania in the USA is named. Penn believed that Europe should have a well-ordered ``system of states'', as otherwise no international legal rules could be practised. He produced a detailed plan for the establishment of a General (or European) Diet, Parliament of State of Europe, which was to put an end not only to all wars but also to espionage and all ill will among European countries.The Utopian idea of ending wars through a union of all European states, which remained feudal, was inherited by the 18th century. From 1713 to 1717, this idea was set forth by Abbe de Saint-Pierre in his Project for Lasting Peace in Europe. It was based on an urge to stop wars between absolutist feudal forces through a proclamation that from 1713 on the boundaries of the European states were to be inviolable: all states would always have the same boundaries they then had, no territory of any state could be dismembered, and no other could be added by succession, pact between the various houses, election, donation, cession, sale, conquest, voluntary submission by subjects or in any other way.^^24^^ We find the author examining all the causes of wars between the absolutist feudal states. It was a Utopian project for absolute stability in international relations and total elimination of arbitrary acts by sovereigns on that basis. At the same time, the scholarly abbe totally denied all sovereignty and all expression of will by the people.
His project was openly ridiculed by feudal statesmen. Thus, King Frederick II of Prussia wrote to Voltaire: ``This thing is in itself quite possible, but it lacks only one thing: the consent of Europe and a few other trifles of that sort."^^25^^
Let us note that the idea of a military-political union of absolutist feudal Europe was increasingly acquiring an aspect that was a far cry from the vision of universal peace in the world. It came to be the substantiation of military alliances aimed against the countries of the East. That is the view of a ``European organisation" taken by Sully, the 17th-century French political leader, and the German philosopher Leibnitz inclined to the same view.^^26^^
Thus, the question of establishing peace by political means was closely connected with the question of the political force that was capable of maintaining order in the international arena, and keeping conflicts from developing into sanguinary wars.
Political thinkers were at first inclined to assume that the emergence of _-_-_
~^^24^^ G. Bouthoul, Les guerres. Elements de polemologie. p. 486.
~^^25^^ Ibid.
~^^26^^ Ibid., p. 484.
59 powerful absolutist feudal states and the growing power of emperors and kings would help to keep the feudal lords in line, and lead to the establishment of peace in long-suffering Europe. But ``the weakening and disappearance of the feudal lords did not suffice to put an end to European wars. From the dust of the medieval conflicts arose the great wars conducted by powerful kings."^^27^^ The aggressive aspirations of absolutist-feudal circles were frequently veiled in dynastic claims, struggles for legitimate succession, etc. Abbe de Saint-Pierre's project had provided for all these causes of war and he had hoped that an all-European treaty could eliminate these. It appeared in the 17th and early 18th century that some sort of European organisation could put an end to strife between the feudal monarchs. The final verdict on these Utopian visions was handed down in the late 18th century.Political thought in the 18th century drew a totally new conclusion: it was the existence of the monarchies, the tyrannies and despotism that bred wars, so that military conflicts would end in Europe only with the triumph of the ``pacific spirit of republics''.
Voltaire was perhaps the most pungent critic of war in the 18th century. In his Dictionnaire Philosophique he sharply criticised Montesquieu for suggesting an armed peace, implying an arms race. Voltaire held war to be the most terrible crime that ``natural religion" prohibited and only ``artificial'' religion sanctioned. War contradicted man's very nature. An enlightened monarch, guided in his policy by the dictates of reason, could direct the development of international relations to the path of peace. This kind of ``radical'' solution of the problem required only a change of monarchs and made any organisation of European states altogether unnecessary.
However, Voltaire was not quite fair in his comments on the views of Montesquieu, the author of the Spirit of the Laws, the first political thinker to draw attention to the danger of the growth of armaments (Chapter XVII, Book XIII). Europe was in the course of changing its medieval weapons; with the discovery of gunpowder and the growth of industrial production, weapons were becoming an important force in politics and Montesquieu noted this. He wrote: ``A new malaise has spread across Europe; it has infected our princes and has made them maintain an inordinate number of troops.'' He stressed that this malaise was growing and ``was becoming contagious, because as soon as one state increases what it calls its troops, the others instantly increase their own, in such a way that no one gains anything from this except common ruin''. He believed that such growth of armaments led to the impoverishment of the peoples and to a decline of culture and commerce. There we find 18th-century political thought first confronted _-_-_
~^^27^^ G. Bouthoul, Les guerres. Elements de pol\'emologie, p. 473.
60 with the question of growing armaments. Komensky had earlier proposed ``a prohibition of weapons''. But how was this to be done?Rousseau expressed scepticism about the achievement of lasting peace, because the idea ``is too good to be accepted, because evil and abuse, from which so many people stand to gain, enter life by themselves, while that which is useful to society needs to be introduced only by force because it is almost always opposed by private interest''. Thus, force was required to overcome the ``private interest" for the sake of the common good. Having expressed the idea, we find Rousseau himself considerably apprehensive and saying: ``Federal leagues are apparently established only by revolution; on this principle, who among us will dare to say whether this European league is to be desired or to be feared? It will, perhaps, do more evil at one stroke that it can prevent over the centuries."^^28^^ Rousseau was apprehensive of the powerful new trends expressed in the incipient ideas of revolution and forcible change of political order by an insurgent people.
The leading minds of the 18th century believed that wars were caused mainly by the whims of monarchs, and this view was also accepted by the leaders of the 1789 revolution which is why they believed the overthrow of tyrants to be the most radical and only way out.
The 1789 revolution, which destroyed the absolutist feudal order in France, proclaimed peace to be its policy. All mankind had to throw off its tyrants, whereupon lasting peace would be established. Deputy Isnard told the Legislative Assembly: ``The peoples will embrace each other in face of the dethroned tyrants."^^29^^ Consequently, even in the eighteenth century political thinkers were considering the possibility of establishing lasting world peace. The leading minds declared the wars of the Middle Ages and the absolutist feudal period to be crimes against humanity. They emphasised the dangers of growing armaments for all nations and urged the need for states to compete in commerce and the production of material goods, and the desirability of a prohibition of weapons. They held that peaceful means had to be used in arranging and establishing international relations and settling any disputes that arose. However, they did not know how to establish lasting peace. The French revolution of 1789 did much to modify their notions, by emphasising the role of the people but confined it to political action in overthrowing tyrannies and monarchies and establishing republics.
The finishing touches to these 18th-century ideas of peace were put by Kant's philosophical essay, Perpetual Peace (1795), which formulated a series of requirements that were to help establish peace. He said that peace treaties should not contain the seeds of future wars, no _-_-_
~^^28^^ Collection complete des oeuvrex de J. ./. Roiixxeau, Geneve. 1882, t. 23. pp. 53--54.
~^^29^^ G. Bouthoul. Lex guerres. Elements de polemolonie. P- 475.
61 independent state should be swallowed up by another, standing armies should disappear with time, state debts should not be used in foreign-policy struggles, and no state should forcibly interfere in the administration and constitutional system of other states. He also insisted that ``dishonest stratagems" should not be resorted to in time of war, as these would ``make mutual trust under a future peace impossible''. Kant summed up and further elaborated the rules for international relations formulated by the leading minds of the 18th century.He condemned the colonial policy of the ``cultured and mainly commercial states" for carrying to distant countries the ``litany of all the calamities burdening the human race''. His conclusion was that ``international law should be based on a federalism of the free states''. By ``federalism'' he meant an alliance of nations which, however, should not be a state of states suppressing their sovereign rights. It implied that ``the civic order in each state should be republican''. It is true that in saying all this Kant admitted that it was extremely difficult to establish and maintain such an arrangement.
The philosopher sought to find an answer to the question of when and how lasting peace would be made possible, and said that this would occur through objective necessity instead of subjective good wishes, a definite step forward in this matter. But it also showed that there could be no correct approach to the problem of peace without a scientific theory of social development. Kant pinned his hopes on the ``mechanism of nature'', which had also produced the selfish inclinations of men and states, which acted against each other. This contradiction was latent not only with the possibilities of armed clashes but ultimately also with the possibility of establishing peace, which was ``not established and ensured by some despotism (in the graveyard of freedom) through a weakening of all forces, but through their equilibrium and their most vigorous competition".^^30^^
Considering the problem of peaceful relations between nations, Kant pinned most of his hopes on commerce, and exclaimed: ``The spirit of commerce, which sooner or later subordinates to itself every nation, cannot exist alongside war!" He was, of course, quite right in saying that society cannot exist exclusively in a state of war and that peaceful relations were dictated by the development of economic ties, but being a man of his age, he was unable to say why these peaceful economic relations should ultimately rule out all war. He himself drew the following conclusion: ``Indeed, that is the way, even through the mechanism of human inclinations itself, nature guarantees lasting peace with an assurance, of course, which is inadequate for a (theoretical) prediction of the day on which it will be established, but which, however, _-_-_
~^^30^^ I. Kant. Zum ewigen Frieden. Leipzig. 1954. p. 73.
62 is feasible in practice and puts on us the duty to work for this (not too chimerical) goal".^^31^^The Utopian socialists of the early 19th century made further headway on the question of peace, emphasising, even if in vague terms, the need for a new social organisation of society to attain lasting peace. They were sure that wars harmed social development and that social progress was promoted when men's efforts were united instead of being divided through military conflicts.
The revolutionary democrats in Russia gave a clear-cut formulation of the visions of the Utopian socialists about lasting peace. The first edition of Alexander Herzen's Thoughts on the Past, said: ``Socialism alone will bring peace.... In the glimmering dawn of the rising community order, the nations, now driven knee-deep in blood, will gain a better knowledge of each other; the wild cry of envious nationality and predatory patriotism will die down. These hatreds do not belong to the nations, but to the states; the nations are guilty only of ignorance, but how are they to know anything when they are being preached a whole false religion of blood and madness, national exclusiveness, honour of the flag, the right of might, all of this dull and limited valour of patriotic egoism, against which the early Christians had already rebelled and which is now so assiduously preached by the latter-day Christians."^^32^^ Thus, war was rooted in the existing despotic states. Herzen said as much: ``Despotism means exclusiveness and hatred; empire means war, which is why Napoleon called it peace."^^33^^ Here we find Herzen's ideas not far advanced beyond those of the 18th-century revolution in France. He went on to remark on the meaning of the religion of blood and madness being imposed by ``despotism''. All of this was undoubtedly quite true, but the roots of this ``religion'' were yet to be discovered.
Marxism alone proved that it was not enough to change the political form of government, as the leaders of the bourgeois revolutions in the 18th century believed. The point was to bring about a fundamental change in the economic and social structure of society. The question of peace also turned out to be inextricably connected with the scientific theory of social development.
__ALPHA_LVL3__ UTOPIAN SOCIALISM IN THE EARLY 19TH CENTURYTo sum up, let us note that mankind's approach to the fundamental and most acute problems of social development and to the development _-_-_
~^^31^^ Ibid., p. 74.
~^^32^^ A. I. Herzen. Selected Philosophical Works, Vol. II, Moscow, 1948, p. 346 (in Russian).
~^^33^^ Ibid., p. 34?.
63 of a scientific theory of the social process was very different from that depicted by bourgeois historians.The theory of social development and its most important prerequisites could not have emerged without the great social battles and the answers to the questions posed by the class struggle and life itself. This theory was generated by the urge to sort out the tendencies and prospects of social development and to discover what lay in store for human history. The great class battles of the period of transition from feudalism to capitalism stimulated social thinkers by confronting them with the fundamental problem of social development. The history of social thought clearly shows that a genuine theory of social development was also bound to be a theory of the fundamental transformation of society. That was the result of the development of social thought on the eve of the 19th century.
These problems were tackled by the great Utopian socialists in the early 19th century, seeking in their own way to continue consideration of the question raised by the Babouvists: what was to be done with the society produced by the French revolution, and what were the prospects for its development? The theory of the historical process could not be advanced without a solution of this problem. Whereas the Utopian communists of the 16th-18th centuries in effect simply brushed aside the capitalist way of development, thinkers in the new age had to start from the fact that the world had already entered upon the capitalist way. Some part of the way had already been travelled, the ``age of industrialism" was on. Europe's tempestuous industrial development was becoming a historical fact, and the considerable successes scored by human labour in mastering the forces of nature were there for all to see. In their efforts to answer the questions posed by life, the Utopian socialists asserted that mankind had to evolve towards a new society, whose main virtue would be labour, instead of greed and gain. However, the new stage in the history of social relations and in the development of labour and production forced them to give thought above all to how the labour process would be organised in the future system in view of what had already been achieved. Their picture of the new society was different from that of the Utopian communists of the 18th century. The 19th-century Utopian socialists did not believe that the realm of private-property money-making would be followed by a system on whose banner would be inscribed: ``From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.'' They inclined to the idea that each member of the new society would work in accordance with his ability and receive according to his work.
They felt that many of the positive elements that had already appeared in social life had to be retained, and all the negative elements discarded. But what was to be regarded as ``positive'' in bourgeois society, what was to develop and what was to be codemned by history? The Utopian 64 socialists gave a sharp criticism of many aspects of life in bourgeois society, doing much to advance social thought. But when it came to identifying the ``positive'' elements achieved in bourgeois society, the elements that were to be the prerequisite for building the new society, they were confused and well off the mark. They were even inclined to carry over into their new society the capitalists, who were for that purpose to merge with the workers.
They were unable scientifically to analyse the essence of exploitation under capitalism, their view of the economy of bourgeois society was superficial and they failed to understand the kind of social structure this economy produced. They did not realise that the working class was to destroy the social structure of the exploitative society and to create a new social system.
They kept saying that the time would come when man's exploitation of man would give way to the cooperation of all for the sake of society's domination of the forces of nature, a period in which social justice would ultimately triumph. Progress would be everlasting, it would cease to be a process of ebb and flow, while the social system was to serve mankind's boundless improvement.
``The golden age, which up to now blind tradition put behind us, is before us.'' With these excellent words Saint-Simon (1760--1825), the famous French Utopian socialist, opened his Literary, Philosophical and Industrial Discourse.^^34^^ Mankind's ``golden age" would open with ``the establishment of an organisation that is most favourable for the development of all useful capacities".^^35^^ No satisfaction of the needs of the majority of men and development of their capacities could be achieved in a society ruled by gross self-seeking. It was necessary to organise society in such a way as to allow the development of industry and agriculture and to serve the interests of the majority.
Saint-Simon believed that ``the best social organisation is that which makes the conditions of those who constitute the majority of society the happiest possible by providing them with the most means and facilities for satisfying their primary wants."^^36^^ His view of the summit of mankind's progressive development was set out in these words: ``Up to now men have brought to bear on nature, so to say, no more than purely individual and isolated efforts. What is more, their efforts have largely always been mutually destructive because up to now mankind has been divided into two unequal factions, the smaller of which has constantly employed all its forces, and frequently even a part of those of the greater faction, to dominate the latter; meanwhile, the greater faction has _-_-_
~^^34^^ Oeuvres choisies de Saint-Simon, t. Ill, Bruxelles, 1859, p. 215.
~^^35^^ Oeuvres de C-H de Saint-Simon, t. V, Paris, 1966, p. 172.
~^^36^^ Ibid., p. 56.
__PRINTERS_P_67_COMMENT__ 5---594 65 wasted a considerable part of its strength in resisting that domination. It is certain, however, that despite this enormous waste of effort, the human race has achieved, in the most civilised countries, a fairly remarkable degree of welfare and prosperity. One can well imagine in the light of this what it would have achieved had none of its forces been wasted and had men, ceasing to command each other, organised themselves to bring their combined efforts to bear on nature, and had the nations adopted the same system in their relations with each other."^^37^^That being Saint-Simon's view of the historical process, what is his contribution to the development of sociology? Bourgeois theorists have a ready answer: they stress in Saint-Simon's writings everything that Auguste Comte borrowed and then went on to distort. Actually, however, Saint-Simon's niche in the history of social development is not at all determined ``via Comte'', but by the following achievements.
First, Saint-Simon formulated the important problem of social development concerning the relation between society and nature, a problem earlier considered by German and French Enlighteners, notably Montesquieu, who stressed the idea that the geographical environment had an influence on social development. Elaborating the ideas of Condorcet and other French Enlighteners, Saint-Simon brought to the fore the idea that man was steadily mastering the forces of nature and that society was exerting an active influence on the environment. That, Saint-Simon held, was the substance of the historical process. He attached much importance to production, to men's economic activity, the true source of wealth and social prosperity. But Saint-Simon did not go beyond that point. Remaining an idealist, he did not realise that production was the basis of social development, and continued to pin his hopes on reason, the mastermind of the historical process, believing that the succession of historical epochs was ultimately determined by the change of ideologies.
Second, Saint-Simon stressed the importance of society's social organisation for its successful mastery of the forces of nature. Society's social organisation was most progressive when it gave most freedom for men's development and best allowed them to pool their efforts to master the forces of nature. Man's domination of man and wars between nations were a sheer waste of effort, which could be joined together for society to exert an influence on nature and to advance its welfare and prosperity. This idea was merely outlined in the most general form, but it had a great future before it.
Third, Saint-Simon's approach to the historical process allowed him to consider the problem of the relation between the individual and society, the problem of men's social connections, which he held to be determined _-_-_
~^^37^^ Oeuvres de C-H de Saint-Simon, t. II, Paris, 1966, p. 195.
66 by men's joint activity in bringing their influence to bear on nature. Of course, there, too, Saint-Simon remained an idealist, assuming that harmonious ties could be established between the bourgeoisie and the workers. Considering that human society was a ``great workshop'', it was not right for some men to dominate others, but for all men together to dominate nature.The task of social organisation lay in the utmost development of men's capabilities and potential for their joint labour, creative effort and production. Man's status in society should be determined not by his wealth but by the capabilities which he contributed to the common good.
Earlier epochs did not accord with this requirement, and the domination by warders together with the priests, the domination by the ``law-makers and metaphysicians" hampered man's creative effort, giving precedence to idlers instead of ``producers'', and slowing down the advance of reason and scientific knowledge. However, these ideas of Saint-Simon's were vague, bacause he was not clear on the concept of classes and the class struggle, and had a very faint idea of the substance of exploitation.^^38^^
Of course, it cannot be said that Saint-Simon's views marked an attempt to break with the capitalist order and the exploitative society. But, on the other hand, neither can Saint-Simon be regarded as an ordinary apologist of capitalism, as many present-day bourgeois theorists insist. Much of Saint-Simon's writings were basically reformist, because he believed that the structure of society he was advocating would not be realised through class struggle and revolution. He merely considered the need so to direct the development of capitalism as to render it harmless, to purge it of sores and to transform it into a new society. Saint-Simon believed this could be done by creating the cells of the new society within the entrails of capitalism. Although he did deal with the succession of the evolutionary and the revolutionary types of social development, the succession of ``organic'' and ``critical'' epochs, he was at heart an evolutionist. However, one should not underestimate the importance of Saint-Simon's views, for his was an attempt to discover tendencies in the historical process which ultimately made exploitative society no more than a transitional stage in history. Saint-Simon tried to review the course of social development.
He held that the slave-holding period of antiquity ``favoured the advance of enlightenment and provided the ruling classes with the opportunity of engaging in the development of their intelligence".^^39^^ The _-_-_
~^^38^^ Of all the bourgeois writings published to mark Saint-Simon's bicentenary. G. Gurvitch's paper in Cahiers International^ de Sociologie stands out, but he, too, obscures this most important point and makes an effort to identify Saint-Simon's views with those of Marx.
~^^39^^ Oeuvres de C-H de Saint-Simon, t. V., p. 13.
67 Middle Ages, feudalism, were not a period of complete decline and regress. ``The barbarian peoples did mankind a great service by totally destroying the social organisation established by the Greeks and the Romans,"^^40^^ having had the task of ``easing the lot of the slaves and paving the way for the total abolition of slavery".^^41^^ The easier lot of the slave and the emergence of serfdom in place of slavery marked a most important step in social development, which is why the Middle Ages should not be regarded as a period of regress and stagnation.The medieval order was broken up by the new social system. ``From the 15th century to 1793, the Europeans worked with great ardour to disorganise the theological and feudal system, but they did not succeed in discovering a system to replace that which they had destroyed."^^42^^ The French revolution was a forced act in the fight against feudalism but it introduced disorganisation because ``insurrection ... absolutely contradicts the interests of industry".^^43^^
The task ahead was to create a new social organisation to eliminate the rule of the minority over the majority of the people, and to establish relations between men on the principle of common effort by all for the common good.
For all the remarkable guesswork about the possibilities for social development, Saint-Simon presented a very vague picture of the new social system. It was to be without those who did not work, being an association for the conquest of nature. The functions of administration were to become functions for directing all the works of society. The state was to lose its erstwhile importance and disappear, because society would have no need of it. Society's main purpose, Saint-Simon believed, was to be the best satisfaction of the needs of all its members, the proletariat, the poorest class, in the first place. ``This great goal" had ``to be attained".^^44^^
But Saint-Simon feared a ``war of the poor against the rich" and believed that the establishment of the new society would not entail such a ``war'' but the spread of the ``new Christianity" with its message of brotherhood.^^45^^ That was the reactionary aspect of Saint-Simon's doctrine, and it was subsequently seized upon and elaborated into a whole system by Auguste Comte.
_-_-_~^^40^^ Oeuvres de C-H de Saint-Simon, t. V, p. 71.
~^^41^^ Ibid., p. 73.
~^^42^^ Ibid., p. 91.
~^^43^^ Oeuvres de Saint-Simon par Olinde Rodriguez, Paris, 1841, p. 348.
~^^44^^ Oeuvres de C-H de Saint-Simon, t. Ill, Paris, 1966, p. 172.
~^^45^^ See M. A. Alpatov, 'The French Utopian Socialists and the Bourgeois Theory of Class Struggle in the 19th Century''. In the collection: From the History of Socialist Ideas, pp. 401--02. The author shows Saint-Simon's awareness of the need of revolution (in Russian).
68On the other hand, the followers of Saint-Simon strove to specify the picture outlined by their teacher: the universal association was to practise the principle of ``to each according to his capacity, to each capacity according to its works''. They were the first to give a precise formulation of this demand, but they failed to realise that it could characterise only the first phase of the new society, and held it to be the ultimate goal.^^46^^ They stressed that man's exploitation of man had to be ended and were the first to formulate this demand in clear terms: ``In the past, the social system was always variously based on man's exploitation of man; henceforth the most important progress will consist in putting an end to this exploitation in whatever form it may be conceived."^^47^^ In their plans for remodelling society, they did not consistently abide by this principle, but in historical terms it was important that the great principle was proclaimed, heralding the end of the realm of idlers and the start of the new era, the realm of labour. Man had to join man in order to exploit the forces of nature. Some of Saint-Simon's followers did not accept his ``new Christianity'', and took an atheistic stand, while others increasingly evolved into something like a religious sect.
Neither Saint-Simon, nor his followers saw any real ways for realising their ideals, and were unable to assess the importance of the class struggle, the greatest motive force of history. That is why their picture of the future social system was vague: industrialists continue to run production, and the concept of ``industrialists'' itself includes both capitalists and workers.
While Saint-Simon and his followers may have been inconsistent, their idea of the possibility of a social system under which each would work according to his, ability and receive according to his work was itself of vast importance. This principle became a plank in the socialist programme. Equal importance attached to the idea that society, having rid itself of man's exploitation of man, acquired tremendous creative power, adopting for its motto the utmost development of science and technology to harness the mighty forces of nature in the service of man. A great future also lay ahead before the idea of transforming the state, a machine for administration, into a machine for directing all the works of society.
In their Manifesto of the Communist Party, Marx and Engels said that the Utopian systems expounded by Saint-Simon, Fourier, Owen and others, were ``fantastic pictures of future society, painted at a time when the proletariat is still in a very undeveloped state and has but a fantastic conception of its own position'', corresponding ``with the first instinctive _-_-_
~^^46^^ See V. P. Volgin, ``The Legacy of Utopian Socialism''. In the collection: A History of Socialist Doctrines, pp. 20--21 (in Russian).
~^^47^^ Doctrine Saint-Simonienne. Exposition, Paris, 1854, p. 207.
69 yearnings of that class for a general reconstruction of society".^^48^^ The systems of the Utopian socialists were based on the still dimly realised yearnings of the proletariat for a reconstruction of society, at a time when its anticipation of such change was influenced by the illusions spread by bourgeois liberalism, because the struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie was only just beginning. Bourgeois writers have long tried to separate the theory of Saint-Simon's social development from his Utopian socialism, an attempt which at best amounts to gross oversimplification. In the light of his idealism, Saint-Simon strove to work out a theory of social development and an ideal for remodelling society. His efforts showed that the time was ripe for producing a theory of social development to include the solution of the question on the fundamental restructuring of society, the future of capitalism, the elimination of social injustice, and that it was impossible to do so in the light of idealism. Only a break with idealism and metaphysics, and the discovery of the inner dialectics of the historical process could meet the urgent need for a scientific theory of society.Auguste Comte, the French bourgeois theorist of the first half of the 19th century, took a different way: he drew generously on the treasure house of Saint-Simon's ideas and emphasised in every way the reactionary aspects of his doctrine. Comte produced his own sociology based on the assertion of harmonious class interests, denial of the importance of revolutions in social development, emphasis on the role of ideas, which determined historical epochs, etc. In short, he strove to kill the living spirit of Saint-Simon's theory and to nullify his remarkable attempt to consider the question of changing society's social structure. Comte produced his ``system'' from the fragmentary ideas left by Saint-Simon, making use of his inconsistencies and limitations, emphasising his idealism in considering social phenomena, and leavening it all with agnosticism and mysticism. Comte's system was faithfully to serve bourgeois liberalism and the apology of capitalism. On the strength of this, bourgeois sociologists, distorting the true picture of the development of social thought, began to rank Saint-Simon as a ``predecessor'' of Comte's and even as an advocate of positivism. Indeed, Saint-Simon had envisaged the creation of a ``political science" to crown the whole system of the sciences, but for all the limitations and inconsistencies of his views, he had never intended to base this science on apologetics for bourgeois society.^^49^^
Charles Fourier (1772--1837) exerted a considerable influence on contemporary social thought, and made a contribution to the theory of social development. His writings are shot through with the idea of social _-_-_
~^^48^^ K. Marx and F. Engels. Selected Works, in three volumes. Vol. 1 p HS
~^^49^^ See N. Y. Zastenker, ``Henri de Saint-Simon''. In the collection: The History of Socialist Doctrines, p. 208 (in Russian).
70 change and the development of society's social structure. Despite his idealistic and theological errors, which still fettered his mind, that idea clearly stands out.In his social theory, Fourier advanced the idea, however vaguely and inconsistently, that man was a social being, and that his substance and nature were expressed and his inclinations developed only in society, in his connections with other men. A characteristic feature of eighteenthcentury bourgeois theories was a kind of social atomism, presenting the ``lone Robinson Crusoe on a desert island'', the lucky individual who stood out against the background of the ``rest'', and we find a series of Robinsonades expressing this view. In contrast, Fourier suggested that man's activity and substance were expressed in his social relations. However, Fourier only took the first step along this way, for he believed that men were impelled to action by their passions. These were everlasting passions with which abstract man was invested. In consequence, Fourier failed to understand and show the substance of man.
Fourier attached more importance than Saint-Simon to the social organisation of society. He did not identify the historical process with the development of industry, and stressed that the latter required a new social structure, as otherwise it held in store for the people nothing but unhappiness and misfortune. But having realised this contradiction in social development, Fourier did not draw the necessary conclusions, and went on to seek a way out in social ``harmony'' in an effort to prevent any sharpening of the contradiction.
Furthermore, Fourier criticised a number of ideas propounded by 18th-century bourgeois Enlighteners when he said that the state was not an expression of universal concord, of some ``social contract'', but the result of oppression of a majority of the people by the rich. He also rejected the idea of straightforward progress. He saw the much-vaunted bourgeois civilisation in such a repugnant light, that he refused to consider it the crowning achievement of progressive development. It is true that Fourier did not see the material basis of progress and believed social development to run both along an upgrade and a downgrade, and so, like Vico, ended by believing that development was cyclic. After all, a sound basis for judging progress is provided only by an understanding of the development of production and social relations, and the succession of the modes of production. The idealist approach to this problem will always leave room for assuming that social development runs along involved curves now advancing, now retreating. Fourier was led to a false and harmful conclusion by his idealistic methodology.
However, Fourier took a critical attitude to the ideologists of the ancient world. He wrote: ``Habituated, according to their philosophical maxims, always to face the past and to praise themselves in comparison 71 with the barbarians, they regarded every social state as the end of movement; every philosopher of antiquity would have supported the idea that civilisation could not have existed without the enslavement of the tillers of the soil and household servants."^^50^^ The Utopian socialists did science a great service by strongly attacking the idea that the social order of bourgeois society marked the ``end of movement''. Society, they held, must advance. The slaves ``became the free men of the modern period, while civilisation, far from declining because of this freedom, has in effect advanced'', says Fourier.^^51^^ ``Modern civilisation,'' he goes on to say, ``having caused the disappearance of the horrible slave system, has risen to plenitude."^^52^^
Fourier insisted that little by little feudal bondage was raising the people to the freedom they had been deprived under the Greeks and the Romans. One must use one's imagination to realise the powerful ring these words had at a time when bourgeois ideologists were extolling the slave-holding democracy of antiquity, always omitting to say that it had been based on slavery, driven to arduous labour, and forgetting that bourgeois democracy was based on exploitation. Fourier stressed that ``all the famous republicans of Greece and Rome, all devoted lovers of liberty, turned the job of executioner into a pastime".^^53^^ They dealt ruthlessly with the slaves, whom they did not consider to be human. Nor was Fourier inclined to trust the heralds of bourgeois civilisation, working hard to cover up its gaping sores.
The civilisation of the modern period, that is, the bourgeois social system, abounded in vices. Comparing the lot of the poor families of jobless workers and that of the savage, Fourier decided that in a civilised society the lot of the former was the more terrible one. The social structure of modern civilisation was itself defective. Fourier boldly exposed the gaping sores of capitalist society castigating the system based on the rule of the rich.
He attacked the ideologists of bourgeois civilisation just as strongly as the theorists of ancient slavery. He wrote: ``How are we to explain the base complaisance of philosophers with respect to the commercial abuses? Those who have trumpeted the crimes of popes and kings dare not speak of the crimes of commerce."^^54^^ Naturally, Fourier did not go to the roots of exploitation under capitalism, but his beginning was a good one. A new system was to be built ``on the ruins of barbarism and civilisation".^^55^^ Fourier expressed a remarkable idea that under the system of civilisation industry could merely create elements of _-_-_
~^^50^^ Ch. Fourier, Egarement de la raison, Paris, 1847, p. 48.
~^^51^^ Ibid.
~^^52^^ Ibid.
~^^53^^ Ibid.
~^^54^^. Ibid., p. 58.
~^^55^^ Oeuvres completes de Ch. Fourier, tome premier, Paris, 1846, p. 101.
72 happiness but not happiness itself, and that ``the excessive growth of industry carries civilisation to very great misfortunes, unless the means of real progress along the scale of social development are discovered".^^56^^ There was need not only to develop industry but also to improve society's social organisation, and to destroy the system under which the wealth and happiness of some were based on the poverty and misfortunes of others. Fourier criticised the ``industrialists'', that is, the advocates of capitalism who believed mankind's happy future lay alone in technical advance and education. What was the use of education for the unfortunate ones who had no means of livelihood? Under civilisation, poverty sprang from abundance itself, Fourier said, and the vicious circle at this stage of mankind's development had to be broken. Those were ideas of tremendous power and importance for the development of social thought and for the emergence of a scientific theory of social development.Fourier's strongest point was his criticism of bourgeois ``civilisation'' of which the ideologists of capitalism were so proud. He succeeded in tearing through the veil of lies by means of which the advocates of capitalism sought to cover up the real defects of bourgeois society. Fourier declared that there were many ``paper rights'', and reasoned on these lines: a right was illusory when one was unable to exercise it. Evidence of this was the people's constitutional right to sovereignty. Despite this brilliant prerogative, the common man without a cent in his pocket had to go without his dinner.^^57^^ He declared that the ``right to work" was the most important one: ``under civilisation it is truly unfeasible, although without it, all the other rights are quite useless".^^58^^
The great Utopian socialist clearly saw the anarchy of production characteristic of capitalism under which whole crops of grapes had to be dumped because of overproduction. He was aware of the contradictions of bourgeois civilisation under which there was a growth of riches but no ``guarantee for the producer or the worker of participation in the growing wealth".^^59^^
One question of tremendous importance posed by Fourier was how to turn work, which the ideologists of the exploitative system declared to be man's curse, into a source of pleasure. However, Fourier could not provide the right answer. In his preparatory manuscript for Capital, Marx said that Fourier was wrong to assume that in the future society work would become an amusement. Work would become man's primary need, but it would never become an empty plaything.
Fourier attached much importance to human passions, and believed that the harmony that was to be established in society would be based on _-_-_
~^^56^^ Oeuvres completes de Ch. Fourier, t. 6, Paris, 1848, p. 36.
~^^57^^ ``La Phalange'', Revue de la science sociale, tome premier, Paris, 1845, p. 46.
~^^58^^ Oeuvres complete de Charles Fourier, Paris, 1846, tome premier, p. 221.
~^^59^^ Ch. Fourier, Ouvres completes, t. 6, p. 28.
73 a satisfaction of human passions. He produced a fairly complicated classification of human passions because he believed that these should be reckoned with in establishing harmonious relations between individuals in society. There, Fourier continued the line started by Mably, who held that passions determined social relations. Some passions were virtuous, having been generated in the period when social property was in the ascendant, while others owed their origins to private property and were harmful (greed, self-interest, etc.).^^60^^ One modern French specialist in social psychology considers Fourier to be a predecessor of modern specialists in this field. He claims that ``Fourier's socialism is structured on this social psychology'',^^61^^ which he had tried to develop in his doctrine of passions.According to this doctrine, men's association in the process of labour should be based on sympathy. Fourier suggested that the labour process had to be organised in such a way as to be a source of satisfaction, to prevent man from being forced constantly to do one type of work, and to enable him to choose the type of work which best fitted his capabilities and inclinations. Thus, we find Fourier also pondering the ways and means of doing away with the capitalist division of labour which tends to distort man, and the contrast between town and country. That was undoubtedly a great achievement, but Fourier's recipes for the future social system were Utopian, and were based on totally wrong ideas.
Academician Volgin was right in saying that ``two trends on the question of the form of social property can be discerned in the history of social thought as it paved the way for the emergence of scientific communism".^^62^^ Fourier was among those who believed that a small and economically independent community had to be the unit of the new society, in other words, that social property was to be held by the given community. The followers of Saint-Simon took a different view and suggested a centralised national economy, ``clearly setting forth the idea of a general economic plan".^^63^^ Let us stress that the Babouvists, as I have said, had come close to the idea of state property owned by the whole people. In Fourier's writings we find the idea of cooperation and cooperatives that were to transform society. Here, he was a predecessor of Robert Owen's, who also had visions of transforming capitalism by means of cooperatives. Owen expected his cooperatives to spread to the factories and plants in the first place, whereas Fourier believed that the units of the new society would rest on a peculiar _-_-_
~^^60^^ See S. Safronov, ``Mably's Political and Social Ideas''. In the collection: From a History of Socio-Political Ideas, p. 249 (in Russian).
~^^61^^ J. Stoetzel, La psychologic socials, Paris, 1963, p. 15.
~^^62^^ V. P. Volgin, ``The Legacy of Utopian Socialism''. In the collection: A History of Socialist Doctrines, p. 9 (in Russian).
~^^63^^ Ibid., p. 11.
74 combination of agricultural and industrial production.Fourier's society was organised in separate phalansteries and so had no overall organisation. It began its life with the establishment of isolated cells, and the whole of social life, in effect, boiled down to their activity. It is true that Fourier assumed that the phalansteries would enter into relations with each other in order to tackle production problems that no phalanstery was able to tackle alone, but he had no elaborated system of bonds between the phalansteries.
Present-day bourgeois sociologists insist that Fourier's views had no direct bearing on the theory of social development, and fundamental writings on the history of social thought deal with Fourier in a few lines. Of course, Fourier was a Utopian and far removed from scientific theory. But he showed the potentialities for social development, and opposed the idea that social institutions were fixed and everlasting. His idea about the possibility of changing the nature of labour and men's attitude to their work, together with the established principles underlying the division of labour, undoubtedly helped to emancipate many minds. Fourier was concerned with enhancing the social power of associated men as the key problem in social development and opposed the view that social forms were ossified. But that is a problem which could not be solved without materialist dialectics. Fourier was also inclined to tread on the verge of mysticism. Life was posing problems that could not be solved in the light of idealism.
The idea that private property had become the greatest drag on human development was proclaimed more powerfully and in more clear-cut terms, than Fourier did, by Robert Owen, the Utopian socialist, who played a great role in enlightening Britain's working class. He attacked private property as the taproot of the social injustice that reigned in society. ``Private property has been, and is at this day, the cause of endless crime and misery to man".^^64^^ Here is a short description of the misfortunes and crimes it has caused: ``Private property alienates mind from mind, is a perpetual cause of repulsive action throughout society, a never-failing source of deception and fraud between man and man, and a strong stimulus to prostitution among women. It has caused war through all the past ages of the world's known history, and been a stimulant to innumerable private murders."^^65^^
Owen argued with great force that the main task of social, intellectual and moral progress consisted in destroying private property. Mankind would breathe freely only ``when mere personals shall be public property, and public property shall always be maintained in superfluity for all".^^66^^ In other words, mankind's true happiness would dawn only _-_-_
~^^64^^ Robert Owen, The Book of the New Moral World, London, 1849, p. 40.
~^^65^^ Ibid., p. 41.
~^^66^^ Ibid., p. 42.
75 with the establishment of communism. Owen believed that the time would come when ``the incalculable superiority of a system of public property be duly appreciated over the evils arising from private property".^^67^^Owen laid much greater emphasis than Fourier and Saint-Simon on the great progressive importance of mankind's transition from private to public property. He was a tireless propagandist of this idea, and made an outstanding contribution to the development of social thought. His resolute consideration of the fundamental question of social development inevitably led to the question of how and why society had arrived at the domination of private property, and what were the ways of changing this social state. A correct answer to these questions would have meant the emergence of a scientific theory of social development.
However, Owen himself took an idealistic approach, believing that the historical process was determined by men's views, and for that reason did not find the way for a fundamental transformation of the social system. He assumed quite naively that because it was rational the rational idea would ultimately triumph, and so kept submitting proposals for reform to the governments of his day. But his achievement was his consistent advocacy of the idea of the superiority of a social system based on public property.
Owen also went beyond Saint-Simon and Fourier in the theory of social development by resolutely purging the theory of all theological and mystical elements which we still find in the writings of the French Utopian socialists. Owen did not believe that religious views provided any basis for progress. He did not accept Saint-Simon's new Christianity, or Fourier's mystical notions. Owen was an atheist, insisting on the reactionary role of religious ideas in social development, boldly continuing in the new conditions the atheistic tradition of the French Enlighteners of the 18th century.
Meanwhile, some early 19th-century Utopian socialists in Germany were developing a vague notion of the historical role of the proletariat. In the 1840s, Wilhelm Weitling wrote about the working class as a ``new Messiah" which was to ``destroy the rotten structure of the old social order, to channel the fountains of tears into the sea of oblivion and to transform the earth into a paradise".^^68^^ We find the German Utopian socialist going beyond the French Utopian socialists, but his approach was also idealistic and was not based on the laws of social development, his social and political program being extremely Utopian. Franz Mehring, the Marxist historian of the German working-class movement, was quite _-_-_
~^^67^^ Robert Owen, op. cit., p. 42.
~^^68^^ Franz Mehring, ``Geschichte der deutschen Sozialdemokratie'', Erster Teil. In: Gesammelte Schriften, Bd.I., Dietz Verlag, Berlin, 1960, S. 105.
76 right in saying that Weitling had a long way to go to the proletarian class awareness, but he regarded the proletarian revolution in much the same way as Fourier regarded the millionaire-saviour. But Weitling believed that revolution would spring not from the growing strength of the workers, but from their growing need.^^69^^ Henceforth, the transformation of society depended on the proletariat's revolutionary activity, for it was the gravedigger of capitalism. This marked an end to the Utopian visions of socialism, ushering in the epoch of revolutionary struggle for socialism and the formulation of the theory of revolutionary action.Here, a great contribution to the development of social thought was made by the Russian revolutionary democrats, among whom we find such remarkable revolutionary theorists as Herzen, Chernyshevsky and Dobrolyubov. Their achievement lay mainly in their efforts to blend socialist ideas with revolutionary struggle. They gave thought not only to a revolution in Russia, but to a worldwide revolutionary process.
__ALPHA_LVL3__ RUSSIAN REVOLUTIONARY DEMOCRATSAlexander Herzen, one of the brilliant thinkers and publicists of the epoch, which abounded in literary talent, was a man who dedicated himself to the revolution and allied himself with the progressive democratic movement of the people, and left a profound impression on the history of ideological struggle. His is an outstanding name in the history of materialist philosophy. Lenin remarked that Herzen ``came right up to dialectical materialism, and halted---before historical materialism".^^70^^ Herzen was the first social thinker to consider the question of Russia's role in the 19th-century revolutionary process. This was of fundamental importance because it led to the more general question about the role in this process of agrarian countries with a predominantly peasant population lagging in their development behind the advanced industrial states. That was one of the important problems in world development, a problem of great sociological depth and much political significance.
Radical West European circles regarded Russia, especially after the 1848 revolution, as a reactionary force which could play only a negative role in the transformation of society. Nicholas I was justly called the gendarme of Europe.
Herzen decided to change this notion, and wrote: ``We do not prophesy anything; but neither do we believe that the destinies of _-_-_
~^^69^^ Franz Mehring, ``Geschichte der deutschen Sozialdetnocratie'', Erster Teil. In: Gesammelte Schriften, Bd. I.. Dietz Verlag. Berlin. 1960. S. 102.
~^^70^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 18, p. 26.
77 mankind are riveted to Western Europe. If Europe fails to rise to social transformation, other countries will transform themselves; there are also some among them which are already prepared for this movement, while others are preparing for it. One of these is known to be the United States of North America; the other, which abounds in strength, but also in savagery, is little and poorly known."^^71^^Herzen expressed doubts about social change in Western Europe following the failure of the 1848 revolution, which did much to change his view of the historical process. Herzen had pinned great hopes on that revolution, and so was greatly disappointed. What had been the basis of his hopes? Herzen had assumed that the rule of the bourgeoisie was to be short-lived, and that the 1848 revolution and the establishment of a republic would bring about the most profound social changes. Indeed, he had mistakenly believed the proletariat's first uprising to be its final and decisive battle. He believed ``republic'' did not mean the rule of the bourgeoisie, but a takeover by the working people and profound social change.
Following the collapse of these hopes, Herzen made a comparison of bourgeois society in the mid-19th century and the final centuries of the slave-holding world. All about him he saw disintegration and corruption. This philosophico-historical conception was criticised by Chernyshevsky, who argued that Western society still had considerable creative strength and that it was not at all in need of salvation from outside.
Herzen subjected bourgeois radicalism to withering criticism for talking too much about a ``republic'' while investing it with the old content inherited without change from the 1789 revolution. Meanwhile, ``republic'' was a term that no longer accorded with the new struggle, because the struggle had gone beyond the limits of that term. Herzen was a resolute advocate of socialist ideas, and his general sociological conception was characterised by the idea of inequality and the historical nature of classes. He wrote: ``The rise of estates was a tremendous step forward, for it meant enlightenment, the end of animal uniformity, the division of labour. The disintegration of this structure was even a greater step forward."^^72^^ That was the substance of mankind's social progress.
About himself, Herzen wrote: ``I did not become a socialist overnight. Thirty years ago the title of socialist was bestowed on me by Tsar Nicholas."^^73^^ However, it is hard to rank him among any of the contemporary trends then dominant in the West. Herzen observed that after 1830, with the appearance of Saint-Simon's theories, socialism left a great impression on men's minds in Moscow. He stressed that ``in Moscow socialism developed together with Hegel's philosophy'', that _-_-_
~^^71^^ A. I. Herzen. Works, Vol. 3. Moscow. 1856, pp. 390--91 (in Russian).
~^^72^^ A. I. Herzen, Selected Philosophical Works, Moscow, 1956, p. 591.
~^^73^^ Ibid., p. 549.
78 the ``new philosophy" should align itself with socialism, and urged ``close ties between science and revolution".^^74^^ He admitted Saint-Simon's theory to be vague and religious, and described the ideological development of his associates from Saint-Simon onwards as follows: ``Having made a study of his writings, they quite naturally arrived at Proudhon, just as they went on from Hegel to Feuerbach".^^75^^ However, Herzen should not be unconditionally regarded as a supporter of Proudhon's, for he accepted some of his ideas, but not his system of views as a whole.Subsequently, Herzen specified his views of the state. In 1869 he wrote: ``Between Lassalle's view and the sermon about the imminent dissolution of the state into a life along federal communal lines lies the whole span between ordinary birth and parturition. From the fact that a woman is pregnant it does not at all follow that she is due to give birth tomorrow. From the fact that the state is a transient form it does not follow that it is a past one."^^76^^ This was open condemnation of Proudhonism and Bakuninism. Herzen asked: ``Was there any people so mature that state tutelage could be withdrawn from it?" He added that no nation could ``begin such an experiment with impunity, surrounded as it is by other nations passionately clinging to their state.... Is it right to speak of an early imminency of a stateless order when the abolition of the standing army and disarmament are remote ideals?"^^77^^ That was very bold guesswork. But the positive aspect of Herzen's views was also limited. He agreed with Lassalle and wrote: ``Lassalle wished to make use of this state power in order to introduce a social order. He thought, why break the mill when its stones will also grind our flour?"^^78^^ By then, history and advanced revolutionary theory had raised the question of breaking up the bourgeois state machine and establishing a new state---a proletarian dictatorship---in its stead.
Herzen noted the positive aspects of Fourier's views, but sharply criticised his system as a whole. He wrote: ``The phalanstery is nothing but the Russian commune and the workers' barrack-room, a military settlement on civilian lines, a regiment of factory hands."^^79^^
Herzen did not believe that the revolution would run precisely on the lines predicted by the doctrinaires, and that it had stopped. ``Instead of incautious attempts and conspiracies, the worker is deeply engrossed in thought and is seeking contact not with guild revolutionaries, not with the _-_-_
~^^74^^ A. I. Herzen, Works, Vol. 3, p. 501 (in Russian)
~^^75^^ Ibid., p. 502.
~^^76^^ Ibid., Vol. 20, p. 591.
~^^77^^ Ibid.
~^^78^^ Ibid.
~^^79^^ Ibid.. Vol. 3. p. 502.
79 editors of journal but with the peasants.''^^80^^ Herzen insisted that the revolutionary tide was already rising among the peasants: ``A heavy storm is gathering in the peasant's breast... He casts gloomy looks at the rich owner, at the notary, at the usurer; but he sees, that however much one works the profit goes into other hands---and so lends an ear to the worker."^^81^^ Herzen pinned great hopes on the alliance of workers and peasants adding that when the peasant had heard out the worker and well understood him, ``with his stubborn firmness of the ploughman, with his fundamental solidity in every undertaking, he will then take stock of his strength and will then wipe the old social structure off the face of the earth. That will be a new revolution of the people's masses."^^82^^ Consequently, Herzen believed that the peasantry, rather than the working class, was to play the decisive role even in the revolution in the West.Herzen's idea of a popular revolution which alone would save the West from destruction and corruption was a vague one, but he was sure that the ``present-day state system with its civilisation will die, will be liquidated, as Proudhon politely put it".^^83^^ Herzen felt that such ``polite expressions" did not fit this revolution, for he believed that ``the proletarian will mete out as it had been meted out unto him. Communism will rage tempestuously, terribly, bloodily, unjustly and swiftly. In the midst of the thunder and lightning, in the glow of burning palaces, on the ruins of factories and government offices new commandments will appear, the features of the new credo will be writ large."~^^84^^ Herzen quite obviously believed the proletarian revolution to be above all a destructive and not a creative force.
Let us now consider the question of how Herzen saw the world's revolutionary process and Russia's role in it. In the mid-19th century Russia continued to be the gendarme of Europe. ``It is she, this barrack-room Russia that wants to use the bayonets in putting an end to all the problems agitating the world."^^85^^
But the revolution would not be put out even by the tsarist attempts at intervention against revolutionary Europe. ``Revolutionary Europe cannot be vanquished by imperial Russia. It will save Russia from a horrible crisis and will save itself from Russia."^^86^^ Herzen was sure that revolutionary forces were maturing in Russia and that the autocracy, having triumphed over civilisation, would find itself confronted with the _-_-_
~^^80^^ A. I. Herzen. Works, Vol. 3, p. 209 (in Russian).
~^^81^^ Ibid., pp. 209--10.
~^^82^^ Ibid., p. 210.
~^^83^^ Ibid., p. 221.
~^^84^^ Ibid.
~^^85^^ Ibid., p. 506.
~^^86^^ Ibid.
80 indignation of the peasants, with a great uprising, like the one led by Pugachov. Herzen believed that the two revolutionary tides would merge in a worldwide revolutionary process. Consequently, he did not believe that the revolution was confined to Western Europe, but he took the wrong view of the revolutionary tide that was rising in Russia.He held that Russia lived with the ``hopes and aspirations of revolutionary Europe'', but believed that Russia had a special role to play. ``The national element introduced by Russia is the freshness of youth and a natural inclination for a socialist order."^^87^^
He insisted that forward-looking men should work to promote the revolutionary process, which required human activity. He stressed the importance of propaganda for revolution, and said in one of his letters to Russia that his only desire was to act as an uncensored voice of the people of Russia, which is why he had not sought to return to his native country but had remained in Europe so as to acquaint it with Russia and to be its ``uncensored mouthpiece".^^88^^ Herzen was sure that the revolution was bound ultimately to triumph and that this triumph could be delayed for some 15 years, while the temporary ``triumph of reaction will bring about such a rebuff and suffer such a debacle of which we have never dreamed".^^89^^
The ``natural inclination for a socialist order" that Herzen saw in Russia, was the age-old peasant commune, which had a different historical destiny in the West and in Russia. He wrote: ``The German and the Celtic communes collapsed in the face of two social ideas which were totally opposed to communal life: feudalism and Roman law. Happily, we have arrived with our commune at an epoch in which the anti-communal civilisation is being destroyed in consequence of a total inability to do away, in virtue of its fundamental principles, with the contradiction between individual right and public right."^^90^^ Communal property resolved this contradiction between the individual and society and triumphed over the ``anti-communal civilisation" which prevailed in the West. Herzen's chief mistake was that he believed the Russian commune to be confronted with a dying instead of a developing capitalism which had enough strength and potentialities to erode the commune in Russia.
In 1869, Herzen wrote, however, that the ``transition of property, so to say, from private, to collective property, was obscure and vague".^^91^^ He realised the great importance of private property for the Western peasant and did not know what could make that peasant abandon the age-old _-_-_
~^^87^^ A. I. Herzen, Works. Vol. 3, p. 504 (in Russian).
~^^88^^ Ibid., Vol. 24, p. 200.
~^^89^^ A. I. Herzen. Seli-cleJ Philosophical Works, p. 505.
~^^90^^ A. I. Herzen, Works, Vol. 3, pp. 511--12 (in Russian).
~^^91^^ A. I. Herzen, Selected Philosophical Works, p. 585.
__PRINTERS_P_82_COMMENT__ 6---594 81 dream of it. The only thing that one could hope for was the ``continuous parcelling of his dwindling land" and the consequent benefit of a ``free economy of the communal cultivation of the fields".^^92^^ Herzen did not see, as Chernyshevsky did, the capitalisation of agriculture in the West, and the growing potentialities in the application of technology on the large farms.Herzen was sure that the Russian peasant was unable to give up his right of inheritance.^^93^^ Communal farming was the only thing that remained, and this was what the ``natural inclination for a socialist order" ultimately boiled down to. Meanwhile, Chernyshevsky envisaged communal land ownership supplemented with communal production, so going well beyond Herzen's ideas.
Herzen's remark about the ``freshness and youth'', which Russia was to introduce into the world revolutionary movement, was a tribute to the masses of Russian peasants, who ``bowed low in adversity so that it passed over them, without touching them; that is why, despite his condition, the Russian peasant possessed such ability, such brains and beauty as to have aroused the amazement of Custine and Haxthausen".^^94^^ However, because of his historical limitations, Herzen was unable to discover the working class, the strength of its character, its intellect, ability and beauty. That is what left a mark on his approach to the question of Russia's role in the world revolutionary process.
Herzen rejected the charges that he was idealising the Russian people, and wrote: ``We did not transfer our ideal to the Russian people and then begin to admire it as a discovery, as people who are easily carried away are wont to do. We simply met each other. The events of the past few years and the questions aroused by the peasant cause, opened the eyes of the blind and the ears of the deaf. Since then the vast northern avalanche has started to move and, whatever is being done in Russia, even the most contradictory, it keeps moving from one social question to another."^^95^^ That was a good guess about the sharpening class contradictions in Russia, and recognition of the abundance of highly important social problems which the country was by then facing in its social development.
Chernyshevsky and Dobrolyubov criticised Herzen's conception and made various important changes in it. The great Enlighteners took a different view of capitalism, their critique of it was much deeper, and they also strove to take a different approach to the question of the commune.
The breakup of the old social relations, the early steps taken by _-_-_
~^^92^^ A. I. Herzen, Selected Philosophical Works, p. 585.
~^^93^^ Ibid.
~^^94^^ A. I. Herzen, Works, Vol. 3, p. 513 (in Russian).
~^^95^^ Ibid., Vol. 18. p. 277.
82 capitalism in Russia, the aggravation of class contradictions and the revolutionary struggle helped to awaken social thinking and raise important questions about the future. Chernyshevsky and Dobrolyubov fought against the bourgeois liberalism that was emerging in the country, the apology of capitalism and against the serf-owners and the landed reactionaries. The ideas of Utopian socialism infiltrating from the West were purged of their bourgeois-liberal, reformist character, which they had increasingly acquired in Europe by the 1840s. These ideas were also cleared of the mysticism with which Saint-Simon and Fourier had invested them. The two men strove to combine these with the traditions of materialism. While the revolutionary democrats did not produce a materialist view of social life, the elements of materialism nevertheless also penetrated into their views of social phenomena. Chernyshevsky's powerful mind was not to be content with Feuerbach's materialism, and he tried to apply Hegel's dialectics to social phenomena. Chernyshevsky rejected the theological halo which still surrounded Feuerbach's concept of man. In contrast to Feuerbach, the Russian materialists concentrated on social issues. The spirit of the class struggle emanated from Chernyshevsky's writings, for he clearly saw society divided into antagonistic classes and came very close to an understanding of the great role of the class struggle in history. Chernyshevsky considered very important aspects of world development and the world revolutionary process.Engels said Chernyshevsky and Dobrolyubov were two socialist Lessings, and compared their activity with that of the major figure in the German Enlightenment. The two great revolutionary Enlighteners were equally conversant with literature and art, economics and history, and the diverse tasks of the political struggle in Western Europe and Russia. Lenin said that Chernyshevsky had been ``a remarkably profound critic of capitalism despite his Utopian socialism".^^96^^ The two revolutionary democrats exerted a powerful .influence on the development of social thought because they combined the sharpest criticism of feudalism and its vestiges in Russia with profound criticism of capitalism and the bourgeois-liberal apologists of ``enlightened capital''.
Nikolai Chernyshevsky, a tireless fighter against serfdom, also struck out at the ideology of the bourgeoisie. He believed that instead of advancing, bourgeois social thought had retreated from the 18th century, and expressed his attitude in these words: ``Adam Smith was essentially a follower of the French encyclopaedists: just as they had imagined that the people had no need of anything except the things that the bourgeois had need of, and just as the people themselves were not yet aware at the time that their requirements were not altogether similar to the interests of the _-_-_
~^^96^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works. Vol. 20. p. 246.
83 middle class, which then marched at the head in the common struggle against the feudals, so Adam Smith failed to notice the difference between the content of his theory, which accorded with the economic condition of the middle class, and his own principal doctrine that labour was the source of all value."^^97^^The time had passed when the bourgeoisie and the working people both belonged to the ``middle class''. There arose the need for a theory expressing the interests of the working people. He wrote: ``The old theory says: everything is produced by labour; the new theory adds: that is why everything must belong to labour."^^98^^ On this basis, said Chernyshevsky, there should be ``a working people's theory..., as we shall call the theory which accords with the requirements of the new period, in contrast to the backward but dominant theory, which we shall designate as the capitalists' theory".^^99^^ This ``working people's theory" was already being created in the course of political, class struggle. ``For a long time, the middle class and the working men behaved, especially in Britain, as two different parties whose demands are different. In France, open hatred between the common people and the middle class has resulted in the formulation of communism in economic theory."^^100^^ But by this Chernyshevsky meant Utopian communism, which he was unable to overcome in view of the backwardness of Russia in that period.
Chernyshevsky also attacked some of the fundamental principles of the bourgeois theory of social development. Bourgeois theorists, for instance, ``assure us that in its present state rivalry is necessary for the improvement of production''. He continued with this ironical remark: ``They seem to think that a man finds his bread tasteful only when it has been wrested from another."^^101^^ He himself believed that there was no ground to assume that private enterprise and competition were the only motive forces of progress, including technical progress. He said: ``The working man must feel, as well as the capitalist, the advantage of improving his tools, if he works for his own benefit."^^102^^ Even today these words hit straight at the advocates of ``free enterprise'', and their justice has been proved by the deeds of millions of working people in the socialist countries.
The working people had their own common interests of comradeship, in contrast to the bourgeois class interests, which were based on the cash nexus. He wrote: ``The working people, not having any reasons for _-_-_
~^^97^^ N. G. Chernyshevsky, Selected Economic Works, Vol. II, Moscow, 1948, p. 345 (in Russian).
~^^98^^ Ibid., p. 309.
~^^99^^ Ibid., p. 352.
~^^100^^ Ibid., p. 346.
~^^101^^ Ibid., p. 363.
~^^102^^ Ibid., p. 362.
84 wishing ill to each other, have no cause to stand aloof from each other. On the contrary, they are directly impelled by economic necessity to seek a common alliance."^^103^^ But from this correct proposition, Chernyshevsky went on to draw incorrect conclusions about the possibility of establishing so-called working people's societies. Here, Chernyshevsky did not go beyond Saint-Simon and Fourier, under whose influence he described his ``working people's societies" which had at their disposal workshops, hospitals, schools, libraries, concert halls, dining halls and even shops. The members of these societies also engaged in farming. The working men received wages, and the society provided its members with housing, for which rent was paid. ``In short, the society is in the same relationship with its members as the factory owner and the landlord are with respect to their working men and tenants."^^104^^ The effect was to spread the idea of social property in contrast to private property, and Chernyshevsky argued cogently that mankind's true economic, social and intellectual progress needed to be connected with the establishment and development of social property.In the light of this, Chernyshevsky considered the historical prospects before the commune. He ridiculed the views of the Slavophiles, who claimed that the commune was exclusive to Russian or Slavonic history. He stressed that ``the communal land system in the form in which it now exists in this country will be found among many other peoples which have yet to emerge from relations close to the patriarchal order, and existed among all the others when they were close to that order.... The preservation of the commune in land relationships, which in this sense has disappeared among other peoples, merely goes to show that we have lived much less than these other peoples."^^105^^ The establishment of private land ownership was a progressive stage, but the introduction of communal ownership in the future would in no sense be a mere preservation of the existing order or a return to the past. It would be a new and higher stage of social development, which would be similar only in form from its beginnings. Chernyshevsky considered the operation of the dialectical law of negation of the negation, taking his facts from the natural and social sciences, including linguistics, and then returned to consider the history of the commune.
What were the conditions in which the communal form of property would signify a new and higher stage of social development? To answer the question, Chernyshevsky considered that point in agrarian history when ``the cultivation of the land begins to require capital in excess of the resources at the disposal of the vast majority of farmers, while _-_-_
~^^103^^ N. G. Chernyshevsky, Selected Economic Works, Vol. II, p. 363 (in Russian).
~^^104^^ Ibid., p. 373.
~^^105^^ Ibid.. Vol. I, p. 696.
85 agriculture calls for a scale that is well in excess of the potential of the individual family, and in the extent of economic tracts also excludes (under private property) the vast majority of farmers from participation in the benefits accruing from economic operations, and converts this majority into wage labourers. These changes destroy the causes of the advantages of private land ownership over communal ownership which had existed in the past."^^106^^ Thus, the transition to communal property paved the way for the development of capitalism, its invasion of agriculture, as in the West. In these new conditions, Chernyshevsky believed, the advantages that private property had over the commune disappeared and ``communal ownership appears to be necessary not only for the welfare of the farming class, but also for the successes of agriculture itself: it turns out to be the only reasonable and full-fledged way of combining the farmers' benefit with land improvement, and production methods with honest work".^^107^^ Chernyshevsky did not consider the question of whether civilisation had attained the highest stage at which communal ownership became necessary, for he was interested in the logic of social development, its uniformity, in virtue of which social property in land must inevitably substitute for private property, so becoming the higher stage. For his period, Chernyshevsky obviously gave a striking and profound interpretation of one of the key aspects of material development, even looking well into the future and considering the question of the inevitable triumph of social property in agriculture.Chernyshevsky erred in assuming that the development of capitalist relations in agriculture in the West, which emphasised the advantages of social property in agriculture, made it unnecessary for Russia to advance along the Western way. The problem arising for Chernyshevsky in this connection, and one which he was very much concerned with, was the possibility of accelerating the historical process. He wrote: ``We are concerned with this question: must a given social phenomenon in the actual life of every society go through all the logical moments, or can it under favourable circumstances go from the first or second stage of development directly on to the fifth or the sixth, missing the intermediate ones, as we find it occurring in individual life and in the processes of physical nature?"^^108^^ Chernyshevsky found the right answer: ``When a social phenomenon in a people has reached a high stage of development its course up to that stage in another, lagging people can take place much faster than it had in the advanced people."^^109^^ In this context, _-_-_
~^^106^^ Ibid., pp. 716--17.
~^^107^^ Ibid., p. 717.
~^^108^^ Ibid., p. 728.
~^^109^^ Ibid., p. 729.
86 Chernyshevsky said that ``history, like any grandmother, has most love for her younger grandchildren".^^110^^Marx and Engels believed that only after the socialist revolution triumphed in the West would it be possible for the lagging countries to take shortcuts in development.
But while Chernyshevsky posed the question of a noncapitalist way of development for the lagging countries and provided the right philosophical and sociological substantiation, his answer was closely bound up with the ideas of Utopian socialism. He believed that the stage of capitalist development in the West had almost run out and he saw no possibilities for capitalism in Russia. This showed his utopianism. He had come very close to finding the right answer to one of the most important problems of social development but had missed the right path under the influence of socialist Utopian ideas. In order to find the right answer one had to know about the proletarian revolution, its role in history and its preparation in the West. That is a key category of scientific sociology of which Chernyshevsky was not aware.
He was a close student of land relations in the West and reached the conclusion that capital there was being invested in agriculture on a vast scale, so that there were no prospects for the development or flourishing of small peasant farms, because ``the petty producers are unable to rival the big ones".^^111^^ He stressed that in virtue of this there was, in France, for instance, an urge to set up ``agricultural unions''.
Chernyshevsky was aware that in the West the proletariat was moving to a period of battle because, ``on the one hand, the proletarians' demands still remain unsatisfied, and on the other, the number of proletarians has been growing steadily and, what is most important, their awareness of their own strength has been growing and their understanding of their own requirements is being clarified".^^112^^ That is a most profound observation. But what were the requirements of the rising proletariat? Chernyshevsky quoted an item from the press and fully accepted it: ``The working class in Western Europe is agitated, demanding that the principles of association should be applied to its labour, and proclaiming with ever greater insistence on work from the government and collective workshops.''~^^113^^ However, Chernyshevsky did not quite see the importance of this movement, for he believed that it heralded the early realisation of the socialist-Utopian programme, and that again was evidence of his utopianism.
Chernyshevsky apparently assumed that there was some possibility of peaceful development towards socialism in Britain, but held that in _-_-_
~^^110^^ N. G. Chernyshevsky. Selected Economic Works, Vol. I, p. 727.
~^^111^^ Ibid., p. 323.
~^^112^^ Ibid., p. 301.
~^^113^^ Ibid., p. 305.
87 France it was bound to involve the use of force. At any rate, Chernyshevsky contrasted the two countries: ``Compare Britain and France: in both countries private property holds sway; whence, in that case, Britain's successes in agriculture, which are not paralleled in France? In Britain there is a sound legal order which no one dares or wants to upset, because any requirement of which society has become aware comes to triumph through the peaceful way of legitimate demand and debate; there is nothing of the sort in France, where however clear society may be about the need for reform or however reasonably it may argue in favour of one, reform can be achieved only through the use of force---and that is the main distinction."^^114^^ But even in France, he believed, the use of force led to the establishment of workers' societies. Chernyshevsky was sure that the socialist revolution was an insuperable movement, but his view of the revolution in the West was wrong.He also believed that Russia, with its patriarchal survivals in the form of communal ownership, was also being involved in the irresistible process, and there was nothing new about this for the West, as Herzen had insisted. Chernyshevsky felt that Europe had nothing to learn from Russia's communal system, but he did not identify the future socialist system in Russia with the commune that had come down from the past. He believed that the future socialist system and the commune had only that in common that they were based on the same principle, and so held that the commune should be preserved until the period of socialist change after the revolution.
In a Manifesto addressed To the Serf Peasants, Chernyshevsky put forward a programme which provided that ``the people should be the head of everything, while its superiors should submit to the village community, justice should be meted out equally and justly to everyone, and no one should take liberties with the peasant"^^115^^ In the same appeal, Chernyshevsky said that in France, for instance, there was no legal difference between man and man, ``whether he farmed the land, or whether he hired others to farm his land for him; whether he had much land and was rich, or had little land and was poor, there was no difference in title".^^116^^ He said that the first thing to do was to secure this kind of order through revolutionary action, this required only ``that the peasants should be united within themselves, that they should have the skill and build up their strength".^^117^^ Only after the revolution, when the question of a better system arose, would there be use for the commune as a form for tackling the problem of fundamental social change. He urged the people to revolution and prepared for it.
_-_-_~^^114^^ N. G. Chernyshevsky, op. cit., p. 300.
~^^115^^ Ibid., p. 613.
~^^116^^ Ibid., Vol. II, p. 611.
~^^117^^ Ibid., p. 614.
88Chernyshevsky's social ideas were elaborated by N. A. Dobrolyubov, with his great capacity for clear and imaginative thinking. He attacked the apology of capitalism and drew a comparison between two important historical epochs---feudalism and capitalism---showing their common exploitative basis and pointing out that ``with the development of education in the exploiting classes only the form of exploitation changed, becoming subtler and more refined; but the substance of it remains the same so long as the possibility for exploitation is there"^^118^^ This analysis of the two formations comes close to Marxism, going well beyond Saint-Simon and Fourier.
Dobrolyubov criticised bourgeois liberalism and exposed the alliance between the bourgeoisie and the landed reactionaries based on their common class interests. He wrote: ``A closer look shows that despite the apparent discord between gross arbitrary action and enlightened capital there is a secret and implicit alliance ... which has one end in view: to resist the working men in a common effort to prevent them from insisting on their rights...."^^119^^ Elaborating on this idea, Dobrolyubov sketched out the historical origins of this alliance: ``The struggle of the cities against feudalism was hot and resolute only up to the point at which the distinction between the bourgeoisie and the working man began to emerge for the one side and the other. Once this distinction was realised, both warring parties began to restrain their impulses and even to make attempts at a rapprochement apparently in face of a new and common enemy."^^120^^ In 1859, there were not many other minds in Europe, apart from Marx and Engels, who were able so clearly to expose the social substance of the reconciliation between ``enlightened capital" and the landed reactionaries.
On the basis of this analysis, Dobrolyubov drew the conclusion that bourgeois democratic tasks in the West European countries still had to be fulfilled: ``This has happened in every revolution in Western Europe and this circumstance was, without doubt, highly favourable for the survivals of feudalism as a party already weakened. But for the petty bourgeoisie this timidity, restraint and accommodation was not advantageous at all: instead of inflicting a final defeat on the weakened party and destroying the very principle maintaining it, they allowed it to be strengthened out of the pusillanimous fear of having to share their rights with the rest of the people."~^^121^^ Such was the balance of forces within the ruling classes which had taken shape in Western Europe: a compromise between the landowners and the bourgeoisie in face of their common enemy, and the cowardice of bourgeois liberalism.
_-_-_~^^118^^ N. A. Dobrolyubov, Collected Works, in three volumes, Vol. II, Moscow, 1952. p. 658 (in Russian).
~^^119^^ Ibid., p. 663.
~^^120^^ Ibid.
~^^121^^ Ibid., p. 664.
89This balance of forces was also reflected in the political system of West European states: ``In consequence of such self-seeking mistakes the survivals of feudalism and its principles---arbitrariness, violence and plunder---have yet to be eradicated in Western Europe and are frequently expressed here and there in the most diverse, even civilised forms."^^122^^ The ``self-seeking mistakes" of the bourgeoisie ensured the triumph of reaction, arbitrariness and violence.
On the strength of this brilliant analysis of the political situation in Western Europe, where capitalism had won out, Dobrolyubov drew some conclusions for Russia's own development: ``Indeed, it is fortunate that we entered the arena of historical life later than other peoples. Looking closely at the development of the peoples of Western Europe and realising the state which it has now reached, we can entertain the flattering hope that our way will be better."^^123^^ But Dobrolyubov did not in any sense mean some special, noncapitalist way of development and said quite explicitly: ``That we, too, must travel along the same way is beyond doubt and is even in no sense regrettable for us."^^124^^ Dobrolyubov quoted the Russian liberals who said the same thing, but from that point on he differed sharply with the latter, emphasising his main idea: ``What has been done by other peoples is still too little.'' Consequently, there was need to go on and do this more consistently than Western Europe had done: ``There is no sense in doubting that we, too, will not entirely avoid mistakes and departures on the way of our future development. But our way will nevertheless be easier; after all, our civic development can run somewhat faster through the phases which it has so slowly passed in Western Europe. And the main thing: we can and must advance more resolutely and more firmly, because we are equipped with experience and knowledge."^^125^^ In other words, the Russian revolution would not involve a compromise between the landed reactionaries and bourgeoisie and could and would fulfil its bourgeois-democratic tasks. One can hardly put any other construction on these words of Dobrolyubov's.
These brief lines published in the censored press contain virtually the whole sociological conception of the revolutionary democrats.
It does not contain any statement of the final goal of the struggle or mention of Utopian socialist ideals, but we know that Dobrolyubov shared these. He wrote a long essay on Robert Owen, popularising as best he could under the press censorship the ideals of the great Utopian socialist. Chernyshevsky referred to the essay, apparently considering it important for the spread of socialist ideas. There is no doubt that _-_-_
~^^122^^ V. Dobrolyubov, op. cit., p. 664.
~^^123^^ Ibid., p. 667.
~^^124^^ Ibid.
~^^125^^ Ibid.
90 Dobrolyubov shared Chernyshevsky's view that Utopian socialist ideals would be realised after the revolution won out.The Russian revolutionary democrats sought to do no more than sketch out the contours of revolutionary theory, as a synthesis of ``science and revolution'', as Herzen put it. Their attempt to consider the world revolutionary process, and the place in it for Russia, which was moving towards revolution, is of special importance. Their attempt to analyse vital questions heralded the new stage in the history of social thought which renewed mankind's whole spiritual life and formulated a truly scientific theory of social development.
[91] __NUMERIC_LVL2__ Chapter Three __ALPHA_LVL2__ REVOLUTION IN THE HISTORYThe Manifesto of the Communist Party appeared in 1848, marking a fundamental turning point in the history of social thought. Of all the theorists involved in the liberation movement in that period, Marx and Engels alone gained a scientific view of the imperative of the time. They obtained the most profound comprehension and critically reformulated the achievements of the most advanced social thought, and also studied in practice and summed up the experience of the working-class struggle in Germany, France and Britain, the leading capitalist countries of the period. Lenin stressed that ``the genius of Marx consists precisely in his having furnished answers to questions already raised by the foremost minds of mankind".^^1^^ Marx and Engels were giants of revolutionary thought and revolutionary action, gaining a deep insight into the past, analysing the present and forecasting the future of human society.
All earlier development of social thought related to the period of the downfall of feudalism, the serf system, and the emergence of capitalism. The most acute social conflicts of the epoch, stormy revolutions and uprisings stimulated the development of social thought, impelling prominent men to consider the destiny of society, the ways of its development, and its future, which, they believed, would help to heal the deep wounds inflicted on mankind by the ordeal of history. Men had long since given deep thought to the question of social justice. Indeed, man's exploitation of man had been condemned in moral terms when capitalism was still in its cradle. The outcry became even louder when capitalism developed and its horrible sores were revealed. Social thinkers raised many questions but no scientific answers were to hand. A genuine scientific theory of social development was still to be formulated.
Meanwhile, in the late 18th century it was held that the epoch of the domination of science was at hand. Indeed, science had been scoring one great victory after another. Natural sciences and technology had advanced to a point where the earlier period appeared to be a mere prehistory. It was becoming clear that the age of steam, which had transformed the world, was about to end, giving way to the age of electricity, an even more revolutionary force. What was the importance of these new developments for mankind's future? In 1850, the model of an electric engine was on display in Regent Street in London, and Marx was one of those who came to have a look. There was every sign of a further rapid growth of technology and success in various spheres of _-_-_
~^^1^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 19, p. 23.
92 knowledge. Darwin's The Origin of Species appeared in the book shops nine years later. The idea of development was making headway in every branch of science. It had revolutionised chemistry. The scientific atmosphere was somewhat reminiscent of the period in which Copernicus and Galileo had made their great discoveries. In that period, social thought was embryonic. But if a scientific world view was to originate and successfully develop there was need for a revolution in social thought, based not only on the achievements of the natural sciences but also on the comprehension of their importance for the destiny of society. The lag in social thought exerted a drag on philosophy and the whole of human ideology. The first requirement was to release ideology from the distorting influence of the bourgeoisie's class interest, which prevented a deeper and farther penetration of reality and made it impossible to effect a correct theoretical generalisation of the advances in natural science. Nor was it possible to generalise the knowledge gained in the individual social disciplines like history, economic science, etc. All the leading minds were aware of the need for a synthesis of the sciences. They realised that new and vast potentialities had been opened up on social development. What did these amount to?Progressive thinkers were becoming increasingly aware that it was no longer enough to discourse on spiritual progress, the growth of science and the ultimate triumph of education as the substance of the historical process. The mind was being beset by new phenomena, and periodicals and other publications used new terms like ``the social question" and ``the labour question''. What was the importance of these problems for a theory of social development? The proletariat gave notice of its emergence in the historical arena by fighting great class battles, staging strikes and erecting barricades. It was no longer possible to confine oneself to theories of political progress heralding the replacement of the feudal political order by new institutions establishing the power of the bourgeoisie and to theories of mankind's intellectual development. Progress of mankind's social organisation itself was a question now on the order of the day. Was it true that the Utopias suggesting the elimination of exploitation and the establishment of social property were no more than a vain dream? Was it true that the social structure of bourgeois society was in accord with the ``dictates of reason and human nature'', so that it marked the limits of social development? These questions became the most important ones in ideology.
Bourgeois theorists declared that science had nothing to do with the elimination of man's exploitation of man. Science dealt with matters like the rotation of the Earth round the Sun, something that no one any longer denied. Meanwhile, the question of whether mankind was advancing towards communism had become one of the key ideological problems and also a most important one for social science to tackle.
93The most important ideological conclusions drawn by philosophers in the late 18th and early 19th centuries were of much importance for the correct answer to this fundamental question.
__ALPHA_LVL3__ THE MATERIALIST WORLD OUTLOOKThe importance of the ideological battles carried on by the bourgeoisie in the late 18th century were characterised by Lenin in these words: ``Throughout the modern history of Europe, and especially at the end of the eighteenth century in France, where a resolute struggle was conducted against every kind of medieval rubbish, against serfdom in institutions and ideas, materialism has proved to be the only philosophy that is consistent, true to all the teachings of natural science and hostile to superstition, cant and so forth."^^2^^ In this way, the vast revolutionary importance of materialism for the development of science, social thought and the liberation struggle was brought out for the first time in history. However, the triumphant bourgeoisie discarded the banner of philosophical materialism and in the defence of its power resorted to diverse forms of idealism closely connected with religion and belief in the supernatural. What is more, even the materialists of the past were materialists only when they dealt with natural phenomena but became idealists when considering social phenomena. On questions of social development idealism had shown itself to be totally untenable. It had grown into a barrier in the way of any advance in social thought.
The fundamental question of the relation between the spiritual and the material aspects of social life had been totally confused by idealism. However, without a correct answer it was impossible to take any further steps in analysing social phenomena reflecting human activity, consciousness and will. Before the discovery of the material basis of social life theories of social development inevitably boiled down to more or less arbitrary constructions in which human will and consciousness appeared as the crucial factors in the historical process. With this kind of approach, it was virtually impossible to do anything about eliminating man's exploitation of man and substituting socialism for the exploitative system. It all amounted to an expression of good intentions.
The few idealist thinkers who did try to tackle the question of the relation between society and nature and considered the problem of social labour, the key problem of social development, were always diverted by their idealistic dogmas from the right answer. They admitted that production consisted in man's exerting an influence on matter and its forces, but the recognition of this fact was no more than a prerequisite for the application of philosophical materialism to the study of the _-_-_
~^^2^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works. Vol. 19, p. 24.
94 historical process, so that if one stopped short at that point one did not actually apply philosophical materialism to consideration of the key questions of social development.First, there was need to explain the development of this process of influence on nature, and here the idealist had the opportunity of declaring that it was the development of human reason and spirit which ultimately determined the growing and deepening influence exerted by man on matter and its forces. Philosophical materialism required a materialistic explanation of the source of the self-development of this process.
Second, there was need to show the substance of the social bonds between men in the process of labour, because there man was neither alone nor isolated. There again, idealism lay in wait, suggesting to the thinker that the substance of these bonds should be found in the sphere of consciousness, in the human mentality, so that ideas and attitudes were eventually taken as the basis of all social development.
What has been said makes it clear that the application of philosophical materialism for an understanding of social phenomena is possible only if it is dialectical materialism, which explains the succession of social states in society's history as their self-development, indicating the inner source of social movement in the light of materialism.
Nevertheless, the materialism of the past, limited and metaphysical, was of much importance for the development of social thought. Let us recall what Marx said about one line of French materialism which ``leads directly to socialism and communism".^^3^^ Summing up what Marx said, Lenin wrote in his outline of The Holy Family that it was the easiest thing to deduce socialism from materialist propositions.^^4^^ These propositions urged the need above all to restructure the ``sensual world''. Thus, the right answer to the principal question of philosophy contained within itself the premise of socialism and its requirement to restructure the reality surrounding man. Marx said this about the logical conclusion to be drawn from materialist premises: ``If man is shaped by his surroundings, his surroundings must be made human."^^5^^ He drew the conclusion that the communists, like Dezamy and Owen, had developed ``the teaching of materialism as the teaching of real humanism and the logical basis of communism''. Consequently, the development of humanism inevitably led to materialism, because materialism alone was capable of creating real humanism. Marx believed that ``Fourier proceeds immediately from the teaching of the French materialists''. Communism and socialism inevitably started from materialist premises because they required a change in the conditions of human life for the emancipation and development of the individual. Socialist doctrines _-_-_
~^^3^^ K. Marx and F. Engels, The Holy Family, Moscow, 1956, p. 175.
~^^4^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 38, p. 44.
~^^5^^ K. Marx and F. Engels, The Holy Family, p. 176.
95 could not have developed without the materialist tradition in philosophical thinking. Marx stressed: ``The Babouvists were coarse, uncivilised materialists, but mature communism too comes directly from French materialism."^^6^^In the same context, Marx wrote to Feuerbach, concerning the latter's writings: ``In these works you---consciously or otherwise, I cannot say---have given socialism a philosophical foundation and that is precisely how the communists have understood them. Unity of man with man based on the real distinctions between men, the concept of the human race, transferred from the heavens of abstraction to real earth---what can this be but the concept of society!"^^7^^
In all these instances, it is materialist premises that were being dealt with, but alone these provided the basis for deducing nothing more than Utopian socialism and communism. If scientific communism was to emerge, there was need for materialism itself to develop, so as to embrace social phenomena and to give them a profound and full materialist interpretation. The connections emerging between philosophical materialism and social doctrines in the history of social thought had to be developed and enriched.
When dealing with materialism as the doctrine of real humanism and the logical basis of communism, Marx pointed to the connection between philosophical and social thought over the centuries. There was a logical and historical connection between the materialist tradition in philosophy and humanism, which for its part, was logically and historically one of the premises for the emergence of Utopian socialism. Humanist ideas inspired the Utopians in their quest for a social order fit for man. This was a further development and deepening of the ideas of humanism and recognition of the truth of materialist premises. Humanist ideas logically led to a denial of the system of oppression and gross private-property self-seeking, which distorted the human personality.
However, the premises of the old materialism were not adequate for solving the problem of the social conditions required for man's harmonious development. There was need for materialism in its most developed form. There was need to comprehend man's social nature, and the material substance and basis of social relations, which determined men's destinies and operated as the objective force of social progress. There was need to indicate the real possibilities and prospects for restructuring these social relations. Nothing of this could be provided by metaphysical materialism. Starting from materialist premises, various thinkers logically arrived at socialist and communist ideas as real humanism, but they were unable to answer the question of how to attain this ideal, and could not describe the real ways of advancing towards it, _-_-_
~^^6^^ K. Marx and F. Engels, op. cit., pp. 176--77.
~^^7^^ World Marxist Review, 1958, No. 2.
96 to say nothing what this real ideal should consist of. Here they found themselves captive to idealism.Scientific communism became a genuine science of man as a social being, a science of the conditions necessary for his full development. Real man became a subject of social thought only with the emergence of Marxism.
Marx and Engels released materialism from its limitations of the 18th and 19th centuries. The very concept of ``matter'' was raised to a new and qualitatively higher level. The concept of ``material'' came to include not only the natural but also the social, like the relations of production, which cannot, as such, be placed under the microscope, but which tangibly and with the inexorable operation of a natural law always determine the vital activity of its social organism. Man became a full-fledged object of philosophical thought. It was no longer a dim image of the real man, reduced to the status of a spiritual substance, or a passive apparatus receiving signals from the outer world, but man acting and changing the world and himself that philosophers now had to consider. Lenin wrote: ``Marx did not stop at eighteenth-century materialism: he developed philosophy to a higher level. He enriched it with the achievements of German classical philosophy, especially of Hegel's system, which in its turn had led to the materialism of Feuerbach."^^8^^ Lenin stressed that the main achievement was dialectics, the doctrine of development in its fullest and most profound form that was free of any one-sidedness.
__ALPHA_LVL3__ DIALECTICS AND SCIENTIFIC COMMUNISMFor the theory of social development, once a collection of more or less adequate guesses, to become a genuine science there was need considerably to enrich the concept of development and to give it true depth and fullness. Of much importance for this were the conclusions drawn by bourgeois social thinkers in the early 19th century, notably Hegel, who gave a profound critique of the false notions of development as some kind of straightforward process which were characteristic of the 18th century. Fourier had tried to abandon these ideas but having taken a step forward he found himself captive to a cyclical scheme. Dialectics alone provided a notion of social development, with retreats and repetitions of what had been travelled at a higher level.
Saint-Simon's metaphysical contrast of destructive and creative epochs was a naive attempt to gain an understanding of the connection between the evolutionary and the revolutionary ways of social development. Hegel's dialectics indicated the way to a correct formulation of the problem. Development was a ceaseless process in _-_-_
~^^8^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works. Vol. 19, p. 24.
__PRINTERS_P_97_COMMENT__ 7---594 97 which the new emerged and the old was destroyed, a process of ascent from the lower to the higher. Hegel's idea that contradictions everywhere generated movement, while gradual quantitative changes led to leaps resulting in a change of quality, was of tremendous importance. He summed up and developed many ideas expressed by prominent minds in the past, and Herzen was right when he said that dialectics was ``the algebra of revolution''.However, Hegel's dialectics could not be applied ready-made t6 the problems posed by the theory of social development, for this would not result in a discovery of the main thing, of the source of society's self-movement. Science had not advanced materially from the fact that the absolute spirit had appeared in place of Fourier's human passions. The absolute spirit provided no reasonable explanation for the concrete expressions of capitalism, which Fourier, for instance, observed. Saint-Simon's consideration of the role and prospects for man's conquest of nature was not to be solved either through an application of the dialectics of ideas.
Before Marx's lifetime, many futile attempts had been made to combine Utopian socialism and communism with Hegel's idealistic philosophy in the hope of producing a new world outlook. Thus, the German journalist Hess, seeking to combine Left-wing Hegelianism and Utopian communism, came to Paris at the end of 1842 in an effort to contact the League of the Just. Hess extolled in every way the idea of action and the ``philosophy of action'', but his political conception did not go beyond individual anarchism.^^9^^ The Left-wing Hegelian A. Ruge also came to Paris to spread German idealist philosophy and to ``unite'' it with some French Left-wing trends. He held that German philosophy ``would not become a force until it acted in Paris, merging with the French spirit".^^10^^ Actually, the whole boiled down to obscure idealistic discourses about humanism. It was quite futile to bring about a mechanical merger of Left-wing Hegelianism and Utopian socialism and communism. In their early works, Marx and Engels gave a devastating critique of these attempts.
In order to produce a coherent and consistent revolutionary world outlook, with dialectical materialism providing the only philosophical basis, there was need for a fundamental creative reformulation of the traditions of French socialism and the basis of German classical philosophy, so as to release dialectics from the fetters of idealism, and to carry the critique of the bourgeois system to its very foundations, to its economic and social relations, instead of a mere moral condemnation of the system.
_-_-_~^^9^^ See Auguste Cornu, Karl Marx und Friedrich Engels. Leben und Werk, Erster Band, 1818--1844, Aufbau-Verlag, Berlin, 1954, S. 455.
~^^10^^ Ibid.
98In his Philosophy of History, Hegel himself tried to apply the idea of development to history. He depicted world history as a kind of ladder leading mankind to ever greater spiritual perfection. That was an attempt to explain the past by fitting it into the Procrustean bed of an idealistic scheme. Hegel suffered a severe setback when dealing with mankind's future and seeking to stop the tide of history by presenting the realities of contemporary Germany as its consummation.
But Hegel also made some brilliant guesses about the historical process and came close to understanding the fundamental importance of the process of labour in social development. That is where his theory contains the origins of historical materialism. These were discerned by Marx and Engels who developed and enriched them and produced a coherent theory. Summing up Hegel's lectures on the philosophy of history, Lenin underscored the following important idea: ``Man with his requirements behaves in a practical way in relation to external nature; in making it serve for his satisfaction, he wears it away, thereby setting to work as an intermediary. For natural objects are powerful and offer resistance in many different ways. In order to subdue them, man introduces other natural objects, thus turning nature against itself, and he invents tools for this purpose."^^11^^ That was undoubtedly the origin of the right approach to analysing the process of labour, the basis on which society develops. Hegel elaborated the idea in the following words: = ``IN HIS TOOLS MAN POSSESSES POWER OVER EXTERNAL NATURE, ALTHOUGH AS REGARDS HIS ENDS, HE FREQUENTLY IS SUBJECTED TO IT.''^^12^^ Having quoted Hegel, Lenin added: ``In actual fact, men's ends are engendered by the objective world and presuppose it,---they find it as something given, present."^^13^^ These ideas of Hegel's suggested the possibility of applying materialism to an understanding of the key social phenomena, of taking the materialist approach to analysing the basis of man's whole activity. Having studied Hegel's ideas, Lenin characterised ``HISTORICAL MATERIALISM AS ONE OF THE APPLICATIONS AND DEVELOPMENTS OF THE IDEAS OF GENIUS---SEEDS EXISTING IN EMBRYO IN HEGEL".^^14^^ Thus, dialectics, the fullest doctrine of development, even when fettered by the idealist system, tended to make its way through the system and led to the origination of some correct conclusions concerning the key aspects of social life.
Hegel also took an idealistic approach to the question of the necessity in the historical process, and of the epochs of world history as necessary stages in development. He opposed the theories which presented the _-_-_
~^^11^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 38, p. 311.
~^^12^^ Ibid., p. 189.
~^^13^^ Ibid.
~^^14^^ Ibid., p. 190.
99 Emacs-File-stamp: "/home/ysverdlov/leninist.biz/en/1975/PS429/20070606/199.tx" __EMAIL__ webmaster@leninist.biz __OCR__ ABBYY 6 Professional (2007.06.06) __WHERE_PAGE_NUMBERS__ bottom __FOOTNOTE_MARKER_STYLE__ [*0-9]+ __ENDNOTE_MARKER_STYLE__ [0-9]+ __FOOTNOTE_MARKER_SEQUENCE__ continuous historical process as an agglomeration of accidents, as a sphere of arbitrary development. This was of much importance in the ideological struggle of that period. He raised the question of the alienation of man's activity under the domination of private-property relations, even if he did so idealistically, thereby paving the way for a critique of the ideology and social relations of bourgeois society.The dialectical method combined organically with materialism was vital to the theory of social development because idealism was proving incapable of tackling the fundamental problems in its interpretation of social phenomena. It turned out that the substance of social relations could not be determined in the light of idealism. Hegel, Marx wrote, ``puts self-consciousness in the place of man'', so that ``the most varied human reality appears only as a definite form, as a determination of self-consciousness''.^^15^^ There was need for a titanic mental effort to produce in place of the guesswork about reality a scientific theory of social development explaining actual processes, showing their objective laws and indicating how these processes were reflected in the minds of men.
