SCIENTIFIC POLITICS AND MORALITY
p The emergence and formation of authentically scientific policies is connected with the appearance of Marxism on the historical arena. The awareness of the laws of social development for the first time created the preconditions for utilizing these laws for the achievement of specific goals, for prognoses and for the regulation of socio-economic processes. Marxism was the first scientific doctrine to become the property of the masses and the ideological weapon in the struggle to transform the world.
p The entire span of history is connected with the struggle of the working people against their oppressors. This struggle gave birth to profound social and moral feelings, a striving for freedom and justice. The goals of the struggle in each instance reflected real social requirements, but bore a predominantly negative character, for they expressed the moral indignation of the people with unjust social relations. Negation of the old was a way of expressing a striving for something different, something the direct opposite of that which existed in reality.
p The dreams of a just society, although they were associated with notions of freedom, equality, and brotherhood nevertheless remained unclear and undefined. The diffuse nature of such notions comes quite rapidly to surface, as one form of exploitation and inequality is simply replaced by another. Even the most glittering revolutionary victories of the past by no means led to the full liberation of man. It proved impossible to embody the moral ideals of these fighters against the old world in a new social order—for economics turned a deaf ear and dictated its own conditions. If an ideal did not coincide with these conditions, then sooner or later the illusory nature of the ideal was made clear and disillusionment set in. Once again the contradiction between moral ideal and reality was enacted.
68p Marxism was the first to introduce human goal-directed activity stemming from a scientific awareness of the objective long term prospects for the development of society. Engels observed that Marx had approached the analysis of the capitalist social order in a scientific manner. He wrote:" According to the laws of bourgeois economics, the greatest part of the product does not belong to the workers who have produced it. If we now say: that is unjust, that ought not to be so, then that has nothing immediately to do with economics. We are merely saying that this economic fact is in contradiction to our sense of morality. Marx, therefore, never based his communist demands upon this, but upon the inevitable collapse of the capitalist mode of production which is daily taking place before our eyes to an ever greater degree; he says only that surplus value consists of unpaid labour, which is a simple fact.” [68•1
p Marxist science decisively rejects moral judgements which cannot be determined to have their foundation in necessity. Even the yearning to serve noble causes cannot determine or correct the results achieved by science.
p In 1884 Engels wrote to Paul Lafargue: "Marx would protest against the economic, ’political and social ideal’ which you attribute to him. When one is a ’man of science’, one does not have an ideal; one works out scientific results, and when one is a party man to boot, one fights to put them in practice. But when one has an ideal, one cannot be a man of science, for one starts out with preconceptions.” [68•2
p Lenin also firmly opposed the replacement of the scientific analysis of social life by moralistic critique and the substitution of trie subjectively desired for the objectively real. "Marx treated the question of communism,” he wrote, "in the same way as a naturalist would treat the question of the development of, say, a new biological variety, once he knew that it had originated in such and such a way and was changing in such and such a definite direction.” [68•3 In other words Marxists study the birth of a new society from the old as well as its transitional forms, etc., precisely as an inevitable natural historical process conforming to laws.
p In this manner the ideal of a just society was brought down from the world of dreams and anchored to the ground. The 69 dream acquired a socio-economic foundation as well as real perspectives. This ideal, further, did not lose its moral excellence, since the analysis of the laws of social development demonstrated that in the process of this development there is created the objective possibility of such a society in which authentic equality and justice, peace and happiness will reign supreme. Having defined the moral ideal as a concrete goal Marxist science added to it a truly purposeful nature.
p Marxist scientific analysis helped give a correct moral assessment to a number of highly complex social phenomena. To cite one example: in 1914, one of the most outstanding Russian Marxists, G. V. Plekhanov, shaken by the barbarity of the German army, which had turned Belgium into ruins, tried to give an evaluation of the World War from the point of view of simple laws of morality and justice. In this context Plekhanov justified the "natural right to defence" proceeding from a statement of which nation may be considered the “aggressor” and which the "defending side”. This position led G. V. Plekhanov to the conclusion that Russia which at that time had suffered a number of major defeats and from the military point of view was a defensive country, was no longer an imperialist plunderer and hence was conducting a just war. A mistaken initial premise made Plekhanov in this question the confederate of chauvinists and social-patriots, that is to say, it placed him in the camp of those against whom he fought throughout his life.
