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p The content of the ideology predominating in the West— in the form of official doctrines and in the shape of ideas and notions rooted in the mass consciousness—reflects the deep-going socio-economic processes that have been unfolding in the industrialised capitalist countries during the past 60-70 years. The development of monopoly capital has wrought profound changes in society’s structure, the condition of the different social strata and the character of the relations between people. In one way or another these changes 288 are mirrored in the content of the spontaneously shaping experience of life, in mass ideology and in the system of value orientations. This process carries with it the indelible imprint of the crisis of the individual’s condition in bourgeois society, a condition that in Western literature is usually designated by the term “alienation”. Within the framework of the problem of “alienation” we are interested in how the state of “alienation” is refracted in the sphere of bourgeois society’s traditional ideas.

p In its most compact, most generalised form the influence of the new social relations on ideology and social psychology resulted in a wide disparity between the stable predominant values and the traditions of the ideology and psychology of enterprising individualism as they took shape in the 18th and 19th centuries, and the changes that took place in the conditions of life and the forms of the social structure created in the course of the development of statemonopoly capitalism.

p The substance of these changes is that the once independent producer is being turned into a simple cog of enormous bureaucratic machine, that forces on him the type and limits of his activity and erases his personality, his individual characteristics. The monopoly circles subordinate the organs of state power, which are becoming more closely linked with the bureaucratic machine and increasingly independent of public opinion. The bulk of the population, the millions of rank-and-file citizens are coming face to face with a “ready-made” policy that is charted behind their backs and imposed on them.

p Finally, man is increasingly losing his independence in the last and seemingly sovereign sphere, the sphere of spiritual life. The ramified and skilfully directed system of ideological stereotypes, standardised patterns of thinking and behaviour and various “social drugs” is turning the “ independent” spiritual world of the individual into an object of programmed manipulation.

p The changed social relations, under which people are 289 finding themselves in day-to-day dependence on the power of the monopolies and the gigantically swollen bureaucratic organisation of the state, are inevitably leading to a conflict between the traditional individualistic ideals, aims and values that are frequently assessed by bourgeois consciousness itself as the “natural” and “immutable” properties of man, and the “external” limits that are being placed on man by the bureaucratic system and which preclude the possibility for the development of these properties.

p The traditional values of individualism are, above all, the ideal of personal, to be more exact, exclusive success achieved as a result of active struggle and competition, as a result of “one’s own” enterprising initiative.

p The values of individualism include the notion that in bourgeois society every person has “equal opportunities” for success, that by perseverance, personal initiative and hard work it is possible to become an independent entrepreneur, i.e., “one’s own master”. With this notion is associated the concept of the “independence” of the individual in and of society.

p Moreover, in this system of values personal success is measured by the possession of wealth, capital, money. The possibility of becoming the subject and not the object in the system of management, the possibility of consuming the largest possible volume of the costliest things and services determine the social prestige of the individual, his chances for respect and self-respect.

p The ideals and illusions of individualism have taken shape historically as a stable system of motivations of vital activity in the course of capitalism’s development. It is no accident that this system of motivations has acquired so much influence and become the central element of the predominant ideology, for instance, in the USA, a country where capitalism had developed most freely, giving rise to individualist ideology and psychology on a mass scale.

p The influence exercised by the ideals and illusions of bourgeois individualism is linked not only with traditions and 290 habits. To this day it has an objective social foundation in the practice of capitalism. Lastly, this influence is sustained by the system of mass propaganda. It is indicative that the propagation of precisely these ideals and illusions as the basic attributes of the so-called American way of life is so prominent in the propaganda campaign being launched today in the USA in connection with the coming celebrations, in 1976, of that country’s 200th anniversary.

p However, a growing number of Americans, who have become workers and employees of monopoly corporations, are unable to display their own enterprising initiative, to realise the ideals of individualism in practice. The actual content and institutional limits of their activity make other demands of them: obedience, subordination, precise fulfilment of formalised functions and procedures, and adherence to stereotype behaviour. Traditional individualism is thus suppressed by authoritarian bureaucracy. More and more frequently the individualist becomes the object of manipulation by the governing organisation, while the organisation itself is structured as a bureaucratic system alienated from the individual, who becomes its member.