But for scientific communism, based on a genuinely scientific theory of social development and the fullest and most profound comprehension of man's social activity, to emerge there was need for great advances not only in philosophy but also in the study of production, a special sphere of men's social activity. It was impossible to understand man as a social being without analysing material production, as otherwise thought was doomed to confine itself to Feuerbach's abstract man. Social thought as expressed in the writings of the Utopian socialists, notably Saint-Simon, had arrived at the question of the role this sphere had to play in mankind's future. Hegel tried to obtain a philosophical understanding of the meaning of labour in the historical process, but he was prevented from doing so by idealism.
__ALPHA_LVL3__ THE KEY SPHERE OF MAN'S ACTIVITYMeanwhile, many other scientists and thinkers were steadily working on various questions in economic science, preparing the necessary prerequisites for identifying and studying production, the principal sphere of human activity. English scientists studying the material conditions of man's life expressed some correct ideas, proclaiming that labour was the source of all social wealth, and formulating the labour theory of value, under which value was determined by the quantity of labour measured in time, with the exchange of commodities ultimately being an exchange of labour activity.
_-_-_~^^15^^ K. Marx and F. Engels, The Holy Family, p. 252.
100In 1662, William Petty declared that the value of commodities was determined by the value of the labour going into their production. That value resulted from human labour was also accepted by John Locke. Adam Smith regarded profit as a product of the unpaid labour of wage workers. In this context, Marx wrote: ``Important as it was to reduce value to labour, it was equally important [to present] surplus-value, which manifests itself in surplus-product, as surplus-labour. This was in fact already stated by Adam Smith."^^16^^
Thus, the question of man's exploitation of man and of the social substance of production in class society, the most important question in the theory of social development, was about to be answered. But Smith and other classics of bourgeois political economy failed to show the substance of capitalist relations or to bring out the deep-going contradictions inherent in capitalism. They failed to show the role of production in the historical process and to go on to a theory of social development.
Still, the question of social structure had been considerably advanced, as compared with the old notions of a solid ``third estate" or the totally naive notions of ``rich'' and ``poor''. Smith saw three classes in capitalist society---workers, capitalists and landowners---with wages, profit and rent, the form in which each derived its income.
Thus, science was still about to tackle the most important sphere of human activity, production. English economists concentrated on a study of men's material activity and did much in this line, making important advances in analysing capitalism and, in consequence, also creating the prerequisites for its scientific critique and for identifying its basic contradictions. The critique of capitalism did away with the unscientific view of that social system as setting the limits to all development. Indeed, social production and private appropriation did not in any sense mark the final point of the historical process.
But the English economists only took the first few steps, for they did not have any intention of destroying capitalism and substituting another social system for it. On the contrary, they regarded capitalism as a ``natural order" which best accorded with ``human nature''. For philosophical materialism to be applied to the cognition of social life it was necessary to reveal its material basis, for which it was necessary to formulate a Marxist political economy as the economic basis for scientific communism. From then on, social thought could no longer develop without relying on dialectics and materialism, on Marxist political economy.
A scientific analysis of the economy of bourgeois society became an instrument of vast importance in the struggle between united labour and _-_-_
~^^16^^ K. Marx, Theories of Surplus-Value, Part III, Moscow, 1971, p. 239.
101 capital; the spread of the basic propositions of this theory became an important means for uniting the workers and establishing a working-class party to struggle for the defeat of the exploiters.Marx considered politico-economic questions in a broad philosophical light. In his Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844 he had come close to bringing out the characteristic features of capitalist exploitation, stressing that labour and capital were irreconcilably antithetical and discovering that the course of economic development itself led to revolution and the emancipation of the workers, which also implied the emancipation of all mankind. By then, Engels had come to live in Britain and was of great help to Marx in his studies of political economy. Engels had made a thorough study of the Chartist movement and Owen's Utopian socialism, and had published an article, entitled ``Outlines of a Critique of Political Economy'', which was published in the Deutsch-Franzosische Jahrbiicher, containing some conclusions from his studies of economic theory.
Marx and Engels integrated philosophical materialism and economic theory to show that man's domination and his complete renascence involved the overthrow of the world of private property. Marx subsequently summed up his ideas in these words: ``My investigation led to the result that legal relations as well as forms of state are to be grasped neither from themselves nor from the so-called general development of the human mind, but rather have their roots in the material conditions of life, the sum total of which Hegel, following the example of the Englishmen and Frenchmen of the eighteenth century, combines under the name of 'civil society', that, however, the anatomy of civil society is to be sought in political economy."~^^17^^
The profound analysis of the economic basis of society helped to elaborate the view of world history and its motive forces. Hegel had paved the way for a correct understanding of the sources of society's self-movement as a dialectical process, but he had hidden world history within the human mind, declaring it to be a product of man's consciousness, of his thought, of his spirit. Economic studies helped to understand the social structure of society, but English thinkers did not consider the problem of the development of that structure and its contradictions, which worked changes in the structure itself. Although by the early 19th century, historical science had accumulated many important observations about social contradictions, it had not produced any coherent theory of the social process and had confined itself to a description of it.
_-_-_~^^17^^ K. Marx and F. Engels, Selected Works, in three volumes. Vol. 1, p. 503.
102 __ALPHA_LVL3__ THE SOURCE OF CLASS SOCIETY'SBourgeois historians during the Restoration in France showed very well that the class struggle (the ``struggle of the estates'', as they called it) existed in the history of society. That had been an important step forward as compared with the view taken of the historical process by the French Enlighteners of the 18th century, who believed that history consisted of nothing but the advance of reason overcoming ignorance. That was also a step forward as compared with Hegel, who, while saying that history was dialectical, ultimately reduced it to the activity of the spirit. Francois Guizot's assertion that history was made by the ``struggle of the estates" was also an advance over the views of Saint-Simon and Fourier. The great class battles of the French bourgeois revolution had not been fought in vain, and bourgeois scientists began to speak of the struggle of classes. The works of the French historians Guizot, Thierry and Mignet are based on the notion of the ``struggle of the estates''.
But they believed that the class struggle came to an end with the establishment of the bourgeois system. They saw the struggle of the ``third estate" and stopped at that point. With the victory of the bourgeoisie, the living thread of history appeared to break off. Summing up their views, Marx wrote: ``Thus, there has been history, but there is no longer any. There has been history, since there were the institutions of feudalism, and in these institutions of feudalism we find quite different relations of production from those of bourgeois society, which the economists try to pass off as natural and, as such, eternal."~^^18^^ For the theory of social development to become a science there was need to overcome the barrier which the class interests of the bourgeoisie had erected. An analysis of the economic basis of capitalist society in the light of materialist dialectics produced a deep-going scientific view of the basis of the class struggle.
The ideologists of the bourgeoisie strove hard to present the capitalist system as an everlasting one, which accorded with the ``requirements of eternal reason'', ``human nature'', the dictates of the ``absolute spirit'', etc. Philosophy, religion, law and economic doctrines were designed to justify these dogmas. The bourgeoisie used every medium of its influence on the working people in order to hold the proletariat captive to these dogmas.
``Marx's philosophical materialism alone,'' Lenin wrote, ``has shown the proletariat the way out of the spiritual slavery in which all oppressed classes have hitherto languished. Marx's economic theory alone has explained the true position of the proletariat in the general system of capitalism."~^^19^^
_-_-_~^^18^^ K. Marx, The Poverty of Philosophy, Moscow, 1973, p. 135.
~^^19^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 19, p. 28.
103Marx believed that history was not generated by ideas but by the masses and that ``theory ... becomes a material force as soon as it has gripped the masses".^^20^^ Even in his early writings Marx clearly expressed the idea that ``in order to abolish the idea of private property, the idea of communism is quite sufficient. It takes actual communist action to abolish actual private property."^^21^^ He was profoundly convinced that history would lead to it, and that the future belonged to the communist movement.^^22^^
The most important distinction of the ``new trend" lay in the fact that it proclaimed: ``As philosophy finds its material weapon in the proletariat, so the proletariat finds its spiritual weapon in philosophy."^^23^^
Marx indicated the only means of changing the world, which, Lenin said, was ``to find, in the very society which surrounds us, the forces which can---and, owing to their social position, must---constitute the power capable of sweeping away the old and creating the new".^^24^^ That was the most important result of the critique of the old world. Man's domination and his complete renascence implied the overthrow of the world of private property: that is the proletariat's mission, for it emancipates the whole of society in emancipating itself.
That was the proclamation of the need to enlighten and organise the proletariat for the great struggle of emancipation. The importance of the revolutionary world outlook for the proletariat was pointed out, and its indissoluble connection established with its emancipatory mission and its political struggle. The revolutionary world outlook could not exist without a philosophical basis and could not be reduced to a collection of maxims about the principles on which a future society was to be structured; it had to be based on a sound philosophical foundation and contain a critique of the political, economic and ideological principles of the old society. Without such a revolutionary world outlook it was impossible to unite the proletariat into a political organisation and to establish a party of the working class, which has already engaged in intense political battles. The emergence of scientific communism and the emergence of a party correctly expressing the proletariat's interests are closely connected with each other.
__ALPHA_LVL3__ THE POLITICAL ORGANISATIONMarx and Engels were the first in the history of social thought to formulate the key proposition about the role in social development of the _-_-_
~^^20^^ K. Marx and F. Engels, On Religion, Moscow, 1972, p. 45.
~^^21^^ K. Marx, Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, Moscow, 1974, p. 108.
~^^22^^ Ibid.
~^^23^^ K. Marx and F. Engels, On Religion, p. 51.
~^^24^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 19, p. 28.
104 political organisation of the working class and of its party. That was the only way to bring out in full the great social energy of the working class. History had not known any political organisation of working people comprising the world oppressed class, instead of separate detachments, showing a scientifically based prospect of struggle and setting the concrete tasks and ultimate goals in this struggle, which it guided. Before the emergence of the political party of the working class, the latter had been fragmented into various socialist and semisocialist sects. The fundamental turning point in world history, heralding the ultimate victory of the exploited over their exploiters, came when the working class set up its political organisation and formulated its revolutionary ideology. The proletariat began to unite into well organised and disciplined ranks for a sustained struggle against capital. Lenin wrote: ``There was nothing even approximately resembling this among the peasant serfs, not to speak of the slaves."^^25^^What then was the fundamental distinction between the political organisation of the working class and all other organisations of the past, and why did the emergence of the political party of the proletariat mark a fundamental turning point in world history and in the development of revolutionary theory?
Considering the period of antiquity, Lenin wrote: ``The slaves, as we know, revolted, rioted, started civil wars, but they could never create a class-conscious majority and parties to lead the struggle, they could not clearly realise what their aims were, and even in the most revolutionary moments of history they were always pawns in the hands of the ruling classes."^^26^^ The uprising of the slaves led by Spartacus merely created a military organisation which broke up once the insurgent armies were put down. Whenever the slaves succeeded in taking over for a longer period, they set up on a limited territory ``states'' headed by their own ``kings'' and isolated from the rest of the mass of slaves. These states disappeared when crushed by the superior military force of the slave-owners. Nor were the serfs capable of setting up a sound political organisation, even if the peasant wars were a higher stage of the revolutionary struggle than the uprisings of the slaves. Spontaneous revolutionary action by masses of peasants led to the establishment of various insurgent organisations restricted to the areas of the uprising, but never produced any political parties. These were mainly army organisations of the insurgent peasants confined to the time and place of the uprising. With the proletariat still weak, the masses of peasants ever more frequently followed in the wake of the bourgeoisie which directed them for its own class interests.
``Mankind moved towards capitalism,'' Lenin says, elaborating his _-_-_
~^^25^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 29, p. 486.
~^^26^^ Ibid.
105 idea about the historical development of the political organisation of the exploited classes, ``and it was capitalism alone which, thanks to urban culture, enabled the oppressed proletarian class to become conscious of itself and to create the world working-class movement, the millions of workers organised all over the world in parties---the socialist parties, which are consciously leading the struggle of the masses."^^27^^The origins of the great victories scored by the working people in the present period lie in the period when the proletariat built up its forces, became aware of itself as a class and set up its political organisation---a party which is capable of giving a conscious lead in the massive struggle. Only with the emergence of the political organisation of the working class, carrying on the struggle under the banner of scientific communism, did historical progress become a powerful force and was the lever discovered to overturn the world of exploitation and oppression. From then on the working class developed into an independent political force, capable of radically transforming social relations through its struggle at the head of the working people. In the course of the struggle, the working class and the peasantry set up an alliance constituting a factor of tremendous social and political importance. The proletariat attracted to its side various sections of the working people and the progressive intelligentsia.
The potentialities and prospects for the working people's liberation struggle underwent a fundamental change. The emergence of the revolutionary theory and the party of the working class marked a new stage of epoch-making importance in the ideological development and the liberation struggle of mankind as a whole.
The proletariat's class struggle developed from separate flareups to such powerful political revolutionary action as the uprising of the workers of Paris in 1848 and the Paris Commune of 1871. The origination and history of Marxism are at the same time the history and development of the political organisation of the working class from the Communist League to the First International and then on to the establishment of Social-Democratic parties in various countries. The development of scientific communism is inseparable from the history of the proletariat's political organisation and its parties.
In the period when scientific communism was emerging the proletariat was being lured by many a will-o'-the-wisp to stray from the right path. In the 1820s and the 1830s, the working class was being given all sorts of advice by spokesmen of various petty-bourgeois trends seeking to dissolve the proletariat in the mass of the ``people'', and also by liberal bourgeois leaders who wanted to intensify bourgeois influence on the working class and to convert the proletariat into a pliant tool of _-_-_
~^^27^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 29, p. 486.
106 bourgeois liberalism. In order confidently and boldly to advance, the proletariat had to discard all this advice and to strike ``a deadly blow at all these vociferous, motley and ostentatious forms of pre-Marxian socialism".^^28^^ Among the complicated problems faced by the working class were these: how was it to act in the political arena? What forms and methods of struggle was it to use? What were its immediate and ultimate goals in the struggle it had started? How was it most effectively to organise its forces to win in the ranging battle? There were no ready-made answers to these questions. These were to be provided by socialist theory.In the working-class organisations which had then emerged the following main lines appeared, showing that the question of the correct revolutionary theory had become the most vital and historically most important question. On the one hand, there were already signs of efforts to set up mass political organisations of the working class. The National Chartist Association was set up in Britain in 1840, marking an important stage in the development of the working-class movement.
On the other hand, various secret societies alongside diverse conspiratorial political outfits involving workers were being set up---characteristically---in France. They revived the tradition of Babeuf's ``Conspiracy of Equals" movement during the French bourgeois revolution. These visions were most forcibly expressed by the impassioned revolutionary Auguste Blanqui, who together with his followers believed that the hour of the second great revolution had struck and that the immediate task was to set up a revolutionary dictatorship.
Another propagandist of revolutionary ideas, revolutionary dictatorship and social equality was Theodore Dezamy, and the ideas were being spread by periodicals like L'Egalitaire and L'Humanitaire. The Egalitarian Workers' Secret Society was set up under the impact of these ideas. Engels, following the activity of this society from his home in Britain, said that its members were completely ignorant of ``history and political economy".^^29^^
In 1848, Marx and Engels put forward the great and fruitful principle of revolutionary struggle, the principle of working-class unity, both within the country and in the international arena. Since then, the working-class movement has developed under the banner of unity and on the basis of the principles of proletarian internationalism. In the lifetime of Marx and Engels the survivals of the old, petty-bourgeois notions were still strong and the principle of unity was fiercely attacked by the Bakuninists, while the Blanquists relied on groups of conspirators instead of the working class as a whole.
_-_-_~^^28^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 18, pp. 582--83.
~^^29^^ Karl Marx/Friedrich Engels, Werke, Dietz Verlag, Berlin, Bd. 1, S. 485.
107Engels assessed the activity of this brand of revolutionaries as follows: ``Brought up in the school of conspiracy, and held together by the strict discipline which went with it, they started out from the viewpoint that a relatively small number of resolute, well-organised men would be able, at a given favourable moment, not only to seize the helm of state, but also by a display of great, ruthless energy, to maintain power until they succeeded in sweeping the mass of the people into the revolution."^^30^^ But revolution cannot be made without the masses. The absence of a revolutionary theory had a negative effect on all the practical activity of the revolutionaries.
No brand of Utopian communist theory could provide an ideological basis for the establishment of a sound political, revolutionary organisation of the working class, for its organisational and propaganda work among the masses, for a definition of the strategy and tactics of the proletariat's political struggle. The fairly vague ideas and convictions about the principles on which the future society was to be structured did not, of course, make up any coherent revolutionary outlook and existed side by side with idealistic bourgeois illusions.
The Utopian socialists assumed that their socialism would develop without any political struggle within the entrails of capitalism. They had hopes that the rich would donate their riches for the establishment of a new social system, and believed that classes could be reconciled through the spread of socialist ideas. Both Saint-Simon and Fourier had assumed as much, and their ideas were carried further in theory and practical activity by their followers. Louis Blanc, the French Utopian socialist of the mid-19th century, has gone down in history as an ardent advocate of a reconciliation between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. Attacking the Mensheviks in Russia years later, Lenin called them advocates of ``Louis Blanc-ism''.
Thus, the proletariat, which had become aware of itself as a class about to start a resolute struggle in complicated historical conditions had need of a coherent revolutionary outlook which Utopian communism, to say nothing of Utopian socialism, was unable to provide.
The history of the League of the Just shows very well the existence of such a need. This ``half-propaganda association, half-conspiracy'',^^31^^ consisting mainly of Germans, emerged in 1836 and by the early 1840s operated as a ramified international organisation with its center in London and branches (lodges) in France, Germany, Switzerland and other countries. But its social doctrine was highly indefinite and its members were, in general, very careless about theory, political economy in particular. They were influenced by Weitling's Utopian communism, _-_-_
~^^30^^ K. Marx and F. Engels, Selected Works, in three volumes, Vol. 2, Moscow, 1973. p. 187.
~^^31^^ K. Marx and F. Engels, Selected Works, in three volumes, Vol. 3, p. 174. 108
108 which had had a progressive role to play at its initial stage but by the mid-1840s had become a heavy drag on the development of that part of the working-class movement which was still under its influence. Engels wrote: ``The tracing of communism back to primitive Christianity introduced by Weitling---no matter how brilliant certain passages to be found in his Gospel of Poor Sinners---had resulted in delivering the movement in Switzerland to a large extent into the hands, first of fools like Albrecht, and then of exploiting fake prophets like Kuhlmann.... As against the untenability of the previous theoretical views, and as against the practical aberrations resulting therefrom, it was realised more and more in London that Marx and I were right in our new theory."^^32^^ In 1847, a majority of its members declared their acceptance of the theory formulated by Marx and Engels and invited them to join the Union and to set forth their views as a manifesto. That same year it took the name of the Communist League and in place of the old motto---``All Men Are Brothers"---it adopted the new slogan: ``Workers of all countries, unite!" The Manifesto of the Communist Party, the scientific programme for struggle by the world's proletariat for its emancipation, appeared in February 1848. __ALPHA_LVL3__ THE WAY OF SOCIAL PROGRESSMarx and Engels showed that communism was a natural stage in social development. Marxism put forward the key propositions of the theory of social progress and also formulated and gave scientific substantiation to the theory. That is why it is a combat weapon in the struggle against the forces of reaction. In their writings, Marx, Engels and Lenin set forth a coherent scientific theory of progressive social development from the primitive commune across the centuries of exploitation to communism. ``The chaos and arbitrariness that had previously reigned in views on history and politics were replaced by a strikingly integral and harmonious scientific theory, which shows how, in consequence of the growth of productive forces, out of one system of social life another and higher system develops---how capitalism, for instance, grows out of feudalism."^^33^^
Just as higher mathematics is inconceivable without the Cartesian coordinates of x and y, which divided space along two lines, so it is impossible to study social development without the two basic coordinates of social relations: the relations of production and modes of production. These coordinates help the student of society to find his bearings in the chaotic tide of social phenomena and to understand the _-_-_
~^^32^^ K. Marx and F. Engels, Selected Works, in three volumes, Vol. 3, pp. 180--81.
~^^33^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 19, p. 25.
109 various forms of social relations in the various epochs, however patchy these may be, the changes taking place in a given society, however small these may be, and to comprehend ideology and social psychology.Once men gain a knowledge of the uniformity of historical development and have at their disposal the scientific criterion for separating the progressive from the reactionary, they cease to blunder about in the darkness and refuse to be the dupes of fraud and self-deception in politics. This enables them to dedicate their spiritual and physical forces to working for the great future of mankind. The Marxist-Leninist doctrine makes it possible to work out a strict and correct assessment of the actions of men, classes and parties, and to bring out the social substance and orientation of political ideas and doctrines. Communism is a natural result of social development; compared with it, mankind's earlier way comes to no more than a pre-history leading up to its true history. Once free of the fetters of exploitation, society develops at a more rapid pace and obtains unprecedented possibilities for advance. Scientific communism throws a strong light on the future economic, social and spiritual progress of mankind. The theory of social development has become a theory of transforming society, a guide to revolutionary action by the masses.
The founders of Marxism-Leninism showed that social progress is based on the development of the productive forces and the change in the relations of production which in antagonistic society occurs through social revolution. Marxism also established a scientific criterion for identifying the stages of the historical process, which appear as ascent from lower to higher social forms. Instead of the chaos of ``civilisation'' and ``cultures'', instead of the artificial schemes produced by the idealistic philosophy of history, it gave a scientific picture of mankind's advance, established the scientific periods in the history of society and showed the succession of socio-economic formations as stages in the progressive development of the economic, political and cultural life of society. Having formulated the most important category in the science of society---the concept of socio-economic formation---Marxism gave a scientific definition of the social whole, a scientific view of social life as the unity and interaction of diverse social phenomena and processes, and revealed the basis of this unity and interaction.
Marxism faces the modern period and makes it possible to consider any current social phenomena over the long term, in its development and in close connection with the history of social forms. The remarkable writings of Marx, Engels and Lenin shed a strong light of scientific theory on current events and processes, but they are also of vast methodological importance because they reveal the uniformities of social development. The Marxist-Leninist doctrine of society combines a study of the present, an analysis of the past and a scientific view of the future.
110Every social phenomenon can be understood in scientific terms only when it is considered in its connection with other phenomena, and with the developing social whole. The student of society taking the Marxist approach never loses sight of the social whole---the mode of production, the socio-economic formation to which a phenomenon relates---- whatever concrete phenomena he may study. Thus, he never loses sight of the thread of the historical process and the prospect of social development.
Marxism studies concrete phenomena in modern life in close connection with the given social whole, which is a stage in mankind's overall social development. At the same time, it studies the given concrete social whole in its movement, and considers all the processes going forward within that whole as being various aspects, component parts and elements in the development of the given socio-economic formation.
Lenin observed that the stormy revolutions which accompanied the collapse of feudalism in Europe gave a graphic demonstration of the basis of social development and its motive force, the struggle of classes, and added: ``The genius of Marx lies in his having been the first to deduce from this the lesson world history teaches and to apply that lesson consistently. The deduction he made is the doctrine of the class struggle."^^34^^ Consistently elaborating the doctrine of the proletariat's class struggle, Marx showed the historical necessity for the proletarian dictatorship, which puts an end to the domination of the exploiters and ushers in the epoch of the rule of labour. Marxism has shown that mankind's future is connected with the revolutionary overthrow of the exploitative system and the establishment of the proletarian dictatorship. This has resulted in the elaboration of a coherent conception of the worldwide historical process, of the doctrine of mankind's progressive advance. This doctrine is the highest achievement of social thought prepared by its development in the course of the class struggle over the centuries.
This conception of the world historical process is being most fiercely attacked by bourgeois ideologists because it is closely bound up with scientific communism. It is because of this that bourgeois theorists attack Marxism. The founder of revisionism, Eduard Bernstein, whose slogan was ``movement is everything, the aim---nothing'', sought to ``release'' Marxism from the doctrine of the ultimate goal of the working-class struggle. Bourgeois advocates go wild over the fact that the ultimate goal of the proletariat's struggle has been scientifically substantiated and derived from an analysis of social development.
_-_-_~^^34^^ V. 1. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 19, p. 27.
111A theory of social development assuming that mankind will have to live under capitalism forever, to hold sacred private property in the means of production forever, and to maintain various forms of bourgeois state and bourgeois ideology ceases to be a theory of development and becomes a doctrine of social stagnation. In our day, no theory of social development which ignores the principles of scientific communism can be scientific.
The need to do away with man's exploitation of man was long considered the key question of revolutionary struggle and social thought, and called for an answer. The scientific theory of social development brought out the uniformity according to which society moves from capitalism to a new social system, which may be generated by capitalism but signifies the abolition of the very basis of the exploitative system. The transformation of Utopian socialism into a science meant that the question of this uniformity had been posed and a scientific answer provided on the basis of an economic, historical and philosophical analysis of the whole course of social development.
The origination and development of Marxism marked a fundamental change in the view of the role of the masses in history, and signified a vast increase in the historical activity of the masses. On the basis of its analysis of capitalism, Marxism has shown the role of the working class which history assigned to it, a role it has started to fulfil. Marxism has provided all-round, scientific substantiation of the idea of an alliance between the working class and the toiling peasantry and other sections of the working people in the fight to abolish exploitation. These ideas worked a fundamental change in the notion of social progress. It is tremendously important for social progress that the great social energy of the masses should be combined with scientific revolutionary theory, and this was demonstrated by the experience of the Paris Commune in Marx's own lifetime.
The Paris Commune announced to the world the spontaneous awakening of the mighty power of the working class. The greatness of the Paris Commune consists in the fact that in its history, the ``revolutionary instinct of the working class asserts itself despite fallacious theories".^^35^^ The proletarians of Paris were being confused by the theories of the latter-day Utopian socialists, but the common sense of the working class gained the upper hand and it displayed its revolutionary initiative and creative approach. Lenin stressed that ``the Commune sprang up spontaneously. No one consciously prepared it in an organised way".^^36^^ That is one of the characteristic features of the great proletarian uprising in the 19th century. Considering the unfavourable conditions _-_-_
~^^35^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 8, p. 207.
~^^36^^ Ibid., Vol. 17, p. 139.
112 which had then taken shape in France for a victorious socialist revolution, Lenin said that ``French capitalism was still poorly developed, and France was at that time mainly a petty-bourgeois country (artisans, peasants, shopkeepers, etc.). On the other hand, there was no workers' party; the working class had not gone through a long school of struggle and was unprepared''. In consequence, ``there was no serious political organisation of the proletariat, nor were there strong trade unions''.^^37^^ The masses were yet to master revolutionary theory. This explains above all the serious mistakes made by the Commune, and these were analysed in detail by Marx, Engels and Lenin as they formulated a scientifically based theory of social development and its key component part, the doctrine of socialist revolution.When studying the experience of the Commune, Marx and Lenin above all put a high value on the historical initiative of the masses. The experience of the Commune showed very well that the vibrant creative approach of the working people was a necessity in building the new society. Lenin stressed: ``The historical initiative of the masses was what Marx prized above everything else."^^38^^ But this tremendous creative revolutionary energy of the masses can be most effectively expressed only when there is a political organisation of the proletariat, its Party, its vanguard, capable of leading the working class and the bulk of the working people.
The important conclusion which Marx, Engels and Lenin drew from the experience of revolutionary struggle, including the activity of the Paris Commune, bears on the political organisation of society carrying out a socialist revolution, a political organisation which must give the revolutionary energy of the masses the utmost effectiveness and purposefulness. Their profound theoretical conclusion was that the socialist revolution should consist in the proletariat's breaking up the old state machine and running the country by means of a new state. In his April Theses, Lenin put forward the demand for the establishment of a state of which the Paris Commune had been the prototype. He substantiated this idea in detail on the eve of the Great October Revolution as he elaborated Marx's ideas. Lenin made a thorough study of the experience in setting up Soviets in Russia, for he saw their great future as the state form in building the new society discovered by the masses themselves. He drew this conclusion on the strength of his study of the revolutionary initiative of the masses and the application of the scientific theory of social development to concrete tasks which sprang from the historical situation. This conclusion has become a part of the _-_-_
~^^37^^ V. I. Lenin. Collected Works, Vol. 17, p. 141.
~^^38^^ Ibid.. Vol. i:. p. 109.
113 treasure house of the ideas of the world communist movement as a whole. The historical importance of this conclusion has now been verified by the vast experience of struggle and victories since then.After the Soviet state had been established, Lenin also referred to Marx's assessment of the experience of the Commune. In his report at the Third All-Russia Congress of Soviets, Lenin compared the experience of the Commune and that of the Soviet power and drew the conclusion that since 1871 the international working-class movement had taken a great stride forward and that the Soviet power was in a situation that was immensely more favourable than the Commune. The workers, peasants and soldiers of Russia had succeeded in setting up a powerful apparatus---the Soviet power---which was established throughout the country and enjoyed the wholehearted support of the great majority of the people.
The Commune hoisted its banners just when mankind's history was moving from one epoch to another, but it served as a symbol of the inevitable dawn of a much greater, third epoch. The epoch of 1789--1871, when bourgeois society was getting rid of feudalism, was becoming a thing of the past. In that epoch, the revolutionary energy of the masses gave bourgeois revolutions power and scope and helped to do away with the rule of the feudals. But at that time the working people were not yet able to set up a sound political organisation of their own, a mighty party to lead them along the way illumined by scientific revolutionary theory. The bourgeoisie sought in every way to limit any expressions of massive revolutionary energy and to keep down the people. For that purpose, the bourgeoisie entered into an alliance with the feudal lords and the serf-holders. After 1871 came the epoch of the decline and rottenripeness of capitalism, the domination of the most reactionary monopoly capital and the mustering of its forces by the new class, the proletariat, whose revolutionary energy was growing. The proletariat was equipped with a scientific theory of social development which indicated its place in the historical process and the way of its revolutionary action. The Paris Commune showed for the first time that state power can and must pass into the hands of the working class, that the dictatorship of the proletariat is a real demand of social development, and that the capitalists will have to leave the historical scene and clear the way for the new social system. The revolutionary energy of the proletariat is a great creative force, given the necessary conditions for its expression, and a revolutionary theory to guide it. Scientific communism has proved beyond all doubt that a knowledge of the uniformities of social development and of its potentialities and prospects is the most important prerequisite for the historical activity of the masses and a most potent instrument of progress.
114 __ALPHA_LVL3__ SCIENTIFIC COMMUNISM AND ITS STRUGGLEMarx made a deep study of the key trends in social thought and in 1843 criticised the utopianism of the French socialist and communist trends. In a letter to Arnold Ruge, he stressed: ``For although no doubt exists on the question of `Whence', all the greater confusion prevails on the question of `Whither'. Not only has a state of general anarchy set in among the reformers, but everyone will have to admit to himself that he has no exact idea what the future ought to be."^^39^^ The Utopians were aware of their point of departure, meaning that the advance was to be from capitalism on into the future, but they did not know how to advance into the future. Instead, they invented speculative schemes of a future social order.
In contrast to these Utopian attempts, Marx presented a ``new trend" in social thought, of which he says the following: ``On the other hand, it is precisely the advantage of the new trend that we do not dogmatically anticipate the world, but only want to find the new world through criticism of the old one."^^40^^ To discover a new world through a critique of the old one means to discover in the old society the real forces which could remake it and to determine how a new social system could actually spring from the old society. The unsubstantiated contrast of speculative pictures of the new world and actual capitalism was, according to Marx, a dogmatic anticipation of the future. It amounted to a lifeless utopianism deprived of revolutionary energy. Any dogmatism and its attendant utopianism are profoundly alien to the dialectics of life, practical struggle and revolutionary theory. As soon as it emerged, Marxism declared war on dogmatism, utopianism and the doctrinaire approach.
The Utopian socialists suggested the possibility of a social order under which each worked in accordance with his capacities and was paid in accordance with his work, but they intended to secure this arrangement under the bourgeois system, without any revolution. The Utopian communists called for revolution and a revolutionary dictatorship that were to usher in social equality and set up a society where each would receive in accordance with his needs. But their idea of revolution was utterly fantastic: it was to be a kind of miracle that was instantly to establish the ideals of complete equality, social justice and distribution in accordance to needs.
When asked why the new social system had to replace the old one, the Utopian communists had one answer: because of its indisputable merits. They had no idea of the real forces that were to act in accordance with the laws of history to establish the new social system.
_-_-_~^^39^^ K. Marx and F. Engels, Selected Works, Vol. 3, p. 141.
~^^40^^ Ibid.
115In their fight against various political trends, Marx and Engels sided with the revolution and joined the revolutionary movement from the outset. As early as 1843, Marx stressed that the task then was to carry on ``ruthless criticism of all that exists, ruthless both in the sense of not being afraid of the results it arrives at and in the sense of being just as little afraid of conflict with the powers that be".^^41^^ Thus, Marx insisted that this criticism had a political content and said that ``the critic not only can but must deal with these political questions (which according to the extreme Socialists are altogether unworthy of attention)".^^42^^ That is why Marx and Engels resolutely opposed the stand taken by the Utopians, who preached abstinence from political struggle.
Furthermore, Marx and Engels just as resolutely sided with communism, for they had no doubt at all that communism was the ultimate goal of the revolutionary struggle. But they began a profound critique of Utopian communism.
As early as 1843, Marx declared that because the Utopian communism of Cabet, Dezamy and Weitling turned its attention only to some aspects of the future society it amounted to a dogmatic abstraction. This one-sided abstraction inevitably produced another abstraction---Utopian socialism, i.e. ``a one-sided realisation of the socialist principle".^^43^^ Marx was not satisfied with the prospect of a one-sided implementation of the socialist principle, just as he was against the one-sided implementation of the communist principle.
These ideas already suggested the need to overcome the one-sidedness both of Utopian socialism and of Utopian communism. Scientific communism alone was capable of doing this. The Utopian socialists put forward the idea of a possible social system under which each worked according to his abilities and received according to his work. They proclaimed that men would come to dominate nature for the common good, but they believed that all of this could be achieved without a revolutionary transformation of bourgeois society.
The Utopian communists, like the followers of Blanqui, issued calls for revolution and the establishment of a revolutionary dictatorship which was to implement instant social equality by setting up a society in which each received according to his needs. But there arose this question: was society capable of satisfying all the needs of every one of its members the day after the socialist revolution? The Utopian communists countered by declaring that communism could start its way from a holy state of poverty. They ignored the question of the material incentives for work and did not consider at all the development of production and the _-_-_
~^^41^^ K. Marx and F. Fngels, op. cit., p. 241.
~^^42^^ Ibid., p. 143.
~^^43^^ Ibid., p. 142.
116 economy. In 1844, Marx was already saying that the ``urge for levelling" and the establishment of an equal minimum for all prevailed in ``crude communism".^^44^^ Indeed, this ``crude communism" which Marx first criticised in 1843--1844 amounted to a whittling down of social requirements to a minimum and total levelling in society on the basis of that minimum. Marx saw this as a call for ``the regression to the unnatural simplicity of the poor and crude man who has few needs and who has not only failed to go beyond private property, but has not yet even reached it".^^45^^This criticism contains the embryo of the idea that communism is possible only on the basis of an abundance of material goods. In the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 we also find the embryo of the idea that the new society must develop and in its development pass through a number of stages until it reaches perfection.
The lesser lights of Utopian socialism, whom Marx fought, considered the transition to the new society not as a single dialectical process of development in which the new and higher stage naturally followed upon the preceding one, but as a disintegration of society into separate cells. Whenever they suggested a breakup of social relations it was only in the sense that many social ties, characteristic of the epoch of capitalism, were destroyed, with centralisation giving way to total decentralisation, and self-sufficient commune associations substituting for the intricate system of capitalist relations between men, peoples and countries.
Bdkunin and Proudhon held that with the abolition of exploitation, men's joint activity would also be abolished, for they believed that the emancipation of labour implied independent activity by individuals or small groups.
Some Utopian socialists were quite wrong when they said that the emergence of the new society would start with the organisation of more or less isolated associations. Indeed, Proudhon based his ``associations'', in contrast to other Utopian socialists, on an equivalent exchange of goods and services, and not on social property. He suggested that the future society would break up into separate collectives, so that the bourgeois state would not give way to a dictatorship of the proletariat but to anarchy.
In 1847, Marx exposed Proudnon's ``poverty of philosophy" and drew the following conclusion: ``He wants to soar as the man of science above the bourgeois and the proletarians; he is merely the petty bourgeois, _-_-_
~^^44^^ Attention to this idea of Marx's was drawn by V. S. Alexeyev-Popov in his work, ``The Social Circle' and Its Political and Social Demands''. In the collection: From the History of Socio-Political Ideas, pp. 327--28. See also: T. I. Oizerman's circumstantial study. The Formation of the Philosophy of Marxism, Moscow, 1962, pp. 269--79 (in Russian).
~^^45^^ K. Marx, Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, p. 89.
117 continually tossed back and forth between capital and labour, political economy and communism."^^46^^ In the 1850s, Marx continued his criticism of Proudhonism and showed the flimsiness of the theory which held that artisans and peasants were to receive credit and land, and engage in a direct exchange of the products of their labour in order allegedly to bring about fundamental social changes in society. These were the Utopian aspirations not of the proletariat, but of the petty bourgeoisie, which was being hemmed in by big capital through credit and competition. All of this amounted to an attempt, Marx said, to invent something that would forcibly stem the growth of capital and the progressive development of society.In his sociological writings, Proudhon came fairly close to Comte's positivism and agnosticism and held that ontology as a science of substances and causes was impossible and that all that was accessible to man's observation was the relation between things. Proudhon borrowed his ``law of the three stages" governing the progress of society from Comte, or directly from Saint-Simon; he designated these as religion, philosophy and science. That was the sum and substance of his inadequate idealistic theory of progress.
M. A. Bakunin also to some extent started his theoretical exercises from Proudhon. Engels wrote that ``Bakunin has a peculiar theory of his own, a medley of Proudhonism and communism. The chief point concerning the former is that he does not regard capital, i.e., the class antagonism between capitalists and wage workers which has arisen through social development, but the state as the main evil to be abolished".^^47^^ Subsequent anarchist theories variously start from Bakunin's ideas, all being characterised by this amalgam of Proudhonism and communism, and all being hostile not only to the bourgeois state, but also to the idea of a dictatorship of the proletariat, without which it is absolutely impossible to carry out any deep social changes or to prepare the construction of a new society and to establish its first phase. For all their loud revolutionary talk and the display of Leftism, Bakuninism and other anarchist trends were harmful to the cause of the revolution.
Bakunin and his followers attacked Marxism from the positions of reactionary utopianism, declaring Marxism to be a state-communistic programme. In contrast to the idea of the proletarian dictatorship, Bakunin developed his anarchist theory of a riot by the whole people and the free organisation of masses of workers. He held that following a riot by the whole people, upon the overthrow of capitalism, a social system was at once to emerge under which there would be full satisfaction of all _-_-_
~^^46^^ K. Marx, The Poverty of Philosophy, p. 141.
~^^47^^ K. Marx and F. Engels, Selected Correspondence, Moscow, 1965, pp. 334--35.
118 material requirements through collective labour, compulsory and equal for all. Here Bakunin reiterated the ideas of Utopian communism.Bakunin imagined the new social system to be some emancipation of mankind from the operation of the laws of social development. Following the riot of the whole people the development of the social forms would cease, and society, broken up into its initial cells---- associations---would subsequently not undergo any qualitative changes, so that its development would amount only to quantitative growth. That was a definite step back in the history of social thought.
For the first time in the history of social thought, Marx and Engels, who relied on materialist dialectics and carried on a struggle against petty-bourgeois views, showed the most harmful role of voluntarism in revolutionary action. The will was the basis of Bakunin's whole revolutionary theory, and that is what Marx emphasised in exposing the Bakuninists. Engels had criticised the Blanquists for their voluntarism. Marx and Engels laid the basis for all the subsequent criticism of petty-bourgeois ``Leftism'' and showed how harmful and untenable this kind of theory and practice were.
__ALPHA_LVL3__ THE PROBLEM OF THE FUTURE SOCIETYLet us note that in 1844 Marx already criticised ``crude communism" for its urge forcibly to abstract itself from talent, etc.^^48^^ The idea of the need to take account of human capacities is contrasted to egalitarian communism. Marx held that communism was ``the genuine resolution of the conflict between man and nature and between man and man''. The entire movement of history is the birth act of this communism; on the other hand, for the thinking consciousness this movement is the comprehension of its becoming.^^49^^ While Marx was quite clear on his attitude to communism in that period as a trend of thought, he had yet to clarify the stages in the formation of the new society.
In The Poverty of Philosophy (1847), Marx gave a more profound analysis of doctrinaire socialism, when he wrote: ``So long as the proletariat is not yet sufficiently developed to constitute itself as a class, and consequently so long as the struggle itself of the proletariat with the bourgeoisie has not yet assumed a political character, and the productive forces are not yet sufficiently developed in the bosom of the bourgeoisie itself to enable us to catch a glimpse of the material conditions necessary for the emancipation of the proletariat and for the formation of a new society, these theoreticians are merely Utopians who, to meet the wants of the oppressed classes, improvise systems and go in search of a _-_-_
~^^48^^ K. Marx, Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844, p.
~^^49^^ Ibid., p. 90.
119 regenerating science."~^^50^^ Marx sought to discover the material conditions necessary for emancipating the proletariat and building the new society, and also to analyse the possibilities of the political struggle of the working class. The answers to these questions were given on the eve of the revolutionary storm of 1848 in the Manifesto of the Communist Party, which contained a profound analysis of the real ways in which the new society was to take shape, the need of the proletariat to make use of its political domination so as to wrest from the bourgeoisie the whole of its capital, to centralise all the instruments of labour in the hands of the state, that is, to organise itself as the ruling class and to boost the productive forces.Returning to the criticism of ``doctrinaire socialism" in 1850, Marx observed that ``the struggle of the different socialist leaders among themselves sets forth each of the so-called systems as a pretentious adherence to one of the transit points of the social revolution as against another".^^51^^ Scientific communism alone was capable of overcoming all these one-sided approaches because it had studied as a whole the problem of society's transition from capitalism to socialism. What were the stages of this transition that Marx and Engels set out?
In the Principles of Communism (1847), Engels replied to a question about whether it was possible to abolish private property at once, as follows: ``No, such a thing would be just as impossible as at one blow to multiply the existing productive forces to the degree necessary for the creation of the community. Hence, the proletarian revolution, which in all likelihood is approaching, will only be able gradually to transform existing society, and will abolish private ownership only when the necessary quantity of means of production has been created."^^52^^ Engels further explained his idea as follows: ``Once the first radical onslaught upon private ownership has been made, the proletariat will be compelled to go further, and more and more to concentrate in the hands of the State all capital, all agriculture, all industry, all transport, and all means of exchange."^^53^^ Thus, the development of the new society would be characterised by ever greater socialisation of the means of production: ``All these measures work towards such results; and they will become realisable and their centralising consequences will develop in the same proportion in which the productive forces of the country will multiply through the labour of the proletariat."^^54^^ The development of the new society would be based on a growth of the productive forces, and this would carry society to full communism. ``Finally, when all capital, all _-_-_
~^^50^^ K. Marx, The Poverty of Philosophy, p. 140.
~^^51^^ K. Marx and F. Engels, Selected Works, in three volumes. Vol. 1, p. 282.
~^^52^^ Ibid., pp. 89--90.
~^^53^^ Ibid., p. 91.
~^^54^^ Ibid.
120 production, and all exchange are concentrated in the hands of the nation, private ownership will automatically have ceased to exist, money will have become superfluous, and production will have so increased and men will have so changed that the last forms of the old social relations will also be able to fall away."^^55^^We find here the first outline of the ideas which Marx was so brilliantly later to elaborate in the Critique of the Gotha Programme, with special emphasis on the development of production in the new society to the point at which it would be possible to go over to distribution according to need. With the development of the productive forces, wrote Engels, ``society will produce sufficient products to arrange a distribution that will satisfy the requirements of all its members".^^56^^ Thus, as early as 1847, Engels clearly indicated the basic condition under which society would be able to go over to the communist principle of distribution. He stressed that ``a communistically organised society will be able to provide its members with the opportunity to utilise their comprehensively developed abilities in a comprehensive way".^^57^^ That is when the contradiction between mental and manual labour and between town and countryside would disappear.
Consequently, Marx and Engels clearly saw the task facing the proletariat once it had taken over. Lenin attached much importance to the following idea put forward by Engels: ``Our task relative to the small peasant consists, in the first place, in effecting a transition of his private enterprise and private possession to co-operative ones, not forcibly but by dint of example and the proffer of social assistance for this purpose."^^58^^ It was Marx and Engels who provided the answer to the most important question of what was to happen to the peasantry: ``Only the fall of capital can raise the peasant; only an anti-capitalist, a proletarian government can break his economic misery, his social degradation."^^59^^ This was the way for solving the problem which social thinkers had pondered without result over many decades. Thus, in place of the conjectures of the Utopian socialists and the Utopian communists about the future society there appeared a coherent theory of the emergence and development of the new social system, springing from capitalism and passing through these necessary and fundamental stages: socialist revolution, establishment of the proletarian dictatorship, a transition period, socialism as the first phase and communism as the higher phase of development.
The clear demarcation of the stages of the single process in which the _-_-_
~^^55^^ K. Marx and F. Engels. Selected Works, in three volumes. Vol. p. 91.
~^^56^^ Ibid., p. 92.
~^^57^^ Ibid., p. 93.
~^^58^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 21, p. 74.
~^^59^^ K. Marx and F. Engels, Selected Works, in three volumes. Vol. 1, p. 277.
121 new social system took shape and developed was a great contribution by Marxism to the history of revolutionary thought and revolutionary action.Marx said that with the proletariat's takeover, its enemies or the old organisation of society would not yet disappear, which is why the proletariat must apply measures of force, that is, government measures; if it itself still remains a class and the economic conditions in which the class struggle and the existence of classes have not yet disappeared, they need to be forcibly eliminated or transformed, and the process of their transformation must be forcibly accelerated.^^60^^ Such is the transition period.
Marx drew a distinction between socialist society ``as it is when it has just emerged after prolonged birth pangs from capitalist society'',^^61^^ and communist society, which develops on its own basis. Consequently, the development of the new society includes: 1) its emergence after long birth pangs from the entrails of capitalist society, 2) the creation of its own basis, and 3) its further development on this basis.
Lenin gave a remarkably profound insight into the substance of Marx's work on the questions of the future social system in contrast to Utopian socialism. He wrote: ``There is no trace of utopianism in Marx, in the sense that he made up or invented a `new' society. No, he studied the birth of the new society out of the old, and the forms of transition from the latter to the former, as a natural-historical process. He examined the actual experience of a mass proletarian movement and tried to draw practical lessons from it."^^62^^ On the question of communist society Marx also started from materialist dialectics, from the doctrine of development. Lenin wrote: ``The great significance of Marx's explanations is that here, too, he consistently applies materialist dialectics, the theory of development, and regards communism as something which develops out of capitalism. Instead of scholastically invented, `concocted' definitions and fruitless disputes over words (What is socialism? What is communism?), Marx gives an analysis of what might be called the stages of the economic maturity of communism."^^63^^ This idea of development, the idea of stages in the economic maturity of communism is the basis of the whole of Marx's work on the problem of the future society.
Marx clearly pointed out the direction in which social development would run after the socialist order was established and how the economic maturity of communism would be realised. ``In a higher phase of communist society, after the enslaving subordination of the individual to _-_-_
~^^60^^ Karl Marx/Friedrich Engels, Werke, Bd. 18, Berlin, 1969, S. 630.
~^^61^^ K. Marx and F. Engels, Selected Works, in three volumes, Vol. 3, p. 19.
~^^62^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 25, p. 425.
~^^63^^ Ibid., p. 471.
122 the division of labour, and therewith also the antithesis between mental and physical labour, has vanished; after labour has become not only a means of life but life's prime want; after the productive forces have also increased with the all-round development of the individual, and all the springs of co-operative wealth flow more abundantly---only then can the narrow horizon of bourgeois right be crossed in its entirety and society inscribe on its banners: From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs!"^^64^^Marx subjected to withering criticism the reactionary idea that the essence of the new social system would be a legalised sharing out of the whole aggregate social product, which society would entirely consume. Marx strongly attacked the demand for ``labour's uncurtailed income''. Exposing this proposition as being Utopian and unscientific, he wrote that from the aggregate social product it would be necessary to deduct the outlays for compensating the means of production consumed by society. Without this production itself was impossible. Furthermore there would be need to deduct that part that was necessary for extended production. Without this, the economy and society could not develop. There would also be the need to put aside a reserve fund as insurance against accidents and natural calamities. The costs of administration and other social needs would also be deducted. Without all this the progressive economic development of the new society was impossible. Only after all these deductions were made would there come the turn of individual distribution for the personal use of every member of society of the aggregate social product that remained.
When dealing with the satisfaction of personal requirements, Marx said that the share of the aggregate social income earmarked for the satisfaction of common social requirements would increase instead of decreasing. Thus, everything that was deducted from the producer as a private person would directly or indirectly be returned to him as a member of society. Marx clearly saw that as society advanced towards communism the importance of social funds and institutions of which all members of society had joint enjoyment would increase.
Thus, what Marx so brilliantly expressed was the idea that the development of socialist society implied an improvement of social organisation on the basis of a development of the productive forces and a growing importance of the aggregate, collective wealth and development of social property. This would also ensure the economic maturity of communism that would ultimately enable society to satisfy all the reasonable requirements of every one of its members.
In the fight against the ``vulgar socialists'', as Marx called the epigones of Utopian socialism, he criticised all these harmful and unscientific _-_-_
~^^64^^ K. Marx and F. Engels, Selected Works, in three volumes, Vol. 3, p. 19.
123 views. He backed up the idea of socialist society's indivisible fund, showing that the first phase---socialism---was a period in which the aggregate, collective wealth of society was accumulated. The ``vulgar socialists" reduced the whole theory of socialism to distribution, and distribution to a sharing out, presenting the social revolution as a disintegration and fragmentation of the national economy.In elaborating the theory of socialist society, Marx switched the emphasis to an analysis of production, the basis on which the collective wealth was created and multiplied. This dealt a crushing blow at the theories of ``vulgar socialism''. In the Critique of the Gotha Programme Marx wrote: ``Vulgar socialism (and from it in turn a section of the democracy) has taken over from the bourgeois economists the consideration and treatment of distribution as independent of the mode of production and hence the presentation of socialism as turning principally on distribution."^^65^^ In order to disprove these harmful views, Marx had to put in a vast amount of effort in studying production and the laws of its development, and analysing social labour.
__ALPHA_LVL3__ THE IDEA OF A WORLD REVOLUTIONARYOne of the greatest achievements of Marxism-Leninism in the history of social thought is its formulation and solution of the question of a worldwide revolutionary process. Generations of forward-looking thinkers had considered revolution in the context of individual countries. It is true that many of them assumed that the revolution would spread to other nations as well. What were the grounds for this assumption? In the 18th century, it was believed that the revolution amounted to a re-establishment of ``man's natural rights'', which the tyrants had robbed him of. That was also the view taken by the French revolutionaries. This line of thinking had led to the formulation of a ``right to revolution" which progressive thinkers in the period recognised. In the medieval period the feudal lords had the right to refuse allegiance to the king on some occasions, while the Church was empowered to release the people from their oath of loyalty to a king who had run afoul of the Church. The 18th century had established the people's right to uprising and revolution and had declared the people to be the sovereign source and vehicle of power. The revolution was seen as a progressive and beneficial act. The peoples had to recognise this and join revolutionary France. Many impassioned speeches in this spirit were delivered in the Convent. But if this had been an idea of a world revolutionary process, it was altogether embryonic.
_-_-_~^^65^^ K. Marx and F. Engels, Selected Works, in three volumes. Vol. 3, p. 20.
124When the idea of socialist revolution first appeared it was initially just as vague and abstract. Working on the question of a second revolution that would be the last one and would establish a revolutionary dictatorship and social equality, the followers of Gracchus Babeuf likewise said nothing about a world revolutionary process.
In the pre-Marxist period, the Russian revolutionary democrats had gone farthest in working out the idea of a world revolutionary process, and had considered the question of Russia's role in the revolutionary changes they were expecting to take place in Europe as well. They seemed to be thinking along two lines of revolutionary movement towards the ideals of socialism, one Western and the other Russian. But it was quite obvious that Herzen and Chernyshevsky merely strove to attain to an understanding of the world revolutionary process, but in effect stopped just short of formulating the concept. It was the remarkable call issued by Marx and Engels---``Workers of all countries, unite!"---that announced to the world the birth of a theory of the world revolutionary process, the end of the era of a working-class movement closed within national boundaries and the start of the era of proletarian internationalism.
Marx formulated the sociological law on the inevitable decline of all the formations preceding communism.
Communism is the result of all earlier historical development, and the most perfect organisation of society, ushering in mankind's true history. Marx indicated the real way and direction of historical development, putting the question of revolution within the world context in his coherent theory of the world revolutionary process.
But Marx also clearly saw and warned against the danger facing a triumphant socialist revolution which stemmed from the fact that on a vast territory of the globe in that period bourgeois society was still on the upgrade. Marx considered the external threat to an emergent socialist society and gave an answer in accordance with the contemporary historical conditions. There could have been no theory of the world revolutionary process without such an answer. In the period when Marx was working on the problem the world would have looked as follows once socialism won out: on the one hand, there were the advanced capitalist countries in which the socialist revolution won out almost simultaneously, and on the other, the less developed countries in which the bourgeois system was still on the ascendant.
Replying to the question in his Principles of Communism (1847), Engels said that the socialist revolution could not take place in any one country. He added: ``Large-scale industry, already by creating the world market, has so linked up all the peoples of the earth, and especially the civilised peoples, that each people is dependent on what happens to another. Further, large-scale industry has levelled the social development of all civilised countries so much that in all these countries the bourgeoisie and 125 proletariat have become the decisive two classes of society, and the struggle between them has become the main struggle of the day. The communist revolution, therefore, will be not only a national one; it will take place in all civilised countries, that is, at least simultaneously in England, America, France and Germany.'' Engels went on to say that the revolution ``will also exercise considerable influence upon other countries of the world, completely changing the hitherto existing mode of their development and accelerating it greatly".^^66^^
In the 1850s, Marx and Engels did not apparently have any doubts that the revolutionary process in the advanced capitalist countries would start in Western Europe and only later spread to the USA, where capitalism was still on the upgrade. In an international survey in the mid-19th century, Marx and Engels considered prospects for the development of the relations between bourgeois Western Europe and the USA as follows:
``Italy was the focus of world relations in the Middle Ages, Britain in the modern period, and the southern half of the North American subcontinent is now becoming a similar center. Old Europe's industry and commerce need to make tremendous efforts unless they want to reach a state of decline like the one in which Italy's industry and commerce have been since the sixteenth century, unless they want Britain and France to become like present-day Venice, Genoa and Holland. ...The Atlantic Ocean will be reduced to the role of an internal sea, like that of the Mediterranean today."^^67^^ Marx and Engels drew their conclusions against a broad historical background: Europe could lose its importance as the old center of capitalism, and that center could move to the USA. The emergent conflict between the old bourgeois Europe and the new bourgeois America was a natural stage in the development of capitalism, whose history had its beginnings in the medieval cities of Italy, then in wealthy Holland and Britain, with its bourgeois revolution, and in revolutionary France, which threw off the fetters of feudalism. Finally, capitalism had spread to North America, where it initially brought about a rapid growth of the productive forces, for there the influence of feudal and absolutist impediments was least, while the bonds with Britain were soon broken. In the mid-19th century, Marx and Engels were already considering the possibility of Europe subsequently being politically and economically dependent on America.
They drew the most profound conclusions about Europe's historical destinies on the strength of the experience of the 1848 revolution. They wrote: ``The only condition on which the civilised European countries will not be plunged into the same kind of industrial, commercial and _-_-_
~^^66^^ K. Marx and F. Engels, Selected Works, in three volumes. Vol. 1, p. 92.
~^^67^^ Karl Marx/Friedrich Engels, Werke, Bd. 7, Berlin, 1969, S. 221.
126 political dependence as that of present-day Italy, Spain and Portugal is a social revolution, which will transform, before it is too late, the mode of production and exchange in accordance with the requirements of production itself which are being generated by the modern productive forces, thereby making it possible to create new productive forces to ensure the superiority of European industry and so to equalise the disadvantages of geographical location."^^68^^``Before it is too late.'' Indeed, the hour of revolution first struck in Russia, and this at a time when the threat of its conversion into a colony of the US capitalists was quite real. The revolution did not occur in the center of Europe, but in its eastern part, and it generated great productive forces which have not only been successfully competing with the economy of the New World, but have also surpassed it in a number of modern technical indicators. That was the birth of a socialist world which has no fear at all of US capitalism. The contradiction between bourgeois Europe and bourgeois America has been developing in new historical conditions. Together with its overseas rivals, America has now entered a period of deep crisis and capitalist stagnation. The Soviet Union and a growing world socialist system now exist in the world, while the colonial system of capitalism is on the way out.
However, the way of development and prosperity for Europe indicated by Marx still remains its only alternative.
The shift of the center of the capitalist world to the USA is not in any sense an indication of strength, but of weakness. Western Europe has become its vulnerable spot. The world revolutionary process cannot skirt this old center of capitalism, for after all there is the other Europe, the Europe of which Marx and Engels were the two great citizens, the Europe which cherishes the memory of Lenin's genius. This living and fighting Europe does not regard the collapse of colonial regimes and the growing might of the socialist world as a threat to its future, but as the dawn of its democratic renovation.
Marx held that a socialist revolution in the West European countries could face a threat from the countries lagging behind in their development. Marx wrote: ``As for social revolution, what does it amount to except the struggle of classes? This struggle between the workers and the capitalists would perhaps be less fierce and sanguinary than it had been between the feudal lords and the capitalists in Britain and France. One should hope so. But at any rate, while such a social crisis could invigorate the Western nations, it could, like any internal conflict, cause an attack from outside."^^69^^ At the time, Marx feared the possibility of intervention by tsarist Russia against the revolutionary _-_-_
~^^68^^ Karl Marx/Friedrich Engels, Werke, Bd. 7, S. 221.
~^^69^^ Ibid., Bd. 16, Berlin, 1968, S. 204.
127 movement in Western Europe: Russia would once again play the part ``which it already played during the anti-Jacobin war and since the emergence of the Holy Alliance---the role of a divinely ordained saviour of law and order".^^70^^In 1916, Lenin recalled this idea of Marx's when he wrote: ``If the concrete situation which confronted Marx when tsarism dominated international politics were to repeat itself, for instance, in the form of a few nations starting a socialist revolution (as a bourgeois-democratic revolution was started in Europe in 1848), and other nations serving as the chief bulwarks of bourgeois reaction---then we too would have to be in favour of a revolutionary war against the latter, in favour of `crushing' them, in favour of destroying all their outposts, no matter what small-nation movements arose in them."^^71^^ Lenin also recalled that at the time tsarism had used some small national movements for its anti-democratic purposes.
Marx held that social revolution---``internal conflict" in capitalist society---could cause an external attack, an important question in the theory of historical process which he formulated on the strength of a vast array of historical facts. The threat of external attack always became real whenever a new social system was just being established in this or that country, while the old system was still a force to be reckoned with in the international arena. Internal conflicts spilled over into the international arena, where a struggle broke out for the victory of the new over the old.
Marx formulated this idea in more general terms in a letter to Engels on October 8, 1858: ``The difficult question for us is this: on the Continent the revolution is imminent and will immediately assume a socialist character. Is it not bound to be crushed in this little corner, considering that in a far greater territory the movement of bourgeois society is still in the ascendant?"^^72^^
In a letter to Kautsky in 1882, Engels appeared to answer this question when he stressed that socialist revolution in the advanced capitalist countries ``will furnish such colossal power and such an example that the semi-civilised countries will of themselves follow in their wake; economic needs, if anything, will see to that".^^73^^ But Engels did not rule out the possibility that other countries would rise against the states in which the socialist revolution had won out. Lenin subsequently summed up this idea as follows: ``An economic revolution will be a stimulus to _-_-_
~^^70^^ Karl Marx/Friedrich Engels, op. cit., S. 204.
~^^71^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 22, p. 341.
~^^72^^ K. Marx and F. Engels, Selected Correspondence, p. 135.
~^^73^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 22, p. 352.
128 all peoples to strive for socialism; but at the same time revolutions--- against the socialist state---and wars are possible."^^74^^On the strength of new data on the development of the revolutionary struggle in the lagging countries, Russia in particular, and the writings of the Russian revolutionary democrats, Marx and Engels were convinced that once the socialist revolution won out in the West the other countries could follow a noncapitalist way of development, because there, too, social conflicts and revolutionary forces were in the making. The important thing to stress is Marx's role in studying the Russian revolutionary process in his formulation of the theory of the world revolution. This was a new contribution to the theory of the world revolutionary process.
Marx and Engels criticised and corrected the mistakes of the Russian revolutionary democrats and gave a correct understanding of the role of the Russian revolution in the world process. In a preface to the Russian translation of the Manifesto of the Communist Party in 1882, they wrote: ``If the Russian Revolution becomes the signal for a proletarian revolution in the West, so that both complement each other, the present Russian common ownership of land may serve as the starting point for a communist development."^^75^^
But the revolution in Russia could start in various ways. Back in 1853, Engels believed that ``a noble-bourgeois revolution in Petersburg with an ensuing civil war inside the country, is quite within the realm of possibility".^^76^^
The Marxist classics subsequently stressed that the development of capitalism in Russia had gone so far that, as Engels wrote in 1894, there was ``accelerated transformation of Russia into an industrial capitalist state, the proletarisation of a large part of her peasantry, and the destruction of the old communist community".^^77^^This took Russia onto the path of proletarian revolution.
However, their study of the potentialities of Russia's historical development in the second half of the 19th century gave Marx and Engels ground to draw the general conclusion that after a proletarian victory in Western Europe the countries just taking the capitalist way with survivals of the tribal order could use these relicts of communal ownership and the corresponding popular usages as a powerful instrument for taking a shortcut in their development towards socialist society. Thus, the countries lagging in their development merged with the general revolutionary tide and reduced their way to socialist society. _-_-_
~^^74^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 22, p. 353.
~^^75^^ K. Marx and F. Engels, Selected Works, in three volumes. Vol. 1, pp. 100--01.
~^^76^^ K. Marx and F. Engels, Selected Correspondence, p. 74.
~^^77^^ K. Marx and F. Engels, Selected Works, in three volumes, Vol. 2, p. 409.
__PRINTERS_P_130_COMMENT__ 9---594 129 ``But an inevitable condition of this is the example and active support of the hitherto capitalist West. Only when the capitalist economy has been overcome at home and in the countries of its prime, only when the retarded countries have seen from their example 'how it's done', how the productive forces of modern industry are made to work as social property for society as a whole---only then will the retarded countries be able to start on this abbreviated process of development. But then their success will be assured."^^78^^ This is, in effect, a clear-cut formulation of the importance of the socialist system, which has become a world system, for the development of the precapitalist countries. This idea was subsequently elaborated by Lenin in new historical conditions.Lenin also later worked out Engels's remark on the power of example, of ``how it's done" not only in respect of the precapitalist countries, but also of the bourgeois world surrounding the country of victorious socialist revolution.
Lenin attached much importance to the fact that Marx and Engels drew attention to the foreign-policy conditions for the further development of the revolutionary process and that they pointed to an external danger in the event of a socialist revolution in Europe. Lenin stressed this idea as follows: ``Engels was perfectly right when, in his letter to Kautsky of September 12, 1882, he clearly stated that it was possible for already victorious socialism to wage 'defensive wars'. What he had in mind was defence of the victorious proletariat against the bourgeoisie of other countries."^^79^^ That letter of Engels's contained the following lines: ``One thing alone is certain: the victorious proletariat can force no blessings of any kind upon any foreign nation without undermining its own victory by so doing. Which of course by no means excludes defensive wars of various kinds."^^80^^
Thus, the writings of Marx and Engels contained indications about a possible stage in the revolutionary process when the socialist revolution, having won out in the advanced countries, was still forced to carry on a struggle for its existence and for its right unconditionally to determine the subsequent course of world history. In formulating a new theory of socialist revolution Lenin gave the closest attention to the fact that Marx and Engels had allowed for such a possibility. In the new historical conditions, with capitalism in its final stage, and with the conditions for a victory of the working class substantially different, Marx's theory of socialist revolution called for further development.
It was Lenin who fulfilled this vast undertaking.
_-_-_~^^78^^ K. Marx and F. Engels, Selected Works, in three volumes, Vol. 2, pp. 403--04.
~^^79^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 23, p. 79.
~^^80^^ Ibid., Vol. 22, p. 352.
130 __ALPHA_LVL3__ MARX AND OUR DAY __ALPHA_LVL4__ [introduction.]It is very right to say that great men do not have two dates to their life-span in history---birth and death---but only one---birth. Marx was about to leave the provincial German town of Trier, where he had spent many years, when the weavers of Lyons, in France, raised their banner on which they inscribed this oath: ``Live working or die fighting.'' Marx brilliantly discerned the emergent tendencies of the historical process. Today, more than 150 years after his birth, we clearly see that Marx continues to live in history, for in a sense he has merged with the historical process to which he made such a great contribution, a contribution that is inseparable from the leading tendency and the chief forces of world development today. Marx produced a doctrine on the development of social life, its foundations and basic elements, and showed that capitalism was a transient social form in the life of mankind.
From then on it was impossible to tackle any new problems without relying on Marx's doctrine of social development and the answers he had given to the questions arising about the destinies of human society, the nature of the future world and the real ways leading into that future. Lenin's great achievement is that, starting with Marx's doctrine, he produced solutions for the new problems and showed that Marxism could and had to develop on its own basis, brushing aside diverse attempts to supplement it with bourgeois views and theories on the plea that the ``new times" allegedly required ``new songs''.
__ALPHA_LVL4__ IMarxism emerged at that turning point in history when the idea of development began its triumphant advance, leaving a visible mark in the sciences of nature and when new prospects were opened up in the field of technology. Meanwhile, social thought was lagging behind. In that period, especially much was being written and said about man's conquest of nature, there was much talk about the age of steam and predictions of an age of electricity. But most theorists believed that capitalism was some kind of everlasting social form which would steadily and ceaselessly be filled with new content as science and technology advanced. Consequently, capitalism was set up as a lasting and as the most convenient form for a unity of society and nature. Of course, people still had visions of a just society, but no one knew how it was to be reached.
Marx not only showed that man's knowledge of nature was socially conditioned but also proved that the social structure and social relations in class society were not at all of such infinite scope that they could encompass the scientific achievements transformed into its productive __PRINTERS_P_131_COMMENT__ 9* 131 forces. Marx's greatest discovery was that there was a limit to the development of capitalist social relations, which at a definite stage became a drag on the great productive force of human labour and consequently on the creative power of the human mind.
Today many claim that this brilliant conclusion of Marx's is outdated. Since the war, theories praising the ``harmonious development" of capitalism have been widespread in bourgeois Europe and in the USA. The ideologists of imperialism have attacked Marx's theory in every possible way, making exaggerated claims about the ``salutary'' role of the bourgeois state, which, they claim, can resolve the contradictions of capitalism. The revisionists have followed in the wake of the bourgeois theorists. There has been a hitch in this chorus just now, especially in connection with the grave monetary crisis. It is becoming ever more obvious that the so-called state regulation of the economy under capitalism actually means no more than an expression and ultimately an aggravation of the basic contradiction which Marx discovered, namely, the ever sharper antagonism between social production and private appropriation. The monopoly-capitalist state, which acts in the interests of the whole capitalist class, is in a position to siphon off and use a part of the profits for social manoeuvring. But this inevitably tends to aggravate the struggle between the monopolies for power, generating fresh contradictions between them and political crises, creating opportunities for more vigorous action by the democratic forces and more intense working-class struggle. Those are the facts.
Of course, even today some insist on trying to ``correct'' Marx. They are ecstatic over the new machines being developed in the USA, and shout themselves hoarse about the scientific and technical revolution going on in that country. These people pretend not to notice the terrible destructive effect of imperialism equipped with modern technical facilities. There does not appear to be a single achievement which man has wrested from nature that the monopolies have not sought to use to destroy man. War is a continuation of politics in times of peace and, consequently, those who gear their policy to war poison the whole of political and social life with the spirit of destruction and hatred of man. Can this social system, whose incurable ills Marx showed with irresistible conviction, give full scope for creative social energy, when it seeks ruthlessly to destroy the working people, the chief productive force?
Another characteristic feature of present-day development is that monopoly capital is no longer able to shelve new inventions as it did at the turn of the century, because it is aware that these inventions are soon bound to be used to build up the industrial might of socialism, the Soviet Union in the first place. A highly intense struggle is also being carried on today in production, the main sphere of human activity. Socialism is on the offensive. Monopoly capital is restive: it no longer has a worldwide 132 monopoly and is daily faced with the steadily growing potentialities of socialism, its adversary. This works a change in the picture of world development, but does nothing to alter the nature of capitalism, whatever the revisionists, who have betrayed Marxism-Leninism, may say. In stubborn struggle, socialism has been demonstrating by its victories and achievements that it is the social form that presents boundless potentialities for the boosting of society's productive forces for the sake of the working man.
Emphasising the characteristic Marxist approach to the question of socialist society, Lenin wrote: ``There is no trace of utopianism in Marx, in the sense that he made up or invented a `new' society. No, he studied the birth of the new society out of the old, and the forms of transition from the latter to the former, as a natural-historical process. He examined the actual experience of a mass proletarian movement and tried to draw practical lessons from it."^^81^^ Therein lies the great power of Marxist-Leninist theory, which today rests on factual experience gained in decades of building the new society, the experience of millions upon millions of working people, without which the modern world cannot be conceived. The basic propositions put forward by Marx and creatively elaborated by Lenin have stood the test of time and have become indefeasible laws of social progress.
Furthermore, Lenin said that ``Marx gives an analysis of what might be called the stages of th'e economic maturity of communism".^^82^^ This problem of the stages of the economic maturity of communism---from the earlier transitional form to full-scale socialist society and the construction of communism---has become a problem in the social practice of millions of men.
In formulating the theory of socialist society, Marx switched the emphasis to an analysis of production, the problems of the creation and multiplication of collective wealth. The ``vulgar socialists'', as Marx called his opponents from among the epigones of Utopian socialism, concentrated on distribution and produced diverse moral and political tractates but ignored production, the basic sphere of human activity. They had no idea about the stages of the economic maturity of communism and did not even consider the problem of the development and maturing of the new socio-economic formation. In effect, the doctrine of Marx and Lenin of the new social system is a doctrine of the new relationship between nature and society, of the new character of man's use of the forces of nature, which can be achieved only if the social system itself has changed.
Man's struggle against nature in order to harness its mighty forces has never had such broad and real prospects before it, and never before has _-_-_
~^^81^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 25, p. 425.
~^^82^^ Ibid., p. 471.
133 the old social structure exerted such a terrible and distorting influence as present-day capitalism is doing. Today, many people outside the socialist countries have come to regard the once sacred words ``knowledge'' and ``science'' with superstitious fear. Such is the result of capitalist manipulations. Today, the use of the forces of nature by society has become a most urgent and concrete question of policy, bearing on the interests of millions of people. __ALPHA_LVL4__ IIHaving mapped out the ways for solving the key problems of social development, Marxism also first provided a firm scientific basis for the science of man. Marx proved that man does not exist outside his social ties. Man's social nature is the definitive starting-point for a study of him. The Marxist requirements for the development of the individual are changing social conditions, abolition of every type of social oppression and creation of new social ties based on creative labour free from exploitation. Without healthy social ties, the human mind is inevitably dulled and man's spiritual life impoverished. All of this has become an axiom which is attacked only by pharisees and liars in the old world. Nevertheless, the opponents of Marxism have recently developed the habit of claiming, without rhyme or reason, that Marx and his followers had ``forgotten about man''. Indeed, some theorists declare that Marxism needs to be ``supplemented'' with anthropology (the science of man) so as to be ``humanised''.
These are new versions of old songs. For a long time, the bourgeois theorists tried hard to present society as a chaotic conglomerate of individuals. Marxism-Leninism established that after society emerged from the entrails of the primitive system it was divided into classes, which constitute the basis of its social structure. In our day, there are no isolated, ``classless'' individuals. Social development, the struggle of antagonistic classes leads to the revolutionary abolition of exploitation and oppression, the abolition of antagonistic classes. With this paramount social change, society does not in any sense disintegrate into individuals, as the anarchist Bakunin declared in Marx's lifetime; on the contrary, social ties, purged of exploitation, become ever more necessary for the development of every individual. The demand for ``freedom'' for the individual from social ties and, consequently, from social duty is profoundly reactionary. In a state of such ``social weightlessness" man tends to lose the sense of his own personality. This can result only in grave degeneration of individual consciousness and a destruction of the whole mechanism of the social motivation behind human activity.
134Indeed, Marxism-Leninism considers and scientifically assesses social relations in the light of man's development and his interests. For that purpose it has introduced the categories of human capacities and requirements, a great achievement in the science of man. Without requirements and capacities there can be no expression of individuality, no ties between it and society, or of the internal structure of personality or individuality. The history of the individual, just as the history of mankind, is the development of human requirements and capacities. An analysis of the history of the human concept of ``knowledge'' bears out the truth of this. Purged of bourgeois lies, the demand for ``freedom of the individual" has no other real content but the demand for the satisfaction of man's healthy requirements and the development and application of his capacities. The individual, which bourgeois theorists keep contrasting with the social, in fact turns out to be indissolubly connected with the social.
Scientific communism has substantiated the need for a social structure that would give scope for the boundless development of man's capacities and their application in labour, and the fullest satisfaction of his requirements.
Exploitative society---capitalism in particular---ruthlessly distorts these very capacities and requirements. For the purpose of camouflage, bourgeois theorists have invented the mocking theory that capitalism is a society of ``equal opportunities for all''. Capitalism, they claim, provides opportunities for everyone to become a millionaire, and gives everyone the right to ``eat = off gold plate''. Actually, only those who have the power can realise this right.
It is an incontrovertible fact that socialism is a society in which man's social prestige does not depend on capital but on capacity and work. As history develops, man's growing requirements can no longer be satisfied on a private-property basis; private-property relations also constitute a barrier to the development of human capacities. It is socialism that requires man's and mankind's development.
__ALPHA_LVL4__ IIIMarx, Engels and Lenin produced the only scientific theory which says that man is capable of exerting an effect on social conditions, a theory of social action and social change. How do deep-going changes take place in the life of society? That is a question social thinkers had pondered for long. Many believed that social changes were created by will, idea and spirit. Frequently, this spirit was declared to be embodied in the ``great personalities" and members of the elite.
Marxism-Leninism showed for the first time the true importance of men's conscious activity, which can exert an influence on the historical 135 process when it is based on an awareness of the mature requirements of social development. This activity becomes truly effective when it looks to the working man, when it involves masses of working people, the true architects of history.
In defending and elaborating Marx's doctrine, Lenin refuted the Narodist theories, which claimed that history was made by `` critically-minded individuals''. In a society which has reached the capitalist stage of development no amount of ``outstanding personalities" could turn the tide of history until the working class, the greatest force behind social development, joined in the struggle. Even today some theorists, claiming to be progressive, refuse to recognise this truth which Marx discovered. Among them we find Herbert Marcuse, who denies the fact that the intelligentsia becomes a revolutionary force only when it adopts the standpoint of the working class in its struggle against the bourgeoisie and when it dedicates its knowledge to the victory of the working class.
In any circumstances, the forces of social progress can win out only if they accept the idea, formulated by Marx and Engels back in 1846, that the bourgeoisie and the proletariat become the two decisive classes of society, and that the struggle between them is the main struggle of our day.^^83^^ This struggle, which began over a century ago, is being continued in new conditions. The struggle between socialism and capitalism is the main struggle of our day. Those who reject this idea inevitably lose their bearings in the revolutionary struggle.
Other theorists insist that the national liberation movement is now the chief and even the only revolutionary force in the world. They extol mainly the intelligentsia and in part the peasantry---``the world village"---taking part in it, but they say nothing of the fact that the present-day national liberation movement has been developing and tackling the tasks of national liberation and social emancipation by borrowing much of the experience gained in the socialist countries, the Soviet Union in the first place. They forget that the national liberation movement enjoys these countries' assistance and that the mighty revolutionary tide, which is expressed in the successful construction of the new society, has been ceaselessly on the offensive against imperialism, thereby helping the advance of all the other anti-imperialist forces of our day.
The anti-communists among the bourgeois ideologists and some revisionists have attacked the Marxist-Leninist doctrine of the ways of the revolutionary struggle, claiming that Marx regarded the world revolutionary process as a one-dimensional phenomenon confined to the working-class struggle in Western Europe. On the strength of this, they _-_-_
~^^83^^ Karl Marx/Friedrich Engels, Werke, Bd. 4, Dietz Verlag, Berlin, 1969, S. 24.
136 suggest that Marx's ``model'' of the revolution has not worked. Actually, when formulating his theory of the world revolutionary process, Marx invariably linked up the possibility of a revolutionary victory in Europe with support for the European proletariat's struggle by the revolutionary forces of other countries. Marx said this was a ``hard question" and for many years worked together with Engels to give a theoretical answer. They made a study of the mass movements in the countries of the East, in India, and especially of the revolutionary struggle in Russia. Let us recall Marx's brilliant idea about the need to supplement the struggle of the European working class with something like a second edition of the peasant war in the countries where the peasantry constitutes the bulk of the population. Lenin subsequently gave a creative elaboration of this idea in his coherent doctrine of the alliance between the working class and the toiling peasantry.By about roughly the 1870s, Marx had worked out a scientifically substantiated notion of the two streams of the world revolutionary process: the proletarian movement in the West and the peasant revolution maturing in Russia, and the fruitful interaction between the two streams. Marx devoted much attention to Russia and spoke of its revolutionary forces with affection and respect. At the same time, he and Engels kept a close watch on economic and social changes in Russia, attaching ever greater importance to the emergent and rapidly growing proletariat in that country.
The question of revolution in the countries of the East was a difficult one for that stage of development in the world revolutionary process. These problems were brilliantly solved by Lenin at the following stage, but Marx and Engels already formulated this important sociological law: if the countries lagging in technical and economic terms were to shorten the process of their development along the way to socialist society, they had to see the example of ``how it's done''.
In the past, bourgeois revolutionaries and Utopians saw the revolution only as a means of destroying the old social system. Marx declared this to be absurd. According to Marx and Engels, the world revolutionary process necessarily includes the construction of a new society, and the successful construction of this society helps to stimulate the world revolutionary struggle.
The national liberation movement is closely allied with the development of the socialist countries, with the Soviet Union, with the international working-class movement, with the new and majestic phenomena in the life of mankind generated by the struggle and the victories of the working class. These phenomena have changed the whole situation in the world, and the whole course of world history. It is the unity of the three streams of the present-day revolutionary process that gives it the strength to destroy the old, moribund system of exploitation and oppression, and to create new forms of social life. Here, 137 as Lenin stressed, the main trend of the revolutionary process is objectively expressed by the working class, a consistent fighter against the power of capital in all its ugly manifestations.
Marx, Engels and Lenin also discovered the most important condition for social progress: if the working class is to struggle and win it must be organised. In the past, neither the slaves nor trie-serfs were able to create political parties to lead their struggle. In the past, the conscious element did not have a great part to play in the destruction of socio-economic formations. In its highest form, this organisation should take the form of a political party capable of giving a lead to the working class and the social forces following it: the peasantry, the intelligentsia and the other nonproletarian sections of the working people. Engels wrote: ``For the proletariat to be strong enough to win on the decisive day it must---and this Marx and I have been arguing ever since 1847---form a separate party distinct from all others and opposed to them, a conscious class party."^^84^^ In the new condition of struggle, Marx's doctrine of the working-class party was creatively elaborated by Lenin. Without such a political organisation it is impossible for the masses to display a high level of consciousness, and their influence on the historical process will remain no more than spontaneous.
The doctrine of the working-class party is central to the MarxistLeninist conception of social action and social change. In our day, with the October Socialist Revolution ushering the world into a period of great social change, with the general trend being transition from capitalism to socialism, the leading role of the Marxist-Leninist party, the principles of its structure and the structure of its activity constitute the most burning question. The greatest emphasis is being laid on it by bourgeois theorists, who seek to influence all those who hesitate and vacillate between the two camps, socialism and capitalism. These anti-communist attacks on the Marxist-Leninist doctrine of the party also show that the working-class parties, loyal to the banner of Marx and Lenin, have become a great historical force, and that the working people, who have set up such parties, who are organised in their ranks and who are inspired by their ideas, have built up a great force.
In the vast process of social emancipation across the world, socialist ideals are being accepted by hundreds and hundreds of millions of men, affecting their everyday activity and their whole struggle. In the new conditions, imperialism has to make a fierce effort to distort and denigrate socialist ideas. For this purpose, it is prepared to label capitalism as ``socialism'', while blackening all the truly important principles of socialism. For the same purpose bourgeois propaganda has _-_-_
~^^84^^ K. Marx and F. Engels, Selected Correspondence, p. 492.
138 been spreading false and distorted notions about socialist society, diverse theories according to which the economic basis of socialism---social property in the means of production---can be combined with the political organisation of bourgeois society to obtain a ``harmonious'' hybrid society, as if this were a matter of putting a few cubes together instead of the organic laws of development of social and political structure.The reactionaries attach much importance to the spread of individualism, which breaks up the working people's social ties and which rests on private-property illusions and habits. The idea of collectivism is being attacked, although this idea has always accompanied mankind in its social emancipation.
The present stage of historical development is characterised by the growing role of mass consciousness and the people's ability to take a correct view of the contending tendencies, to see the objective potentialities for advancing the revolutionary struggle and making use of these possibilities. In the world revolutionary process, spontaneous movements become ever more irrelevant, and there is a growing understanding of the truth that defeat is in store for those who grope their way forward.
Implacable struggle against bourgeois ideology is a historical necessity, and an important condition for keeping the path of progress clear of the fog of illusion which springs from self-deception and from deliberate deception by the imperialist reactionaries.
When considering the present strategic line of capitalism in the ideological struggle against Marxism, we find that bourgeois ideologists, terrified by the spread of Marxist ideas, have been attacking Marxism mainly as a system. They can no longer do anything about the penetration of various Marxist ideas into the minds of men, and they fear that these ideas may add up to a system, which is why all their efforts are aimed to break up Marxism-Leninism into fragments and to do their utmost to prove that today Marxism can exist only as a patchwork, with solid incrustations of bourgeois ideological conceptions. That is why the struggle for Marxism-Leninism as a coherent system is being intensified. Bourgeois ideologists ever more frequently resort to a peculiar trick in presenting some bourgeois conceptions as the ``last word in science''. In this connection, Marxists seek to have Marxism-Leninism say the truly last word in science in the course of its tempestuous development, in the course of the rapidly changing social scene which produces more and more new problems.
The whole of mankind, the peoples building socialism, the working class and all the other working people involved in anti-imperialist struggle, the countries swept by the national liberation movement all look to the example of the Great October Socialist Revolution, the half-century of rapid economic, social and cultural development in a vast 139 country, development that would have been inconceivable without the great force inspiring and organising the social energy of the masses, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. All the peoples witness the powerful advance of the socialist community. That is the most characteristic feature of progress today.
Marx discovered the unity of the vital interests and tasks of the working class on an international scale, as expressed in the slogan: ``Workers of all countries, unite!''. That was his starting point when he tackled the questions of organising and enlightening the working class. This key principle of Marxism-Leninism---proletarian internationalism---was subsequently attacked in countless ways. But this principle lives on, because it sprang from life itself and expresses its tendencies. Of course the working class has many tasks which it has to fulfil within the national framework. The number of these tasks has been growing and they themselves have been gaining in complexity. The Communists have shown that they express the best and most advanced traditions of the nations and work to keep them alive. The old attempts by bourgeois slanderers to prove that the Communist parties havabeen imported from abroad and that they are not a product of national life, are no longer seriously considered by anyone. The process whereby the Communist parties are becoming a key factor of national development has gone forward and has gained in depth. That is undoubtedly an important step forward in social progress. But that is only one aspect of present-day world development.
The other is that there is a steady approximation of the national and the international tasks of the working class. Today there are no historical processes which are bounded from the rest of the world by the national framework. Any historical event taking place in one country variously affects the interests of other countries. The event itself takes place in this or that international situation, and to some extent depends on it. This objective tendency of the world process is now also being realised by many leaders of the national liberation movement, who started out by advocating only nationalistic ideas. Today many of them already realise the importance of the international solidarity of the progressive forces for the success of their cause. Many are already becoming aware of the fact that the solidarity of the progressive forces on the scale of a given region or even a continent cannot be a substitute for broad international solidarity of these forces, and that this is of vital importance for the victory of the cause of social progress.
The Communists are the most consistent advocates of this tendency of world development. They are aware of their responsibility to the world's progressive forces for their solution of national tasks at home. This awareness of international responsibility has been growing despite various barriers and obstacles. There is also growing concern among the individual national contingents of the Communists in international 140 affairs, as otherwise it is hard and, in fact, impossible for them to fulfil their tasks within the national framework.
Bourgeois propagandists are known to hate materialist dialectics, and claim that the national and international tasks facing the progressive forces do not blend. They seek to induce them to look to their national framework and to forget about international solidarity, which they claim to be a relict. They deliberately confuse the question of leadership of the world communist movement from one center and the question of international solidarity, of the unity of this movement on the principles of Marxism-Leninism. It is quite obvious that today it is no longer possible to run the world communist movement from a single center. That is a past stage. But the international solidarity of the Communist parties, their unity and cohesion on the basis of Marxism-Leninism is a demand of the times. The future belongs to this unity.
The assertion of the principle of proletarian internationalism, which Marx put forward and scientifically substantiated, is taking place in the conditions of a fierce political and ideological struggle against the enemies of Marxism. That is why it requires that all Marxist-Leninist parties should constantly and persistently carry on organisational and educational work.
Speculating on the various difficulties, the enemies of scientific communism have long and repeatedly tried to undermine this principle. They have refused to accept it as the expression of an objective historical tendency making its way in struggle against national narrowness, and have claimed that this principle is an artificial onf which will never be realised. But the historical tendencies of social development cannot be destroyed by any trick or dodge, because these tendencies are backed up by classes and parties, the real aspirations of the masses of the working people and their struggle for their vital interests.
In his young years, at the start of his practical revolutionary activity, Marx stressed that communist ideas alone would not help to destroy the private-property system. ``It takes actual communist action to abolish actual private property,'' he said. He was deeply convinced that ``history will lead to it".^^85^^ This communist action has been developing in our day and embracing the whole globe. Millions of people have taken up the banner raised by Marx.
_-_-_~^^85^^ K. Marx, Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, p. 108.
141 ~ [142] __NUMERIC_LVL1__ Section Two __ALPHA_LVL1__ MARXISM-LENINISM:Marxism differs from all other socialist theories in the remarkable way it combines complete scientific sobriety in the analysis of the objective state of affairs and the objective course of evolution with the most emphatic recognition of the importance of the revolutionary creative genius, and revolutionary initiative of the masses---and also, of course, of individuals, groups, organisations, and parties that are able to discover and achieve contact with one or another class.
(V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 13, p. 36.)
A characteristic feature of the spiritual development of mankind today is that people in various parts of the world are coming ever more closely to understand that the Soviet Union has been tackling highly important tasks in production, the use of the forces of nature, the development of social relations and the education of man. The greater the awareness of these tasks by the masses, the clearer are their prospects of historical development and of their own activity and struggle for the future. When dealing with the ideological struggle in our day, we must say that our adversaries of every stripe seek first of all to minimise in every possible way the historical importance of the Soviet people's labour effort in tackling their grand tasks.
At the dawn of modern history, as society was shedding the fetters of serfdom, it was faced with some complicated problems that no one was capable of solving at the time. The answers suggested merely revealed a vague anticipation of man's vast potentialities that were to be expressed centuries later.
In the course of man's long struggle with nature, towards the end of the Middle Ages, there arose the question of whether it was possible to change the properties of substances and to invest them with new and required properties. Men were aware of the great power of fire, they had developed casting, and they suspected that the mixture of different substances resulted in qualitative changes. The alchemists spent days and nights with their test tubes and furnaces in the hope of obtaining gold by artificial means. They were hopeful of a miracle, and this was a far cry from science and its laws. They believed that all one had to do was to find the miraculous ``philosopher's stone" that would make it possible to produce gold. At the time, gold enabled one to buy and sell anything, for the cash nexus had already started its triumphal and terrible advance. Greed glowed and flared in the souls of men like the coals in the furnaces of the alchemists.
__PRINTERS_P_146_COMMENT__ 10---594 145But one bold mind, that of the 16th-century English humanist Thomas More, conceived a story about a distant and happy island without private property, poverty or oppression. He insisted with fierce irony that over there men used gold to make nightpots. This suggested a world in which money had no power. There arose the idea of releasing society from the ugly greed generated by private property. But at the time, the vision of a fundamental change in the social system was as vague as the hope of changing the properties of matter.