p Lenin provided a Marxist evaluation of the war, thereby laying the foundations of the doctrine of the two types of war—the just and the unjust. Although in the very definition of types of wars there is contained a moral assessment Lenin did not proceed from "simple laws of morality" and was not guided by moral and ethical categories. Lenin’s moral feelings were also offended by the bloody carnage. He wrote: "Socialists have always condemned wars between nations as barbarous and brutal.” [69•1 But the object of his research did not become those horrors which are the inevitable accompaniment of war in general. Lenin analysed the causes for and trie nature of war—as an historian and economist, viz., a scholar.
p He defined the wars unleashed by the imperialists and directed at the re-division of the world and spheres of influence as unjust. Such wars are profoundly inimical to the interests of working people as a whole and to the class struggle 70 of the proletariat for socialism in particular. Quite another matter is civil war as well as war for social and national liberation. These wars are not only historically inexorable, but also profoundly just. In the final result such wars lead to the liquidation of war as a whole.
p Thus Marxist scientific analysis provided the opportunity of classifying wars, of determining their origins, class nature, feasible tendencies as well as effects. The stance toward and moral evaluation of wars as just and unjust were for Lenin founded upon objective scientific data.
p Marxist science determines the policies for the revolutionary party of the working class as well as the strategy and tactics for its struggle. The victory of the Great October Socialist Revolution crowning an entire era of battles for the liberation of the working peoples, represented the triumph of MarxistLeninist theory. Having liquidated private ownership of the basic means of production and turned them into the property of the entire people as a whole, the Soviet Republic became the first country to introduce on a state level scienific planning and management over social and economic transformations.
p Soon after the October Revolution, in April 1918, Lenin wrote an article entitled "Draft Plan of Scientific and Technical Work”, In this article the task was set before the Academy of Sciences of drawing up in the shortest possible interval a plan for the economic growth of Russia. The necessity of conducting a series of scientific investigations was also mentioned in the article. Inviting the most outstanding scholars to the task of the drawing up of an economic plan, many of whom it was impossible to classify as even “sympathizing” with Soviet power, Lenin tried to involve them in the working out of the higher sphere of communist policies, for these policies are "the most concentrated expression of economics". [70•1 Further, the first long-range plan for socio-economic transformation in the history of mankind, namely the State Plan tor the Electrification of Russia, was also worked out with the participation of major scholars and specialists and embodied in concrete tasks the general Marxist proposition concerning the planned creation of the material basis for socialism. Lenin called this plan the second Party programme.
p The Soviet Republic, said Lenin, stands in need of plans of broad scope drawn up by science. They are necessary "in a visual, popular form, for the masses, so as to carry them 71 forward with a clear and vivid perspective (entirely scientific at its foundations)....” [71•1
p In the experience of the building of socialism and communism in the USSR the purposeful nature of historical creativity has emerged in such an unambiguous manner that for the first time it is possible to speak of the conscious creation of a new socio-economic formation. History has confirmed the effectiveness of Marxist policies, which rely upon scientific knowledge.
p The bourgeoisie has also attempted to rely upon the social sciences. We are not concerned here simply with a change in the "system of phrases" employed by bourgeois political figures who have replaced the old words and slogans with terms and notions in scientific guise which were once the exclusive property of a narrow circle of specialists. Capitalism, it is observed in the Report of the Central Committee of the CPSU to the 24th Congress of the CPSU, "...is trying to adapt itself to the new situation in the world.... Hence, the bourgeoisie’s striving to use more camouflaged forms of exploitation and oppression of the working people, and its readiness now and again to agree to partial reforms in order to keep the masses under its ideological and political control as far as possible.” [71•2 But on the basis of imprecise initial data no more or less fruitful policies can be devised. If in the contemporary world advanced economic life is impossible without the employment of the latest achievements of natural sciences, for the same reason contemporary bourgeois policies long ago began to avail themselves of the services of the social sciences.
p Why has this been possible? Let us try to delve into the matter.