p But this is yet not all. The small and the medium entrepreneurs are being turned into office and factory workers, a process that has a painful effect on the consciousness. Discontented individualism is most frequently to be observed in the petty bourgeois—the shopkeeper, the owner of a small workshop, and the farmer, who today find themselves sinking into growing dependence on the big monopolies. The small entrepreneurs still active constitute a considerable proportion of the US population and form a substratum that may be called a lumpen-bourgeoisie. They are afraid of the future, are constantly pressured by the large bureaucratic organisations and compelled to worry not so much about prosperity as about how to survive under state-monopoly capitalism. The various petty-bourgeois strata, the small officials of the monopolies, the ruined farmers, and so on, are the exponents of the crisis phenomena in the American 291 consciousness. However, it is interesting to note that similar processes are to be observed in the consciousness of more privileged strata of American society, for instance, the topechelon employees, who are likewise becoming increasingly dependent on the disciplinary limits of the state-monopoly bureaucracy.

p The fact that the conflict of discontented individualism (between the former notions about the values of private enterprise and the present forms of administration set up by the monopolies and the state) embraces not only the petty bourgeoisie, millions of wage workers and office employees, but also privileged strata, creates the illusion that it concerns “general” ideals that conform to the universal “nature” of man as such and are not strictly determined by class interests. However, the contradiction between the ideals of free enterprise and the reality of state-monopoly organisation is a contradiction of capitalist reality itself. The economy of capitalism remains founded on private ownership and one of its fundamental principles remains that of a competitive struggle for the symbols of personal success. In the monopoly economy, however, the individual activity of the vast majority of people may “enter” the process of social production only by means of various corporate, bureaucratic organisations through a system of social institutions isolated from man and obeying their own laws.

p Attention must be drawn to a very important detail. In the specific conditions of the historical and economic formation of the American national community, when heavily accentuated individualism became the central value of the American way of life, perhaps comparable only with the extreme nationalism dished up under the guise of patriotism, its influence spread not only over bourgeois, petty-bourgeois and marginal strata of American society. Individualism became the paramount value not only of the governing but also of mass ideology, sinking deep into the consciousness of the numerous strata of the working population, including the working class.

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p In the USA individualism is one of the main inhibitions to the growth of the proletariat’s political self-awareness. To a large extent this explains the fairly wide proliferation of the psychology of anti-communism, which can be used by the bourgeoisie, if necessary, to push individual contingents of the working class into extremist anti-communist and anti-Soviet actions.

p In short, a unique situation arises where proprietary practice, on the one hand, inevitably generates ideals of proprietorship, individualism and “business” independence and, on the other, prevents these ideals from being translated into life, reduces the overwhelming majority of society to permanent and painfully realised dependence on the system of economic and non-economic links in which the monopolies have enmeshed the whole of society. It is here, on the borderline of the clash between traditional ideals and the framework of the reality in which these ideals cannot be implemented that the mass mood of discontent, resentment and aggressiveness is aroused.

p Latent resentment inevitably seeks an outlet. The external expression of this state frequently evolves into conformism, a state of apathy and indifference, the switch of energy into trifles, and attempts to protest against lost individuality by displays of consumer capabilities, vanity and acquisition. Tension sometimes grows into unwitting hostility for everything social, into repugnance for the established standards of behaviour and into an inclination for political adventurism. The development of capitalism steadily narrows the sphere of possible, “independent” enterprise, and these moods are acquiring a mass scale and becoming typical. Reactionary propaganda is directed at these discontented individualists, who form the medium in which the ideology and psychology of anti-communism flourishes. Under reactionary influence the mood of the restless, discontented individualist is easily transformed into putschism, into a striving for fascist-type political activity, into a tendency toward anti-communist hysteria.

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p Such is one of the features of the diffusion and influence of anti-communism: it is linked with the dissatisfaction of the restless, embittered and hysterical traditional individualist and the specific ideological and psychological atmosphere that is created by and accompanies this mood.

p However, a simple recording of the overall link between the two social phenomena does not allow understanding the operation of the specific mechanisms by which this link arises and is sustained. It must be borne in mind that today anticommunism is not merely a sum of ideas, notions and moods but the content of the activity of a large number of official and “public” organisations.

p Despite the diversity of anti-communist organisations and the motley content of their programmes they have a feature in common. In order to teach people to hate communism and involve them in anti-communist activity these organisations make deliberate use of the internal acute social problems that in the capitalist countries worry people most of all. These problems are interpreted in the spirit of anticommunism.