At that time, another bold vision was suggested by the Czech educator of the 16th-17th centuries Jan Amos Komensky, who claimed that it was possible to change the qualities of man himself. He had given thorough thought to the possibility of a general improvement of men to divest them of any trace of corruption. That, too, was no more than a vague bit of guesswork about the future. Bourgeois thinkers subsequently discussing the question found themselves in a vicious circle: to change human nature, they reasoned, one had to change the ``environment'', but to change the environment one needed to change man.
Modern history tells us about mankind's abandonment of the idea of finding the ``philosopher's stone'', and going on to create the science of nature and then a true science of the development of society and of man as a social being. The three visions were blending into a single one: the remoulding of nature in man's interests, the remoulding of the social system also in the interests of the working man, and the remoulding of man himself as the old moral and mental wounds inflicted on him by the exploitative society are healed. There appeared a philosophy which brought together these three tasks, providing a theoretical substantiation and indicating the practical way of fulfilling them. Marxism has proved that man cannot truly harness the forces of nature so long as he is fettered by the chains of wage slavery. He can become its master when he sets up a system for which exploitation will be just as barbarous a practice as cannibalism is for civilised nations. That is when man himself will change, opening up a new era in the history of society, the history of science and technology and man's own development. That was the origin of the scientific theory of progress, comprising economic, social, political, intellectual and moral progress in society.
The working class and the other working people also learned how mankind was to solve the problems posed by history.
Lenin formulated the answer in these few lines: ``For many centuries and even for thousands of years, mankind has dreamt of doing away 'at once' with all and every kind of exploitation. These dreams remained mere dreams until millions of the exploited all over the world began to unite for a consistent, staunch and comprehensive struggle to change capitalist society in the direction the evolution of that society is naturally taking. Socialist dreams turned into the socialist struggle of the millions only when Marx's scientific socialism had linked up the urge for change 146 with the struggle of a definite class. Outside the class struggle, socialism is either a hollow phrase or a naive dream."^^1^^
Thus, with the emergence of Marxism socialism became a science because it linked up the aspirations for change with the struggle of the working class to change capitalist society in the direction in which that society was itself developing. Marxism showed that any solution of the problems in society's progressive development inevitably implied a solution of the problem of the relationship between economics and politics, that is, a clear-cut definition of the behaviour and action of the masses that were to transform the world.
A fundamental restructuring of society requires that the working class should be in possession of political power, fundamentally modifying the political organisation of the society that caters for the power of capital. Consequently, in order to have a clear view of the path of progress and confidently to advance along it, there is need for a most precise analysis not only of the developing conflict between the productive forces and the relations of production in the new historical conditions but also of the whole sphere of politics, including the arrangement of social, class forces at every stage of social development. There was need to decide on the relationship between revolution and war, to decide when the socialist revolution inevitably assumed the form of armed uprising and when it could assume peaceful forms. These were all questions of mankind's progressive development, and the answers were provided by Leninism.
In the course of profound political conflicts countries and peoples among whom capitalism has reached a high stage of development move on to socialist revolution. That was demonstrated by Marx and Engels. But which is the way to take for the peoples still variously fettered with the chains of feudalism and capitalism?
The answer to this question bears on the destiny of the bulk of mankind, and it has also been provided by Leninism. The answer was found through a study of historical experience in a country with a highly developed, class-conscious and organised working class, capable of leading the working people to socialist revolution, but on the whole encumbered with numerous feudal fetters, and with industrial centres still no more than islands in a vast sea of small and scattered peasant farms. That country was Russia, and the working class there was led by Lenin and the Bolshevik Party. It is Russia's historical experience that has helped to find the answers to the basic questions arising in the progressive development of the whole of mankind, the advanced capitalist countries with their developed working class and the peasant countries retarded in their technical and economic development. _-_-_
~^^1^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 9, p. 443.
147 The theory of progress, the theory of the historical process and the theory of the world revolutionary process were blended in a single theory.Its key question, which had a bearing on every aspect of social development, was that of the course and stages of the world revolutionary process involving the population of the globe. Pettybourgeois revolutionaries saw the world revolutionary process as a series of separate acts by isolated armed uprisings. Marx and Engels showed these ideas to be unscientific, and said that revolution was to win out in several advanced capitalist countries. That was an approach determined by the epoch of premonopoly capitalism. In the period of imperialism, when the uneven development of capitalism was tremendously intensified, there appeared a real possibility for the socialist revolution to win out initially in one country, while the possibility of its winning out simultaneously in all the advanced capitalist countries disappeared. At the same time, there also appeared a new arrangement of the forces fighting for socialism. The working class finds it easier to win out in a country where the bourgeoisie has fewer possibilities to corrupt the top section of its working class. Russia in the early decades of the twentieth century was just such a country, and the historic possibilities it offered were discovered and used to the utmost by Lenin and the Bolsheviks, who showed the path of progress to all mankind.
An equally important question of progress was how mankind was to advance after a contingent of the world's working class had broken through the chain of imperialism. Leninism had to answer this question in the course of historical development. The uncontestable conclusion was that the destinies of mankind and of the world revolutionary process were inextricably bound up with the destiny, development and consolidation of the system of social property which had arisen on a part of the globe. How was socialism to be transformed into a world system? Which way was the world socialist system to develop from there on and what was its influence on the world revolutionary process? Without an answer to these questions there could be no modern theory of progress to illumine mankind's advance. Bourgeois and petty-bourgeois ideologists have tried in every way to minimise the importance of the world socialist system for the historical process as a whole. Practice shows that the world socialist system, including highly industrialised countries, can exert a decisive influence on the whole course of world developments. Some would also like to destroy the prospects for the development of the socialist system. On the plea that it is now impossible for all countries simultaneously to move into the second phase of the new society---- communism---they have proposed that this transition should be delayed even where it has matured. They have contrasted the development in breadth to the advance forward, failing to understand that today 148 progress applies to both directions, so that unless socialism advances its development in breadth it is bound to be slowed down. Such is one of the key formulas of modern progress.
The advance to communism is a solution of the key problems of progress. There are, first, the problems of using the mighty forces of nature for the benefit of all society and for every individual, the problems which, in other words, involve the construction of the material and technical basis of communism. This provides the solution for the key problem of economic progress, while laying down the direction of the scientific and technical revolution through which mankind is now going. There are, second, the problems of developing communist social relations, doing away with the distinctions between town and country, and between mental and manual labour, in a society without classes. This also paves the way for a system of communist social selfgovernment which substitutes for state power. This helps to solve the problem of social and political progress. There are, third, problems in educating the new man, that is, fundamental problems of intellectual and moral progress. The construction of communism is a key stage in society's progressive development, helping simultaneously to put the finishing touches to the scientific theory of progress. Without this mankind can no longer advance, because the period of blind groping is over, having given way to a period in which masses of people, led by the working class, are involved in highly conscious historical activity.
In the next few chapters, I shall try to deal briefly with all these problems, which have been posed and solved by modern social thought.
__NUMERIC_LVL2__ Chapter One __ALPHA_LVL2__ SOCIAL THINKING IN THE NEW EPOCH __ALPHA_LVL3__ [introduction.]In order to advance the development of social thought and to effect a fundamental change in its direction, Marx and Engels had to concentrate on materialism and dialectics, to produce the materialist doctrine of social development, and this called for a thorough study of production, the key sphere of human activity. In order to develop social thought in the new epoch---the eve of the socialist revolution---Lenin also had to concentrate on all three component parts of the Marxist doctrine: philosophy, political economy and scientific communism.
Within capitalism itself there were new trends indicating that production was becoming ever more social even in the presence of private appropriation. Bourgeois theorists held forth loudly about the 149 overcoming of ``the shadier aspects of industrialism'', the advent of an ``epoch of organised capitalism'', about the solution of social problems, the fading away of the class struggle, etc. Actually, these were signs that capitalism was dying and that the socialist revolution was on its way. Of course, progressive mankind, the working class and the other working people were equipped to find an explanation and obtain an understanding of the new epoch and of the ways of historical development and revolutionary activity by the oppressed classes. Their instrument was the doctrine of Marx and Engels. But in view of the tasks of the epoch it was necessary to develop Marxism, including its political economy. This historical task was fulfilled by Lenin, who as a social thinker ranks with Marx and Engels.
Lenin continued the work of the founders of Marxism in studying capitalist development and showed the need for the working-class struggle to change capitalist society in the direction in which it was itself developing. By analysing the new stage in the development of capitalism---imperialism---Lenin showed that the era of socialist revolutions was at hand and that the hour had struck for resolute revolutionary action by the working class in the van of all the working people. This revolutionary action is based on the objective laws of the historical process and runs in the direction in which capitalism has itself been developing.
Characterising imperialism, Lenin wrote: ``The result is immense progress in the socialisation of production. In particular, the process of technical invention and improvement becomes socialised."^^2^^
The merger of bank and industrial capital, the formation of finance capital, promotes the socialisation of production and the development of economic ties between separate enterprises and branches of production. The Marxist analysis of capitalist production contained revolutionary conclusions. Lenin carried this analysis to its logical end, by studying the final stage in the development of capitalist society.
He wrote: ``Production becomes social, but appropriation remains private. The social means of production remain the private property of a few. The general framework of formally recognised free competition remains, and the yoke of a few monopolists on the rest of the population becomes a hundred times heavier, more burdensome and intolerable."^^3^^ The world communist movement starts from this conclusion of Lenin's, advancing the anti-monopoly struggle, uniting the majority of the population in the capitalist countries in a single tide, and tackling the key problems of our day.
Lenin showed that the bourgeoisie was losing its place in the process _-_-_
~^^2^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 22, p. 205.
~^^3^^ Ibid.
150 of social development, that it was becoming ever more parasitic, that it was no longer necessary for the development of production, and that, in fact, its very existence was harmful for social progress.Some theorists of the Second International did not notice the changes in capitalism and the concentration of capital, and continued to say that capitalism had undergone no changes since the 1860s. Others claimed that a totally new stage in the history of bourgeois society had been ushered in, with capitalism having changed its character, becoming ``organised'' and ``almost socialism''. Lenin had to put in a great effort in clearing the way for social thought to show the historical place of imperialism as the last stage of capitalism, and the eve of socialist revolution. Lenin's writings have helped the working-class parties to find their bearings in the new historical situation and to realise that the socialist revolution had matured.
Furthermore, it was necessary to analyse the changes that had taken place not only in the economy, but also in the superstructure of the capitalist society. In that period, some Social Democrats took the harmful view that in the 20th century the bourgeois state allegedly opened up opportunities for fundamental social change, and suggested that the dictatorship of the proletariat slogan should, therefore, be shelved. On the other hand, there was a revival of anarchist tendencies in assessing the state: some said that the bourgeois state machine had to be broken up in the course of the socialist revolution, but they forgot to say that a new state, the dictatorship of the proletariat, had to be set up in its place. Lenin analysed the political superstructure of imperialism and indicated the growing danger of militarism, the drive against the working people's democratic rights and growing reaction all along the line. He reasserted Marx's doctrine of the state and further developed it, providing a deep substantiation of the need for the proletarian dictatorship in bringing about fundamental social change and promoting mankind's progress.
There were also considerable changes in other areas of the superstructure, the ideology of imperialism in particular, and some socialist theorists were inclined to regard these as being progressive and as allegedly promoting the advance of social thought. Some rejected the new trends in bourgeois social thought out of hand, without trying to understand their objective sources. Lenin showed the idealistic views current in the period of imperialism to be profoundly reactionary and bared the direct connection between these views and fideism, mysticism and religion. At the same time, Lenin pointed out the difficulties in the objective development of science on which many bourgeois scientists had stumbled under the impact of idealistic views, subsequently sliding into the bog of fideism, where the class interests of the bourgeoisie encouraged them to stay.
Lenin put forward the idea that dialectical materialism, the Marxist 151 outlook alone made it possible for science to emerge from the crisis and further to develop. Lenin's genius enriched Marxist philosophy, further developed materialist dialectics in an epoch when working mankind was most in need of this ``algebra of revolution''.
Thus, Lenin laid a scientific foundation for the strategy and tactics of the working-class party in the new conditions, and determined the main lines for the economico-political and ideological struggle of the working class.
Lenin's greatness lies in the fact that he and his followers within the ranks of the working-class movement took a correct view of the need to set up Marxist parties capable of leading the proletariat and all the other working people in the offensive against capitalism, because the hour of socialist revolution and destruction of the exploitative system had struck. The doctrine of the party was an important achievement in social thought and the theory of social development, substantiating revolutionary action by the masses. At that turning point in history, special importance attached to the consciousness, will and organisation of the working class and of all the masses, whose role in the historical process greatly increased. Establishment of the new type of party accorded with the objective requirements of history.
The formulation of the organisational principles of Bolshevism and the elaboration of the ideas of how the party was to be structured signified a further development of revolutionary theory and the creation of a key prerequisite for its most effective application in practice. A key principle of party activity from the outset was the principle of the unity of its educational and organisational work, the unity of high ideological awareness and maximum efficiency, ruling out any substitution of revolutionary talk for revolutionary action. The party's ideological work opens up new opportunities for massive historical action which must be used to the utmost effect in the interests of the revolutionary cause. The party's organisational effort is designed to translate these possibilities into reality. There is no other way to fulfil the tasks which history has put before the working class, without organising its vanguard, rallying together its advanced forces working in the midst of the masses, that is, without setting up a new type of party, the Marxist-Leninist Party of the working class.
The scientific answer to the question of shaping the vanguard of the proletariat, of its party, capable of organising the whole class and giving a lead to the other sections of the working people helped to solve an important problem in the progressive development of society in this epoch and its fundamental reconstruction. The task that Marxism proclaimed---that of uniting socialism and the working-class movement---was fulfilled in the establishment of the new type of party, which, summing up the experience in the struggle of the masses, becomes the theoretical, revolutionary headquarters developing and 152 enriching revolutionary theory. At the same time, the new type of party is the most efficient organisational form for stimulating the initiative of the masses, helping them to master advanced experience, accumulating, spreading and multiplying the power of example in the revolutionary struggle of the working people and in their construction of new society. It was Lenin and his followers who substantiated the idea and translated it into reality. Since then, the solution of key social problems and the development of social thought has been bound up with the theoretical and practical activity of the Marxist-Leninist parties.
__ALPHA_LVL3__ LENIN'S WORK ON THE PROBLEMSMarxism-Leninism is a great science because it has explained how men make their history in the epoch of great revolutionary change in the transition from capitalism to communism. What is more, MarxistLeninist theory teaches men to make history in this remarkable epoch, to apply most efficiently the laws of social development and make use of their united strength. A key condition for stimulating massive creative activity is a profound understanding of Marxism-Leninism and the party's policy. The 20th century is one in which mankind has mastered the fabulous power of the atom. But an even more remarkable development in this age is the discovery and expression of the tremendous social energy of the working people transforming the world. The awakening of the revolutionary energy of millions cannot be compared with any other development in its importance for the destiny of mankind. The discovery of fire, steam, electricity and nuclear energy are all great stages in man's conquest of nature, but without an expression of the great forces latent in the working people themselves and their capacity consciously to change the social organisation of society in accordance with the development of the productive forces it is impossible to make the forces of nature work for the benefit and happiness of mankind, instead of helping man to oppress man.
It is of vital importance for the working people's historical activity that they should come to realise the substance of social relations and their nature. This task is being fulfilled through the selfless effort of the Marxist-Leninist parties, creatively developing the doctrine of Marx and Lenin and standing up for it in struggle against the Right- and ``Left''-wing opportunists and fostering the communist world outlook among the masses.
__b_b_b__Lenin's immortal achievement is the discovery of the uniformities of the great historical epoch of transition from capitalism to communism, an essential contribution to the scientific theory of social development. 153 He proved that in the period of imperialism the capitalist countries developed very unevenly, producing a weak link (or links) in the imperialist chain and creating the possibility of rupturing the chain. The revolutionary situation, the national crisis cannot take place simultaneously in all or most countries.
In August 1915, Lenin wrote: ``Uneven economic and political development is an absolute law of capitalism. Hence, the victory of socialism is possible first in several or even in one capitalist country alone."^^4^^ That was the key proposition of Lenin's theory of socialist revolution.
According to this theory, the course of social development necessarily leads to the victory of the socialist revolution in one or several countries, while the rest of the world remains bourgeois or prebourgeois for a certain period. This opens up a new and most important period of world history, with the world split up into two systems. This is a period in which socialist and bourgeois and also prebourgeois countries coexist. In this period, the contradictions between labour and capital are intensified in the capitalist countries, while the struggle for a fundamental revolutionary transformation of society on socialist lines is invigorated.
Concerning the precapitalist countries, with the emergence of imperialism there appeared an important factor in the revolutionary process called the anti-imperialist national liberation struggle of the peoples of these countries. Lenin wrote: ``World capitalism and the 1905 movement in Russia have finally aroused Asia. Hundreds of millions of the downtrodden and benighted have awakened from medieval stagnation to a new life and are rising to fight for elementary human rights and democracy.
``The workers of the advanced countries follow with interest and inspiration this powerful growth of the liberation movement, in all its various forms, in every part of the world. The bourgeoisie of Europe, scared by the might of the working-class movement, is embracing reaction, militarism, clericalism and obscurantism. But the proletariat of the European countries and the young democracy of Asia, fully confident of its strength and with abiding faith in the masses, are advancing to take the place of this decadent and moribund bourgeoisie.
``The awakening of Asia and the beginning of the struggle for power by the advanced proletariat of Europe are a symbol of the new phase in world history that began early this century."^^5^^ This was a brilliant analysis of the changes that had taken place in the world revolutionary process since Marx.
_-_-_~^^4^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 21, p. 342.
~^^5^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 19, p. 86.
154The victory of the socialist revolution in one country introduced further changes in the world revolutionary process, in the struggle for power by the proletariat in the advanced capitalist countries and in the incipient awakening in the colonial and dependent countries.
Once the working class takes over in the country where the revolution has won out, it guides all the other working people in building a new economy and arranging new social relations, doing a great deal to foster men in a spirit of high awareness. At first socialism does not prevail among the other sectors of the economy and the social structure of this society. But because the working class wields the power and shows the other working people in town and country the way to advance, because the Marxist-Leninist Party is guided by the advanced revolutionary theory and has strong bonds with the masses, the socialist sector gradually becomes the dominant one as the economic, political and ideological class struggle advances and then comes to be one that has undivided domination in the country. External conditions are highly important for building the new society, with peace providing the most favourable atmosphere.
At the Seventh Party Congress in 1918, Lenin said: ``Today we have reached only the first stage of transition from capitalism to socialism here in Russia. History has not provided us with that peaceful situation that was theoretically assumed for a certain time, and which is desirable for us, and which would enable us to pass through these stages of transition speedily. We see immediately that the civil war has made many things difficult in Russia, and that the civil war is interwoven with a whole series of wars. Marxists have never forgotten that violence must inevitably accompany the collapse of capitalism in its entirety and the birth of socialist society. That violence will constitute a period of world history, a whole era of various kinds of wars, imperialist wars, civil wars inside countries, the intermingling of the two, national wars liberating the nationalities oppressed by the imperialists and by various combinations of imperialist powers that will inevitably enter into various alliances in the epoch of tremendous state-capitalist and military trusts and syndicates. This epoch, an epoch of gigantic cataclysms, of mass decisions forcibly imposed by war, of crises, has begun---that we can see clearly---and it is only the beginning."^^6^^
History showed that Lenin was right in assessing the period which had then begun. But he did not say that this period of the most diverse wars would never give way to a peaceful situation which was desirable for communist construction. Nor did he say that the peace period would arrive only with the final victory of the revolution on a world scale.
_-_-_~^^6^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 27, p. 130.
155In this context, Lenin raised a highly important methodological question about the inevitable growth of socialist influence on the world revolutionary process. Defending the new theory of socialist revolution against those who tried to intimidate the working people by pointing to the strength of capitalism and expressed lack of faith in the strength of the working class, Lenin emphasised in 1918 that ``not a single historical change of any importance takes place without there being several instances of a disproportion of forces. Forces grow in the process of the struggle, as the revolution grows."^^7^^ This remark has profound sociological meaning and gives a truly philosophical comprehension of the historical process. From this Lenin drew far-reaching theoretical conclusions about the growth of the forces of socialism within the country and in the world arena, and its growing influence on every aspect of world history.
Lenin's remarkable characteristic of the prospects for the development of the world revolutionary process is given in his ``Preliminary Draft Theses on the National and the Colonial Questions" (1920). Lenin emphasises the importance of the period when ever more urgent importance attaches to ``the task of converting the dictatorship of the proletariat from a national dictatorship (i.e., existing in a single country and incapable of determining world politics) into an international one (i.e.. a dictatorship of the proletariat involving at least several advanced countries, and capable of exercising a decisive influence upon world politics as a whole)".^^8^^ Consequently, Lenin's analysis clearly brings out two stages in the development of the world revolutionary process after the victory of the socialist revolution in one country and points out their qualitative distinctions.
At the first stage, the socialist state finds itself within a hostile capitalist encirclement. At this stage, the dictatorship of the proletariat cannot yet determine world politics. The main task here is to build socialist society in one country with support from the revolutionary forces abroad, above all from the working class in the capitalist countries. In this period, it is necessary to use all foreign-policy instruments to prolong the breathing space and all the domestic-policy instruments to consolidate and develop the socialist system, to industrialise the country, to secure the victory of socialism in the countryside and to carry out a cultural revolution.
The emergence of the first socialist society had a most important impact on the world revolutionary movement. The rise of the revolutionary spirit in the ranks of the working class was expressed in the establishment of Communist parties. There appeared the possibility of uniting these emergent parties within the Third International. Lenin _-_-_
~^^7^^ Ibid., p. 413.
~^^8^^ Ibid.. Vol. 31. p. 148.
156 gave the following assessment of the situation: ``The First International laid the foundation of the proletarian, international struggle for socialism.``The Second International marked a period in which the soil was prepared for the broad, mass spread of the movement in a number of countries.
``The Third International has gathered the fruits of the work of the Second International, discarded its opportunist, social-chauvinist, bourgeois and petty-bourgeois dross, and has begun to implement the dictatorship of the proletariat."^^9^^
Under Lenin's leadership, the Comintern worked out the general line of the Communist parties in the new historical conditions taking shape after the Great October Socialist Revolution, helping to clarify the ways of involving the masses of peasants and the oppressed colonial peoples in the struggle against imperialism.
Under the impact of the October Revolution, the national liberation movement in the colonies and dependent countries was given a fresh impetus. The historical experience of national liberation and social emancipation of the peoples in the Soviet Union gave that movement ideological and political force; Marxist-Leninist groups and parties were set up in some countries of the East. The Comintern gave them substantial assistance in their activity.
Earlier on, Engels had written this about the First International: ``For ten years the International dominated one side of European history---the side on which the future lies---and can look back upon its work with pride."~^^10^^ The same can be said about the activity of the Third International, with the difference that the aspect of the European history to which the future belonged had become considerably richer. Socialism began to exert its influence not only on European but also on world history.
At the second stage, the nature of this influence also underwent a fundamental change. Socialism, now a world system, was capable of exerting a decisive influence on world affairs, as Lenin had anticipated, when he expressed his idea of a proletarian dictatorship in several leading countries, at least, an international dictatorship. In that period, the USSR had become a leading country not only in terms of social system, but also in technico-economic terms. The socialist system could not have exerted a decisive influence on world development if it had neglected the tasks of economic construction This idea of Lenin's is a continuation of his earlier idea about the possibility of socialism initially winning out in one country or in a few countries. These propositions of _-_-_
~^^9^^ Ibid.. Vol. 29, p. 307.
~^^10^^ K. Marx and F. Engels, Selected Correspondence, p. 351.
157 Lenin's constitute the most important foundations for the theory of the world revolutionary process.The analysis of this new stage in the world revolutionary process is a major achievement of Marxism-Leninism. The Marxist view of modern history has been markedly enriched and deepened after the CPSU and its Central Committee showed the importance for world development of socialism emerging beyond the boundaries of one country and of the formation of the world socialist system. The strengthening of the world socialist system produces a situation in which it is possible to have the struggle between capitalism and socialism in the world arena assume forms other than military clashes and world wars.
At the second stage, the Communist parties which had gained in stature and matured in struggle, required other ties with each other, than those they had under the Comintern, for leadership of the diverse and vast world communist movement from a single centre had become impossible. New forms of contact and cooperation between the fraternal Marxist-Leninist parties began to develop, notably in the form of various meetings between representatives of the parties. The international communist movement has the greatest support from the world socialist system, which is the most important result of the working-class struggle over the whole preceding period in the development of the revolutionary process.
The national liberation movement also has a solid mainstay in the socialist system. The socialist countries are in a position to use the instruments of state policy to support in the international arena the people's struggle for their political and economic independence. The colonial system of imperialism is collapsing.
At the second stage of the world revolutionary process it is of the utmost importance for the internal development of the world socialist system, for the struggle between labour and capital in the capitalist countries and for the national liberation movement that the Soviet Union has entered a period of full-scale construction of communism. In this period, the competition between socialism and capitalism enters its decisive phase. The advantages of the socialist system are expressed above all in the successes in the economic construction. It is the realisation of the vast advantages of socialism that exerts a revolutionising influence on the hearts and minds of the working people in the capitalist countries. It is not ultrarevolutionary catchwords, but the tireless labour of millions of men and women in material production, which helps to strengthen the common front of socialism and to multiply its strength in the revolutionary struggle of peoples of all countries that helps to lay a sound foundation for the complete victory over capitalism. Lenin stressed: ``We are now exercising our main influence on the international revolution through our economic policy.... The struggle in this field has now become global. Once we solve this 158 problem, we shall have certainly and finally won on an international scale.''~^^11^^
Soon after his return to Russia in 1917, Lenin wrote the following in his work ``The Tasks of the Proletariat in Our Revolution (Draft Platform for the Proletarian Party)": ``From capitalism mankind can pass directly only to socialism, i.e., to the social ownership of the means of production and the distribution of products according to the amount of work performed by each individual. Our Party looks farther ahead: socialism must inevitably evolve gradually into communism, upon the banner of which is inscribed the motto, `From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs'."~^^12^^ In this context, he drew the following conclusion: ``We must call ourselves the Communist Party---just as Marx and Engels called themselves."^^13^^
When considering the question of changing the Party's name in 1918, Lenin stressed that ``as we begin socialist reforms we must have a clear conception of the goal towards which these reforms are in the final analysis directed, that is, the creation of a communist society that does not limit itself to the expropriation of factories, the land and the means of production, does not confine itself to strict accounting for, and control of, production and distribution of products, but goes farther towards implementing the principle `From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs'."^^14^^
Consequently, Lenin taught the Communists to regard socialist transformations as the ultimate goal and to keep that goal in mind, even when only launching upon them but never to identify the ultimate goal and the immediate changes to be carried out. In many of his writings after the October Revolution, Lenin emphasised the difference between the first phase of communism and the second, and the mistake of trying to leap over to the second phase. It is hard to overrate Lenin's contribution to the theory of building socialism and communism. Marx had formulated the basic and guiding idea on the question, while Lenin went on to solve the hundreds of theoretical questions in building the new society, its economic development, its political organisation and its culture in close connection with practice. It is no exaggeration to say that Lenin's writings after the 1917 Revolution add up to an encyclopaedia of socialist construction.
Lenin raised the question of the distinction between the first phase of communist society and the second, and considered the conditions for the transition from one to the other even before the October Revolution in his work The State and Revolution, where he stressed that socialist _-_-_
~^^11^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 32, p. 437.
~^^12^^ Ibid.. Vol. 24, pp. 84--85.
~^^13^^ Ibid., p. 84.
~^^14^^ Ibid., Vol. 27, p. 127.
159 society is a society ``which is compelled to abolish at first only the `injustice' of the means of production seized by individuals, and which is unable at once to eliminate the other injustice, which consists in the distribution of consumer goods 'according to the amount of labour performed' (and not according to needs)".^^15^^ That is why Lenin brought out as a key distinctive feature of the social organisation of the first phase the fact that ``there still remains the need for a state, which, while safeguarding the common ownership of the means of production, would safeguard equality in labour and in the distribution of products".^^16^^ But as socialist relations were strengthened and advanced the nature of the state itself tended to change: ``All citizens become employees and workers of a single country-wide state `syndicate'."^^17^^ From this it follows that the development of this syndicate and its transformation into a state of the whole people is a necessary process. The state will wither away only under full communism.At the same time, Lenin kept stressing that both phases developed on a single basis. Socialism is incomplete communism, but in its development socialism inevitably leads to communism. Lenin taught the Communists to discern and painstakingly to foster every element of communism that appeared in socialist society, with special emphasis on the working people's growing consciousness and their high sense of discipline. As ``the fragmentation of labour, no confidence in the social economy and the old habits of the petty proprietor"^^18^^ disappeared society advanced faster towards its communist future. Evidence of this also came from the emergence of phenomena in social life, like the communist subbotniks, when the working people freely give of their labour to society.
Socialist change, the development of socialist relations, help to achieve the final goal---communism---``for when all have learned to administer and actually do independently administer social production, independently keep accounts and exercise control over the parasites, the sons of the wealthy, the swindlers and other 'guardians of capitalist traditions', the escape from this popular accounting and control will inevitably become so incredibly difficult, such a rare exception, and will probably be accompanied by such swift and severe punishment (for the armed workers are practical men and not sentimental intellectuals, and they will scarcely allow anyone to trifle with them), that the necessity of observing the simple, fundamental rules of community will very soon become a habit.
``Then the door will be thrown wide open for the transition from the first phase of communist society to its higher phase, and with it to the _-_-_
~^^15^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 25. p. 466
~^^16^^ Ibid., p. 467.
~^^17^^ Ibid., p. 473.
~^^18^^ Ibid.. Vol. 30. p. 284.
160 complete withering away of the state."~^^19^^ These remarkable words also indicate a most important distinction between the first and the second phase and one of the most important conditions for society's moving into the second phase.How is the inevitable development of the first phase into the second ensured? The common basis of both phases of the one communist formation consists in the fact that ``the proletariat represents and creates a higher type of social organisation of labour compared with capitalism. That is what is important, this is the source of the strength and the guarantee that the final triumph of communism is inevitable."^^20^^ Social progress means above all development of the great productive power of labour; that is the main angle from which to consider the historical process. Without this there would have been no quantitative accumulation or qualitative development either in the material sphere or in the sphere of mankind's spiritual culture; consequently, society would not be advancing. The growing productive and creative power of human labour calls for a system of organisation in line with the level reached in the development of the productive forces and giving room for their further progress. Socialism creates just such a social organisation of labour which helps to reach the higher phase of communist society and ultimately to defeat capitalism.
Lenin resolutely and consistently fought all expressions of pettybourgeois and anarchist spontaneousness. The petty-bourgeois revolutionary gave least thought to creation, to production, to economic construction. A different approach is taken by the consistent proletarian revolutionary, who will never look down on economic activity, on its successes, on the development of the creative and productive power of human labour.
This idea is at the basis of Lenin's numerous articles and speeches. In April 1918, Pravda carried his article entitled ``The Immediate Tasks of the Soviet Government'', which outlined the programme for a great creative effort by the masses. At the time, large-scale tasks of construction faced the new system born in revolutionary struggle. There was need to determine the main line of social development and of the Party's activity in leading the working people. The theory of social development was becoming a theory of the practical transformation of society. The great revolutionary energy of the masses was becoming a vast creative force that history had never known. Everything depended on the correct view of the prospects for the social process, which determined the mainstream of the mighty tide of the awakened social energy. Lenin's remarkable writings contain the answer to the _-_-_
~^^19^^ Ibid., Vol. 25, p. 474.
~^^20^^ Ibid., Vol. 29. p. 419.
__PRINTERS_P_161_COMMENT__ 11---594 161 fundamental question posed by life concerning the transition from capitalism to socialism.As the task of expropriating the expropriators and suppressing their resistance was being solved in the main, Lenin wrote, ``there necessarily comes to the forefront the fundamental task of creating a social system superior to capitalism, namely, raising the productivity of labour, and in this connection (and for this purpose) securing better organisation of labour".^^21^^ That was the first occasion on which the Party and Soviet society as a whole were set the task of organising labour in such a way that it would produce a higher productivity of labour than that under capitalism. How was this fundamental task to be tackled?
``The raising of the productivity of labour first of all requires that the material basis of large-scale industry shall be assured, namely, the development of the production of fuel, iron, the engineering and chemical industries."^^22^^ Lenin pointed out that the Soviet Union had vast deposits of iron ore, fuel, water resources, raw materials for the chemical industry, in areas like the Urals, Western Siberia, the Caucasus and Turkmenia. He ended with these words: ``The development of these natural resources by methods of modern technology will provide the basis for the unprecedented progress of the productive forces."^^23^^ In this way Lenin formulated the key task of building the new society. The Soviet people have advanced along this path, building socialism, and fulfilling one five-year national-economic plan after another. That is the way they are still going, fulfilling Lenin's precepts about electrifying the country, putting forward a great plan for introducing the use of chemicals into industry and agriculture, building the material and technical basis of communism, working its vast resources with new technology and resolutely eliminating all shortcomings.
The requirement that there should be a material basis for higher labour productivity applies to the construction both of the first and the second phase of the new society. That is the only basis on which it is possible to effect the corresponding changes in the social structure and the whole system of social relations, to eliminate the contradictions and subsequently the essential distinctions between town and countryside, between mental and manual labour, and to bring about the triumph first of socialist and then of communist relations of production. But the creation of the material basis was not the only requirement put forward by Lenin for the construction of the new society.
Lenin said that the basis for the diverse social ties consisted of the ``mutual relations of people arising out of the part they play in social _-_-_
~^^21^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 27, p. 257.
~^^22^^ Ibid.
~^^23^^ Ibid.
162 labour".^^24^^ No society can exist without sound ties between men in the process of labour, and the extent to which labour and the nature of these ties are developed determines the stage of human history.Lenin wrote that after the revolution the working class would build a new and higher social connection, and stressed the importance of massive activity in producing ``a new social bond, a new labour discipline, a new organisation of labour, which will combine the last word in science and capitalist technology with the mass association of class-conscious workers creating large-scale socialist industry".^^25^^ Lenin stressed the ``creative aspect of socialist economic and living conditions"~^^26^^ and the creative spirit of the ``new economic relations in the new society".^^27^^ This creative effort developed in the period of socialism and attained vast scope during the full-scale construction of communist society. Throughout the construction of the new society, the working people increase and improve this united force.
One of the fundamental changes in social relations produced by the socialist revolution is that the political superstructure becomes totally different, with a fundamentally new role in organising social labour. The proletarian dictatorship and then the state of the whole people are of tremendous importance in uniting the creative efforts of the working people. In the recently published chapters of the original version of the article ``The Immediate Tasks of the Soviet Government'', Lenin wrote: ``The task of administering the state, which now confronts the Soviet government, has this special feature, that, probably for the first time in the modern history of civilised nations, it deals pre-eminently with economics rather than with politics. Usually the word `administration' is associated chiefly, if not solely, with political activity. However, the very basis and essence of Soviet power, like that of the transition itself from capitalist to socialist society, lie in the fact that political tasks occupy a subordinate position to economic tasks."^^28^^ The subsequent change in the political organisation of society for the purpose of tackling economic tasks in the first place is a characteristic feature of Soviet development.
In the course of communist construction, the Party boldly tackles important problems in the management of industry, construction and agriculture. The Marxist theory of social development has demonstrated, contrary to the ``theories'' produced by confused men, that the transition to communism would not at all involve a disintegration of society into separate and unconnected cells. On the contrary, in the _-_-_
~^^24^^ Ibid., Vol. 6. p. 265.
~^^25^^ Ibid., Vol. 29, p. 423.
~^^26^^ Ibid., p. 424.
~^^27^^ Ibid., p. 419.
~^^28^^ Ibid., Vol. 42, p. 71.
163 course of this transition social ties and all the combined production activity of men are further developed and improved.The progress of the productive power of human labour requires an ever higher level of consciousness and association of the working people equipped with the most advanced technology. This is a most important uniformity underlying the development of the new society. Lenin constantly underlined this fact: ``Another condition for raising the productivity of labour is, firstly, the raising of the educational and cultural level of the mass of the population. This is now taking place extremely rapidly, a fact which those who are blinded by bourgeois routine are unable to see; they are unable to understand what an urge towards enlightenment and initiative is now developing among the `lower ranks' of the people thanks to the Soviet form of organisation."^^29^^
Lenin used to say that the initiatives which have their beginning at the grass roots are an important condition for higher labour productivity. The Soviet system and the Communist Party have generated a remarkable creative quest among masses of people. The growth of these initiatives in which everyone takes a hand is a law governing the development of socialist society. This is expressed in the rise of scientific theoretical thinking and in the day-to-day performance by the millions of people, above all the leading workers in industry and agriculture. The Soviet people, led by the Communist Party, tackle and solve the most important state problems in every sector of communist construction.
Lenin also put forward another requirement for the final victory of the new system over capitalism. He stressed: ``Secondly, a condition for economic revival is the raising of the working people's discipline, their skill, the effectiveness, the intensity of labour and its better organisation."^^30^^ When Lenin wrote his article ``The Immediate Tasks of the Soviet Government'', the great struggle for the triumph ``of proletarian conscious discipline over spontaneous petty-bourgeois anarchy" had just begun, the struggle to apply ``a number of the greatest scientific achievements in the field of analysing mechanical motions during work, the elimination of superfluous and awkward motions, the elaboration of correct methods of work, the introduction of the best system of accounting and control, etc."^^31^^ Lenin initiated the struggle for a high level of organisation and harmonious operations in all kinds of work, above all in production, and insisted that the whole of social labour should be organised on strict scientific principles, with an effective system of control involving the greatest possible number of people. The _-_-_
~^^29^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 27, pp. 257--58.
~^^30^^ Ibid.
~^^31^^ Ibid., p. 258.
164 development of the scientific organisation of the whole of social labour is an important feature of the advance by socialist society to communism.Lenin constantly stressed the importance of accounting and control under socialism and the vast potentialities of this control when it relied on the working people's initiative. No human society can live or develop without its inherent form of social control required for the observance of laws and rules in this society. Let us note that bourgeois sociologists have written a great deal about social control, but they have always forgotten to say that at every stage in the history of antagonistic formations control has always been exercised over masses of people. The socialist system alone has carried out a most important change by transferring control over the fulfilment of the laws and rules in society into the hands of the people themselves. That is what makes the socialist system so powerful as it develops on its way to communism. Its realisation means a further enhancement of the role of consciousness in social development.
Lenin held that the Communist Party, embodying the highly conscious proletarian discipline, must be the leading force in the struggle for the new society. Its establishment was the first clear expression of the organisational effort of which the working class is capable. For its part, the Communist Party started large-scale organisational activity in the midst of masses of the working people, rallying them to the banner of Leninism, showing them the prospects for social development and indicating the way to transform these prospects into historic reality. Lenin said that a centralised and disciplined political party of the proletariat is required so that ``the organisational role of the proletariat (and that is its principal role) may be exercised correctly, successfully and victoriously".^^32^^
Lenin stressed that in Soviet society the power of example is able to influence the people for the first time.^^33^^ Today, the Party's whole effort is pivoted on the spread not only of the most advanced view of life but also of the most advanced practical experience. Because of this effort, the individual initiatives displayed by Soviet working people become available to the masses, generating fresh initiatives, which, for their part, become massive, etc. This process of the creative assimilation of advanced experience and its multiplication has a tremendous role to play in the advance towards communism, and could not have developed but for the tremendous organisational and educational effort of the Party.
The high ideological level fostered by the Communists among the _-_-_
~^^32^^ Ibid., Vol. 31, p. 44.
~^^33^^ Ibid., Vol. 27, p. 261.
165 people is not only a quality of the human mind, but it also helps to forge the human character and produces a special kind of mental and moral makeup in the individual. Lenin stressed the importance of the fight against features, still to be found among some Soviet people, like ``relapses into petty-bourgeois spinelessness, disunity, individualism, and alternating moods of exaltation and dejection".^^34^^ The high level of communist consciousness, which is displayed in the day-to-day activity of the Soviet people, prevents the re-emergence of these traits. Lenin put a high value on qualities of character and mentality like `` perseverance, persistence, willingness, determination and ability to test things a hundred times, to correct them a hundred times, but to achieve one's goal".^^35^^ He stressed the great importance of the communist attitude to work. These remarkable qualities, which the builder of communism needs, are being fostered by the Party as it tests and tempers men in labour for a common good.The success of the communist cause depends on a clear understanding by everyone, by every collective and the whole people of the tasks put forward by historical reality, on the consideration and utmost use of the opportunities opened up by the socialist system for the working people's activity, on the knowledge of the ways leading to a solution of these problems, and on the correct organisation of the masses. That is one of Lenin's most important ideas about building the new society. It is the Communist Party that gives the masses a clear historical prospect and organises them for their historical activity to bring about the victory of communism.
__ALPHA_LVL3__ TWO STAGES IN THE DEVELOPMENTWhat was Lenin's idea of the main features of the world revolutionary process once socialism had been initially established in one country?
Lenin expressed a remarkable idea about the prospects for the development of the world revolutionary process in his ``Preliminary Draft Theses on the National and the Colonial Questions" (1920), where he brought out the importance of the period in which ever greater urgency attaches to the ``task of converting the dictatorship of the proletariat from a national dictatorship (i.e., existing in a single country and incapable of determining world politics) into an international one (i.e., a dictatorship of the proletariat involving at least several advanced countries, and capable of exercising a decisive influence upon world politics as a whole)".^^36^^ With this transformation Lenin also connected _-_-_
~^^34^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works. Vol. 31, p. 44.
~^^35^^ Ibid., Vol. 30, p. 518.
~^^36^^ Ibid., Vol. 31, p. 148.
166 the growing urgency of the struggle against various expressions of petty-bourgeois nationalism, which in these conditions becomes especially dangerous, because the transformation of the proletarian dictatorship into an international dictatorship cannot be realised without a struggle against nationalistic narrowness, which tends to slow down the process.Consequently, Lenin quite clearly outlined two stages in the development of the world revolutionary process once the socialist revolution had won out initially in one country, and indicated the qualitative distinctions of these stages, with the attendant changes in the world situation.
The first stage is the existence of the socialist state in a hostile capitalist encirclement. At this stage, the socialist state is unable to determine world politics. The main task of this stage is the construction of a socialist society in one country with the support of the revolutionary forces abroad, the working class in the capitalist countries in the first place. In this period, there is need to use all the foreign-policy instruments to prolong the breathing space and to use all the domestic-policy instruments to consolidate and develop the socialist system, to industrialise the country, and to build up the solid property of the whole people---socialist industry---to secure the victory of socialist property in the countryside on the basis of collectivisation and to carry out a cultural revolution.
After the Great October Socialist Revolution it became possible for the revolution to win out in several countries of Eastern and Central Europe, which would have created a world socialist system. But capitalism was still very strong, the Soviet Union was still weak, and there were no mature Communist parties anywhere, except the Soviet Union, capable of leading a victorious socialist revolution. The Soviet Republic in Hungary and the revolution in Germany were put down by imperialist reaction.
It took a long period for the transition from the first stage of the world revolutionary process---the victory of socialism in one country---to the establishment of a world socialist system. In that period, the forces of socialism became much stronger, while the Communist parties in the capitalist countries grew into a key factor in political life.
The Great October Socialist Revolution gave a fresh impetus to the national liberation movement in the colonies and the dependent countries. The historical experience of the national liberation and social emancipation of the peoples of the Soviet Union gave ideological and political strength to the national liberation movement and Marxist-Leninist groups and parties were set up in some countries of the East.
At the second stage, the influence of socialism on the world historical process underwent a fundamental change. Socialism, which has become 167 a world system, has been exerting the decisive influence on and determining the whole world process.
Bourgeois and petty-bourgeois conceptions of the contemporary historical process ignore these characteristics. In our day, the struggle between bourgeois and petty-bourgeois conceptions, on the one hand, and the Marxist-Leninist theory of the historical process, on the other, is most acute. The question of determining the character of the contemporary epoch and bringing out its qualitative peculiarities is on the order of the day. Bourgeois theorists regard our epoch as one in which capitalism is being ``transformed''. Petty-bourgeois theorists, who have adopted Marxist terminology, keep saying that in our day it is imperialism that determines world development.
The CPSU and its Leninist Central Committee have shown the harmfulness of the bourgeois and petty-bourgeois conceptions of the contemporary epoch, for both in essence insist that capitalism continues to determine the course of the historical process. The metaphysicians accept only two stages of world history: bourgeois domination and capitalism, and the complete triumph of socialist social relations all over the globe. They do not understand the dialectics of the displacement of capitalism by socialism.
The fact is, however, that in world history formations have never instantly succeeded each other on a world scale. Formations which had outlived their day had never given way to a new social system at a stroke. The struggle for the new mode of production went on primarily in the individual countries but was inevitably carried over into the world arena. That was how the slave-holding society emerged in the form of isolated seats while the rest of the inhabited globe continued to be at the first stage of historical development. That was how the shoots of feudalism grew up on the ruins of the collapsed slave-holding empires. The struggle between advancing capitalism and outgoing feudalism was carried on in the various countries and in the international arena for a long time.
Indeed, a look at the early Middle Ages reveals a period in which the feudal mode of production did not yet win out finally, when slavery had not yet left the historical scene and when, consequently, feudalism did not exert a decisive influence on the course of history. It took centuries for the advantages of the feudal system to materialise and the process of its formation to be completed. In Europe, the development of the feudal mode of production went at a slow pace for about 400 years. Centuries passed before the feudal estates, with all their advantages and drawbacks, arose. Engels stressed that ``the social classes of the ninth century had taken shape not in the bog of a declining civilisation, but in the travail of a new".^^37^^
_-_-_~^^37^^ K. Marx and F. Engels, Selected Works, in three volumes, Vol. 3, p. 314.
168This idea of Engels's is of great methodological importance. Of course, the first elements of the new mode of production did appear as the old civilisation was being destroyed, but the course of history was still being determined by the old society and its uniformities and some time had to pass before those of the full-fledged new social system began to determine the whole historical process.
That is something bourgeois theorists could not understand for a long time. This applies to Edward Gibbon, one of the founders of bourgeois historical science in the 18th century, who believed that feudalism was ``... the state of the city of Rome, during the darkness and confusion of the Middle Ages".^^38^^ Gibbon felt that this whole period was one of destruction and collapse of the old, and he did not see the emergence of a new society in general. But Guizot, a bourgeois historian of the Restoration epoch, modified this conception and concentrated his attention on the emergence of the new. In a preface to an 1828 edition of Gibbon's work, he wrote that the downfall of the Roman Empire showed ``the dilapidation of the ancient world, the spectacle of its expiring glory and its degenerate morals, the infancy of the modern world, a picture of its early progress, and the new direction imprinted on minds and characters".^^39^^ Guizot quotes a very meaningful line from the French poet Pierre Corneille, who said: ``A great destiny begins, a great destiny ends.''
Thus, bourgeois historical science was only gradually edging up to the idea that the emergence and development of the new, feudal mode of production had been a long process abounding in struggle between the old and the new in the world arena. The first bourgeois philosophical conception of the emergence of feudalism merely allowed a period of destruction and disintegration of the old world. Of course, even today, when studying the history of ``individual societies" in isolation, as present-day bourgeois sociology requires, one tends to lose the idea of the world scale, and it is exceedingly difficult to understand the emergence of feudalism, which calls for an analysis of the interaction of societies differing in system in the world arena, the struggle between the old and the new not only within the given society, but also in the international arena, that is, an analysis of world development. From the standpoint of bourgeois sociology it is also impossible to answer the question when the decisive influence on the whole historical process is exerted not by the uniformities of the declining civilisation but of the emergent new society.
_-_-_~^^38^^ Edward Gibbon, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, N. Y., 1905. p. 41.
~^^39^^ Edouard Gibbon, Histoire de la decadance et de la chute de I'Empire Remain, Paris, 1828, p. 2.
169Still, the length of the transition from the ancient world to the Middle Ages produced in bourgeois historical science many terms and concepts whose content should bring out the distinction between one stage and the other. There was the concept of the ``early Middle Ages'', which was introduced into scientific usage precisely to separate the early stage, when the struggle between the new and the old did not yet result in a flourishing of the new, when the old, disintegrating social system still continued to exert much influence on the historical process. For instance, the so-called Romanisation of the society of the Ostrogoths in that period amounted to the integration of the Ostrogoth aristocracy with the Roman slave-holders. The conquest of Italy by the Langobards dealt a heavier blow at the domination of slave-holding relations and at the large landed estates existing on their basis. Let us recall Engels's well-known remark that ``between the Roman colonus and the new serf there had been the free Prankish peasant".^^40^^ The rural communities which arose throughout Europe, the growing proprietary inequality, the class differentiation and the development of forms of dependence were important aspects of emergent feudalism, but it took centuries for all these processes and phenomena to develop.
Bourgeois historiography in the 19th century was unable to analyse this process with its bluntly evolutionary approach. Fustel de Coulanges believed there was nothing but a mere continuity between the institutions of the Roman Empire and the barbarian kingdoms. In a modified version this theory was later elaborated by the well-known Austrian historian Alfons Dopsch who sought to ``purify'' the ancient Germanic tribes of any traces of barbarism and primitiveness, and to approximate in every way the social system of the Roman Empire and the barbaric tribes .This straightforward evolutionism was designed to obliterate the qualitative distinctions between the slave-holding system and feudalism, and to eliminate the question of transition from the old formation to the new. Another school of bourgeois historians, emphasising its ``understanding'' of the break in the continuity of historical development, reduced everything to violence and conquest, and depicted the Germanic tribes as some kind of Messiah carrying feudalism to Europe. All of this is the fruit of false conceptions in social thinking.
Bourgeois social thought met a stumbling block in the problem of periods in history when the emergent regularities of the new social system were yet to determine the course of the historical process and when, by contrast, the regularities of the outgoing society still continued to be of importance. Of course, even in the early period it is not right to assume that the outgoing system fully retained its erstwhile domination. That is something it had already lost. But the new element making _-_-_
~^^40^^ K. Marx and F. Engels, Selected Works, in three volumes, Vol. 3, p. 314.
170 headway did not yet have the prevailing economic, political and ideological force in the historical process.Of course, from the outset the destiny of the new exerts an influence on the nature and direction of the historical process, but for a long time this new element does not yet exert a decisive influence on all events.
A characteristic feature of the world process in high antiquity was that the slave-holding states emerged as islands in a sea of barbaric tribes, which to some extent served as a nutrient medium for the slave-holding states. These tribes became a reservoir of manpower. In the epoch of the early Middle Ages, the balance of forces in the world arena changed, so that the slave-holding empires themselves, already on the decline, fell victim to the raids and conquests of the barbaric tribes. Of course, these empires were subjected to such raids even in the heyday of the slave system, but then the slave-holding mode of production in a given society, despite the upheaval, continued to develop, for the conditions for transition to feudalism had yet to take shape. Students of the ancient world tell us of ``processes of feudalisation" in Egypt, after it had been conquered by Libyan tribes, or in Babylon in the period when it was being conquered by the Kassites. But even bourgeois historians do not risk saying that these processes developed and were completed in the ancient world.
In the early Middle Ages, the situation was a different one. The slave-holding empires were already too weak to conquer the neighbouring tribes, to seize slaves and develop slave-holding relations, as will be seen from Justinian's wars against the barbaric Goth kingdoms and his ``pragmatic sanctions''. Indeed, because of its socio-economic nature the slave-holding empire was no longer interested in a steady influx of fresh masses of slaves. Byzantium was switching to the colon system, as feudal processes developed in it. In this way, wars and seizures ceased to serve the development of the slave-holding system, for they were already serving emergent feudalism. Is it right on this ground to treat the role of war and armed clashes as an absolute, even if only for that epoch of man's history? Of course, it is not right to do so, unless one breaks with Marxism-Leninism and the truth of history.
These acute conflicts in the sphere of policy, in the balance of forces in the world arena reflected the processes taking place chiefly in the economy. In this decisive sphere of human activity the old system had already been weakened, while the new system had yet to gain the strength and the stature to secure a complete victory.
In place of slave labour, feudalism made use of a producer who was in possession of the means of production and engaged in farming. That was the ultimate reason for the triumph of feudalism. Under the slaveowning system the influx of slaves depended on wars of aggrandisement and plunderous raids. But when debtors were impressed into slavery for 171 their debts, this tended to erode the whole of society and led to its destruction. Feudalism changed these social relations and took society out of the dead end. That is quite obvious, but mankind did not take this path at once.
Marx said that ``serfdom in the early Middle Ages" still contained within itself ``many features of ancient slavery".^^41^^ But the way to new forms of more productive labour was being opened up. There was established ``a lack of freedom which may be reduced from serfdom with enforced labour to a mere tributary relationship".^^42^^ Such is the framework of the possible dynamics and tendencies in the development of the feudal mode of production.
But it will be centuries before the features of ancient slavery disappear, the commune (mark) develops, and serfdom is established. Lenin said that ``the allotment-holding peasant must be personally dependent upon the landlord, because he will not, possessing land, work for the landlord except under coercion. This system of economy gives rise to 'non-economic coercion', to serfdom, juridical dependence, lack of full rights, etc.''~^^43^^ in the feudal period, the instrument of exploitation is the attachment of the working man to the land. To develop, this process took a considerable period and required conditions which did not arise all at once. Until then, there could be no question of the domination of feudalism and its decisive prevalence over the forces of the old system.
The period required for the maturing of feudalism and for the creation of a prevalence of its forces in the economic and political spheres is not at all a purely ``European'' or ``Western'' phenomenon.
In India, the period of transition of feudalism was also characterised by the downfall of the big slave-holding power and the emergence in the historical arena of various tribes which had already reached the stage of disintegration of their primitive order and, joining in military alliances, invaded the ancient slave-holding states and set up feudal principalities. However peculiar the development of these processes, the overall regularity is clear. The deep crisis into which the slave-holding system was plunged heralded the birth of a new system, but it took a considerable period of struggle between the old and the new, the maturing and development of the new before it came to exert the decisive influence on the direction of the historical process and to be transformed into the dominant social system finally determining the direction of the historical process.
The development of feudal relations in China, the profound social _-_-_
~^^41^^ Karl Marx/Friedrich Engels, Werke, Bd. 19, Berlin, 1962, S. 326.
~^^42^^ K. Marx, Capital, Vol. Ill, Moscow, 1971, p. 771.
~^^43^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 15, pp. 84--85.
172 upheavals and the downfall of the great Han power, all these are processes occurring over a long period of time. The fact that historians are at odds over the period of China's transition to feudalism is highly indicative. In the early period of feudal relations it is hard to find a definite demarcation line between the old and the new. What is unquestionable is that there is a later line---the post-Han period---which everyone accepts as the period of domination by the feudal mode of production. How the relationships between the tribal world that had come into motion and the ancient society were shaping out, and what impact these relationships had on the development of the feudal system is a special question. For our purposes here, let us emphasise that there again tribes which had remained in the darkness of prehistory came on the scene and that the early period of feudalism in China includes interaction and struggle between ancient seats of civilisation and barbaric tribes and that only in the subsequent period does the new social system become dominant.In transition from one formation to another it is inevitable that the question of change of state power became most acute. Transition to the slave-holding mode of production could not have, of course, occurred but for the emergence of the machinery of force, the state, which was in the hands of the slave-holders. Various aspects of political organisation in society from the slave-holding despotisms of the Ancient East to the democracies of antiquity corresponded to the stages of development of slave-holding ralations. Republican forms of government developed in society which already rested entirely on slavery; wherever the rural commune still had a considerable role to play, we find a grosser and more primitive form of political organisation of society, the slaveholding despotism. The democracy of antiquity gave way to slaveholding empires, which expressed and consolidated the further development of slave-holding.
The establishment of a new political organisation of society also had a great part to play in the transition to feudalism. The old slave-holding empires were doomed to destruction. Neither in Rome nor in Byzantium could they have become a political form of feudal society. With the advance of feudalism, the old empires collapsed. The establishment of a new state power of the exploiting classes took a considerable period, ranging from the barbaric kingdoms (5th-6th centuries) to the Carolingian state (7th century), and this corresponded to the period of the development of feudal property. Thus, the political organisation of society emerging in the world arena in the interests of the social and economic system which produced it was itself developing, gaining in strength or being weakened depending on the destiny of that system.
The epoch of transition from feudalism to capitalism, which Marx, Engels and Lenin studied in depth, shows that for a fairly long time the new and the old social systems existed simultaneously in the world 173 arena. Lenin said that feudalism was characterised by the existence of ``farms of the different manors, village communities and peasant families" which ``were `self-sufficing', were not dependent on other farms, and no power on earth could drag them out of their age-long stagnation".^^44^^ The feudal order ``perpetuates technical stagnation and the producer's condition of bondage".^^45^^
It was Marxism-Leninism alone that saw the main line of historical development and its stages behind the complex patchwork of political events in the epoch of transition from feudalism to capitalism. Meanwhile, bourgeois historians had produced many false theories, all of which boiled down to an attempt to obscure the qualitative distinction between capitalism and feudalism, so as to eliminate the question of any leap in the sphere of socio-economic relations. The hardest efforts here were made by the Dopsch school. Making use of some new data and some very old metaphysical and idealistic conceptions of the historical process, this school strove to show that capitalism had existed in Western Europe even at the time of the Carolingians in the form of ``estate capitalism''. There being nothing new under the sun, capitalism was being ``discovered'' even in the 8th and 9th centuries. Actually, capitalism emerged very much later, but even then it was not capable of determining the course of world development.
Subsequent history shows how and when capitalism came to exert a decisive influence on the whole course of world development and how it became master of the world. This process is based on the development of the capitalist mode of production. The capitalist mode of production took a relatively long time to defeat outgoing feudalism. Marx wrote: ``Although we come across the first beginnings of capitalist production as early as the 14th or 15th century, sporadically, in certain towns of the Mediterranean, the capitalistic era dates from the 16th century."^^46^^ But even the 16th century was only the initial stage in the development of the capitalist mode of production. At the time, the feudal-absolutist order was established in Europe and this initially gave some leeway for the development of the capitalist mode of production, but it subsequently became necessary to destroy that order so as to consolidate and establish the domination of capitalism. The following stage in the development of capitalism is one of stubborn struggle against the feudal-absolutist forces.
The struggle for the victory of capitalism was carried on in the individual countries and in the world arena. The French bourgeois revolution could not have been an isolated phenomenon, but emerged and developed in a definite international situation. The fact that the _-_-_
~^^44^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 3, p. 213.
~^^45^^ Ibid., p. 215.
~^^46^^ K. Marx, Capital, Vol. I, Moscow, 1972, p. 715.
174 revolution in France defeated feudalism also enabled it to attack the hostile forces threatening it in the European arena. The struggle against the feudal-absolutist forces in the individual countries and in the world arena continued in the 19th century, until the power of the bourgeoisie was finally established, until it gained a full victory and ushered in the period of its domination on a world scale. Thus, world development is the only angle from which the changeover from feudalism to capitalism can be understood.The political struggle in that period was of tremendous importance. In the first place, this was a struggle for state power, which the bourgeoisie sought to wrest from the landowners. Being unable to do this without the help of the people, it sought to rise to power on the shoulders of the peasantry and the plebeian elements of the cities. Because capitalism originates in the entrails of the feudal system, the transformation of the political superstructure is an important requirement at a definite stage, without which it is impossible for the new system further to develop. Feudalism in Europe was dealt one blow after another: the Reformation and the peasant war in Germany, the revolution in the Netherlands, the English revolution and, finally, the bourgeois revolution in France. These are characteristic stages in the process of world development, in the course of which the bourgeoisie and the landowners are locked in conflict and also compromise with each other in face of the growing activity of the working people, whose revolutionary scope terrifies the exploiters.
What then is the main historical line of capitalist development, what stages has its history gone through? In the history of capitalism, Lenin identified the following main epochs: ``The first epoch from the Great French Revolution to the Franco-Prussian war is one of the rise of the bourgeoisie, of its triumph, of the bourgeoisie on the upgrade, an epoch of bourgeois-democratic movements in general and of bourgeois-national movements in particular, an epoch of the rapid breakdown of the obsolete feudal-absolutist institutions. The second epoch is that of the full domination and decline of the bourgeoisie, one of transition from its progressive character towards reactionary and even ultra-reactionary finance capital. This is an epoch in which a new class---present-day democracy---is preparing and slowly mustering its forces. The third epoch, which has just set in, places the bourgeoisie in the same position as that in which the feudal lords found themselves during the first epoch. This is the epoch of imperialism and imperialist upheavals, as well as of upheavals stemming from the nature of imperialism."^^47^^ Characterising the third epoch, Lenin says: ``The place of the struggle of a rising capital, striving towards national liberation _-_-_
~^^47^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 21, p. 146.
175 from feudalism, has been taken by the struggle waged against the new forces by the most reactionary finance capital, the struggle of a force that has exhausted and outlived itself and is heading downward towards decay."^^48^^The main objective content of the historical phenomena in the course of the first and partially of the second period, according to Lenin, were the ``convulsions'' of bourgeois society as it shed various types of feudalism. ``The bourgeoisie was then the chief class, which was on the upgrade as a result of its participation in those wars; it alone could come out with overwhelming force against the feudal-absolutist institutions.'' That was what determined the character of the epoch. Lenin stressed: ``At that time there could have been no possibility of really independent action by present-day democracy, action of the kind befitting the epoch of the over-maturity and decay of the bourgeoisie, in a number of leading countries.''^^49^^
Thus, at the dawn of the capitalist era, in the 16th-18th centuries, the new mode of production did not secure a dominant position and did not exert a decisive influence on the course of world development. In the subsequent epoch, which opened after the French Revolution of 1789, capitalism prevailed, but even then there was intense struggle for a rapid breakup and destruction of the feudal-absolutist system and for the development, as Lenin put it, of nationally emancipating capital on a world, or rather, on an all-European scale. In that epoch, Lenin said, ``the mainspring was the movement of the bourgeoisie against the feudal and absolutist forces".^^50^^
These feudal-absolutist forces were a drag on the capitalist mode of production and hampered its development. The struggle was carried on within the individual countries and in the world arena, where coalitions and military-and-political alliances of the feudal-absolutist forces continued to operate.
Without an analysis of the economic basis of the great changes in the life of the peoples, it is, of course, impossible to understand the political and ideological battles expressing the advent of these changes and showing the intensity of the struggle between the old and the new within the Individual countries and in the world arena, that is, reflecting the development of the world process and becoming its manifestation.
That is a problem bourgeois social thinkers could not solve. For them, the question of the relation between economics, politics and ideology in the period of transition from feudalism to capitalism remained a closed book. With their defective idealistic methodology, bourgeois theorists stressed the importance of the ideological conflicts, wars and armed _-_-_
~^^48^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 21, p. 149.
~^^49^^ Ibid., p. 147.
~^^50^^ Ibid., p. 143.
176 clashes, which they said were due to ideological conflicts. The stages of the historical process disappeared, its economic basis remained in the background and only the idealistically interpreted facts of armed struggle were in evidence.Although capitalism grew up within the entrails of feudalism, it still took a long time to overcome the old system by developing its own advantages and realising them in the sphere of world politics. The struggle for the victory of capitalism in the world arena is simultaneously a struggle for the primacy of the strongest plunderers. Spain, Portugal and the Netherlands were the strongest and richest countries in the 16th century, while France and Britain joined in the fight for world supremacy in the 17th century. After the bourgeois revolution, the balance was tilted in favour of Britain. That is how things stood in the early period of capitalist development, when the feudal-absolutist order was still dominant in the world. But the struggle against the feudalabsolutist order also frequently took the form of armed conflicts. Those are the facts bourgeois theorists usually stress, without trying to get through to their meaning. They also start from the fact that whereas under capitalism peaceful relations between nations became much more extensive and profound, as compared with those in the slave-holding and serf period, the fight between the capitalist plunderers constantly produced wars of aggrandisement, so that war continued to be a permanent instrument of policy, a means of enslaving other nations, taking over their wealth and converting them into colonial slaves.
__ALPHA_LVL3__ SOCIAL REVOLUTION IN THE 20TH CENTURYI should like to start by quoting a few lines from Wilhelm Liebknecht's reminiscences of Karl Marx which date to 1850 and well show Marx's attitude to the revolutionary changes in science and technology. He says: ``Soon we were talking about natural sciences and Marx scoffed at the victorious reaction in Europe, who imagined that they had stifled the revolution and had no idea that natural science was preparing a new one. King Steam, who had revolutionized the world the century before, had lost his throne and was being superseded by a still greater revolutionary---the electric spark.''^^51^^
Let us recall that Marx saw such changes as an ally of the proletariat in the revolutionary transformation of society, and a symptom of the growing historical necessity for such transformations. For many decades, the development of natural science prepared a new scientific _-_-_
~^^51^^ Reminiscences of Marx and Engels, Moscow, 1957, p. 98.
__PRINTERS_P_177_COMMENT__ 12---594 177 and technical revolution. First, the power of electricity was to develop to vast proportions, while other branches of natural science were also to prepare for a fresh leap by a series of discoveries.On the eve of the scientific and technical revolution, when capitalism had solved highly intricate technological problems and many remarkable discoveries were made in natural science, Lenin wrote: ``On all sides, at every step one comes across problems which man is quite capable of solving immediately, but capitalism is in the way."^^52^^
Years later, Lenin's plan for the electrification of the USSR would be drawn up for the purpose of putting the great revolutionary power of electricity and various other scientific and technical achievements at the service of the victorious socialist revolution. Under the leadership of the CPSU, the Soviet people fulfilled and overfulfilled this plan, and a mighty industrial power, confidently challenging capitalism in the field of science and technology, appeared on the map of the world. The other socialist countries, working to enhance the efficiency of production and secure the ever fuller realisation of the advantages of socialism, also became a scientific and technical force to be reckoned with. The socialist countries have set themselves the task of harnessing the scientific and technical revolution and advancing it on the basis of social property.
Facts drawn from contemporary history suggest the conclusion that the scientific and technical revolution, as a social phenomenon, is connected with the fundamental contradiction of the modern world, the struggle between the two systems: socialism and capitalism. This struggle is not only a condition of the historical situation in which the scientific and technical revolution has been going forward as an immanent process in the development of science and technology. This historical situation also exerts a definitive influence on the advance of the scientific and technical revolution and the application of its achievements in practice, in the first place. It is hard to say how the scientific and technical revolution would have run if only one system---capitalism in its final stage, that is, imperialism,---continued to dominate the globe. The bourgeois press has made no secret of the fact that the mainspring of scientific and technical progress under capitalism today is its fight against the socialist system, when it comes to manifestations of the scientific and technical revolution like space exploration or the latest types of weapons.
This question arises: is it right to limit the impact of the struggle between the two systems to the field of technology? Should not the approach be a much broader one?
We feel that if the struggle of the two systems is ignored, it is altogether impossible to analyse the scientific and technical revolution correctly as a historical phenomenon. Indeed, there is no justification for _-_-_
~^^52^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 19, p. 389.
178 artificially separating the scientific and technical revolution from the cardinal issue of present-day world history. It is impossible either to consider or solve the problem in some artificial vacuum. Of course, the scientific and technical revolution has been prepared by the development of a number of sciences, which enable man to use new instruments in harnessing the mighty forces of nature. In its knowledge of natural phenomena, mankind has reached a culminating point at which the possibilities for exerting a conscious influence on the forces of nature are unprecedented in scope. That is undoubtedly so. But this process is a social phenomenon, a fact in the social life of the nations, and that is how it should be considered. If we are truly intent on making a correct study of present-day world history, we shall have to learn above all to see its phases and phenomena in the light of the struggle between the two systems.I think that Soviet writers have not yet dealt adequately with, among other things, the influence of the struggle between the two systems on the internal development of capitalism. Of course, capitalism develops in accordance with its own laws, but the struggle between the two social worlds exerts a powerful influence on its development. The capitalist system, deeply involved in this struggle, cannot be understood if it is considered as an isolated system not subject to the influence of the strident requirements of the struggle against a powerful and growing world socialist system.
In this connection we could ask the following question: how has it happened that the possibilities for applying scientific and technical achievements in production have been extended within the imperialist system, a decaying system, whose whole economic and political life is oppressed by the monopolies? The Social Democrats and the revisionists keep shouting that capitalism has changed its spots, that it has ceased to be a decaying society and has become a progressive social system. No, monopoly capitalism has not changed. It is the world situation that has changed.
Today, in the presence of socialist society, the capitalist monopolies, however strong, are unable to take over any industry lock, stock and barrel, to share it out among themselves on a world scale, etc. Lenin quoted one bourgeois economist to the effect that at the turn of the century there were ``two electrical `great powers'\thinspace'', and that there were ``no other electrical companies in the world completely independent of them".^^53^^ It is now clear to everyone that the situation today is radically different. There is now in the world an ``electrical power" which is not only independent of the capitalist monopolies, but which has in fact issued them a challenge. If the monopolists decided to shelve all the important inventions, these would still be realised in the socialist world.
_-_-_~^^53^^ Ibid., Vol. 22, p. 247.
179Socialism develops production on the basis of social property, advancing science and technology and carrying on extensive research in these fields. Labour, which for centuries acted as no more than wage-labour for capital, joined in the struggle for power with the establishment of the highest form of the proletariat's political organisation, the new type of party. Having won state power, it now stands on sizable territories of the world as a mighty rival of capital in organising and developing production. This does not change the nature of capitalism, but it does change the world situation in which it has to operate. Lenin wrote: ``It would be a mistake to believe that this tendency to decay precludes the rapid growth of capitalism. It does not. In the epoch of imperialism, certain branches of industry, certain strata of the bourgeoisie and certain countries betray, to a greater or lesser degree, now one and now another of these tendencies."^^54^^ With the fierce struggle between the two systems ranging not only over politics and ideology, but also over production, the key sphere of human activity, the monopolies can no longer afford to stem the scientific and technical revolution and block scientific discoveries and technological inventions.
The main conclusion this suggests is that the scientific and technical revolution does not damp down or eliminate the struggle between the two systems, as some advocates of the convergence theory claim, allegedly leading to a common-type structural development in the two systems until they ``meet''. Actually, the struggle between capitalism and socialism has been gaining in acerbity and depth, because in this sphere capitalism has no intention of surrendering without a fight.
Capitalism has certainly been casting about for new means in its fight against socialism by making use of scientific and technical achievements. But what are the long-term prospects for capitalism in realising these achievements in production?
Let us, first of all, note briefly an idea that has been expressed in Marxist writings. It is the influence of the scientific and technical revolution on the basic contradictions of capitalism. The main thing here, I feel, is that mass production based on the latest scientific and technical achievements calls for a high level of organisation, efficiency and continuity. Sooner or later, this requirement runs into contradiction with the blind forces of a convulsive market. The strict logic of technology in production cannot be reconciled with any breaks in its smooth rhythmic flow. The Uncontrolled market forces produce impulses which tend to disrupt the smooth rhythm and high organisation. Consequently, the scientific and technical revolution is bound increasingly to demand the introduction of socialist relations of production, the establishment of social property, scientific planning, and scientific coordination and cooperation in industry. That is an important aspect of _-_-_
~^^54^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 22, p. 300.
180 the scientific and technical revolution which bourgeois theorists try to ignore. The scientific and technical revolution, far from abolishing, in effect bears out the Marxist-Leninist thesis that present-day capitalism is ripe for social change, and that imperialism is the eve of the socialist revolution.Of course, the conflict will not be spasmodic, but will take a long time to develop. There will be a great many frauds and illusions about ``state democratic planning" under state-monopoly capitalism. It will take a long time for the working class in the capitalist countries to realise that capitalist society needs to be eliminated and not cured.
But the important thing to see is that the tendency is there and that it will make itself known in various forms. The point is that as the conflict develops the working class is ever more actively involved in it. This produces a relatively new arena of the class struggle: this is a struggle against all the burdens of the scientific and technical revolution being thrown on the working class.
Some bourgeois theorists regard the scientific and technical revolution as a means of expelling the working class from the sphere of production, so as to deprive it of its role in society and its political importance. They have visions of returning to the ancient period with a lumpenproletariat living at the expense of the society. Of course, the attempt to push the modern proletariat, with its high skills and high labour standards, into the status of the ancient lumpenproletariat, which required no more than ``bread and circuses"---and this means a corresponding level of consciousness---must inevitably explode the social system which dares to undertake such an experiment. Concerning idleness as a social ideal of present-day capitalism, one must say that a close look at spiritual life in the capitalist West clearly shows a growing protest against the ``leisure society'', as a social ideal. It is true that protests against this piece of social ugliness also frequently assume ugly forms, but the important thing is that these protests are there and keep growing.
This question also has another aspect which is perhaps equally important. At whose expense will capitalist society then live? Bourgeois theorists suggest that the technical intelligentsia will become the main productive force.
Capitalism, carrying on the scientific and technical revolution, tends to sharpen its social conflicts, above all the conflict with the working class, which is inherent in capitalism at every stage of its development. The threat of unemployment facing the whole working class, instead of some of its sections, general unemployment may become a law of its life. Is it not clear that this approach to the working-class question will generate a most acute social conflict which will shake the capitalist system to its foundations and give the working class a clear insight into the great advantage of the socialist system? Can man and mankind live without working, without applying and developing their capacity for 181 work? In our age this would undermine the very basis of the human community. Socialism restores the spiritual content of the worker's labour of which capitalism has deprived it. Capitalism deprives the worker of the right to work, which socialism realises and guarantees. Bourgeois writers have admitted that the capitalists have been slowing down the extensive introduction of automation and remote control because they fear that this would build up a powerful social explosion.
There is also another conflict in the making, that between statemonopoly capital and the intelligentsia. The recent student protests have made one look closer at the maturing and development of this conflict as well. Even the bourgeois press has said that the substance of these movements is that the intelligentsia, especially the younger generation, has refused to lie in the procrustean bed into which the monopolies seek to drive it. The inflated hierarchy established by the monopolies at the enterprises and in research institutes does not hold any promise for the young generation in extensively applying their capacities. This is especially true today, under the scientific and technical revolution, when the monopolies seek to convert the generation of young intellectuals into the same kind of ``cogs'' in the laboratories and the shops as the workers. This has aroused protests by young intellectuals who are as yet unable to realise and formulate their demands. But I think that this is essentially a struggle for the right to work in accordance with one's capacities, the right to express and develop these capacities in labour. Monopoly capitalism stands in the way. Its levelling bulldozer has not spared those who come from the middle classes either. In this respect, monopoly capitalism once again appears as the eve of the socialist revolution.
Petty-bourgeois radicalism is an unstable phenomenon. Fascism is known to have succeeded in confusing many petty-bourgeois radicals, befogging their minds with diverse types of demagogy and turning them against the working class.
Once again attempts are being made to direct petty-bourgeois radicalism against the working class. Let us recall, as an example, the theory of Professor Herbert Marcuse. Consequently, the subjective aspect of the matter, the battle of ideas, the struggle for the unity of action by the working class and the nonproletarian sections acquire tremendous importance.
In the past few years, the integration of the capitalist system, especially in Western Europe, is a question that has been ever more frequently considered within the context of the scientific and technical revolution. The bourgeois press has suggested that the scientific and technical revolution promotes this integration, leads to ever clpser interweaving of the national economies, etc. This tendency cannot be denied, but the form in which it is expressed is typically capitalist. Here everything rests on domination and subjugation, on hegemony, on the allocation of influence by strength, by capital, as Lenin used to say.
182However, this strength now takes on a different form, being covered with a scientific and technical shell. There is no doubt that the scientific and technical revolution tends to become a component part of world politics and acquire political importance. US monopoly capital seeks to restore its positions in the capitalist world by harnessing the scientific and technical revolution. The bourgeois press has carried reports that there is mounting alarm in Western Europe over the growing US investments in the West European countries, especially over the nature and areas of these investments. Those who invest seek to gain control or dominant positions for US monopoly capital in the new technology areas. A new term---technological colonialism---has even been coined to describe the US attitude to Western Europe. This purpose is also served by the so-called ``brain drain''.
Incidentally, even within the capitalist countries the scientific and technical revolution causes a sharpening of the struggle between the monopolies. The ``young'' monopolies frequently carry on a fight against the ``old'' ones. Under state-monopoly capitalism this develops into a struggle for the instruments of state power and assumes the form of acute political conflicts and crises.
In world politics, monopoly capital has pinned other hopes on the scientific and technical revolution, notably, hopes of re-equipping colonialism. On the one hand, the monopolies assume that the scientific and technical revolution, with its new technology, will markedly ease their dependence on some types of raw materials extracted in countries with a low technical and economic level. On the other hand, they expect the scientific and technical revolution to create new and powerful means for an offensive against the colonies they have lost, so as to intensify their technical and economic dependence and, consequently, to preserve the political master-and-servant relations.
Such are some of the lines along which capitalism has tried to use the scientific and technical revolution. These attempts to bolster the positions of capital ultimately tend to aggravate the contradictions of capitalism, quite apart from the use of science and technology for the arms race, for fabricating mass destruction weapons. Such use of science and technology by capitalism, of course, presents the greatest danger to mankind.
What I have said suggests that the anti-imperialist struggle in the period of the scientific and technical revolution cannot and must not die down, but that it will develop and that there is an objective basis for its development. Such is the logic of life and its objective necessity. It is now largely up to the subjective factor. Consequently, the ideological struggle of the working class and the Communist parties is of tremendous importance.
Ever greater historical importance attaches to the struggle for the scientific and technical revolution in the Soviet Union and the other 183 socialist countries. Scientific and technical progress in the socialist countries, the extensive application of new technology in production, its growing efficiency, the scientifically grounded management of the economy, and the most effective realisation of the vast potential of socialism---all add up to an earnest of fresh victories for socialism in the economic, political and ideological sphere in its struggle against capitalism. That is one of the key questions of world history.
__ALPHA_LVL3__ THE ROLE OF THE MASSES IN HISTORY __ALPHA_LVL4__ [introduction.]On November 8, 1917, the day after the October Revolution won out, Lenin spoke about the new political force which had emerged for the first time in history: ``Our idea is that a state is strong when the people are politically conscious. It is strong when the people know everything, can form an opinion of everything and do everything consciously."^^55^^ These words of Lenin's express the great turning point in the political, state activity of the people. The Soviet people's success in building a new society helps everyone to gain a greater understanding of the tremendous power and potentialities of the people and the prospects for their development.
The transition of vast masses of men from spontaneous participation in the historical process to conscious activity, and their conversion into active creators of this process is a characteristic feature of our time. In May 1918, Lenin spoke of the movement in the USSR of hundreds of thousands of men ``who have hitherto lived according to tradition and habit, into the camp of the builders of Soviet organisations".^^56^^ At that time, the process was just beginning and only in one country. Today, the transition from the old order according to tradition and habit, handed down from ages of domination by the exploiters, to conscious historical action has swept not only the countries of the world socialist system, but also many peoples which had but recently been in colonial dependence. The present epoch is a turning point in world history in the activity of the masses, in their organisation, the effectiveness of their action and the pace of social development.
For thousands of years the masses took no more than a spontaneous part in the historical process. Only with the emergence of the proletariat in the arena of the class struggle did the participation of the toiling masses in the historical process undergo a radical change. Lenin said that the proletariat had alone succeeded in uniting, rallying together, and forming disciplined ranks for carrying on a systematic struggle against capital. The nature of the participation by the working class in the _-_-_
~^^55^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 26, p. 256.
~^^56^^ Ibid., Vol. 27, p. 411.
184 historical process is directly connected with their political organisation. Neither the slaves nor the serfs had been able to set up parties as a conscious vanguard of the whole class. Both the slaves and the serfs had set up temporary insurgent organisations which in structure and function were a far cry from political parties operating constantly and daily, instead of sporadically, rallying the whole class to struggle for the immediate tasks and the ultimate goals, and formulating these goals on the basis of an analysis of reality with the help of a revolutionary doctrine.Another expression of the spontaneous nature of the working people's movements in the slave-holding and the feudal periods was that these movements frequently rallied to religious ideas, their participants having no more than a vague and fantastic idea of the end of their struggle, which had no political programme clearly reflecting the class interests and the mature requirements of social development. The lack of the necessary consciousness and developed political organisation was also expressed in the relations taking shape between the mass and the leaders of the movement at the most revolutionary moments of history: the leaders of slave or serf movements were surrounded by an aura of sanctity and infallibility, because they were thought to be the instruments of Divine Providence, of Divine fate. There was as yet no clear understanding of the fact that the strength of the leaders of a movement lies in the consciousness and organisation of the masses and in their ability to express the collective will and idea. It was the Marxist-Leninist parties that introduced new and scientifically grounded forms of mass organisation and principles of leadership. Thanks to their activity the working class became the rallying point for other sections of the working people, while the concept of ``masses'' acquired clarity, giving rise to a political organisation of the masses which opened up real possibilities for their taking historical action with great effect.
__ALPHA_LVL4__ IThe ideologists of the capitalists and the petty bourgeois have always taken an incorrect view of the concept ``people'' and ``mass''.
The Narodniks spoke much about the people and even praised it in every way, but their view of it was far from being scientific. Their concept of the ``people'' remained vague because they did not see the existence of classes and the class struggle. According to such theories, which ignore the internal dynamic strength of the people, it takes some kind of external impetus to set masses of people in motion. Most frequently this external force is represented as a band of ``heroes'' ruling the ``crowd'', an inert and faceless force. The individual was contrasted with the people and set up over and above them.
185Petty-bourgeois theories, denying the existence of classes and the class struggle, could not conceal the anti-popular substance of the exploiters' policy or correctly understand their attitude to the people. Many theorists of this stripe blanketed the exploiters and the exploited under the name of the ``people'', thus reiterating the bourgeois views of the French bourgeois revolutionary period, when the bourgeoisie identified itself with the people, claiming that it was unthinkable for the working people to have their own legitimate interests distinct from those of the bourgeoisie. In effect, Narodnik sociology was unable clearly to distinguish the concept of ``people'' from that of ``nation''.
Present-day bourgeois philosophy and sociology have virtually abandoned the use of the term ``the people''. Gone are the days when bourgeois theorists used to write the word with a capital P. They now prefer to use the word ``masses'' with a hint of contempt, although they make use of terms like ``mass society" and ``mass civilisation" to identify the present stage of social development. Philosophical and sociological theories of ``mass society" are bound up with the political use and political organisation of bourgeois society in the imperialist period. This connection is inevitable, because nothing at all can be said about the role and potentialities of the masses unless we draw attention to their political organisation and the social structure of society which produces this organisation. However hard present-day bourgeois theorists may try to exorcise this fact, all of their reasonings merely serve to confirm it.
Which political views of the bourgeoisie does this imply?
Soon after the French Revolution of the 18th century, bourgeois theorists proclaimed that society did not consist of classes, social groups or organisations, but of individuals. That was an apology for bourgeois individualism, for a social and political system based on private-property relations. It was, in effect, an apology for the very real and absolutely unlimited rights of capital, with formal rights only held out to masses of people. The people came to be characterised as an assemblage of individuals deprived of any internal organisation. Encyclopaedic dictionaries said that ``the people" were a mass of men and women inhabiting a country and living under the same laws. This mass, or ``assemblage'', was united only by the state power operating on the given territory. The bourgeois contempt for the masses is simultaneously contempt for the individual and a trampling of his rights.
What is the individual and what is his role in bourgeois society if he is deprived of private property, capital, which alone determine his weight? The bourgeois view of the masses justifies the rights of the property owner and the deprivation of the poor, who were told that they were themselves to blame for having failed to become ``someone''. -
The bourgeoisie, with its state power, was not at all inclined to accept the fact that the working man became strong only when he united with his mates in a political organisation. In theory and in practice, the 186 bourgeoisie preferred to deal with personified moneybags and a scattered group of ``individuals'', deprived of any strength and organisation, lost like grains of sand in the vast dunes known as ``society''. But against the will of the bourgeoisie and under its domination the working class began to organise itself, its consciousness was enhanced, it began a struggle for its rights and for that purpose made use of bourgeois-democratic freedoms.
As society entered the period of imperialism, monopoly capital launched an offensive against the democratic rights of the people in an effort to establish its complete domination on the political scene. Hundreds of books and articles were written to prove that classes and the class struggle had disappeared, that the process of ``integration'' was going forward everywhere, and that society was becoming ever more ``homogeneous''. These were apologetic writings extolling present-day capitalist society, which allegedly has the ``legitimate right" to ban as useless and obsolete political parties of the working class and its democratic organisations. To this very day, writers in the USA who have sold out to the capitalists claim that the trade unions ``hamper the individuals'', while strike-breakers champion ``individual freedom''.
Theories denigrating the people in every way haye become widespread, their authors insisting that ``homogeneity'' tended to dissolve the individual in the ``mass'' and that the ``masses'' in history were the greatest evil, and nothing but a ``degradation of the human condition''. Numerous socio-psychologists of the Freudian school have tried to prove that by their very nature the ``masses'' could engage only in the lower forms of spiritual activity, exaggerating in every possible way the role of the unconscious and subconscious elements in the behaviour of the masses. Even the British historian Arnold Toynbee, who does not accept Freudian-type socio-psychological attitudes, in his vast work on the philosophy of history at one stroke dissected all civilisations that had ever existed in the world into two social sections: the ``creative minorities" and the ``uncreative majority''. Toynbee holds history to be a largely changing relationship between the inert, ``uncreative majority" and the ``creative minorities''. These reactionary and unscientific views were subsequently spun out in various theories of the ``elite'', which must and does take charge of mankind's history. The purpose of all these bourgeois theories is ultimately to try to keep the masses away from political activity, thereby helping to preserve capitalist relations.
The practical and theoretical activity of the Marxist-Leninist parties has been developing in implacable struggle against such views and practices of the bourgeoisie. Marxism-Leninism has given a strictly scientific explanation to the concept of ``people'', for otherwise it is impossible to carry on correct and effective revolutionary activity. Only 187 by separating the concept of ``people'' into classes has Marxism produced a truly scientific view of the people, of the masses, as a real force in historical progress. In the first place, it was necessary to bring out the working class, which these theorists had wanted to dissolve in the general concept of ``people'', an extremely vague notion as used by bourgeois and petty-bourgeois theorists. That was done by Marx and Engels, who also pointed out that the proletariat was the leader of all the working people in the revolutionary process.
Lenin developed the doctrine of the alliance between the working class and the peasantry, of a merger of peasant movement and the struggle of the working class, and of the proletariat's leadership of the revolutionary struggle of the nonproletarian sections of the working people. He elaborated the proposition concerning the fundamental vital interests of the working class and the toiling peasantry, whose alliance alone could and did attract the best men from the intelligentsia and all the healthy elements of the nation. The further development of this alliance and its growing strength and organisation determined the future of the historical process.
The main thing is that the core of the alliance and its leader, the working class, should be highly organised and capable of giving a lead to all the other, nonproletarian sections of the working people. Such an alliance ensures the victory of the socialist revolution and then the success of socialist construction, in the course of which the other sections of the people draw ever closer to the working class; in this way, the people is increasingly consolidated, acquiring unity and cohesion in the fight against the exploiters and in building the new society.
Lenin's ideas were tested in the flames of revolutionary battles. Modern history has shown that it is Lenin's theory that ensures success in practice and makes it possible to pursue a viable and realistic policy capable of fulfilling mature historical tasks. Lenin's predictions have been borne out by the emergence in modern history of massive political forces like the popular front. Thus, Marxism-Leninism has alone produced scientific concepts of the ``people'' and the ``masses'' in place of the old ones which presented the masses as something quite amorphous and deprived of inner social and political organisation. The people, that is, the working class, rallying the peasant masses and the nonproletarian sections of the working people round it, is a great social force capable of changing the whole social system. Such is the incontestable conclusion of history. What is more, it is the most characteristic feature of the whole content of the present-day historical process, which is determined by the growing active and conscious participation of masses of people. The higher forms of such participation exert an influence on the other elements of the historical process. That is why the transformation of the CPSU into a party of the whole people, and of the Soviet state into a state of the whole people, together with the 188 real successes scored by the Soviet people, which show how effective the participation of the masses is in fulfilling the tasks of social development, are of great importance that transcends the boundaries of the USSR.
__ALPHA_LVL4__ IIThe organisation of the people as a conscious social force is a most important historical task today. This task is being fulfilled by the working-class Party, which is structured on the organisational principles of Leninism and which is guided by revolutionary theory. Its most important principle is that the Marxist-Leninist Party carries on its work in the masses, involving ``all the best forces without any exception, at every step verifying carefully and objectively whether contact with the masses is being maintained and whether it is a live contact. In this way, and only in this way, does the advanced contingent train and enlighten the masses, expressing their interests, teaching them organisation and directing all the activities of the masses along the path of conscious class politics."^^57^^
The Party teaches the masses to organise, for that is the only way to express their conscious strength. The Party educates and enlightens the masses, carrying on its organisational work in their midst, and expressing in its activity the interests of the working people and the urgent requirements of social development. Therein lies the great strength of the Party, whose emergence and development works a change in the whole course of world history and in the participation of the masses in the historical process.
Once the power of the exploiters has been destroyed, the people, united by the working class, displays its mighty creative forces to the full. The working-class Party organises and directs the construction of the new society, and its constant and living bonds with the masses are of tremendous importance. In this context, Lenin said: ``Our victories were due to the direct appeal made by our Party and by the Soviet government to the working masses, with every new difficulty and problem pointed out as it arose; to our ability to explain to the masses why it was necessary to devote all energies first to one, then to another aspect of Soviet work at a given moment; to our ability to arouse the energy, heroism and enthusiasm of the masses and to concentrate every ounce of revolutionary effort on the most important task of the hour."^^58^^
There Lenin reiterated his idea about the strength of the Soviet state, something he had said on November 8, 1917. In effect, he formulated a _-_-_
~^^57^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 19, p. 409.