p In our everyday language we are accustomed to use the expression "science requires”. In point of fact the scientific truth attained by the scholar carries no intrinsic requirements. People set their own demands before science, it only speaks to the possibility and necessary conditions for the fulfilment of these demands. In this sense the results achieved by science can no more be categorized as moral or immoral than can be necessity itself. To speak in the given instance of the morality or immorality of this or that objective scientific conclusion is just as irrelevant as it would be, on the basis of any given law of 72 physics, to render a judgement on the immorality of nature itself.
p The chemist’s conclusions concerning the inevitability of an explosion given the combination of certain substances can neither be classified as moral or immoral. The same may be said of Marx’s discovery of the laws underlying recessions and crises in the capitalist economy, although these crises do bring hunger and unemployment to working people.
p The effect of gas upon the human organism is a scientific problem, not a concoction of "evil people ’ who have designed gas warfare. The problem was posed by life itself from that point in time when men began to descend into mines and work in chemical enterprises. The conclusions reached by scientists from their work upon this problem establish only conformities. These findings can be employed equally for working out security measures in these very same mines or for the construction of gas chambers.
p The objective conclusions arrived at by the social sciences likewise merely place before man the problem of choices. Marx, for example, gave theoretical foundation to the assertion that the victory of socialism and the collapse of capitalism conform to historical laws. He demonstrated that this victory will be achieved as a result of the class struggle waged by the proletariat against the bourgeoisie, whose resistance is just as inevitable. Can it be considered that this conclusion provided some sort of “universal” maxim? Of course not. It placed man squarely before the problem—to struggle on the side of the working class for socialism or together with the bourgeoisie for the prolongation of capitalism. Such a formulation of the question is by no means scholastic, even given a knowledge of the final result of this struggle. For a moral assessment and corresponding choice of position will depend not upon knowledge itself, but rather upon the class approach to the problem.
p The independence of the scientist from society and from the dominant views held by that society is extremely relative. He lives and works precisely in this society and is bound to it by thousands of visible and invisible strings. In this context the position of the social scientist is complicated by the fact that he as distinct from the naturalist is incapable of setting himself at a remove from the object under investigation.
p The object of study for the social sciences is human society. Its laws of development are objective. Therefore in the analysis of a given process or processes, representatives of the humanities, holding a variety of class positions, cannot each 73 attain "his own”, identically objective (and thereby mutually exclusive) truths. Despite the existence of bourgeois and proletarian philosophy or political economy, history or ethics, the objective truths for each concrete problem number not two, three, or a multitude, but one. And objective, viz., authentic conclusions from science are of equal value for all.
p At the same time any new truth attained by the social sciences in an antagonistic society will always find a hostile reception from someone or another. There have never been problems in these sciences which in one manner or another did not touch upon the interests of definite classes, social strata or groups.
p In problems touching upon the “foundations” of society the striving for a stability of views often reflected nothing other than the striving of the ruling classes to stabilize their position. The attempt to overturn these views unfailingly brought the scientist into conflict with those for whom precisely the given views were an underlying condition of their comfortable existence. Therefore those who saw the imperfections of the existing social order and propagated the necessity of radical changes were accused of immorality by the supporters of the power structure and sent to prison or the gallows.
p But alongside those, whom the search for truth led to the gallows, there were others as well. We have in mind those for whom the dominant social relations became not an object of scientific research but the subject of bombastic apologetics. Such thinkers, as a rule, were given recognition and provided with an abundance of material benefits.
p But no matter how strenuous the efforts of bourgeois ideologues to present an ideal picture of capitalism, no matter how much they speak of a "new era" in its history, the laws of social development delineated by Marxist-Leninist science operate independently of these judgements. Not only bourgeois political figures but also scholars are to an ever greater degree forced to take this fact into consideration.
p Without denying the existence of certain contradictions characteristic of the capitalist mode of production and observed by Marx, many of these figures (witness, for example, John Maynard Keynes) view their mission as follows: utilizing a knowledge of the mechanism of these contradictions they are to try to deform, and facelift them, to ward off a deepening of these contradictions and fend off the effects. The spread of Keynesian economic policy in the developed capitalist countries and the penetration of bourgeois theoretical economic 74 thought into the practical day by day policy of “regulation” has become an established fact.