p In other words, we are witnessing a special method of anti-communist propaganda, namely falsification of communism designed to influence the mass mind. This method relies on a system of current prejudices, illusions, and unhealthy moods that are typical of the general ideological and psychological atmosphere in capitalist countries and induced in the public mind not necessarily in connection with anti-communist activity proper but in connection with the crisis of the traditionally predominating system of values and vital orientations, the values and orientations of individualism.

p Efforts are made to give an anti-communist direction to this spontaneous social criticism, to the mass discontent that is mounting as a result of the dominance of the forms of bureaucratic society and appealing to individualism, to the “patriotic” ideals of free enterprise and romantic-philistine dreams of personal “independence”. Such, if we take the 294 USA, is the general programme of all Rightist organisations, beginning with George Rockwell’s American Socialist Party and ending with the “respectable” conservatives.

p Usually—and quite rightly—the imperialist state is regarded in Marxist literature as the instrument of the giant monopolies, while these monopolies, especially those linked with war orders, are seen as the mainstay of political reaction. For that reason it would seem logical to assume that all the semi-fascist and extreme Rightist organisations will move in the channel of the US Government’s policy, act as apologists of the central power and counterpose their views to the traditional liberal-bourgeois liberties. However, as one can see, the actual picture frequently proves to be almost the very opposite.

p In order to have a clearer idea of the alignment of forces in the USA, we have to analyse in more detail the anti- communist, political and economic views that are now offered under the slogan of “conservatism”, “traditionalism”, and so forth. Today, when in the capitalist countries many social problems are being aggravated, appeals to the past, the romanticisation and idealisation of the past, are becoming a very characteristic feature of mass ideological propaganda. This feature manifests itself, for instance, in the preparations for the bicentennial of the USA, with the most reactionary groups openly coming out with apologias of “ conservatism”. As a matter of fact, when the views of the reactionaries are characterised, criticism is often concentrated on hunting out compromising “extreme”, “extravagant” pronouncements and aphorisms, which are given no more than moral assessments. But the logic of political struggle and social programmes do not rest on the laws of theoretical morality. They mirror definite social forces, definite trends in the consciousness, definite mass moods, and their influence depends on how adequately they express these moods and tendencies.

p In the foreword to his book The Conscience of a Majority Barry Goldwater asserts that the USA is fundamentally a conservative nation.^^1^^ He writes that most of the American 295 people, particularly young people, crave for a return to the principles of conservatism but that the realisation of this aspiration is hindered by the fact that in politics and ideology the tone is set by the liberals and radicals. Goldwater does not consider that conservatism is a political programme predicated by current and transient circumstances. He assesses it as an indispensable attribute of the American way of life and, at the same time, as an adequate expression of the very essence of man, as the formulation of the requirements springing necessarily from his nature.

p Already this brings to light the position of the Right-wing groups. They claim to defend the “inalienable” spiritual values of man against the policy and social practice that tramples these values (this is a key to understanding the mechanism by which anti-communist psychology is ingrained into the mass consciousness of the bourgeois countries). In the categories of the bourgeois consciousness this programme is perceived as a defence of the traditional ideals, initiative and independence that had taken shape in the period of free enterprise against the changes in the social structure and the mode of functioning of the bourgeois state called forth by the concentration of capital and the bureaucratisation of state administration. Hence the attitude of the conservatives acquires the semblance of defending the highest “spiritual” values against utilitarian, narrow-minded practicism.

p This orientation is even more distinct in the political programme of the “ultras” and in their protest against the concentration of power in the hands of the Federal Government. The “ultras” willingly play on the dissatisfaction and fear of many Americans in face of the rapid growth of the might and influence of the bureaucratic machine controlled by the Federal Government. In pursuance of their selfish interests, they frequently oppose the Presidential power. They seek to discredit the steps taken by the US President to end the cold war and endeavour to restore the atmosphere of anti- communist and anti-Soviet hysteria.

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p At the same time, they play on American traditions by attacking state interference in agriculture, condemning the increase in taxes, particularly in the progressive tax on profits, and denouncing the government’s intervention in education, all the government’s projects for “combating poverty”, the Bill of Rights, the Supreme Court ruling on school desegregation, and so on.

p What is the class content of this programme? In many ways the attacks on the Federal Government are motivated by considerations of the inner-party struggle. The attitude of the “ultras” reflects mainly the interests of the “young” monopolies that are pressing for a redistribution of spheres of influence and militating against the established links with the state. Paradoxically enough, their attitude is formed as a defence of their “free enterprise” with regard to the bureaucratic Establishment.

p But this is only one facet of the matter.