~^^58^^ Ibid.. Vol. 30, p. 139.
189 key principle underlying the activity of the whole political organisation of Soviet society, both the Party and the State. To tell the masses the truth about the existing difficulties and to show the ways of overcoming them was not only a moral principle of Party activity but an imperative of real politics and of the whole materialist world outlook. Fulfilment of this requirement multiplied the strength of historical action by the masses. That is why the Party attaches such importance to this requirement, and condemns boasting, idle talk and administration by fiat.It is quite obvious that without a profound scientific analysis of the urgent tasks of social development the Party cannot explain to the masses why and how this task can be solved, and cannot organise or direct the revolutionary efforts of the masses. The Party's whole policy is based on a study of the objective course of development.
It is also necessary to have a profound knowledge of the moods prevailing among the masses, to be able to approach the mass and to win its absolute confidence for the Party, which expresses its interests and aims, in tackling any important tasks.
Summing up the experience of guiding the masses in Soviet society, Lenin put forward the following principles:
``Bonds with the mass.
Living in its midst.
Knowing its mood.
Knowing everything.
Understanding the mass.
The right approach.
Winning its absolute confidence.
The leaders not losing touch with the masses they lead, the
~ ~ vanguard---with the whole army of labour.
...No flattering of the mass, no losing of contact with the mass.''^^59^^
Guided by these principles, the Party has won the greatest confidence of the people. But that is not to say, of course, that these principles are now outdated. Their constant implementation and the further strengthening and extension of ties with the masses help the Party to attain to a more profound scientific analysis of the mature tasks and to formulate the methods for fulfilling them.
In maintaining close ties with the people, the Party absorbs the experience of the masses, studies and generalises it, and enriches its revolutionary theory. In his ``Speech at the First Congress of Economic Councils" Lenin gave a clear characteristic of the role of mass experience in building the new society. He said that scientific analysis of capitalist society helped to bring out the tendency of its development and _-_-_
~^^59^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 44, p. 497--98 (in Russian).
190 the historical inevitability of the swing away from the domination of private property to the domination of social property. In this way, theoretical analysis had helped to determine the main line of social transformation. Lenin added: ``We knew this when we took power for the purpose of proceeding with socialist reorganisation; but we could not know the forms of transformation, or the rate of development of the concrete reorganisation."^^60^^What is the source of the Party's knowledge of the concrete forms of transformation and the realistic rates of this process as it directs the greatest reorganisation of society?
Lenin's answer is quite clear: ``Collective experience, the experience of millions can alone give us decisive guidance in this respect, precisely because, for our task, for the task of building socialism, the experience of the hundreds and hundreds of thousands of those upper sections which have made history up to now in feudal society and in capitalist society is insufficient."^^61^^ The task of building a new society requires the involvement of the whole mass of working people in construction, for this alone will produce effective results and enrich experience.
In those conditions, the role of the creative principle inevitably grows and the role of the Marxist-Leninist Party is enhanced and complexified. It has to make a scientific generalisation of the experience to select from it what is most important for historical progress, everything that most deeply expresses the requirements of social development and its fundamental line. The Party's task is to awaken the creative energy of the masses and to channel it into the solution of urgent problems. That is why the Party so resolutely condemns any neglect of mass experience and any hasty recommendations which fly in the face of practical experience.
The Party's great organisational effort among the Soviet people is complex because the solution of the tasks of building a new society requires that the masses should be so organised as to provide that every person fits into his proper place.^^62^^
History operates with great numbers and calls for masses running to many millions. But that does not mean that the mass is faceless and that it does not consist of individuals. On the contrary, every individual who is a part of the mass must be an active conscious builder, for this multiplies the creative energy of the masses in every sphere of social life. The Party insists that the legitimate interest of every working person should be constantly reckoned with, so that his material incentives to work should not be reduced but increased.
At the same time, a key aspect of the Party's activity in rallying the _-_-_
~^^60^^ V. I. Lenin. Collected Works, Vol. 27, p. 410.
~^^61^^ Ibid.
~^^62^^ Ibid., p. 411.
191 working people is to foster a sense of the common cause, which creates bonds between all members of society, a sense of the common interest, without whose satisfaction it is impossible to satisfy the personal interests of every working person. The Party expresses the social interest, the common cause of the whole working people building the new society. The same purpose is served by the state organisation of the new society. The Soviets are a form of involving the masses in state construction, having sprung from revolutionary experience of the masses and helping to accumulate and enrich it. The trade unions, the young people's organisations and the farming cooperative movement have much experience in mass creative effort. But without the organising and leading role of the Party in the very midst of the masses their experience would not have developed on that historic scale. A specific feature of the activity of a political organisation like the Party is that it exerts an influence on the masses not by administrative measures but carries its ideas and its advanced theory into the mind of every working person by involving him in active conscious work.``In revolutionary activity the changing of oneself coincides with the changing of circumstances'',^^63^^ which means that in the course of man's revolutionary activity he ceases to regard social conditions as being immutable, as being predetermined by blind fate. This also means that man comes to realise that his social activity and the real possibilities for changing the existing situation are objectively determined, instead of engaging in illusions and fantasies. The CPSU fosters among the working people a correct notion of man's social activity, of the role of the subjective factor and objective reality.
Accordingly, its policy includes two key elements: scientific analysis of the regularities and tendencies of social development, and generalisation of the conclusions which natural science makes it possible to apply to production and the development of social labour. The knowledge of nature and of society is blended in a scientific basis for the historical activity of the masses, promoting progressive social development.
The Party's main requirement is that every task in the activity of the masses should be scientifically substantiated, and it resolutely condemns any departure from this principle and all empty and meaningless statements. That is the only way to make the whole effort in building the new society practical and efficient.
__ALPHA_LVL4__ IIIThe historical change in the nature of the activity of the masses and in their thinking is expressed above all in their attitude to production.
The attitude to production fostered in the minds of men over the _-_-_
~^^63^^ K. Marx and F. Engels, The German Ideology, Moscow. 1964. p. 230.
192 centuries dominated by private property suggests that it is the business of the individual to secure his food and clothing. At first, there was almost no difference between ``my'' business and interest, and the ``common'' business and interest. The contradiction between the individual and the social interest emerged with the disintegration of primitive society and the appearance of classes and private property. With the disintegration of the commune in slave-holding society the new attitudes already made themselves felt and continued to develop in the feudal period, reaching their peak under capitalism. In spontaneously developing society, man's own activity appears to him as an alien and countervailing force which oppresses him. Attitude to work, to the labour process and production is a key aspect in the development of social consciousness and individual consciousness. Only with the emergence of the new society, as socialist consciousness combats the bourgeois-anarchist approach, does man's distorted attitude to production begin to disappear, together with the habit of regarding the effort to secure food and clothing as a ``private'' matter.In place of the social connection in production which expressed the employer's self-seeking interest, men structured their social relations on new lines. The accursed past, personal interest, Marx said, reduced man's requirements to possession, although appropriation is not in any sense a universal expression of human interest. He wrote: ``Private property has made us so stupid and one-sided that an object is only ours when we have it.... In the place of all these physical and mental senses there has therefore come the sheer estrangement of all these senses, the sense of having."^^64^^ This, says Marx, leads to an ``absolute impoverishment" of the individual. Even the need of other men, beginning from the slave-holding period, is converted into an urge to take possession of the other man.
Imperialism has almost entirely deprived production, labour, the key sphere of human activity, of its spiritual content, and has reduced the working man to the status of an appendage of the machine.
Specialists in industrial sociology have said a great deal about the ``despiritualisation of labour'', an insoluble problem under capitalism and its crime before mankind. By depriving the working man of the joy of creative work, capitalism seeks to convert him into a soulless automaton producing surplus value.
In socialist society, labour has been released from the fetters of exploitation and private-property greed and has become a great force in the development of the people themselves. That is why the solution of the problems arising in the correct organisation of social labour is of primary importance in the USSR. That is why the CPSU devotes so _-_-_
~^^64^^ K. Marx, Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, p. 94.
__PRINTERS_P_194_COMMENT__ 13---594 193 much attention to these matters. The main requirement in organising social labour in the period of communist construction is that every working person should display initiative and new ideas in his work, for this results in profound changes in man's mentality and helps to develop his capacities and requirements.The best minds have always wanted work to be an endeavour giving scope to the development and application of human capacities and satisfying their growing requirements. Over thousands of years in the course of world history work did not meet the necessary requirements of social justice. Following a fundamental revolution in the social system, with the triumph of the socialist revolution, labour, free from the fetters of exploitation, enables man to apply and improve his capacities. That is what makes the new society so strong. The Party's policy is to build up and multiply this strength.
The construction of the new society signifies a fundamental change above all in production, the most important sphere of the activity of the masses, and in their attitude to work. For the first time men begin to work consciously and freely on building the economic basis of society, whose creative tasks are accepted as the chief ones in the activity of all the members of society. The CPSU helps to realise the greatest historical mission, by setting up big and small well-knit collectives within society and transforming all working people, the whole of society into one vast, conscious and creative collective, a solidly united people building a new life and performing a titanic patriotic achievement.
__ALPHA_LVL4__ IVIt took ages for the three spheres of human activity---production, the socio-political sphere and the ideological sphere---to be differentiated and developed. More centuries passed before the working people eliminated by their struggle man's exploitation of man, the main barrier in the development of these three spheres of massive activity.
Socialist society opens up the vast social potentials latent in men and shows the real possibilities for pooling their efforts in transforming nature and perfecting social relations and men themselves. It fills labour with a high spiritual content and bridges the gap between production and the socio-political sphere. Production tasks become the political tasks of the masses and the whole of social activity is aimed above all at ensuring the development of production. In the USSR the working man is a good worker in production and is at the same time a public figure, who has a say in society and whose production activity consists in doing his public duty, and this is duly appreciated by the whole people.
As socialist society develops, participation in socio-political life becomes a right and a duty of every citizen. The socialist state of the 194 whole people expresses this in its legislation, and the Communist Party works to develop consistent democracy so as to allow every working person to be active, to display initiative and work consciously for the benefit of society. That is what marks the start of a new stage in man's socio-political activity, which transforms his own nature as well.
With the development of socialist society, Marxist ideology becomes the ideology of the masses, so working a radical change in man's spiritual activity. Never before in history has progressive thought been adopted by such broad masses of people. That is a most important characteristic of our day. The task now is to make scientific Marxist ideology adopted as the world outlook by every member of society.
We live in a great period because it marks the end of the age-old isolation between man's mental activity and his manual work. All the spheres of human activity are being harmoniously blended, and production is no longer separated by a Great Wall from the mental sphere. On the contrary, it requires of man a high level of intellectual activity, knowledge, a wealth of spiritual power, including a high moral standard. Nor is socio-political activity separated from production or farmed out to a privileged minority: it belongs to the whole people, to the state of the whole people, and to the Communist Party. Socio-political activity is closely bound up with every aspect of spiritual activity, because in socialist society all its forms amount to serving the people and doing one's social and civic duty. The Party works to raise the level of massive activity, in a titanic endeavour in the midst of the masses, in every collective, seeking to involve every working person.
What is the state of these three spheres of massive activity in present-day capitalist society? I have already said that bourgeois theorists themselves admit that production and labour are being ``despiritualised''. Whenever imperialism manages to add `` depolitisation" of social life to the ``despiritualisation of labour" it does so to the utmost extent, and that is a vivid expression of the stagnation of capitalism.
Bourgeois sociologists have written a great many books about the ``depolitisation'' of present-day capitalist society, especially in the USA. They give figures to show that citizens stay away from the polling booths, while the public opinion polls show a decline of interest in political affairs. What they fail to say is why this is so. But the causes and those to blame are easily identified. When the political arena is entirely occupied by two powerful concerns, by two parties, as it is in the USA, and when the working people are invited from time to time to choose between these concerns, whose basic programmes do not differ from each other, how can the masses be active? Everywhere the monopolies seek to convert the country's political life into a bog and to oust all the democratic forces on the political arena.
__PRINTERS_P_195_COMMENT__ 13* 195In these conditions the sphere of the spiritual activity of the masses contracts in an ugly way. Unless man is aware of his social ties and the urgent tasks of social development, his spiritual world is poor and inadequate. It remains for him to live in a world of illusion because the incentives coming from social life or man's mental activity are weakened. In the sphere of spiritual activity it becomes ever more evident that the framework of reality in which man lives is extremely limited by his personal and everyday interests which are not realised as being a part of an intense and full-blooded social life. In these conditions, the impulses to consideration of the great problems in human life inevitably tend to weaken.
The Communist and Workers' parties in the capitalist countries have a great historical mission to perform. They express and multiply the strength of the tendencies and the forces acting for an awakening of the masses for great creative activity. The revolutionary energy of the masses and their activity in the socio-political sphere in exploitative society are aimed to destroy its foundations and to create the prerequisites for a grand creative effort in the subsequent period. That is the aim of the organisational and educational activity of the MarxistLeninist parties in capitalist society, and that is the substance of the socio-political activity of the masses under capitalism.
Under the leadership of the Marxist-Leninist parties the working class has been fighting against all the barriers set up by the exploitative system in the way of the creative initiative of the masses and seeks to awaken them to political activity. The Communists in the capitalist countries rely on the successes scored by the CPSU, directing the vast creative activity of the masses, and by the other fraternal parties in the socialist states. More and more democratic forces and intellectuals, including those who are not yet aware of the fact that it is the communist movement that has awakened them and has impelled them to start their first and difficult search for the truth, have been following the Communists in the capitalist countries. The democratic elements cannot develop and become an impressive force in the social life of the developed capitalist countries without a strong Communist party. Such is the logic of history. The political organisation of the working class, and the rallying round it of all the working people, together with the extension and deepening of the Communist parties' activity and the spread of their influence on all the democratic forces make up an important element of present-day world history.
The world communist movement directs the class economic, political and ideological struggle of the masses for the achievement of the same goal---socialism and communism---so tackling an urgent task in social development. The truly scientific revolutionary theory stands for the unity of the economic, political and ideological struggle of the working class, a requirement which has a profound philosophical backing and 196 whose fulfilment introduces consciousness into every sphere of the working people's activity. In their struggle, the Marxist-Leninist parties are guided by this requirement, combining organisational and ideological activity in the masses, leading them to struggle to attain their immediate goals dictated by the historical situation, and for the achievement of the ultimate aims of the working class. Marxist-Leninist theory equally rejects the contemplative and passive approach, admiration of spontaneous movements and every kind of voluntarism and subjectivism, which inevitably lead to adventurism. Lenin wrote: ``There can be no dogmatism where the supreme and sole criterion of a doctrine is its conformity to the actual process of social and economic development."^^65^^ This is a key principle of the scientifically grounded philosophical theory of mass revolutionary activity.
Leninism, the outlook of the Communist Party, for whose victory among the masses it carries on its struggle, asserts that man's moral duty and his sense of responsibility to society can develop only if the requirements of social development and the urgent requirements of society have been correctly understood. Only then can man determine what he has to do and how he has to act. This understanding grows as a result of the Party's activity as it studies the requirements of social development, and formulates the tasks for the masses to fulfil, without which it is impossible even to determine the meaning of individual life in concrete historical conditions.
The creation of the political organisation of the working class---its Communist party---marks not only an important stage in the activity of the masses and in their social reality, but also in its cognition. The pooling of the efforts of the working class and of all the working people is simultaneously a summing up of the experience of struggle gained by many contingents of the army of labour. Experience in the struggle includes the effective use of known uniformities and the discovery of new objective prerequisites for the historical activity of the masses, which make it possible to gain a deep understanding of the objective conditions of social being. Lenin's ideas are great and the congresses of the CPSU and the documents of the meetings of Marxist-Leninist parties are of abiding importance because they are based on a comprehensive knowledge of social reality and the historical practice of the masses and direct the masses' conscious activity on scientific principles.
The spiritual horizon of Soviet people goes beyond the boundaries of one country, for whatever they do they are aware of the need to tackle international tasks in supporting the world liberation movements. Thanks to the organisational and educational work of the CPSU, Soviet people have a sense of being in step with the times, of being members of _-_-_
~^^65^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. I, p. 298.
197 a collective which includes all the fighting national contingents, of being fighters in the great army of labour which on various sectors carries on its struggle against exploitation, and for the triumph on the globe of new social relations, which open up boundless scope for expressing the social energy of the masses. That is the substance of the historical endeavour of the Communist Party and the whole Soviet people. __NUMERIC_LVL2__ Chapter Two __ALPHA_LVL2__ SOCIAL THOUGHT AND REVOLUTIONARYIf the historical tendency of development that was most important for mankind was to be realised, if vigorous action by the working class and all the working people was to be intensified, and if their consistent, staunch and all-round struggle for changing capitalist society in the direction of its own development was to be carried on, there was need for intense ideological battles to release the working class movement from the influence of bourgeois ideology and the habitual cliches of bourgeois thinking. It was the bourgeois view that recognition of the objective course of social development inevitably implied a reduction in the importance of men's conscious activity. That was an important defect of the bourgeois mechanistic, metaphysical materialism, as Marx observed in his Theses on Feuerbach. On the other hand, recognition of the role of men's conscious, creative activity in the historical process implied, for bourgeois ideologists, a denial of objective uniformities, voluntarism and diverse forms of subjectivism.
Both these cliches were especially harmful at a time when society was moving towards socialist revolution, as the vast social energy of the working people was being awakened for the destruction of the old and the creation of a new system. The awakening, organisation and direction of this great energy of the masses became the key questions in social thought. One of the most vital tasks was to overcome the bourgeois cliches and the ideological influence of the bourgeoisie on the working class, and this called for historical revolutionary action by the masses.
__ALPHA_LVL3__ THEORY OF STRUGGLE INSTEADMeanwhile, the relatively peaceful period for the working-class movement from the uprising of the Paris proletariat in 1871 to the Russian revolution of 1905 was marked by growing bourgeois influence 198 on the working class in the advanced capitalist countries. This was expressed in the growing danger of opportunism, which used Marxist terminology to cover up its attempts to smuggle in the idea of capitalism's ``growing into" socialism.
The German bourgeois Professor Werner Sombart characterised the state of social thought and social movement by the turn of the century, following the death of Frederick Engels, as follows: ``The social movement---and I find this point to be the most important and significant aspect of this whole change---has become above all evolutionist, to use once again a well-known expression for the sake of brevity: the revolutionism, which had ruled undivided up to then, that is, the idea that revolution could be made, was in principle abandoned. Now that the dependence of the social movement on economic development, and consequently, the economic dependence of all revolution has been understood, the masses had to be seized, to be sure, with a sense of confidence that their `emancipation' had to arrive as a 'natural necessity', but then, on the other hand, every urge to secure emancipation by means of uprisings and street fighting was suppressed."^^1^^
Sombart said that the revolutionary attitude remained only among the anarchists and ``putschists'', whose outlook was closely connected with idealism. Actually, however, with the domination of opportunism, the anarchists and Leftist phrase-mongers claimed a monopoly of revolutionary activity and sought to present adventurism and voluntarism as revolutionism. But Sombart, true to his bourgeois conception, declared that the old revolutionary tendencies in the social movement were dying out, just as they had allegedly been ``overcome'' in social thought, in ``the theoretical understanding of social processes''. He claimed that even in the outlook of Marx and Engels revolutionary elements remained no more than relicts of mid-century revolutionary storms. Unfortunately, many theorists of the Second International agreed with the bourgeois professor.
Sombart believed that ``Marxism'' (actually, opportunism), having abandoned idealism and revolutionism, and introduced an ``economic view of history'', had, in effect, fulfilled its mission in the history of social thought and social movement. Sombart wrote: ``The ideological content of Marxism seems to be exhausted for further development. There is need for new men with fresh ideas. But are they there?" Urging the need for ``new ideas" in Marxism, Sombart stressed: ``On the threshold of the peasantry it will have to decide its future destiny. While the solution may not be as simple as some agrarian professors imagine: industry is socialistic, agriculture is individualistic (in Italy, Hungary and _-_-_
~^^1^^ Werner Sombart, Friedrich Engels (1820--1895). Bin Blatt zur Entwicklungsgeschichte des Sazialismus, Berlin, 1895, S. 26--27.
199 Emacs-File-stamp: "/home/ysverdlov/leninist.biz/en/1975/PS429/20070606/299.tx" __EMAIL__ webmaster@leninist.biz __OCR__ ABBYY 6 Professional (2007.06.06) __WHERE_PAGE_NUMBERS__ bottom __FOOTNOTE_MARKER_STYLE__ [*0-9]+ __ENDNOTE_MARKER_STYLE__ [0-9]+ __FOOTNOTE_MARKER_SEQUENCE__ continuous elsewhere we find a very strong collectivist agrarian movement), still it seems that the old Marxist wisdom needs to be vigorously rejuvenated if the old stock of ideas is not to lose its importance."^^2^^ In a way, Sombart was right, for opportunism had in effect fulfilled its ``mission'' and its distinction from bourgeois theories was becoming ever more tenuous. Among the many other problems which the opportunists ignore, Sombart was correct in groping his way to the peasant question that was of tremendous importance for a number of countries in Europe, to say nothing of the colonies. On the whole, this bourgeois theorist had a fairly clear sense of the weakness of social opportunism, his closest ally.The effort to deny all credit to this opportunist trend in social thinking, and to show that at root it contradicted Marxism and its effective revolutionary substance, that opportunism signified complete degradation of social thought itself, became an important task in mankind's ideological life. This called for new men capable of making a resolute break with centrism and conciliation with opportunism, the attitudes which distinguished the leaders of the Second International, men capable of characterising the new historical situation and new revolutionary prospects for the activity of the working class and all the other working people.
In an article, written in 1899 and entitled ``Our Programme'', Lenin stressed that the creative development of Marxism was a historical necessity: ``We do not regard Marx's theory as something completed and inviolable; on the contrary, we are convinced that it has only laid the foundation stone of the science which socialists must develop in all directions if they wish to keep pace with life."^^3^^ But it was revisionism and opportunism that presented a barrier in the way of creative development of Marxist thought. Revisionism did not issue a call to advance but to retreat. ``Back to Kant!" the revisionists declared, for instance, seeking to reverse the development of social thought and to revive various doctrines that had already become things of the past.
Social thought breaking with revolutionary social action was deprived of any possibility of development. Social thought could develop only by indicating the way for mass action and by summing up the historical experience in the struggle of the working class. There was no other way forward. All other ways led into the past, to a revival of the somewhat modified and refurbished theories of the social process which had already outlived themselves.
The ground for the development of social thought changed when social conditions had developed to a point at which the working class appeared in the historical arena to carry on a consistent struggle for its emancipation and for the emancipation of all mankind from exploitation, _-_-_
~^^2^^ W. Sombart, op. cit., S. 34.
~^^3^^ V. 1. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 4, p. 211--12.
200 from the bourgeois mode of production, the last possible form of oppression in the history of society. The strengthening of the bonds between social thought and the revolutionary, struggle of the working class meant broader possibilities for the development of social thought itself. Retrogression towards different forms of petty-bourgeois socialism was also possible, because there remained in capitalist society the petty bourgeoisie and the peasantry, while sizable sections of the working class were infected with petty-bourgeois attitudes. But then social thought would have ceased to express the progressive tendencies of social development. The development of social thought along that line would not have helped to separate the petty-bourgeois sections from the influence of powerful capital, but would have strengthened the latter's influence on these sections. The separation of social thought from the tasks of the revolutionary struggle of the working class would inevitably have meant only a strengthening of the reactionary influence of bourgeois ideology, a spread of the dogmas of bourgeois social philosophy, a dead end for the development of social thought itself and its inevitable degradation. For the working class, stagnating social thought would have meant the gravest trials, much blundering about and a loss of orientation in the struggle. That is why Lenin vigorously opposed any attempts, as he wrote in 1899, to ``conduct the workers' struggle ... and not attempt to combine it with socialism; ...not strive to turn the working-class movement into the essential, advanced cause of all mankind".^^4^^ The conjunction of the working-class cause with socialism was the guarantee for the development of social thought and social movement.``Tailism" presented a growing danger to the working-class movement as the importance of action by the masses and their high level of consciousness and organisation increased. In the history of the Social-Democratic movement in Russia, as Lenin pointed out, this danger appeared as early as 1901 and 1902. In that period, ``tailism'' assumed the form of ``Economism'', involving a denial of the importance of political struggle. The ``Economists'', and also the Mensheviks and the Liquidators, who subsequently succeeded the former in the political arena, were moving towards a theory of spontaneous movement, making irrelevant references to the objective uniformity of the historical process and ignoring the fact that the activity of the masses was a key factor in the process of social development. In this way ``tailism'' inevitably became revisionism, a ``revision'' of the key tenets of Marxism.
The revisionists speculated on the fact that the revolutionary storms of 1848 had subsided, and that new historical conditions had taken shape, which meant that Marxism had to be supplemented with new propositions in accordance with the new period. The revisionists' _-_-_
~^^4^^ Ibid., p. 284.
201 references to the changing historical scene showed that revisionism could be defeated only by creative Marxism, with its profound scientific analysis of new phenomena emerging in the life of society, with an indication of the importance of these phenomena for the activity of the masses, for their struggle against the exploitative system, and for the prospects for social development from capitalism to socialism.Concerning the revisionists themselves, Lenin wrote: ``And we now ask: Has anything new been introduced into this theory by its loud-voiced `renovators' who are raising so much noise in our day and have grouped themselves around the German socialist Bernstein? Absolutely nothing. Not by a single step have they advanced the science which Marx and Engels enjoined us to develop; they have not taught the proletariat any new methods of struggle; they have only retreated, borrowing fragments of backward theories and preaching to the proletariat, not the theory of struggle, but the theory of concession---concession to the most vicious enemies of the proletariat, the governments and bourgeois parties who never tire of seeking new means of baiting the socialists."^^5^^
Here Lenin shows very well what developing Marxist theory truly means. It means, first of all, developing the theory of struggle, and teaching the proletariat new methods of struggle which spring from the new situation. That is the only way Marxist theory, which is a guide to action, can develop. The revisionists insisted that the struggle should be folded up, and worked to eliminate the revolutionary historical activity of the masses. For social thought to develop it was necessary relentlessly to combat bourgeois objectivism, the reactionary and unscientific idea that the objective laws of social development themselves would lead society to socialism through gradual change and reform, without vigorous revolutionary action by the working class. Let me emphasise that had the idea won the day, social thought would have gone into reverse.
By then, the Marxist propositions showing the uniformities of historical development were spreading ever wider among the bourgeois intelligentsia as well. Marxism was reflected in bourgeois literature, a largely new phenomenon as compared with developments during the lifetime of Marx and Engels. The ``legal Marxists" did not mind borrowing some propositions from Marx's social theory, but flatly refused to accept socialist revolution and the dictatorship of the proletariat. Lenin's struggle against ``legal Marxism" was of fundamental international importance. Marxist ideas were also reflected (and still are reflected) in bourgeois writings in the capitalist countries. Lenin taught the Communists to distinguish these ``reflections'' from true Marxism and showed the danger of killing the revolutionary content of Marx's _-_-_
~^^5^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 4, pp. 211--12.
202 theory. Theories borrowing snatches from Marxism were designed to paralyse the will of the working people for struggle. Opportunists of various stripes were also closely allied with bourgeois theorists spreading such ideas. The former made use of some Marxist tenets but refused to recognise the revolutionary activity of the masses as being necessary and law-governed.Some of them also dabbled in ``economic materialism'', and referred to the self-movement of the productive forces, while discarding the working class, the masses of the working people and their active revolutionary struggle, in their analysis of the historical process. That was a return from Marx to the traditions of mechanistic materialism.
The history of social thought shows that the attempts to apply mechanistic materialism to an analysis of social phenomena fail to produce any profound explanation of these phenomena or to show the self-movement of the social whole, and ultimately result in surrender to idealism. That is what happened to the opportunists, who held metaphysical views, took the mechanistic attitude and adopted the ``economic view of history''. These men flung wide open the gates to idealism in explaining historical phenomena.
The claim was that Marx and Engels had not produced a philosophy and that their political doctrine could be combined with whatever bourgeois philosophical system happened to be in vogue. The opportunists, who were sliding down to idealism, rejected the fundamental materialist tenet that in order to change man there was need to change his conditions. They held that it was quite enough to restructure men's consciousness. The advocates of ethical socialism insisted that morality should be changed first of all. The opportunists, who were infected with neo-Kantianism, held that the ideals of socialism were unattainable and were no more than tantalising visions which would never be realised.
Bourgeois theorists used the favourable situation to intensify their propaganda of idealism which did not meet with sufficiently strong and staunch adversaries on its way. The revival of idealistic trends among the intellectuals and the urge to carry idealism into the masses of the working people were most pronounced not only in the West but also in Russia. Everywhere social phenomena were given an idealistic interpretation. The journal, Severny Vestnik (Northern Herald), which was started in the 1890s and engaged in the spread of idealism and mysticism, on one occasion declared: ``We believe that the mechanism of human life is wound up inside, from the human spirit. Action through external legislative measures amounts to no more than moving back with your finger the hand of a clock that is late."^^6^^
_-_-_~^^6^^ Russian Literature of the XX Century (1890--1910), ed. by Professor S. A. Vengerov, Vol. 1, Moscow, Mir Publishers, p. 246 (in Russian).
203However, the point was not to advance the hands of a late clock by means of reforms, nor was it to start the ``self-improvement'' of every cog in the clockwork. The point was to install a new clockwork in place of the old one that had run down, implying a fundamental transformation of social relations. The struggle for materialism, and against idealism, for dialectics and against metaphysics and mechanicism entered a new phase, a struggle that was closely connected with scientific communism, its creative development and its triumph in theory and practice.
__ALPHA_LVL3__ APPROACH TO REVOLUTION:The struggle for dialectics and materialism and for their creative development was also required for the battle which Lenin was then waging against the Leftist trends which claimed to represent the revolutionary wing of the working-class movement, the revolutionary mainstream of social thought. Lenin said these trends were ``vulgar revolutionism" and showed that petty-bourgeois reformism and pettybourgeois revolutionism were internally akin to each other, and that this was most clear in the working-class movement at the turning points of history. Lenin wrote: ``Every specific turn in history causes some change in the form of petty-bourgeois wavering, which always occurs alongside the proletariat, and which, in one degree or another, always penetrates its midst.
``This wavering flows in two `streams': petty-bourgeois reformism, i.e., servility to the bourgeoisie covered by a cloak of sentimental democratic and `Social'-Democratic phrases and fatuous wishes; and petty-bourgeois revolutionism---menacing, blustering and boastful in words, but a mere bubble of disunity, disruption and brainlessness in deeds. This wavering will inevitably occur until the taproot of capitalism is cut."^^7^^
Analysing the epistemological roots of ``vulgar revolutionism'', Lenin showed that subjective idealism was its methodological basis. He stressed that the swing towards subjective idealism was most characteristic of bourgeois ideology in the epoch of imperialism. Philosophy was faced with the great task of giving a scientific explanation of the active role of human consciousness and men's conscious practical activity on the basis of the objective laws of nature and society. Diverse schools of bourgeois philosophy, the subjective idealists most prominently, did a motley round-dance about these questions. As the old metaphysical notions were collapsing, they claimed to be warring against all dogmas, but actually sought to deny scientific knowledge every objective reference-point, extolled randomness, and encouraged the _-_-_
~^^7^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 33, p. 21.
204 arbitrariness of bourgeois thinking which was unable to get at the truth. Under the cover of the same struggle against ossified dogmas in literature and art, these men insisted on a complete expulsion of all ideas and enshrined absurdity as ``freedom of art''. These were the products of the disintegration which emanated from the rotting social system. In face of new advances in science and defending itself against these all along the line, the reactionaries took cover behind the shield of subjective idealism and declared the objective uniformities discovered by science to be the subjective notions of the scientists concerned.Imperialism, the final stage in the development of capitalism, is marked by an aggravation of its most profound contradictions, the germination of socialist revolution, and convulsive attempts by reaction to slow down the revolutionary process. One such attempt was the revival of subjective-idealist views in philosophy and science. By then, the vast productive forces awakened by capitalism were stimulating the development of technical and scientific thought. Improved technology and machinery, in particular, meant fresh demands upon research, new instruments for the researcher and fresh opportunities for experiment. The advance of science, physics in particular, had reached a point at which the old, mechanistic views, which no longer agreed with the new scientific data, were being broken up. This was evidence of the boundless potentialities of the human mind in gaining a knowledge of objective reality. The reactionaries, for their part, claimed that this merely showed the ability of the human mind to create a ``picture of the world'', without ever getting at the objective truth.
The bourgeois sermon of subjective idealism, backed up with false references to scientific achievements, necessarily had an effect on the vacillating petty-bourgeois elements, who had joined the working-class movement and were inclined to ``vulgar revolutionism''. They held that if the time came to act, everything depended on the subjective factor. They refused to consider the objective uniformities, believing that everything depended on the notions of men. They denied there were any uniformities at all. The revival of subjective idealism in scientific theories gave ``vulgar revolutionism" something like a methodological basis. Bakunin and his followers were unable to find any other theoretical ``substantiation'', except neo-Hegelianism. Theorists who had fallen under the influence of bourgeois subjective-idealist views were inclined to take an ``extreme Leftist" stand in politics, and, for example, demanded the recall of workers' deputies from the State Duma and opposed the use of parliamentary forms of struggle.
Lenin gave a profound critique of the urge to revive subjective idealism. He exposed the reactionary political substance of this trend and showed its epistemological roots, giving a deep analysis of the development of scientific thought and the philosophical problems facing natural science, physics in particular.
205Throughout his life, Lenin carried on a struggle against every expression of subjectivism in the development of social thought and against any departures towards subjective idealism. He began his struggle with a critique of subjective sociology and Narodnik socialism.
The sociology propounded by the ``friends of the people" (N.~K. Mikhailovsky and others) was based on the subjective-idealist outlook and a denial that economic relations had the crucial role to play in social relations. These men were loudest in talking about the people on every possible occasion but hardly anyone had so debased the importance of the people in history as the advocates of subjective sociology, because they brought to the fore individuals, ``heroes'' who were contrasted with the faceless crowd.
The epigones of Narodnik socialism advocated the ideas of pettybourgeois revolutionism, which is the opposite of the proletarian revolutionary approach. They tended to isolate the peasants from the workers, the peasant movement from the working-class movement, and regarded the peasant movement as being a truly socialist movement, with the peasant commune being the basic unit of socialist society.
They failed to understand that capitalism, already developing in Russia, was a natural stage in the evolution of class society, and denied Marx's great discovery, the worldwide historical importance of the proletarian class struggle.
Lenin and the Bolsheviks carried on a persistent fight against any attempt to return to the petty-bourgeois theories of social thought, which tended to minimise the role of the people in the historical process, or extolled heroes or spontaneous movements, and rejected organisation and a conscious approach.
The effort to bring a high level of organisation and consciousness to the masses is the struggle for proletarian leadership of the working people, the peasantry in the first place, for the ideological and political influence of the working-class party on these masses, and against petty-bourgeois socialism.
The struggle carried on by Lenin and the Bolshevik Party against every form of petty-bourgeois socialism is of tremendous international importance. In 1920, Lenin wrote: ``Little is known in other countries of the fact that Bolshevism took shape, developed and became steeled in the long years of struggle against petty-bourgeois revolutionism, which smacks of anarchism, or borrows something from the latter and, in all essential matters, does not measure up to the conditions and requirements of a consistently proletarian class struggle."^^8^^ In 1905, Lenin explained why this petty-bourgeois revolutionism was so tenacious in Russia. He wrote: ``Russia's backwardness naturally accounts for the firm footing that various obsolete socialist doctrines gained in our _-_-_
~^^8^^ V. I. Lenin. Collected Works, Vol. 31. p. 32.
206 country. The entire history of Russian revolutionary thought during the last quarter of a century is the history of the struggle waged by Marxism against petty-bourgeois ``Narodnik socialism."^^9^^ This applied especially to petty-bourgeois, ``Narodnik socialism'', because there remained the individual farming peasants with their backward socio-economic relations.At the Second Congress of the RSDLP, Lenin urged the Party to work so as to make the proletariat the leader of the peasantry in the coming revolution.
The struggle against petty-bourgeois, ``Narodnik socialism" was not a short-lived episode. The Bolsheviks carried on a great historical struggle to win over the toiling peasantry, and to establish an alliance between the working class and the peasantry, so as to provide correct quidance for the revolutionary energy the peasantry had been accumulating over the centuries. Otherwise it was impossible to create the revolutionary tide that could sweep away first tsarism, and then, after a regrouping of the forces, the power of the capitalists as well.
Throughout his life, Lenin continued with tireless energy to fight against every expression of subjectivism, subjective idealism and voluntarism in the working-class movement, against the attempts of these most harmful trends to camouflage themselves as Marxism, and against every effort to push the revolutionary movement into adventurism and so inevitable defeat.
At various stages of the revolutionary process, Lenin's Party carried on a relentless fight against the ``Otzovists'', the ``Left Communists'', the Trotskyites and others who loved to use ultra-Leftist catchwords, and showed these to be essentially capitulationist.
Much importance attaches to the struggle carried on by Lenin and the Party against Trotskyism, which has always covered up its capitulationist substance by means of Leftist and ultra-Leftist catchwords. The Trotskyites were seeking to wind up the construction of the new society and contrasted the building of socialism in the USSR and the interests of the world revolution. They denied the possibility of building socialism in one country and demanded that the revolution should be exported and the world revolutionary process stimulated by military means. They claimed that concentration on the various aspects of economic construction allegedly tended to narrow down the field of vision and weaken one's revolutionary sense. Their ``broad'' revolutionary outlook boiled down to ceaseless chatter about the world revolution, a rejection of economic and, consequently, of political efforts to build up socialism, and capitulation to imperialism. Lenin exposed the Trotskyite capitulationists and stressed the importance of Soviet economic construction for the advance of the world revolutionary process, and the _-_-_
~^^9^^ Ibid., Vol. 9, p. 439.
207 strengthening of the economic might of the Soviet Union, showing that these opened up real prospects for the emancipation movement.Lenin fought against petty-bourgeois Leftism not only within the Bolshevik Party but also in the world communist movement, exposing expressions of Leftism in foreign Communist parties like the denial of parliamentary forms of struggle, underestimation of communist activity in the trade unions, neglect of the struggle for reforms, absolutisation of armed forms of class struggle, etc. He said these Leftist relapses amounted to an ``infantile disorder" and taught the Communists to see its dangers and to take timely measures to cure it, so as not slide into empty talk and sectarianism, in isolation from the masses and the true revolutionary cause. ``The greatest, perhaps the only danger to the genuine revolutionary is that of exaggerated revolutionism, ignoring the limits and conditions in which revolutionary methods are appropriate and can be successfully employed. True revolutionaries have mostly come a cropper when they began to write `revolution' with a capital R, to elevate `revolution' to something almost divine, to lose their heads, to lose the ability to reflect, weigh and ascertain in the coolest and most dispassionate manner at what moment, under what circumstances and in which sphere of action you must act in a revolutionary manner, and at what moment, under what circumstances and in which sphere you must turn to reformist action. True revolutionaries will perish (not that they will be defeated from outside, but that their work will suffer internal collapse) only if they abandon their sober outlook and take it into their heads that the 'great, victorious, world' revolution can and must solve all problems in a revolutionary manner under all circumstances and in all spheres of action. If they do this, their doom is certain."^^10^^
Lenin showed up the petty-bourgeois nature of Left opportunism, and proved that Leftism had its social roots in the petty-bourgeois, the petty proprietor, who had ``gone wild" from the horrors of capitalism, whose revolutionism was unstable and superficial, and who lacked proletarian self-control, organisation, discipline and steadfastness. Lenin wrote: ``Revolutionary phrase-making, more often than not, is a disease from which revolutionary parties suffer at times when they constitute, directly or indirectly, a combination, alliance or intermingling of proletarian and petty-bourgeois elements, and when the course of revolutionary events is marked by big, rapid zigzags."^^11^^
The Communist Party, which Lenin founded, and the whole world communist movement have developed and have been tempered in implacable struggle on two fronts: against Right-wing opportunism, revisionism and liquidationism, and also against ``Left''-wing opportunism, dogmatism and sectarianism. Social thought was unable to advance _-_-_
~^^10^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 33, pp. 110--11.
~^^11^^ Ibid., Vol. 27. p. 19.
208 without overcoming these obstacles in its way. Right-wing and ``Left''-wing opportunism tended to drive social thought and the revolutionary cause into a dead end.Today, the task is to merge the revolutionary forces in a single tide not only within the boundaries of individual countries, but on a worldwide scale, considering the broad sweep of the national liberation movement, which is at root a peasant movement. The conjunction of this movement with the struggle carried on by the socialist system, the greatest achievement of the world working class, and with the struggle carried on by labour against capital in the capitalist countries is an earnest of success for the world revolutionary process as a whole.
Today, with fresh contingents, including those in the agrarian countries, joining the world revolutionary process, the danger of a revival of various petty-bourgeois revolutionary ideas in contrast to the proletarian revolutionary approach and scientific communism is a very real one. The imperialist bourgeoisie insists on the contrast in order to exert an influence on the national liberation movement in its own interests, and to separate it from the struggle of the international working class and the world socialist system for the construction of a new society.
Such theories may well spread whenever there is a possibility for the petty-bourgeois sections to increase their influence. Lenin stressed that ``economic relations which are backward, or which lag in their development, constantly lead to the appearance of supporters of the labour movement who assimilate only certain aspects of Marxism, only certain parts of the new world outlook, or individual slogans and demands, being unable to make a determined break with all the traditions of the bourgeois world outlook in general."^^12^^
Lenin indicated the way of struggle for the working class, which marches at the head of all the working people, and explained the importance for a victory in this struggle of a solid political organisation of the working class and the establishment of a mass proletarian party. The Marxist-Leninist Party, equipped with a scientific revolutionary theory, carrying the working class with it, and rallying the peasantry and all the other sections of the working people round the working class, is a key factor in the historical process on the eve of the socialist revolution and in the period of thansition from capitalism to socialism, when working-people's movements cease to be spontaneous and when the importance of their organisation and consciousness is multiplied a hundredfold. That is the only way to rouse the great social energy of the masses, the architects of history.
Lenin's exposure of the methodological basis of ``Left''-wing and Right-wing opportunist trends is of tremendous importance for social _-_-_
~^^12^^ Ibid., Vol. 16. p. 348.
__PRINTERS_P_210_COMMENT__ 14---594 209 thought, and will continue to be meaningful so long as the capitalists and the petty-bourgeois sections continue to exist. Lenin achieved this by taking a creative approach to materialist dialectics and analysing the dialectics of human cognition and of nature and society. __NUMERIC_LVL2__ Chapter Three __ALPHA_LVL2__ THE ORIGIN OF REVOLUTIONSLenin's brilliant analysis of the importance of conscious activity by masses of people and of objective conditions is best illustrated by his solution of the key question of how revolutions originated. Marx and Engels showed the deep-going causes of revolution by pointing to the conflict between the productive forces and the relations of production. But how does revolution originate in the storm of political events, how does the revolutionary drive of the masses gather momentum, what are the conditions in which it originates, which political phenomena lead to revolution when the conflict between the productive forces and the relations of production has come to a head? The answer to these questions was to be found by analysing the new and changing conditions. The opportunists insisted that revolutions cannot be made, that they occur of themselves. The voluntarists held that revolution was made by will and determination. What was the truth?
From the 1890s, Russia was swiftly advancing towards a bourgeoisdemocratic revolution, which was developing in new historical conditions, and had its own characteristic features: ``Objectively, the mass movement was breaking the back of tsarism and paving the way for democracy; for this reason the class-conscious workers led it."^^1^^
In 1902, Lenin wrote: ``History has now confronted us with an immediate task which is the most revolutionary of all the immediate tasks confronting the proletariat of any country. The fulfilment of this task, the destruction of the most powerful bulwark, not only of European, but (it may now be said) of Asiatic reaction, would make the Russian proletariat the vanguard of the international revolutionary proletariat."^^2^^
That was how Lenin saw the reasons why the centre of the world revolutionary movement was shifting to Russia. His approach was based on the scientific theory of social development. Consequently, the point was that in the course of the historical process the Russian proletariat had to tackle the most revolutionary task, which was why it moved into the van of the world revolutionary army.
_-_-_~^^1^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 22, p. 356.
~^^2^^ Ibid., Vol. 5, p. 373.
210Lenin concentrated the full power of his mind on the effort to see the social revolution as a living phenomenon, and relentlessly attacked the doctrinaires. He wrote: ``Whoever expects a `pure' social revolution will never live to see it."^^3^^ Lenin ridiculed the doctrinaire notion of socialist revolution: ``So one army lines up in one place and says, `We are for socialism', and another, somewhere else and says, `We are for imperialism', and that will be a social revolution!"^^4^^
Mankind's political horizon was considerably broadened when Lenin, having studied the new characteristic features of democratic movements and specifics of bourgeois-democratic revolutions under imperialism, and the hegemony of the proletariat in these revolutions, formulated the proposition that society's political organisation could be structured on new lines when the working class and the peasantry exercised their revolutionary dictatorship, and that the bourgeois-democratic revolution could develop into a socialist one.
__ALPHA_LVL3__ DOCTRINE OF THE REVOLUTIONARYThe doctrine of the revolutionary situation is the key element of Lenin's theory of socialist revolution. In many of his works, Marx analysed the process in which revolutionary crises came to a head. Thus, he brought out in detail how and what had caused ``the eruption of the general discontent" in France in 1848, and which factors at the time had accelerated ``the outbreak of the revolution".^^5^^
Lenin continued this work in the new conditions, when capitalism had entered the stage of imperialism and when the socialist revolution was knocking at the door. Lenin translated into the language of politics the proposition about the most acute conflict between the productive forces and the relations of production, a conflict that was about to boil over. He showed which situations in the sphere of politics expressed this conflict, which political forces were set in motion when the conflict arose, and how the political crisis from which revolution developed was created. Lenin devoted much attention to analysing the awareness and attitudes of the masses, the changes in the sphere of ideology and social psychology as the deep-going political crisis developed. The great revolutionary assessed the profound causes and the possible immediate factors which worked to create revolutionary situations.
On the eve of the 1905 revolution, Lenin began to analyse the question of revolutionary situations. On January 4, 1905, he published an article _-_-_
~^^3^^ Ibid., Vol. 22, p. 274.
~^^4^^ Ibid., Vol. 22, pp. 355--56.
~^^5^^ K. Marx and F. Engels, Selected Works, in three volumes, Vol. 1, p. 209.
211 entitled ``The Autocracy and the Proletariat'', which said that the working class ``must rouse and rally to its side the broadest possible sections of the exploited masses, muster all its forces, and start an uprising at the moment when the government is in the most desperate straits and popular unrest is at its highest".^^6^^ There Lenin already stressed such important conditions for an uprising as the moment when the ``government is in the most desperate straits" and ``popular unrest is at its highest.'' During the revolutionary upswing in 1913, Lenin returned to his analysis of this question and formulated the key proposition about the mounting of revolutionary crises: ``Oppression alone, no matter how great, does not always give rise to a revolutionary situation in a country. In most cases it is not enough for revolution that the lower classes should not want to live in the old way. It is also necessary that the upper classes should be unable to rule and govern in the old way."^^7^^ That is precisely when a political crisis tends to develop on a national scale. ``A nation-wide political crisis is in evidence in Russia, a crisis which affects the very foundation of the state system and not just parts of it, which affects the foundation of the edifice and not an outbuilding, not merely one of its storeys."^^8^^ Of great methodological importance is Lenin's remark to the effect that the crisis must go to the ``very foundation of the state system'', and that the crisis must be so profound that no reform will help to overcome it. This kind of crisis affects the whole of society's political life, ranges over the whole of its political organisation and results in great upheavals.Analysing the growth of the strike movement in Russia a year before the Lena shootings, and indicating that no other country in the world had so many participants involved in political strikes, Lenin emphasised that this was an expression of ``the special conditions in present-day Russia, the existence of a revolutionary situation, the growth of a directly revolutionary crisis. When the moment of a similar growth of revolution approaches in Europe (there it will be a socialist and not a bourgeoisdemocratic revolution, as in our country), the proletariat of the most developed capitalist countries will launch far more vigorous revolutionary strikes, demonstrations, and armed struggle against the defenders of wage-slavery".^^9^^ Thus, the mounting of the revolutionary crisis must precede both the socialist and the bourgeois-democratic revolution, for in both cases the revolutionary eruption must be preceded by a political crisis going to the very foundation of the state system and incapable of resolution by means of political half-measures.
_-_-_~^^6^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 8, p. 27.
~^^7^^ Ibid., Vol. 19, pp. 221--22.
~^^8^^ Ibid., Vol. 19, p. 222.
~^^9^^ Ibid.
212Two years later, Lenin gave a full-scale definition of the revolutionary situation, which fully applies to socialist revolution. He also returned to the question of the role of the struggle for democratic demands in preparing the socialist revolution in advanced capitalist countries.
In 1915, Lenin wrote: ``To the Marxist it is indisputable that a revolution is impossible without a revolutionary situation; furthermore, it is not every revolutionary situation that leads to revolution. What, generally speaking, are the symptoms of a revolutionary situation? We shall certainly not be mistaken if we indicate the following three major symptoms: = 1) when it is impossible for the ruling classes to maintain their rule without any change; when there is a crisis, in one form or another, among the 'upper classes', a crisis in the policy of the ruling class, leading to a fissure through which the discontent and indignation of the oppressed classes burst forth. For a revolution to take place, it is usually insufficient for 'the lower classes not to want' to live in the old way; it is also necessary that 'the upper classes should be unable' to live in the old way; = 2) when the suffering and want of the oppressed classes have grown more acute than usual; = 3) when, as a consequence of the above causes, there is a considerable increase in the activity of the masses, who uncomplainingly allow themselves to be robbed in 'peace time', but, in turbulent times, are drawn both by all the circumstances of the crisis and by the 'upper classes' themselves into independent historical action."~^^10^^
Only the involvement in the crisis both of the ruling and of the oppressed classes indicates that the political crisis is profound and that the ordinary political machine of the ruling classes is unable to cope with it.
Lenin also showed that it is ``not every revolutionary situation that gives rise to a revolution; revolution arises only out of a situation in which the above-mentioned objective changes are accompanied by a subjective change, namely, the ability of the revolutionary class to take revolutionary mass action strong enough to break (or dislocate) the old government, which never, not even in a period of crisis, `falls', if it is not toppled over".^^11^^ Thus, the revolutionary situation is created by the objective course of social development, and no revolution is possible without such a situation, but for the revolution to originate the revolutionary class must be capable of taking strong revolutionary action to overthrow or undermine the government. All of this indicates the maturity of the new element, which is capable of destroying the old, the obsolete in social life.
In this work of Lenin's which I have quoted---``The Collapse of the Second International"---Lenin asks whether a revolutionary situation _-_-_
~^^10^^ Ibid., Vol. 21, pp. 213--14.
~^^11^^ Ibid., p. 214.
213 had developed at the outbreak of the world war and replies in the affirmative. He also gives this important feature of political crisis: ``All governments are sleeping on a volcano; all are themselves calling for the masses to display initiative and heroism."^^12^^ This appeal for mass initiative and the awakening of this initiative is an important feature of the mounting revolutionary situation. But even in that period, in the period of wartime, Lenin did not connect the origination of revolutionary situations exclusively with war. Among the various types of political crises, he pointed to the Dreyfus Affair in 1894, when France was divided into a reactionary and a progressive camp. Another example cited by Lenin was the 1913 incident in Alsace, when a Prussian officer's abuse of the French-speaking population sparked off an outburst of indignation against the oppression by the Prussian militarists.Summing up these facts, Lenin wrote: ``The socialist revolution may flare up not only through some big strike, street demonstration or hunger riot or a military insurrection or colonial revolt, but also as a result of a political crisis such as the Dreyfus case or the Zabern incident, or in connection with a referendum on the secession of an oppressed nation, etc."^^13^^ The tactics of the working-class party is not to confine itself to parliamentary statements, but to involve the masses in vigorous action, to extend the struggle over every vital democratic demand and to carry it to direct attacks on the bourgeoisie.
Indeed, it is Lenin's elaboration of the question of deep-going political crisis that led him to draw, before the October Revolution, the important conclusion about the advance of socialist revolution in Europe. He wrote: ``The socialist revolution in Europe cannot be anything other than an outburst of mass struggle on the part of all and sundry oppressed and discontented elements. Inevitably, sections of the petty bourgeoisie and of the backward workers will participate in it---without such participation, mass struggle is impossible, without it no revolution is possible---and just as inevitably will they bring into the movement their prejudices, their reactionary fantasies, their weaknesses and errors. But objectively they will attack capital, and the class-conscious vanguard of the revolution, the advanced proletariat, expressing this objective truth of a variegated and discordant, motley and outwardly fragmented, mass struggle, will be able to unite and direct it, capture power, seize the banks, expropriate the trusts which all hate (though for different reasons!), and introduce other dictatorial measures which in their totality will amount to the overthrow of the bourgeoisie and the victory of socialism, which, however, will by no means immediately `purge' itself of petty-bourgeois slag."~^^14^^ Such is the picture of revolution as a living _-_-_
~^^12^^ V. I. Lenin. Collected Works. Vol. 21, p. 215.
~^^13^^ Ibid., Vol. 22, p. 145.
~^^14^^ Ibid., p. 356.
214 phenomenon, instead of a doctrinaire scheme. ``To imagine that social revolution is conceivable without revolts by small nations in the colonies and in Europe, without revolutionary outbursts by a section of the petty bourgeoisie with all its prejudices, without a movement of the politically non-conscious proletarian and semi-proletarian masses against oppression by the landowners, the church, and the monarchy, against national oppression, etc.---to imagine all this is repudiate social revolution''~^^15^^No revolution can start without a deep-going political crisis affecting the very foundations of the state system and ruling out any solution by means of partial reforms. This crisis involves not only the proletariat but also the semi-proletarian sections, a part of the petty bourgeoisie, and small nations in vigorous revolutionary activity. Revolutionary eruptions are also variously directed against landowner, religious, national and monarchist oppression. Various sections of the population are involved in the revolutionary crisis, entering upon a path of struggle for various reasons and carrying with them into the revolution their own prejudices and reactionary visions, their weaknesses and mistakes. But objectively they all join in the fight against capital. The task of the vanguard of the revolution, the advanced proletariat, is to unite all these sections and to direct them into the revolutionary mainstream, which leads to the overthrow of the bourgeoisie, the takeover by the working class and the victory of socialism.
The picture of advancing socialist revolution completes the characteristic of political crises fraught with revolution. At this point, Lenin supplemented his earlier analysis of deep-going political crises by indicating the social sections and the manner in which (for which immediate reasons) they enter into the political crisis. He said that the objective truth of the diverse motives underlying the struggle carried on by the patchwork mass ultimately amounts to an ``attack on capital'', and this objective truth is expressed by the working class. Its leadership helps the masses to purge themselves from their ``petty-bourgeois slags" in the flames of revolution.
__ALPHA_LVL3__ THE FUNDAMENTAL LAW OF REVOLUTIONAfter the victory of the Great October Socialist Revolution, Lenin summed up his earlier studies and formulated the fundamental law of revolution. He wrote: ``The fundamental law of revolution, which has been confirmed by all revolutions and especially by all three Russian revolutions in the twentieth century, is as follows: for a revolution to _-_-_
~^^15^^ Ibid., p. 355.
215 take place it is not enough for the exploited and oppressed masses to realise the impossibilityof living in the old way, and demand changes; for a revolution to take place it is essential that the exploiters should not be able to live and rule in the old way. It is only when the `lower classes' do not want to live in the old way and the 'upper classes' cannot carry on in the old way that the revolution can triumph. This truth can be expressed in other words: revolution is impossible without a nation-wide crisis (affecting both the exploited and the exploiters).^^16^^ = __NOTE__ Missing close double-quote before "16" footnote marker. That is the political expression of the acute and mature conflict between the productive forces and the relations of production, a sharp expression in the sphere of politics of the fact that the relations of production have become fetters upon social development and that they can no longer meet its requirements.The general sociological law of the conflict between the productive forces and the relations of production needs to be expressed in concrete terms through the law of the maturing of a nationwide crisis in a given country. The crisis must be expressed with especial force in politics and in the arrangement of class forces. The ruling classes must be in a state of government crisis, which involves the most backward masses in political affairs and weakens the government. On the other hand, Lenin stresses, the subjective factor, the high level of consciousness and organisation of the masses, is of tremendous importance.
In his characteristic of imperialism, Lenin stressed that ``the monopolies, which have grown out of free competition, do not eliminate the latter, but exist above it and alongside it, and thereby give rise to a number of very acute, intense antagonisms, frictions and conflicts".^^17^^
Consequently, political crises are especially possible in the period of imperialism, being caused by various frictions, for the domination of the monopolies inevitably leads to such conflicts that also affect the petty bourgeoisie and some sections of the middle bourgeoisie. The struggle between the monopolies also undermines the political structure of capitalist society. The monopolies trample on the old bourgeois democracy and range themselves against the rest of the population in thp capitalist countries. That is a source of the instability in the political sphere of the capitalist states in the period of imperialism.
Indeed, it is the most acute contradictions of imperialism taking the shape of deep-going political crises that could become nationwide, and in these conditions the struggle for vital democratic demands could develop into an attack by the working people, led by the working class, against the bourgeoisie. The monopolies stand for reaction, they are essentially anti-democratic and profoundly hostile to the struggle of all the sections of the working people for democratic demands.
_-_-_~^^16^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 31, pp. 84--85.
~^^17^^ Ibid., Vol. 22, p. 266.
216Today, in the presence of the world socialist system, and with capitalism weakened, a political crisis may shake the edifice of bourgeois domination in this or that country to its very foundations whenever an attempt is made to establish fascist rule, whenever an insane policy of reaction and aggression is pursued, etc.
In assessing the contemporary political situation in the capitalist world there arises the question of whether Lenin identified revolution and armed uprising? The answer is no. Back in 1899, Lenin considered the question of the peaceable and the armed way of a working-class takeover when he wrote: ``The working class would, of course, prefer to take power peacefully.... It is very probable---even most probable---that the bourgeoisie will not make peaceful concessions to the proletariat and at the decisive moment will resort to violence for the defence of its privileges. In that case, no other way will be left to the proletariat for the achievement of its aim but that of revolution. This is the reason the programme of 'working-class socialism' speaks of the winning of political power in general without defining the method, for the choice of method depends on a future which we cannot precisely determine."^^18^^
That is Lenin's view of the peaceable and the armed methods of a working-class takeover, a view Lenin maintained all his life. He held that a peaceable or armed takeover of power could be carried out only by an organised working class schooled in the class struggle. The armed takeover was necessary whenever the bourgeoisie resorted to force in protecting its privileges at the decisive moment. The proletariat would prefer to take power peacefully. The choice of the method of takeover depended on the concrete historical situation, and repudiation of the armed way in advance would amount to recklessness and an ignominious concession to the capitalists.
The historical situation in the following few decades provided very few opportunities for use by the working class of the peaceful method of taking power. The bourgeoisie was still very strong, and was always prepared to resort to armed force in defence of its privileges. But whenever there was an opportunity to use the peaceful method, Lenin pointed it out, as he did in his article entitled ``On Compromises" in September 1917. Considering the possibility of a return to the pre-July demand for a handover of power to the Soviets, Lenin wrote: ``Now and only now, perhaps during only a few days or a week or two, such a government could be set up and consolidated in a perfectly peaceful way. In all probability it could secure the peaceful advance of the whole Russian revolution, and provide exceptionally good chances for great strides in the world movement towards peace and the victory of _-_-_
~^^18^^ Ibid., Vol. 4, p. 276.
217 socialism."^^19^^ He added that ``the revolution's peaceful development" was ``an opportunity that is extremely rare in history and extremely valuable".^^20^^ In an afterword to this article, written two days later, Lenin stressed: ``Perhaps the few days in which peaceful development was still possible have passed foo."^^21^^ This fleeting opportunity in revolution was instantly noted by Lenin, who outlined in this connection the change of tactics for the working-class party. Considering that in those historical conditions the possibility of peaceful development in revolution was extremely rare, Lenin put all the more value on such opportunities and studied them closely and in depth.What was his idea of the peaceful opportunity in 1917? He wrote: ``If there is an absolutely undisputed lesson of the revolution, one fully proved by facts, it is that only an alliance of the Bolsheviks with the Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks, only an immediate transfer of all power to the Soviets would make civil war in Russia impossible, for a civil war begun by the bourgeoisie against such an alliance, against the Soviets of Workers', Soldiers' and Peasants' Deputies, is inconceivable; such a `war' would not last even until the first battle...."^^22^^ Consequently, the main thing for the peaceful development of the revolutionary process is the unity of all the democratic elements, from the Communists to the petty-bourgeoisie, and the isolation of capital. Furthermore, Lenin stressed that such a government would bring peace to the people and land to the peasantry, in which case ``a peaceful development of the revolution is possible and probable if all power is transferred to the Soviets".^^23^^
The Soviets would constitute a kind of parliament with seats held by Socialist-Revolutionaries, Mensheviks and Bolsheviks. Further struggle for power between the parties, for transition to socialist change would go forward in the Soviets: ``The struggle of parties for power within the Soviets may proceed peacefully, if the Soviets are made fully democratic".^^24^^ By ``fully democratic" Lenin meant that nothing should be done to curtail the democratic principles. If the struggle for power between the parties in the Soviets was to be peaceful, it was quite obvious that Lenin imagined the Soviets consisting of SocialistRevolutionaries, Mensheviks and Communists to be something in the nature of a parliament, and not yet as organs of the proletarian dictatorship. They could be no more than organs of the dictatorship of the working class and the peasantry. In form, as an arena of struggle for power between the parties, they would constitute a kind of parliament.
_-_-_~^^19^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 25, p. 306.
~^^20^^ Ibid., pp. 306--07.
~^^21^^ Ibid., p. 310.
~^^22^^ Ibid., Vol, 26, p. 36.
~^^23^^ Ibid., p. 37.
~^^24^^ Ibid.
218As for the bourgeoisie, during the revolution in Russia it was subsequently deprived of electoral rights. At the time Lenin wrote: ``It would be a mistake, however, to guarantee in advance that the impending proletarian revolutions in Europe will all, or the majority of them, be necessarily accompanied by restriction of the franchise for the bourgeoisie."^^25^^ But if the franchise for the bourgeoisie remains there must, consequently, remain the elective organs to which the bourgeoisie elects its representatives. This is a point which should be deeply pondered by everyone who has been shouting that Lenin denied the peaceful way of development for the revolution.
The world communist movement and the CPSU, elaborating the question of a peaceful takeover by the working class, proceeded from these brilliant precepts of Lenin's.
The new opportunities opening up for a peaceful takeover by the working class are connected, first of all, with the weakening of capitalism after the emergence and establishment of the world socialist system. The capitalists no longer have the same broad opportunities, as they did in the past, to resort to force in standing up for their privileges. Second, the new conditions are connected with the successes scored by the working class in the capitalist countries and the rallying of all the democratic forces round the working class. The Communist parties in the capitalist countries have been working to set up a united front, to separate the petty-bourgeois sections from the bourgeoisie and to fortify the anti-monopoly stream. They have made wide use of parliamentary forms of struggle wherever this holds promise of success for the cause of peace and socialism. That is the way indicated by Lenin. The various falsifiers of Marxism and downright anti-Communists, who have loudly claimed that Lenin opposed a peaceful takeover by the working class, should read the immortal works of Lenin, who was capable of drawing the most profound theoretical conclusions even on the strength of historical experience that was limited for various reasons.
There is no doubt that Lenin's remarkable theses about revolutionary situations are directly connected with his doctrine of the possibility of socialism initially winning out in one individual country. Let us note that Lenin simultaneously worked on the problem of revolutionary situations and the problem of the possibility of the socialist revolution winning out initially in a few countries or in one country. Naturally, the revolutionary situation and a nationwide crisis cannot arise all at once and simultaneously in all the capitalist countries. Such is the logical connection between the two problems.
__FIX__ These are some long quotes; ideally, format them differently so they stand out like a blockquote, but not a blockquote which has increased left margin and decreased right margin.In January 1918, Lenin wrote: ``The great founders of socialism, Marx and Engels, having watched the development of the labour movement and the growth of the world socialist revolution for a number of decades _-_-_
~^^25^^ Ibid., Vol. 28, p. 256.
219 saw clearly that the transition from capitalism to socialism would require prolonged birth-pangs, a long period of the dictatorship of the proletariat, the break-up of all that belonged to the past, the ruthless destruction of all forms of capitalism, the cooperation of the workers of all countries, who would have to combine their efforts to ensure complete victory. And they said that at the end of the nineteenth century 'the Frenchman will begin it, and the German will finish it'---the Frenchman would begin it because in the course of decades of revolution he had acquired that intrepid initiative in revolutionary action that made him the vanguard of the socialist revolution."^^26^^ Lenin goes on to show that in the early 20th century the situation underwent a change, with the forces of international socialism in a different arrangement. Opposing the efforts to turn economic backwardness into an absolute and to set it up as a necessary condition for the maturing of socialist revolution, Lenin insisted that it was easier to start a revolution in countries which did not exploit other countries and whose bourgeoisie did not have broad opportunities to bribe ``its own" working class.This idea of Lenin's was distorted by Bukharin, who declared in The Economics of the Transition Period that the collapse of capitalism began with countries that were weakest in technico-economic terms. Criticising this view, Lenin wrote: ``That is wrong: it will begin with the `medium weak'. We could have done nothing without some level of capitalism in this country."^^27^^ Bukharin asserted that revolution tended to begin with the lower system of the world economy and that the maturing of revolution was inversely proportional to the maturity of capitalist relations in this or that country. Lenin also criticised this idea and added: ``That is risky: one should say 'not with the highest'---and 'not directly proportional'."^^28^^ Thus, Lenin rejected the metaphysical assertion that revolutions could start only where the level of development of capitalist relations was highest. But he was equally opposed to the similarly metaphysical assertion that socialist revolution had to start with the weakest countries. He stressed the difficulties of starting revolutions in countries where the imperialists were able to bribe the top section of the working class.
Because individual countries develop unequally political crises do not mature simultaneously, but vary in force, depth and time. That was Lenin's starting point when he formulated his theory of the possibility of the socialist revolution winning out in one or a few countries and the impossibility of such a victory simultaneously in all the countries. As a whole, imperialism is the eve of the socialist revolution, and it is not right to say that this law does not apply to some capitalist countries. Lenin's _-_-_
~^^26^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 26, p. 471.
~^^27^^ Lenin Miscellany XI, Moscow-Leningrad, 1931, p. 397 (in Russian).
~^^28^^ Ibid., p. 398.
220 theory of the victory of socialist revolution initially in one individual country does not at all mean that other countries are insured against socialist revolution and are immune to it. Otherwise it is only weak links of imperialism, and not the system as a whole, that have advanced to the very threshold of socialist revolution. Even today some of those who consider the ``weak link" tend altogether to ignore Lenin's doctrine of revolutionary situations. They hold that if the weak link has been identified, some kind of permanent revolutionary situation in a definite geographical zone has been discovered. Once the existence of permanent revolutionary-situation zones is assumed, there is, of course, no need to consider the question of how revolutionary situations arise, for the whole thing boils down to determination and will. The ``weak link" countries are fatally and constantly predestined for socialist revolution. That is, of course, quite wrong. Lenin's theory of socialist revolution follows as a logical necessity from his doctrine of imperialism. Because of the uneven development of capitalism, the maturing of all the necessary conditions for socialist revolution proceeds unevenly, so that revolutionary situations are not created automatically in all the links of imperialism, nor are all the conditions always present for effective use by the working class of the opportunities opening up for action.Let us note that Lenin gave his brilliant formulation of the fundamental law of revolution in a work aimed against the infantile disease of ``Leftism'' in communism. Men afflicted with this disease wanted to hear nothing about revolutionary situations and the maturing of the necessary conditions for revolution in this or that country. Warning them against adventurism, putschism and voluntarist blindness, Lenin taught them the fundamental law of revolution.
Lenin's fundamental law of revolution hits out at all the opportunists, including the Right-wing opportunists, who ignore the revolutionary activity of the masses and the fact that the importance of objective conditions depends on the opportunities they provide for mass revolutionary activity. Lenin's formulation of the fundamental law of revolution is a model for applying materialist dialectics in studying the phenomena of social development. The discovery of this law shows the methodological basis on which Lenin formulated the strategy and tactics of the communist movement.
It is also one of Lenin's remarkable solutions for the general problem which he dealt with throughout his life and which he himself called the problem of the relationship between politics and economics. Lenin considered the major questions of social development always in the light of the connection between economics and politics, because politics had an immediate bearing on millions upon millions of people and their involvement in vigorous historical activity.
It is quite obvious, therefore, that Lenin's analysis of the formation of revolutionary situations is logically and indissolubly connected with his 221 doctrine of the possibility of socialist revolution winning out initially in one country.
The nationwide crisis cannot break out at once in all the capitalist countries and the revolutionary situation cannot mature simultaneously throughout the capitalist world. This conclusion was theoretically substantiated by Lenin with great profundity because he proved that the epoch of imperialism is characterised by extremely uneven development of the capitalist countries, with the result that socialism could win out initially in one or several countries.
In September 1916, Lenin wrote: ``The development of capitalism proceeds extremely unevenly in different countries. It cannot be otherwise under commodity production. From this it follows irrefutably that socialism cannot achieve victory simultaneously in all countries. It will achieve victory first in one or several countries, while the others will for some time remain bourgeois or pre-bourgeois."^^29^^ Earlier on, in August 1915, Lenin formulated this idea as follows: ``Uneven economic and political development is an absolute law of capitalism. Hence, the victory of socialism is possible first in several or even in one capitalist country alone."^^30^^ These brilliant ideas of Lenin's enriched the scientific theory of social development and gave a great impetus to social thought and revolutionary action.
__ALPHA_LVL3__ TIME OF REVOLUTIONARY CHANGEAccording to this theory, the course of social development must lead to the most acute crises arising in one or several countries as a result of which the socialist revolution will win out. The rest of the world will remain bourgeois or prebourgeois for some time. This will, consequently, open up a new and most important period in world history, with the world divided into two systems. This will be a period of simultaneous existence on the globe of socialist, capitalist and also precapitalist countries. This will be a period of the extension and deepening of the world revolutionary process. In this period, crisis phenomena in the capitalist countries will gain and sharpen, the law-governed process of aggravation of the contradictions between labour and capital will enter a new phase, and the struggle for a fundamental revolutionary transformation of society on socialist lines will be intensified, because the working class and the other working people will see ``how it's done''.
As for the precapitalist countries, with the advent of imperialism a new and important factor in the revolutionary process will emerge, namely, the anti-imperialist, national liberation struggle. In 1913, Lenin _-_-_
~^^29^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 23, p. 79.
~^^30^^ Ibid., Vol. 21, p. 342.
222 wrote: ``World capitalism and the 1905 movement in Russia have finally aroused Asia. Hundreds of millions of the downtrodden and benighted have awakened from medieval stagnation to a new life and are rising to fight for elementary human rights and democracy.``The workers of the advanced countries follow with interest and inspiration this powerful growth of the liberation movement, in all its various forms, in every part of the world. The bourgeoisie of Europe, scared by the might of the working-class movement, is embracing reaction, militarism, clericalism and obscurantism. But the proletariat of the European countries and the young democracy of Asia, fully confident of its strength and with abiding faith in the masses, are advancing to take the place of this decadent and moribund bourgeoisie.
``The awakening of Asia and the beginning of the struggle for power by the advanced proletariat of Europe are a symbol of the new phase in world history that began early this century."^^31^^ That was a brilliant analysis of the changes in the world revolutionary process since Marx's time.
Lenin also resolutely opposed any effort to contrast Europe and the colonies, as the Polish Social-Democrats, for instance, were doing. He wrote: ``A blow delivered against the power of the English imperialist bourgeoisie by a rebellion in Ireland is a hundred times more significant politically than a blow of equal force delivered in Asia or in Africa."^^32^^ All this action in the colonies shows their importance as forces ``which help the real anti-imperialist force, the socialist proletariat, to make its appearance on the scene".^^33^^
Lenin's basic idea was expressed in September 1916: ``The social revolution can come only in the form of an epoch in which are combined civil war by the proletariat against the bourgeoisie in the advanced countries and a whole series of democratic and revolutionary movements, including the national liberation movement, in the undeveloped, backward and oppressed nations.''^^34^^ It is safe to say that Lenin, first, established that the socialist revolution took a whole epoch and that it was in no sense a short-lived or instantaneous act of history. Second, Lenin formulated the conception of a coherent worldwide revolutionary process, which includes the struggle of the working class against the bourgeoisie and also a number of democratic and revolutionary movements, including the national liberation struggle against colonialism.
He said that ``imperialism does not halt the development of capitalism and the growth of democratic tendencies among the mass of the _-_-_
~^^31^^ Ibid., Vol. 19, p. 86.
~^^32^^ Ibid., Vol. 22, p. 357.
~^^33^^ Ibid.
~^^34^^ Ibid., Vol. 23, p. 60.
223 population. On the contrary, it accentuates the antagonism between their democratic aspirations and the antidemocratic tendency of the trusts".^^35^^ Elaborating on this idea, Lenin stressed that ``imperialism seeks to replace democracy generally by oligarchy".^^36^^ This indicates an important feature of the deformation of the political organisation of capitalist society by the monopolies. Concerning the activity of the monopolies, Lenin recalled that ``they do not confine themselves to economic means of eliminating rivals, but constantly resort to political, even criminal, methods".^^37^^ Those words were written in 1916 about the US monopolies but are even more relevant today, nearly 50 years later. The monopolies have deformed political life in the imperialist countries, conducting the anti-democratic tendency everywhere and running into antagonism with the democratic tendencies of the masses. On the strength of this analysis of Lenin's, the world communist movement sets itself the task of uniting in a single anti-monopoly stream considerable sections of the population in the capitalist countries.Lenin closely studied the question of what happened to bourgeoisdemocratic movements in the period of imperialist domination, and especially the question of the substance of bourgeois-democratic revolutions in that period. Let us recall that Lenin took the example of the 1905 revolution in Russia to formulate his theory of the development of bourgeois-democratic revolution into socialist revolution. On this problem Leninism was opposed by two ``schools'' of social thought, both of which ignored dialectics and materialism.
Because the Right-wing leaders of the Second International took the metaphysical approach they were unable to see the real connection between the bourgeois-democratic and socialist revolutions in the imperialist epoch, for they did not go beyond stating the distinction between these two phenomena of the same historical process and had them listed under different ``departments'' and as belonging to different epochs. They held that the working class had to play roughly the same role in bourgeois-democratic revolutions in the 20th century as it did in the 18th and 19th centuries. Translated into political idiom, this social metaphysics meant that the working class had to tag along in the wake of the liberal bourgeoisie. With this kind of approach the bourgeoisdemocratic revolution could never develop into a socialist one.
By contrast, Lenin took the consistently materialist dialectical approach and saw the revolutionary process in development. He emphasised that ``from the democratic revolution we shall at once, and precisely in accordance with the measure of our strength, the strength of the class-conscious and organised proletariat, begin to pass to the _-_-_
~^^35^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 23, p. 51.
~^^36^^ Ibid., p. 44.
~^^37^^ Ibid.
224 socialist revolution. We stand for uninterrupted revolution. We shall not stop half-way".^^38^^On the other hand, ``petty-bourgeois revolutionism" failed to see the distinctions between the bourgeois-democratic revolution and the socialist revolution. Lenin wrote: ``Trotsky's major mistake is that he ignores the bourgeois character of the revolution and has no clear conception of the transition from this revolution to the socialist revolution."^^39^^ This tended to distort the revolutionary process and to obscure its elements. In such theories there was, in effect, no development of revolution.
Trotsky's slogan---``no tsar, but a workers' government" ~ ignored the peasantry and completely distorted the question of the real possibility of the bourgeois-democratic revolution developing into a socialist one. Leftist slogans cannot, of course, help to change the course of the historical process. In practice, such slogans merely lead to a defeat of the revolutionary class, which has to pay the price for adventurism, because these slogans merely cover up the true state of affairs, which is a far cry from the substance of the slogan. In 1905, the working class was unable to establish its dictatorship right away, so that Trotsky's slogan could in effect become no more than a screen for the activity of petty-bourgeois and bourgeois forces.
All opportunists denied the importance of the alliance between the working class and the peasantry, an alliance which generates vast social energy capable of changing the world. Lenin and the Bolshevik Party formulated three slogans on the peasant question, expressing the stages of the revolutionary process, the transition from democratic tasks to socialist ones and further fulfilment of the latter. When one thinks of the importance of Lenin's answer to the question concerning the role of democratic movements in the epoch of imperialism, one comes to realise that this is a great achievement of social thought.
In our own day, Marxism-Leninism still has to fight against petty-bourgeois views of the revolutionary process. What then are the characteristic features of these petty-bourgeois theories which Marxism defeated?
First, they all emphasised only the political side of the revolution and saw it mainly as a political revolution. That is understandable, because petty-bourgeois theorists dealt in categories of the bourgeois-democratic revolution, which confines itself to changing the political superstructure and is for that reason characterised, as Lenin said, chiefly as destructive. Underestimation of the creative element in socialist revolution and its most important distinction from bourgeois revolutions is a characteristic _-_-_
~^^38^^ Ibid., Vol. 9, pp. 236--37.
~^^39^^ Ibid., Vol. 15, p. 371.
__PRINTERS_P_225_COMMENT__ 15---594 225 feature of all the attempts to revive the petty-bourgeois view of socialist revolution.Second, they all try to obscure the role of the working class in the revolution. Petty-bourgeois revolutionaries preferred to speak of the people as a class consisting of three elements, with the Russian Narodniks stressing the role of the peasantry and insisting that the revolution must start in the countryside and only then spread to the cities. The Left-wing advocates of Russian Narodnik socialism, who denied the role of the proletariat, also said that the whole West European working class had lost its revolutionary spirit, had become ``philistine'', so echoing the nationalistic, Slavophile ideas about the ``rotten West''.
Third, the revolution was presented only as an act of will, while the awakening of the will of the people was explained idealistically, because of its various ideals and faith in its right. All subsequent attempts to revive petty-bourgeois conceptions of the revolution were marked by voluntarism and calls for giving the revolution a ``push'' from outside.
Fourth, petty-bourgeois theories of revolution said nothing about the law-governed development of the revolution as a process. They were characterised by an urge to leap over the necessary stages, any notion of staged historical development being branded by petty-bourgeois theorists as cowardice or attempts to slow down the revolution. In accordance with this conception, Bakunin attacked Marx and the Marxists for believing that the development of capitalism in Germany was progressive and paved the way for revolution.
Petty-bourgeois revolutionaries frequently revived Utopian communist ideas about full-scale communism following in the wake of socialist revolution. Many petty-bourgeois theorists did not realise that socialism was a special and most important phase in the development of the new society.
Fifth, petty-bourgeois theorists had a very confused idea of revolution as a worldwide process. These views were marked by national limitations, despite the fact that many petty-bourgeois revolutionaries, including Bakunin, loudly advertised their internationalism. Bakunin and various other petty-bourgeois revolutionaries classified the world revolutionary process according to the national or racial principle. Bakunin criticised Marx and the Marxists as follows: ``Being alldevouring pan-Germans, they must reject the peasant revolution, if only because this revolution is specifically Slavonic."^^40^^
Sixth, Marx stressed that the main thing for Bakunin was the ``levelling'' of the whole of Europe, for instance, to the standard of the indigent street peddler. ``He wants the European social revolution, resting on the economic basis of capitalist production, to take place on the level of the Russian or Slav agricultural or pastoral peoples and not to _-_-_
~^^40^^ Karl Marx/Friedrich Engels, Werke, Dietz Verlag, Berlin, 1969, Bd. 18, S. 628.
226 go beyond that level."^^41^^ Thus, the world revolutionary process had to be essentially levelling in purpose, with the levelling off being done to the lowest standard of the peoples involved.Today, no levelling off to the lowest standard is possible if only because world capitalism would then find it easy to destroy the areas of the new social system. Success in economic development, consolidation of defence potential and development of the heavy industry in the socialist countries all add up to a gain for the world revolutionary process and a loss for imperialism. Those who fail to understand this simple truth have abandoned the most fundamental propositions of the Marxist theory of social development.
Thus, the question of the two elements of the world revolutionary process and of the principal contingent of the revolutionary movement---the countries with the appropriate level of development of the productive forces and, consequently, of the working class, and the countries where because the productive forces were at a low level the population, chiefly of peasant stock, was in a state of extreme indigence and indignation---this question was first considered in Marx's lifetime. The Russian revolutionary Narodniks pointed to the importance of the second stream of the world revolution but were unable to show the real connection between the two streams of the one worldwide revolutionary process. Engels stressed that in the presence of a proletarian dictatorship in the industrialised countries, nations whose population was mainly of peasant stock could go over to socialism as well. This problem was subsequently worked out by Lenin.
He pointed out that the situation had changed since Marx's lifetime and that a different combination of forces of international socialism had taken shape. But Lenin did not believe that the working-class struggle was receding into the background, or that the socialist revolution was to be identified with the national liberation movement.
The national liberation revolution is now at different stages in the various countries, it is in its initial stages in some countries where the struggle for bourgeois-democratic change is in the forefront.
A correct view of the present-day revolutionary process rests on Lenin's doctrine of the combination of the proletariat's democratic and socialist tasks. Lenin developed his doctrine of the bourgeoisdemocratic revolution in the conditions of imperialism, of the hegemony of the proletariat in this revolution, of the democratic dictatorship of the working class and the peasantry, and further developed Marx's idea about the development of the bourgeois-democratic revolution into a socialist one. Lenin's profound and thoroughly formulated doctrine of the development of the alliance between the working class and the peasantry, which invests the socialist revolution and the subsequent _-_-_
~^^41^^ Karl Marx/Friedrich Engels, Werke, Bd. 18, S. 633.
__PRINTERS_P_227_COMMENT__ 15* 227 construction of the new society with tremendous power is of great importance. Lenin formulated the national-colonial problem in the new conditions and indicated the ways of developing the national liberation movement, which was mainly peasant, in close connection with the proletarian movement in the advanced capitalist countries. To this day, the tactics and strategy of the world communist movement are determined by Lenin's doctrine of the world revolutionary process, which the Marxist-Leninist parties have elaborated and enriched with new experience of struggle. __NUMERIC_LVL2__ Chapter Four __ALPHA_LVL2__ REVOLUTION, WAR AND PEACE __ALPHA_LVL3__ [introduction.]The bourgeois falsifiers of Marxism would very much like to have the Communists insist that war is the way of spreading socialist revolution across the world. Indeed, they claim that Marxism says that there is no revolution without war. The critics of communism set up Aunt Sallies, and then easily knock them down. Chester Bowles, for instance, has invented a ``communist conception" in which Marx is supposed to argue that capitalism will be destroyed as a result of a series of imperialist wars between the capitalist countries over markets and colonies: So, capitalism is destroyed in war. Marx never said anything of the sort. But Bowles ``elaborates'' this conception. Without the First World War, he says, there would have been no Russian revolution. He tries to ascribe his own views to Lenin who allegedly pinned his hopes on revolution taking place in countries devastated by war. That is why the Communists, he claims, have always put their stake on war. That is his conclusion, and it runs counter to the whole sociological conception of Marxism-Leninism. The Communists take a different view of the motive forces of history, and of the reasons for which one socio-economic formation follows another.
Other versions of the same bourgeois conception of the world revolutionary process have ``expansion'' in place of ``war''. They claim that ``coexistence'' is ``peaceful'' acceptance by the non-communist peoples of the steady expansion of communism as an inevitable phase of historical development. That is another falsification. It is based on the same idea of a mechanical spread of communism from one center. But what is the ``steady expansion of communism"? It is only a bourgeois reading of the world revolutionary process. But the new social system emerges and develops through the living creative effort of the masses and this can be expressed only where the necessary objective and subjective conditions for this exist.
The Communists do not need to export revolution, because revolutions arise where the internal conditions have matured. That is the substance of Lenin's doctrine of revolution.
228 __ALPHA_LVL3__ WHAT LENIN ACTUALLY SAIDHere is what Lenin said about the First World War and about its impact on the construction of the new society in the USSR:
__NOTE__ Error in original: Formatted as regular paragraph in original.``For many years prior to the war the socialists of all countries pointed out, and solemnly declared at their congresses, that not only would a war between advanced countries be an enormous crime, that not only would such a war, a war for the partition of the colonies and the division of the spoils of the capitalists, involve a complete rupture with the latest achievements of civilisation and culture, but that it might, that, in fact, it inevitably would, undermine the very foundations of human society. Because it is the first time in history that the most powerful achievements of technology have been applied on such a scale, so destructively and with such energy, for the annihilation of millions of human lives. When all means of production are being thus devoted to the service of war, we see that the most gloomy prophecies are being fulfilled, and that more and more countries are falling a prey to retrogression, starvation and a complete decline of all the productive forces.''^^1^^
Consequently, Lenin held that the First World War could undermine the very existence of human society. Is it right, therefore, to say that world war is a favourable factor for the creation of a new and much more progressive society throughout the world? Of course, not. Lenin stressed that it was the first time in history that the most powerful achievements of technology had been applied on such a scale, so destructively and with such energy for military purposes. The danger presented by such war to the very foundations of human society springs from the fact that all the productive means are turned to destruction. The only result could be retrogression, starvation and a complete decline of all the productive forces. One must realise that the CPSU and the world communist movement start from Lenin's ideas in assessing the danger of another world war.
If that was Lenin's assessment of the most powerful achievements of technology during the First World War, what could one say about the danger presented by the new thermonuclear weapons? Only what the CPSU and the other fraternal Marxist-Leninist parties have been saying. The powerful achievements of technology have been multiplied a hundredfold, increasing accordingly the danger of undermining the very foundations of the existence of human society. War is bound to result in degradation, starvation and a complete decline of the productive forces.
Let us now consider what the First World War gave Russia, and what the experience of revolution in Russia was in this respect, as described _-_-_
~^^1^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 27, p. 422.
229 by Lenin. Of course, the First World War accelerated the collapse of capitalism in Russia and caused a most profound political, nationwide crisis. Here is how Lenin assessed the role of war in this context referring to Engels as he did so: __FIX__ We could toss a blockquote around the next paragraph even though it's a normal paragraph in original; the whole paragraph is a quote!!!``I am therefore led to recall how justified Engels, one of the great founders of scientific socialism, was, when in 1887, thirty years before the Russian revolution, he wrote that a European war would not only result, as he expressed it, in crowns falling from crowned heads by the dozen without anybody being there to pick them up, but that this war would also lead to the brutalisation, degradation and retrogression of the whole of Europe; and that, on the other hand, war would result either in the domination of the working class or in the creation of the conditions which would render its domination indispensable. On this occasion the co-founder of Marxism expressed himself with extreme caution, for he clearly saw that if history took this course, the result would be the collapse of capitalism and the extension of socialism, and that a more painful and severe transition period, greater want and a severer crisis, disruptive of all productive forces, could not be imagined."^^2^^
Thus, the First World War led to the collapse of capitalism in Russia and resulted in a profound nationwide crisis. But to stop there would be to distort Lenin's idea. Lenin stressed that even then, in the 1914--1918 period, it was impossible to imagine a more painful and arduous transition to socialism. One can imagine the transition to socialism after a third world war, following the use of even mightier achievements of technology---thermonuclear weapons.
About the First World War, whose destructive consequences were only a small fraction of the possible consequences of a third world war, Lenin wrote: ``We are now facing the most elementary task of human society---to vanquish famine, or at least to mitigate at once the direct famine, the agonising famine which has afflicted both our two principal cities and numerous districts of agricultural Russia."^^3^^ Consequently, we began by tackling the most elementary task of human society. That is, in effect, Lenin's assessment of the impact of the First World War on the construction of the new society in Russia.
Lenin's key precept is to take the historical approach to the question of wars, ``from the standpoint of Marx's dialectical materialism".^^4^^ In fighting both Right-wing and ``Left''-wing opportunists, Lenin stressed that the historical conditions tend to change so that the question of wars could be tackled only in the light of the historical situation. He wrote indignant, sarcastic articles against the Russian Mensheviks and German _-_-_
~^^2^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 27, p. 422--23.
~^^3^^ Ibid., p. 425.
~^^4^^ Ibid., Vol. 21, p. 299.
230 opportunists because they kept prattling about wars, refusing to realise that a new historical period had opened.Lenin stressed that the opportunists failed to see that in the past there had been ``no modern imperialism, no mature objective conditions for socialism, and no mass socialist parties in any of the belligerent countries...".^^5^^ Those were the factors which Lenin indicates in the first place in his study of the distinctions between the historical situation during the First World War and that of the preceding period. Thus, when dealing with wars, one must start from an analysis of the historical stage at which society finds itself. But one should also consider the development of the productive forces and technology, including the possibility of its application for the destruction of men.
Lenin, the great scientist, who analysed the economy and politics of the final stage of capitalism, saw the cause of imperialist wars as lying in the fact that the imperialists had undivided domination of the world, which they had shared out among themselves, and were now in the process of fighting for its redivision. That is the economic basis of wars under imperialism.
Lenin wrote about the First World War: ``The objective conditions for socialism have fully matured, and the present war is a war of the capitalists for privileges and monopolies that might delay the downfall of capitalism."^^6^^ Thus, with the aid of wars, the imperialists would like to delay the collapse of capitalism and slow down the historical process, which inevitably leads to the supplanting of capitalism by a new, socialist system. Lenin taught the working class how to fight this strategy of the imperialists.