p Clear testimony of the fact that the opponents of Marxism relate seriously to certain objective conformities of the class and national-liberation struggle is offered by the bourgeois policies of social manoeuvring and the system of neocolonialism created in accordance with new “scientific” recipes. In both instances an understanding of certain aspects of the objective process is utilized only in the attempt to impede it, to channel it in a different course. But one way or another, the ruling elite in the capitalist countries is compelled to resort to the services of the social sciences.
p Thus perhaps the ancient dream of the philosophers has come to fruition: scholars have begun to be drawn to the task of administering society. Indeed, each significant political act carried out in the developed capitalist countries today is as a rule preceded by a stretch of research and study of corresponding problems. In preparation for the moment of decision concerning a given problem the conclusions of experts and leading theoreticians as well as the opinion of specialized institutes and research centres are assembled.
p But from under the professorial cloak we more and more frequently catch a glimpse of the bureaucrat’s briefcase. The apparent independence of our scholar turns out to be just as illusory as the independence of the bureaucrat. The “ freedom” of the scholar who has been caught up in the bourgeois machinery of state consists in the fact mat he may think as he wishes. This is his personal affair. But any attempt to bring his deeds in line with his convictions is cut short.
p In this manner under capitalism the result turns out to be the direct opposite of the dreams entertained by the greatest minds of the past. It is not scholars who make power the tool of science. Rather it is power which makes science and the scientists themselves its instrument: from the scientists the authorities demand the means, but do not permit them to participate in the working out of ends—the goal-setting decisions are taken without them.
p When the bourgeois scientist suggests variants toward a solution of this or that timely problem all his variants may stem from only one "rule of the game" lying outside the framework of science itself, viz., a solution on the basis of the existing capitalist order. It is evident that "scientific policies" of this hue have no authentic social perspectives. They are not capable of eliminating any of the contradictions of capitalism since these contradictions bear an objective character and are 75 inherent in capitalism. "...Adaptation to the new conditions,” states the Report of the Central Committee of the CPSU to the 24th Congress of the CPSU, "does not mean that capitalism has been stabilized as a system. The general crisis of capitalism has continued to deepen.” [75•1
p Thus in the social sciences truthfulness and fruitfulness are directly conditioned by "party spirit”, that is to say, by the given class with which a scholar or branch of social research implicates its fate. The objective long-range prospects for social development, in brief, socialism, and a scientific understanding of social processes are feasible only from a socialist point of view, i.e., from the class position of the proletariat.
p The proletariat has no need of political speculations. It is interested in receiving from science only the truth. Speaking of the working class as the only class capable of attaching social force to an idea, Jean-Leon Jaures called it the true intellectual class, for it never needs resort to lies. Serving the class struggle of the proletariat is not detrimental to science, it does not infringe upon its interests: more than this, science can serve this cause only as long as it does not swerve from the search for the truth.
For precisely this reason Marx once wrote: "When a man seeks to accommodate science to a viewpoint which is derived not from science itself (however erroneous it may be) but from outside, from alien, external interests, then I call him ‘base’.” [75•2 In reference to the analysis of political and social phenomena Lenin always demanded resolutely that we "...face the truth squarely. In politics that is always the best and the only correct attitude". [75•3
Notes
[68•1] K. Marx and F. Engels, The Poverty of Philosophy, Moscow, 1973, p. 9.
[68•2]
Frederick Engels, Paul and Laura Lafargue, Correspondence, Vol. 1,
Mosccow, lyas, p. ijj.
[68•3] V. 1. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 25, p. 458.
[69•1] Ibid., Vol. 21, p. 299.
[70•1] V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 32, p. 32.
[71•1] Ibid., Vol. 35, p. 435.
[71•2] 24th Congress of the CPSU, p. 20.
[75•1] 24th Congress of the CPSU, p. 20.
[75•2] K. Marx, Theories of Surplus-Value, Part II, p. 119.
[75•3] V. I. Lenin, Collected. Works, Vol. 20, p. 275.