p The programme of the conservatives and traditionalists would never have exercised broad influence if it had not skilfully played on the discontent evoked among the pettybourgeois masses by the concentration of capital and the bureaucratisation of the entire organisation of capitalism in the USA. This programme gives the petty bourgeoisie and the lumpen-bourgeoisie, who are doomed to extinction, a means of expressing their discontent and directs their protest into the delusive groove “against liberals”, against the Communists and other progressive forces. Further, the demand for economic decentralisation is combined with a defence of the specifically imperialist internal policy, with the demand for the centralisation of ideological and political life and its subordination to the interests of the monopolies. In championing the traditional slogans of individualism, the reactionaries give their unqualified support for anti-communist legislation, the actions of the Un-American Activities Committee, the persecution of progressive organisations, to say nothing of the most reactionary foreign policy. This policy, too, is quite “realistic” and definite inasmuch as it is 297 embodied in the actions of actual political forces. It is thus a question not of the defence of 19th-century ideals or of “ outmoded Americanism”, but of an entirely modern policy springing from the interests of the present reactionary circles of American society.

p The liberals and the progressive forces are, needless to say, poles apart. Essentially, the attitude of the conservatives allows directing discontent of specifically imperialist forms of social organisation onto the path of struggle against progressive forces, onto the path of anti-communism.

p Brought up on the values of individualism, the American man-in-the-street, whose knowledge of Marxism is based essentially on hearsay, fixes mainly on the fact that Marxism acts under the slogan of collectivism. This is quite natural because this slogan of socialism is opposed to capitalism’s chief value—private property. He has heard that the Marxists stand for the socialisation of the means of production and institute forms of socialised production that are hostile to individualism. But he understands the content of this demand in accordance with his own social experience, in other words, with the forms of bourgeois bureaucratic collectivism that are hostile not only to petty-bourgeois individualism but also to the basic interests of millions of factory and office workers. In this situation the protest against “ substitutes for collectivism”, against the bourgeois corporate system can easily be transformed in the consciousness of the American man-in-the-street into a protest against Marxism, against scientific communism. In the consciousness of this confused man anti-communism, the struggle against the “communist conspiracy”, and the persecution of progressive forces can be perceived as a means of resolving the acute conflicts that he encounters in life, as a form of struggle against the anti-humanitarian trends generated by the bureaucratic authoritarian pseudo-collectivism in the USA.

p As everybody knows, modern state-monopoly capitalism leads to the socialisation of production on a gigantic scale. It 298 creates forms, externally similar to the forms of socialism, such as corporations that embrace millions of factory and office workers and channel their labour into a single production mechanism; it creates a system of internal planning and a system of social discipline. Moreover, these corporations formally belong not to one man or a small group of monopolists, but to millions of shareholders. Outwardly, they appear as organisations belonging to millions and uniting millions, as collectives carrying out the will of these millions. This image is intensively propped up by bourgeois propaganda. The bourgeois state, too, comes forward with the external trappings of a collective organ of society serving this society and establishing disciplinary norms in the name of social interests.

p However, experience tells the American man-in-the-street that the forms of bourgeois collectivism are hostile to him. The widely propagated slogans of “fidelity” and “loyalty” to the collective “(What is good for General Motors is good for each of the employees”) are a subtle means of spiritually enslaving and manipulating the individual. Today many Americans deprecate this bureaucratic collectivism and the ideology that champions it. But this is usually a spontaneous protest and is not accompanied by a sober understanding of the actual social substance of these phenomena. They believe that the evil lies in collectivism as such, in the principle of collectivism, regardless of society’s actual class nature. These illusions are fortified by traditional bourgeois individualistic ideology. Bourgeois collectivism is artificially identified with true collectivism, with the collectivism of the revolutionary proletariat.

p The logic of this thinking proves to be very simple: in American society the small and medium entrepreneur is finding his existence to be increasingly shaky. In the Soviet Union private property has been altogether abolished. Thus the objective foundation for entrepreneurial individualistic practice and ideology, which persists in the USA, is entirely non-existent in the Soviet Union. And since in the bourgeois 299 consciousness individualism is identified with individuality and freedom of the individual, it is believed that in the Soviet Union there is no individual freedom and that the individual is suppressed.

p This belief is bolstered and given shape under the impact of subtle anti-communist propaganda. The embittered, discontented petty bourgeoisie—shopkeepers, small entrepreneurs and so on—are usually the most susceptible to this propaganda.