How did Lenin consider the question of peace, the struggle for lasting peace in the imperialist epoch, before the victory of the socialist revolution in Russia?
Opposing the deceit of the people by means of pacifist catchwords, Lenin showed mankind the true path to peace. He taught the working class that ``the benefits they expect from peace cannot be obtained without a series of revolutions".^^7^^ He opposed the illusion that ``the existing governments, the present-day master classes, are capable---without being `taught' a lesson (or rather without being eliminated) by a series of revolutions---of granting a peace in any way satisfactory to democracy and the working class".^^8^^
Why did Lenin write about a series of revolutions, which alone could work a fundamental change in the world situation and create the conditions for the benefits of peace the masses were looking to? The _-_-_
~^^5^^ Ibid., p. 309.
~^^6^^ Ibid., p. 345.
~^^7^^ Ibid., p. 292.
~^^8^^ Ibid.
231 country in which the socialist revolution won out would undoubtedly be subjected to intervention by the capitalist states. To such intervention the people, who had taken over and were responsible for their country's destiny, would respond with a just, defensive war. Lenin wrote that the ``victory of socialism in one country does not at one stroke eliminate all war in general".^^9^^ That is a thing of the future, the result of a series of revolutions.Theorists who take a hostile attitude to Marxism want to conceal the fact that the CPSU starts from these very propositions of Lenin's. A series of revolutions has now taken place, eliminating capitalism over a vast expanse of the globe. The imperialists still in power in the rest of the world have also been learning in their own way. Even the most diehard representatives of imperialism seem to realise that the time has gone for good when international relations were an arena for arbitrary acts by the imperialists, aggressors and invaders. The mighty world socialist system, as Lenin anticipated, is capable of exerting a decisive influence on world politics, and it is working to exert such influence in favour of peace throughout the world.
__ALPHA_LVL3__ LENIN'S IDEAS OF STRUGGLEThere is need specifically to stress that Lenin totally discredited the theory of spreading revolution thiough conquest.
The proletariat, once it has taken over, must of course by prepared to safeguard its gains by force of arms against any intervention by reactionary international forces. That is what Lenin said. Revolutionary wars, he pointed out, ``may be waged to defend the conquests of the proletariat victorious in its struggle against the bourgeoisie".^^10^^
Replying to a question about what the proletarian party would do if the revolution put it in power in that war, Lenin said: ``...we would propose peace to all the belligerents on the condition that freedom is given to the colonies and all peoples that are dependent, oppressed and deprived of rights.''~^^11^^ To the threat of the military suppression of the revolution, the working class, holding power, would respond with a revolutionary war, rousing to that war colonies, dependent countries and the proletariat of Europe. In September 1917, Lenin stressed that ``it is impossible to arouse popular heroism without breaking with imperialism, without proposing a democratic peace to all nations, and without thus turning the war from a criminal war of conquest and plunder into a just, _-_-_
~^^9^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 23, p. 79.
~^^10^^ Ibid., Vol. 21, p. 163.
~^^11^^ Ibid., pp. 403--04.
232 revolutionary war of defence".^^12^^ The proletarian state can wage only a war that is defensive, just and revolutionary.Consequently, when Lenin spoke about revolutionary war, he meant defence of the socialist fatherland, which the working people had won by taking power into their own hands.
The meaning of Lenin's statements in 1915 and 1916 about the proletariat's revolutionary wars comes to the following. Lenin had no illusions about how the capitalist world would respond to a victorious socialist revolution. He believed that only the capitalist world could start a war, because imperialism was inclined to ``rule'' history with the aid of machine-guns.
Socialism, which had won out in one or several countries, would still be weak; imperialism, with its characteristic policy of unbridled militarism, would seek to use armed force to put down socialism. Elaborating his idea, Lenin wrote: ``It would be sheer folly to repudiate 'defence of the fatherland' on the part of oppressed nations in their wars against the imperialist Great Powers, or on the part of a victorious proletariat in its war against some Galliffet or a bourgeois state."~^^13^^ After all, some Galliffet could be found in one or several capitalist countries with the urge to use arms to impose his rule and to crush victorious socialism. The working people would respond to such attempts with revolutionary war. Such is Lenin's view of revolutionary war, for which the working class and all the working people of a country that has thrown off the capitalist yoke, should prepare.
Lenin attached much importance to the historical fact that the Soviet power took over under the slogan of peace. In his article entitled ``Can the Bolsheviks Retain State Power?" he wrote: ``Take the question of peace, the crucial issue of today.... On this issue the proletariat truly represents the whole nation, all live and honest people in all classes, the vast majority of the petty bourgeoisie; because only the proletariat, on achieving power, will immediately offer a just peace to all the belligerent nations, because only the proletariat will dare take genuinely revolutionary measures (publication of the secret treaties, and so forth) to achieve the speediest and most just peace possible.''~"^^14^^ Lenin also dealt with this point a little earlier, when he wrote: ``...no power on earth would be able to overthrow a government of peace, a government of an honest, sincere, just peace, after all the horrors of more than three years' butchery of the peoples.''~^^15^^ Lenin held that the slogan of peace, together with the slogans on the agrarian question, was the Bolsheviks' key slogan, which roused the masses to socialist revolution.
_-_-_~^^12^^ Ibid., Vol. 25, p. 363.
~^^13^^ Ibid., Vol. 23, p. 80.
~^^14^^ Ibid., Vol. 26, p. 99.
~^^15^^ Ibid., p. 41.
233Lenin and the Party never took the view that communism needed wars, or that the victory of communism had to be ushered in by military disaster, with the Communists for that reason trying to mount various armed conflicts and wars. This is an idea which is alien to communism, and which was accepted only by those who, like Bukharin, had abandoned its principles. Criticising the loud-mouthed ``Leftists'' in 1918, Lenin asked: ``Perhaps the authors believe that the interests of the world revolution require that it should be given a push, and that such a push can be given only by war, never by peace, which might give the people the impression that imperialism was being `legitimised'?"~^^16^^ = The answer was: ``Such a `theory' would be completely at variance with Marxism, for Marxism has always been opposed to `pushing' revolutions, which develop with the growing acuteness of the class antagonisms that engender revolutions.''^^17^^ Only those who used ``Leftist'' catchwords could invent the idea that the peace policy pursued by the socialist states with respect to the capitalist countries could mean a ``legitimisation'' of imperialism, and that peace was allegedly harmful for the development of the world revolutionary process. The ``Left Communists" first took the wrong turn by claiming that peace was tantamount to a ``reconciliation'' with the capitalists, while struggle against capitalism meant war and armed uprising. In this way they grossly distorted the meaning of the world revolutionary process and its motive forces. The October Revolution exerted a tremendous influence on the world revolutionary process, but this cannot be interpreted in any sense as meaning a ``pushing'' of the revolution in other countries by means of the arms of the socialist state.
In 1918, criticising the harmful ideas propounded by ``Left Communists'', Lenin asked: ``Perhaps the authors believe that the interests of the world revolution forbid making any peace at all with imperialists?"~^^18^^ Lenin firmly replied to these men who were confusing the issue: ``A socialist republic surrounded by imperialist powers could not, from this point of view, conclude any economic treaties, and could not exist at all, without flying to the moon."^^19^^
Socialism and capitalism exist on one planet, and their coexistence is historically inevitable.
But imperialism is known to have ignored the call to peaceful coexistence and good-neighbour relations in the hope of correcting the course of history by brute force, so as to return it to the old, pre-October line.
In the arduous years of the Civil War, when the Soviet people were carrying on their hard fight against the whiteguards and foreign invaders, _-_-_
~^^16^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 27, p. 71.
~^^17^^ Ibid., pp. 71--72.
~^^18^^, Ibid., p. 71.
~^^19^^ Ibid.
234 in defending their life and the independence of the world's first socialist state, Lenin said that they were engaged in fighting a war for peace, and that that war was yielding magnificent results.Lenin told the Seventh Congress of the Party in 1918 that the country was then only at the first, transitional stage from capitalism to socialism in Russia, and added: ``History has not provided us with that peaceful situation that was theoretically assumed for a certain time, and which is desirable for us, and which would enable us to pass through these stages of transition speedily. We see immediately that the civil war has made many things difficult in Russia, and that the civil war is interwoven with a whole series of wars. Marxists have never forgotten that violence must inevitably accompany the collapse of capitalism in its entirety and the birth of socialist society. That violence will constitute a period of world history, a whole era of various kinds of wars, imperialist wars, civil wars inside countries, the intermingling of the two, national wars liberating the nationalities oppressed by the imperialists and by various combinations of imperialist powers that will inevitably enter into various alliances in the epoch of tremendous state-capitalist and military trusts and syndicates. This epoch, an epoch of gigantic cataclysms, of mass decisions forcibly imposed by war, of crises, has begun---that we can see clearly---and it is only the beginning."^^20^^
History has shown that Lenin was right in assessing the period that had then just begun. But did he believe that this period of the most diverse wars would never give way to a period of peaceful conditions, which are desirable for socialist construction? No, he did not. Did Lenin believe that wars and armed conflicts were desirable for socialism? No, he did not.
Lenin assessed the achievements of Soviet foreign policy during the Civil War in the light of the struggle for peace, stressing the vast importance of winning public opinion in the capitalist countries over to the side of peace. Thanks to the Soviet Government's correct foreign policy, a number of bourgeois countries took up a neutralist stand, important changes took place in the attitudes of the workers and peasants and then of the petty-bourgeois circles in the capitalist countries, and this impelled them to act against intervention in the affairs of the Soviet Republic.
Lenin, the author of the brilliant work, Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism, did not regard the imperialist camp as a monolithic entity without any cracks. In his ``Report on Foreign Policy" in 1918, Lenin formulated the idea that there were two tendencies in the foreign policy of imperialism. He observed that the capitalist world was dominated by contradictions, conflicts, struggles, and bitter clashes verging on wars _-_-_
~^^20^^ Ibid., p. 130.
235 between the imperialist powers, and added: ``Owing to these contradictions, it has come about that the general alliance of the imperialists of all countries, forming the basis of the economic alliance of capitalism, an alliance whose natural and inevitable aim is to defend capital, which recognises no fatherland, and which has proved in the course of many major and important episodes in world history that capital places the safeguarding of the alliance of the capitalists of all countries against the working people above the interests of the fatherland, of the people or of what you will---that this alliance is not the moving force of politics."^^21^^ But Lenin warned that this alliance continued to be the basic tendency of imperialism, while the other tendency---the division of the imperialists into hostile groups and coalitions---was also expressed. This made more difficult and virtually impossible any alliance between the major imperialist powers against the Soviet Republic, which in the first six months of its existence had won the warmest sympathies and undivided support of all the class-conscious workers throughout the world. Lenin's general conclusion was that in world politics ``two trends exist; one, which makes an alliance of all the imperialists inevitable; the other, which places the imperialists in opposition to each other---two trends, neither of which has any firm foundation".^^22^^ One of these tendencies may gain the upper hand, but that does not mean that the other has disappeared. The struggle between the two tendencies is the content of international relations, which opens up the possibility of neutralising a number of countries, which cannot and will not follow in the wake of the imperialist powers' policy of war.An active foreign policy aimed to maintain and consolidate peace has a real basis in the development of international relations, in the growing strength of the socialist system itself and in the sympathies which it commands among a vast majority of the population of the globe.
But in the Civil War period the question was being decided on the battlefield. The Soviet Republic had to defend its very existence. Either the one or the other side had to win. In these conditions, Lenin said, a number of the most terrible clashes between the Soviet Republic and the bourgeois states, taking the path of war, was inevitable. But even at the height of the fighting against the Denikin bands in 1919, Lenin was already considering the possibility of ``attracting into Russia, during the period of the coexistence side by side of socialist and capitalist states, the technical help of the countries which are more advanced in this respect".^^23^^ Through the storms of the Civil War Lenin clearly discerned the outlines of the historical period that was bound to come.
_-_-_~^^21^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 27, p. 366.
~^^22^^ Ibid., p. 369.
~^^23^^ Ibid., Vol. 30, p. 39.
236Lenin's doctrine of peaceful coexistence is a remarkable example of creative Marxism. Lenin elaborated his doctrine on the strength of the experience of revolutionary struggle and construction of the new society. Life kept presenting fresh problems and Lenin provided profound and theoretically well-grounded answers based on the solid principles of Marxism. Lenin's ideas have always helped the Party and the state confidently to advance, to overcome their foreign-policy difficulties and clearly to see the basic trends in the development of world affairs. In our own day, the Central Committee of the CPSU takes the same Leninist, creative approach in developing Marxism, providing Marxist answers to the questions posed by life.
Summing up the results of the victorious Civil War, Lenin said: ``...we are in a position of having won conditions enabling us to exist side by side with capitalist powers, who are now compelled to enter into trade relations with us."^^24^^ The period of peaceful coexistence was not a historical windfall, but the result of active and selfless efforts on the part of the men and women engaged in socialist construction, the Communist Party, the Soviet state and millions of working people in foreign countries. Back in November 1917, Lenin had warned: ``It is highly naive to think that peace can be easily attained, and that the bourgeoisie will hand it to us on a platter as soon as we mention it."^^25^^ Efforts had to be made to secure a period of peace. Once the direct armed attack by capitalism had been beaten back, Lenin stressed that ``we have something more than a breathing-space: we have entered a new period, in which we have won the right to our fundamental international existence in the network of capitalist states".^^26^^
At the time, Lenin formulated the basic principle of Soviet foreign policy aimed to secure peaceful coexistence in a draft resolution which he wrote and which was adopted by the Eighth All-Russia Conference of the Party and the Seventh Congress of the Soviets: ``The Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic wishes to live in peace with all peoples and devote all its efforts to internal development so as to put production, transport and government affairs in order on the basis of the Soviet system ; this has so far been prevented by the intervention of the Entente and the starvation blockade."^^27^^ The Conference and the Congress authorised the Soviet Government ``to continue this peace policy systematically''.
But Lenin urged the Soviet people to bear in mind that they were surrounded by men, classes and governments openly voicing the greatest hatred for them.
_-_-_~^^24^^ Ibid., Vol. 31, p. 412.
~^^25^^ Ibid., Vol. 26, p. 345.
~^^26^^ Ibid., Vol. 31, p. 412.
~^^27^^ Ibid., Vol. 30, p. 191.
237The masters of the capitalist world were inclined to see the new period only as a breathing-space and not as a historical period, despite the fact that the way was open for the peaceful coexistence on the globe of two different social systems.
Even in Lenin's lifetime, the rulers of the capitalist world were forced to negotiate with the Soviet state. An international conference meeting at Genoa in 1922 saw a Soviet delegation take its place at the same table with representatives of the capitalist states of Western Europe. At the opening ceremony, the Soviet delegation declared: ``While maintaining the standpoint of the principles of communism, the delegation of Russia recognises that in the present historical epoch, which makes it possible for the old and the emergent new social system to exist parallel with each other, economic cooperation between states representing these two systems of property is an imperative for general economic rehabilitation."^^28^^ Let us recall that all the preparations for the Genoa Conference were carried out under Lenin's direct guidance.
The question of peaceful coexistence in political, military and also economic terms was posed by history. In 1921, Lenin analysed and broadly elaborated this question: ``But is the existence of a socialist republic in a capitalist environment at all conceivable? It seemed inconceivable from the political and military aspects. That it is possible both politically and militarily has now been proved; it is a fact. But what about trade? What about economic relations?"^^29^^ Lenin gave a positive answer and made this highly important point: ``There is a force more powerful than the wishes, the will and the decisions of any of the governments or classes that are hostile to us. That force is world general economic relations, which compel them to make contact with us."^^30^^ It is hard to overestimate the methodological importance of this idea of Lenin's.
Petty-bourgeois revolutionaries considering the world revolutionary process and seeking to estimate the opponents' strength very characteristically either altogether underestimate the will and urges among the capitalist classes or overestimate them just as grossly, in both instances ignoring the objective regularities of social development, and displaying lack of skill in assessing the real strength of the subjective factor. The petty-bourgeois revolutionary keeps vacillating in his assessment of the world revolutionary process, now taking the passive attitude and believing that it will work of itself, independently of the subjective factor, now taking the voluntarist approach.
By contrast, Lenin urged his associates to make a distinction between the will, urges and decisions of hostile classes and governments, and the _-_-_
~^^28^^ A. History of Diplomacy, Vol. III, Moscow-Leningrad, 1945, p. 170 (in Russian).
~^^29^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 33, p. 151.
~^^30^^ Ibid., p. 155.
238 objective course of history. He emphasised that the peaceful coexistence policy was not based on any subjective desires but on objective tendencies, which could overcome the resisting forces with men's vigorous activity and the correct foreign policy of the socialist state.This policy, aimed at maintaining and consolidating peace cannot run counter to the interests of any people anywhere on the globe. On the contrary, it meets the vital interests of all nations and all the working people, who reject the policy of aggression and war. Lenin said that ``our peace policy is approved by the vast majority of people all over the world".^^31^^
A peaceful foreign policy is an instrument to win over for communism the vast majority of the population of the globe. It helps communist ideas to reach the minds of the masses, without which there can be no successful world revolutionary process.
This policy, far from producing conflicts, is in effect designed to eliminate the very ground on which conflicts between nations arise. Lenin elaborated this idea in detail in 1922, when he wrote: ``Our experience has left us with the firm conviction that only exclusive attention to the interests of various nations can remove grounds for conflicts, can remove mutual mistrust, can remove the fear of any intrigues, and create that confidence, especially on the part of workers and peasants speaking different languages, without which there absolutely cannot be peaceful relations between peoples or anything like a successful development of everything that is of value in present-day civilisation."^^32^^ There is no doubt that imperialism seeks to intensify this mistrust and to push it to a point where it erupts in armed conflict. This policy is resisted by socialist foreign policy. A new state of affairs is produced in world politics: the socialist state works to eliminate mutual mistrust between nations, generated and fostered by capitalism, and seeks to eliminate the ground for conflicts between nations, thereby paving the way for the successful development of what is most valuable in modern civilisation. That is one of the key aspects of socialist foreign policy.
The peace policy, once a demand coming only from the working class and the other working people, became the state policy of a great socialist power wielding all the instruments of foreign policy, and providing real support in the world arena for the urge for peace among millions and millions of working people all over the world. Therein lies the importance of the great turning point in the history of the struggle for peace which came with the October Revolution.
On November 8, 1917, the day after the socialist revolution, Lenin addressed the Second All-Russia Congress of Soviets and set out the _-_-_
~^^31^^ Ibid., Vol. 30, p. 390.
~^^32^^ Ibid., Vol. 33, p. 386.
239 foreign policy of the Soviet state. In concluding his first foreign-policy speech on behalf of the young Soviet state, in which he dealt with the key issue of world politics---the issue of war and peace---he declared: ``Everywhere there are differences between the governments and the peoples, and we must therefore help the peoples to intervene in questions of war and peace. We will, of course, insist upon the whole of our programme for a peace without annexations and indemnities. We shall not retreat from it; but we must not give our enemies an opportunity to say that their conditions are different from ours and that therefore it is useless to start negotiations with us. No, we must deprive them of that advantageous position and not present our terms in the form of an ultimatum."^^33^^In those words the great strategist of the revolution formulated the key principle of revolutionary foreign policy pursued by the Soviet state. One of the most important tasks of the Soviet state's foreign policy, as Lenin saw it, was to wean away the masses from the imperialists and to win them over to its side. Its task was to deprive the enemy of any opportunity of using Soviet foreign policy to dupe the masses and of keeping them in the wake of the bourgeoisie.
At this point, one cannot help recalling that by the early 1950s the imperialists had managed, by means of lying propaganda, to persuade sizable masses of the population in the capitalist countries that there was no need to enter into negotiations with the Soviet Union because that was allegedly hopeless, considering that the wheels of history inexorably rolled along the path to war. The Communist Party and the Soviet Government debunked this false idea of the imperialists and worked to win over for socialism broad sections of the population in the capitalist countries. With the signing of the Austrian Treaty (1955), with the establishment and development of normal good-neighbour relations with a number of capitalist countries, including the USA, step by step, including the Moscow Treaty banning nuclear-weapons tests in the three environments---air, water and outer space (1963)---they worked to bring about that swing in public opinion among broad sections of the population in the capitalist countries, destroying the wall of lies and slanders which the imperialists had erected along the boundaries of the socialist world. It is hard to exaggerate the importance of this change in the minds of the masses in the capitalist countries. It paralysed bourgeois propaganda efforts of many years and deprived the imperialists of the advantageous position, which they had artificially sought to create for themselves in the late 1940s and early 1950s in their fight against communist ideas, accusing the Soviet Union of aggressiveness and unwillingness to maintain good-neighbour and peaceful relations.
_-_-_~^^33^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 26, p. 252.
240On various occasions opposition-minded and confused people issued statements to the effect that the revolutionary character of Soviet foreign policy should consist in the peremptory approach, in constant intransigence and loud phrase-mongering. Replying to these loudmouthed `` Leftists'', Lenin stressed: ``We should not and must not give the governments an opportunity of taking refuge behind our uncompromising attitude and of concealing from the peoples the reason why they are being sent to the shambles. This is a tiny drop, but we should not and must not reject this drop, which will wear away the stone of bourgeois conquest. An ultimatum would make the position of our opponents easier. But we shall make all the terms known to the people. We shall confront all the governments with our terms, and let them give an answer to their people."^^34^^
By now the drops that kept wearing away the stone of bourgeois aggressiveness have merged in the mighty tide of Soviet foreign policy based on Leninist principles. What Lenin said adds up to skilful formulation and implementation of a real foreign-policy programme which meets the interests of the peoples, rallies and unites the democratic forces, hampers the moves by reactionary imperialist circles and forces them to succumb to the people's aspirations. Consistent implementation of this kind of programme in international affairs in effect means helping the peoples to intervene in the questions of war and peace, and facilitating the democratic forces' efforts in exerting an influence on the solution of key international problems.
In our day, every world issue of any importance is scrutinised by public opinion. Even imperialist politicians have been forced bitterly to admit that the age of secret diplomacy has gone for good. The various machinations by the imperialist governments are resisted by the foreign policy of the Soviet Union and other socialist countries. There are inevitably two lines on every world issue; that is why public opinion must weigh and evaluate the views of the socialist countries and compare them with the line pursued by the imperialists. Lenin's plan was to confront all the governments with Soviet proposals, with Soviet projects for tackling international problems, and this plan is being consistently fulfilled and has yielded abundant fruit. The Soviet Government has made wide use of the UN rostrum for that purpose.
Lenin began his fight against secret diplomacy, believing that it was necessary to help the peoples to intervene in the solution of key world issues. At the same time, addressing the Second Congress of Soviets, Lenin indicated the general line of Soviet diplomacy: ``There is still another point, comrades, to which you must pay the most careful attention. The secret treaties must be published. The clauses dealing with _-_-_
~^^34^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works. Vol. 26. p. 255.
__PRINTERS_P_241_COMMENT__ 16---594 241 annexations and indemnities must be annulled. There are various clauses, comrades---the predatory governments, you know, not only made agreements between themselves on plunder, but among them they also included economic agreements and various other clauses on good-neighbourly relations."^^35^^ He emphasised in conclusion: ``We reject all clauses on plunder and violence, but we shall welcome all clauses containing provisions for good-neighbourly relations and all economic agreements; we cannot reject these."^^36^^ Soviet foreign policy marks a new watershed in international relations, rejecting all agreements on plunder and violence, carrying on a purposeful struggle against such agreements, and holding up in contrast agreements on good-neighbour and economic relations. That indicates a genuine revolution in international relations.These propositions of Lenin's bear on the fundamentals of Soviet foreign policy. On the other hand, the policy of preparing for war and creating sharp international conflicts, in which armed force could be used or threats could be issued of the use of such force to achieve self-seeking aims---that is what the ``normal'' foreign policy of the imperialist bourgeoisie amounts to.
With the emergence of the Soviet socialist state, the bourgeois view of the strength of states and their foreign-policy prestige was undermined, the very foundations of the bourgeois policy ``from positions of strength" were subjected to withering criticism. This policy of imperialism was contrasted with the principles of the foreign policy of the socialist state.
__ALPHA_LVL3__ PRESENT-DAY SOCIAL THOUGHTLenin flatly rejected the suggestion that the Soviet state should carry on in the well-beated track of bourgeois diplomacy, which relies on brute force and is in the habit of issuing ultimatums and diktats. Lenin showed that there were two views of the strength of states and their policies, the bourgeois and the socialist view. He showed that bourgeois notions of the political strength of states were false and explained where the true power of states lay. ``According to the bourgeois conception, there is strength when the people go blindly to the slaughter in obedience to the imperialist governments. The bourgeoisie admit a state to be strong only when it can, by the power of the government apparatus, hurl the people wherever the bourgeois rulers want them hurled. Our idea of strength is different. Our idea is that a state is strong when the people are politically _-_-_
~^^35^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 26, p. 255.
~^^36^^ Ibid.
242 conscious. It is strong when the people know everything, can form an opinion of everything and do everything consciously."^^37^^The bourgeoisie was in the habit of viewing world politics as a sphere in which the state applied its strength. Two main stages stand out in the history of bourgeois doctrines about the principles of world politics propounded in the 19th and 20th centuries. The first is the period of premonopoly development of capitalism marked by the almost undivided domination of the theory which came to be known as the ``balance of strength''. According to this theory, world order as a whole rests on a balance of strength, chiefly between the great powers. Anything that tends to upset this balance, any advantage accuring to this or that power is latent with grave consequences. World politics and diplomacy must use every means at their disposal to prevent the balance from being upset. War is also a means of redressing the balance. This theory was called a ``Concert of Europe" theory, because Europe was the center of world politics. The ``balance of strength" theory in international affairs was closely connected with the positivist sociological doctrines of the early and mid-19th century. I have already mentioned the importance of the theory of ``equilibrium'' in Spencer's sociology. Indeed, he applies this to relations between societies and to international relations. The change from militarism to industrialism, according to Spencer, depends on the establishment of equilibrium between nations and races.^^38^^ The epoch of imperialism shows how wrong and artificial this positivist scheme is. ``Industrialism'' has done nothing to eliminate militarism, but has, on the contrary, pushed it to the limits.
The uneven development of the capitalist countries, which is much more acute in the period of imperialism, and the fierce fight among the plunderers in the world arena have undermined the prestige of that theory and have produced a new stage in the development of the bourgeois doctrines concerning the principles of world politics. It is expressed in the conception of strength, or in other words, of arbitrary action in international relations. One of the first versions of the ``strength'' theory was ``geopolitics'', which made use of some aspects of geographical determinism to present the political map of the world as an aggregation of ``centers of force" and ``lines of force'', that is, lines of expansion emanating from these ``centers''. Another theory was concocted to show that law and order did exist in the world only if one power had absolute preponderance in strength, for then all the other states were bound to reckon with that absolute superiority. From this angle a review was made of the history of international relations in the _-_-_
~^^37^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 26, p. 255.
~^^38^^ H. E. Barnes and H. Becker, Social Thought from Lore to Science, Vol. I. Washington, 1952, p. 668.
__PRINTERS_P_244_COMMENT__ 16* 243 nineteenth century, and the conclusion suggested that after the Napoleonic wars peace in Europe rested on the absolute superiority of Britain, so that when Germany undermined that superiority the continent inevitably slid into the chaos of the First World War. This theory was a rehashed version of a theory which had currency in the Roman Empire, and was called ``Pax Romana'', under which the Roman legions alone could establish law and order everywhere by putting down all the intransigent by armed force. It will be easily seen that this theory was an ideological expression of imperialist policy aimed to secure world domination. In one form or another it was adopted in all the countries whose bourgeoisie laid claim to world supremacy: Britain, Nazi Germany and then the USA, all of which had many ideologists extolling this theory.The emergence and consolidation of the world socialist system dealt a crushing blow at all these imperialist theories of world domination. However, the advocates of plunder and fisticuff law in world politics had no intention of laying down their arms. On the contrary, they declared that the ``strength'' policy was most convenient for the imperialists in their fight against the Soviet Union and the world socialist system as a whole. That is precisely what John Foster Dulles kept saying. The myth of the ``communist threat" helped the architects of the ``strength'' policy.
For decades bourgeois ideologists who were generously paid by finance capital for their lying theories kept saying that imperialism was the keeper of the traditions of bourgeois democracy. That was the false slogan under which preparations for war against the USSR and other socialist countries were being carried on. Indeed, among the terms invented for that purpose was the ``free world''. The intention was to take a leaf from the pirates' book and to sail along under a borrowed flag: they claimed that they were the champions of bourgeois-democratic freedoms. They sought to use a screen of ideas borrowed from others and on every fitting occasion quoted some American ideologist of the 18th century. That was an attempt to forge the birth certificates of the present-day ideologists of imperialism and to present them as being the descendents of progressive political leaders of the past. That was a feint, an attempt to win over some sections of the middle and petty bourgeoisie, and some sections of the working class labouring under bourgeois political and ideological influence. But it is impossible to buy a ``decent'' family tree for reactionary ideas, because ideas have their own lineage which cannot be forged. Indeed, it can be changed only if all the libraries were burned down and the memory of the peoples obliterated.
The ideologists of the rising bourgeoisie proclaimed ideas which were antithetical to those now put forward by the imperialists. The 18th century saw the proclamation of the right of the people to revolution, and the leaders of the American revolution said as much in their writings. They stood up for that right. They protested against various attempts by 244 feudal-absolutist reaction to stamp out the revolutionary movement in other countries. Thomas Jefferson, a prominent leader of the liberation movement in North America and US President from 1801 to 1809, wrote that when people suffer from absolute despotism ``...it is their right, it is their duty to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security''. The forward-looking political leaders of the 18th century recognised the people's inalienable right ``...to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organising its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness".^^39^^ That was what Jefferson wrote, emphasising the principle of the people's sovereignty and stressing in every way the right of every people to arrange its own affairs and to seek happiness and security. Indeed, security was especially underscored, because no people can be sovereign if it is unable to stand up for its security. Nor can there be any happiness without security. In those distant days, the ideologists of the bourgeoisie were guided by logic and not by sophistry. The present-day spokesmen of imperialist reaction, throwing up a barrage of sophisms, would like to destroy logic and deprive revolutionary peoples of their right to ensure their own security against aggressive moves. Their aim is quite clear: when that happens, the peoples' sovereignty will become illusory.
In our day, the feudal lords and the absolutist monarchs, against whom the bourgeoisie once fought in its efforts to secure state power, have now given way to the magnates of financial capital, the central figures in international conflicts. This process has now gone deeper and farther. It is the task of the progressive forces in their political and ideological struggle to expose this process and to show the masses how the murky tide of reaction has carried the magnates of financial capital to positions once held by the wildest feudal lords and spokesmen for absolute monarchies. What were the ideas expressed at the congress of the Holy Alliance at Troppau? The men who met there had respect only for the ``law'' of the mailed fist, the only ``law'' which the feudals recognised in international relations. The leaders of reaction wanted to establish the ``inevitability'' of the use of coercive force. Since then, ``hawks'' and other reactionaries in the USA have not invented anything new. They have merely borrowed the political views of the feudal lords and the absolute monarchs, the very regimes against which Jefferson so eloquently spoke out. There is a record of a characteristic incident involving the Russian tsar Nicholas I. When told of the February 1848 events in France, he addressed his Guards officers as follows: ``To horse, gentlemen! There is a republic in France!" However, the horsemen of Nicholas I were unable to trample the spreading democratic movement in France.
_-_-_~^^39^^ Thomas Jefferson, The Life and Selected Writings, New York, 1944, p. 22.
245It is dangerously insane to revive the reactionary ideas of long past periods in the present situation. Any attempt to revive the doctrines of the Holy Alliance about the ``right'' to intervene in the affairs of revolutionary peoples is fraught with world conflicts. Feudal and absolutist leaders in the past were not faced with the danger of causing a world war, and that is an important distinction between the present and the past. Moreover, the forward-looking social forces of the past were not united or consolidated in the world arena and the reactionaries succeeded in their attempts to put down revolutionary movements which started here and there, and got off scot free when they violated the sovereign rights of nations.
Today the situation is quite different. However much imperialist reactionaries may love the old slogans of trampling the sovereignty of other nations, they have to desist. Any attempt to act in the world arena in the spirit of those plunderous slogans, provoking world conflicts, inevitably sets in motion powerful world forces and awakens world opinion.
Incidentally, even in those days when the Holy Alliance held sway in Europe, the statesmen of Britain still decided not to risk open adoption of the Troppau ideas. The then British Foreign Secretary cautiously declared that ``it is inadmissible that the Holy Alliance should undertake a priori the obligation to maintain certain political theories against other theories in all the possible cases and in all the countries".^^40^^ Those were weak reservations but they did give a hint of apprehension in face of public opinion.
The early predecessors of present-day bourgeois ministers felt themselves forced apprehensively to consider contemporary public opinion. Public opinion today means millions of organised workers in the capitalist countries, the intelligentsia in these countries, many of whose members heed the voice of reason, the petty-bourgeois sections where there is awareness of the possible consequences of war, the millions of people in countries that have thrown off the colonial imperialists, and the states of the mighty world socialist system, whose opinion carries much weight in international affairs.
The feudal lords and the absolutist monarchs fanned international conflicts without securing victory. These conflicts ultimately undermined and destroyed feudalism and absolutism in the old serf-holding Europe. Present-day imperialist reaction cannot hope to gain more by provoking international conflicts.
The time came when even a president of the USA, J. F. Kennedy, found himself forced to admit that the strength of imperialism and the strength of the world socialist system were roughly equal. While the _-_-_
~^^40^^ A. Debidour, Histoire diplomatique de I'Europe, t. I, Paris, 1891, p. 150.
246 monopolies working on war contracts and the militaristic circles keep urging the need to step up the arms drive, the ``strength'' policy in world affairs and a diplomatic line in accord with that policy keeps coming up against obstacles whose importance has been growing.Of course, the reactionary, militaristic imperialist circles are still trying to frustrate in every way the socialist countries' peaceable development, because they are not sure that capitalism will win in the competition against socialism.
However, military theorists established back in the 19th century that the crucial thing for a successful war is correspondence of political aims and military means available to achieve these aims. This idea was developed by the German military theorist Clausewitz. Those military circles have not renounced their plunderous and aggressive designs and the most ``hawkish'' of the military-industrial circles have not abandoned the idea of destroying socialism by means of armed force. The present level of science, technology and the productive forces has made it possible to fabricate an extremely powerful destructive weapon. But its use for aggressive political purposes by imperialism is fraught with contradictions. The imperialists no longer have a monopoly of nuclear weapons. In military-technical terms, the Soviet Union, far from lagging behind, is actually ahead of the imperialists. Thus, the use of this destructive weapon holds no promise for the imperialist bourgeoisie of achieving its political aims and is, on the contrary, fraught with threat to the very existence of the capitalist system.
This idea has occurred to more and more bourgeois theorists. It was expressed in a talk with Soviet journalists by the prominent British idealist philosopher Bertrand Russell. It is also given in a peculiar version by Professor Walt Rostow in his book, The Stages of Economic Growth, which well illustrates the absurd position in which the imperialists find themselves following the loss of their nuclear-weapons monopoly.
However, the ``military situation" is only one side of the matter. The point is that militarism as the historical phenomenon generated by capitalism and brought to an extreme in the period of imperialism is plunged in deep crisis.
In 1878, Engels wrote in his Anti-Duhring that ``in this competitive struggle between armour-plating and guns, the warship is being developed to a pitch of perfection which is making it both outrageously costly and unusable in war''. Engels saw this development of military technology as expressing the ``dialectical laws of motion on the basis of which militarism ... is being brought to its doom in consequence of its own development".^^41^^
_-_-_~^^41^^ F. Engels, Anti-Diihring, Moscow, 1969, pp. 207--08.
247That moment is at hand. The weapons of destruction have reacneu a ``pitch of perfection" that makes them unfit for aggressive, plunderous purposes. Risk itself turns war, with its plunderous political purposes, into a reckless adventure for imperialism.
The downfall of militarism, however, is not an instantaneous or automatic act, but a relatively lengthy process. It goes hand in hand with spasmodic attempts by the imperialists to save militarism from destruction and to keep weapons in the arsenal of world politics at all costs. At the same time, there is a growing struggle for the destruction of militarism.
The so-called cold war was an expression of the contradiction into which imperialism, with its aggressive policies, has been plunged in a situation when these policies could boomerang.
The imperialists have not abandoned their policy of militarism, which brings great profits to the monopolies working on arms contracts. It is arms contracts that are a highly convenient form for further concentrating vast power in the hands of the biggest monopolies, the prime contractors controlling the fulfilment of government orders. Statemonopoly capital has the most solid positions in the arms business, and this has a great effect on the whole policy of the imperialist powers.
The cold war policy was called ``balancing on the brink of war" for a very good reason. Dulles presented it as being the summit of bourgeois statemanship. Actually, it was an expression of the dead end into which imperialism has run. The aggressive elements of imperialism have been seeking a way out by trying to start a ``hot war'', but the most sober-minded statesmen in the imperialist camp have already come to realise that this line is reckless and hopeless. However, the latter do not have a decisive preponderance over the reactionary and aggressive elements, which are closely bound up with the arms business.
The way out of the dead end is, above all, to intensify the influence exerted by the people on the policy of the ruling circles in the capitalist countries. When massive pressure is intensified, the ruling circles are forced to reckon with this and the more peaceable tendencies gain the upper hand. In the present epoch, wars have become a means of artificially maintaining capitalism. The struggle for peace has become a means of weakening capitalism.
During the First World War, the working class of a number of countries came to realise that capitalism was seeking artificially to maintain the wage-slave system by means of armed force, through wars. A struggle was started for a revolutionary withdrawal from the war, and the whole of mankind was shaken by the Great October Socialist Revolution. Some 25 years later, the truth of Lenin's words was again driven home to the working people of many countries through the terrible example of the Second World War, after which a number of 248 peoples threw off the imperialist yoke. Today, one-third of.mankind has gone over to socialism and has become the master of its destiny.
Social thinkers were faced with a highly important question: one-third of mankind had taken control of the laws of social development, eliminating the blind forces of capitalism, scoring great successes, harnessing the forces of nature and producing remarkable machinery and technology, while the imperialists were still able, as in the old days, to drive the peoples to the slaughter whenever they wished. Consequently, was the bloody element to rage over the globe as it did in the old days? This raised the question about the possibility of further limiting the operation of the capitalist system in the sphere of world politics, because capitalism was no longer the one and only master in the international arena.
The answer to this key question was provided by the 20th Congress of the CPSU, which put forward the idea that in our day there was no fatal inevitability of war and that the possibility to avert war had increased. The conversion of socialism into a world system, the growing might of the Soviet Union and all the socialist countries, the growing consciousness and organisation of all the forces coming out for peace in the capitalist countries, the emergence of ``peace zones" and the growth of the national liberation movement---all of this had brought about a fundamental change in the world situation. The CPSU announced this from the rostrum of its 20th Congress, and these ideas were also the basis for the conclusion drawn by the 21st Congress of the CPSU, which said that even before socialism fully won out all over the globe, and while capitalism still remained on a part of it, there would arise a real possibility to eliminate world war from the life of society.
The proposition that in our day it is possible to prevent war, and to maintain peace, was adopted by the Meetings of the fraternal parties in Moscow in 1957 and 1960.
The Programme of the CPSU, adopted by the 22nd Congress of the Party, contains a detailed statement about the possibility of averting world war in our day. It starts from the fact that in the new historical epoch masses of people tend ever more actively to intervene in the solution of international issues and tackle the solution of the problems of war and peace, ``It is possible to avert a world war by the combined efforts of the mighty socialist camp, the peace-loving non-socialist countries, the international working class and all the forces championing peace. The growing superiority of the socialist forces over the forces of imperialism, of the forces of peace over those of war, will make it actually possible to banish world war from the life of society even before the complete victory of socialism on earth, with capitalism surviving in a part of the world."^^42^^
_-_-_~^^42^^ The Road to Communism, Moscow, 1961, p. 505.
249It is no longer one socialist country in a capitalist encirclement but a world socialist system that now stands in the way of the aggressive schemes of imperialism. The Soviet Union, with its vast economic and military potential, has grown stronger and gained in stature. Imperialism no longer has a hinterland in the form of a colonial system. The first half of the twentieth century saw the collapse of colonialism in Asia, and in the second half the colonial system began to crumble in Africa, the liberation movement in Latin America has also scored considerable successes, while Cuba has taken the socialist way. Within the capitalist countries there is growing organisation and rising awareness in the ranks of the working class that it is capable of rallying sizable peace-loving forces. The number of states which stand for peace in the international arena has been growing.
The struggle for peace has hit the most aggressive circles of monopoly capital, whose policy of preparing for war has always been connected with the wildest domestic reaction in the capitalist countries and attempts at the implantation of fascist regimes, especially on the periphery of the capitalist world. Today the policy of militarisation is accompanied by the brazen attempts to establish an open dictatorship by the most aggressive and reactionary imperialists, attempts to drive the Communists into the underground, to break up the political organisation of the proletariat, and to narrow down all the possibilities for political struggle which the proletariat has gained in heavy fighting against capital. This policy is connected with interference in the domestic affairs of countries that have thrown off the foreign yoke, with armed intervention and the export of counterrevolution, with attempts to change the political organisation of society in these countries.
The policy of war preparation provides the reactionary imperialist circles with broad opportunities to resort to violence, relying on armed force, and creates a convenient pretext for eliminating the relicts of bourgeois democracy and narrowing down to the utmost the field in which the democratic forces can operate.
Barring the way of the policy of war preparation means creating greater opportunities for the activity of the progressive forces in capitalist society. This purpose is served by the principle of settling outstanding issues through negotiation, which helps to expose the true substance of the various pretexts the imperialists use to create tensions in international relations and to fan armed conflicts. Broad circles all over the world have witnessed the collapse of barriers, which the imperialists claimed to be insuperable, in the way to peaceful coexistence between states with different social systems. This helps to put the most reactionary circles of monopoly capital still clinging to the policy of aggression, into ideological and political isolation.
The key point at which the bulk of the population in the capitalist countries could now break with the policy of the monopolies is the 250 question of maintaining peace, for on this question the interests of the aggressive monopolies and those of the majority of the population in the capitalist countries can and do run into the sharpest contradiction.
In present-day conditions, therefore, the struggle for peace affords the opportunity to isolate the most aggressive elements of monopoly capital not only within the capitalist countries, but also in the world arena. This idea of uniting all the democratic elements round the working class for anti-imperialist struggle was clearly expressed in the documents of the world communist movement adopted in 1957 and 1960. In complete accord with these documents, the CPSU Programme formulates this key feature of the present-day struggle between labour and capital in these words: ``The working class directs its main blow against the capitalist monopolies. All the main sections of a nation have a vital interest in abolishing the unlimited power of the monopolies. This makes it possible to unite all the democratic movements opposing the oppression of the finance oligarchy in a mighty anti-monopoly torrent."^^43^^
In the current struggle against labour and capital, foreign policy and the questions of war and peace are an important sector. The task is to use the policy of peace to promote the breakaway of sizable sections of the population in the capitalist countries from the aggressive policy of the monopolies and to help rally the democratic forces in a single, mighty anti-monopoly tide.
Militarism is a means used by imperialist reaction to suppress the revolutionary process. Militarism, especially occupation or semioccupation of countries which are weak links in the imperialist chain, a form of militarism that has taken shape since the Second World War, tends to slow down the advance of the liberation movement in these territories. Indeed, it was the stationing of the Anglo-American troops in a number of European countries after the Second World War that helped to slow down and considerably to complicate the democratic development of Western Europe. Let us recall that in the early postwar years there were Communists in the governments of France and Italy. Relying on the Anglo-American troops and then putting through the ``Marshallisation'' of the West European countries, imperialist reaction slowed down the natural democratisation of European opinion and political life, together with the process of important social and economic change.
The task now set by history is for the newly rising tide of democratic movement to put an end to militarism and to force the imperialists to disarm. Today, that is one of the key problems before the world's liberation movement. Militarism means reaction all along the line in the capitalist countries, the introduction of ``emergency laws'', attempts to drive the progressive forces from the legal political arena, and the Communists into the underground. It means unceasing attempts to _-_-_
~^^43^^ The Road to Communism, p. 483.
251 intervene in the newly liberated countries. With sophisticated military techniques, the militarists find it easier to use arms to kill working people than they did in the period of massive armies, whose soldiers ultimately realised the truth and adopted ideas of revolutionary struggle. This is why the importance of disarmament is increasing and is inevitably connected with the triumph of progressive forces over reaction, with democratic renovation of the capitalist countries, with victories for the national liberation movements. The broad and mighty anti-monopoly tide has real possibilities of reaching this goal.The battles against fascism showed the vast historical importance of the struggle to influence the middle sections. Let us recall that at the time the monopoly-capital elite had managed, by means of demagogy, to confuse these sections and to isolate them temporarily from the working class. In that period, the world communist movement had already come to realise the importance for the development of the revolutionary process of clear-cut slogans and a clearly formulated programme for working-class struggle to win over the middle sections, its reserves.
The socialist countries' foreign policy, especially now that socialism has become a world system, can help to avert external attack at a time of social crisis in this or that country.
Today, the question of creating favourable conditions for the development of the world liberation process is above all a question of preventing the export of counterrevolution, the struggle against imperialist intervention, support for the peoples fighting for their social emancipation and national liberation, and for their right to decide their own future. That is what determines the key line of Soviet foreign policy.
The history of Soviet foreign policy in the recent period is a history of struggle against the right, arrogated by the imperialists, to attack peoples fighting for their freedom. It was Soviet foreign policy which succeeded in frustrating the plans of the aggressors, thereby promoting the development of the liberation process. Considering the stages of the Soviet Union's struggle against imperialist intervention, one must realise that with the growing strength of the Soviet Union and all the forces of socialism and peace, the aggressive imperialist circles find it ever harder to meddle in the domestic affairs of nations for the purpose of suppressing the revolutionary movement.
The present period marks a turning point in the history of world politics. The power of the foreign-policy influence exerted by the Soviet Union and the whole world socialist system, supported by the progressive, democratic elements all over the globe, has become very much greater, and this is evidence of a real turning point in the development of world politics.
252Of course, the imperialists still continue to meddle in the domestic affairs of some countries for the purpose of suppressing the progressive forces. Their intervention in the affairs of these countries began long ago, and is now a survival of the earlier period in the development of world politics. Consequently, the struggle is aimed to cut short the imperialist intervention in the domestic affairs of other countries and to prevent it. That is precisely the purpose of the Soviet Union's foreign policy.
In foreign-policy terms, the question may be formulated as follows: can the socialist states prevent foreign armed intervention in the domestic affairs of countries where social conflicts have reached a state of great intensity? That is exactly how history has posed the question. Under extreme militarisation, the imperialists, of course, have superior armed force as compared with some countries engaged in national liberation struggle and are able to build up a considerable preponderance of strength in some areas and in some local wars. That is why they keep trying to produce pretexts for their armed intervention in order to suppress the national liberation struggle. The task is to safeguard the victorious revolution from external armed intervention, and it is an extremely important task. One must realise that the colonialists have been trying to push the differences between tribes, parties and organisations in some newly liberated countries into a state of civil war, so as to use their mercenaries for the purpose of putting an end to the successful process of liberation.
In fact, tactics of this kind were also used by the imperialists after the October Socialist Revolution in Russia, where the overthrown exploiting classes would have been unable to carry on an exhausting civil war without open support of the capitalists of the world. In September 1917, Lenin wrote about the advance of the Soviet revolution: ``The peaceful development of any revolution is, generally speaking, extremely rare and difficult, because revolution is the maximum exacerbation of the sharpest class contradictions; but in a peasant country, at a time when a union of the proletariat with the peasantry can give peace to people worn out by a most unjust and criminal war, when that union can give the peasantry all the land, in that country, at that exceptional moment in history, a peaceful development of the revolution is possible and probable if all power is transferred to the Soviets."^^44^^ Let us recall that after the October Revolution the Soviet power advanced triumphantly across the country, and that the Civil War was sparked off by the alliance of the overthrown exploiting classes and the international bourgeoisie.
When considering the formation of the people's democratic system in Eastern and Central Europe, one should bear in mind .that its greatest _-_-_
~^^44^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 26, pp. 36--37.
253 advantage lay in the fact that it had been safeguarded from foreign intervention and civil war, and had the opportunity to consolidate the new democratic people's system.The ceaselessly developing worldwide liberation process has now placed on the order of the day the need to struggle for complete political and economic independence of the countries which have escaped from colonial oppression. Analysing the national liberation movement and its prospects, Lenin wrote in August 1920 that ``...the Communist International should advance the proposition, with the appropriate theoretical grounding, that with the aid of the proletariat of the advanced countries, backward countries can go over to the Soviet system and, through certain stages of development, to communism, without having to pass through the capitalist stage".^^45^^ He stressed: ``If the victorious revolutionary proletariat conducts systematic propaganda among them, and the Soviet governments come to their aid with all the means at their disposal---in that event it will be mistaken to assume that the backward peoples must inevitably go through the capitalist stage of development."^^46^^
When the dictatorship of the proletariat becomes international, the influence of the working class on the liberation movement in the peasant countries is intensified. With the assistance of the international proletarian dictatorship, the peasant countries can also advance along the socialist way of development. It is not only a matter of the ideological influence of the international working-class dictatorship, although such influence has now become an important factor in the revolutionary process, but of the material potentialities and prerequisites for the peasant countries' developing along the socialist way. The foreign policy of the Soviet state is aimed to help these countries to take the path of independent development. This way helps to strengthen the working class and its influence, to consolidate the positions of all the democratic forces, and inevitably carries the people closer to tackling the question of going over to socialist development.
In international economic ties, the Soviet Union's foreign policy is also aimed to strengthen the national-economic base of the state sovereignty of the developing countries and their political independence.
__ALPHA_LVL3__ COMMUNISM IS PEACEThe Communists have no need to advocate war as a factor of progress. A social ideal may induce its advocates to impose it by armed force only _-_-_
~^^45^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 31, p. 244.
~^^46^^ Ibid.
254 when that ideal does not rest on a scientific theory of progress and runs counter to the law-governed course of the historical process. That is when voluntarism becomes the basis of policy, adventurism gives way to confidence in the law-governed course of the historical process, while the ideological struggle becomes no more than a concomitant of interference in the course of history ``from positions of strength''.The communist ideals include the idea of peace and friendship of nations. Of course, peaceful coexistence includes the struggle of ideas, but that does not at all mean that the struggle of ideas contains within itself the seeds of war. The scientific conception of progress implies the confidence that the triumph of the new social system will ultimately be decided in the key sphere of human activity, in productive labour, and not on the field of battle. Man's complete emancipation from every type of oppression, the development of all his capabilities in creative and productive labour---these are the key features of our social ideal, of communist society.
Why build and create if all the fruits of one's labour were going to be destroyed in the furnace of war? This idea must have occurred to the minds of all honest people as they observed the construction of communism. But the socialist system emerges and develops on the basis of creative effort and the development of the productive forces. Devastating wars would hamper the process instead of facilitating it.
The Communists have been working to realise their social ideal, but this requires peace, not war. They reject the assertion that progress is advanced by means of wars; on the contrary, in our day wars and armed intervention are used by some in an effort to slow down progress. Of course, it is impossible to do so, but history shows that armed conflicts can multiply what may be called progress costs. What we want is to ease mankind's advance along the path of progress. The scientific theory of progress in our day includes the demand for peace, the demand for political and ideological struggle, and not struggle with the use of atomic bombs.
A key point at issue between Communists and bourgeois ideologists is the question of peace. Bourgeois views of social phenomena result in acceptance of war as an inevitable evil or even as a beneficial force in relations between nations. Marxism-Leninism alone shows the right approach to the question of war and teaches the working people consistently to work to eliminate the cause of the war. The elimination of the exploitative system on the globe will mean the complete elimination of these causes. The elimination of this system on sizable areas of the globe and the emergence and development of the world socialist system have resulted in a situation in which there are objective prerequisites for successful struggle by masses of men against war and against the imperialist plans of aggression. The world socialist system opposes preparations for a new war, making use for this purpose of its vast 255 economic resources, its political potentialities in the world arena, and the mighty power of communist ideology.
In the ``Inaugural Address of the Working Men's International Association" (1864), Marx pointed to the duty of the working class ``to master themselves the mysteries of international politics; to watch the diplomatic acts of their respective Governments; to counteract them, if necessary, by all means in their power; when unable to prevent, to combine in simultaneous denunciations, and to vindicate the simple laws of morals and justice, which ought to govern the relations of private individuals, as the rules paramount of the intercourse of nations.
``The fight for such a foreign policy forms part of the general struggle for the emancipation of the working classes."^^47^^
Thus, when the working-class International was founded, Marx inscribed on its banner that it is the duty of the working class to struggle for the simple laws of morals and justice in the sphere of international relations. This has now become a plank in the programme of the Leninist Party. The CPSU Programme, adopted by the 22nd Congress of the Party, says: ``Communism makes the elementary standards of morality and justice, which were distorted or shamelessly flouted under the rule of the exploiters, inviolable rules for relations both between individuals and between peoples."^^48^^
The Soviet Union and the socialist system now have all they need to work successfully to implement these principles. Therein lies the historic importance of the foreign policy pursued by the Soviet Union. In their relations with the socialist countries and the countries newly liberated from the colonial yoke, the imperialist countries will have to abide by the simple laws of morality and justice by which individuals are guided in their relations with each other. This the peoples will not owe to the good will of the imperialists but to the persistent efforts of the Soviet Union and the world socialist system, which have an ever greater role to play in world affairs, the active struggle for peace of the working class and all the working people of the capitalist countries and the developing national liberation movement.
The theory of peaceful coexistence has nothing in common with the notorious metaphysical conception of the balance of strength, which starts from the concept of rest as the definitive moment, denying the primacy of motion and development. Need one say that peaceful coexistence cannot be a formula for social stagnation? It is a formula for society's rapid advance, a formula expressing mankind's progressive development in our epoch.
The metaphysical, mechanistic conception of equilibrium is fundamentally antithetical to the principles of peaceful coexistence also _-_-_
~^^47^^ K. Marx and F. Engels, Selected Works, in three volumes, Vol. 2, p. 18.
~^^48^^ The Road to Communism, p. 566.
256 because it reduces all the relationships between the two systems to the concept of an external clash, like the clash of two spheres. This concept suggests the idea of war being fatally inevitable. That is why the West German idealist philosopher, Karl Jaspers, says that coexistence is possible only as strict isolation of the two systems, for any interaction between them is fraught with sanguinary wars.^^49^^An equilibrium, upset and restored, as a scheme for relations between the two world systems can result in harmful political conclusions and help to justify the arms race and, consequently, preparations for war. Actually, this is a process of struggle and competition between the two systems, in which socialism will win out.
Starting from the concept of rest as the definitive moment, some bourgeois philosophers and sociologists seek to prove that peaceful coexistence is the complete cessation of any struggle between the two systems. In other words, they want the two opposed systems to be converted into two similar-type systems, whereupon all struggle would cease. That is, in effect, the idea advocated by Raymond Aron, who holds that one of the key conditions for establishing peace on the globe is an end to the antagonism between the two prevailing ideologies, and recognition of the kinship which allegedly connects the different social systems.
To back up this thesis, Aron had to invent the concept of ``industrial civilisation'', which includes capitalism and socialism, obscuring their radical distinctions. The Communists allegedly support a ``war of principles'', thereby destroying the unity of ``industrial civilisation''. Because this ``war of principles" cannot be stopped, we have now entered a period not of peaceful coexistence, but of ceaseless conflict and limited wars.
This kind of ``theory'' can be seen as ideological justification of all manner of barriers in the way to establishing lasting peace, as theoretical ``substantiation'' of the imperialist policy aimed to erect various obstacles in the way of any further international detente.
Bourgeois ideologists would very much like to have the theory of peaceful coexistence between the two systems mean a contemplative and passive attitude on the part of the socialist forces, a peculiar theory and practice of quietism and fatalism. That is exactly the view of the Catholic theorist, Gustaw A. Wetter, who has the reputation in the West of being an ``expert in Soviet ideology''. He asks his readers this question: Does the policy of peaceful coexistence follow from the Marxist-Leninist doctrine? And without batting an eye he says: No.^^50^^
_-_-_~^^49^^ Karl Jaspers, Die Atombombe und die Zukunft des Menschen. Miinchen, 1958.
~^^50^^ See Gustaw A. Wetter, ``The Soviet Concept of Coexistence'', Soviet Survey, No. 30, October-December, 1959, pp. 19--34.
__PRINTERS_P_257_COMMENT__ 17---594 257Wetter reaches the following conclusion: either the Communists of the USSR are true to Marxism-Leninism, and then they must be against the idea of peaceful coexistence; or they stand for peaceful coexistence, and then they have abandoned Marxism-Leninism. Welter's view of Marxism-Leninism is similar to that of other bourgeois theorists, but he has no reason to worry: the Communists are true to Marxism-Leninism and that is precisely why they stand for the policy of peaceful coexistence. The Communists do not identify massive revolutionary activity and war.
The period of peaceful coexistence is a period of ever more active struggle by masses of men for peace, a growth of the role of the masses in deciding questions of war and peace, and consequently, of their ever more active intervention in the solution of the key political problems, and the rallying of ever broader sections of the working people round the working class and its Marxist-Leninist parties. This view of one aspect of present-day social life and this approach to the age-old questions of historical process---questions of war and peace---is a great achievement for social thought.
__NUMERIC_LVL2__ Chapter Five __ALPHA_LVL2__ SCIENTIFIC COMMUNISMThe starting proposition in modern social thought is that in our age the development of social labour and of science afford an ample opportunity to produce an abundance of material and spiritual goods for all men on the globe. ``Under the socialist system of economy, scientific and technical progress enables man to employ the riches and forces of nature most effectively in the interests of the people, to discover new forms of energy and to create new materials, to develop means of weather control, and to master outer space. Application of science in production becomes a decisive factor for the rapid growth of the productive forces of society,'' says the CPSU Programme.^^1^^
Never before has the development of the natural sciences run so closely with the development of social thought as it does today, when the question of realising and using for man's benefit the vast achievements in the science of nature inevitably comes up against the question of the social conditions necessary for doing so, the question of capitalism, which slows down or distorts the use of such achievements. Bourgeois scientists pondering the use of scientific achievements in human life, _-_-_
~^^1^^ The Road to Communism, p. 572.
258 come up on every hand against obstacles thrown up by the capitalist system. On the other hand, any idea of the prospects of social development must now take account of the level of scientific and technological development, and the use of nuclear energy, remote control, automation and computers. This is one of the characteristic features of the development of social thought in our day. Close attention to the development of the natural sciences and the use of their achievements in human life is due not only to the vast prospects opening up before science in the atomic age, but also to the fact that ours is an age in which the great social energy of the masses is being revealed, incontestably showing that capitalism has become a drag on the development of human society and a barrier in the way of progress. There is now a new social organisation of society on the globe which ensures the solution of the great problem of mankind's progressive development. The struggle between the forces of socialism and the forces of capitalism gives social thought its direction. __ALPHA_LVL3__ PATH OF PROGRESS FOR ALL MANKINDAs seen in retrospect, the path travelled by mankind shows quite obviously that this epoch of ours has to tackle in practical terms the tasks it has inherited from past ages and millennia, and to cut through the Gordian knots tied up by the exploitative system.
The extremely uneven development of various parts of the globe is characteristic of the capitalist epoch. A handful of imperialist powers has amassed vast wealth, while peoples in Asia, Africa and Latin America live in terrible poverty. Millions of people there have never put pen to paper or read a book, and can only dream of having their fill of food.
For ages, the exploitative society was based on the principle of great injustice: the exploiters advanced along the path of progress but kept the vast masses of deprived men and women in the dark. When the first seats of the slave-holding civilisation originated, with their developed art of writing, the figurative arts, and culture, the rest of the world was steeped in the darkness of barbarism and semibarbarism. The slaveholding civilisation ``enlightened'' the barbarians with fire and sword. The raids on the settlements of the neighbouring tribes were designed to capture slaves and the products of the labour of others. New states, based on slavery, emerged on the periphery of the slave-holding world, but the vast majority of the population of the globe still remained at the stage of prehistory. As for the masses of men and women turned into slaves, their condition was even worse and more arduous. They were no more than the pedestal of the history and culture of slave-holding society, as Marx put it.
__PRINTERS_P_258_COMMENT__ 17* 259When feudalism emerged, the framework of world history was considerably extended, but the tribal system and barbarism still remained outside the feudal world in Europe and Asia. The economic, social, political and cultural development of the serfs within feudal society was variously hampered by the landowners' oppression.
Capitalism further extended the framework of world history, but it clamped the fetters of colonialism on a majority of mankind and pushed whole countries, peoples and continents away from the path of progress. A vast impoverished countryside, where people still live in hovels, surrounds the developed urban civilisation of the capitalist world. Within the capitalist countries, the imperialist bourgeoisie has constantly sought to keep vast masses of working people from culture.
The true progress of all mankind began in our epoch, when the peoples of the socialist countries took control of their own future, with the peoples of the once colonial countries wresting their independence from a weakened capitalism, and with the working class, giving a lead to all the working people, becoming the decisive force in capitalist society as well. History becomes truly worldwide because vast masses of people are involved in historical activity.
Progress ultimately amounts to the activity of masses of people making use of the real historical prospects opening up before them to overcome the obstacles and difficulties in their way. Progress is always connected with the discovery of new ways and creative initiative. Without activity by the masses, it is impossible to convert latent possibilities into reality. The theory of progress, in short, means mankind's confidence in its future. This confidence is great when it relies on an understanding of the laws of social development, on men's awareness of their powers and the potentialities latent in historical reality. Any theory of progress is, in effect, relevant to the extent to which it brings out the historical potentialities and shows men real ways for their activity.
The Marxist-Leninist parties, which express the working people's urge for progress and which guide their struggle for progress, are of tremendous importance for the whole of the world process today. Progress and its requirements cannot be seen as something independent of the historical activity of the masses. Marx wrote that ``\thinspace`history' is not a person apart using man as a means for its own particular aims; history is nothing but the activity of man pursuing his aims".^^2^^ The clearer the view vast masses of men have of their real purposes and the ways of achieving them, the better they are organised for struggle for these purposes, the faster and deeper is the progressive development of every aspect of society. The Programme of the CPSU says that the Communist _-_-_
~^^2^^ K. Marx and F. Engels, The Holy Family, p. 125.
260 Party ``looks keenly into the future and shows the people scientifically motivated roads along which to advance,'' arouses titanic energy in the masses and leads them to the accomplishment of great tasks".^^3^^ Without the Marxist-Leninist parties it would be impossible for mankind to advance along the path of progress, for these parties have sprung from the powerful forces of progress and are their instrument and concentrated expression.Mankind's progress implies the need to eliminate the gap which has been created over the centuries between mental labour, as a privilege of the few, and manual labour, which has become a heavy burden on the majority. In exploitative society the benefits of progress are fully enjoyed only by a privileged minority. Modern technology---the use of chemicals, mechanisation, automation, remote control and computers---provide the means for eliminating this social injustice, but these can be used to the full only under communism, when society is organised on the right lines. Thus, the greatest social injustice in the history of culture can and must be righted. This is a real task in the progressive development of society today.
The development of the productive forces makes it possible to eliminate another inherited contradiction, that between town and country, but this will become a reality only with the development of social property. There must be a change in the social organisation of capitalist society so that communist principles come to prevail in production and other social spheres. The answer to this question, posed by mankind's development over the centuries, is also to be found in the CPSU Programme.
The proposition, put forward by Marxism-Leninism and elaborated in the CPSU Programme, showing that all the exploitative forms of social organisation have outlived themselves and that in our day the organisation of society on socialist lines is the only highroad of progress, is of vast importance for an understanding of the prospects before present-day social development and the shaping of convictions proper to the communist world outlook. The apologists of capitalism keep extolling the path of capitalist progress, addressing their hypocritical speeches to the nations which have thrown off the yoke of colonialism. But the capitalist way is a way of suffering for the people, a way of crises in economic development. Capitalist development will further ruin the peasantry, which in these countries already has a heavy burden to bear. For the workers, capitalist development means back-breaking toil for the enrichment of a handful of capitalists, with a swelling army of unemployed. The petty bourgeoisie will be crushed in the competitive struggle with growing big business. The benefits of culture and education _-_-_
~^^3^^ The Road to Communism, p. 583.
261 will remain out of reach of the masses. The intelligentsia will be forced to sell its talents. That is the way of capitalist progress.Lenin used to stress Marx's scientific analysis of capitalist society and capitalist progress as a vast advance in the development of theory.^^4^^ At the time, capitalism was the highroad of social development. Today, a new highroad has been laid. On the map it is no longer marked as a dotted line that is to be laid in the future, but as a road that has already been built, and it is fully described in the CPSU Programme.
Today, Marxism, having summed up the vast experience in building the new society, provides an analysis of socialist society and socialist progress, showing that the capitalist way of development is no longer as pre-eminent as it used to be. This marks a fundamental turning point in the development of social thought. ``Economic growth'', to use the bourgeois term, is now inseparable from social progress and consists in raising all the peoples and all the ethnic and social sections of the population to the heights of abundance, culture and civilisation. Capitalism has proved that it cannot do this. The Soviet Republics in Central Asia are evidence that socialism can. That is the modern ``formula of progress''.
There are various signs that the turning point is at hand. In our day everyone has heard, and few have denied, the advantages of the planned economy. It is safe to say that the idea of planning has already made its way into the minds of the masses. In the underdeveloped economies, the idea of planning is now accepted by a vast majority of the population. Not everyone as yet understands that economic planning is possible only on the basis of social property in the means of production, and that it can be the result only of a fundamental social transformation of society. Bourgeois propagandists have tried hard to obscure the issue and to confuse the minds of men. But the great results of the socialist system of economic activity have already been appreciated, and the idea of planning has been accepted almost everywhere. Vast masses of men have already come out in favour of it. The key change in the awareness of the masses is already taking place. The masses want economic and social development to be guided consciously, and capitalist economic chaos to be eliminated. Reality itself will suggest the next step which is of crucial importance, namely, the awareness of the need for switching to social property. This idea is making headway among the masses, and world development is running in this direction.
Mankind has been rising from blind poverty and ignorance to culture and civilisation through labour. Great social injustice has been a concomitant of progress. Throughout the ages, men were born and died with the idea that mankind was too poor for everyone to have their fill of _-_-_
~^^4^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. I, p. 145.
262 food, and that wealth was the lot of a few lucky people, while the majority were doomed to indigence. The Biblical story that men were cursed with labour for their sins was handed down from one generation to another. Vast masses of men had to live in poverty and do back-breaking toil, so that the great palaces of the doges should be mirrored in the tranquil waters of the canals of Venice, and the pinnacles of Notre Dame should rise to the skies. That was the heavy price civilisation had to pay for its achievements. The cynics said this was the wisdom of history, while the romantics called it the greatest tragedy of mankind. But both believed that nothing could be done about it, for otherwise the poets and the composers would not be heard, scientific thought would dim, while the architects would have nothing to build. Mankind would start to regress, moving back to the dulling poverty of primitive times, which was a fetter on man's creative powers. Rebellious thinkers of the late 18th and early 19th centuries accepted this as being inevitable and hailed the sanctity of poverty, which would wash away the contagion of money-grubbing in a purifying stream. That would renovate mankind. Some suggested that for the sake of progress social justice should be sacrificed for ever, while others urged a return to the past so that social justice could triumph. It was a vicious circle.Marx, Engels and Lenin found the way out of this vicious circle by developing the theory of scientific communism and showing mankind clear prospects of implementing the age-old vision of social justice along the path of progress, instead of away from it. When this vision began to be implemented the old-established notions crumbled. When the purifying storm of the October Revolution broke out, when the workers and the toiling peasantry began to reshape the face of their vast country without the landowners and the capitalists, the world of the old notions of progress was shaken. Men all over the world came to ponder the great truth: the first commandment of modern progress is elimination of man's exploitation of man. That was a truth the Utopian socialists first announced. Marxism has shown that that is the immutable law of social development. It has been transformed into historical reality by the October Revolution.
When the Communist Party and the Soviet people fulfilled their first Party Programme and started on the second, many people came to realise the truth of the great power of unfettered human labour.
Since then, the path of progress has been inextricably connected with the practical experience of the revolutionary transformation of society. The USSR's transition from the first to the second phase of socialist construction will be an important stage in the progressive development of all mankind, because the entry of Soviet society into communism will be a new stage in the development of the productive power of labour, showing the vast potentialities of the new system, which has proclaimed 263 that labour will become the master of the world, and which has resolutely moved on from the world dominated by capital.
While the Soviet people built socialism, unfolding step by step the unprecedented productive forces of free labour, they had yet finally to escape from the grip of poverty to which the country had been doomed by the domination of the landowners and capitalists. Whereas in the bourgeois world, men's minds were still being warped by the false theories of capitalist progress. At the same time hundreds of thousands of men were dying of hunger in the countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America, and in the USA itself tens of thousands of unemployed and slum dwellers lived from hand to mouth.
Then comes the turning point in the minds of men blinded by stories about capitalism creating wealth and abundance on the globe. Men in various countries come to accept the idea of social wealth and abundance created by all and for all. Marx anticipated the period when all the sources of social wealth will flow in abundance, and this period is at hand. The fact that mankind has reached the point in world history when the sources of social wealth can flow in full abundance works a fundamental change in the whole of world development, giving rise to new and powerful forces of progress, testifying to the weakening of reaction and stagnation, and to a revolution in the minds of men.
In order to appreciate this change in the minds of men, one should bear in mind that the concept of wealth has always been connected with the notion of private fortune and personal luck, against the background of a great many unfortunates. That was the idea ever since the notion of wealth first appeared on the ruins of the primitive communal system. The emergence of a rich elite in society had a religious halo about it. The ``rich man" and the ``lucky man" were synonymous, while the notion of ``luck'' appeared to contain the benevolence of some supernatural force operating for ``Divine election''.
That was the origin of the idea that wealth was the good fortune of a happy few and poverty the lot of the many, and that it was impossible for everyone to be rich. That was the key principle of the ideology of the class society. Capitalism which emerged in the historical arena created the cult of the lucky individual who rose to wealth. Indeed, getting to the top at the expense of everyone else became the motto that was considered fit for every deprived individual and for whole nations. For that purpose the concept of human happiness was debased to the level of a philistine standard, of the ``minor happiness" of the man who had had his dinner, the microscopic wealth of a few saved dollars. The more abundant the festive board of the capitalist, the more crumbs will fall from it for the working people---that is the political wisdom which lies at the root of all the theories of ``people's capitalism''. Another rule says: ``Persevere, you, too, have a chance to become rich and take your place 264 at the festive board.'' The whole of bourgeois propaganda in the USA has long praised this ``conventional wisdom" and presented various versions of the ``theory of chance''. A contemporary US writer, considering the keynote of bourgeois propaganda, has reasoned on these lines: why should the worker in the USA seek to gain the whole world, as Marx and Engels suggest, if he has a chance to become the owner of a filling station. A petty view of happiness indeed! This tiny fortune will disappear overnight through the blind workings of the capitalist system, the chaotic and relentless forces of capitalism. Bourgeois ideologists have boasted of the fact that capitalism creates incentive for work through the overriding private-property instinct. Addressing themselves to the sections of the working people with an embryonic class awareness, bourgeois propagandists emphasise the individual's personal welfare, and assert that present-day capitalism is best able to satisfy his interests. That is where they seek to switch the ideological struggle, with various peddlers of the poisonous concoctions of anti-communism being most assiduous in this effort.
Today, communism has accepted the challenge in this area as well and has carried on its offensive for the sake of man against bourgeois individualism, which is an ideological echo of the world dominated by private property.
In the contemporary struggle between socialism and capitalism the great power of social property and the new relations between men developing on its basis and resulting in man's individual development is being increasingly revealed. Idealism and metaphysics have a harmful role to play in their efforts to obscure the material basis of social relations. That is a characteristic feature of all the bourgeois and petty-bourgeois theories, which seek to drag social thought away from its Leninist path.
It is a great achievement of Marxism-Leninism, the true science of society, that it has made a profound study of the social bonds between men and that it has identified in their diversity the most important ones. Bourgeois sociologists, who have written a great many books in their efforts to salvage bourgeois individualism and to provide theoretical backing for its principles, have never tried to bring out the basis of relations between men in society. They have indicated family relations, professional relations, national relations and the various hobbies which bring men together (like art and sports), and many other secondary ties between members of society. But the main thing they want to obscure is the highly important truth that production is the basis of social life and that the relations of production constitute the basis of all the social ties between men and of man's own development.
Lenin said that relations between men involving them in social labour constitute the basis of all the diverse social ties. No society can exist without strong ties between men in the process of labour. The stages in 265 the history of society are determined by the stages in the development of labour and the nature of these ties.
``Whatever the social form of production, labourers and means of production always remain factors of it. But in a state of separation from each other either of these factors can be such only potentially. For production to go on at all they must unite. The specific manner in which this union is accomplished distinguishes the different economic epochs of the structure of society from one another."^^5^^ Why is every new epoch progressive with respect to the preceding one? It is so because it is ultimately an epoch of qualitative and quantitative growth in the productivity of man's creative labour. The social relations, which change with its emergence, are a condition for that growth. The political organisation of society, expressing and consolidating these relations, also ultimately has an influence on the development of the productive power of labour. The culture of society is an indicator of the quantitative and qualitative level reached in society's material and spiritual standards through the growing productivity of labour.
__ALPHA_LVL3__ GROWING PRODUCTIVITYMarxism draws a distinction between the main economic epochs in the history of society in accordance with the instruments of labour. That is the starting point for any scientific analysis of society. Marx stressed: ``It is not the articles made, but how they are made, and by what instruments, that enables us to distinguish different economic epochs. Instruments of labour not only supply a standard of the degree of development to which human labour has attained, but they are also indicators of the social conditions under which that labour is carried on."^^6^^ But instruments of labour as a measure of the extent to which human labour power and social relations have been developed are important in that they determine the efficiency, the results and the productivity of labour. The concept of mode of production is inseparable from the concept of labour productivity, which is characteristic of that given mode of production. No mode of production has disappeared from the arena of world history before it has worked out its potentialities for greater labour productivity. Every new socio-economic formation has brought with it a higher productivity of labour, requiring a new organisation and new social relations, in accord with the greater productive forces. The advantages of the new social system were _-_-_
~^^5^^ K. Marx, Capital, Vol. II, Moscow, 1967, pp. 36--37.
~^^6^^ Ibid.. Vol. I, p. 180.
266 displayed in the new social organisation, resting on the development of the productive forces achieved, which helped to secure a higher productivity of labour and, consequently, a quantitative and qualitative increase in material welfare that is the basis of spiritual welfare.So long as a given form of relations of production---property relations---corresponds to a definite stage of production, and consequently, to a definite level of productivity of social labour, society keeps developing and advancing. When the relations of production no longer accord with the greater productive forces of society, its technology and manpower, these relations begin to hamper the development of the productive power of social labour and become a fetter on it. The mode of bringing together the means of production and labour power creates the basis for the development of labour's productive power and in antagonistic formations also puts definite limits to such development.
Marxism has shown that the secret of the collapse of the slave-holding world and the triumph of feudalism, a problem which generations of bourgeois thinkers had been unable to solve, lay ultimately in the fact that the labour of the medieval serf and artisan was more productive than that of the slave.
The slave had no incentives for work, for developing his productive power. That is why slave labour ultimately carried society into a dead end, and there was general scorn for labour. The further growth of production entailed nothing but the capture of more and more slaves. There were no prospects for technical progress. When Greek scholars first discovered the importance of steam, it was used to open the gates of temples, so as to amaze men.
A new level of labour productivity was reached by the slight improvement in the condition of the serf as compared with that of the slave, giving more room for initiative and incentive to labour, for he had to produce something over and above the product he himself needed to meet his own wants and those of his family, and this marked the victory of feudalism over the slave-holding system. Capitalism brought a fresh spurt in the productivity of labour.
In The Development of Capitalism in Russia, Lenin showed very well that the existence of precapitalist forms of exploitation, characteristic of the feudal-absolutist order in Russia and in the West, tended to slow down the progressive development of labour productivity. Lenin said that ``labour-service necessarily presupposes the lowest productivity of labour; hence, no possibility exists for increasing income by increasing the surplus product; that can only be done by one means, namely, by employing all sorts of bonded forms of hire".^^7^^ Under a purely capitalist economy, said Lenin, ``to raise the productivity of labour becomes not _-_-_
~^^7^^ V. I. Lenin. Collected Works, Vol. 3. p. 214.
267 only possible, but also necessary as the sole means of increasing income and withstanding severe competition".^^8^^However, there came a time in the development of capitalism when private appropriation ceased duly to stimulate the growth of labour productivity. On the contrary, the emancipation of labour from all exploitation alone carried with it an unprecedented growth of labour productivity. Today, progress is connected entirely with the future of social property and with the potentialities which it creates for growing labour productivity. The forms of exploitation were stages in the development of labour productivity, but today there is need to release labour from all exploitation for it to reveal its creative power to the full.
Before the emergence of socialist society there was no instance in history of labour productivity being advanced by workers voluntarily allied with each other and consciously making use of advanced technology. In Soviet society the change and improvement in working habits, once largely a spontaneous process, is becoming a process generating vast creative initiatives among the working people, impelling them to innovations and scientific and technical experiments. On the other hand, science, which has ceased to be a means of exploitation, blends with the working people's initiative and innovation. Therein lies one of the reasons for the tempestuous growth of the productive forces in the new society.
The development of social labour has always been connected with changes in the means of production and labour power, and has always implied the existence of definite labour skills and their improvement. The steady improvement of labour skills results in constant changes which now and again remain unnoticed. That is an expression of the growth of the productive power of social labour. The urge to change and improve the means of production has been expressed in the process of labour ever since it originated.
Throughout the history of mankind until the emergence of socialist society this most important process was basically spontaneous, with conscious effort going mainly into inventions and scientific discoveries in technology, which were determined by the needs of developing production and by the level of labour development and then exerted a stimulating influence on production. The form of exploitation determined the limits within which labour skills and technology were improved and science applied to production. Exploitative society has never left any room for extensive initiative among the producers, and has subordinated the power of science to self-seeking ends.
In socialist society, the growing productivity of labour means above all a growing role for every worker in the process of material production. This is in line with the principle of ``working according to one's ability'', _-_-_
~^^8^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 3, pp. 214--15.
268 and the requirement made by society on every one of its members that all should put their best into labour for the common good, improving their capacities with the development of social labour.The role of every working person in social life tends to increase. Those who have risen to a higher productivity of labour are of great value for the whole of society and enjoy its respect. The working person who has risen to a high standard of labour productivity becomes a public figure whose opinion is of national importance.
Working people in socialist society have an interest in the results of their labour, and this is the basis of the principle of material incentives, an important principle underlying the development of socialist society on its way to communism. But material incentives can be held out to everyone only when there is a vigorous effort in the whole collective, and also those who supply the raw materials for production, the instruments of labour, and the goods to meet the individual's various requirements. Consequently, every individual has an interest in the results of the labour of other working people in socialist society. That is an important basis for all the other social relations.
In Soviet society, alongside the individual interest and material incentives of each worker in the results of production there is the common interest of the given collective of working people and the national interest, which range over the whole of social production and determine society's requirements on the activity of the individual industries and enterprises. This national interest takes the form of state interest. The Soviet state of the whole people expresses and safeguards the aspirations of the whole of society and of its members, who have an interest in developing production. The state has economic and political instruments of influence and control, which it uses to have the national interest correctly taken into account in the work of every enterprise, every industry and production as a whole.
However, it is not only the state and its agencies that are concerned with bringing out the national interest, with taking account of this interest and controlling its complete satisfaction. The substance of Soviet socialist relations is such that this interest tends ever more widely to be considered by all members of society, becoming a basis for their practical activity, the basis for all social ties.
Socialism makes it possible to combine personal material incentives, the interests of the given production collective of workers and the national, state interest. But this combination cannot be achieved of itself, spontaneously, apart from men's vigorous activity. A knowledge of the laws and requirements of social development has helped the Soviet people to tackle the tasks posed by life.
The Party Programme shows what social and economic progress in our age means. Its main principle is that the mighty technology produced by mankind which helps to release the vast productivity of labour can, given 269 the right social organisation, create a society with an abundance of material and spiritual goods for all. Today, continued industrial development makes it imperative that social labour should be organised on the highest rational level.
__ALPHA_LVL3__ PROGRESS IN THE ORGANISATIONThe two phases of the one communist formation have a common basis, and it is that the ``proletariat represents and creates a higher type of social organisation of labour compared with capitalism. This is what is important, this is the source of the strength and the guarantee that the final triumph of communism is inevitable".^^9^^
The activity of the socialist state, which alone directs the national economy, is an expression of this high level of social organisation of labour. Ever since society divided into classes, the relations of production have inevitably produced a political superstructure which has a part to play in safeguarding and developing the social system. One aspect of the great transformation effected by the socialist revolution is that it works a fundamental change in the role of the political superstructure in the organisation of social labour. The original version of Lenin's article entitled ``The Immediate Tasks of the Soviet Government" said: ``The task of administering the state, which now confronts the Soviet government, has this special feature, that, probably for the first time in the modern history of civilised nations, it deals pre-eminently with economics rather than with politics. Usually the word `administration' is associated chiefly, if not solely, with political activity. However, the very basis and essence of Soviet power, like that of the transition itself from capitalist to socialist society, lie in the fact that political tasks occupy a subordinate position to economic tasks."^^10^^ The characteristic feature of development in socialist society is that its political organisation is geared more closely to the tackling of economic tasks, that is, tasks in developing production, the key sphere of human activity.
Therein lies the profound distinction between the line of the Marxists-Leninists and that of the petty-bourgeois revolutionaries, who give least thought to construction, to production and economic activity. The consistent proletarian revolutionary cannot, of course, take a supercilious view of economic activity in the new society and the development of the creative power of human labour. Any attempt to neglect the growth of labour productivity as being some kind of _-_-_
~^^9^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 29, p. 419.
~^^10^^ Ibid., Vol. 42, p. 71.
270 ``economism" amounts to a revival of the petty-bourgeois theories of social development and a departure from the fundamental propositions of the Marxist-Leninist doctrine.Indeed, says Lenin, the boosting of labour productivity is the way to tackle this fundamental task when considering the construction of the new society. That is precisely the way the Soviet people have followed in building socialism, and fulfilling their five-year national-economic development plans one after the other. The Soviet people are still advancing along this path in building communism. That is the great historical meaning of Lenin's formula: ``Communism is Soviet power plus the electrification of the whole country.'' This formula of Lenin's above all implies a high level of organisation of social labour, which Soviet society has proved capable of establishing. It also implies a high level of technical equipment of labour and consequently a high level of productivity. It also, undoubtedly, means a steep rise in cultural and technical standards for masses of working people. The development of large-scale industry is a key political task of the society building up the new system and a necessary basis for growing labour productivity. In formulating the Party's line, Lenin combined the highest achievements in the science of social development with the conclusions reached by advanced technical thought and natural science, gearing this to the revolutionary and constructive energy of the masses.
The unity of the social and the natural sciences in the period of communist construction is expressed, first, in the common growth of their social importance, which is determined by the vital requirements of social development; second, the growing interaction between the natural and the social sciences on the basis of their common social role; third, the identical methodological, philosophical conception on which they rest. Scientific communism brings together the data produced by the science of nature and the science of society, because it indicates the ways for building the new society and shows how these data are to be applied on the strength of the motto: everything for the sake of man.
In agriculture, the USSR has reached a point at which, the CPSU Programme says, its dependence on the natural elements has been considerably reduced and brought down to a minimum. Only agriculture organised on socialist lines is capable of tackling this task, which is of vast historical importance, considering the long history of agriculture.
In an agrarian country like old Russia, the most complicated question facing the country was that of eliminating ``the fragmentation of labour'', and switching the petty peasant farms, which daily and hourly generated capitalism, to organisation on socialist lines. Lenin devoted much attention to the problem of organising the socialist economy, and formulated a coherent theory of cooperation of the peasant farms and establishment of large-scale social property in the countryside equipped with advanced machinery and technology. In order to fulfil this plan 271 there was need above all to raise and develop socialist industry, the basis on which cooperative farms could score great successes, the countryside develop on socialist lines, providing a solution for the age-old problems which could not be compared with any other difficult problem in building the new society. Lenin stressed the importance of material incentives for productive labour among the peasantry, and criticised the ``Left Communists'', who urged an instant switch to communes all over the country. Lenin stressed that it was possible to build the new society not by ``directly relying on enthusiasm, but aided by the enthusiasm engendered by the great revolution, and on the basis of personal interest, personal incentive and business principles".^^11^^
Lenin also pointed to another important condition for the development of socialist society: ``...a condition for economic revival is the raising of the working people's discipline, their skill, the effectiveness, the intensity of labour and its better organisation."^^12^^ Lenin and the Communist Party carried on a persistent struggle for the triumph of ``proletarian conscious discipline over spontaneous petty-bourgeois anarchy".^^13^^
Stressing the importance of nationwide accounting and control for the development of socialist relations, Lenin said that this was a fight ``to break with the rotten past, which taught the people to regard the procurement of bread and clothes as a `private' affair, and buying and selling as a transaction 'which concerns only myself---... a great fight of world-historic significance, a fight between socialist consciousness and bourgeois-anarchist spontaneity".^^14^^ The restructuring of the working people's consciousness was to start with a change in their attitude to work, to production, to the task of supplying the people with consumer goods. Men developed the habit of regarding production, the key sphere of their activity, as a social undertaking combining their personal material incentives, the interests of the given labour collective and the interests of the whole of society, the national and state interest, without whose satisfaction it is impossible to satisfy the personal interests of the working people either. Capitalism had habituated them to regard this as the private business of individuals working to secure a living. That amounted to an apology of the bourgeois anarchism and bourgeois individualism.
Bourgeois ideas were at the basis of anarcho-syndicalist notions. Lenin wrote: ``It is now particularly clear to us how correct is the Marxist thesis that anarchism and anarcho-syndicalism are bourgeois trends, how irreconcilably opposed they are to socialism, proletarian dictatorship and _-_-_
~^^11^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 33, p. 58.
~^^12^^ Ibid., Vol. 27, p. 258.
~^^13^^ Ibid.
~^^14^^ Ibid., p. 254.
272 communism."^^15^^ The attempts to push the question of producing grain and clothing into the background and to turn this into a minor question of scientific communism amounted to a relapse into the bourgeois view of production and labour.In contrast to the petty-bourgeois phrase-mongers, Lenin taught the people to work for a scientific organisation of production, with the use of scientific achievements and the best systems of accounting and control, etc. The development of socialist society is closely connected with its efforts to enhance its organisation and cohesion in all its work, production in the first place, efficiently to organise the whole of social labour on strictly scientific principles, and to establish an efficient system of control with extensive participation by masses of working people.
In many of his works, Lenin warned against idealistic and voluntaristic attempts to leap over to communism, bypassing its first stage, socialism, and stressing that the new society, and above all its material basis, had to be built brick by brick. ``From capitalism mankind can pass directly only to socialism, i. e., to the social ownership of the means of production and the distribution of products according to the amount of work performed by each individual."^^16^^
That is why ``there still remains the need for a state, which, while safeguarding the common ownership of the means of production, would safeguard equality in labour and in the distribution of products".^^17^^ For the state completely to wither away there is need for full-scale communism, Lenin wrote. But after the socialist revolution the political organisation of society undergoes a change, and as a result of the triumph of socialist relations the very nature of the state is modified. ``All citizens become employees and workers of a single country-wide state `syndicate'."^^18^^ The development of this ``syndicate'' and its transformation into a state of the whole people is a necessary historical process.
Considering the transition from the first to the second phase of the new society, to communism, Lenin stressed the decisive importance of the basis of social development, the growth of the productive power of highly organised and highly conscious human labour. Lenin did not tolerate any concessions to idealism which were so characteristic of petty-bourgeois theorists, who hoped to build a new society by reforming man's mentality.
To say nothing about these precepts of Lenin's would amount in effect to a revision of Leninism on the key questions of the theory of social development, the theory of socialist construction.
_-_-_~^^15^^ Ibid.
~^^16^^ Ibid., Vol. 24, pp. 84--85.
~^^17^^ Ibid., Vol. 25, p. 467.
~^^18^^ Ibid., p. 473.
__PRINTERS_P_273_COMMENT__ 18---594 273Thus, the mainstream of social progress today consists in eliminating every type of exploitation and then in further improving the social organisation of society. Accordingly, the main line in the progressive development of the political organisation of present-day society consists in abolishing the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie and establishing the dictatorship of the proletariat, which is transformed into a state of the whole people as the new society develops. The way to the future lies through the utmost development of social self-government.
__ALPHA_LVL3__ THE EDUCATIONAL POWERLenin gave a brilliant sociological analysis of the educational role of example in building the new society. He began his analysis with the history of socialist thought and the views held by the Utopian socialists: ``In capitalist society there have been repeated examples of the organisation of labour communes by people who hoped peacefully and painlessly to convince mankind of the advantages of socialism and to ensure its adoption. Such a standpoint and such methods of activity evoke wholly legitimate ridicule from revolutionary Marxists because, under the conditions of capitalist slavery, to achieve any radical changes by means of isolated examples would in fact be a completely vain dream, which in practice has led either to moribund enterprises or to the conversion of these enterprises into associations of petty capitalists.
``This habitual attitude of ridicule and scorn towards the importance of example in the national economy is sometimes evident even now among people who have not thoroughly considered the radical changes that began from the time of the conquest of political power by the proletariat."~^^19^^
Robert Owen, and the followers of Saint-Simon and Charles Fourier wanted to create the cells of a new society within the framework of the capitalist system, inside the bourgeois countries, to act as an example for the rest of the world. That was utopianism. Marxism resolutely combated such views. Following the fundamental changes that took place, Lenin urged a fresh consideration of the power of example.
Starting from the new social conditions, Lenin stressed the vast importance of example in organising production on socialist principles inside the country. He said that the task was to spread the experience of the best organisation among the masses so as to help raise the level of the economy throughout the country.
_-_-_~^^19^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 27, pp. 204--05.
274This showed an important regularity in the internal development of Soviet society, an important aspect of the mechanism of the socialist system's progressive development.
In the spring of 1918, the Soviet Republic's first spring, Lenin dictated some of his considerations about the characteristic features of the new system and its immediate tasks: ``The force of example, which could not be displayed in capitalist society, will be of enormous importance in a society that has abolished private ownership of land and factories, not only because, perhaps, good examples will be followed here, but also because a better example of the organisation of production will be accompanied inevitably by a lightening of labour and an increase in the amount of consumption for those who have carried out this better organisation."^^20^^ Outside the Kremlin walls lay a Moscow that was yet to divest itself of its old features, and beyond its suburbs stretched fields still most tilled by means of the wooden plough, with villages made up of huts in which the wood splinter still provided the only light. But looking ahead, Lenin was aware that a marvellous social energy had been awakened and that its most efficient development required the power of example. Advanced example was being creatively mastered by new contingents of builders, with fresh examples engendered in the course of this assimilation.
In Soviet society, Lenin said, the force of example is able to influence the people for the first time.^^21^^ The massive impact of the power of example is the mainspring of the mechanism which impells Soviet society towards communism. The Party, the Soviet people's vanguard, sets an example for the mass of Soviet people in various spheres of their activity. Today, the whole work of the Party is pivoted on the spread not only of the most advanced views of life, but also of the most advanced experience in labour and production. Thanks to the Party's efforts, various individual initiatives among the Soviet working people become massive, generating fresh initiatives which for their part become massive, and in the course of emulation produce new creative attempts, resulting in a further enrichment of the process of labour, of production and of the whole of social life. Such is the cycle of progress which carries Soviet society ever farther along the path towards communism. The creative assimilation of advanced experience by the whole mass of the people is a process that could not have developed without the Party's vast organisational and educational effort.
It pays to give profound thought to the main thesis in Lenin's remarkable work entitled ``A Great Beginning''. It shows the important mechanism of progress in socialist society, where example is in effect _-_-_
~^^20^^ Ibid., p. 206.
~^^21^^ Ibid., p. 261.
275 initiative, the start of a massive movement. With example, or initiative, are closely connected the emergence, assimilation and development of the new elements in social life. These new elements in human activity provide the example in bringing out and mastering new potentialities in social development. Example and initiative show that new objective potentialities have matured in society. Realisation of new potentialities by ever greater numbers of citizens leads to a new stage of development. Society's development in this or that sphere has reached a stage at which the whole point is to have the progressive tendencies intensified, broadly extended and fully established. In the period of communist construction, with initiatives among the masses on the increase, the power of example becomes a key social factor.Sociologists of the pre-Marxian period used to say that if the individual were left to himself his development would differ little, if at all, from that of an animal. Social influence on the individual is frequently expressed in the form of example, which teaches one how to act and to behave in various circumstances. This influence in socialist society does not oppress the individual but in the long run helps to bring out his capabilities and potentialities. The power of influence exerted by the collective induces man to accept rules which become habitual and commonplace. Concrete examples enable the individual to learn that ``some things are not done'', and it depends on the correct organisation of the life of the collective that the example of the most honest, highly moral and ideologically steeled men should predominate and command the greatest prestige. Man's life experience includes the examples which he has mastered and which have exerted a deep influence on him. Awareness of one's individuality is totally impossible without the influence of the collective and without contacts and close interaction with other individuals.
One should not think that the power of example implies no more than mere imitation. That is a gross error which bourgeois sociologists have made since the days of G. Tarde, a reactionary theorist of the 19th century. Actually, the power of example awakens an individual's inner mental potentialities, and an example can be surpassed or can engender actions applying the example in another sphere. This constitutes the beginning of a new concatenation, setting a new example, which is to be assimilated in its turn. Thus, thanks to the valuable example fresh masses of men are involved in the movement, which grows in breadth and is simultaneously enriched in content. That is why example develops into initiative. New habits and methods of work are broadly accepted all over the country, and the best ways of mastering and making efficient use of advanced technology and hardware are adopted by the masses. Innovation and new ideas are an expression of this power of example. The example set by the foremost workers rules out the possibility of its mechanical repetition, for it shows the need to learn and constantly to 276 acquire knowledge, if the labour process is to develop. The example set by the leading workers shows the way along which one should advance; it shortens the distance but does not obviate it altogether.
The power of example is considerable not only for the organisation of labour, the development of its methods and the raising of the technical and cultural level of the working people, but also for shaping the character and the mental makeup of men. The power of example is paramount in fostering emotions, feelings, and the ability to set in motion one's will under definite circumstances to achieve a given goal. It is important for socialist society not only to develop men's minds, but also correctly to develop their emotions. There again, nothing can be done without the educational power of example.
__ALPHA_LVL3__ LENIN'S IDEASMarxism-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.
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.
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 277 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".^^22^^
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.
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."^^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.
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.
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.
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.
_-_-_~^^22^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 30, p. 288.
~^^23^^ Ibid., Vol. 29, p. 427.
278In 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.
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.
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.
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.
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 279 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.
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.
When dealing with the conscious and free attitude to labour under communism, Lenin remarked on the fact that the workers must pool 280 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.
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.
__b_b_b__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.
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 281 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.
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.
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.
The process of change and improvement in labour skills, which in precapitalist formations led to spontaneous changes in the instruments of 282 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The time has long passed when the level in the development of the productive forces required that the worker should have no more than 283 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.
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.
__b_b_b__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."^^24^^
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.
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 _-_-_
~^^24^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 30, p. 517.
284 production and stimulates the growth of labour productivity, the raising of skills and improvement of production techniques.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".^^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.
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.
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.
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 _-_-_
~^^25^^ Ibid., Vol. 25, p. 474.
285 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.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."^^26^^
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.
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.
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 _-_-_
~^^26^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 31, p. 50.
286 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.
__ALPHA_LVL3__ THE HIGHROAD OF THE FREE SOCIETYAt one time Soviet society was forced to suppress the remnants of the exploiting classes, and to deprive them of their freedom to express their will, because they aimed to overthrow the socialist system. Today, there are no remnants of the exploiting classes in the country, and a state of the whole people is developing. This state of the whole people is such in nature, functions and forms of activity that under certain conditions after the triumph of communism, it will give way to communist social self-government based on persuasion instead of coercion.
The state of the whole people expresses socialist social relations in their movement, holding out to everyone equal rights and opportunities for development. There are no privileged social groups in the country. The Soviet state ensures absolutely free national development for all the peoples of the Soviet country. The state system consisting of Union and Autonomous Republics, Autonomous National Regions and National Districts, ensures all nations---big and small---opportunities for developing their native tongue, their national culture and their best traditions. All of these are expressions of freedom of the individual realised on the basis of correct understanding of man's social nature and its bonds with society. The Programme of the CPSU says: ``All-round extension and perfection of socialist democracy, active participation of all citizens in the administration of the state, in the management of economic and cultural development, improvement of the government apparatus, and increased control over its activity by the people constitute 287 the main direction in which socialist statehood develops in the period of the building of communism."^^27^^
Theorists, who are hostile to Marxism-Leninism, fail to understand the development of social relations and the political organisation of socialist society and do not understand the influence this trend of development exerts on every aspect of social life, including production, the key sphere of human activity.
Social relations based on the principle of Soviet democracy, collectivism, comradely cooperation and mutual assistance become a great force in the development of production and the improvement of labour. Collectives of workers constantly bring out and use reserves in production, starting various new drives for progressive innovations, working to reduce the inputs per ruble of marketable goods, the lowest labour intensity per unit and the highest labour productivity.
At some enterprises new relations between men are expressed in the fact that the whole collective is responsible for each individual, and every individual is responsible for the collective as a whole. The greater the collective and the individual interact, the broader the basis of comradeship and trust for relationships within the collective, and the stronger every collective and its every individual member.
Of course, in human society there can be no absolute independence of the individual from society, because social bonds remain so long as society exists, so that absolute independence is no more than imaginary. Actually, talk about such ``freedom'' usually serves to cover up anti-social acts aimed to harm other people. The bourgeois fairy-tales about the ``absolute freedom of the individual" are empty and harmful. No society can exist without a clear distinction between what is permissible and impermissible, for otherwise all social life and society itself would be abolished.
At the dawn of history we find, according to the 19th-century Russian sociologist, Maxim Kovalevsky, the emergence of the ``principle that everything promoting the material or moral prosperity of the group is deemed to be good, desirable, in accord with custom, and that which is due. Conversely, everything which for this or that reason harms the interests of the group, its security, its material welfare, its honour, is deemed to be bad, shameful and by nature intolerable''. These notions of the primitive society are not clear-cut and are veiled in fantasy. Indeed, they are extremely limited. Thus, Kovalevsky notes the existence of this kind of law in the primitive commune: ``What is allowed in respect to aliens is intolerable with respect to kinsmen."^^28^^ Subsequently, new standards of what was permissible and impermissible were dictated by _-_-_
~^^27^^ The Road to Communism, p. 548.
~^^28^^ M. M. Kovalevsky, ``Demarcation of Permissible and Impermissible Acts''. In: New Ideas in Sociology, Collection No. 4, St. Petersburg, 1914, p. 90 (in Russian).
288 slave-holding society, when what was allowed the slave-owner was prohibited for the slave. In feudal society, the fetters of serfdom and the hierarchy of various forces were a fetter on the working people.In the 18th century, demands were made for formal democratic rights. This was, as one Russian revolutionary thinker put it, an unfeasible demand for every man's ``right'' to eat off gold plate. The further development of democratic ideas in the course of the social struggle led to demands for real, material guarantees that the people's democratic rights could be practised, for otherwise all the rights and freedoms remained on paper. The 20th century proclaimed that it was impossible to extend such guarantees to the people without eraducating the power and influence of capital in society, for in any clash between formal right and the real, material power of capital, the latter always won out. The prime guarantee of the people's freedom is destruction of the power of money.
When Lenin and the Bolsheviks entered the arena of political struggle, they gave a real basis to the question of freedom, discarding the false and obscure reasonings of bourgeois ideologists about ``freedom in general''. This is how they put the question: freedom for whom, freedom from what? The Communists put forward the demand of emancipation from exploitation, the demand for freedom for the working people. Today it is safe to say that in the Soviet Union there is freedom for all. All citizens enjoy equal rights. Let us ask this question: ``What is this freedom from? The answer will be quite clear: it is freedom from exploitation, genuine freedom from every type of oppression and, consequently, emancipation of human thought and action from the age-old fetters produced by the economic, political and spiritual domination of the exploiters.
Genuine freedom is the possibility to unfold one's capabilities, to display them through one's activity and tirelessly to develop them. That is the kind of freedom, as the highest privilege and the greatest value in human life, that forward-looking men throughout the ages had visions of. There is now a society which requires that everyone should work according to his abilities. That is a law of Soviet life and its moral standard. The main conclusion to be drawn from this law is that the individual's personality is enriched with the development of Soviet social relations. That is the most important conclusion drawn by the modern theory of social progress.
The progressive aims of modern society consist in unchaining the vast creative potentialities in man. This calls for abolition of exploitation and oppression. Furthermore, there is need to have the labour effort of millions increase the social wealth to a point where all human requirements can be met. It is also necessary that man himself should develop his capabilities and gain in stature in the course of building the new society. The task before modern society is to create the best possible conditions for bringing out the creative potentialities and __PRINTERS_P_289_COMMENT__ 19---594 289 capabilities of every individual and, consequently, of the whole mass of the people. Mass creativity is a key feature of the present epoch of transition from capitalism to communism. That is what accelerates the progressive development of society.
__ALPHA_LVL3__ THE WAY OF INTELLECTUALThere was a time when the bourgeoisie advanced to power under the banner of the progress of reason and knowledge. But bourgeois social relations created a gulf between the people and science. These two most powerful forces of progress were divided. Their unification must be started in the process of labour itself. The progressive development of modern society requires that the powerful forces of science and the people should be blended into a single whole, and that can be done only by the new society. It is the hallmark of the new society that the CPSU Programme indicates the main lines of development in the key fields of natural and social science.
Capitalism has deprived labour of its spiritual content, converting the workingman into an appendage of the machine. That was the arrangement in the age of steam, and such it is today in this age of automation and remote control. Communism restores to labour its spiritual content and enriches it manyfold. Social relations require that every working person should have knowledge, while science should have close contacts with life and should satisfy the requirements of social development. That is the main line of intellectual progress in modern society. And today we have already left the capitalist world far behind in this respect.
For centuries the best minds pondered the problems of man's moral improvement, but all the wisdom of the moralists was unable to secure mankind's moral progress. Capitalism pulled men down into the morass of greed, envy, wild egoism, and social injustice.
Thinkers of the past, contemplating mankind's intellectual and moral progress, produced a great many theories for improving the individual and developing all his spiritual potential, but all these doctrines preached moral and intellectual improvement for the individual alone. That was the wrong way. Moralists are apologists of bourgeois individualism and in their reasoning about the defects and vices of ``human nature" they did not say that it is capitalist bondage that tends to distort man's moral consciousness. The preaching of moral self-improvement for the individual served to promote the interests of the ruling classes, for it was used by the bourgeoisie in an effort to divert the working people from the struggle for a radiant future for all mankind. Forward-looking thinkers in the 18th century noticed the connection between moral progress and the 290 development of education, science and culture, but they reduced the question of moral consciousness to enlightenment. Of course, there is a connection between the development of the mind and moral consciousness, but the acquisition of knowledge does not in itself amount to a development of moral consciousness.
Capitalism has in fact converted the working man into a mere appendage of the machine, and knowledge into an instrument of greed, distorting men's moral consciousness and inscribing anti-intellectualism and amoralism on its banner a long time ago.
Pre-Marxian socialism was likewise unable to show the real way for mankind's moral and intellectual progress. Utopian socialism believed that the new man would emerge from special test tubes and hothouses, in the cells of the new society that would germinate within the entrails of the old. That was a metaphysical and idealistic view, which was a far cry from the truth.
Marxism alone, taking the material dialectical approach, showed the way to recast man's consciousness in the struggle for the triumph of the new social system. Marx and Engels said that the consciousness of man who was to build the new society would initially be burdened with survivals of the old world outlook and that there would be need for a fundamental remoulding of man's spiritual cast. On this key question, Marxism produced a totally new answer which resolutely broke with the old Utopian views. Lenin wrote: ``What distinguishes Marxism from the old, Utopian socialism is that the latter wanted to build the new society not from the mass human material produced by bloodstained, sordid, rapacious, shopkeeping capitalism, but from very virtuous men and women reared in special hothouses and cucumber frames. Everyone now sees that this absurd idea really is absurd and everyone has discarded it, but not everyone is willing or able to give thought to the opposite doctrine of Marxism and to think out how communism can (and should) be built from the mass human material which has been corrupted by hundreds and thousands of years of slavery, serfdom, capitalism, by small individual enterprise, and by the war of every man against his neighbour to obtain a place in the market, or a higher price for his product or his labour."^^29^^
Marxism resolutely rejected the idealism and metaphysics of Utopian socialism and showed how the new society was to be built from massive human material instead of artificially created men with special virtues, and explained how man was to be led onto the path of boundless intellectual and moral progress. This answer was provided in the light of dialectical and historical materialism, which had established the importance of social practice for the development of knowledge and human consciousness.
_-_-_~^^29^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 28, p. 388.
291Subsequently, various opportunists, revisionists and Mensheviks, abandoning revolutionary Marxism, including the idea of remoulding the mass consciousness in the course of revolutionary struggle, claimed that the socialist revolution in Russia was impossible because on the whole the general educational and cultural standards of the people in the country were lower than those of the capitalist states in Western Europe. That was a rehash of old metaphysical views, and in the light of revolutionary Marxism Lenin rejected this false opportunistic thesis and said: ``If a definite level of culture is required for the building of socialism (although nobody can say just what that definite 'level of culture' is, for it differs in every West-European country), why cannot we begin by first achieving the prerequisites for that definite level of culture in a revolutionary way, and then, with the aid of the workers' and peasants' government and the Soviet system, proceed to overtake the other nations?"^^30^^ At the same time, Lenin remarked on the difficulties of tackling this task. He said: ``Of all the socialists who have written about this, I cannot recall the work of a single socialist or the opinion of a single prominent socialist on future socialist society, which pointed to this concrete, practical difficulty that would confront the working class when it took power, when it set itself the task of turning the sum total of the very rich, historically inevitable and necessary for us store of culture and knowledge and technique accumulated by capitalism from an instrument of capitalism into an instrument of socialism."^^31^^ This kind of transformation of the whole store of knowledge, culture and technology into an instrument of socialism is a key task of socialist society as it creates its own basis for further development.
The Communist Party of the Soviet Union has worked out among the key problems of scientific communism the problem of mankind's intellectual and moral progress. The Party has carried on re-education of the masses in the course of communist construction. ``The Communists reject the class morality of the exploiters; in contrast to the perverse, selfish views and morals of the old world, they promote communist morality, which is the noblest and most just morality, for it expresses the interests and ideals of the whole of working mankind.''^^32^^ Indication of the ways to mould man's new spiritual makeup is closely bound up with the scientific theory of social development.
The education and upbringing of Soviet man are inseparable from his activity, from the labour process, because Marxism denies the possibility of the new man's outlook and mental makeup being shaped in any kind of test tube or hothouse. Only in labour, on the basis of social activity, can man develop the right habits, skills and notions.
_-_-_~^^30^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works. Vol. 33, pp. 478--79.
~^^31^^ Ibid., Vol. 27, p. 412.
~^^32^^ The Road to Communism, p. 566.
292Production in socialist society today requires much scientific knowledge of everyone. On the one hand, the labour process requires that this knowledge should be formed into a system, and on the other, helps to bring it into a system and provides the pivot for knowledge, cementing it with practice. The acquisition of scientific knowledge in connection with the labour process helps not only to raise technical skills but also to shape the scientific world outlook of men in socialist society. If education is organised on the right lines, man learns to go to the root of things and phenomena, to separate the important from the secondary and accidental, to show the causes of phenomena, to discern the physical, chemical and mechanical laws in diverse phenomena and to apply these in practice in accordance with known laws. This kind of education gives a sound foundation for the scientific world outlook. Of course, the scientific world outlook is not shaped spontaneously, but calls for much educational effort to make men take an active attitude to the knowledge they receive, seeking to comprehend it instead of merely storing up in their heads. It is also necessary that men should not extract from the system of knowledge that which they need at the moment, regarding the rest as useless. This kind of approach is a survival of the bourgeois attitude to knowledge. The bourgeoisie has always held that knowledge is good only insofar as it helps to make money. The bourgeoisie has always feared that knowledge acquired by its servitors---the workers---would one day blend together in their minds into a coherent and integrated world outlook. The Soviet people equally reject the aristocratic attitude to knowledge as a pastime, and the distorted and self-seeking bourgeois attitude. That is an important wartershed in the development of social thought which was crossed only with the emergence and development of Marxism, of scientific communism. The working people, who are masters of the new life in the USSR, seek to have the knowledge they obtain to be constituted in a system and, what is most important, in tackling practical problems try to learn to think and to reason on scientific and principled lines.
Moreover, scientific knowledge in this period of tempestuous technical progress has to keep growing and being replenished. The knowledge in science and technology considered satisfactory for a worker or an engineer 10 years ago is now clearly inadequate. The same applies to the social sciences. Life requires that every member of society should gain an ever deeper understanding of the Party's line, of the vital tasks of social development, and growing and well-grounded economic knowledge. That is not a mechanical process leading to a mere accumulation of knowledge but a process in which man's outlook is developed in close connection with the extension and deepening of his life and work experience.
The combination of knowledge and labour not only makes this knowledge, backed up by practice, much clearer and less abstract, but 293 also enriches and deepens it. This produces not only individual new ideas, but leads to the raising and tackling of great production problems by whole collectives.
The selection of the tasks and the undertaking of commitments by a team or an individual worker requires not only breadth of technical vision, but also knowledge in the economics and organisation of production, the ability to discover untapped reserves to achieve the key task of the enterprise, which is closely bound up with the overall tasks of the state in the given industry and with the state plan as a whole.
In Soviet society, knowledge implies the formation among the masses of correct notions about the forces of nature, notions which rule out any faith in the supernatural and the unknowable. Knowledge also implies a correct and profound understanding by the masses of the role of social forces, an understanding that is equally alien to superstition, blind admiration of these forces or attempts to ignore them by means of various subjective idealistic dodges and illusions. Communist education also implies a correct understanding of man's role, of his strength and potentialities, an understanding which rules out any spirit of servility, debasement and downtroddenness, or the spirit of wild and inflated individualism. These scientific notions become the basis for man's whole activity and behaviour. Notions brought together in a system of views and strongly influencing human activity develop into convictions and induce people to take correct action. Convictions help to steel man's character and shape his whole mental makeup.
In Soviet society the study of the laws of nature and of the natural sciences runs in close connection with a study of the social forces whose instrument is science, in close connection with a study of society's economic and social life and the tasks which the Soviet people have to tackle in the sphere of production and the economy making use of scientific data. In other words, the science of society, the theory of social development, is an important theoretical basis for the shaping of all of man's convictions. When man comes to see the great ideals of communism and realise the ultimate and immediate goals in his day-to-day labour activity, the high level of communist consciousness then awakens his creative initiative and activity in labour, and produces collective rationalisation experience and bold novel approaches. All of this works a fundamental change in man's spiritual makeup.
At every new stage of communist construction there is a growth and change in the criteria of political maturity and communist consciousness in the various spheres of activity involving Soviet people. This process shows best how socialist society bridges the gap, created by the centuries of domination by the exploiters, between the ``lofty'' vision and the ``low'' day-to-day activity. This gap was constantly used to justify bourgeois duplicity, hypocrisy and phrase-mongering, and explain the contradictions between word and deed.
294The new criteria require a deeper political education, an understanding of economic processes in Soviet society and more profound and all-round knowledge. There is need not only for an urge to work for the benefit of society, but also the ability increasingly to produce such benefit. This ability also implies self-restraint, sufficient steadfastness of character, a mentality that rules out sudden switches from elan to depression or idleness. We say that rush-work methods have long since outlived themselves. That is not to say, of course, that elan, enthusiasm and revolutionary romanticism are ruled out in the activity of Soviet people. On the contrary, in the period of communist construction Soviet people have produced remarkable examples of labour heroism and great feats for the benefit of their country.
But the point is that in the present-day conditions, great feats require more than determination. They call for skill and considerable knowledge. The achievements of Soviet cosmonauts are the best confirmation of this changing character of exploit in the society building communism. That is why the development of the virgin lands has become a school of political and cultural education for millions of Soviet people.
Education in labour for the common good implies the development of respect for the common wealth, an understanding that man can satisfy his material requirements and derive a high moral satisfaction by multiplying this wealth, instead of wasting it. The fostering of the new attitude to work is a necessary condition for moving on to the higher phase of communism. The advance of socialist society towards communism implies a development of labour and fundamental changes in the working people's consciousness.
In this context, Lenin stressed the importance of initiative which develops at the grass roots as a condition for growing labour productivity. The vast creative initiative of the masses has been awakened by the Soviet system and the growth of this initiative is a law governing the development of socialist society.
The point is that in socialist society labour helps to show every aspect of human personality and its diverse capabilities. Labour helps to develop the human mind, keen wit, the ability to think fast, to grasp and understand the main thing and to keep so-called minor details within one's field of vision. The requirement in socialist society that everyone should work according to his ability implies, first, the need to develop these capabilities in the process of labour for the common good, because capabilities will dull and dim unless they are developed. Second, it implies the ability to apply one's capabilities in labour, the requirement to learn to put one's all into the labour process, Consequently, it implies the shaping of man who gives his all to society voluntarily, developing and displaying his capabilities to the full in working for the common good.
295In our day, the high moral appreciation by society of human labour and also the high level of scientific and technical equipment of labour, the advance of mechanisation and automation tend to create a situation in which the old distinction between the ``high'' and ``low'' types of labour activity tends to disappear. That is a very important and characteristic feature of communist labour and society's moral consciousness in the period of communist construction. In these conditions, the attitude to any type of work depends on how earnestly, skilfully and devotedly man serves society by his work, and how much of his capabilities he dedicates to his endeavour.
For a long time in the history of Marxist thought it was suggested that communist labour would mean an end to the trades and to professional training, for labour would become universalised. It is now fairly safe to say that in the period of communist construction every trade, including the new ones and the old ones which are still necessary and are filled with a great content, requires broad vision and much diverse knowledge. In the USSR, some shepherds have a full secondary education and continue to study to become specialists in animal husbandry.
As communist labour is filled with great spiritual content and develops into a social activity, with mechanisation and automation increasingly eliminating the most arduous operations, the essential distinctions between mental and manual labour and between labour in town and country are obliterated.
An indication of the growing requirements made by society on the individual, requirements which promote the development and enrichment of his personality is the fact that men taking part in the movement for communist labour in all its diverse forms undertake commitments to learn to live and work the communist way, and meet these commitments step by step. This formula, in effect, ranges over all the main spheres of the individual's activity, his outlook, mentality and character. This formula requires that the principles of communism should be at the basis of the working people's whole activity.
At the same time, this formula expresses in concrete terms in the new conditions the propostion put forward by revolutionary Marxism that the new man is moulded in struggle and labour in building the new society. A key principle of communist education of man is set forth in the CPSU Programme, which says: ``Communist ideas and communist deeds should blend organically in the behaviour of every person and in the activities of all collectives and organisations."^^33^^
In fulfilling the requirement to work the communist way, the Soviet people has advanced from the early expressions of the communist attitude to labour in the form of subbotniks to the great collectives which _-_-_
~^^33^^ The Road to Communism, p. 565.
296 practise the principle of communist attitude to labour in their day-to-day work. This great way traversed by the Soviet people is characterised by the fact that the idea of working for the common good tends increasingly to penetrate into the minds of the masses and becomes the overriding idea.As for the requirement to learn, to raise one's educational level, this initially meant with respect to the whole mass of working people no more than a requirement of general and political literacy. This requirement also expressed the historical need to build up a Soviet intelligentsia that originated from the working class and the peasantry. Today, the requirement to learn, addressed to the whole mass of working people, to the whole people, is a requirement to assimilate high culture, great general and special knowledge, and have political education. Fulfilment of this requirement is an important link in the process of abolishing the essential distinctions between mental and manual labour.
The requirement to live the communist way means the final remoulding of men's mentality, character and way of life, the ultimate rooting in man's behaviour of the principles of communism, the new outlook, and new relations between men in every sphere of life.
The sphere of so-called private life under the system based on private property is regarded as being the broadest sphere. The order established by the capitalist at his enterprise is considered to be his private business, one's attitude to one's wife, children, fellow-workers, etc., is considered to be one's private affair. With the restructuring of social relations on socialist lines, the so-called sphere of private life has naturally been subjected to change as well. The elimination of the rule of greed in social relations between men has also exerted an influence on such purely personal relations as friendship, love, etc. But the introduction of the new principles into these relations between men, has, of course, inevitably been much slower than in the sphere of politics or production. The further development of socialist relations of production, including friendship and mutual assistance, increasingly requires a change in all the attitudes and habits of human behaviour with respect to other men. Even such purely personal qualities as impatience and lack of self-restraint in this or that member of the collective could become a drag on the development of the activity of the whole group. If man displays various features of the old outlook in his personal relations, for instance, egoism and individualism, such features of character and outlook are bound to be expressed in one form or another and in varying degree in his social activity as well. The requirement for the reshaping of the individual's outlook and character tend to grow with the development of socialist society.
In the period of communist construction, the whole of man's personality is increasingly involved in social life, which becomes a sphere in which his multifaceted capabilities and qualities are expressed. 297 There is ever broader growth of the creative initiative of the masses in every aspect of social life, and the importance of labour collectives and mass organisations is on the increase.
That is not to say that the sphere of personal life is impoverished. On the contrary, man's personal life is enriched, because the vibrant social life helps to purify man's personal life as well. In socialist society, there is no gulf between social and personal life. In bourgeois society, it is characteristic for men to doff his social personality after office hours and to don his lounging clothes in which he enters his ``private life" that is no business of society's. In Soviet society, man remains a member of communist society in every sphere and circumstance of life.
For man in communist society regards his social endeavour as a personal one, which has an immediate bearing on his own life. On the other hand, everyone's personal life adds up to various expressions of social relations based on friendship and comradeship, because in his personal life man also inevitably enters into various relations with other members of society.
The private-property outlook, which makes man ``mind his own business'', gives way in the minds of masses of people to a profound interest in social affairs and a sense of public duty, which is not confined to the sphere of production but extends to various other spheres of man's diverse activity. Of course, not everyone displays this sense of public duty in every sphere of life, on every occasion or is always guided by the rules of communist relations between men in his attitude to all things. Some work well in production but are still variously burdened with the old rules of morality and behaviour in the family. Others have not yet shed their individualism, and for that reason equate moral incentives to work and ambition, love of glory and honours. Some have gained various scientific knowledge, but have stopped short of carrying the process of cognition to drawing the conclusions concerning their world outlook, which remains hazy, so that various old prejudices live side by side with scientific facts. Consequently, the assimilation by the masses of the fundamentals of the new world outlook and rules of morality and behaviour cannot be seen as a process which equally embraces the whole consciousness of every individual with mechanical precision and absolute regularity. There are still many men with contradictions between their habits and skills inherited from the old days, and their world outlook has a new basis but is yet to be fully recast.
Defects in men's mental makeup, survivals of the habits and customs cultivated by exploitative society for centuries under social relations which distorted the personality are now a serious obstacle in the fostering of the new man. Changes in ideology must go hand in hand with changes in mass mentality. Defects in human mentality are a drag on communist education and provide the soil for a revival of various preconceptions, incorrect notions and alien ideas.
298Men's mentality is inevitably reshaped by a high sense of consciousness which penetrates into every sphere of human thinking and practice. This kind of remoulding of man's mentality and character is of tremendous importance in communist education. It is not right for man to reason correctly on general issues but to remain a philistine in his mental makeup on various particular points. Lenin used to stress, for instance, the importance of the struggle against such phenomena in men's mental makeup and their behaviour as ``relapses into petty-bourgeois spinelessness, disunity, individualism, and alternating moods of exaltation and dejection".^^34^^
Spinelessness is a trait that may convert even a capable man into a virtually useless member of society. The same applies to lack of restraint, when man's behaviour keeps alternating between enthusiasm and dejection. Individualism, isolation and a refusal to mix with other men are indications of inadequate development of the collectivist outlook and adoption of the corresponding rules of behaviour. These are features inherited from the past, when man's mental makeup was distorted. Bourgeois psychologists insist that various features of man's mental makeup are properties of man's abstract nature. That is, of course, quite wrong. There will always be those who are more sociable, more excitable, etc. But that is not the point. Individualism means the mental makeup and character fostered through the centuries in which the world was distorted by private-property relations,
Consequently, ideological and educational work calls for a raising of the level of communist consciousness to exert a decisive influence on the whole of man's mental makeup and his behaviour. Ideological and educational work, correctly organised, results not only in a growth of positive knowledge, including political knowledge among masses of people, but also exerts a great influence on man's mental makeup, his habits and character. In their educational work, Soviet society and the Leninist Party rely on the positive experience of a great number of working people who have already done much to adopt the coherent communist world outlook. In Soviet society, much importance is attached to the education of men on the positive examples set by thousands upon thousands of working people, who display models of high communist consciousness and remarkable mental qualities, which have come to be known as the ``Soviet character''.
Feelings and emotions and the ability to control these are a part of man's character. There can be no real or the whole man without feelings and emotions, without his service to the great cause and his enthusiasm for high ideals. Lenin said that ``...there has never been, nor can there be, any human search for the truth without `human emotions'\thinspace".^^35^^ All this _-_-_
~^^34^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works. Vol. 31, p. 44.
~^^35^^ Ibid.. Vol. 20, p. 260.
299 __EMAIL__ webmaster@leninist.biz __OCR__ ABBYY 6 Professional (2007.06.06) __WHERE_PAGE_NUMBERS__ bottom __FOOTNOTE_MARKER_STYLE__ [*0-9]+ __ENDNOTE_MARKER_STYLE__ [0-9]+ __FOOTNOTE_MARKER_SEQUENCE__ continuous needs for human emotions and feelings to be given the right direction and the right outlets, so as not to obscure the mind, but to help, instead of hampering, man, to find the truth and advance without erring. Feelings, emotions and various traits of character, like will, persistence, and the urge to overcome difficulties, cannot be fostered without the development of a coherent communist outlook and moral consciousness.Of course, society cannot be indifferent to the various expressions of human feelings. These expressions of feeling become distorted when man seeks to vent his joys or sorrows in drink. Now and again some men seek to fill up with drinking their ``empty'' time in a period of leisure, which gives one a sense of emptiness. Educational work helps man to discover other ways of expressing his feelings of joy or sorrow, his sense of dissatisfaction or fatigue.
But the right expression of emotions and feelings implies some education of such emotions and feelings that have an influence on human behaviour. Education and self-education help man to refrain from these feelings to be vented as rudeness to other men, drunkenness, wild behaviour, etc. Of course, example has much importance in the correct fostering of emotions, feelings and their expression.
We now have many people in society who in moments of joy or sorrow turn to music, with its great spiritual depth or to the theatre, or reread their favourite poems, seeking to find an expression for their mood. The working out of the right reactions, including emotional reactions, to various situations in life is a great task in education and self-education.
Here, exceptional importance attaches to fiction, which contains a profound and truthful description of many situations in life and men's negative and positive attitudes in complicated situations. In Soviet conditions, fiction is of growing importance in transforming man's mentality, character, emotions and behaviour in various situations, for in a sense it is a reflection of mankind's collective experience of life. In fiction, the power of example is expressed in imagery, which acts on man's feelings and thoughts.
Among the negative features of man's mentality and character are still those which Lenin designated as ``this slovenliness, this carelessness, untidiness, unpunctuality, nervous haste, the inclination to substitute discussion for action, talk for work, the inclination to undertake everything under the sun without finishing anything".^^36^^ All these harmful features of man's mentality and character, these habits and attitudes are a legacy from the centuries dominated by exploitative society. For centuries mental labour was separated from manual labour, and this explains the gap between such notions as ``to think'', ``to say" and ``to do'', when the main thing was to think or to say, while doing was _-_-_
~^^36^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 26, p. 412.
300 considered to be of minor importance. That is the origin of the inclination, which Lenin noted, to substitute talk for action. Each of these negative qualities can become highly dangerous for society and the collective. A man burdened with such negative qualities can be a serious handicap to the collective, even in the absence of ill will or alien bourgeois views.Lenin pointed to the true way of eliminating these negative traits of character and mentality in Soviet conditions. He stressed the need for ``exercising practical control over the translation of words into deeds".^^37^^ There must be no discrepancy between word and deed, and that is one of the remarkable traits of man's character and mental makeup in communist society. This calls for control, which can and must be ex-ercised by the individual himself and the collective.
In Soviet conditions, the collective has a growing role to play in shaping man's outlook, mentality and behaviour. The more attention the collective gives to the material and spiritual requirements of each of its members, the greater the spirit of collectivism and the less ground there is for any individual in the collective to display the lone-wolf mentality. The activity of hundreds of thousands of front-ranking workers enhances the moral power of the collective, creating exceptionally favourable conditions for the morally strong and well-knit collective exercising an influence on its less reliable members.
Where concern is shown to meet the spiritual requirements of individuals (organisation of libraries, theatre outings, etc.) and where the necessary conditions are created for continued education, a sizable part of the individual's spiritual requirements at enterprises is met by the collective and this helps individuals to live in the collective and with it. There are any number of examples illustrating this concern of the collective for satisfying the spiritual needs of its members.
Where an individual can expect to receive help from the collective even when he is in a tight spot or has personal troubles, the collectivist outlook carries the day and the individual has no reason to feel that he is alone in the whole wide world.
But if as a result of incorrect educational efforts the influence of the collective on the individual is reduced, the ground is created for relapses into the individual outlook and mentality. Let us bear in mind that there are no innate ideas or innate ideas of collectivism. The revival of the individual mentality in the absence of vibrant ties with the collective may result in an excessive inflation of a man's ego in contrast to the collective and society. This leads straight to neglect of a man's duty to society, to anarchic individualism, whose motto is ``I'm all right, Jack''. This produces anti-social acts and the attitudes of the turncoat.
_-_-_~^^37^^ Ibid., p. 413.
301A man out of touch with the collective fails to feel the great power of the collective and society. The lone individual will experience moods of dejection, will seek illusory ways out of his loneliness and artificial solace. Some hope to find this in alcohol, others in the stupefying effect of prayer, the chanting of hymns and sermons about some supernatural force.
In other words, less than adequate educational influence by the collective on the individual creates favourable soil for a revival of diverse relicts of capitalism in the minds of some individuals. There is no social section in the country all of whose members are infected with the survivals of capitalism, but those who still carry these survivals in their mind belong to different sections, some being among the workers, others among the intellectuals and the collective farmers. The soil for a return of the survivals of capitalism is always created as a result of poorly organised educational work at enterprises or collectives. The way to eliminate all the survivals of capitalism in the minds of men is to eliminate the shortcomings in educational work in every collective and take a differentiated approach to each individual and group of men.
The Party organisation is the core of every collective and is its guiding and directing force. In the period of communist construction, all mass organisations and all collectives of working people have a growing role to play. This applies above all to the role of Party organisations, which unite the activity of all the collectives, and muster, direct and organise the great energy of the masses. Where the Party organisation takes a creative approach to the instructions of the Leninist Central Committee of the CPSU concerning educational work, its successes in this work are truly tremendous.
The Party has worked out in theory and practice the complex problem of developing the human personality. It now has a coherent doctrine for raising cultural standards in socialist society, for shaping a coherent world outlook, which does not tolerate any discrepancy between word and deed, and for the shaping of a highly exacting moral consciousness and the moulding of man's mentality along consistent collectivist and humanist lines.
The Party determines the interaction between various aspects of culture in fostering the new man. It has addressed itself to Soviet writers, emphasising the educational importance of literature. In this sphere, the mighty power of public opinion has also made itself felt, for it brings out everything that is progressive, and all those who have succeeded in boldly advancing and helping others to advance. The power of social influence is also expressed in scientific achievements by stimulating the solution of the fundamental problems and turning the development of knowledge into a state and nationwide endeavour. Concern for developing man's spiritual potential is expressed in a system 302 of state measures and Party decisions, and has become part and parcel of Soviet social life.
In this epoch, the exploiters pin their hopes on the tenacity of old conceptions, ideas and prejudices, produced by the centuries of private-property domination. These preconceptions may blind some men and prevent them from seeing the correct contours of reality, thereby fettering their will and their revolutionary activity. Leninism combats these schemes with the full power of its political and ideological weapons. The brilliant light of scientific communism cuts through the darkness of bourgeois and petty-bourgeois preconceptions all over the globe, causing deep changes in the minds of the working people, awakening social thought everywhere, showing it the right way and equipping the masses with an understanding of the urgent historical tasks of this epoch.
A powerful factor in the ideological education of all mankind is the real development of social property where it has won out and the examples testifying to the nature of the relations between men which have been developing on its basis.
Soviet society is now building the material and technical basis of communism. This foundation for the future society is being laid by the labour effort of millions of men and women, who have been tackling the key historical task, as indicated by Lenin, the task of raising labour productivity to a level that is beyond the reach of capitalism. Only those theorists whose thinking is limited by the bourgeois outlook will claim that this is a purely economic task. Naturally, they fail to see that communism contrasts the bourgeois ideology of parasitism with the ideology of labour, and that the latter ideology is winning out.
The ideas set forth in the CPSU Programme and the Leninist Party's messages of progress and construction of the future have spread all over the globe. Everyone has heard these words, both friends and enemies. The grandeur of the communist ideology is becoming ever more visible. There was a time when Lenin wrote in his work What Is To Be Done'! about the struggle between the socialist and the bourgeois ideologies and stressed that ``bourgeois ideology is far older in origin than socialist ideology, that it is more fully developed, and that it has at its disposal immeasurably more means of dissemination".^^38^^
This is a period of senile decay and decrepitude for bourgeois ideology and the system that has engendered it, despite the fact that the bourgeoisie still wields powerful technical instruments for its dissemination. The Party Programme says: ``Bourgeois doctrines and schools have failed in the test of history. They have been and still are unable to furnish scientific answers to the questions posed by life. The bourgeoisie is no _-_-_
~^^38^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 5, p. 386.
303 longer in a position to put forward ideas that will induce the masses to follow it."^^39^^ Meanwhile, socialist ideology has already won out over vast expanses of the globe, its influence on mankind is tremendous, and it has been formulated in all its aspects. It has been winning out because it is an expression of the vital interests of the working class and of the vast majority of mankind, which yearns for peace and progress.Today, success of the revolutionary cause depends on a clear-cut understanding by the working class and all the other working people of the tasks put forward by historical reality, on consideration and utmost use of the prospects which it opens up for massive activity, on the knowledge of ways which lead to the solution of these problems and on the correct organisation of the masses to tackle these problems. The world communist movement has indicated these ways---both peaceful and nonpeaceful---for the victory of the communist cause. The Communist parties have been working to rally the masses round the banner of struggle. The Soviet Union, building communism, has its Party Programme, which gives the masses a clear historical prospect for their activity, organising and fostering them for this historical activity for the sake of building the best society on earth. For the first time in history, the principles of scientific communism are being accepted by the whole people, by every member of society. That is an earnest of our successes in further developing scientific communism.
Now that the masses create history, establishing the principles of scientific communism in their day-to-day effort, and taking part through their struggle and labour effort in advancing communist social thought, theory blends directly with the working people's great historical activity and is closely bound up with the cause of the people building the new society. That is the greatest force in modern progress and modern social thought.
_-_-_~^^39^^ The Road to Communism, Moscow, 1961, p. 497.
304 __NUMERIC_LVL1__ Section Three __ALPHA_LVL1__ OBSOLETE IDEAS PERSIST __ALPHA_LVL2__ [introduction.] [305] ~ [306]The selfish misconception that induces you to transform into eternal laws of nature and of reason, the social forms springing from your present mode of production and form of property---historical relations that arise and disappear in the progress of production---this misconception you share with every ruling class that has preceded you.
(K. Marx and F. Engels, Selected Works, in three volumes, Vol. 1, p. 12.)
__NUMERIC_LVL2__ Chapter One __ALPHA_LVL2__ BOURGEOIS SOCIAL THOUGHT RETREATS __ALPHA_LVL3__ [introduction.] __NOTE__ In original LVL2 above should have larger font point size, because it is same size as LVL3 below.The opening lines of the Communist Manifesto describe the confusion caused on the political scene in Europe by the stalking spectre of communism. Men began to talk about a new force that was about to take up the independent position assigned to it by history. There was alarm in the ranks of the feudal-absolutist reaction and bourgeois liberalism, for they were faced with the common adversary. Just recently, the political arena had appeared to belong to no one but themselves.
Even in the early 19th century there was growing realisation among the capitalists and landowners that a new social force had arisen. This was clearly indicated by the struggle of the weavers of Lyon in France and the Chartist movement in Britain. This new force was called the fourth estate by some, and the proletariat by others. As the working class developed its own political organisation and ideology prerequisites appeared for a radical change in social life. What was the state of bourgeois social thought as it faced these historical changes?
__ALPHA_LVL3__ THEORIES OF UNABASHED REACTIONTheories of unabashed reaction appeared in the 19th century like a poisonous weed. They reviled the revolution, science and free thought and even questioned the importance of scientific and technical progress. They were reflected in the schemes of the reactionary philosophy of history. These saw the meaning of the 19th century as lying in the fact that ``the tranquil harmony of a naturally formed social hierarchy was upset and overthrown by the restless, critical and levelling spirit of education and revolution; from the ruins was to rise a new world of harmony and order''. Among those who wrote about ``harmony'' were Fourier and Saint-Simon, but the spiritual leaders of reaction gave the term a different meaning. Reaction required the protection of ``law and order'', with religion playing a great role in the process. ``It was this __PRINTERS_P_306_COMMENT__ 20* 307 formula that determined for a long time historical concepts and interpretations, cutting them off from the philosophy of pure and uninterrupted progress put forward by Lessing, Herder and Condorcet.''^^1^^
Reaction, Professor Vipper says, ``faced above all the ideas of progress'', and directed its first blows at it, anathematising revolutionary struggle, extolling religion and the church, and claiming that ``order'' was the basis of society, and that the key social function was to maintain it by political and ideological means and to put down the ``trouble-makers''. The existing relations of domination and ownership, they claimed, constituted the social ``order'', with ``anarchy'', that is, revolution, its main enemy.
The main content of the theories spun out by the reactionaries was a reappraisal of the events of the French revolution to extract from its experience the ``lessons'' that would help to prevent a repetition of any revolutionary storms. The revolution was reviled in every way, as diplomats, writers and churchmen set to give ideological substantiation to counterrevolution.
In the history of social thought that was an attempt to show the harm of social change. A theorist of the period, Louis de Bonald, claimed, for instance, that revolution meant ``disorder'' when the ``natural functions of the social body were disrupted and stopped"^^2^^ The ``perfect society" was to be a monarchy, because men were unable to obey their equals. This kind of society had to resist all evolution and change, which could be only for the worse.^^3^^ Various philosophical, historical and legal ``arguments'' were aimed at maintaining the idea of ``social stability'', immutability and immobility of social being. All innovation, even in science and technology, did more harm than good, any modification of the established order which changed its traditional form, were dangerous.
Barruel sought in his voluminous History of Jacobinism to expose the ``triple conspiracy" which had led to revolution in France and confused the minds of men all over Europe. He claimed that this was, first, a conspiracy of ``men who claimed to be philosophers'', second, a conspiracy of ``sophists against all the royal thrones" and third, a conspiracy against ``all civil society, and also against every type of property".^^4^^ Such writings were intended to scare the already terrified bourgeois with the spectre of revolution.
_-_-_~^^1^^ R. Y. Vipper. Social Doctrines and Historical Theories of the 18th and 19th Centuries. Second Edition, Moscow, 1908, p. 134 (in Russian).
~^^2^^ Les doctrines politiques modernes. New York, 1947, p. 224.
~^^3^^ Ibid., p. 230.
~^^4^^ L'Abbe Biirruel. Memoires pour serrir a I'histoire iln jacohinixme, Ir partie. Londres, 1798, p. XVII.
308The political wisdom of reaction in that period was a very simple one. Social inequality was a natural human state, for some men were born to be slaves. The same law prevailed in relations between nations, for some nations were destined for colonial slavery. That was, in effect, the world ``order'', which governments had to maintain, vigorously acting against any trouble-makers. Such views were adopted in one form or another by the slave-owners in the south of the United States, many Tory lords in Britain, the legitimists in France, the serf-holders in Russia and other reactionaries. Some reactionaries styled themselves as the ``sons of the Crusaders" and proclaimed their ``right'' to interfere in the internal affairs of other states in order to re-establish the feudal-absolutist order by force of arms. This was first suggested during the preparation of the counterrevolutionary military coalition of 1791 against the bourgeois revolution in France. This ``right'' was subsequently arrogated by the Holy Alliance, a military and political coalition of feudal-absolutist states in the early 19th century.
A congress of this ultrareactionary alliance held at Troppau in November 1820 proclaimed intervention in other states to be `` legitimate" also when their state system was changed as a result of an uprising and when such change presented a danger to members of the Alliance. Naturally, the leaders of the Holy Alliance were to decide when these conditions were met. That was when the lame sophism of the ``threat'' was invented. At that time, Austrian soldiers ruthlessly trampled the cities of Italy on the pretext that some of its cities displayed a spirit of freedom thus presenting a ``threat'' to the Austrian monarchy. The Holy Alliance enshrined the practice of grossly trampling national sovereignty as a principle: whenever the reactionaries decided that there was a ``threat'' they resorted to armed force.
Actually, this kind of social and political philosophy was not new. It was a rehash of old reactionary views in new conditions. It marked an attempt to expunge the development of social and politicl thought over the centuries, to return to the ideas of the Roman slaveowners and St. Augustine, and to discard any progressive traditions in the development of bourgeois thought in the 18th century.
__ALPHA_LVL3__ THE EMERGENCE OF LIBERALISMThe bourgeoisie was gradually shedding the burdensome stock of theories and views of social organisation which had spread in the second half of the 18th century. It was bourgeois liberalism, which became a most important political trend and a party of the bourgeoisie, that 309 undertook to reappraise the political legacy of the past in accordance with the new requirements.
The theories of the 18th century had proclaimed popular sovereignty, recognising the people's right to revolution. Among those who expressed the idea was Thomas Jefferson, a leading political light in America during its War of Independence. The triumphant bourgeoisie no longer needed such ideas. The liberal leaders, raising the banner of struggle for the ``rights of man'', declared the Jacobin dictatorship and the undivided domination of feudal-absolutist reaction to be equally ``illegitimate''. This idea was best expressed by Benjamin Constant, a founder of bourgeois liberalism in France.
Considering the roots of bourgeois liberalism, Engels wrote: ``They must merge all feudalistic privilege and monopoly of money. The political dominion of the middle classes is, therefore, of an essentially liberal appearance."^^5^^ Down with every privilege except the ``natural'' privilege of capital, declared the spokesmen of liberalism. The privileges of the estates had to be expunged from legislation, which had to provide complete freedom for the power of capital. It is on these lines that the old slogan of freedom was then resolutely reinterpreted.
The bourgeoisie had no intention at all of interpreting freedom in such a way as to allow the emergence and strengthening in society of democratic organisations like the Jacobin Club or the organisation of ``Equals'' led by Babeuf, which had called for social equality during the French revolution. That is not the kind of unit that was to make up the political organisation of society after the victory of the bourgeoisie. This organisation was to ensure the domination of capital, which is why the old slogan of freedom had to be reinterpreted. The theorists of the victorious class now began to talk chiefly or even exclusively about the freedom of the individual.
But what is this freedom of the individual in bourgeois society? It is a legal and ideological expression of the rights of the property owner, who is in a position to use these rights depending on the size of his property (capital). Even then, as bourgeois liberalism emerged and flourished the slogan of individual freedom came to be contrasted with the requirement of complete sovereignty for the people. The bourgeoisie, terrified by the French revolution, presented popular sovereignty as being despotism and violence over the individual. Popular sovereignty was furiously attacked for the sake of this illusory ``rights of the individual'', which becomes an empty shell if the social and political organisation of society is not based on popular rule but on rule by the rich or the ``noble''.
Bourgeois ideologists also markedly modified their attitude to the theory of progress. Once in power, the bourgeoisie began, by the mid-19th century, to review its attitude to the theory of boundless _-_-_
~^^5^^ Karl Marx/Friedrich Engels, Werke, Bd. 2, S. 579.
310 progress. Earlier it had made excessive use of the theory of progress to extol its own order, but this enthusiasm over the idea of progress did not last long. ``The ideas of progress and evolution,'' wrote Paul Lafargue, ``enjoyed exceptional success in the early years of the 19th century, when the bourgeoisie was still intoxicated with its political victory and the remarkable growth of its economic wealth. Philosophers, historians, moralists, politicians, writers and poets presented their writings and speeches under the sauce of progressive development. ... But by the mid-19th century they had to moderate their boundless enthusiasm. The emergence of the proletariat in the political arena in Britain and France produced anxiety in the soul of the bourgeoisie about the lasting nature of its social domination---with the result that progress no longer appeared to be so admirable."^^6^^ The theory of boundless progress gave way to notions about the boundless determination of the bourgeois order, which was supposed to ensure mankind's progressive development.Thus, while the landed reactionaries bridled at the very notion of social change and enshrined the immobility of social life as a principle, the liberal bourgeoisie opposed any radical changes in social life and any ``rocking of principles''. In that light there was need to reformulate the theory of social development which was to glorify no more than the partial improvements in the various institutions of the bourgeois system.
The key task which bourgeois liberalism set itself consisted in maintaining an ideological and political influence on the working people, the working class in the first place, and tying it to bourgeois policies. That is why the solidarity of all the elements of society and recognition of the possibility of improving the system based on bourgeois domination was proclaimed as the starting point for the theories of social development enunciated by bourgeois liberalism for the purpose of winning over the working people. This was a theoretical premise for declaring as superfluous and even as harmful any independent political line for the working class and its struggle for its interests and aims. The whole theory of social development put forward by the liberals served to justify the domination of bourgeois relations.
In concrete conditions, depending on the state of the class struggle in the various countries where the roots of liberalism were not as strong or where the situation was different, liberalism had its own features but the general characteristics of bourgeois liberalism as a political and ideological trend were most pronounced as soon as it appeared.
In that period the trend that was allied with bourgeois liberalism was the highly unstable bourgeois radicalism, which variously reflected the attitudes of the petty bourgeoisie. In the old days, bourgeois radicalism _-_-_
~^^6^^ Paul Lafargue, Le determinisme economique de Karl Marx, Paris, 1909, p. 17.
311 as a rule differed from liberalism by taking an anti-clerical or even atheistic stand and attacking the Church, the policy of compromise with the landowning circles and the corruption and graft in the upper sections of society and the state. Subsequently, the radicals' positive programme came to differ less and less from that of the bourgeois liberals.Of considerable importance for the history of social thought was the fact that the most prominent ideologists of the bourgeoisie came out in defence of the capitalist system under the banner of liberalism, criticising the ``extremes'' of openly reactionary theories and standing up for science and the scientific approach. That is when the term ``sociology'' appeared and Comte and Spencer propounded their sociological systems. First, they strove to create a climate of public opinion that would accord with the political line of liberalism. Second, they took account of the need to produce some kind of synthesis of the sciences, a general theory of knowledge to contrast the traditions of the Enlighteners and the materialists of the past, who had taken the scientific view, and also the newly emergent materialist and dialectical theory of Marxism, which had then scored its first victories. The authors of sociological schemes tried to take account of the rapid development of the natural sciences and to show the importance of their growth for social thought, together with the connection between the science of nature and the science of society. The ideologists of the bourgeoisie mechanically applied terms and concepts from the science of nature, biology in the first place, to designate social phenomena and believed this to be a solution for the problem of ``synthesising the sciences''.
By then, the social sciences had accumulated a considerable store of facts. Solid historical works had been written on ancient society, while the life of the peoples of the Ancient East was being studied scientifically for the first time. Important works appeared on the history of the Middle Ages, and many prominent scientists were engaged in a close study of the history of the French revolution. Ethnographers and archaeologists left their mark by publishing numerous data on life in primitive society.
The old philosophy of history was no longer equal to the task of processing all this material in the light of the bourgeois outlook, for this did not fit into its schemes, while its categories did not meet the new requirements. The bourgeoisie was in need of pseudo-scientific schemes, and these soon appeared in the form of ``sociological systems" claiming to explain the diversity and unity of the concrete material amassed by the various social sciences.
Numerous works summing up the history of civilisation were published to show how the elements of barbarism and medievalism gradually gave way to the bourgeois democratic order in an age of ``science and reason''. The bourgeois order was declared to be the 312 summit of civilisation, and the capitalist social and political system a real triumph for civilised mankind.
The most generalised works on the theory of social development in the light of bourgeois liberalism were produced by the positivist sociologists of the 19th century Comte and Spencer.
__ALPHA_LVL3__ COMTE'S SOCIOLOGYThe idea that politics had to become as positive a science as physics was first expressed by Saint-Simon, who also made an attempt to draw an analogy between life in nature and in society. This was no more than a presentiment of the need to produce a social science as a foundation for politics. These ideas were used by Comte, who first described social science as ``social physics" and then as ``sociology''. This term, consisting of Latin and Greek roots, was first met with scepticism, but Comte's system satisfied the requirements of the liberal bourgeoisie and the term was accepted as his views spread.
Another idea Comte borrowed from Saint-Simon was that social science was to look to the future society, but Comte abandoned all of Saint-Simon's socialist ideas and preferred to speak of a future mankind, by which he meant the unification of all men in a single society under the guidance of ``positive philosophers''. That society was not to be based on socialist principles. Positive philosophy was to introduce firm moral rules in relations between workers and employers, with representatives of the industrialists advanced to the helm of the state. These representatives would be led by bankers on the ``philosophical'' ground that they had to perform the most general, abstract functions. The political organisation of society would take the form of a republic. All of this, according to Comte, would mean mankind's complete maturity and its domination over the forces of nature. That was a great step back as compared with Saint-Simon. But Comte's bourgeois admirers spoke at length about Comte's influence on Saint-Simon.
Although Comte did call his sociology ``social physics" he held that society was a social or collective organism that was in a sense a continuation of animal development. He was unable to show the basis for the social connection between men and spoke of their interaction, never going beyond superficial analogies about the influence of the component parts of an organism on each other. Harmony was the normal state of all the parts of the social organism, with the family, its basic cell, verging on the biological and the social. From this came such social entities as the gens and the people. Naturally, Comte failed to see the dialectics of the biological and the social.
Comte recognised progress in human society and even believed this to be a law of social development, but he did not explain the source of its 313 self-movement. Natural conditions in which society lived and the growth of population, the division of labour and cooperation were either retarding or accelerating factors in progress. But it was the human spirit that gave social change its direction, and mankind's ideological and social development coincided. From the spirit came impulses for the development of industry, politics and every other sphere of social life. This most clearly revealed Comte's idealism. The power of ideas constituted the basis of the social order, of harmony and the movement of all the elements of society. The ``mechanism'' of social change was as follows: changes were first worked in opinions, then in mores and, finally, in social institutions.
Whenever Comte sought to indicate any regularities underlying the activity of spirit, being apprehensive that his pseudo-scientific edifice of sociology would be upset by allowing a boundless arbitrariness of spirit, his arguments are especially impotent. In order to limit the arbitrariness of spirit he falls back on the first law of motion, the law that action and reaction are equal, and the principle connecting motion and equilibrium. Comte's crude idealism was combined with an equally crude mechanicism, and the laws of mechanics were made to regulate the activity of spirit. It is hard to believe that all this was written after Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit.
Comte held that the world developed from the simple to the complex, the two ``laws'' governing social development being the organic differentiation of social functions and their coordination. Comte's sociology amounts to a superficial connection between phenomena, their outward description, without any penetration into the substance of the historical process, with idealism and mysticism going hand in hand with mechanicism and metaphysics in the assessment of social phenomena. Comte introduced a distinction between social statics and social dynamics, borrowing the concepts from physics instead of biology. Social statics was a consideration of constantly operating factors and established social phenomena like mores, ideas and institutions. But social dynamics did not at all show the motive forces of social development, being no more than an attempt by means of abstraction to describe and assess the course of social development. Harmony was the overall direction of this development, being a state in which all the forces of society and all its members were component parts of a single ``social whole''. He held that the epochs of social development were determined by the development of ideology, but he was no longer dealing with the rebellious reason of the French Enlighteners of the 18th century, impelling men to advance, but a reason that had been pacified and fettered by metaphysics and agnosticism.
From Saint-Simon Comte borrowed the idea of three stages in the development of society. The first---theological---stage was dominated by the priesthood and the military; the second---metaphysical---stage 314 was dominated by legislators and lawyers; and the third---- positive---stage was dominated by industrialists and scientists. But Comte gave his own reading to the positive stage, by combining the development of thought with agnosticism and the expulsion of the critical and revolutionary spirit.
The whole purpose of Comte's sociology was to defend ``order'' and block the path of the forces of ``anarchy'', and this purpose is served by all the historical material he used, together with the idea of alternating destructive and harmonious epoch which he borrowed from SaintSimon. Positivism was to carry society to a state of final stability and harmony, with all the destructive forces of history overcome. In this way, Comte's positivism is crowned with the idea of a world development completed. One Soviet scientist says: ``The theory of progress, inherited from the 18th-century enlightenment, fitted into these contours. It continued to be fed from the same impressions of growing industrial and scientific development, but in the new formulation it lost, together with the vagueness of its expectations, the concept of an endless advance."^^7^^ This is a good characteristic of the spirit of the 19 thcentury positivism.
__ALPHA_LVL3__ SPENCER'S SYSTEMIn a novel from English life in the early 19th century the French writer Andre Maurois wrote that Britain, in her fight against the enlightening philosophy ``required of its public schools a sagely hypocritical generation".^^8^^ Positivism, too, fostered a sagely hypocritical generation, for it was shot through with this spirit.
Characteristically, Spencer made a point of not using the term ``progress'', and strove to generalise the available data on the development of organic and inorganic nature and of human society to formulate a concept of evolution opposite to the dialectical understanding of development. Spencer sought to discover the general type of development for all phenomena in animate and inanimate nature and in human life. Concentration, the first mark of evolution as a universal law, was at the basis of the emergence of the Earth and the other planets from a primordial nebulosity, and the development of organisms or historical processes, like the formation of nations from initially isolated tribes. Differentiation, another key mark of evolution, meant transition from _-_-_
~^^7^^ R. Y. Vipper, Social Doctrines and Historical Theories of the 18th and 19th Centuries, p. 173 (in Russian).
~^^8^^ Andr\'e Maurois, Ariel ou la vie de Shelley, Paris, 1923, p. 14.
315 the more to the less homogeneous. There was a certain harmony between concentration and differentiation. In society, as in biology, growth led to a change in structure. Spencer supplemented these tenuous laws by means of which he sought to characterise development with a number of others, like the law of the conservation of force.The early stages of life in society were dominated by concentration, with the individual being subordinate to the whole. The personality was yet to develop and was, accordingly, subordinate to society. Then came the process of differentiation, giving rise to individualism, with individuals going their own ways. That is the characteristic mark of the epoch of industrialism. Spencer anticipated a third epoch, the harmonious combination of egoism and altruism, a term which, incidentally, was introduced by Comte.
It will be easily seen that the ideas of bourgeois individualism, which stem from private-property relations, constitute the basis for Spencer's sociological views. Spencer declares the individual to be the ``social unit" which is equal to the biological call, allowing an exception only for primitive times, when the family or the small horde was the unit. The whole of society's subsequent history had to do with an individual. Spencer safeguarded bourgeois individualism and the system of privateproperty relations against any attacks by claiming that sociological laws were immutable.
Paul Lafargue summed up the idea which, in effect, completed Spencer's theory of social evolution: ``The bourgeois who proclaim that their takeover of power was the sole moment of social progress in history, claimed that their dislodgement by the proletariat would be a return to barbarism, 'to slavery' as Herbert Spencer put it."^^9^^ In the second half of the 19th century, the ideologists of the bourgeoisie made an effort to scare their audiences and readers with the prospect of society's degradation if it were to move beyond the bounds of capitalism. After the bourgeois takeover, the whole of history was to consist only in ``improving'' capitalism, but not in eliminating it, for that would mean undermining the very ``pillars of civilisation" or even of the very basis of human community living. These unscientific theories were dictated to bourgeois liberalism by its fear of the growing strength and consciousness of the working class.
Long before his present-day followers, Spencer proclaimed communism to be ``the coming slavery'', the bulwark of bureaucracy and complained about the excessive costs to society of nationalising the banks, the factories and all the other means of production. Insisting on freedom for the individual, he came down resolutely against social ownership.
_-_-_~^^9^^ Paul Lafargue, Le determinisme economique de Karl Marx, pp. 15--16.
316Thus, Spencer put a limit to social progress, claiming that bourgeois social relations had to be everlasting, if the individual was not to be impressed into a new ``slavery''.
Spencer's book The Coming Slavery (1884) was thoroughly analysed by Paul Lafargue, who reached the conclusion that ``Spencer has been misunderstood: he has been erroneously deemed to be an evolutionist because he is in the habit of classifying the facts he deals with in accordance with their outward appearance, never taking the trouble of analysing their intrinsic properties or their external causes and studying the action of the environment on them and their reaction on the environment."~^^10^^
Lafargue was right in saying that Spencer could not be unconditionally classed as an evolutionist not just because he put a limit to social development. The fact is that Spencer's whole philosophy was based on agnosticism, and claimed that sciences, including sociology, merely dealt with phenomena whose substance was elusive. But is it possible to produce a theory of the evolution of social forms while declaring the substance of social change to be unfathomable?
Indeed, Spencer dealt only with a distribution of facts by their outward appearance. In the light of agnosticism one is able to construct no more than a formal theory of evolution. The basic ``law'' of Spencer's theory of evolution is transition from the homogeneous to the heterogeneous. In accordance with this law of evolution, Spencer classifies societies as simple and complex, as being of the first, second, third, etc., degree of complexity, these stages constituting the differentiation of the social whole. Consequently, the starting point in Spencer's social evolution is simple, homogeneous and undifferentiated primitive societies. But that is no more than a purely formal aspect. It is, of course, impossible to get the substance of the historical process by means of such ``laws''. This question naturally arises: why does social differentiation begin in primitive societies in the first place? Spencer's metaphysical philosophy provides no answer, and he resorts to the ``assistance'' of another society which swallows up the first, homogeneous, one and so stimulates the process of differentiation, which is, consequently, caused by an external impulse. This shows up the weakness of Spencer's whole theory.
Spencer's mechanistic theory of equilibrium is a prominent element of his sociology. It was set out in his first major work, which appeared in the 1850s under the title Social Statics. Equilibrium and its disruption depend on the relations between nature and society, between social groups within society and between various societies. The idea of equilibrium and its disruption does not, quite obviously, shed any light _-_-_
~^^10^^ Paul Lafargue, ``M.~Herbert Spencer et le socialisme'', L'erenouvelle, 1894, No. 5, p. 42.
317 on qualitative social changes and ignores them. In effect, the theory of equilibrium provides no explanation for the evolution to which Spencer pays lip service. Why does equilibrium and its disruption promote mankind's advance, instead of making it mark time---that is a question Spencer never answered.There can be no scientific theory of social development until the nature of social ties and their substance have been discovered. Spencer saw society as a greater individual, an organism. Bertrand Russel wrote: ``The prestige of biology caused men whose thinking was influenced by science to apply biological rather than mechanistic categories to the world. .. .The conception of organism came to be thought the key to both scientific and philosophical explanations of natural laws.''^^11^^ Spencer also used this concept to explain the laws of social development, resorting to the ``prestige of biology'', but the application of biological conceptions to social life, far from excluding mechanicism, in effect merely supplemented it. The result was a crude scheme, in which society was seen as an organism, with its component parts ``supplementing'' each other. The growing differentiation of the various functions of this organism and its organs was the only content of social evolution. The application of biological terms and conceptions merely put a scientific gloss on such a theory of society.
At the same time, this kind of terminological transfer had a reactionary role to play. Spencer, for instance, applied to social life the concept of natural selection, according to which only the strongest survived, and said that this was beneficial for society. Subsequently, so-called social Darwinism became one of the most reactionary, man-hating trends.
__ALPHA_LVL3__ ``REFORMS'' AGAINST REVOLUTIONBourgeois-liberal theories, having divested themselves of the `` vagueness of expectations" and hopes for an age of reason and happiness, sought to prove that the highroad of progress lay in a gradual improvement and change of the bourgeois system of power and property through reform and improvement. Spencer had visions of a happy time when a ``mobile equilibrium" would be established, that is, when tranquillity would reign with some movement that did not change the structure or upset the equilibrium. All of this was presented as the latest word in science, as a ``positive'' and progressive theory that did away with the romantic ``exaggerations'' of the old theory of progress.
In 1906, Lenin said that ``progressives'' of this stripe sought to substitute the bourgeois theory of ``harmony'' in ``social'' progress for the theory of the class struggle as the only real driving force of history. They _-_-_
~^^11^^ Bertrand Russell, History of Western Philosophy, London, 1946, p. 754.
318 refused to recognise that progress in the social life of capitalism resulted from the development of highly acute contradictions. They held the motive force of progress in bourgeois society to be ``harmony'' and ``solidarity'' between classes. That was a key dogma of positivism and the whole of the bourgeois-liberal theory.``According to the theory of socialism, i.e., of Marxism (non-Marxist socialism is not worth serious discussion nowadays), the real driving force of history is the revolutionary class struggle; reforms are a subsidiary product of this struggle, subsidiary because they express unsuccessful attempts to weaken, to blunt this struggle, etc. According to the theory of bourgeois philosophers, the driving force of progress is the unity of all elements in society who realise the `imperfections' of certain of its institutions. The first theory is materialist; the second is idealist. The first is revolutionary; the second is reformist. The first serves as the basis for the tactics of the proletariat in modern capitalist countries. The second serves as the basis of the tactics of the bourgeoisie."~^^12^^
The idea of solidarity is especially characteristic of Comte and his followers. Comte saw the embryos of solidarity in the animal world and then went on to depict such solidarity as a key factor in social development. The bourgeois liberals held that the proletariat's struggle tended to undermine this ``unity'', to introduce no more than ``division'' into society, while the class struggle did not promote the cause of progress. Positivism provided the theoretical substantiation for this thesis. The substance of progress was reduced to attempts to reform and ``improve'' the various institutions and aspects of capitalism.
Continuing his analysis of this bourgeois theory, Lenin wrote: ``A logical deduction from the second theory is the tactics of ordinary bourgeois progressives: always and everywhere support 'what is better'; choose between reaction and the extreme Right of the forces that are opposed to reaction. A logical deduction from the first theory is that the advanced class must pursue independent revolutionary tactics. We shall never reduce our tasks to that of supporting the slogans of the reformist bourgeoisie that are most in vogue. We pursue an independent policy and put forward only such reforms as are undoubtedly favourable to the interests of the revolutionary struggle, that undoubtedly enhance the independence, class-consciousness and fighting efficiency of the proletariat."~^^13^^
Consequently, the struggle against bourgeois-liberal, positivist schemes of progress---evolution---was closely bound up with the proletariat's class struggle and its transformation into an independent force guided by revolutionary tactics. That is what provided a powerful _-_-_
~^^12^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. II, p. 71
~^^13^^ Ibid.
319 impetus for the further development of Marxism-Leninism, the scientific theory of social development. Lenin stressed: ``Reformist tactics are the least likely to secure real reforms. The most effective way to secure real reforms is to pursue the tactics of the revolutionary class struggle."^^14^^ Without the right perspective for social development it is impossible to assess the importance of reforms or to decide whether they serve the cause of social progress or amount to a movement in circles.Lenin thus gives the only right criterion to judge about the progressive nature of a reform, gradual changes in bourgeois society and their need for social development.
One can have a criterion to judge the progressiveness of changes in every aspect of social life, including any particular changes, only by showing the real prospects and trends in social development. The theory of social development must consider the question of society's future and show how the present paves the way to that future. Bourgeois liberalism was incapable of taking such an approach to the problem, which is why its theory of social progress was an apology for marking time, instead of advancing. Its notions of what is ``better'' or ``worse'' for social progress do not rest on any scientific analysis of the prospects of social development, but result either from abstract reasoning about ``social good and evil" and ``absolute social ideals'', meaning the principles of the exploitative society enshrined as an absolute, or are shot through with downright subjectivism. As the theory of social development increasingly became a theory of the working-class struggle for a better future, bourgeois theorists increasingly abandoned the theory of progress and the very idea of uniformity in the history of society.
__ALPHA_LVL3__ SUBJECTIVISM TRIUMPHS IN SOCIOLOGYIn contrast to the Marxist view of the objective laws of society's progressive development, bourgeois theorists claimed that progress was a relative and arbitrary conception which depended on the researcher's standpoint. In the course of the ideological struggle, bourgeois theorists have adopted subjective idealism in sociology.
In the closing years of his life, Comte stressed the subjective nature of knowledge and reached the conclusion that sociological systems were subjective and not objective. Since then bourgeois theorists have gone beyond his views, criticising the formal concept of social evolution which Spencer gave, and opposing the ``transfer'' of laws and uniformities from the natural sciences to the study of the social process. They claimed that the science of society was a science of spirit, which _-_-_
~^^14^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. II, p. 71.
320 meant that anyone was free to invent such ``formulas of progress" as he saw fit, and that the category of progress was defined in accordance with the thinker's ``social ideal''. Social ideal, for its part, resulted from the activity of the brain, being the result of subjective assessment of reality.The subjective idealist view of history was developed in greatest detail at the turn of the century by the neo-Kantians Rickert, Windelband and others who insisted that social science was a system of subjective evaluations of various social phenomena. They came out against the application of the conceptions of law and uniformity to social life, claiming this to be an unwarranted transfer of conceptions proper only to the natural sciences. With this kind of approach the most die-hard reactionary and champion of obsolete social systems could present himself as a champion of progress. That is exactly what the apologists of the bourgeois system did. Social-reformists under the influence of neo-Kantian views, unable to see the prospect of social development and, consequently, to obtain a scientific criterion for what is progressive, also put the label of progress on anything they liked, and this meant chiefly any bourgeois reform.
The bourgeois theorists concentrated on attacking the fundamentals of the scientific view of social development, the doctrine of the mode of production, of socio-economic formations and their law-governed development. They were intent on refuting the following important conclusion drawn from an analysis of the historical process: everything that actively promoted the victory of the working class and the new socio-economic formation over the old and obsolete, and subsequently helped to establish and develop it was progressive.
In the course of the ideological struggle, bourgeois theorists subjected the positivist theory to criticism from the Right. This was an attack by bellicose subjective idealism against the recognition of any objective laws governing social development. The attack was mounted by the neo-Kantians and taken up by other subjective idealists. On the crest of this wave we find Max Weber, the German historian and sociologist, who claimed that the laws of social life, including economic laws, were no more than the products of the human mind which helped to understand reality. The social structures which succeeded one another in the course of history were no more than ``ideal types" produced by the mind to help the researcher sort things out in the historical process.
On the one hand, Weber strove to avoid the impression that the historical process was chaotic, and on the other, to avoid the assumption that it was objective and law-governed. The historical process consisted of unique events and phenomena, and there Weber agreed with other neo-Kantians, including Rickert and Windelband. But the comparative method still safeguarded sociology from complete elimination. In these unique events and phenomena one could discern some general features of the historical process, one could generalise something, so as to __PRINTERS_P_320_COMMENT__ 21---514 321 produce various ideal types. In this way, Weber modified the neo-Kantian view of the historical process.
However there was this question to answer: where was the limit to this generalising activity of the sociologist's mind? Was it possible to go on from the generalisation which resulted in the production of ideal types or successive models of the historical process to assume their succession and change, thereby producing a theory of the social process, however idealistic? On the strength of his neo-Kantian views, Weber allowed himself to recognise only one line in the historical process, namely, the growth and development of the abstracting power of the human mind. But even this he did with his characteristic reservations: ``The emancipation of the world from illusion and the attendant rationalisation could be either good or evil, such is our lot.... The old churches are mercifully open ... if there is need to perform a 'sacrifice of the intellect'."^^15^^ Progress in scientific knowledge consisted in a destruction of the old, ``comforting'' philosophical schemes. Those who are afraid to abandon these schemes have only one alternative: a return to the past, a sacrifice of the intellect.
Thus, Weber put forward a theory according to which social life could be understood only by means of the ``ideal types" constructed by the sociologist. Let us add that in our day the advocates of such theories of ``ideal types" or ``images'' have propounded Platonic ideas, claiming that reality is no more than a reflection of ideal types. Others have confined themselves to preaching the Kantian view of conception, declaring that the conceptions of ``type'' or ``image'' arise prior to experience. Other sociologists claim that image-conceptions are, after all, some kind of generalisations of empirical material and help to generalise it. On the whole, Weber's theory proved to be valuable for bourgeois ideologists. Marxism, which has attacked bourgeois ideology from the scientific point, has put forward the doctrine of socio-economic formations. Making use of Weber's ideas, bourgeois theorists say: we have our own doctrine of the ``types'' of society. However, because these ``types'' are no more than the fruit of the mind, because they are ideal, the theorists of the bourgeoisie have nothing to worry about. But that has confused many scientists in the West.
__ALPHA_LVL3__ CLASSICAL POSITIVIST SCHEMESBy the end of the 19th century the data accumulated by the social sciences had grown and was seen to be in crying contradiction with the _-_-_
~^^15^^ Max Weber, Gesammelte Aufsdtze zur Wissenschaftslehre, Tubingen, 1951, S. 596.
322 dogmas of flat evolutionism and the organic theory of society. Historians had shown that the history of mankind abounded in revolutions, periods of fierce struggle between the new and the old, and the collapse of the obsolete. The scene in the early 20th century showed the smooth and conflict-free development of society predicted by the positivists to be an illusion. The reduction of all social phenomena to superficial analogies with biological processes was being resolutely refuted. The question arose about the specific character of social phenomena. The neo-Kantians claimed that it was due to the domination of the spiritual element in social life, but this clashed with the data obtained by social science by that time, notably, information about economic development. It was clear to one and all that the old positivist schemes were irrelevant.It was the French sociologist Emile Durkheim, who made the most resolute statement in bourgeois science about the disintegration and deep crisis of ``classical'' positivist schemes. He considered the question of ``social fact" and social phenomenon and declared in his Method of Sociology (1895) that these could not be reduced either to biology or psychology. He held that ``social fact" was a blend of notion and action, thereby dealing a heavy blow at the schemes put forward by Spencer and Comte. It was not the individual but the group, the collective that was the basic unit of sociological research. Social ties and relations between men were, consequently, what the sociologists should consider in the first place. That was the right way to attack, but the critical importance of Durkheim's writings is much greater than his attempts to find a way out of the positivist dead end.
However, he did try to find a way out in his work entitled On the Division of Labour in the History of Society (1893). Let us recall that Comte had drawn attention to the division of labour under the impact of the ideas which had been characteristic of Saint-Simon and other Utopians. Durkheim saw the division of labour as the basis of society's progressive development, which explained intellectual, moral and legal evolution. The growth of population required a rising labour productivity, and this was achieved by ever stricter specialisation in work, through a division of labour. That is Durkheim's starting point in his efforts to switch the attention of sociology to ``social action" and the system of social relations. However, he ignored classes and class struggle, which is why the problem of social relations, including the importance of the division of labour for their development, were problems he could not solve.
Durkheim attacked the empty abstractions of the old positivist schools, insisting that social phenomena had to be seen as real and material. But he reduced the effort to a study of the origin and development of individual phenomena in social life, abandoning the general idea of advance in the historical process. At the same time, Durkheim favoured __PRINTERS_P_322_COMMENT__ 21* 323 a study of sociological laws and strict determinism in analysing social phenomena, insisting that these should be explained through an analysis of social life, instead of biology or psychology.
Durkheim tried to use this method in his work entitled The Suicide (1897). This was a challenge to the sociologists who reduced social phenomena to biological and psychological factors, as they easily did, for instance, in analysing phenomena like suicide. Durkheim sought to prove that suicide was a social fact caused primarily by social factors. He had statistical data to prove that only a small number of suicides occurred at a time of great political crises and consolidation of social forces in the epoch of revolution and wars. From this he drew the conclusion that the causes of suicide were to be found in the individuals' unsatisfactory participation in social life or inadequate integration of collectives to which the individual belonged. These conclusions were clearly aimed against the harmful biological and purely psychological theories, but they were still fairly abstract.
In a work entitled Elementary Forms of Religious Life (1912) written mainly on the basis of his study of religion among the Australian tribes, Durkheim sought to tackle the question of the origins of religion as a social phenomenon. That was an achievement. He connected the origination of religious beliefs with the emergence in the primitive commune of notions about the ``sacred'' and the ``profane''. Here he has many valuable observations, but his conclusion was wrong and harmful: he held that religion was a bond between the individual and society, and so had a positive role to play in social development.^^16^^ There again, the researcher was fettered by an idealistic view of social bonds.
It became even harder to present the ideas of Comte and Spencer as incontestable achievements in social science following the publication of Durkheim's works, which were very widely read. But the systems of Comte and Spencer were defeated by forces that were more powerful than their critics in bourgeois sociology. The old liberal positivist systems of the bourgeoisie collapsed because of the fundamental changes in the world's social and political situation.
A historian of English political doctrines has this to say about the atmosphere at the turn of the century: ``The morning sun of January 1, 1901, illumined a happy and hopeful world. ...Men hoped and believed that the new century, while bringing perhaps even greater material progress, would also bring a greater measure of order and stability, of peace and prosperity.
``Looking backward, it is easy to see that this sanguine state of mind _-_-_
~^^16^^ See G. P. Frantsov, The Origins of Religion and Free Thought, Moscow-Leningrad, 1959, p. 208 (in Russian).
324 was scarcely warranted by the facts."~^^17^^ The old certainty about the solidity of capitalism was a thing of the past.Elton Mayo, an American sociologist, wrote: ``The Victorians were very sure of their progress---of its reality and beneficence for humanity."~^^18^^ What he meant, of course, was capitalist progress and certainty in the prospects before capitalism. The prominent English philosopher Arnold Toynbee, says something similar: ``The writer's mind runs back 50 years, to an afternoon in London in the year 1897. He is sitting with his father at a window in Fleet Street, watching a procession of Canadian and Australian mounted troops who have come to celebrate Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee."^^19^^ The pomp ceremonies were eloquent evidence of the political and economic might of British imperialism, but Toynbee feels that only a philosopher might have reflected that ``where there is growth, there is likely also to be decay".^^20^^
However, at the turn of the century bourgeois sociologists still gave little thought to the decay of capitalism. British bourgeois publicists sang praises of ``business expansion" and prophesied everlasting prosperity for the empire. Herbert Spencer, pretentiously called the Aristotle of Victorian Britain, ruled the minds of men, and his evolutionism and ``organic theory of society" were accepted as the summit of social thought.
Spencer patronisingly recommended to science that it should share its authority with fideism, declaring in his Social Statics that the world was on its way to harmony and equilibrium, including the harmony of classes, that everything in the world tended gradually to adapt itself to the existing conditions, which is why the working people's struggle would cease. The decade that followed showed that these optimistic expectations clashed with the harsh truth of historical reality. ``Spencer's idea of evolution as a process of adaptation progressively tending in the direction of an ultimate condition of complete adjustment is contrary to all the facts we have."^^21^^ Spencer himself has now been declared by his critics to be no more than an amateur scientist and a pseudophilosopher, for life has completely exploded his synthetic theory and demolished his political postulates.
_-_-_~^^17^^ Ch. C. Maxey, Political Philosophies, New York, 1938, p. 609.
~^^18^^ E. Mayo, The Social Problems of an Industrial Civilization, Boston, 1945, p. 3.
~^^19^^ A. Toynbee, ``The Present Point in History'', Foreign Affairs, Vol. 26, No. 1, October 1947, p. 187.
~^^20^^ Ibid.
~^^21^^ Ch. C. Maxey, Political Philosophies, p. 562.
325 __NUMERIC_LVL2__ Chapter Two __ALPHA_LVL2__ HISTORY MARCHES ONBourgeois social thought, starting from the dogma of capitalism being everlasting, found the key facts of modern history to be an insuperable barrier. The great forces of the old world proved to be unable to stop the revolutionary advance of the working class. Their political, economic and ideological impotence was most pronounced where they had appeared to be strongest, where they acted as the mainstay of European and Asian reaction---in tsarist Russia. In his work What Is To Be Done? (1902) Lenin wrote: ``History has now confronted us with an immediate task which is the most revolutionary of all the immediate tasks confronting the proletariat of any country. The fulfilment of this task, the destruction of the most powerful bulwark, not only of European, but (it may now be said) of Asiatic reaction, would make the Russian proletariat the vanguard of the international revolutionary proletariat.''^^1^^
The theorists and ideologists of the bourgeoisie believed the victory of the revolution in Russia to be a miracle. They wrote a great many books and, the slanders and conscious falsifications apart, they were absolutely sincere on one point: they did not understand how the miracle had taken place and how the great revolutionary force took shape at a turning point in history, when real prerequisites had been created for revolutionary change, enabling Lenin to say that there was a party that could take over. This Party gave a lead to the broadest masses of people and guided them with great skill in carrying out a great revolution. Bourgeois theorists holding forth about the October Revolution missed the whole history of the political, economic and ideological bankruptcy of the bourgeoisie in Russia. That was an expression of the class short-sightedness of bourgeois political thinking, which had prevented them from discerning the contours of the objective historical process.
The ideologists of imperialism did not see, first, how it was so acutely evident in Russia that politically, economically and ideologically the bourgeoisie was powerless to cope with the contradictions of the epoch of imperialism, of which the First World War was a most vivid expression with all its dire consequences for the people. They failed to see, second, that it was in Russia that capitalism had proved to be incapable of overcoming the country's backwardness, of raising the underdeveloped areas and carrying the country along the path of progress. They were unable to understand, third, how the new historical _-_-_
~^^1^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 5, p. 373.
326 force was born in the form of the Leninist Party, all of whose activity relied on the alliance of the working class and the peasantry, to see the social energy latent in this alliance and the importance of Leninism and the Communist Party for awakening this mighty energy.The theorists of bourgeois parties also failed to understand how and why the bankruptcy of social opportunism was accelerated by the revolution in Russia. They failed to notice the major turns in the class struggle at which opportunism lost more and more of its ideological and political influence on the masses. Bourgeois theorists failed to see that the correct tactics used by the Bolsheviks before and after the socialist revolution impelled Menshevism to disintegrate, and put the opportunist leaders into isolation, while the best workers and the best elements of petty-bourgeois democracy sided with Bolshevism. They failed to notice that the ideological banners of social opportunism were incinerated in the flames of the Civil War.
Furthermore, it is extremely important to note that the social thought of the bourgeoisie was unable to understand that the process which was accelerated in Russia a hundredfold by the course of the revolution, continued after the October Revolution throughout the world, even if at a slower pace. There is growing evidence that the bourgeoisie is unable to cope with the deep-going contradictions of the epoch of imperialism. Its policy tends to aggravate these contradictions.
But what most clearly exposed the impotence of bourgeois social thought was the problem of the attitude to take to the ideas of communism and then to the communist reality.
__ALPHA_LVL3__ BARRIER TO BOURGEOIS SOCIALWhen the great ideas of scientific communism first appeared, heralding the inevitable advent of a new stage in the development of society, they were met with a fierce wail of the reactionary bourgeoisie, which above all strove to persuade the sections of society under the influence of its views that the destruction of the capitalist system would amount to a destruction of mankind's culture and civilisation, and of the pillars of moral and economic, social and intellectual life in society. It presented the fundamentally new stage in social development as a potential disaster for all mankind. Comte's positivist sociological conception, which condemned ``critical'' destructive epochs and extolled ``organic'', positive and constructive epochs backed up this approach, while a theoretical basis was provided by the bourgeois theory of progress, which declared capitalism to be the last and culminating stage of mankind's development.
327In their Communist Manifesto, Marx and Engels responded to these slanderous charges with impeccable logic and showed them to be quite empty. They made it quite clear that there was no substance in the bourgeois claim that the capitalist system was the be all and end all of social life.
However, for decades to come this myth of anti-communism would continue to be wielded as a weapon by the reactionaries. During the Paris Commune and the Great October Socialist Revolution the myth that communism posed a threat to the very foundations of the human community, which should allegedly be based on private property and the power of the bourgeoisie, was being spread about with especial insistence by all the bourgeois propaganda media. For their part, the social reformists joined in the general chorus of the reactionaries.
The bourgeoisie stubbornly refused to see the great creative power of the socialist revolution and the creative energy of the proletariat, which advanced at the head of the working people. It took long years for the ideologists of the bourgeoisie to start considering the great creative force generated by the socialist revolution in the masses. But one cannot say that the theorists of imperialism have altogether abandoned the old story about the ``fall of civilisation'', and one will find it in the books and articles written by sociologists and philosophers following in the wake of Spengler, who prophesied in the 1920s ``Europe's decline''. The loudest voices in this chorus were those of the Nazis, who claimed to be the ``champions of Western civilisation'', even if they were unable to play the part for long. The propaganda ``legacy'' of the Nazis is, of course, being variously used by the anti-Communists to this day, but more frequently the old myth is being spread by bourgeois propaganda in a somewhat different version.
__ALPHA_LVL3__ ANTI-COMMUNIST MYTHOLOGYThe fact is that the myth about communism destroying the foundations of social life was being spread about in the 19th century in this form: the claim was that social property clashed with human nature itself, damping man's initiative and enterprise, while private property accorded with human nature. Towards the end of the century these views were propounded by Herbert Spencer, the leader of bourgeois sociology. Indeed, this untenable idea is virtually the only one used by all the bourgeois economists, philosophers, sociologists and lawyers in their efforts to refute communism to this very day.
Thus, the Catholic philosopher J. M. Bochenski said that since Plato's time Western culture tended to consider the ``individual'' in contrast to 328 the ``abstract'' concepts of the collective, mankind, etc.^^2^^ However, the very concept of the ``individual'' as opposed to the collective took shape precisely during the centuries of private-property domination.
Lenin showed that far from damping emulation and bold and creative initiative, socialism in effect allows masses of people to display these attitudes for the first time in history on a truly massive scale. Life has borne out Lenin's idea, but the propagandists of reaction still refuse to abandon the old myth, which is designed to discredit the future society. They have been spreading it through their periodicals, radio, television, books and pamphlets, as the basis for their stories about the ``free world'', the self-styled image of capitalism today.
Since the mid-19th century, the reactionary bourgeoisie has relied not so much on ideological struggle against communism as on force and police reprisals against the Communists and the working-class parties. The slanderous inventions about communism clashing with human nature naturally helped the police, but there was need of a more direct ideological sanction. After all, if communist ideas were contrary to ``human nature'', why did they not die out, but continued to spread across the world? The myth about exported revolution was brought to the fore during the Paris Commune, and fitted nicely with the sociological and philosophical conceptions of the reactionaries, who denied any uniformities in historical development, and set up subjectivism and voluntarism as the basis of the social process. They claimed that the revolution had no internal causes, that it did not result from internal development but was an ``evil'' imported from outside. Bourgeois theorists claimed that revolutions resulted from arbitrary action, so that force had to be used to end revolutionary movements.
This produced a very convenient ideological pretext for putting down the vanguard of the working class, the best part of the nation. Those who accepted communist ideas were declared to be agents of a foreign power that was alien to the nation. When Marx and Engels issued their call for the workers of all countries to unite, the reactionary bourgeoisie stepped up its propaganda of the myth about the exported revolution, and about the making of the revolutionary ideas and the training of revolutionary leaders in some kind of ``international centers" which then dispatched conspirators to every part of the globe.
The myth about exported revolution was blasted by Marx and Engels, and during the Paris Commune Marx wrote: ``The police-tinged bourgeois mind naturally figures to itself the International Working Men's Association as acting in the manner of a secret conspiracy, its central body ordering, from time to time, explosions in different _-_-_
~^^2^^ J. M. Bochenski, ``Der freie Mensch in der Auseinandersetzung zwischen West und Ost''. In: Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte, 5 Juni 1963, S. 8.
329 countries."^^3^^ The exported revolution myth has served and continues to serve imperialist reaction as justification for its bloody reprisals, armed interventions and police persecutions.The imperialists and their theorists have produced another version of the exported revolution myth: having established itself in the Soviet Union, the revolution proceeds to spread across the world either through Soviet secret agents or by means of its armed force.
The emergence of the People's Democracies in Europe was presented as Soviet ``expansionism''. The fact that Soviet troops were stationed in a number of East European countries towards the end of the Second World War and prevented armed intervention by the imperialists against these countries was presented by the ideologists of imperialism in a distorted light. Never before had the false and absurd theory of exported revolution been spread on such a scale and with such effort as in that period. Why was this done?
First, it was designed to induce the masses to believe that revolutionary change was not a result of internal development in this or that country but that they were unnatural and illegitimate because they were implanted by an alien armed hand. A characteristic feature of bourgeois political thinking is unwillingness to recognise the deep and natural changes in the world since the Second World War, and unwillingness to recognise the historical swing towards socialism in some countries.
Second, it was designed to justify the export of counterrevolution and to substantiate the imperialists' ``right'' to intervene in the domestic affairs of other states. Reaction had arrogated this ``right'' in the early 19th century under the Holy Alliance, and it was now taken out of mothballs.
Third, the false version about the People's Democracies was designed to help the imperialists to mount slanderous campaigns against the Communist parties in the Western countries and to revive the old story about the ``hand of Moscow'', which was allegedly manipulating the whole world communist movement. The reactionaries sought to change the attitude of the masses to the Communist parties in the capitalist countries and to undermine their prestige. In the early postwar years, Communists were members of the governments in France and Italy, and the imperialist reactionaries then put through a strategic plan to oust the Communists from the political arena and to help the bourgeois parties control political life in the capitalist countries. That was the first major postwar attack by reaction against the progressive forces.
It was preceded by a wild attack before the Second World War, when the imperialist reactionaries, having trampled all the traditions of bourgeois democracy, resorted to the fiercest forms of suppression to _-_-_
~^^3^^ K. Marx and F. Engels, Selected Works, in three volumes, Vol. 2, p. 241. 330
330 put down the working-class movement, introducing fascism in their efforts to establish an open dictatorship by the most extreme aggressive groups of monopoly capital. That was an attempt by monopoly capital to find a new and more convenient form of political organisation in society. However, the attempt to oust the working class from the political arena has proved to be a reactionary Utopia and has failed. Thus, fascism was unable to rule for long, for its key features---aggressive foreign policy, armed invasion, colonisation of once independent countries and a drive for world domination---naturally caused growing contradictions and strong resistance throughout the world. The presence of the USSR, a great socialist power, was the main factor which doomed fascism to total military, political and ideological defeat.The rout of fascism, the shock force of monopoly capital, released vast democratic forces in the capitalist countries. Without some reliance on these forces, Britain, France and the USA could not have withstood German and Japanese fascism, but even during the war the reactionary circles were terrified at the growth of the democratic movement and the growing strength of the Left-wing elements, the Communists in particular, in the Resistance. Now and again, the military-strategic tasks facing Britain and the USA were fulfilled in the light of their political goal, which was to prevent the democratic elements from gaining in strength. After the war, the most vigorous steps were taken to block the way of democratic development in the West European countries, especially Italy and France. But the reactionaries were unable to do this in a number of countries in Eastern and Central Europe, which took the socialist path, set up democratic people's states and dropped out of the imperialist system.
The new stage of ideological struggle was marked by the fact that the apologists of capitalism found it altogether impossible to claim that the socialist revolution was a purely ``Russian phenomenon" and that the Soviet Union's way was unfit for other countries. The false idea about the capitalist countries of the West being immune to communism was also refuted. The situation that has taken shape increases the possibilities for historical activity by the working class in the capitalist countries.
Law-governed development which the imperialists managed to block in the West after the Second World War, by roughly 1947, has not been abolished altogether. After all, it is the bulk of the nations that has an interest in doing away with the sway of the monopolies, and this makes it possible to unite all the democratic movements, opposing the financial oligarchy, in a mighty anti-monopolist tide. The working class, advancing at the head of this struggle, favours extensive nationalisation on terms which are most advantageous for the people, and control by parliament, the trade unions and other democratic and representative organs over the nationalised industries and the economic activity of the 331 state as a whole, together with radical agrarian reforms under the slogan: ``Land to those who till it!''. The general democratic struggle against the monopolies marks an important stage in the progressive development of society because it helps to rally the working people round the working class and bring on the socialist revolution.
There is no doubt about the overall line of development: in its struggle for peace and against preparation for war, for better living and working conditions (higher wages, shorter working hours, social security, etc.), the working class exercises its right to have a say in policy decisions, in selecting the forms of social life and determining the prospects for social development.
Thus, instead of being destroyed, as the bourgeois ideologists think, the idea of socialist revolution and the question of its forms are being given ever more thought by millions of people throughout the world. In the new historical conditions one comes to realise the great achievement of Marx, Engels and Lenin, who first posed these key questions of social development and provided the scientific answers. What then is the state of bourgeois social thought in these historical conditions?
__ALPHA_LVL3__ CHRONICLE OF THE SPIRITUAL IMPOVERISHMENTHere is a document testifying to the atmosphere of the time, an extract from the chronicle of the spiritual impoverishment of anti-communism. An editorial entitled ``Ideologies and Idea Systems" in the solid bourgeois Times Literary Supplement of August 24, 1951, contained an attempt to sort out these problems. Here is its conclusion about the results of the Second World War: ``One of the main ideologies of our time---Fascism---has been crushed, but another---Communism---is the main beneficiary of its destruction. So at the present moment the world has the appearance of being divided between monolithic Communist ideology, able to draw the functions of millions of people within one political drive, and the `West' which has no unifying ideology, from its own point of view; although, from the Communist one, it can be analysed as a complex of diverse impulses all directed towards destroying Communism. The West has been made to feel amorphous and incoherent; with a dozen faiths, and yet without faith in itself; ...
...``It is not inconceivable, in a time when half the world is fascinated by Communist ideology. ...It would be accompanied by a persecution of liberal opinion and an attempt to direct all thought into channels which were supposed to be anti-Communist.
...``There is also a danger that in fear of Communism, Fascist ideas might revive in precisely those countries where Fascism has been most successful."^^4^^
_-_-_~^^4^^ The Times Literary Supplement, August 24, 1951, pp. II, III.
332This is, in effect, an attempt to present the prospect of the vicious circle: fascism---rout of fascism---anti-communism---revival of fascist tendencies. This article was designed not to assert the prospect of another fiasco with the revival of fascism but to suggest another way. What attempts have been made to escape from this vicious circle?
After the Second World War, the formation of the world socialist system, the successes of Marxist-Leninist ideology and the Soviet Union's achievements became especially obvious. There was a growth of sympathies all over the globe for the Soviet Union in the period of its heroic struggle against fascism, while the Communists advanced fearlessly at the head of the masses facing death and torture in the struggle against the fascist invaders. The prestige of communism and the Communists was enhanced. For bourgeois ideology, the Second World War had very sad results. Fascism suffered not only a military but also an ideological and political defeat, and there could now be no question of an open revival of the old fascist ideology. There was need to cast about for a ``new'' ideological platform for the capitalist world in its fight against communism. Accordingly, the bourgeoisie set about fulfilling this task, now smuggling in the ideas of fascist reaction, now covering up its policies with religious slogans or extracting from the museums the banners of 19th-century bourgeois liberalism. But let us take a look at the historical milestones along this way.
Just after the war, the vast propaganda machine and the `` psychological warfare" mechanism, set up during the war, were turned against the Soviet Union and the countries which had dropped out of the capitalist system. Their scheme was very simple and cynical: all the habitual ideas advanced against fascism, all the well-known arguments of wartime were to be mechanically aimed against the Soviet Union, so as to create round it a thick curtain of lies and slander in an effort to convince men that the social system developing in the Soviet Union and the other socialist countries was not a harbinger of the future but a repetition of the past. The press and radio kept using terms like ``totalitarianism'' with respect to the Soviet Union, and ``free world" with respect to the capitalist countries.
At the same time, it was decided to make use of the main ideas of fascist propaganda in harassing the Communists. From Dr. Goebbels's jargon they borrowed terms like ``iron curtain" and the myth of a ``red imperialism" allegedly intent on destroying Western civilisation.
Emphasis was made on the myth about a ``communist military threat''. During the Second World War men in the West had grown accustomed to respect the Soviet Armed Forces, and the Western press was itself forced to write about the defeats inflicted by the Soviet troops on the Nazis, who had fairly easily invaded and occupied a number of West European countries. Bourgeois propaganda now kept saying that the Soviet armies were poised for an attack on the West.
333With the emergence of the world socialist system, bourgeois propaganda began spreading the false idea that the historical contest between the two systems was bound to be decided through war. Day by day, the people in the capitalist countries were induced to accept the idea that war was inevitable, and that it was, therefore, natural for the West to militarise, to carry on an arms drive and prepare for war against the Soviet Union and the countries taking the socialist path. This required much propaganda effort, because the men and women who had just gone through the Second World War, were still under the influence of the idea that that war had been the last one. Also there was much war fatigue.
In order to overcome these attitudes, a great effort was made to assert that war and its roots were indestructible, that the seeds of war were planted in human nature and man's fatal passion, without which human nature was inconceivable.
Among those who joined in the chorus, were the Malthusians, who argued that war was necessary to save the world from overpopulation and to keep pure mankind's genetic material.
There were other theories galore. Herbert Read, a British sociologist, argued that war had always had an invigorating effect on human nature and man's spiritual powers. That was a rehash of the old fascist stories, but there followed this philosophical postulate: there was need even in peacetime of some Ersatz of war. That was already an attempt to provide a theoretical backup for the cold-war policy.
John Foster Dulles came out with a book designed to prove that during the Second World War a mistake had been made that split the Western world. The policy of the Western powers had to be designed to avoid divisions and to set up a united bloc of capitalist powers against the Soviet Union. This US diplomatist coined such a well-known Western policy term as ``roll back'', and then ``containment'' of communism by armed force. It was also he who first used the ``policy from positions of strength" term.
This helped to create the background for Churchill's speeches urging a crusade against communism and the establishment of a military bloc of the imperialist powers. The signal was issued for a drive on the ideological front so as to create a change in Western opinion despite the war fatigue and the great yearning for peace.
The propaganda against communism was further intensified with the start of the ``Marshallisation'' of the Western countries and the knocking together of the Atlantic bloc. Bourgeois theorists argued the need for military, aggressive alliances of the capitalist powers, praised the ``unity of Western culture'', the ``Atlantic community'', etc.
But it soon transpired that for all this bellicose noise capitalism lacked the offensive theoretical weapon, and that its ideological content was negative. In August 1949, The Atlantic carried an article by the US writer 334 Archibald MacLeish, who first considered the matters: ``American foreign policy was a mirror image of Russian foreign policy: whatever the Russians did, we did in reverse. American domestic politics were conducted under a kind of upside-down Russian veto: no man could be elected to public office unless he was on record as detesting the Russians, and no proposal could be enacted, from a peace plan at one end to a military budget at the other, unless it could be demonstrated that the Russians wouldn't like it. American political controversy was controversy sung to the Russian tune; left-wing movements attacked right-wing movements not on American issues but on Russian issues, and right-wing movements replied with the same arguments turned round about.
``American education was Russian education backward: ignorance of Communism was the principal educational objective recognised by politicians and the general press, and the first qualification demanded of a teacher was that he should not be a Communist himself, should not have met persons who might have been Communists, and should never have read books which could tell him what Communism was. American intellectual life revolved around Russian intellectual life: writers stopped writing and convoked enormous meetings in expensive hotels to talk about Russia for days at a time, with the result that the problems of American culture (if that self-conscious and overfingered word is still in use in 1980) became reflections of the problems of Russian culture. Even religious dogma was Russian dogma turned about: the first duty of a good Christian in the United States in those years was not to love his enemies but to hate the Communists---after which he was told to pray for them if he could."^^5^^ The idea of this piece was to argue in favour of a simple truth: it is impossible to base a world outlook on negation. The article was an alarm signal. For several years such signals came one after another, showing that anti-communism had driven bourgeois social thought into an impasse and signified an extreme state of its degradation.
Ten years later, the same questions were raised by the bourgeois journalist Pierre-Henri Simon in an article in Le Monde on March 11, 1960. He wrote: ``Thus, in this world of ours where two civilisations are in confrontation with each other, either---through the will of brute chance---for armed conflict or for a lengthy peaceful competition, I seem to hear communism shouting to us: 'On my side I have the weight of my countless masses of men, disciplined by my law and my hope; on my side I have their will, which has been liberated from God and aimed to establish domination on Earth, the sorcery of my laboratories which put dancing celestial stars which I have created into the skies; I have on my side hundreds of my universities, millions of my students, my Spartan and doctrinaire youth which scorns the affectation and the _-_-_
~^^5^^ The Atlantic, August 1949, p. 17.
335 corruption of yours, and which makes joyous use of all its powers to unchain Prometheus and to kill his vulture."^^6^^There are three points to be brought out in these numerous statements. First, they recognise the organic bonds between communism and science, and its ``faith'' in science. This bond was denied only a short while ago, when bourgeois theorists assured us that science was entirely on the side of the bourgeoisie. That old myth has been blasted for good. Bourgeois theorists are no longer able as easily to refer to science as they did in the past, and this has narrowed their field of movement. Even the rabid champions of bourgeois ideology have come to realise that bourgeois thought has had to retreat from the field of battle. Second, they admit that communism is a ``synthesis of heretical tendencies" in mankind's development, the result of ``bold expressions of the human spirit'', that is, that it is a legitimate heir of all the progressive tendencies in social development. That, too, tends to narrow down the field in which bourgeois theorists can operate, and forces them to repudiate the classical legacy, with the result that their social thought is totally impoverished. Third, they stress the active and effective character of this alliance of science and communism, which is aimed to restructure the world.
At the turn of the century, bourgeois social thought reached the conclusion that society could not be changed through revolution and that communism was a Utopia. After 1917, the revolutionary change of society was designated as a ``Russian deviation from the rule'', an ``episode'' on the way of capitalist development that was much to be regretted. The time has now come to accept the reality of these changes and to draw up the balance in the battle for the minds of men. The result has been discomforting for the bourgeoisie. The power of communist ideas has been recognised indirectly and with various reservations, and such admissions have from time to time appeared in the press.
We find more and more statements in the capitalist world about a lack of ability to act with the use of ideas. The US Senator Thomas Dodd proposed in a lengthy speech in the Senate the establishment of a special academy to train personnel capable of carrying on the ideological struggle against communism. He said: ``We seem to be so obsessed with studying the enemy, we have no energy or talent left over for thinking through the conclusions to which these studies should point. It is almost as though we were hypnotized into a condition of partial mental paralysis.'' He attacked the amateurs using primitive methods of political warfare which are easily frustrated. ``We have produced no Free World Lenins to show us how to develop our own operational science and train our own leaders."^^7^^
_-_-_~^^6^^ Le Monde, 11 mars 1960, p. 4.
~^^7^^ Vital Speeches of the Day, Vol. XXVII, No. 4, December 1, 1960, p. 123.
336These statements, coming from professional anti-Communists, show that capitalism has already lost a number of important ideological positions and has been forced to retreat from strategic frontlines on the field of the battle of ideas.
Consequently, the life has shown that present-day monopoly capital is unable to feed social thought with positive ideas, for its main task is defensive and prohibitive. It has induced its theorists to fear social change and any fundamental restructuring of social relations. It requires social thought to camouflage and embellish reality. Only partial, empirical research is allowed in the social sciences, without any deep-going generalisations and bold conclusions. Social science is to provide the ideological weapons for the fight against communism, that is, against progress and its mighty forces. The monopolies exert a devastating influence on social thought and lead to its elimination, for social thought which fails to consider the basic issues in social development inevitably tends to die out. To reduce it to refined attempts to protect what is on the way out means to lead social thought itself to destruction.
__ALPHA_LVL3__ CHARACTERISTIC FEATURESJust at present, neoliberalism is being glorified in the West in the search for remedies against communist ideas, for it is claimed that liberalism has pushed reaction into the background to become the dominant trend capable of defeating communism. Indeed, this is a very indicative attempt on the part of imperialism to use the banner of bourgeois liberalism as a cover.
As I have said, bourgeois social thought and the bourgeois theory of social development in the 19th century were closely connected with the ideology of liberalism, which gave these theories their direction, filled them with political content and produced these theories to substantiate its political line. That is why the history of bourgeois liberalism is closely connected with the development of bourgeois sociology and the theories of social progress.
At the turn of the century, bourgeois liberalism underwent profound change. Its one-time opposition to feudal-absolutist conservatism has long since become meaningless, thereby depriving the social theories connected with bourgeois liberalism of their relatively progressive features. The margin between conservatism and liberalism is becoming ever more tenuous. There have been ever more frequent crises and divisions in the liberal parties, with various leaders moving from one camp to another. Of course, bourgeois liberalism has not stopped trying to exert an influence on the working people and the working class. Indeed, the policy of small concessions and deception of the working people by bourgeois liberal catchwords is still current in various 337 capitalist countries. From time to time this policy alternates with the policy of open reprisals and suppression of the working class. In the epoch of imperialism, we no longer find any major liberal parties in the political arena, the banners being left without standard-bearers. But monopoly capital has refused to consign the political weapon of bourgeois liberalism to the archives. The parties of monopoly capital have tried to borrow some of its weapons, and use is also being made of the old speeches of bourgeois liberalism about free competition and democracy, which are given a new reading.
But there is a most profound internal contradiction in the present attempts to revive bourgeois liberalism. On the one hand, monopoly capital has sought to ensure its influence on the petty and middle bourgeoisie, and on the other hand, it fears that these sections could unite on an anti-monopolist basis of opposition trends. One cannot say that there is no ground in the modern world for a revival of some ideas of bourgeois liberalism in the form of opposition to the reigning monopolies. But the monopolies, relying on their influence within the bourgeoisie, are trying to control the process and cut it short whenever it has posed any threat to them, seeking to use it ultimately to support the sway of the monopolies.
``Free enterprise'', which is allegedly ensured by present-day capitalism, is brought to the foreground. The stereotype conception is roughly as follows: private property produces ``economic democracy" and intensifies enterprise and personal initiative. This corresponds to ``political democracy" which promotes the development of economic activity, whereas social property and the planned economy allegedly stifle personal initiative and result in ``totalitarianism'', ``etatism'' and other political forms hampering the development of economic activity. In the process some critical remarks are allowed against the modern bourgeois state concerning its ``interference'' in economic affairs, etc.
But the whole conception is deliberate demagogy and a reactionary Utopia. First, private initiative and enterprise are not the present, but the past of capitalism, and there is no return to it. It is confidence trick on the part of bourgeois propagandists to describe the present as the premonopoly period of capitalism. Second, today socialism alone can create the conditions for a steady growth of initiative and creative thinking and action by all the working people and every individual.
When capitalism was taking over from feudalism, it did something to foster in men enterprise, vigorous action and bold initiative, and this explains the creative power of epochs like the Renaissance, the 18th century and partially the first half of the 19th century, but even then initiative was not displayed by broad sections of the people and did not become truly massive.
Can there be any ``free enterprise" under monopoly capitalism today? Lenin wrote: ``Under such capitalism, competition means the incredibly 338 brutal suppression of the enterprise, energy and bold initiative of the mass of the population, of its overwhelming majority, of ninety-nine out of every hundred toilers; it also means that competition is replaced by financial fraud, nepotism, servility on the upper rungs of the social ladder."~^^8^^
Today, under state-monopoly capitalism competition means suppression of enterprise even among the middle bourgeoisie, which is being kept away from the sharing of the pie by a handful of giant monopolies. The big monopolies have the petty bourgeoisie in a tight grip. That being so, can there be any initiative or enterprise among workers under capitalism? Thus, the tall stories about ``free enterprise" relate to a past age. Perhaps the advocates of ``free enterprise" intend to abolish the present situation and return to the past? But is there a force that could do this? Of the thousands of corporations in the USA, only about 50 are awarded major war contracts by the government. US News and World Report has stressed that the small companies seek to become satellites of the giants who secure the fattest contracts. But that is a system of vassalage and not of ``free enterprise''. How is it to be abolished without serious social change?
Of course, it is possible to fight the sway of the monopolies, and the only way to do this is to enhance the influence of the working class which develops towards control over social affairs and attainment of real power. In its democratic struggle, the working class unites all the anti-monopoly elements in a single tide. The reactionary Utopias preaching a return to the past can merely serve to divert sections of the middle bourgeoisie and petty-bourgeois elements from this antimonopoly tide, without advancing them in any way to a realisation of their interests.
The new methods of using a part of the legacy of bourgeois liberalism to promote the interests of state-monopoly capitalism were best illustrated by the developments in West Germany, where most was being said about the market economy, free competition and curbs on the power of the monopolies. What is the essence of this ``neoliberalism''? Having read the statements of the neoliberal Chancellor Erhard, every sober-minded person must ask himself this question: where is the force that is capable of putting down the monopolies, restoring the ``free market economy" and securing other benefits for the middle and even the petty bourgeoisie? Erhard said that this requires a ``strong state'', which must and can keep the country's economy going. But in this age of rapid technological developments requiring vast investments who can control the economy in the capitalist world? Of course, Erhard did not for a moment believe that the petty producer or even the middle bourgeoisie could do this. Nor did he intend to rely on the working class. _-_-_
~^^8^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 26, p. 404.
339 In present-day capitalist conditions the ``strong state" is a state controlled by the monopolies. Having started out with liberal talk, Erhard ended with an apology for state-monopoly capital.The growing concentration of capital and the present level of technological development impel the monopolies to interfere in every element of the state apparatus so as to ensure stricter regulation of various aspects of social life and the production process, ranging from scientific research to labour relations. This tends to aggravate the class struggle, and impels the proletariat to take ever more vigorous action against this monopoly line by advancing the strike struggle and seeking to curb the power of the monopolies in an effort to have a greater say in economic and social affairs. When this conflict between the monopolies and the working people becomes highly acute, the FRG government acts as an arbiter, suggesting a compromise in order to prevent any further deepening and extension of the conflict. The FRG's example shows that the government assumes the attitude of arbiter when the working-class struggle is especially intensified and when the refusal of some monopolies to compromise poses the threat of grave consequences for the whole capitalist class. Does this mean, as the neoliberals claim, that the state becomes an arbiter standing over and above the class struggle between labour and capital? Of course, it does not. The state acts as a representative of the ruling class of the bourgeoisie against individual ``feudals'' in order to protect the interests of the whole capitalist class.
When assessing neoliberalism, one should bear in mind that the threat of isolation of the elite of monopoly capitalism from the whole nation, including the middle and the petty bourgeoisie, is an ever growing threat in the political life of the imperialist states, and many representatives of the monopolies are clearly aware and apprehensive of this threat. But how can one escape from this growing isolation? During his presidency, Franklin D. Roosevelt arranged some fairly bold compromises with the middle and even the petty bourgeoisie, but his policy inevitably resulted in the growing importance in political life of sections inclined to oppose the monopolies. That is why Roosevelt's more resolute way aimed against the growing isolation of the monopolies is still a source of apprehension for the leaders of monopoly capital.
Here is another fact to take into account. Writing in the Saturday Review, Norman Cousins noted this paradox in the USA: ``It is that some of the men who most loudly proclaim the virtues of the free enterprise system may reveal the least faith in it when the chips are down. They inveigh against an increase in federal powers, but ignore the powerful factor of government involvement when it comes to military projects."^^9^^ It is of course Utopian to expect a retreat from state-monopoly capitalism, back to the period of free competition. The neoliberalist _-_-_
~^^9^^ Saturday Review. August 10, 1963, p. 14.
340 catchwords are being used in order to persuade the middle and petty bourgeoisie to have faith in the ``creative powers" of capitalism, that is, ultimately to rely on the beneficial effects of the power of the monopolies, which are allegedly intent on using their power in the interests of ``general prosperity''. When these promises are not backed up by action, they tend sooner or later to lose their attractiveness among the middle and petty bourgeoisie. The real way of fighting the power of the monopolies is for all the democratic forces to unite in a single anti-monopoly tide. __ALPHA_LVL3__ POLITICAL CONCERNSLet us consider another aspect of what is happening to liberalism today. Liberalism flourished at a time when there were strong political parties which adopted it as their banner. Today the political arena in the USA, for instance, is dominated by two parties, whose platforms differ little from each other, if at all. They have a tight grip on political life in a country which has not only a big bourgeoisie, but also a middle and small bourgeoisie, and which also has a working class which is not uniform in composition, and also a sizable farming section. All these classes and social groups have their own interests. Meanwhile, only two political parties---the Democratic and the Republican Parties---have vast capital, which means overriding power. In West Germany, France and Italy, the efforts of big business are also concentrated on establishing a monopoly in the political arena. In this way, political life in the capitalist countries is deformed under the impact of the growing rule of the monopolies, and there are no liberal parties in the USA.
The two powerful political concerns, having taken over the political scene, have in effect substituted for political struggle a duel between the Republicans and the Democrats, the difference between which is marginal. Clinton Rossiter, a specialist in US political life, tried to characterise its ``special spirit" and reached the conclusion that there was a lack ``in our behavior, as a nation and as individuals, of a deep commitment to politics as a way of living and of doing the public business. Some writers call this `apathy', others `indifference'."^^10^^ Such is the outcome of the ``bipartisan'' system. As a result of the noise raised during the presidential elections, says the French analyst Georges Lavau, there is a ``slight shift in the voting patterns, which results in a win of a hundred or so electoral ballots''.^^11^^ Rossiter adds that what either _-_-_
~^^10^^ C. Rossiter, Parties and Politics in America, Ithaca, New York, 1960, p. 24.
~^^11^^ G. E. Lavau, Partis politiques et realties sociales, Paris, 1953, p. 80.
341 American party wants of its adherents is their vote. Add to this that the parties give nothing at all to the rank-and-file adherent, while the leader can expect to obtain a sinecure in the event of a victory at the polls, and that is the root of the ``apathy''.Political life under monopoly capitalism is organised like a market dominated by mighty monopolies on which the consumers are offered a ``range'' of products turned out by one or more corporations---- frequently only one, because the various brands are turned out by subsidiaries. Is this in any way similar to the political setup under bourgeois liberalism in the period of premonopoly capitalism?
In other capitalist countries the development of monopoly capital and its political power has yet to reach the US level, but the monopolies seek similarly to organise society's politics on the same lines. In Italy, monopoly capital has been trying hard to install the Christian Democrats as the ruling concern in political affairs. There was the same tendency in France but it was expressed in somewhat different concrete conditions in view of the president's increased personal powers. These tendencies have not prevailed entirely in these countries only because of the high level of organisation and consciousness displayed by the working class in rallying broad masses of people,in opposing the rule of the monopolies. This situation is not reminiscent of political life under big bourgeois liberal parties either.
In the past, bourgeois liberalism was a political trend with a political platform. Today some bourgeois observers believe there is much danger in the fact that the monopolies have in effect stifled political life in the USA. Rossiter admits, for instance, that the time has come to inject a new dose of ideology into US political life. The present political ideology of both parties is extremely poor. ``The conservatism of the one has been entirely visceral, the liberalism of the other has been a mockery of the idealism of Jefferson and Wilson."^^12^^ The fact that Jefferson, the political leader of the 18th century and Wilson, who was president during the First World War, are being brought together under the umbrella of liberalism is merely an indication that the concept of liberalism in the USA has become extremely vague. ``What we need from both is a little less group diplomacy and a few more ideas about the American future."^^13^^ Group diplomacy is struggle for domination in the state apparatus between various groups of monopoly capital. The bourgeoisie has failed to produce any ideas about the American future, and here Rossiter puts his finger on the weakest aspect of bourgeois ideology today.
There is good reason why in discussing the prospects opening up before the Soviet Union the British Conservative weekly, The Observer, wrote on the eve of the 22nd Congress of the CPSU on October 15, 1961: _-_-_
~^^12^^ C. Rossiter, Parties and Politics in America, p. 175.
~^^13^^ Ibid.
342 ``That so ambitious a programme can fire the popular imagination and `mobilise' Soviet strength need not be doubted; and that the statesmen of the West are offering their peoples no vision of the future comparable in attraction is also true.''^^14^^ What the capitalists fear most is that socialism has made men look into the future and think about the prospects of social development.In bourgeois writings in Britain we find remarks about Labour taking over from liberalism to develop the liberal traditions in opposition to Conservatism, just as at one time the Whigs opposed the Tories, and later the Liberals the Conservatives. Consequently, liberalism has slightly shifted to the Left. Robert McKenzie, who wrote a lengthy work about British political parties, quoted a turn-of-the-century leader, Lowell, who said this about the Liberals and the Conservatives: ``Both are shams, but with this difference, the Conservative organisation is a transparent, and the Liberal an opaque, sham.'' McKenzie added that if the word ``Labour'' were substituted for ``Liberal'', there would be ``a sense in which Lowell's remark is equally appropriate today".^^15^^
The Conservatives and the Right-wing Labour leaders are agreed on the main thing, namely, the principles of the bourgeois system. It is true to say, in a sense, that the Right-wing Labour leaders now perform the old liberal function of leading the working class and the working-class movement in the wake of bourgeois policies. But Labour does not extol the old premonopoly capitalism with its competition, ``free market'', etc., but serves to conduct the influence of state-monopoly capital, and suggests to the petty bourgeoisie and the working people various illusions about a transformation of contemporary capitalism, which has allegedly lost its exploitative substance and has turned into a ``welfare state''.
Lenin wrote in 1920 that the Liberals were either friends of the Labour leaders ``or [their] new masters".^^16^^ The Labour Party leaders have shown again and again that they ``prefer their close relations with the capitalists to the unity of all the workers".^^17^^ The tactics of the Right-wing Labour leaders, together with those of the Conservatives, was to push the Left, revolutionary elements of the working class and the Communists out of the political arena. The role of both parties---that in office and in opposition---amounts to occupying the arena of political struggle and making use of the vast material advantages in electoral campaigns and propaganda media, to prevent any other force, especially the party that is the vanguard of the working class, from moving into that arena.
_-_-_~^^14^^ The Observer, October 15, 1961, p. 13.
~^^15^^ Robert T. McKenzie, British Political Parties, Melbourne, London, Toronto, 1955, p. 581.
~^^16^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 31, p. 86.
~^^17^^ Ibid., p. 87.
343But such a ``bipartisan'' system ultimately tends to keep some of the voters away from the polls and makes the masses lose confidence in political activity.
In the recent period, an attempt has been made in Britain to restore the Liberal Party to the political arena in Britain, in view of the general tendency for a revival of liberalism. The Labour Party, which has a growing Left wing and whose candidates are supported by the working class, is still a source of apprehension for the bourgeoisie. An important aspect here is the hope of recruiting the white-collar workers, that is, the sections of the employees and the technical specialists who become a part of the working class or represent the intermediate sections close to it.
The political organisation of bourgeois society in the general crisis of the imperialist system has become a key issue in the struggle for progressive development, and against the forces of reaction. It is possible to mount a broad democratic struggle against the monopolies, to recruit to the working-class side various anti-monopoly elements of bourgeois society. The monopolies have to manoeuvre and use every means to bolster their influence on the middle and petty bourgeoisie. The monopolies are afraid to provide any real outlet to allow the interests of the middle bourgeoisie,to say nothing of the petty bourgeoisie, to emerge in the political arena, because these elements could become a political force in opposition to monopoly capital. That being so, the monopolies seek to control the attitudes among these social sections in their own interests, stubbornly preventing them from any independent political action, thereby converting liberal slogans into mere talk and deception.
The old liberalism, which stood for private property, competition, free enterprise and individualism, was the taproot for the systems of Comte and Spencer with their positivist schemes and theories. Contemporary neoliberalism is either a barren reactionary Utopia about a return to the premonopoly stage, or a screen for state-monopoly capitalism. In either case, neoliberalism leads bourgeois social thought to nothing but degradation.
__ALPHA_LVL3__ WHAT HAPPENSOf all the slogans played up by the bourgeoisie today the most fraudulent one is that of ``freedom of the individual'', which liberalism held up in the old days. In capitalist society today, the rights of the individual can be maintained only through vigorous and strong democratic organisations, against which monopoly capital, in effect, directs its attacks. In the US labour movement, any sign of democracy is 344 ousted and replaced by boss oligarchy. Monopoly capital in other countries also hopes to achieve this. No trace has been left of the cultural and educational societies, working people's and petty-bourgeois clubs, which were so popular at the end of the 19th century. The common man finds himself in the vice-like grip of monopoly capital. The monopolies seek to isolate him, to foster a philistine mentality of self-complacency and to confine his mental horizon to the narrow framework of a consumer world. The individual can have no freedom of his own, because the monopolies have established a whole system of coercion over the isolated individual.
The sociologist David Riesman has drawn this important conclusion: ``...skill democracy, in fact, based on respect for ability to do something, tends to survive only in athletics."^^18^^ ``Skill democracy" in the capitalist world has always been bounded by the framework of private-property relations and the narrow limits of competition. Under monopoly capital it disappears altogether, and that is what Riesman means.
Of course, so long as private property is there bourgeois individualism continues to be a most important aspect of the bourgeois world outlook, and this fact is being used by the ideologists of neoliberalism. But under monopoly domination, individualism is distorted and tends to degenerate. The whole of social life and all the spheres in which human capabilities are used are dominated by the giant monopolies. Under their crushing weight, the ordinary man loses his bearings in society dominated by unknown social forces and cannot realise his true role or social value. He keeps switching from an inflated ego, solipsism, amoralism, etc., to servility, a sense of debasement, mysticism and awe of supernatural forces.
Extreme individualism tends to impoverish the personality, producing mental quirks and even ailments, which, bourgeois socio-psychologists admit, spring from a sense of hopeless loneliness. It is an elementary proposition of scientific psychology that human consciousness develops in relations with other men. Where social relations are impoverished man's consciousness is likewise depleted. Men who live alone fora long time and have nothing to say to anyone lose their power of speech. That may be one of the roots of the modern abstract art and other phenomena in bourgeois Western culture suggesting the impoverishment of the creative personality. Some bourgeois theorists hold ``freedom of art" to be freedom from any principles. But creativity is impossible without a world outlook based on stable and guiding principles which direct a man's will. Without principles any world outlook will disintegrate or degenerate and become nothing but arbitrary action.
Thus, state-monopoly capital modifies the old bourgeois individualist outlook in its own way. Of course, the basis of this individualism--- _-_-_
~^^18^^ David Riesman, The Lonely Crowd, New York, 1953, p. 84.
345 private-property relations---is still there, but it is no longer possible for the individual to display the same spirit of enterprise. The ideology of parasitism increasingly constrains the individual, killing all his active and creative elements. Abstract art is an expression of this dulling ideology.These features of parasitism are increasingly intensified as capitalism moves to its decline. The active, creative personality transforming the world is no longer held up as a model. In fiction it is the inward-looking character who ignores the surrounding world that is victorious. Instead of engaging in action, he goes through a succession of mental states. The ``active principle" will be found, perhaps, only in the detective thriller, where the exciting plot consists in the duel between the criminal and the sleuth. That may explain the popularity of adventure stories and sensational reports about unusual events among readers who are fed up with writings in which nothing happens.
In the present state of the economy and politics in the imperialist countries there can be no question of freedom in the sphere of spiritual culture even in its bourgeois liberal sense. The bookmarket, the cinema, etc., are under the control of the big monopolies. The destruction of democratic institutions in the political sphere has told on the cultural sphere as well. The notorious ``individual of the free world" is in effect an impotent and defenceless person, who is hemmed in on all sides by market relations controlled by the monopolies, which use the situation not only to control prices but also the preferences of the audiences, whose members are habituated to a definite spiritual-food ration.
Bourgeois ideology contains less and less liberal ideas of the old days, and more and more old reactionary feudal dogmas. Indeed, words like ``religion'' and ``order'' now have the same meaning with which they were invested by the reactionaries in the feudal period. The old ideas of the Holy Alliance, which arrogated the ``right'' to interfere in the affairs of other states to establish order, are being brazenly revived. The racist ravings of Count de Gobineau, who preached a ``natural'' inequality of the races in the mid-19th century are now being presented as the latest word in political wisdom and even science (so-called psychoracism).
Let us stress that state-monopoly capital has not abandoned its attempts to change the political organisation of society to suit itself as it moves away from bourgeois liberalism. It has no intention---or possibility---to abandon such attempts. Indeed, the political organisation of bourgeois society known as bourgeois democracy took shape in the premonopoly epoch of capitalism. The new period of domination by capital has brought changes in the political organisation of bourgeois society, giving rise to plans for transferring to one favourite party the functions of the old bourgeois parties, so as to oust all the political organisations of the working class from legal political activity. As the real prospects for the working class making use of democratic 346 institutions and representative bodies for its own class purposes grow, monopoly capital seeks to withdraw all the instruments of government from democratic pressure. Clerical parties have also been used for this purpose. In Italy, the Christian Democrats, a clerical political organisation connected with the Vatican, has been brought to the fore in the hope that it could use the vast machine of the church and play on the religious preconceptions of the masses to promote the political interests of the reactionary circles. Soon after the war, the Catholic MRP in France and in West Germany Adenauer's Christian Democrats also a clericalminded party, were advanced for the same purposes.
But this stake on the clericalisation of political life in some West European countries has failed, because the working class has become too strong a political force for monopoly capital to be able to try that kind of trick unhampered. Besides, the establishment of mass clerical parties recruiting working people into their ranks has proved to be less than safe for the monopolies. The true attitude of the working people, their urge for unity with the political organisations of the working class, their urge for peace and their opposition to the monopolies' domestic and foreign policy began variously to break through to the surface in these parties. By now there are Leftist trends among the Catholics, with some of them increasingly demonstrating their anti-capitalism and willing to make arrangements with the working class and the Communists. The Papacy has had to reckon with these trends as well, and an indication of this was the change of line carried through by the Pope John XXIII in the latter years of his life. Some Catholic priests who had made a point of working in industry admitted that they could not go along with capitalism and that instead of improving the bourgeois system it should be eliminated. One could say that the postwar attempt to bring clericalism to the fore in political affairs has failed, although it is still dangerous.
Even today one should not forget that monopoly capital also breeds the ideology of fascism, an ideology of extreme chauvinism, racism and wild anti-communism. On the periphery of the bourgeois world the monopolies continue to implant starkly fascist regimes. In the dependent and semidependent countries terroristic military dictatorships directly controlled by foreign monopoly capital are being installed. That is the case in some Latin American countries, where there is lawlessness, an inflated police machine, killings and political assassinations, harassment of progressives, provocations and subversive actions practised as a political system. All of this is a very far cry from the theory and practice of bourgeois liberalism.
Of course, it would be wrong to say that bourgeois social thought has been ossified altogether. It still displays shrewdness and the ability to take risks when it comes to tackling economic problems on which the profits of the monopolies depend. But the most acute contradictions built into the capitalist system, the snags constantly occurring in 347 production, the disproportions in the development of various sectors and regions, the slow pace of development as a whole---all these are problems that capitalist social science has been unable to solve. The attempts to tackle social problems amount to suggestions for various improvements in the condition of some sections of the working people, which are presented as being designed to eliminate exploitation and to persuade the people in the capitalist countries that political power and forms of property are questions which have lost their erstwhile importance. That is the substance of the talk about transformation of present-day capitalism.
For the development of bourgeois social thought this postulate means a claim that the basic issue---the origin of social and national oppression and what will happen to exploitation in the course of historical development---has been superseded. That is a question social thinkers have tried to answer for centuries. Some said it was everlasting and inevitable so long as human society existed, while others contended that exploitation had to go with the institution of social property. Present-day social thinkers in the bourgeois world have to substantiate this sophism: ``Western'' society today has neither exploitation nor domination of social property.
There is some analogy here with the development of bourgeois philosophical thought, which has now allegedly managed to rise over and above materialism and idealism and to overcome their ``extremes''. In place of the fundamental question of philosophy, it has allegedly proposed other ``aspects'', in virtue of which the relation between mind and matter has ostensibly lost its erstwhile importance. Bourgeois philosophical and social thought has declared these ``accursed questions" to be nonexistent, and to have been overcome by the development of capitalist society. Accordingly, science, including social science, needs allegedly to deal with other ``aspects'', leaving aside the cardinal problems of world outlook, to study the ``particular'' and the ``concrete'' questions, confining itself to positivism and empiricism. However, in our day the specific problems in the individual sciences, the social sciences in particular, are ever more closely connected with the general questions of world outlook. Such is the logic of social life and of the development of scientific knowledge itself.
__NUMERIC_LVL2__ Chapter Three __ALPHA_LVL2__ CONCEPTIONS OF SOCIAL STAGNATION __ALPHA_LVL3__ [introduction.]Sociology is the daughter of the greatest crisis in the life of the West. That was the view taken of bourgeois sociology by the late West German Professor Alfred Weber. We must agree with him.
348 __ALPHA_LVL3__ LOSS OF HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVEBourgeois sociology is the daughter of the greatest crisis in the life of the West, and it must consider at least some of the most acute contradictions in modern capitalism. But in so doing it puts the wrong interpretation on these, because it springs from that crisis and fears to allow that these contradictions lead the capitalist mode of production to destruction and substitution by a new, socialist social system. Bourgeois social thought has ceased to understand the fact that the present is a stage in the historical process, and that is something without which social thought cannot develop. Thus, the theory of social development turns out to be breached at its most important link, so that the whole chain of the historical process falls apart and the conception of its law-governed progressive stages disappears.
Take some social facts from present-day capitalist society showing the conflict between the productive forces and the relations of production, facts which some bourgeois sociologists analyse, without discovering their real significance.
Their conclusions are characteristic of their view of the historical process as propounded by the present-day bourgeois philosophy of history.
William Ogburn, a founder of present-day US sociology, put forward a theory in 1922 according to which in present-day, that is, bourgeois, society there is a gap between scientific and technical development and spiritual development. This theory, called the ``cultural lag" theory, has become very popular. Let us note one of its aspects: technology under modern capitalism, the development of the productive forces have outstripped the spiritual culture produced by that system. This has made many sociologists ponder. Of course, from here one may very well go on to hurling accusations against technology and science, whose effect is ``inhuman'' and whose power should be moderated. That is exactly what many bourgeois sociologists have done, attacking scientific and technical progress, ``the machine civilisation" which is allegedly at variance with human nature. This carries them straight into the bog of reactionary Utopias about the ``disurbanisation'' of social life, and the restraining of scientific and technical progress. Others have concentrated on the ``defects'' of modern man's intellectual and moral development and have tried to invent recipes to remedy these defects. Ogburn himself did something similar by urging the need, after Spencer, for man to ``adapt'' to his ``technical environment''.
One American sociologist raised the question of ``the disparity between modern science and technology, on the one hand, and our social institutions, on the other".^^1^^ He held that the social institutions of _-_-_
~^^1^^ Harry Elmer Barnes, Historical Sociology: Its Origins and Development, New York, 1948, p. 168.
349 capitalism were unable to cope with the problems put forward by modern ``industrial civilisation''. But he, too, does not say in so many words that the development of the social relations of capitalism has lagged behind the development of productive forces. The same half-house approach will be found in the writings of West German sociologists who have reached the conclusion that the ``social structure" tends to lag behind technical development. Consequently, modern capitalism has not been developing at all smoothly: its spiritual life and social structure have lagged. But having put their finger on one contradiction of capitalist society, bourgeois theorists evade the question and are afraid to tell the truth about capitalism's eventual doom.The English philosopher A. D. Ritchie blames the gap between technology and spiritual culture on man's intellectual and moral development, declaring that the term ``conquest of nature" is a most misleading one. He says: ``Wild nature remains unconquered as always. The scene of the conquest is an artificial world of machines; and those who are really conquered are the men who, in one way or another, are subjected to the power of the machines."^^2^^ He reaches the following pessimistic conclusion: ``...the process of human evolution will mean no more than that men were once a small and simple herd and now they are a large and mechanized herd."^^3^^ A roughly similar view was expressed by Bertrand Russell, who said that human nature and man's fatal lusts remained unchanged, while science and technology merely provided new means for satisfying the old lusts. That is why such glaring disproportions have appeared in mankind's development, but the blame for this falls on imperfect human nature.
Thus---and this must be stressed---as the role of capitalist relations of production in slowing down and distorting the development of the productive forces, science and technology becomes clearer, bourgeois theorists are forced to admit, in their own way, the existence of this most acute contradiction of capitalism. Indeed, many of them have started a search for remedies that could ease the ills of capitalism and maintain it at this stage.
This purpose is served, for instance, by some of the basic ideas of modern ``industrial sociology" which starts from Ogburn's ``cultural lag" postulate. A group of ``industrial sociologists" has reached the conclusion that their main task is to help the workers' mentality to ``adapt'' to the conditions of ``technical environment''. The old idea expressed by Spencer about man adapting to his environment has been revived. Numerous recipes for this kind of ``adaptation'' have been invented. Sociologists and psychologists went off into the plants and factories to give the employers the benefit of their advice. These sociologists are engaged in tackling the practical tasks of organising _-_-_
~^^2^^ A. D. Ritchie, Science and Politics, London, 1947, p. 22.
~^^3^^ Ibid., p. 46.
350 labour, and some of their specific observations are of some scientific interest. However, they have also spread among the workers the bourgeois ideology which claims that class interest can be reconciled with the ``right approach''. Thus, Ogburn's proposition which could become a scientific bridge ultimately leading to the right way has, in effect, had the opposite effect, leading bourgeois sociologists ever farther away from any scientific analysis of the contradictions of present-day capitalism. __ALPHA_LVL3__ ``SOCIAL CHANGE'' INSTEADThere is good reason why it was Ogburn who was among the first in our day to attack the very notion of progress in social history. He claimed that it was ``unscientific'' and proposed a substitute---``social change"---that was to help expel from social science any notion about a succession of stages of development and of society's advance. But the conception of ``social change'', far from excluding, in effect implies the progressive development of society. When Ogburn considers the question of innovation as a factor of ``social change'', there can be no objection. But we object to the effort to expunge from social science conceptions like progress and progressive change, for there can be no scientific theory of social development without such conceptions.
The arguments presented by the opponents of the social development theory do not hold water. The conception of ``social change'', far from releasing the sociologists from the need to answer the question of what precisely undergoes change and what this change consists in, in effect makes it necessary to establish the fact that a change has occurred in a given phenomenon. There is also need to decide what this change is. Is it a sign of growth of the new element to which the future belongs, or is it a modification of the old, which is bound to recede into the past. But this means that the sociologist, whether he likes it or not, must tackle the question about development, formation, tendencies of change and direction of change. That is something scientific cognition cannot in any way avoid.
The opponents of the theory of progress make a point of referring to science and scientific data which, they claim, make the scientists abandon the conception of progressive social development. They say that 19th-century social science, which was short of facts, produced an oversimplified theory of straightforward progressive development, while present-day social science, immensely richer in content, has upset the old primitive theories of development and has discarded them.
The content of science has certainly been enriched. Spencer and Comte, taking the agnostic approach, did not blush to lay down the 351 ``limits to human cognition''. Science has long since gone beyond these limits. The successes in mathematics, nuclear physics, chemistry, astronomy and biology have long since invalidated all talk about the ``limits'' to human knowledge laid down by the 19th-century agnostics. The boundaries of human knowledge have also been broadly extended in the social sciences. New and hitherto unknown stages in the development of society have been discovered, the history of mankind since the Great October Socialist Revolution has entered a new epoch, opening up grand prospects for social development, while the Soviet Union is engaged in its successful construction of communism.
What then are the data allegedly testifying against the theory of development? Modern science requires a doctrine of development in its fullest and most profound form, that is, materialist dialectics. A study of natural and social phenomena shows that dialectical materialism is right while Comte and Spencer, with their positivist schemes of flat evolutionism, are totally wrong. The development of science and the growth of our knowledge about the history of nature and society have upset the metaphysical schemes of development as a gradual accumulation of changes without any leaps or retreats.
Many bourgeois theorists believe that the emergence of the new marks a break in the line of development which they see as a straight line between the two points. Instead of giving up their incorrect and limited notions of development, which the positivists advocate, they prefer to discard the very idea of development as applied to nature and society.
Emile Brehier, a prominent French historian of philosophy, wrote: ``The importance attaching to the problem of origin in history was connected in spirit with Darwin's doctrine of the origin of species.... But this research into origins appears to have led history to totally unexpected results....
``One finds different social structures which have neither been the results of preceding ones nor the basis of subsequent ones, but which emerged with their own spirit and their own irreducible individuality; this has been neither transformation, nor metamorphosis of one into another but was rather death and destruction."^^4^^ This expresses the incorrect idea that the theory of development does not recognise the emergence in society of qualitatively new elements ``with their own spirit, and their own individuality''. Having presented the theory of development in this grotesque form, Brehier claims that ``social structures" exist in history which had ``neither been the result of preceding ones, nor the basis of subsequent ones''. This idea has become very popular with many bourgeois historians and sociologists, and Brehier holds its appearance to be a most characteristic mark of the transformation undergone by present-day philosophical thought. Closely connected with this _-_-_
~^^4^^ E. Brehier, Transformation de la philosophie frangaise, Paris, 1950, p. 159.
352 metaphysical conception are present-day ``transformations of philosophical thought'', claiming that ``social structures" unconnected with each other exist in history. This is a real sign of the degradation of bourgeois theoretical thought.To illustrate what he means, Brehier cites, for instance, the discovery of the so-called Aegean culture on Crete (2nd millennium B.C.) which preceded the culture of Ancient Greece. Let us take a closer look at these claims. These examples, in effect, indicate no more than that the new discoveries in historical science cannot be understood or explained in the light of the old flat evolutionism. These examples once again confirm, the fact that only the Marxist-Leninist doctrine of socioeconomic formations can explain the different ways in which the slave-holding society took shape and how its concrete forms developed.
Actually, the development of slave-holding society which Brehier has in mind, when dealing with the culture of Crete, has proved to be a very complicated process, and in no sense a straightforward one. The initial forms of the slave-holding society are more primitive, being connected with a continuation of the land commune. This form was widespread in the Ancient East, and the civilisation of Crete also had such an initial form of slave-holding society. At the early stages, slavery helped to make considerable advances in building, the arts and the art of writing. The civilisation of Crete was destroyed by the barbaric tribes who occupied the island. Many Western historians speak of a period of ``Greek Middle Ages'', but the analogy is a purely superficial one. The history of the early slave-holding society abounds in events when the emerging pockets of slave-holding civilisation were drowned out by the flood of barbaric invasion. At any rate, this kind of reference will not help to refute the theory of progress. The ancient slave-holding society which then emerged marked a new and higher stage in the development of the mode of production based on slave labour. One need merely recall that ancient society produced the alphabet, the writings of Euripides and Aeschylus, the philosophical works of Aristotle and Epicurus. Under Crete's primitive slave-holding system nothing of the sort was achieved, although the figurative arts and some other aspects of slave-holding culture did rise to a fairly high level. But the slave-holding despotisms of the Ancient East did not reach the state of Greek antiquity. Consequently, the relative retreat was simultaneously a time of preparation for a fresh leap forward.
The opponents of the theory of progress also refer to the MohenjoDaro (Harappa) culture in Ancient India (III-II millennia B.C.). They are delighted with its building techniques and hold forth about the level reached by that culture. But Mohenjo-Daro was also a culture of primitive slave-holding society, which also fell under the blows of conquering tribes, and this meant some retardation, but the progressive development of slave-holding was not thereby stopped in any way. __PRINTERS_P_354_COMMENT__ 23---594 353 There arose the culture of Ancient India, from which remarkable political tractates, profound philosophical works and undying literary works have come down to us.^^5^^
The breaks in the history of society do not at all signify the absence of advance. On the contrary, an analysis of these breaks helps us to gain a fuller and deeper understanding of the dialectics of the historical process. That is precisely what present-day bourgeois theorists, who are captive to the metaphysical way of thinking, refuse to understand.
The fact is that Brehier's examples upset the schemes of flat evolutionism and the conceptions of rectilinear development, but not the scientific theory of progressive social development. On the contrary, these examples show very well that progressive development goes forward within the framework of formations, and that formations are not fixed once and for all.
Slave-holding societies which emerged in different historical conditions and at different times in the Ancient East, in Greece and in Rome were different, being concrete stages in the development of the slave-holding formation and slave-holding relations, all resting on a common basis---the use of slave labour. These were different epochs in the life of slave-holding society.
What was Lenin's approach to the conception of historical epoch? First, he urged the need to consider ``which class stands at the hub of one epoch or another, determining its main content, the main direction of its development, the main characteristics of the historical situation in that epoch, etc.".^^6^^ In the history of Antiquity, which has attracted the attention of bourgeois sociologists, this would of course be the slave-holding class. But the slave-holding elite in Crete and the slave-holding democracy of Antiquity characterise different stages of maturity of slave-holding relations.
Second, Lenin used to stress that ``only a knowledge of the basic features of a given epoch can serve as the foundation for an understanding of the specific features of one country or another".^^7^^ In this context, Lenin said that a distinction should be made between the main features of different epochs, and that one should not confine oneself to studying separate episodes in the history of individual countries.
Lenin urged an analysis of ``the most outstanding and striking historical events only approximately, as milestones in important historical movements".^^8^^ Thus, a scientific relation between the conceptions of _-_-_
~^^5^^ The opinion of these processes in slave-holding society held by Soviet historical science will be found in Vol. I of World History, Moscow, 1955 (in Russian).
~^^6^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 21, p. 145.
~^^7^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 21, p. 145.
~^^8^^ Ibid., p. 146.
354 ``historical event" and ``historical epoch" is established. An historical event like the fall of Crete under the onslaught of barbaric tribes should be regarded as a milestone in a major historical movement. This event showed the internal weakness of Cretan society, which was unable to withstand the barbaric drive against the seats of slave-holding civilisation.Br\'ehier's examples taken from ancient history merely serve to illustrate the correctness of the Marxist-Leninist methodological principles in defining the various epochs. Bourgeois theorists who reject the conception of formation, a key category of scientific sociology, are unable to sort out the question of epochs, because outside the context of formations epochs have no meaning at all and cease to demarcate qualitatively distinct stages of important historical movements and to be milestones on the way of the development of formations. Without the dialectical development of formations there can be no understanding either of epochs or of historical events. Scientific analysis of social phenomena in their development requires a unity of the historical and the logical, and any rupture of this unity spells defeat for sociology and the science of history. The ``birth and death" of separate events, epochs, cultures and civilisations cannot be the subject of scientific analysis if it is assumed beforehand that these are totally isolated phenomena which have no connections either with preceding or subsequent history. Nor will it do to string out such phenomena in time.
How did Lenin analyse the epochs in modern history? He identified them as stages in the development of the capitalist formation. One epoch---from 1789 to 1871---was the epoch of the rise of the bourgeoisie and marked its total victory. Another epoch opened in 1871. ``From a rising and progressive class the bourgeoisie has turned into a declining, decadent, and reactionary class. It is quite another class that is now on the upgrade on a broad historical scale."^^9^^ Thus, historical epochs in the main express the logic in the development of formations. They can also, of course, express the zigzags of history, since the development of formations is a dialectical and contradictory process in the course of which the progressive forces now and again suffer temporary defeats. But these zigzags cannot be understood outside the logic of historical development.
The reactionary nature of the bourgeois theoretical approach becomes especially clear when one deals with the definition of the present epoch of sharp change in the history of mankind. Anyone taking the metaphysical approach cannot say what determines the main content of the present epoch and the main lines of its development. None of them can understand the emergence of the new, and keep regarding our epoch as being merely a ``continuation'' of the earlier period or some kind _-_-_
~^^9^^ Ibid., p. 149.
355 of isolated episode in the history of mankind. Those who continue stubbornly to insist that the present epoch is an epoch of imperialism and proletarian revolution thereby assert that imperialism determines the main content of our time. But the fact is that a world socialist system has been established and has been developing. Its development does not at all take place because of the existence of imperialism, for it creates its own basis and develops on that basis. That being so, it is no longer possible to hold that the bourgeoisie is at the center of the epoch and determines its main direction. The class struggle is a sign of the growing might, organisation and consciousness of the proletariat and all the other working people. In the presence of the world socialist system, the class struggle between labour and capital is influenced by the growing strength and solidity of the developing new society. The working people's strength is multiplied as time goes and their struggle against their oppressors takes on a new quality because the working class and all the other working people now have an organised state which relies on an economy independent of capitalism. This provides the working people with totally new instruments for putting pressure on the exploiters and gives socialism a preponderance over the forces of capitalism. A truly scientific view of the epoch cannot be static; it is dynamic, being connected with an analysis of historical movements, motive forces and tendencies in social development.Lenin set out his doctrine of historical epochs in application to the history of capitalism. But it is also equally applicable to earlier antagonistic formations. Only with respect to the primitive communal formation, when classes did not yet exist, are historical epochs determined directly by production and completely coincide with the stages in the development of production, to which the development of primitive social relations also corresponds. Such, in short, are the conclusions drawn by Marxist sociology about historical epochs as stages in the development of formations. Here, bourgeois sociologists are totally confused, because historical epochs and the scale and nature of historical events can be determined only within the framework of formations, as the only basis for bringing out the specific features in the development of individual countries and the meaning of separate episodes in their history. Bourgeois sociologists have discarded the conception of formation, and that is why they find historical events and epochs falling apart in their hands like a house of cards. They keep shuffling these cards at will, labelling them with pseudo-scientific names and holding forth about their sudden birth and unexpected death.
This approach naturally carries the scientists from flat evolutionism to abandonment of the very notion of development. Bourgeois theorists have discarded the key categories of historical science, thereby dooming it to blind groping in the chaos of events and epochs, and have drawn the conclusion that any idea of development is defective as such. French 356 sociologist Eric Dardel said that the ``illusions have burned down in the flames of reality'',^^10^^ using the word ``illusions'' to designate all the sociological theories which, even if in idealistic form, recognised the development of the history of society, including the theories of progress advanced by the 18th-century Enlighteners, Hegel's philosophy of history, etc.
But actually it was only the idealistic theories, the liberal-positivist schemes of development that were burned in the ``flames of reality'', while the weapons of dialectical materialism have been tempered in these purifying flames.
That is the point at which bourgeois theorists began to put the most diverse and unexpected interpretation on the conception of ``social change'', seeking to deprive it of any positive content. They used the conception to reach the conclusion that it was not right at all to use expressions like ``mankind's progressive development" or ``evolution in world history'', but only ``long-term change''. Social life tended to change, bourgeois sociologists said, but it was impossible to say which way such change took.
The conception of ``social change" was used to fragment the coherent historical process into separate processes of ``change'', while history began duly to break up into independent civilisations or societies genetically disconnected from each other, social life in this or that period being cut apart into separate spheres in which ``social changes" also took part almost without any connection with each other. The only bond that was recognised in this chaos of processes was the human psyche, on which relations between men were based, but this bond did not explain anything in the objective process. Coherent world history, law-governed stages of change in social being, objective stages in its development, prevailing tendencies in various social changes at every one of these stages have all disappeared. In this way, the present-day bourgeois philosophy of history has broken with scientific historical knowledge, having destroyed the living bond of social phenomena both within each historical epoch and in the succession of epochs. Present-day bourgeois sociology, which wants nothing to do with any conceptions of the philosophy of history, actually finds itself closely connected with such conceptions.
The most characteristic aspect of this philosophy of history is the absence of any conception of concrete stages in the historical development of society and of any conception of the social whole uniting the various aspects of social life. The 19th-century positivists believed it to be necessary to emphasise, in their own way, the existence of a social whole, declaring it to be an evolving ``organism''. Bourgeois sociology in _-_-_
~^^10^^ E. Dardel, L'Histoire: science du concret, Paris, 1946, p. 6.
357 the 20th century has discarded this unscientific notion of society as an ``organism'', but together with it, it has rejected not only the notion of social development but also the notion of the social whole, retreating even farther away from any scientific notion of society. __ALPHA_LVL3__ BOURGEOIS CONCEPTIONSBut 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 clich\'es. 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''.
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.
358The 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".^^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.
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''.
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.
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 _-_-_
~^^11^^ F. S. Northrop, The Taming of the Nations. A study of the Cultural Bases of International Policy, New York, 1954, p. 5.
359 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.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.^^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''.
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.
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 _-_-_
~^^12^^ B. Landheer, Pause for Transition. An Analysis of the Relation of Man, Mind and Society, The Hague, 1957, p. 59.
360 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.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.^^13^^
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.
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.
Many facts show that bourgeois sociologists, having abandoned the _-_-_
~^^13^^ W\"orterbuch der Soziologie, Stuttgart, 1955, S. 637.
361 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.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.
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.
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 362 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.
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.
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.
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.^^14^^
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 _-_-_
~^^14^^ S. Casson, Progress and Catastrophe, London, 1937.
363 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."~^^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.
__ALPHA_LVL3__ REVIVAL OF THE ``CYCLIC THEORY''But perhaps there was a theory that said something about the destruction of ``society'' for internal reasons, under the shock of a most acute social struggle, but one that did not suggest the conclusion that capitalism was bound inevitably to give way to socialism? Such a theory was found. It was an expression of the old urge to produce a philosophy of history without a future, and to present the historical process as the emergence and downfall of individual ``societies'' or ``civilisations''. It was the revived ``theory of cycles" or of the eternal roundabout. There is development but it runs along a circle and exists only within the bounds of it. Society develops cyclically, passing through definite stages, but once it has reached its zenith it returns to its starting point. Many historians and sociologists claimed that the epochs of feudalism and capitalism had already been passed in the ancient world, and that after the downfall of the Roman Empire in the Middle Ages society did not enter a new phase, but merely started out on the same path all over again.
_-_-_~^^15^^ G. P. Gooch, ``Some Conceptions of History'', The Sociological Review, Vol. XXXI. No. 3, July 1939. p. 244.
364Many bourgeois historians today, while not setting out this kind of conception as a whole, still start from its assumption in their writings, spreading the ``theory of the cyclic movement" in its various elements, seeking to habituate their readers to it.
That is the attitude taken by some present-day historians, who insist that an ``ancient aristocracy" and a ``new bourgeoisie" existed in Ancient Egypt roughly in the third millennium B.C. Their method for comparing different historical epochs includes superficial analogies which do not penetrate to the substance of phenomena, and frequently even downright attempts to stretch various points. Such theories make wide use of the comparative method in order to declare that social development is a mere repetition of the past, so as to convince the reader that throughout its history mankind has never gone beyond the boundaries of feudalism and capitalism. These are ``eternal categories" of social development: a rejection of capitalism will merely carry society to barbarism, which in turn will lead to feudalism.
The cyclic theory was elaborated in greatest detail by the British Professor Arnold Toynbee,^^16^^ whose chief work in ten volumes is entitled A Study of History (1934--1955).
He starts from the idea that every civilisation goes through growth and decline, seeking to present a scheme of the process of growth, which gives way to decline, a typical model which fits all societies. Marxism-Leninism has shown that the productive forces and the relations of production as a unity constitute the basis of social development. When the growing productive forces run into antagonistic contradiction with the old social relations it is time for social revolution, giving rise to a new formation and a new and higher level of social development. Toynbee would like to find a ``substitute'' for this scientific, dialectical conception of social development. He claims to have found it in the cyclic theory, according to which society goes through two main stages in each cycle. At the first stage, it consists of the following three parts: ``creative minorities'', an ``uncreative majority" and ``surrounding primitive societies''. Toynbee says that for this or that society to be a success the growing and developing civilisation should attain perfectly idyllic relations between these three component parts, relations ruling out the working people's class struggle and the struggle of the oppressed peoples. In the ideal case, the ``creative minorities" work for the welfare of the people and do not clash with ``uncreative mass''. Their relations with the surrounding ``barbaric tribes" are just as idyllic.
_-_-_~^^16^^ For details on Toynbee's conception see E. A. Arab-Ogly's ``Conception of the Historical Cycle''. In: Historical Materialism and the Social Philosophy of the Bourgeoisie Today, Moscow, 1960, pp. 153--97 (in Russian).
365Crisis in developing civilisation, says Toynbee, is connected with the change in their ideal relations. First, the ``creative minorities" leave the scene, giving way to a ``dominant minority'', which pursues a policy of violence with respect to the mass. A split develops within the ``uncreative mass" and this leads to the formation of an ``internal proletariat''. Second, because of the different policy pursued by the ``dominant minority" with respect to the surrounding uncivilised peoples, the latter become an ``external proletariat''. As a result of conquest, this ``external proletariat" frequently becomes an ``internal proletariat''. There follows a fatal ``rift of the social unity'', and this means its decline and breakdown.
-Toynbee's cycle conveys some outward features of the collapse of antique society, and hints at the present level in the development of capitalism. But the actual content of the historical process has been emasculated and the socio-economic basis of society's development is completely ignored. This is the metaphysical theory of development stripped of its covers. The starting point is peace and harmony; the struggle of opposites is evil, and leads society to decline instead of progress.
Present-day capitalism is the second stage in Toynbee's historical cycle. Thus, he admits that in capitalist society a minority rules the majority. But his theory does not at all envisage any radical economic, social or political reconstruction of bourgeois society. He believes capitalism to be natural, so that any attempts by the proletariat to change it is a threat to civilisation.
Toynbee has structured a period of ``idyllic'' relations between the oppressors and the oppressed, and insists that one can return to this idyll, which has never existed, by retaining the exploitative system. To achieve this aim he calls on religion and Christianity to help capitalism.
Toynbee holds that if modern capitalism relies on Christianity it will be able to heal the ``rift'' in society and once again restore tranquillity and complete ``integration''. He writes with amazing frankness that if Christianity was able to ``create a unity" between the white slave-owner and the black slave in America in the 18th and 19th centuries, it is to be hoped that Christianity will be able to ``heal'' modern capitalism from its divisions and the struggle of the exploited against the exploiters. He assumes that in this way ``Western civilisation"---as he calls the capitalist world, in contrast to the ancient civilisations---will be able to avoid destruction and eliminate the division of the social whole and the class struggle, despite the threatening symptoms of decline. The US Time magazine played up Toynbee's ``merits'' in this sphere, and one of its issues carried Toynbee's portrait with the jubilant inscription: ``Our civilisation is not inexorably doomed.'' The authors claimed that ``A Study of History was the most provocative work of historical theory 366 written in England since Karl Marx's Capital''.^^17^^ But Toynbee's theory was so full of holes and rode so roughshod over the historical facts that, despite his good intentions, it evoked a flood of objections from bourgeois historians and won hardly any advocates. The author's intentions are welcomed, but his theory is scarcely applied.
One of Toynbee's few followers is Professor Wright, who says that each civilisation starts with a ``heroic age'', then follows a period of conflicts between various movements, arising in the ``heroic age''. The period of sharpened conflict corresponds to Toynbee's ``disintegration of the social unity" and is called the ``time of troubles'', a term borrowed by British and American historians from Russian history in the early 17th century, and is applied to Ancient Egypt and to various other periods of modern history. The ``time of troubles" starts when internal conflicts are set in motion, civil strife begins and economic upheavals arise. This period gives way to a period of re-established equilibrium, consolidation of the state and its expansion, a stage Toynbee did not provide for. However, the period in which equilibrium is restored also has its negative side because it is marked by a suppression of individual freedom and a narrowing down of local autonomy, which ultimately leads to a decline of society. Among the upper classes this is expressed in a seclusion in art, and among the ``internal and external proletariat" in the establishment of a new religion. The ``new social ideal" is the harbinger of a new cycle, giving rise to a new civilisation and a new turn of the spiral of development. This conception reveals an attempt to compare early Christianity and communism. Nor is Wright alone in time to do this. A Labour theorist, Harold Laski, wrote about this at greater length. But for all the violence they may try to do history, such theorists will never succeed in reducing scientific communism to the level of the visions and dreams of slaves, which in effect heralded the decline of the slave-holding mode of production and its substitution by the serf system. These attempts merely reveal their political intentions and show up their theoretical helplessness.
Wright's scheme, like Toynbee's, is an oversimplification of the process of decline and breakdown of the antique slave-holding formation and also of some aspects of modern capitalism. Because both Greek antiquity and the European Middle Ages had their own heroic epos which describes their early periods, a vague stage of ``the heroic age" is constructed. The Middle Ages link up with the period of capitalism in a common ``civilisation'', which began with a ``heroic age" and is now in decline. The worldwide empires built up in the capitalist period suggest an analogy with the epoch of the Roman Empire. The overall conclusion _-_-_
~^^17^^ Time, Vol. 49, No. 11, March 17, 1947, p. 29.
367 drawn from this scheme is that beyond the present ``civilisation'' there will once again follow ``barbarism''.The Toynbee-Wright schemes are intolerable oversimplification of the historical process, and the problem of repetition becomes insoluble. Nor can they find refuge in references to the fact that there is no straight path in history and that the old schemes of rectilinear development have been upset by the facts.
Marxists are well aware that there is no straight and narrow path in history and that the course of history is tortuous and contradictory. ``History is moving in zigzags and by roundabout ways."~^^18^^ But it is not right to draw any conclusion from this that there is no historical progress as such.
Of course, various civilisations and societies did exist in history, definite processes ran their course, but each such process created some material and social prerequisites for the emergence of the following one, without which the latter would have been impossible. Once history is fragmented, once the historical process is broken up into separate and unconnected cycles, the very possibility of scientific cognition of history is undermined.
History has never had any isolated cycles. Under the impact of the inexorable laws of development and as a result of the acute contradiction between the productive forces and the relations of production antagonistic socio-economic formations went into decline and broke up. The following formation was a higher stage than the earlier one. The conflict between the productive forces and the relations of production, which is inherent in antagonistic society, developed on a new basis. At every stage of its development, society does not start from the beginning, the productive forces of the earlier formation do not disappear, nor do its cultural achievements pass without trace.
Definite historical epochs, periods in which some states flourished and gave way to others, were concrete expressions in the development of antagonistic formations.
Without an analysis of the regularities inherent in a given formation it is impossible to understand the concrete history of these states and countries. With our present level of knowledge, only a total ignoramus will claim that Cretan society, for instance, was destroyed without trace, without leaving anything for the antiquity of Greece that followed. After a definite interval of time, the incipient slave-holding despotism of the ancient oriental type gave way to slave-holding democracy. That was tremendous progress in the development of human society. Any retreats in history do not cancel out its advance.
However, some bourgeois sociologists declare that the main danger of the theories of social development lies in the fact that they are based on a _-_-_
~^^18^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 27, p. 163.
368 recognition of inevitable successive stages of development. It is this idea of the succession of stages of development that the bourgeois theorists like least of all, because it ultimately suggests the conclusion that capitalist society is itself no more than a stage in the social process, which has to give way to a higher stage, a new form of society called communism.Why do bourgeois ideologists so willingly accept the ``cyclic theory''?
The peoples must move into the past, instead of the future, says the ``cyclic theory''. That is why there are insistent attempts to revive it.
Subjectivism knows no bounds in all its attempts, which are all based on a common and defective foundation. The British writer Aldous Huxley has produced the following scheme: ``Periods of classicism alternate with periods of romanticism, periods of devotion with periods of unbelief, periods of pacifism and internationalism with periods of nationalism and militarism.''~^^19^^ This kind of ``theory'' may merely serve to explain the ``inevitable'' triumph of clericalism, the preparation of another war, and activity by reactionaries and militarists, because mankind is doomed, according to Huxley, everlastingly to switch from ``periods of pacifism" to ``periods of militarism'', from ``periods of unbelief" to ``periods of devotion''.
The neo-Malthusians have also produced their own version of the ``cyclic theory" in the history of society. The population explosion, some of them say, proves that the rise and decline of civilisation depend on the genetic ``quality'' of the members of society, which they divided into two categories: the ``problem solvers" and the ``social burden''. These are even more oversimplified categories than Toynbee's ``creative minorities" and ``uncreative mass''. At different stages in the development of each civilisation the leading part belongs to the problem solvers, while masses of men falling into the ``social burden" category are ``eliminated'' in virtue of ``natural'' processes like starvation, high infant mortality, etc. The fiercer these curses strike at the working people the better, say the neo-Malthusians.
The dangerous stage of ``crisis'' for society begins when living conditions improve, and when the death rate among those who belong to the ``social burden" category is reduced and their share of the population increases. In consequence of this there is a sharp worsening of society's ``genetic quality'', which leads to ``genetic erosion'', so that civilisation goes into decline and eventually breaks up. With the re-establishment of the operation of the laws of ``natural selection'', with the sharp worsening of living conditions and aggravation of the ``struggle for survival'', society gets rid of the ``burden'' and a new cycle opens in its _-_-_
~^^19^^ Approaches to World Peace, Fourth Symposium, New York and London, 1944. p. 476.
__PRINTERS_P_368_COMMENT__ 24--594 369 development. Here the cyclic theory is seasoned with biological terms and is approximated to the ``social Darwinist" conception, which has long been supplying ideological weapons for the most reactionary and aggressive circles of imperialism.The ``cyclic theory" has opened up the way for diverse speculations, for it presents the repetition in history as a mere return to the past, giving rise to various Ersatz theories of development based on eulogy for the movement in reverse. While the advocates of the ``cyclic theory" seek to scare the people with the prospect of society's movement in reverse and try to induce them not to temper with present-day capitalism, if society is not to be plunged once again into the darkened ways of the Middle Ages, other bourgeois theorists, who are aware of the crisis of the capitalist system, seek a way out precisely in a return to past stages of social development and present the movement in reverse as a boon.
Thus, Wilhelm R\"opke, who is very popular in West Germany, claims that all the ills of capitalism began with the 1789 French Revolution, and that is precisely the date in history from which society should be moving backward. He contrasts the French Revolution and revolutionary France on the one hand, and the English revolution and the Anglo-Saxon countries, which had allegedly sprung from ``an earlier and more organic" democracy and liberalism.^^20^^ He believes the way out to lie in society's repudiation of the ``pernicious'' spirit of the French revolution, and a return to the sweet vision of ``an earlier and more organic" way of life and thought. He preaches an absurd and reactionary Utopia of ``deproletarisation'' of industry through a conversion of the proletarian into a petty bourgeois. That is, of course, a reactionary utopia but it shows the kind of notions present-day bourgeois theorists have of the historical process. Some of Ropke's writings have been adopted by the West German advocates of ``neoliberalism'', who declare that they have a miraculous means of returning capitalism to its premonopoly stage.
However, it is the reactionary Utopian writings of Catholics that are of especial importance for imperialist demagogy. The French Catholic sociologist Bardet has issued a call for a return to the feudal order,^^21^^ to a ``polyphonic organisation'', which he has invented and which implies a theocratic feudal society and state, the only environment in which man can escape absorption by the machines and can recapture the rhythm of the cosmos and of God---the countryside. This is designed to back up the need for a revival of the feudal order, a dismantling of modern industry and big cities (and the proletariat with them). While urging a return to the ``golden age" of the Middle Ages, he preaches a clericalisation of social relations, without excluding the possibility of establishing fascist or semifascist systems in bourgeois countries.
_-_-_~^^20^^ W. Ropke, La crise de notre temps, Neuchatel, 1943, p. 62.
~^^21^^ G. Bardet, Demain, c'est l'an 2000!, Paris, 1952.
370For all the differences between the views propounded by bourgeois theorists and for all their different versions of social development, what they have in common is a repudiation of the idea of progress. Some repudiate it by extolling the ``cyclic theory''. Others claim that the historical process can move in reverse. Still others (and these are a majority) prefer to accept the typically new positivist conception of ``social change'', while refusing to determine the lines along which it runs. But all of this is repudiation of the very conception of society's advance. There is only one reason for the emergence of all these theories: the disappearance of faith in progress in the modern Western world is connected with the loss of faith in the future of the capitalist system. L. Bernard has said, for instance, that in contrast to the philosophy of the 18th century, social thought in the 20th century (meaning, of course, only bourgeois social thought) is based on the conviction that ``evolution is not necessarily and inevitably progressive" and that ``progress itself is not an inherent law of nature".^^22^^ The fact that progress as a problem has been disappearing from the writings of 20th century sociologists is explained as follows: ``Several factors have contributed to this decline of interest in the subject, or at least to the abandonment of the attempt to treat it scientifically. Not a few sociologists believe that we lack a method of measuring progress and of discriminating between progress and retrogression. Others hold that progress is entirely relative to the goals we set up and hold that no absolute goals can be established. Others still are discouraged by the great complexity of the subject and prefer to work on different aspects of social change, at least until we can gain a surer social perspective. Even the term progress is offensive to some who believe that science must limit itself to description and avoid all value judgements.... Still other sociologists are profoundly discouraged by recent social events and believe that society is in a process of general decline. Therefore they avoid discussing the question of progress altogether."^^23^^
But what are the ``recent social events" that have discouraged bourgeois sociologists? Which society is in a process of general decline? Is it not clear, after all, that the emancipation of the masses from exploitation, the abolition of private property in the means of production and the establishment of social property, mankind's release from bloody wars of aggression, and abolition of the morality of greed and gain, that all of this helps man to advance? Is that not a ``social perspective"? But that is precisely what bourgeois theorists refuse to discuss.
_-_-_~^^22^^ Contemporary Social Science, ed. by Ph. L. Hiirriman. J. S. Roucek, G. B. do Hus/ar, Vol. I. Harrishurg. 1953, pp. 182--83.
~^^23^^ Ibid., pp. 184--85.
__PRINTERS_P_371_COMMENT__ 24* 371That is why the term ``progress'' does not appear in some editions of the West German Dictionary of Sociology. That is why it has disappeared from the Encyclopaedia Britannica.
But if a scientist has lost his bearings in the historical process, he is bound to lose his way in the labyrinth of historical facts and is at best confined to recording casual and single facts. That is, in effect, what the historian is impelled to do by the present-day bourgeois sociology and philosophy of history.
__ALPHA_LVL3__ CHANCE INSTEAD OF OBJECTIVE REGULARITYThe denial of the necessary connections between social phenomena, of objective logic in history and of the unity of the historical process---that is the patterned wisdom of bourgeois sociology. Still, many historians continue to hold these ideas.
Thus, Fisher declares that there is no regularity in history, but only a succession in time of ``one emergency following upon another as wave follows upon wave".^^24^^ That is why, says Fisher, the historian's task is to recognise in the development of human destinies the play of the contingent and the unforeseen.
This view is untenable not only in theoretical terms, but is also politically harmful. The theory of contingencies, which allegedly dominate history, is a logical premise for voluntarism, which in politics refuses to reckon with any regularity. The ideologists of imperialism regard mankind's advance, the triumph of socialism and the successes of the national liberation movement as a regrettable contingency which needs to be corrected. Claiming that history is an agglomeration of accidental events is a way to justify any arbitrary policy. That is where the theoretical roots for all the talk about ``containing'' and ``rolling back" communism are to be found. These philosophical conceptions contain the theoretical roots of the assertion that force can help to ``check'' or even to reverse the tide of history in the ``right'' direction. Thus, the philosophy of history closely interweaves with the political philosophy of present-day imperialism.
Marxism does not, of course, deny that accidents take place in nature and in social life, and that they can exert a considerable influence on the course of events. But accidents do not determine the course of history, and to refer to them as an argument is to seek ``refuge for ignorance'', as Spinoza used to say. Recognition of the role of chance in the development of nature and society does not contradict the proposition that development in nature and society is governed by law. It is the task of science to gain a knowledge of these regularities. The theory of social _-_-_
~^^24^^ H. Fisher, A History of Europe, Vol. I, London, 1935, p. VII.
372 development which presents the historical process as a chaos of accidental happenings leads to a repudiation of the scientific view of social phenomena. No amount of mathematical methods, theories of probability or laws of large numbers will save social thought from complete degradation once it has abandoned the notions of regularity in social development.Some sociologists in the West are coming to realise that the bourgeois theory of social development is in an impasse. In this context, interest attaches to a book published in 1958 by the bourgeois sociologist R. B. Bailey, containing a critical examination of European and American sociology in the 20th century. Bailey does not accept the conceptions which deny historical progress and urges an effort to ``save sociology from the undermining attacks of the cyclical theorists and the irrationalists".^^25^^
Bailey notes that while the epoch in which sociology had emerged had been one of optimism, present-day sociology was shot through with pessimism. In the early 20th century, the mood of disillusionment was widespread mainly in European circles, ``today, however, one hears more than rumblings of disillusionment from the United States".^^26^^ Sociological theories not only reflect the pessimistic attitude in society but, for their part, help to spread them. Bailey resolutely opposes any such role for sociology and was quite right in saying that the idea of progress and faith in progress in the 18th century sprang from the conviction that human reason was almighty and that human behaviour was rational.
Present-day sociology has abandoned these very notions. The numerous sociological theories of masses and theories of the crowd regard human activity as being irrational. Lack of faith in progress, prophecies of the downfall of civilisation, and the notion of man as a being that is irrational and that is moved by myths, blind faith and illusions---all of these inject a hopeless pessimism into present-day sociology.
I think that the author was also right in indicating another source of inspiration for the out-and-out opponents of the theory of progress. Indeed, in our day there can be no theory of progress that denies the great social energy of the masses, which make history. Bourgeois social theory has always ignored the masses of the working people whatever its conceptions. Today, this mistrust and downright contempt for the masses has reached a peak, and this has been largely promoted by various philosophical and psychological trends in irrationalism. Some socio-psychologists, making wide use of Freudianism, have developed _-_-_
~^^25^^ R. B. Bailey, Sociology Faces Pessimism, The Hague, 1958, p. 166.
~^^26^^ Ibid., p. 34.
373 the most distorted notions of the role of the subconscious, instincts, etc., in the activity of the masses. Profound mistrust of the masses, lack of confidence in their historical creativity and fear of the masses--- there we have one of the roots of the denial of progress in society by present-day bourgeois theorists.Sociologists taking a pessimistic view of the prospects of mankind's development, the author said, refused to understand the importance of sociology in the transformation of society. Let us add that these sociologists have been so blinded by their theories that they no longer see the realities of life. The experience of the Soviet Union and other socialist countries shows that Marxism-Leninism, the true science of social development, has become a vast force in transforming society.
The implementation of the CPSU Programme, the long-term socioeconomic development plans and the Party's activity in managing the whole complex of socialist life, and remodelling social relations and remoulding man himself are a triumph of social science.
Bailey said that Western sociology should become true knowledge and should start from a rational view of man and his activity. There was need, he said, to find a synthesis of the old 18th-century theories and present-day doctrines: ``This new synthesis would accept, but with qualification and limitation, the belief of the eighteenth century philosophers that truth presented to rational beings will result in social progress."^^27^^ That is a good wish. But to this should be added that the main tendency of social progress today is expressed by scientific communism. In our day, the idea of social progress, the theory of scientific communism and the theory of social development are fused with each other.
Many bourgeois theorists now realise that their stubborn attempts to deny the very notion of progress in this age of triumph of the greatest progressive tendencies in social life could ultimately isolate them from their audiences. In these conditions, more and more bourgeois ideologists have been racking their brains in an effort to take the sting out of the theory of progress, to switch from total denial to an acceptance of progress that would make it quite meaningless.
Before the emergence of Marxism, the theory of progress had no scientific substantiation, with bourgeois philosophical thought erring between assertions that progress was the development of reason and education, to assertions that progress was some kind of formal evolution leading to the differentiation of individual forms of the social organism.
_-_-_~^^27^^ R. B. Bailey, Sociology Faces Pessimism, p. 167.
374 __ALPHA_LVL3__ ``ECONOMIC GROWTH'' THEORY: ERSATZ THEORY OF PROGRESSThe Marxist theory of progress is now widely accepted and it is ever more difficult to deny it by means of ``cyclic theories'', etc. What bourgeois theorists are most concerned with is the scientific, economic substantiation of the Marxist theory of progress. That is why present-day bourgeois political economy has produced its own theory of progress in the form of a ``theory of growth'', which has failed to see the basis of progressive social development. Bourgeois theorists declare that mankind's progress boils down to ``economic growth',' to a growth of wealth, but they have failed to answer the question of how and why this growth occurs. Bourgeois theorists, as usual, refuse to see the workingman, the actual producer. Their ``theory of growth" juggles different terms like ``investments'', ``savings'', etc., but they have not tried to gain an insight in the process of production. It appears that capital itself attains such ``growth'' without the working people's participation. Consequently, mankind has to thank capital, from which all benefits derive, for progress as well. Professor Walt Rostow, a leading exponent of this theory, is inclined to deal with everything under the sun: Neuton's mechanics, the establishment of national states, etc., as factors helping ``growth'', but he says very little indeed about a category like labour productivity, ignores the various forms in which the working people are exploited and which ensure economic growth in antagonistic-class formations, and fails to analyse the modes by means of which the growth of material resources in these formations is achieved. In short, the exponents of this theory want to conceal the fact that throughout the centuries economic growth sprang from man's exploitation of man and that a turning point has now been reached at which economic growth, far from requiring any form of exploitation, in effect tends to slow down and hamper social development and for that reason has to be abolished. That is the substance of the modern theory of progress.
The advocates of the ``growth theory" declare that it does not matter who owns the resources and accumulates them---society or its private-property classes, because the country as a whole still becomes richer. Such is Rostow's theory. But the growth of wealth in the hands of the monopolies and a growing social wealth are not the same thing at all. The former is an obstacle to progress in modern society, while the latter opens up the path for unlimited prosperity.
Rostow says that the growth of wealth in the imperialist countries means rising levels of mass consumption. But in the capitalist countries the people are short of material goods while imperialism wastes them on preparation for war. Agricultural production is artificially limited while millions of people in the world suffer from malnutrition. A sizable part of the production facilities remains idle, while millions of unemployed look 375 around for jobs. In this age of unprecedented scientific and technical successes and vast development of the productive forces, hundreds of millions of men on the globe live in horrible poverty. Bourgeois economists operate with ``averages'' to show that the age of ``mass consumption" is here. But the fact is that men cannot be content with ``averages'' which cover up inequality, they want equality, they want a social system under which ``averages'' do not lie, but express social justice.
Rostow believes that all social antagonisms are to be found beyond the framework of the capitalist world, in areas which have yet to enter the ``mass consumption" age. But it is altogether impossible to separate the rich capitalist city, the centers of capitalist civilisation, from the fringe areas, from the sprawling ``village'', which is poor and indigent. This can be done only as an armchair exercise.
So long as the scientist imagines bourgeois society to be an ``aggregation of individuals'', as an arena in which ``harmonious forces" operate and are capable of paralysing any expression of ``destructive forces'', so long as he refuses to recognise the existence of classes and turns a blind eye on exploitation, he can never hope to advance towards scientific theory of social development. This approach is inherent in the political thinking of the bourgeoisie and is the ideological substratum of present-day trends in Western sociology. The old positivism sought to produce a bourgeois sociology in place of the philosophy of history by borrowing some conceptions and methods from natural science, but it was ruined from the outset by view of society that was distorted for political purposes. Present-day attempts to escape from the bog of positivism by means of diverse theories recognising the importance of the ``economic factor'', holding forth on ``economic growth" as a ``law'' of social development are also bound to fail because they have not abandoned the unscientific view of society.
The positivists of the 19th century saw society as a single organism, but towards the end of the century bourgeois sociology already abandoned the notion. Instead it put forward the idea which boiled down to roughly the following: ``Society is not something simple, but is, on the contrary, something very complex. But Comte always required that society should be regarded as a whole, that in it, as in the study of individual organisms, one should move from the whole to the parts, instead of vice versa, so that the part should not in any case be studied in isolation."^^28^^
The positivist notion of ``society as a whole" was metaphysical, abstract and idealistic through and through. In an effort to escape from this abstraction and urging a study of ``real things'', Durkheim struck out _-_-_
~^^28^^ P. Barth, Die Philosophie der Geschichte als Soziologie, Erster Teil, Leipzig, 1897, S. 68.
376 at the old schemes, but it was life itself that struck hardest at this ``whole''. The view taken by Spencer and Comte of society as a harmonious whole was upset by life: the capitalist world, entering the epoch of imperialism, was shaken by the most acute social contradictions.Rostow has now made an attempt to return to the conception of society as a social whole. He has even provided his own classification of society in which, for instance, he labels as ``traditional society" the whole of the initial stage, ranging over the primitive system, the whole of ancient history, the whole epoch of feudalism and a part of the capitalist period. This example shows that Rostow has returned to the abstract and metaphysical conceptions of society. He is prepared to recognise the economic basis of society but is incapable of getting through to the essence and significance of its social structure. Rostow's society ``grows'' and gets richer, but he does not know what society is, for it is a conception still veiled in mist.
Indeed, what sort of society is it that has no relations of production and classes? The basis of the historical process disappears, while the process itself becomes an agglomeration of diverse and arbitrarily constructed ``types'' of society.
__ALPHA_LVL3__ BOURGEOIS SOCIOLOGY: NO SOLUTION FOR SOCIAL RELATIONS PROBLEMThe prominent US sociologist, Talcott Parsons, gives roughly this kind of picture of social development since ancient times. First came the tribal system and tribal groups. Then, in virtue of a mysterious process of differentiation, there emerged an ``elite'', an aristocracy, with combined political and religious functions, there arose a bureaucracy, military and civilian, etc.^^29^^ This description contains everything, including ``religious autonomy'', but the only thing it lacks is the origination of classes, the great division of society into oppressors and oppressed. But having forgotten the process of class formation, the sociologist, far from moving towards an understanding of the substance of social development, in fact draws ever farther away from it, increasingly mystifying the actual historical process.
Lenin said that the basis of all the diverse social relations consisted of ``the mutual relations of people arising out of the part they play in social labour".^^30^^ There is no society without these relations, and the degree of development of social labour and the character of relations between men in the process of labour determine the stages in the social history. There _-_-_
~^^29^^ ``Theories of Society'', Foundations of Modern Sociological Theory, Vol. I, The Free Press of Glencoe, 1961, pp. 242--49.
~^^30^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 6, p. 265.
377 can be no scientific sociology without an analysis of these relations. Social thought which loses sight of this rock-bottom basis of social relations inevitably runs into a dead end.Such is the characteristic feature of the history of bourgeois social thought. Having dropped the old positivist theories of the 19th century, present-day bourgeois sociology has come up against an insoluble question. If society is not a vast organism which evolves according to laws close to organic laws what is it then?
Many bourgeois sociologists took a different way from that of Rostow's. The French sociologist G. Bouthoul believes, for instance, that it is not right to consider society as a whole, because the term is ``extremely vague''. When people use the term ``society'', they actually have in view only mankind. That was also Comte's view of society.^^31^^ Other sociologists have gone even farther: they have also lost sight of the conception of ``mankind'', which leaves them only individuals, the rest being declared an abstraction.
The US sociologist E. Burgess divides modern sociologists into the same two schools into which medieval scholastics were divided---- realists and nominalists. He says realists are those sociologists who assume ``the reality of society".^^32^^ But ``the reality of society" is presented mainly as ``collective representations'', ``collective behaviour'', etc., which govern social relations. They regard society as some kind of ``psychic whole''. In other words, the modern ``realists'' have substituted for the ``world spirit" of the old idealistic philosophy a more ``modern'' conception, that of ``collective spirit''. But they have also eliminated the old rationalism. ``Collective psychology" is the sphere of the irrational, the subconscious; human reason has a very small part to play in social life. Natural social relations which hold men together in society are left undiscovered and are mystified.
In this respect, the modern ``realists'' differ little, if at all, from the modern ``nominalists'', who do not recognise society as an ``object of study'', and declare that only ``individuals'', taken outside society, outside social relations, exist.
Many other sociologists similarly classify present-day bourgeois theories of society, making a distinction between ``social realism" which assumes an ``objective reality of society, irreducible to any combination of individuals'', and ``social atomism" which claims that the ``individual is the only objective, empirically ascertainable entity".^^33^^ The substance of the former trend is an idealistic separation of the conception of _-_-_
~^^31^^ G. Bouthoul, Traite de sociologie, Paris, 1949, p. 184.
~^^32^^ E. W. Burgess, ``Research Methods in Sociology'', Twentieth Century Sociology, ed. by G. Gurvitch and W. Moore, New York, 1945, p. 21.
~^^33^^ F. Znaniecki, ``Social Organisation and Institutions'', Twentieth Century Sociology, New York, 1945, p. 178.
378 society from actual people and actual social relations, while the latter seeks to substitute for social man an idealistic abstraction of ``man in general''.The well-known bourgeois philosopher and sociologist Karl Popper, who sides with social atomism, believes that ``society'', ``social group'', ``social institutions" are no more than abstract concepts.^^34^^ Indeed, he declares, only concrete human individuals exist, and these interact with each other and the environment in different ways. For Popper, even ``the war" and ``the army" are ``abstract concepts".^^35^^
This kind of nihilistic bourgeois individualism undoubtedly signifies the elimination of sociology as a science. Most bourgeois sociologists today have not, however, taken this radical path of ``self-destruction''. Many of them realise that if they took for the object of their research ``naked man on naked earth" they would be eliminating the very conception of ``social'' and ceasing to make any study of social phenomena which arise from the interaction of men and which exist on the basis of this interaction. But recognition of such interaction does not yet make sociology a science. In social life there are countless such interactions, and life would present a chaotic picture unless the real basis of all these interactions and bonds between men is discovered. Bourgeois sociologists merely stress the role of the psyche in these bonds, but the chaos of various interactions remains. Parsons has written of the great importance of the existence in society of the basic cultural traditions which are not innate, but which are handed down from generation to generation through education. These traditions give society stability and duration in time and create a stable system of interaction. But what is a ``cultural tradition'', what is its basis, how can its own stability, growth and change be explained? The answer is: by the interactions of men. But these, for their part, are explained by ``cultural traditions''. Such is the vicious circle of idealism.
Most bourgeois sociologists criticise the 19th-century positivists for their theory of the ``unilinear'' social process, and expound at length about the multiplicity of tracks, while presenting social relations as a great number of individual psychic connections between men, while the social whole is seen as a conglomerate of diverse petty social groups and a sum total of the smallest psychic phenomena. All their attempts to bring these psychic connections into a system have failed because within the closed circle of psychic phenomena they can be classified only in accordance with some formal aspect.
Bourgeois sociology labours in the grip of a contradiction, which idealism cannot resolve, the contradiction between the universal, the particular and the individual. Some researchers have produced empty _-_-_
~^^34^^ The Philosophical Review, January 1959, p. 98.
~^^35^^ Ibid.
379 abstractions, ignoring the particular and the individual in social life. Others have artificially isolated the individual and the particular, because they cannot find in phenomena any general features, or regularities inherent in social development. The most radical advocates of this standpoint agree to recognise the existence only of individuals. Many more sociologists have taken the way of metaphysically separating the particular from the general, constructing diverse ``individual societies'', ``concrete social groups'', etc.All of these are an inevitable result of the abandonment of the concrete conception of society and failure to accept the doctrine of socio-economic formations. Bourgeois sociologists create arbitrary schemes based on arbitrarily selected features of human society. Their ``new'' constructions are as abstract and artificial as the old ones.
At the end of the 19th century, the German sociologist F. Tonnies proposed that a distinction should be drawn between two types of social connections: ``community'' (Gemeinschaft), based on ``organic'', biological ties, and ``society'' (Gesellschaft), based on artificial ties. This kind of classification of social connections is unacceptable, because in human society there are no biological ties that are not simultaneously social ties, for human society took shape when relations of kinship became social relations. The ``artificial relations" are in effect the ties established by men in their social labour, in production. The stage in the development of these relations and of social labour in production makes it possible to distinguish the stages through which society has passed in the course of its history.
Bourgeois sociological thought has tried to define society and social relations from other angles as well. The US sociologist R. Maclver proposed in the 1920s that social connections---and so different societies---should be classified according to men's purposes or interests. His attempt would have appeared in a different light if he had recognised the existence of class interests, but he opted for formal classification, without making an effort to discover the real substance of the phenomena he was describing. He brought out economic, scientific, educational interests, and also the interests of power and prestige, the interests of tribe, family, etc. Something of this kind was suggested by other sociologists. Of course, such interests do exist in the human community, but if these are taken as a basis of society, this question will arise: what determines the unity of society as a social whole? It appears as a conglomerate of diverse ``ties'' which exist side by side in space and time. No wonder some theorists have claimed that the only reality is the individual, while society is an abstraction.
US sociologists who accepted Lester Ward's views adopted the psychological principle of classification of social relations and societies, and discarded economic interests. Thus, Giddings insisted that society was not an organism but an organisation which was in a sense a 380 continuation of nature only at the earlier stages of development (family groups, tribes). Subsequently, the psychic, volitional element began to prevail in the life of society, with conscious decisions becoming the principal law. The US sociologist eventually reached the conclusion that social decisions were subordinate to ideals, and this produced another idealist vicious circle.
But there are, in effect, no societies based on instinct. Such an assumption can be made only if we ignore that which in fact distinguishes human society from the animal herd, that is, labour. There are no societies which have been erected on the basis of reason and reflection, and that was the view held only by the advocates of the ``social contract" theory.
The only thing all such classifications definitely suggest is that bourgeois sociologists completely ignore the incontrovertible fact that relations between men in the process of labour, in production constitute the basis of all their social relations. Without this basis neither the human family nor any ideas of prestige or power could have arisen. The attempts to substitute for the basic social relations secondary, tertiary or other derived relations or to invent some kind of artificial relations instead of the actual ones give bourgeois scientists no chance to see the light.
The starting point of sociological research---the ``social group"---is also a concept that is vague in scientific terms because the basis of all social relations has, not been discovered. Society appears as a conglomerate of such social groups and their aggregation adds up to its ``social structure''. The ``groups'' are produced by ``social processes" which ultimately boil down to ``psychological impulses''. This way of reasoning actually explains nothing, because the whole point is to determine exactly which social processes produce groups, where the ``impulses'' which bring men together in these groups originate. Some say that the social process is based on ``social instinct'', while others substitute for the conception of ``instinct'' new ones like ``mighty reflexes'', ``motives'' and ``impulses''. Bourgeois sociologists have written very much about the motivation of human acts but they have ignored the question of society's social structure, classes and the class struggle, class interest and the objective requirements of social development, and so have remained within the sphere of highly tenuous psychological abstractions. They have not gone beyond general reasoning about ``human nature" and human mentality, because they prefer not to delve into ``mysteries'' of social being. Bourgeois sociologists have lost all real notions of society because they have ignored the real basis of social relations and the basic social groups---classes, which make up class society.
US sociologists are prepared to study any kind of ``groups'', to invent the ``sociology of the inveterate clubmen" or to study ``groups of 381 university professors''. For this purpose they have produced more and more schemes for classifying such ``groups'', like groups based on similarity (which include college professors, war veterans, etc.), groups based on proximity (church congregations), and also on ``interaction'' (family, club).
Some bourgeois sociologists are inclined to divide ``groups'' into primary, secondary and associations. Some take account of the territory, others the quantitative elements, still others duration of the relations between members, but almost all these classifications refer to the psychic affinity of members, etc.
These arbitrarily structured ``groups'' must clearly, according to the intention of their architects, live in peace with each other, banding together into ever greater ``groups'' or ``associations of groups''. Of course, now and again conflicts may break out between individual groups, but these are of a purely psychological character and can and must be eliminated. For some bourgeois sociologists society is a mere conglomerate of ``groups'' which enter into various types of ``interaction'' with each other. While conflict is accepted as one type of interaction, there is special emphasis on the interconvertibility of the various types of interaction, with the transition from conflict to cooperation in relations being easiest between, say, groups like employers and trade unionists.
All these ``classifications'' have plunged bourgeois sociology into a state of complete chaos, and have allowed some sociologists to perform the most fantastic operations. These classifications do not hold water even in formal terms because no attempt is made to maintain the ``ground for division''. Formal logic says that it is not right to divide mankind, say, into fair-haired, dark-haired, fat and lean men, because in this case the ``ground for division" is upset, and there will be no strict classification, because various men will find themselves in several groups, at one and the same time. Some bourgeois sociologists who had also noticed this defect said that such groups were the result of empty abstraction because the same men were members of different groups. But then, say the modern ``nominalists'', there is need to emphasise that ``social groups" are something derivative, with the individual being the only reality. The conception of society has disappeared altogether.
Of course, various social relations and numerous social groups do exist in capitalist society. These relations and groups can and must, of course, be studied from various angles, including that of social psychology, but they cannot be scientifically analysed if one ignores the class division of society or if these groups are taken outside the context of class contradictions. Only a correct understanding of the basis of society's social structure makes it possible to bring out the derivative and additional social relations between men and the specific features of separate sections and groups of a given society. Indeed, what could we 382 say about the ``group of college professors'', for instance, unless we have a knowledge of the present-day class structure of the United States, the status of the intelligentsia in bourgeois society, and the forms of class struggle, including ideological struggle? One would have to confine oneself to superficial observations which do not go to the social substance and contradictions inherent in the group. Classification by groups, as proposed by bourgeois sociologists, is eloquent evidence that it is impossible to understand society and its structure without showing the relations of production, the basis of all social relations.
There can obviously be no scientific view of society if one ignores categories of social science like productive forces, relations of production and mode of production. It is the Marxist-Leninist view of society that does away with the abstract and schematic approach in social science and helps to study society in concrete historical terms as existing in the form of different socio-economic formations. But that is exactly what bourgeois sociologists have attacked.
``What Marx and Engels called the dialectical method---as against the metaphysical---is nothing else than the scientific method in sociology, which consists in regarding society as a living organism in a state of constant development (and not as something mechanically concatenated and therefore permitting all sorts of arbitrary combinations of separate social elements)."^^36^^ It is hardly possible to give a more precise definition of the basic defect of present-day bourgeois sociology. There are no arbitrary combinations in the historical process and these are just as untenable in scientific sociological research. Meanwhile, bourgeois sociologists have been operating with this method of artificially separating some elements of social life from the rest, ignoring the basic and definitive social relations and emphasising secondary and tertiary phenomena.
The basic flaw in all present-day bourgeois studies of social psychology is, first, the idealistic separation of psychology and reality, and the idealistic view that the psyche is capable of creating social relations, and second, the exaggeration of the important role of irrational elements in the consciousness of the masses. This tendency is closely connected with the bourgeoisie's political thinking, with its ever present neglect of the people and their conscious historical activity. This tendency is also compounded by the sway of irrationalism in present-day bourgeois ideology. A study of the psychic ties between men without an analysis of their material basis even by the most bona fide researchers has produced very little. On the other hand, this opens up boundless opportunities for the most incredible speculations. Here is one example. Contrasts and conflicts, suppressions and upheavals, bourgeois sociologists claim, equally exist in the life of the individual and in the life _-_-_
~^^36^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 1, p. 165.
383 of society. That is the method used to structure many of the conceptions of present-day ``collective psychology''. The well-known US sociologist R. Strausz-Hupe has formulated the credo of many bourgeois politicians as follows: ``Territorial, economic, and even ideological issues which heretofore [that is, before the `revolution' in science performed by the `socio-psychologists'---G. F.] were considered by statesmen and historians as causes of conflict, are now viewed as manifestations of neurosis, maladjustment, and culture traits. In this sense, these issues as such do not exist."^^37^^ He goes on to explain that these questions, which bourgeois ideologists and politicians had not been able to answer, can be easily ``eliminated'' by means of a simple operation: ``...the psychologists' bold leap from the psychology of the individual to that of the group, or ... to the state."^^38^^ However, no such ``leap'' has taken place. It was no more than a transfer of the psychology of the individual to society as a whole. Spreading such ``theories'' means returning to the prescientific stage in the development of ideology, to the stage of anthropomorphism. The idealism in present-day ``psychological theories" is even more pronounced than it was in the ``organic theories" of the 19th century. The positivists of our day dress up their idealism in psychological terminology.Analysing the results of development in 19th-century bourgeois sociology, Lenin wrote that these bourgeois theories were fruitless and a priori discourses about society; instead of studying and explaining social phenomena they merely insinuated bourgeois ideas for a conception of society.^^39^^ We find the same state of affairs in the latest constructions of ``collective mentality''.
Gramsci once remarked that without historical materialism sociology amounts to no more than an ``empirical compilation of practical observations".^^40^^ This is borne out by the popularity of ``empirical sociology" among present-day Western scientists. But when some of them want to rise from a compilation of empirical observations in their narrow sphere to theoretical conclusions they fail, and Gramsci is quite right when he says that ``a method of social mathematics and of external classification" introduces nothing but an ``abstract sociology".^^41^^ Therein lies a peculiar paradox: while claiming to be empiricists and favouring absolutely concrete research, many bourgeois sociologists produce the emptiest abstractions.
Take the conception of ``social prestige" which is very popular in bourgeois sociology today. They keep saying that a man's status within his group depends on his prestige. But this ostensibly profound idea is in effect no more than a tautology: status depends on prestige, and prestige _-_-_
~^^37^^ R. Strausz-Hupe, The Zone of Indifference, New York, 1952, p. 37.
~^^38^^ Ibid., p. 38.
~^^39^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 1, p. 145.
~^^40^^ A. Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, New York, 1973, p. 428.
~^^41^^ Ibid., p. 430.
384 on status. It is impossible to break out of this vicious circle if one ignores the class structure of society and the actual forms of the class struggle. What is the prestige of a revolutionary, a leader of the working class, or of a capitalist? These are diametrically opposite phenomena. How can one reason about ``social prestige" and obscure the fact that the capitalist has no prestige without his money, without his capital? There are many examples to show that the theoretical conceptions of bourgeois sociology are not concrete, but are abstract and vague, although many of those who operate with such conceptions claim to be empiricists and devotees of facts.Indeed, this switch to empirical generalisation is regarded as a most important step in the development of sociology. The US sociologist Carl Taylor wrote: ``To my mind the two great developments that have taken place in sociology in the last forty years are that social theory has become less philosophical and historical..., and that empirical research has become dominant."^^42^^
Present-day positivists claim that philosophical and historical conceptions prevent sociology from becoming a science, because they allegedly dictate to the scientist various preconceptions and reduce his effort to a search for examples to illustrate the postulates of this or that philosophical theory. But social science cannot exist without philosophical theory, and the point is whether philosophical theory is materialist, and has stood the test of facts, or idealistic, which carries the researcher along the wrong path. The same applies to the historical approach to social phenomena.
Present-day bourgeois sociologists declare with pride that they are engaged in concrete and contemporary research. But what can one understand of the present if one has lost the thread of historical development? Lenin used to stress that the main defect in the reasoning of bourgeois sociologists was the ``lack of concreteness and historical perspective".^^43^^ The historical approach in considering social phenomena without an analysis of concrete facts boiled down to a repetition of general propositions, while scientific analysis without concrete facts is impossible without the historical approach. Bourgeois sociologists say that they oppose ``social statics" and that they favour a study of ``social dynamics" and all kinds of mobility. They declare that they use the empirical method to study ``social change" in present-day capitalist society but wish to know nothing about the transformation of premonopoly capitalism into imperialism and of the changes in imperialism itself. They also claim that they are engaged in an empirical study of social sections and social groups in present-day society in the _-_-_
~^^42^^ Sociology and Social Research, Vol. 40, No. 6, Los Angeles, 1956, p. 412.
~^^43^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 23, p. 271.
__PRINTERS_P_385_COMMENT__ 25---594 385 West, but they ignore the basis of society's social structure, its division into classes and the existence of the class struggle.The agglomeration of abstract terms has done nothing to clarify the substance of social relations or to reveal their basis. In these relations everything becomes ephemeral and every material substratum disappears. The sociologists may produce the most complex definitions and construct a great many abstract conceptions which have no concrete content, without advancing social science in any way.
The fact that bourgeois sociologists have lost the thread of historical development will be seen, in particular, from the fact that historical sociology, as one US scientist admits, has disappeared as a scientific discipline: ``It is now dead and the trends are all against any prospect of its revival."^^44^^ Sociologists are altogether out of touch with history. Their so-called empirical, or concrete, research has ousted the historical approach from sociology, and without it there can be no in-depth concrete research.
The claims by present-day bourgeois sociologists to have escaped from the influence of philosophical systems for a study of the facts alone are ridiculous, and this becomes quite clear when one considers socio-psychology, the main trend in present-day bourgeois sociology.
Behaviourists among the positivist sociologists, for instance, have subjected their facts to quantitative analysis, making use of statistical methods to study the behaviour of men. They declare that they are engaged in a ``precise'' analysis of social relations. But these cannot be reduced to psychological relations. Consciousness is no more than a true or false reflection of these relations. We find, therefore, that their starting point is idealism, despite the fact that they have repudiated philosophy in general, and idealism in particular. Their method cannot yield any precise analysis of social relations.
One American writer says: ``The field has moved from broad historical, theoretical, and philosophical interests to technical research on specialised restricted topics subjected to detailed controlled quantitative surveys or polls."^^45^^ But the point is how sociologists ``specify the restricted topics'', and whether their studies are based on the arbitrary, subjective method or on the objective regularities of social development.
Meanwhile, present-day positivists have frequently made use of the mathematical method in order to substitute for the causal analysis a description of arbitrarily established ties between various social phenomena. Naturally, functional ties can and must be established, but one must not ignore the actual basis of these relations and the fundamental regularities underlying social development. Ben Halpern, an American sociologist, says: ``A `functional' as opposed to a `causal' _-_-_
~^^44^^ Contemporary Sociology, ed. by J. S. Roucek, London, 1959, p. 266.
~^^45^^ The State of the Social Sciences, Chicago, 1956, p. 4.
386 relationship between variables---for example, the relation between economic and religious `factors'---can be construed in either direction."^^46^^ Thus, it matters little whether the economy determines religion or vice versa. Such is the conclusion suggested by the idealist methodology, with its built-in preconceptions.``The rigour" of present-day research with the use of mathematical methods can be determined from some of the examples given in one American collection.^^47^^ There is special emphasis on mathematical models designed to ``describe'' various social phenomena. Articles by N. Rashevsky and J. Coleman analyse a wealth distribution model. Let us consider their starting points. Society is regarded as a conglomerate of interacting men, each of which has two characteristics: ``ability'' and ``wealth''. This arrangement of characteristics gives the authors away, for it suggests that wealth is created by high ability. Indeed, Coleman's conclusion was that according to the model, the distribution of wealth ``will ... be highly skewed toward individuals of high ability''. Thus, the power of the Rockefellers now rests on the mathematical ``models'' of US sociologists. Wealth is ``skewed toward individuals of high ability'', while bourgeois sociologists are ``inclined'' to cater for the interests of these ``individuals''. Why have not these sociologists estimated how many men of high ability capitalism has trodden down, twisted and even converted to men of low ability among the mass of working people? That is precisely the point to be clarified when considering the relationship between ``wealth'' and ``ability'' in bourgeois society.
Marxists do not, of course, deny the need to use mathematics and statistics in studying social phenomena, but these must rule out any arbitrary approach and have to be objective. Only then will it be possible to discover the various social regularities. However, present-day advocates of the quantitative method in sociology use mathematical models according to all the rules of subjective sociology.
The very approach to research implies the existence of a definite set of views of social life and a definite theory of social phenomena. The whole point is to what extent such a theory allows a correct identification of various social processes if one is to ask the right questions for a study of these very processes. One must have an idea of the structure of society as a whole if one is to be able to clarify how the aggregation of men selected for polling fits into that structure. Bourgeois sociologists make use of the mighty apparatus of modern mathematics in application to material that has been casually or arbitrarily selected. They take the same approach in polling people on their soap preferences, the willingness or unwillingness of soldiers to wear uniform when on leave, and the impact of religion on interests in classical music. But the results _-_-_
~^^46^^ The American Journal of Sociology, July, 1957, Vol. LXIII, No. 1, p. 5.
~^^47^^ Mathematical Thinking in the Social Sciences, ed. by Paul F. Lazarsfeld, Glencoe, 1954.
387 obtained in analysing minor groups of men, frequently artificially selected, or in analysing secondary social phenomena, are generalised and inflated to general theoretical conclusions.Marxism-Leninism attaches much importance to a study of concrete phenomena and current social facts, but it has emphasised that the facts must be taken in a concrete historical situation, in interconnection and in the context of a long-term tendency. Only then will analysis be profound and scientific.
We find remarkable examples of the concrete sociological research in Lenin's writings on social development. In his brilliant work The Development of Capitalism in Russia, Lenin drew conclusions on the tendencies of the social process as he studied concrete material and analysed statistical data. When analysing concrete data and opposing, for instance, the method extensively used in local statistics to group peasant farms by their allotments, he wrote: ``In classifying the peasants according to allotment, we lump together the poor peasant who leases out land and the rich peasant who rents or buys land; the poor peasant who abandons the land and the rich peasant who `gathers' land; the poor peasant who runs his most wretched farm with an insignificant number of animals and the rich peasant who owns many animals, fertilises his soil, introduces improvements, etc., etc. In other words, we lump together the rural proletarian and the members of the rural bourgeoisie. The `averages' thus obtained obscure the differentiation, and are therefore purely fictitious."^^48^^ Marxists have made wide use of the grouping method in economic science, but their analysis of concrete data is valuable for practical activity because it shows the long-term tendencies in social development.
The sociological use of quantitative indicators and statistical data must not ignore qualitative distinctions. In the same work, Lenin analysed social groups among the peasantry and said that the ``small rural bourgeois (in Russia, as in the other capitalist countries) is connected by a number of transitional stages with the small-holding `peasant', and with the rural proletarian who has been allotted a patch of land. This circumstance is one of the reasons for the viability of the theories which do not distinguish the existence of a rural bourgeoisie and a rural proletariat among 'the peasantry'."^^49^^ It is the method of formal comparison, the method of ignoring the qualitative distinctions and the tendencies and prospects of social development that is being used by many bourgeois sociologists to produce an altogether artificial ``middle class" which includes definite sections of the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. But those who seek to structure a ``middle class" today lack the grounds for it that the Narodniks had in their period.
_-_-_~^^48^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 3, p. 103.
~^^49^^ Ibid., p. 311.
388Lenin developed the scientific analysis of concrete data to a state of high precision and thoroughness. Let us recall how Lenin analysed the changing role of family labour among handicraftsmen, and his remarkable sociological analysis of various groups of wage-labour in Russia at the turn of the century. He showed the prospects for the development of the working class in the country, and this gave the Party the right orientation in its struggle. Whichever concrete fact or process in the social science of capitalist society that Lenin analysed we find that he has always opposed any analysis of isolated facts, and insisted on a study of the prospects and tendencies of social development. That was also Lenin's approach in studying concrete phenomena in the life of the new, Soviet society.
Take his remarkable work ``A Great Beginning'', which is based on an analysis of the concrete facts after the October Revolution. With remarkable depth, he formulated the sociological law that the fundamental advantage of a new social system ultimately lay in the fact that its social organisation and new forms of labour organisation enabled it to raise labour productivity to a new level. Lenin gave a profound and precise characteristic of the serf-holding and capitalist organisation of labour. He started out from an analysis of phenomena, tendencies and prospects for the development of the new society to produce brilliant generalisations on the key problem of historical materialism. ``A Great Beginning" contains an analysis of perfectly concrete facts taken from Soviet reality. Lenin makes a thorough analysis of press reports from May 17 to June 8, 1919, about the communist subbotniks. He does this in the early pages of ``A Great Beginning'', where he says: ``I have given the fullest and most detailed information about the communist subbotniks because in this we undoubtedly observe one of the most important aspects of communist construction, to which our press pays insufficient attention, and which all of us have as yet failed properly to appreciate."^^50^^
Lenin analysed his data in the light of the tasks of moving from capitalism to socialism, developing the doctrine of the proletarian dictatorship, setting out his well-known definition of classes, indicating the specific features of Russia's social and economic development, and considering many other key questions bearing on the subject. This is the way Lenin analysed specific facts, determined their importance in the course of historical development, and evaluated them in the light of previous development of society and the prospects for its future development. Lenin showed that his facts were not isolated, but that they were a concrete expression of highly important social regularities.
Social facts in Russia in 1919, which the superficial bourgeois observer could have ignored as unimportant, when taken one by one and outside the context of the historical process and social development, were in _-_-_
~^^50^^ Ibid., Vol. 29, pp. 418--19.
389 effect of tremendous importance, and this Lenin proved. He wrote that the ``first communist subbotnik, organised by the workers of the Moscow-Kazan Railway in Moscow on May 10, 1919, was of greater historical significance than any of the victories of Hindenburg, or of Foch and the British, in the 1914--1918 imperialist war".^^51^^ But Lenin also stressed that the whole point was a scientific definition and analysis of the substance of this phenomenon: ``We must carefully study the feeble new shoots, we must devote the greatest attention to them, do everything to promote their growth and `nurse' them. Some of them will inevitably perish. We cannot vouch that precisely the 'communist subbotniks' will play a particularly important role. But that is not the point. The point is to foster each and every shoot of the new; and life will select the most viable."^^52^^ This is a very important precept for social science, whose task is to bring out the tendencies and prospects of development. For every adherent of the scientific method in sociology, Lenin's writings are a model of in-depth research into concrete social phenomena, and the use of the latest mathematical method makes no difference. The goal is to illumine the way for advancing mankind.Historical materialism shows how the unity of the universal, the particular and the individual is attained in social science. It is impossible to study any general uniformities of social development without analysing their concrete expression, the specifics of the historical process and even individual facts. It is a reactionary approach to contrast theory and concrete analysis in the study of social phenomena.
An in-depth analysis of social phenomena, including all the concrete specifics of political and economic events, enabled Lenin's Party to lead the mass of working people in storming capitalism. All the stages in building the new society are simultaneously highly important stages in the formulation of Marxist-Leninist theory, and milestones in studying the uniformities underlying the formation and development of the socialist system. The CPSU Programme and other Party documents contain an analysis of the most important social processes today. On the basis of a profound sociological analysis, propositions on building communist society in the USSR which are of exceptional practical and theoretical importance have been put forward. The great Soviet plans have been formulated on the basis of a scientific analysis of economic and social phenomena in this country. A characteristic feature of Marxist-Leninist theory and the activity of the Leninist Party, which shows its great power, is its organic bond with life, with the experience and practice of vast masses of men, and that is what determines the development of present-day social thought, which discards all the obsolete and reactionary views and steadily moves forward.
_-_-_~^^51^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 29, p. 424.
~^^52^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 29, p. 425--26.
[390] __ALPHA_LVL2__In the period in which feudalism emerged, the ideological struggle in the world arena was carried on mainly in religious form; the spread of Christianity reflected the collapse of the slave-holding world and the emergence of feudalism. The process consisted in the new society's assimilating the religious legacy of the outgoing slave-holding system, in modifying Christianity to adapt it to the new conditions of social and political life. Islam became the ideology of the emergent feudal system in the East. Changes in religious ideology characterised the formation of feudalism in India and China. At the same time, political theory was also incorporated in religious conceptions.
The battles in the sphere of religious ideology were especially acute at the ``start of the capitalist era'', when the bourgeois versions of Christianity came out against its feudal form. In the sphere of political ideology the struggle was carried on against the feudal-absolutist doctrines which ignored the rights of national states and their sovereignty. Capitalism raised the banner of national sovereignty, while the leading thinkers of America loudly declared, for instance, that the people had the right to revolution. Feudal-absolutist reaction continued stubbornly to assert its illusory ``right'' to interfere in the domestic affairs of other states in order to establish ``order'' everywhere. In this way the ideas of legitimism appeared in the world arena and became the central issue in the struggle.
However, the key sphere of struggle was the field of battle in which scientific knowledge upheld its inalienable right to give a lead to mankind's progressive development, while philosophical materialism was adopted as the banner of society's leading forces. The struggle ranged over every sphere of spiritual life and was persistently carried on in art and literature. Of course, this struggle was of tremendous importance for historical development, but bourgeois sociologists, beginning with Max Weber, tried to turn the whole process on its head, arguing that even economics was determined by ideological struggle and 391 that the development of capitalism proceeded under the impact of religious ideology.
That is, of course, an idealistic distortion of the historical process. Any attempt to set up ideological or political struggle as an absolute is a departure from Marxism-Leninism. The scientific theory of social development, in effect, asserts that the formation of ideology, corresponding to the new mode of production, has a considerable part to play in its triumph and consolidation. There is no doubt that feudalism in Europe developed a powerful spiritual weapon for its domination and the highest sanction for the feudal system in elaborating the ideology of Catholicism. The spread of Christianity to Ancient Rus also meant a break with the tribal way of life and helped the country to move on to feudalism. Islam, which sanctioned the emergent feudal order and the establishment of the exploitative state among the Arabs emerged in fierce struggle against the survivals of the tribal system and its allied religious cults. The emergence and spread of bourgeois forms of Christianity, like Calvinism, helped to strengthen and develop the bourgeois order and to establish the rules which emerged on the basis of bourgeois society.
The fact that the progressive sections of the bourgeoisie turned to science and adopted philosophical materialism, developing new political doctrines, naturally all had a tremendous part to play in the struggle against feudal-absolutist reaction.
In that period, ideological struggle went hand in hand with political struggle, and the latter could not develop successfully without the corresponding ideological substantiation. But both political and ideological struggle in that period were an expression of the stages of formation of a new mode of production.
Today, ideological struggle is waged over the true and uncompromising scientific world outlook, for the triumph of the ideology of labour over the ideology of parasitism. It has a great role to play in converting the world socialist system into the decisive force of historical development. Today, the basic issue in the struggle between capitalism and socialism is the strengthening of the might of socialism and its fulfilment of the great historical tasks facing the new system.
Some bourgeois theorists try to emphasise the ideological conflict between socialism and capitalism in an effort to find justification for present-day militarism. Here they stress the Communists' conviction that communism is bound to win out on a global scale because of the progressive development of society. It is this fact, according to the bourgeois theorists, that goes to make the present-day ideological conflict so acute, resulting in ``cold'' and even ``hot'' wars. This idea is being broadly used by bourgeois propaganda in its fight against the Communists and, one must admit, it has penetrated the minds of some Western intellectuals.
392The new move by the bourgeois ideologists is to concentrate attention on the ideological differences between the opposite systems, and to draw the conclusion that in the presence of such contradictions it is quite impossible for the two systems to coexist peacefully. This is an effort to prove that because the two systems have different ideologies there is no basis for peaceful coexistence and, conversely, every reason for the militarisation of the economy and the arms drive.
Some bourgeois ideologists have not abandoned their attempts to induce the peoples to accept the idea that the contest between capitalism and socialism cannot be resolved by peaceful means. They say that peaceful relations between capitalist and socialist states can be established only if the contest between them ceases altogether and the ideological struggle is wound up.
For example, the Right-wing Labour leader Christopher Mayhew has put out a special pamphlet on this subject with the title Coexistence Plus. A Positive Approach to World Peace. To the established conception of peaceful coexistence, Mayhew wants to add ideological coexistence and an end to the ideological struggle between ``so-called capitalism" and ``so-called communism''. Mayhew prefers not to call a spade a spade. He hates to call capitalism capitalism, and to admit that there is exploitation in the ``free world''. Nor does he want to call communism communism and to admit that this system abolishes exploitation. Instead of trying to find out what the contradiction between the two systems is and whether it must result in armed conflicts between them, many bourgeois theorists merely skate on the surface.
The whole of bourgeois propaganda picked up the fashionable notion of equating the cold war and ideological conflict. Hence the recipe for ending the cold war: preparation for war will end with the abolition of ideological struggle and unification of men's views.
It is quite clear that this is a confusion of correct propositions with deliberately false ones. Will anyone argue that the cold war means preparation for war? Will anyone object that the cold war was started by men's attitudes, with militaristic propaganda, which was carried on by many imperialist statesmen, whole parties and organisations? That, too, is true. But to regard the cold war as a kind of ideological struggle, to equate these two phenomena, to say nothing of demanding an end to ideological struggle as a condition for relaxing international tensions is to engage in theoretically untenable and politically harmful exercises. To put an end to the cold war is in the vital interests of all people. But ideological struggle is a form of class struggle and it will go on and remain a factor of social development so long as antagonistic classes with their opposite ideologies remain.
The Programme of the CPSU emphasises: ``A grim struggle is going on between two ideologies---communist and bourgeois---in the world today. This struggle is a reflection, in the spiritual life of 393 mankind, of the historic process of transition from capitalism to socialism.''^^1^^
The idea that wars are engendered by ideological conflicts is idealistic through and through, because this ultimately makes ideas and attitudes the basis of social being. The idea has been accepted by generations of men in the West who have been bred in the idealist tradition. Idealistic views of society and its history are inculcated at school, where the teenager is told that the Crusades were mainly religiously motivated. One of the first pages in the modern science of history opens with the exposure of this invention: the establishment of real, mundane causes for the Crusades was a great achievement of the scientific world outlook. The plunderous campaigns mounted by the feudal lords of Europe in their drive to conquer the ``fabulously'' rich countries of the East were merely veiled in religious form and slogans for the ``recovery of the Holy Sepulchre''. The leading historians exposed the very down-to-earth aims of these military colonising expeditions, which resulted in the Crusaders' plundering the ``most Christian" state of Byzantium with monstrous cynicism in 1204. No one but those who are blinded by bourgeois ignorance will refer to the Crusades as being ``evidence'' of the thesis that wars are caused by ideas.
It is equally wrong to refer to the religious wars of the 16th century. What is really important is that these were, in effect, civil wars in France expressing the crisis of absolutism. The fact that in that period two powerful parties---Huguenots and Catholics---emerged under the religious flag does nothing to refute the truth that these parties pursued political interests. The Massacre of St. Bartholomew, when the Huguenots were slaughtered (1572), was also a political act. The religious form merely emphasised that the political ideology of the contending social forces was not fully developed because of the existing historical conditions. Religious ideology carried the methods used in the struggle to fanaticism and cruelty, but to say that religious ideas caused civil wars would be to return historical science to its infancy.
This question was, indeed, confused by bourgeois social thought, but historical science still found a way to its solution. The anti-clericals among bourgeois Enlighteners, who took the idealist attitude in the study of society, claimed that religious fanaticism impelled men to fight sanguinary wars. Meanwhile the reactionaries and the clericals insisted that it was the neglect of the true faith by men who had been confused by ``false teachings" that made the sanguinary outcome of the religious strife inevitable. Actually, men were impelled to armed conflicts by mundane interests, with religion presenting no more than a convenient form for these bloody conflicts.
_-_-_~^^1^^ The Road to Communism, p. 497.
394Historical science made its way through the fog of preconceptions, getting at the real earthly causes of the 16th-century wars which were fought under religious banners, but which were an expression of the conflicting interests of the feudal aristocracy and the emergent bourgeoisie. But bourgeois scholastic theory cherished the idealistic interpretation of history, while university science raised such interpretations of history to the level of philosophical generalisations about ideas causing wars. The propaganda of false views concerning the causes of wars fell on idealism-fertilised soil in the West, where idealism continued its political work.
It is not surprising that even those who are actively fighting for peace in the capitalist world will refer to the Crusades or religious wars as evidence that ideological conflicts may cause war. Such views are widespread among bourgeois pacifists.
The emergence in the world arena of a new force in the epoch of imperialism led to bloody clashes unleashed by imperialist states, but the emergence of the world socialist system does not at all lead to wars, because socialism has no reason either for using armed force to take anything away from capitalism, or for ``exporting revolutions''. Economic and social development in socialist society does not produce any Gordian knots in its relations with capitalism that have to be cut through by the sword. Growing and consolidating socialism has invited capitalism to peaceful coexistence in the economic sphere. Bourgeois theorists will not always easily accept the idea.
Those are the theoretical prerequisites for the origination and spread of the idea that the ideological battle between communism and capitalism must lead to war. The real causes of its emergence are different and will be found in the political attitude which was taken by the ruling classes in present-day bourgeois society on peaceful competition with the socialist system.
The ruling circles of the imperialist powers are known to dread peaceful competition with socialism in the sphere of production. While bourgeois theorists are inclined to boast that the Soviet Union will never reach the level of US production, more and more economists and politicians in the USA have been sounding the alarm. Some theorists and propagandists of imperialism are apprehensive of the outcome not only of the economic competition but also of the current ideological struggle. Of course, Western journals keep carrying immoderate self-praise of bourgeois ideology, but that is frequently no more than a badly veiled expression of alarm.
The advocates of imperialism have been thinking hard about what capitalism can put up in contrast to communism in the raging battles for the hearts and minds of men. The loud propaganda about the ``ideals of the free world" merely goes to expose the ideological poverty of imperialism. It is ever more obvious that these ideas have been borrowed 395 from the premonopoly stage of capitalism. The ideological armour dating to the late 18th and early 19th centuries, which has been borrowed from the museums, is worn out. There are no new ideals. All of this is an indication that private property has worked itself out in social development. There is an inevitable urge for scientific communist ideas, which show mankind the way to establish social property, clearly identifying the goal of the emancipation struggle, reflecting the vital interests and aspirations of all the working people, and inspiring them with historical optimism and faith in their strength and vast potentialities.
In these conditions, some people in the West have decided to start a propaganda drive against ideological struggle, and to call for an end to it. A closer look at this effort will show that behind the demand to abandon ``ideological struggle in general" is an attempt to play down the ideological influence of communism. The advocates of this conception insist that ``ideological disarmament" is the only condition for lasting peace. In this way, first, they seek to divide the forces acting for peace, and second, to protect those who are preparing a war under any possible pretext, including ideological differences.
Life has already ridiculed some of the most reactionary spokesmen of Catholicism, who urge ``ideological disarmament''. Thus, a leader of the French Catholic Church, Guerry, in his book The Church and the Community of Peoples, put forward the following idea: in order to bridge the gap between the two blocs, there is need to have a common principle, namely, a positive ideal of human and moral civilisation. Everyone knows that the Communists do not believe capitalist civilisation to be an ideal, and have been resolutely criticising bourgeois morality. Consequently, the Catholic writer argued, it is hopeless to try to bridge the gap between the two systems.^^2^^ But the author has engaged in a gross subterfuge. The fact is that the Communists and the Catholics have different notions of the present and the future of human civilisation, but there is no reason why the Communists cannot agree with Catholic working people on one very positive matter, which is the need to safeguard peace as the apple of one's eye, the need to prevent the aggressors from starting war, and the need to have mankind live in peace without wars. Honest men all over the globe are, consequently, united in the idea of the need to preserve and strengthen peace, and this is an idea most cherished by the working people. This has been understood by leaders of the Catholic Church like Pope John XXIII, who stood for peace and peaceful coexistence.
Nothing can prevent practising Catholics from hearing the communist call to preserve peace and have relations between the peoples rest on the simple rules of morality and justice, as the CPSU Programme puts it. _-_-_
~^^2^^ Cahiers du communisme, No. II, 1959, p. 1051.
396 The Communists have been carrying on an implacable ideological struggle against the advocates of war and against the ideology of hatred and hostility among nations.The assertion of the bourgeois theorists that ideological struggle constituted the content of the cold war and that it was a struggle that had to develop into a shooting war was profoundly defective. A cold war was not just an ideological struggle or an ideological conflict, but the ideological preparation for war. The sharpness and depth of the ideological struggle do not at all signify that it must become the ideological preparation for war. Ideological struggle becomes preparation for war when the struggle contains within itself the idea that ideological instruments are inadequate, that they are ineffective in achieving success; that is when the inevitability of armed conflict is asserted and the slogan of ``guns instead of ideas" preached.
What has been said above shows that identification of the characteristic features of the new stage of world history which opened with the emergence and strengthening of the world socialist system enriches our whole concept of the historical process and of the change of socio-economic formations. The conclusion that the new system initially has no decisive influence on the course of world history and acquires such a possibility only later on is profoundly scientific.
The definition of the present epoch as one of transition from capitalism to socialism, with socialism becoming a decisive factor of world development, is a great achievement of creative Marxism, for without it the world communist movement would have been unable correctly to orient itself in the present historical situation or to formulate its correct political line based on the principles of Leninism.
Lenin stressed that the proletarian dictatorship must win out in at least a number of advanced countries if it is to exert a decisive influence on world affairs. Why did Lenin insist on the advanced countries? He held that the socialist system which has won out in several underdeveloped countries could not exert such an influence because the socialist countries, without adequate economic strength, could not be completely rid of capitalist influence. Consequently, it takes more than a mere increase in the number of countries carrying out the socialist revolution to convert the proletarian dictatorship into an international force. Lenin also stressed the qualitative side, namely, the need for these countries to be advanced, if they are to exert a decisive influence on world affairs.
Socialism initially won out in the Soviet Union, which lagged in technical and economic terms behind the advanced capitalist countries. For socialism to become a decisive force it has to win in a number of countries, with the countries taking the socialist way becoming advanced in technical and economic terms. This task has been fulfilled by the Communist Party and the Soviet people, by building up a mighty socialist power.
397The transformation of socialism into the decisive force of world history is fundamentally different from the triumph of feudalism or capitalism, both exploitative formations, over their predecessors. Socialism does not realise its superiority in conquests, for it has no need of wars of aggrandisement. On the contrary, it carries on a struggle to prevent capitalism from translating the contest into the language of guns and bombs. Socialism begins to exert its decisive influence on the course of world history by standing up for peace, checking the arbitrary acts and use of force by the imperialists in the world arena. The successes of socialism along this way clearly show its transformation into the decisive force.
__ALPHA_LVL3__ CONCERNING SOME ASPECTSThe content and forms of ideological struggle carried on by imperialism against socialism have now undergone some important changes. To start with, various problems in this struggle are being increasingly tackled by generals from NATO headquarters, diplomatic officials, professional intelligence officers, and representatives of various sections of the state-monopoly capital machine.
Anti-communism has become a special industry, directed by major centers and employing all manner of mercenary writers. Anticommunism has become the business of all the mass media---radio, television and the press---which are subservient to state-monopoly capital. In short, the struggle against the ideology of socialism has become one of the key functions of state-monopoly capital and its policies.
The concept of ideological struggle in the old sense is ever less applicable to this kind of activity and there is good reason why the apologists of the bourgeoisie prefer to use the term ``psychological warfare" instead of ``ideological struggle''. The architects of this ``warfare'' are not inhibited in their choice of weapons, including the ``great lie'', slanders, and a falsification of the facts. Everything serves their purpose, with reports capable of poisoning men's minds being of especial value. The ``psychological warfare" arsenal includes diverse ``operations'', including ``bridge-building'', for the purpose of smuggling ideological contraband into the socialist countries.
Since the Second World War, the old bourgeois theory which held that socialism could be put down by means of armed force, economic blockade and diplomatic pressure has been blasted. Socialism has 398 displayed a vast internal strength and the ability to develop as a world system. The imperialists, without abandoning their old theory, have been forced to amend and supplement it. Their search has been mainly in one direction: they have been casting around for a way to secure the desired ``erosion'' of Marxist-Leninist ideology, the ideological basis of socialist society, to unhinge its political organisation and to engage freely in anti-socialist activity within this or that country.
The attacks by the reactionary forces on Czechoslovakia's socialist gains have illustrated this imperialist tactic in action.
The CPSU Central Committee, having analysed the world situation in depth, issued a timely and clear-cut indication of the much greater importance of the ideological front in the present struggle between socialism and capitalism, showing the close connection between political and ideological forms of struggle at the present stage. The fraternal Marxist-Leninist parties have also given growing attention to this front.
__ALPHA_LVL4__ IIThe theorists and propagandists of capitalism taking an active part in the present-day ideological struggle hate the very notion of ``ideology''. They have written about the ``end of ideology'', and have held forth vigorously on the ``deideologisation'' of mankind's spiritual life. What are the true purposes of these fishers of immature men, what is the purpose of their hustling?
The point is that the ideologists of capitalism have come up against a mighty opponent whose strength they have realised: the ideology of socialism is a coherent system of ideas, views, and convictions, which has been well elaborated and scientifically substantiated, and which has been and is being put to the test through the experience of millions of people, developing on this basis a wealth of experience. Bourgeois theorists have repeatedly admitted that they are incapable of putting forward a system of views that could attract the masses. That is why they want to eliminate the very idea of ideology, which means socialist ideology in the first place.
The sugared lies which are designed to save capitalism and which permeate the whole of present-day bourgeois ideology have failed to stand up to the test of life. The severe winds of the epoch sweep away the web woven by bourgeois ideologists, and it is seen to hang in shreds. What remains today, for instance, of the myth about capitalism being a ``welfare state"? After all, this used to be one of the pillars on which the ideology of capitalism rested. The riots staged by poor Blacks driven to desperation have dispelled the myth about the USA being a country of ``equal opportunities for all''. Less and less people now believe the lying claims that bourgeois society is based on ``humanism and democracy''. 399 Emacs-File-stamp: "/home/ysverdlov/leninist.biz/en/1975/PS429/20070606/429.tx" __EMAIL__ webmaster@leninist.biz __OCR__ ABBYY 6 Professional (2007.06.06) __WHERE_PAGE_NUMBERS__ bottom __FOOTNOTE_MARKER_STYLE__ [*0-9]+ __ENDNOTE_MARKER_STYLE__ [0-9]+ __FOOTNOTE_MARKER_SEQUENCE__ continuous What remains of the much vaunted bourgeois democracy, after the deliberate killing in the USA in broad daylight first of the President, then of his brother, a Senator, and a prominent Black preacher, to say nothing of the many other lesser known victims.
This is an indication of a deep crisis in bourgeois ideology ultimately reflecting the deep general crisis of capitalism.
The advocates of capital, coming out against ideology in general, and against the Marxist outlook, in particular, employ all manner of gross sophisms, like the claim that if a world outlook is coherent, harmonious and principled, it is for that reason ``dogmatic'' and ``doctrinaire'', while the unprincipled and fragmented consciousness is declared to be ``freedom'', and ``independence''.
Some revisionists, echoing the bourgeois ideologists, have attacked loyalty to principles under the pretext of ``combating dogmatism" and urge the elimination of the revolutionary convictions, the principles of socialist ideology, and their substitution by a package of fashionable bourgeois political, philosophic and economic theories. Contemporary revisionism means ideological surrender to capitalism and abandonment of the socialist ideology as a coherent system of ideas, views and convictions, which enable the working people to transform the world. In Czechoslovakia, for instance, the revisionists openly urged a `` dismantling" of Marxism-Leninism, seeking to prove that Leninism was not international but a purely ``eastern'' doctrine that was unfit for the advanced countries of the West. The revisionists would like to erode the class content of socialist ideas, including denial of the struggle between capitalism and socialism as the most important aspect of mankind's whole life today. But the strength of socialist ideology lies precisely in its coherence and its organic bond with life and practice.
__ALPHA_LVL4__ IIIAnother method is also widely used in capitalism's present struggle against socialist ideology: bourgeois ideologists insist on a ``plurality'' of ideologies. Actually, they offer a ``choice'' of diverse versions of bourgeois ideology. In the USA, for instance, this means that one can support the Democrats or the Republicans, or patent fascists. There is a similar choice in philosophy, political economy, aesthetics, ethics, etc. But what is flatly denied is one's right to adopt the scientific socialist ideology and struggle against bourgeois ideology.
Making use of this method to erode Marxist-Leninist ideology, the advocates of capitalism insist that there should be different ``socialist'' ideologies in the world. Socialism commands a high prestige and has been attracting more and more social strata. That is why an attempt is being made to invent ``another socialist ideology'', another view of 400 socialism acceptable to the bourgeoisie and to spread this view in contrast to Marxism-Leninism.
Efforts are being made to formulate a system of ``amendments'' to socialist ideology so as to make it ``different''. This system of amendments has come to be known as ``liberalisation'', that is, diverse easements with respect to anti-socialist activity in the socialist countries. This system is also known as ``democratic socialism" despite the fact that when anti-socialist elements take over the political arena there is no sign of socialist democracy. That was well shown by the course of events in Czechoslovakia.
There can be no ``other'' socialism following the origination and development of scientific socialism, or any ``other'' socialist ideology that is not based on Marxism-Leninism, because it is impossible nowadays to abolish the great criterion of the truth---the practice and experience of millions of men.
In the early years of the century Lenin wrote that ``the only choice is---either bourgeois or socialist ideology. There is no middle course''. From this he drew the necessary conclusion: ``Hence, to belittle the socialist ideology in any way, to turn aside from it in the slightest degree means to strengthen bourgeois ideology."^^3^^
Scientific socialism is called scientific because it is based entirely on scientific analysis and does not recognise any equality between truth and error. Of course, search for the truth implies creative discussion and debate, but the search must be based on scientific principles, indisputably established by Marxism-Leninism and tested in struggle and victory.
The bourgeois propaganda of ``pluralist'' socialist ideologies is aimed to undermine the international character of Marxism-Leninism and socialist ideology. Bourgeois theorists and revisionists have tried in vain to refute the basic uniformities underlying the formation and development of socialist society which Marxist-Leninist science has discovered.
Very many books, pamphlets and articles have appeared in the West claiming that the socialism built in the USSR is good only for this country. But tsarist Russia was an epitome of the contemporary imperialist world, for it had industrialised areas with their working class, which was on a par with the working class of the other centers of the capitalist world in organisation, consciousness and revolutionary tradition. The experience in transforming Russia's industry on socialist lines has enriched the treasure house of Marxism-Leninism, being of much value also for the proletariat of the industrialised capitalist countries today.
Russia also had agrarian areas, and experience in developing them on socialist lines has set an example for other countries where agrarian _-_-_
~^^3^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 5, p. 384.
__PRINTERS_P_401_COMMENT__ 36---594 401 relations prevail. Bourgeois theorists experience a sense of fear when they realise that the peoples of the East are taking a close look at the prospering Soviet socialist republics in Central Asia.The experience of socialist construction in the USSR has also shown that the new society cannot be built without the leading role of the working class and its Communist Party or without a cultural revolution, which means a transformation of the spiritual atmosphere in society.
Thus, Soviet experience contains general regularities without which socialist construction is impossible. But it also has its specific aspects, reflecting the specific conditions of development in the USSR and this cannot, of course, be mechanically adopted by other countries taking the socialist path.
Loyalty to the basic principles of Marxism-Leninism and scientific socialism, their creative application in the differing conditions of various countries, and implacable struggle against bourgeois ideology and revisionism---those are the necessary prerequisites for the success of the socialist cause.
__ALPHA_LVL4__ IVAnother bourgeois-propaganda line is to try to ``make breaches" in socialist ideology, so as to infiltrate bourgeois views into various areas of human activity---culture, science, literature, art---in socialist society, ``free'' from the interests of the working people. This line is also aimed to undermine the economic theory of Marxism-Leninism, its assessment of present-day imperialism as the last stage of capitalism, and of the institution of social property and planning as the basis of socialism. Bourgeois ideologists make no secret of the fact that in this way they would like to play down the leading role of the Party in socialist society.
The main aim of the ``breaching'' exercise is to divide the great army of labour, whose strength lies in unity. Bourgeois ideologists dream of separating the intelligentsia and the working class or, at any rate, of estranging some of its groups from the common struggle of the working class and all the other working people. The poison of bourgeois nationalism, they hope, will divide the working people on the nationality principle.
Bourgeois propagandists have been trying mainly to ``breach'' the political consciousness of the working people, so as to make them lose their bearings and to confuse those who may succumb to their influence. They have attacked the principles of socialist democracy, the principles of democratic centralism in the first place, because they know its real power, by means of slander, lies and falsifications. Let us bear in mind that socialist democracy is the highest form of democracy because it awakens broad initiative and activity among the working people, and 402 fully releases their creative energies for the purpose of advancing social development, and throws up insuperable barriers in the way of any anti-socialist and anti-popular activity seeking to reverse the development of society or to plunge it into stagnation. The principle of democratic centralism, consistently practised by the Marxist-Leninist Party, the state, and mass organisations, helps to awaken massive initiative and to concentrate to the utmost the efforts of all on the solution of common problems, ensuring the necessary conditions for the most efficient action by millions of working people.
Unfortunately, some people are inclined to make concessions on the main principles and so to agree to undermine the political organisation of socialist society, eliminate the leading role of the Marxist-Leninist Party, give the anti-socialist elements a free hand and, consequently, freedom to prepare for a return of capitalism.
The CPSU has been tirelessly combating every attempt to dismember the coherent socialist ideology and to divide it among the national and regional detachments. The CPSU has done its utmost to strengthen the unity of the world communist movement on the basis of the principles of Marxism-Leninism and proletarian internationalism.
Socialist ideology has a sound basis in the economic, social and political system in the socialist countries. It expresses the vital interests of the working class and all the other sections of the working people which it rallies. This ideology expresses the progressive tendencies in world history, and there is no power anywhere in the world that could block its successful development. Socialist ideology is not on the defensive but on the offensive.
While socialist ideology has been developing and perfecting itself, penetrating ever deeper into the minds of millions of men in the course of the struggle against bourgeois ideas, bourgeois ideology is in a totally different condition. Its arms bearers have to use mainly subversive methods in their fight against socialist ideology, and that is evidence of the weakness of bourgeois ideas.
Under present-day capitalism, the bourgeoisie is forced increasingly to abandon the old legacy, which no longer meets its class interests, for this legacy stems mainly from the period when the bourgeoisie was still a rising class. Today, many of the key ideas of the past are no longer palatable to the bourgeoisie. By contrast, the working class and the Marxist-Leninist parties are the legitimate heirs of all that is progressive in the past.
At the same time, there is an ever growing process of emancipation from the influence of bourgeois ideology among new social sections. There is ever greater evidence of ideological crisis among the bourgeois intelligentsia, many of whose members have expressed dissatisfaction over the narrow framework in which they are invited to apply their capabilities and knowledge by state-monopoly capitalism with its __PRINTERS_P_402_COMMENT__ 26* 403 hidebound hierarchy. There is growing protest against the callousness and spiritual po.verty of bourgeois society and against the consumer mentality. There is a mounting struggle by the Communists to spread socialist ideology in the ranks of the proletariat and other sections of the working people siding with it. In the countries being swept by the national liberation movement, the prestige of bourgeois ideology has been plummeting because it is closely connected with the policy of colonialism and neocolonialism, while the prestige of socialist ideology has been growing. Those are the facts.
Socialist ideas are bound to win in the fierce struggle of ideas which is now in progress. Socialist ideology alone meets the vital requirements of social development, giving full and all-round expression to the interests and aspirations of millions upon millions of working people all over the globe, and reflecting mankind's inexorable advance towards socialism and communism. Socialist ideology has the truth of life behind it, and the truth is invincible.
__ALPHA_LVL3__ THE IMPACT OF EXAMPLEBourgeois 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.
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."^^4^^
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 _-_-_
~^^4^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 31. p. 457.
404 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.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."^^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''.
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.
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 _-_-_
~^^5^^ Ibid., p. 417.
405 can no longer develop independently of the example set daily by the Communists of the socialist countries in building the new society.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".^^6^^
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.
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."^^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 _-_-_
~^^6^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 31, p. 457.
~^^7^^ Ibid., pp. 418--19.
406 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.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.
``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."^^8^^
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:
``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."^^9^^
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.
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 _-_-_
~^^8^^ Ibid., pp. 417--18.
~^^9^^ Ibid., Vol. 32, p. 437.
407 (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.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.
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.
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.
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.^^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. _-_-_
~^^10^^ The Road to Communism, p. 463.
408 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.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.
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.
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.
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.
409World 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.
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.
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.
The building of communism exerts an influence on the working class and other sections of the working people mainly through the 410 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.
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.
``The plain truth is that factory work is degrading....
``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....
``The worker's attitude toward his work is generally compounded of hatred, shame and resignation."^^11^^
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 _-_-_
~^^11^^ The Nation, August 17, 1957, pp. 65, 67.
411 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.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.
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.
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.
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 412 into practice".^^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.
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.
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.
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.
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 _-_-_
~^^12^^ The Road to Communism, p. 488.
413 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.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."~^^13^^ The objective conditions in the modern world are ripe for the example of communist construction to yield fruitful results.
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.
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."^^14^^
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.
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 _-_-_
~^^13^^ A. Nove, Communist Economic Strategy: Soviet Growth and Capabilities, USA. National Planning Association, 1959, p. 50.
~^^14^^ Ibid., p. 51.
414 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".^^15^^ It is the period of full-scale communist construction, marking the most resolute moment in the competition between socialism and capitalism.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....
``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."^^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.
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\thinspace``~impressed the Indian steel workers and even some of the genuine anti-Communists in the Indian government and business community''.
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 _-_-_
~^^15^^ Karl Marx, Grundrisse der Kritik der politischen Okonomie (Rohentwurf) 1857--1858, Moskau, 1939, S. 593.
~^^16^^ A. Nove, Communist Economic Strategy: Soviet Growth and Capabilities, pp. 51--52.
415 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.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.
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.
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 416 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.
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."^^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.
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 _-_-_
~^^17^^ V. I. Lenin. Collected Works, Vol. 33, p. 157.
__PRINTERS_P_417_COMMENT__ 27---594 417 few, Western experts are doing just that."~^^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.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.
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."^^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.
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."^^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 _-_-_
~^^18^^ A. Nove, Communist Economic Strategy: Soviet Growth and Capabilities, p. 52.
~^^19^^ J. J. Rousseau, Le Control social, Paris, Livre III, Ch. XV, p. 305.
~^^20^^ The Road to Communism, p. 537.
418 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."^^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.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.
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.
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.
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 _-_-_
~^^21^^ Robert K. Merton, Social Theory and Social Structure, The Free Press, Glencoe. Illinois, 1957, pp. 136--37.
419 with scorn."^^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."^^23^^ He draws attention to socialist collectivism and the socialist system of social property.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."^^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.
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.
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.
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.
So long as two opposite and competing social systems exist, men are bound to compare them and their results. A comparison of the facts _-_-_
~^^22^^ Vital Speeches of the Day, October 15, 1961, p. 22.
~^^23^^ Ibid.
~^^24^^ Ibid.
420 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.
[421] __ALPHA_LVL1__ SUBJECT INDEXAgnosticism in sociology---70, 314, 317,
352Anarchism---206 Anti-communism---138, 141, 231, 232, 265,
328, 332--33, 335, 337, 347, 372, 398,
413, 414 Art---391
---abstract---345, 346
B
Capitalism---13, 14, 18, 67, 131, 135, 167, 168, 174--76, 178, 180, 181, 206, 217, 221, 226, 230, 231, 235, 243, 249, 258, 265, 267, 272, 273, 281, 282, 326, 333, 338, 340, 343, 346, 347, 348, 350, 366, 390, 391, 395, 398, 409, 410, 411, 417, 418, 419
---capitalist way of development---64, 129, 364, 365, 366, 367
---criticism of---15, 47, 48, 64, 69, 70, 72--75, 83, 101, 115, 123
Classes, class struggle---18, 24, 25, 27--29, 34--36, 47, 64, 67, 69, 82, 83, 84, 102, 103, 126, 132, 181, 184, 206, 217, 311, 318, 323, 327, 340, 341, 356, 360, 366, 377, 381, 384, 388, 393, 413
Collectivisation---167, 417, 418
Colonial system of imperialism---128, 250
Communism (as a theory)---96, 109, 110, 116, 120, 121, 122, 125, 133, 149, 158--60, 234, 239, 240, 254--56, 261, 263, 271, 273, 275, 276, 278, 327--30, 332, 333, 334, 337, 352, 392, 409, 410--12, 413, 414, 416, 418, 419, 420
__COLUMN2__---Malthusianism---334, 369
---neo-Kantian conceptions---203, 321, 323
---positivist schemes---118, 243, 313, 315, 319, 321, 322, 327, 384, 385
---psychosociological theories---380, 381, 382, 383, 385
---social Darwinism---318, 370
422---as the higher phase of development---121, 159, 161, 263, 369
---egalitarian---38, 41, 43, 53--56
---Utopian---35, 38, 40--42, 49--51, 54, 64, 69, 83, 84, 98, 108, 115--17, 119, 226
Communist morality---292
Culture---229, 266, 358--61
---bourgeois---345, 359--62, 419
---of antiquity---259, 260, 353, 354, 362, 363
---socialist---360, 408
---spiritual---161, 346, 349, 350
__COLUMN2__---in the philosophy, science, and culture of the early 20th century---358, 360, 362, 378
---in the social thought of antiquity---30, 31
---in Utopian theories---66, 69, 71, 75, 76
Ideology
---bourgeois---13--15, 132, 140, 198, 202, 204, 244, 255, 257, 263, 321--33, 336, 342, 345, 346, 351, 382, 397, 399--402
---Marxist-Leninist---195, 392, 400, 403, 404, 421
---the struggle of ideologies---13, 20, 139--40, 145, 176, 198, 245, 255, 256, 257, 329, 337, 390--93, 395--97, 397--98, 403, 404, 413, 415, 421
Imperialism---132, 148, 154, 168, 175, 181, 193, 204, 211, 216, 221--24, 227, 231, 232--35, 239, 244, 247--49, 252, 356, 377, 384
---final stage of the development of capitalism---205
---the eve of the socialist revolution---150, 151, 182
Individualism, bourgeois See Bourgeois individualism Intelligentsia
---bourgeois---15, 182, 188, 196, 202, 246, 403, 416
---national---137
---technical intelligentsia---181, 344 International working-class movement---115, 326, 331
Internationalism, proletarian See Proletarian internationalism
DDialectical method---101, 383 Dialectics---16, 97, 99, 204, 210 "ascendant dialectics"---16
---dialectical process of the development of society---16, 70, 117, 168,224, 315, 354, 355
---materialist---12, 16, 120, 122, 220, 224, 291
Dictatorship
---of the bourgeoisie---51, 274
---of the proletariat---13, 111--14, 118, 122, 152, 156, 163, 165, 210, 220, 225, 227, 254, 274, 388, 397
---revolutionary---107, 115, 125
Epoch
---historical---168, 176, 238, 266, 354, 358, 364, 368
Exploitation---37, 46--48, 49, 65, 67, 69, 72, 89, 92, 94, 101, 102, 112, 117, 145, 172, 194, 200, 256, 259, 261, 263, 287, 289, 298, 343, 348, 371, 374, 375, 392, 405, 406, 413
Bourgeoisie---119, 125, 136, 154, 168, 175, 186, 204, 214, 215, 217, 219, 224, 242, 244, 260, 293, 303, 307, 310, 311, 316, 338, 340, 342--44, 355, 403
Bourgeois individualism---139, 265, 272, 345, 378, 419
Bourgeois liberalism---90, 307, 309--13, 316, 319, 320,333, 337, 338, 339, 342--45, 347
---neoliberalism---337, 339--41, 344-- 46, 370
Bourgeois sociology (conceptions of)---16, 134, 169, 186, 195, 257, 265, 282, 312, 349, 350, 351, 357, 358, 361, 362, 372, 383, 384, 386, 387, 390
---``cyclic'' theories: Fourier---70, 71 ---"modern---32; 317, 363--71 Pythagoreans---32; Vico---44, 45
---"economic growth" theory---375-- 77
---"empirical sociology"---384--86
---"industrial sociology"---198, 350. 351
Fascism---182, 252, 331--34, 371
---ideology of fascism---347
H
Humanism---38, 39, 48, 56, 57, 95, 97, 98 I
Idealism---16, 27, 94, 95, 97, 98, 100, 203, 204, 205--06, 265, 320--21, 348, 394, 395
---in the conceptions of the Enlighteners---46
Labour---69--72, 74, 75, 99, 101, 262, 263, 268, 269, 277, 281, 292, 295, 2%, 376, 380, 381
---communist labour---277--82, 284--87, 2%
---distinctions between mental and manual labour---162,286,296,297, 300
---division of labour---323, 409
---instruments of labour---266, 267, 283
---organisation of labour---161, 162,
163, 165, 273, 275, 351, 389
---productivity of labour---159, 162,
164, 172, 255, 266--71, 283, 323, 375, 389, 395
423---social---165, 180, 192, 193, 194, 264, 269--71, 273, 277, 412, 420
---Utopian theories of emancipation of labour---48, 49, 64, 66, 68
Liberalism, bourgeois~
See Bourgeois liberalism
---Marxist-Leninist---12, 19, 104, 141, 152, 153, 158, 165, 166, 167, 185, 189,
191, 192, 194--97, 209, 219, 228, 229, 256, 258, 260, 261, 275, 292, 299, 302, 304, 327, 390, 399, 403, 413
---political organisation of the working class---104--08, 113, 114, 1%, 209, 307, 346, 347
Peace---15, 231, 233, 234, 236--41, 248, 249, 251, 253, 255--57, 258, 332, 334, 395, 3%, 398
---Utopian vision of lasting peace---55, 57--63
Peaceful coexistence---234, 236--39, 255,
256--58, 393 Peasantry---78, 79, 113, 121, 137, 175, 188,
201, 225, 226, 228, 253, 260, 408
---peasant wars---106, 175 Philosophy---11, 103, 112, 146, 186, 201,
203--05, 313, 349, 358 Philosophy of history---16, 349, 364, 372 Political organisation of society---146, 163,
173, 211, 288, 310, 313, 331,412
---bourgeois---186, 224, 344, 346, 347
---socialist---405
Politics, political struggle---12, 19, 104, 108, 116, 120, 141, 175, 183, 196, 232, 236, 238, 239--44, 247--50, 252, 254, 255, 311, 330, 335, 343, 344, 346, 392, 394
Positivism---344, 348, 358, 375, 376, 379, 384,
Power
---of the bourgeoisie---93, 94, 341--42
---revolutionary---49
---state---115, 172--74, 217, 347 Production---14, 53, 60, 64, 71, 100, 101,
120, 121, 132, 133, 150--52, 174, 180,
192, 193, 194, 195, 226, 237, 265--67, 268--70, 274, 279, 288, 293, 348, 359, 362, 375, 380--82, 395, 415
Productive forces---109, 119--21, 123, 124, 126, 127, 132, 133, 161, 203, 210, 211, 216, 227, 229--31, 247, 255, 258, 261, 266--68, 278--80, 283, 349, 350, 363, 365, 368, 376, 383, 405, 410
Progress, social~
See Social progress~
Proletarian internationalism---107, 125, 141, 142, 403
Proletariat---69, 114, 136, 137, 148, 153, 154, 155, 184, 188, 204, 207, 210, 212--15, 222--24, 232, 233, 253, 254, 269, 319, 344, 356, 366, 370, 411
Property
424---private---37, 38, 41, 42, 50, 53, 55. 64, 75, 76, 85, 102, 111, 120, 135, 146. 191, 193, 265, 297, 316, 328, 329, 338, 345, 362, 371, 3%, 413, 415
---public---50, 51, 53--55, 75, 76, 81, 86, 131, 140, 178, 180, 191, 261, 262, 268, 272, 316, 328, 348, 371, 396, 413, 420, 421
Social progress---109, 138, 148, 149, 255, 256, 259--64, 269, 275, 289, 290, 303, 313, 316, 318, 319, 374, 391, 392, 408, 409, 415
---bourgeois conceptions of---43, 45-- 48, 64, 84, 85, 118, 311, 313, 314, 319, 320, 327, 328, 366
---historical---106, 191, 368, 369, 373
---intellectual---290--92
---Marxist-Leninist teaching of---111, 113
---moral---290--92
---scientific and technical---284, 322, 414
---theory of---148, 149, 259, 260, 351, 354, 357, 374
---Utopian theories of---38, 40, 41, 64, 65, 66, 71, 72, 75, 76, 370, 371
Social thought---11, 12, 14, 15, 17, 18, 19, 20, 25, 26
---bourgeois---13, 20, 83, 178, 199, 200, 201, 202, 204, 210, 269, 307, 308, 309, 326, 327, 332, 336, 337, 344, 347, 348, 349, 353, 394
---connection with the development of dialectical thought---28, 98, 100, 101
---connection with the development of natural science---31, 32, 37, 45, 93, 177, 178, 205, 258, 271, 294, 312, 325
---connection with the development of philosophical thought---96, 101, 169---connection with the development of political thought---13, 58, 61, 62
---connection with the development of the social sciences---25, 27, 43, 64, 91, 94, 97, 104, 115, 217, 293, 322
---emergence of---11, 12, 23, 25
---main stages of development---24, 25, 28, 29--34, 35, 42, 43, 46, 47, 48, 50, 52, 56, 58, 59, 64, 70, 72, 74, 76--78, 82, 83, 92, 94, 96, 111, 120, 121, 124, 131, 145, 148, 150, 151, 153, 198--201, 203, 204, 205, 222, 258, 259, 262, 293, 304, 307, 308, 312, 348, 352, 390, 416
Socialism (as a theory)---16, 18, 133, 135, 149, 157, 158, 160, 161, 165, 167, 168, 180, 182, 214, 215, 219, 222, 227, 228, 231, 233, 234, 235, 249, 257, 273, 292, 329, 330, 338, 392, 395, 397, 398, 399, 400, 404, 405, 408, 409--11, 413, 416, 418, 420
---bourgeois conceptions of---13, 14
425M
Marxism-Leninism---11, 12, 16, 63, 89, 105--08, 110, 111, 112, 114--16, 120, 123, 124, 132--34, 136, 140, 141, 145, 146, 171, 174, 188, 197, 200, 201, 202, 225, 228, 230, 234, 237, 255, 260, 261, 265, 266, 277, 291--93, 319, 320, 322, 362, 364, 365, 371, 373, 388, 392, 397, 402, 412
Marxist sociology---356
Masses of people---19, 20
---their role in social development---11, 48, 80, 104, 108, 140, 145, 184, 185, 188, 189, 190, 1%, 248, 249, 255, 258, 260, 372, 373, 406, 409
Materialism---94, 100, 149, 204, 224, 348
---dialectical---16, 77, 95, 152, 230, 291, 312, 352, 357
---historical---19, 26, 77, 99, 291, 312, 384
mechanistic, metaphysical---198, 203
---philosophical---94, 95, 101, 103, 391, 392
---spontaneous---26, 27 Metaphysics---46, 70, 168, 224, 256, 265,
314, 366 Militarism---151, 233, 243, 247, 248, 251,
252, 253, 392 Mode of production---25, 109, 111, 124,
168, 169, 171, 172, 174--76, 266, 321,
349, 358, 375, 383, 392 Morality, communist~
See Communist morality~
RReformism---12, 204
Regularities (uniformities) of social development---114, 169--71, 192, 238, 275
Relations of production---98, 104, 110,180, 210, 211, 216, 267, 297, 307, 349, 350, 363, 365, 368, 377, 382
Religion
---religious ideology---23, 24, 32--34, 60, 66, 94, 103, 307, 308, 324, 367, 370, 391, 394, 395
Revolution---102, 108, 120, 124, 210, 211, 228, 229, 230, 231, 264, 391, 404, 405, 407
---bourgeois---48, 53, 54, 61, 63, 78, 114, 174, 175, 177, 211, 224, 225, 227, 245, 308, 309, 310, 370, 405, 406, 412
---cultural---157, 164, 167, 402
---myth about the exported revolution---228, 329, 330
---revolutionary initiative---11, 14, 113, 114
---social---110,126, 127, 128, 223, 365
---socialist---76, 87, 88, 113, 125, 126, 127--30, 147, 148, 151, 154, 155, 167, 198, 205, 211--15, 218--23, 225--28, 231, 233, 234, 239, 248, 253, 263, 327, 328, 332, 352, 397, 405, 406, 407
Revolutionary situation---211--14, 217. 218, 221, 222
N
Scientific and technical progress---177, 178, 183, 184, 258, 259, 267, 293, 307, 414
Scientific and technical revolution---149, 171--81, 182, 183, 414
Scientific communism---12, 13, 18, 95--97, 100, 101, 104, 106, 110, 114--16, 135, 204, 258, 263, 271, 292, 293, 304, 367, 374, 3%, 412
Scientific theory of social development---318
National liberation movement---136, 137, 141, 154, 157, 167, 222, 223, 227, 228, 249, 251--54, 256, 371, 415
Neopositivism---16, 18, 371
Noncapitalist way of development---87, 91
Paris Commune---11, 112--14, 328, 329. 363 Party
---doctrinaire---119, 120
---Utopian---49, 55, 56, 64--65, 69, 70, 71--77, 79, 83, 87, 96, 98, 108, 115, 116, 117, 122, 133, 274, 291, 292
---vulgar---124, 125. Society
---and the individual---40, 50, 51, 66, 276, 288, 289, 297, 298, 316, 344, 345, 380, 381
---and nature---66, 69, 94, 95, 145, 146, 204, 294, 317, 350, 352
---development of---11,12,15, 63,64, 90, 91, 92, 109, 120, 146--48, 149, 153, 229, 231, 260, 272, 273, 288, 289, 295, 320, 323, 336, 344, 351, 352, 356, 358, 380, 388, 389, 406, 408, 416.
---history of---146, 316
---social organisation of---64, 65, 66, 68, 70, 71, 72, 75, 125, 261, 273, 274, 376, 377, 417
---social structure of---46, 47, 64, 65, 70, 102, 103, 132, 135--37, 140, 321, 350, 352, 353, 362, 376, 377, 381--83, 404, 408, 412
Society
---capitalist---176, 275, 344, 348, 349, 350, 375, 376, 391
---communist---122, 255, 285, 286
---slave-holding---168, 353--55
---socialist---122, 123, 129, 133, 157, 160, 167, 194, 231, 268, 269, 270, 272, 273, 275, 277, 288, 293, 302, 395, 408, 410, 414
Socio-economic formation---166--68, 173,
266, 267, 270, 321, 322, 353, 354--57,
368, 397 Sociology, bourgeois~
See Bourgeois sociology~
Sociology, Marxist~
See Marxist sociology~
State~
---bourgeois---43, 60, 117, 118, 242, 338, 340
---slave-holding---171, 173
---socialist---151, 152, 156, 167, 184, 235, 239, 240, 242, 269, 274, 287
Struggle
---anti-imperialist---140
---revolutionary---77, 105, 107, 112, 138, 153, 201, 237
Surplus-labour---101 Surplus-product---101 Surplus-value---101, 193
Transitional period from capitalism to socialism---122, 123, 138, 159, 162, 163, 209, 220, 225, 227, 230, 254, 397
U
Utopia---14, 18, 20, 84, 115, 119, 274, 371
W
War---56, 132, 154, 171, 176, 214, 223, 228--36, 240--43, 246--49, 251, 253, 255, 331, 334, 369, 371, 417
---possibility of preventing---55--57, 58
Working class (See also Proletariat)
---grave-digger of capitalism---13
---historical mission---76, 93, 101, 104, 106, 108, 120, 126, 153, 209, 211, 223, 304, 328, 344
---its role in social development---16, 65, 76, 87, 104, 106, 112, 136, 137, 138, 148, 155, 163, 181, 184, 185, 188, 1%, 198, 200, 211, 215, 216, 219, 223--26, 227, 231, 250, 251, 254, 256, 258, 260, 292, 316, 331, 332, 339, 346, 347, 356, 388, 402, 403, 408, 410
World communist movement---113, 158, 1%, 219, 224, 228, 229, 251, 252, 304, 397
World revolutionary process---77, 79, 80, 91, 124, 125, 126, 128,130, 137--40, 148, 154--59, 222, 226--28, 238, 251, 252, 254, 405,409
World socialist system---127,128,148,157, 158, 167, 219, 232, 244, 246, 249, 250, 252, 255, 256, 333, 334, 356, 397, 409, 410, 417, 421
[426] __ALPHA_LVL1__ NAME INDEXAeschylus---353 Adenauer, Konrad---347 Albrecht, Karl---109 Aquinas, Thomas---34 Aristotle---31, 325, 353 Aron, Raymond---257 St. Augustine---33, 56, 309
Cabet, Etienne---116
Campanella, Tommazo---40--44, 45, 47, 49,
53 Chernyshevsky, Nikolai Gavrilovich---77,
78, 82--91, 125 Churchill, Winston---334 Clausewitz, Karl von---247 Coleman, James S.---387 Comte, Auguste---66, 68, 70, 118, 312--15,
319, 320, 323, 324, 327, 344, 352, 376,
378Condorcet, Jean Antoine de---46, 66, 308 Constant, Benjamin---310 Copernicus, Nicolaus---36, 93 Corneille, Pierre---169 Coulange, Fustel de---170 Cousins, Norman---340 Cromwell, Oliver---51, 52 Cruc£, Emeric---58 Custine, Astolphe de---82
B
Babeuf, Francois Noel (Gracchus)---52,
53, 107, 125, 310 Bailey, Robert B.---372, 373, 374 Bakunin, Mikhail Alexandrovich---118--20,
134, 205, 226 Bardet, Gaston---370 Barnes, Harry Elmer---31, 37, 349 Barruel, 1'AbW---308 Becker, Howard---31, 37 Belinsky, Vissarion Grigoryevich---35, 36 Bernard, Luther Lee---371 Bernstein, Eduard---111, 202 Blanc, Louis---108 Blanqui, Auguste---108, 116 Bochenski, Innocent Joseph M.---328, 329 Bodin, Jean---44 Bonald, Louis Gabriel Ambroise de---
308Bouthoul, Gaston---59, 378 Bowles, Chester---228 Brdhier, Emile---352, 353, 355, 359 Bukharin, Nikolai Ivanovich---220, 234 Burgess, Ernest---378
D
Dardel, Eric---357
Darwin, Charles---93, 352
Democritus---26
Dfeamy, Theodore---95, 107, 116
Dobrolyubov, Nikolai Alexandrovich---77,
82, 83, 89--91 Dodd, Thomas J.---336 Dolcino, Fra---35 Doni, Anton Francesco---40 Dopsch, Alfons---170, 174
427Duhois. Pierre - 56
Dulles, John Foster---244, 248, 334
Durkheim, Emile---323, 324, 376
Isnard, Gustav---61
Mar^chal, Pierre-Sylvain---52
Marcuse, Herbert---136, 182
Marini---57
Marx, Karl---15, 16, 23, 24, 53, 70, 73, 87, 89, 92, 95--104, 108--32, 131--41, 146, 148, 149--51, 154--55, 159, 172, 173, 174, 177, 188, 193, 198, 199, 200, 202, 203, 206, 210, 211, 219, 223, 226, 227, 228, 230, 256, 259, 260, 262, 263--66, 282, 285, 291, 328, 329, 330, 332, 367, 387, 415
Maurois, Andrd---315
Maxey, Chester C---325
Mayhew, Cristopher---393
Mayo, Elton---325
Mehring, Franz---76
Merton, Robert K.---419
Meslier, Jean---51, 52
Mignet, Francois A. M.---103
Mikhailovsky,
Nikolai
Konstan-
tinovich---206
Miller, Raymond W.---420
Montesquieu, Charles de---45, 60, 66
More, Thomas---38--40, 41--44, 45, 47, 49, 57, 146
Morelly---35, 49, 50, 51, 56
Munzer, Thomas---35
N
Northrop, Filmer Stuart---359 Nove, Alec---414, 415, 417, 418
O
Ogburn, William---349--51
Ovid---30
Owen, Robert---69, 74--76, 90, 95, 102, 274
Riesman, David---345
Ritchie, Arthur David---350
Roosevelt, Franklin D.---340
Ropke, Wilhelm---370
Rossiter, Clinton---341
Rostow, Walt Whitman---247, 375--77
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques---32, 47, 48, 54,
55, 61, 412, 418 Ruge, Arnold---98, 115 Russel, Bertrand---247, 318, 350
Engels, Frederick---11, 25, 35, 53, 56, 69, 87, 89, 92, 97, 98, 99, 100, 102, 104, 107--11, 114, 117, 119--22, 126--30, 136-- 39, 148, 149, 150, 157, 159, 168--70, 173, 188, 210, 219, 230, 247, 263, 265, 291, 310, 328, 329, 332, 383
Epicurus---26, 353
Erasmus Roterodamus---57
Erhard, Ludwig---339, 340
Euripides---353
Jaspers, Karl---257 Jefferson, Thomas---245, 310, 342 John XXIII---347, 3% Justinian---171
K
Kant, Immanuel---61, 62, 200
Kautsky, Karl---128, 130
Kennedy, John F.---246
Komensky, Jan Amos---58, 59, 61, 146
Kovalevsky, Maxim Maximovich---43, 288
Kuhlmann, Georg---109
Kuznets, Simon---414
Saint-Pierre, Charles Irdnee de---59, 60
Saint-Simon, Claude-Henry de Rouvroy---56, 65--71, 74, 83, 85, 89, 97, 100, 103, 108, 118, 274, 307, 313--15, 323
Schurtz, Heinrich---25
Simon, Pierre-Henry---335
Skazkin, Sergei Danilovich---35
Sombart, Werner---199
Smith, Adam---83, 84, 101
Spencer, Herbert---243, 312, 313, 315--18, 320, 323--25, 328, 344, 350, 352, 377
Spengler, Oswald---328
Spinoza, Benedict---45, 372
Stasyulevich, Mikhail Matveyevich---34
Sternberg, Lev Yakovlevich---24
Strausz-Hupe, Robert---384
Suarez, Francisco---57
Sully, Maximilien B&hune de---70
Feuerbach, Ludwig---79, 83, 96--97, 198 Fisher, Herbert A. Laurens---372 Fourier, Charles---55, 56, 69, 70, 71--77, 79, 83, 85, 90, 95, 99, 104, 108, 274, 307
Galilei, Galileo---93
Galliffet, Gaston---233
Gibbon, Edward---169
Giddings, Franklin H.---380
Gobineau, Joseph Arthur de---346
Goebbels, Joseph Paul---333
Gogol, Nikolai Vassilyevich---36
Gooch, George Peabody---364
Gouldner, Alvin---17
Gramsci, Antonio---19, 384
Guerry, Emile---396
Guizot, Fran?ois Pierre Guillaume---103,
169 Gurvitch, Georges---15, 16, 17
H
Halpern, Ben---386
Haxthausen, August von---82
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich---24, 78,
83, 97, 98--100, 102, 103, 314, 357, 359 Heraclitus---26
Herder, Johann Gottfried von---46, 308 Herzen, Alexander Ivanovich---63, 77--82,
88, 91, 125 Hess, Moses---98 Heyerdahl, Thor---360 Hobbes, Thomas---43 Huxley, Aldous---369
Lafargue, Paul---311, 316, 317
Landheer, Bart---360
Laski, Harold---367
Lassalle, Ferdinand---79
Lavau, Georges E.---341
Leibnitz, Gottfried Wilhelm von---59
Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich---11, 12, 35, 36, 53, 77, 83, 92, 94, 95, 97, 100, 103--14, 121, 122, 127--31, 133, 135--38, 147, 148--67, 172, 173, 174, 175, 176, 178, 179, 184, 188, 189--91, 197, 200--02, 204, 205, 206--10, 211--25, 227, 228--43, 253, 254, 262, 263, 267, 270--74, 275, 277--78, 280--82, 284--87, 289, 291, 292, 295, 299, 300, 301, 318--20, 326, 329, 332, 336, 338, 339, 343, 354--56, 368, 377, 383, 384, 385, 388, 389--90, 397, 401, 404--08, 409, 417, 420
Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim---83, 308
Locke, John---43, 101
Lowell, Abbott Lawrence---343
Lucretius Titus Carus---26, 31, 32
Luther, Martin---40
Tarde, Gabriel---276 Taylor, Carl C.---385 Thierry, Augustin---103 Tonnies, Ferdinand---380 Toynbee, Arnold---325, 265--68 Trotsky, Lev Borisovich---225 Turgot, Anne Robert Jacques---45
Parsons, Talcott---377, 379
Penn, William---59
Perroux, Fran§ous---412
Petty, William---101
Plato---30, 31, 41, 328
Popper, Karl---379
Porshnev, Boris Fyodorovich---51, 52
Proudhon, Pierre-Joseph---80, 117, 118
Vanini, Lucilio---40
Vic6, Giovanni Battista---44, 45, 71
Vipper, Robert Yuryevich---308, 315
Virgil---33
Vitoria, Francisco de---57
Volgin, Vyacheslav Petrovich---30, 40, 49,
53, 74 Voltaire, Francois Marie Arouet de---44,
60--61
428M
Mably, Gabriel Bonnot de---35, 54, 55--56,
74Machiavelli Niccolo---37, 38, 45 Maclver, Robert Morrison---380 McKenzie, Robert---343 MacLeish, Archibald---335
Rashevsky, Nicholas---387 Read, Herbert---334 Rickert, Heinrich---321
429 WWard, Lester---380
Weber, Alfred---348
Weber, Max---321, 322
Weitling, Wilhelm---76, 108, 109, 116
Wetter, Gustaw A.---257, 258 Wilson, Woodrow---342 Windelband, Wilhelm---321 Winstanley, Gerrard---51 Wright, Quincy---367, 368
[430] __ALPHA_LVL0__ The End. [END]REQUEST TO READERS
Progress Publishers would be glad to have your opinion of this book, its translation and design and any suggestions you may have for future publications.
Please send all your comments to 21, Zubovsky Boulevard, Moscow, USSR.
[431]Erratum~
Should read~
Page 254, lines 4 3 from bottom, subtitle
Communism Is Pea< *> ,un1 Friendship Among Nations
[432]G. P. Frantsov's Philosophy and Sociology presents a broad historical panorama of the development of mankind's philosophical and sociological thinking over the centuries and shows how forward-looking social thinkers sought the answers to the basic questions of social progress until these were provided by Marxism-Leninism.
This is a profound and creative philosophical and sociological analysis of the basic laws of transition from capitalism to socialism, of the socialist revolution, the construction of socialism and communism, and of scientific, technical, spiritual and moral progress.
This is also a critical analysis of the historical evolution and contemporary state of bourgeois philosophical and sociological thought.
[433]