p Anti-communism is presented as defending the traditional ideals of Americanism and the American way of life, as a means of explaining the actual crisis phenomena felt by many Americans. This creates the illusion that the average American’s own experience, the experience of a disinherited and oppressed member of the bourgeois pseudo-collective, bears out the tenets of anti-communism, which is the doctrine of reactionary monopoly circles. Precisely these circles are the proponents and champions of anti-communism. They lavishly finance reactionary organisations and give them every possible support.

p The striving to pass all the forms of pseudo-collectivist activity, the entire system of economic and non-economic links, by which the monopolies and state organisations control society, for manifestations of communist tendencies is to be seen clearly in anti-communist literature. It is alleged that the ultimate goal of communism is to achieve political dictatorship together with state monopoly in religion, education, industry and all the institutions that in “free” countries usually operate and flourish outside the sphere of the state and independently of it.

p In short, the class substance of the phenomena linked with a country’s monopolisation and bureaucratisation is distorted and the phenomena themselves are given out as the result of communist infiltration.

p A point that must be taken into consideration in this context is that today, confronted by the growing popularity of the ideals and requirements of socialism and communism   300 among ordinary Americans, some apologists of the American way of life are trying more and more frequently to persuade the latter that these requirements, particularly, the concrete demands formulated by Marx and Engels in The Communist Manifesto, have been met in the USA. As examples they refer to state ownership of land, the progressive tax, the restricted inheritance rights, the confiscation of the property of criminals and emigres, the centralisation of credit in state banks, the nationalisation of communications and transport and the education of children at public schools. Already here the forgery is self-evident: what they indicate is not the communist programme proper, but the measures that Marx and Engels felt had to and could be enforced within the framework of the existing capitalist system.

p Needless to say, it is emphasised that there still are essential distinctions between the ideal of the Communists and the actual state of affairs. Moreover, it is asserted that all the above-mentioned measures are being put into effect in spite of the influence of scientific socialism and the efforts of the Communist Party and other organisations of the proletariat, and that therefore every American should counter communism more vigorously.

p In a review of anti-communist doctrines spawning on the soil of the individualistic protest against the bureaucratisation of social life it is important to mention the “mass society” and “mass culture” concepts, whose protagonists regard the “mass” standardisation of man as the principal obstacle to progress.

p As we have already noted, when bourgeois bureaucracy hides behind the signboard of collectivism, it gives prominence to man who is aware of himself as a social being, a member of a community living to its standards. The bourgeois sociologists militating against bureaucratic pseudo- collectivism usually fail to see the class substance of this “ collectivism” and perceive its mainsprings not in the specifics of monopoly capitalist development but in the appearance and predominance of the “mass man”.

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p The “mass man” is a standardised being who has lost his individualist ideals, energy and faith in himself, who has been turned into a cog and subjected to intensive bureaucratic brainwashing. Western critical liberal sociologists anxiously note the spread of this type of individual in modern capitalist society and direct the fire of their criticism at him.

p This sort of protest frequently smacks distinctly of anticommunism. The anti-communists make much of the fact that Marxism is profoundly hostile to individualism and propagates the collective, the collective man, against the private proprietor, the individualist anarchist, who holds his selfish interest above the interests of advanced social forces. An inalienable element of this sort of speculation is that the “community” formed by the state-monopoly bureaucratic organisations is counterposed to the progressive society formed by conscious proletarians. These organisations aspire to turn the factory and the office worker into an instrument that is obedient not only to “external”, but also to “internal” compulsion, to “its own” moral motivations and precepts. Precisely such is the content of the policy of “human relations”, which forms a system for the manipulation of minds and engages in social “collectivist” demagoguery. This policy is evoking a growing protest among large segments of factory and office workers. And it is this protest that anticommunism seeks to utilise in its speculation on illusory, “converted” forms of social consciousness, on false notions about Marxism.

p This guideline of present-day anti-communism springs from the individualism that identifies the state-monopoly bureaucratic form with every type of collectivism. But there is another guideline, which stems from state-monopoly pseudo-collectivism. It is not as hysterical as the former but enjoys similar if not more influence. This guideline is linked with the monopolies, demagogically using the slogan of “ collectivism”, and constitutes the ideology of the anti- communism linked directly with the growth of monopolies, with the 302 assertion of state and military bureaucracy in the USA. This type of anti-communism, too, usually refers to traditional individualism as an inalienable principle of social life^ However, it concentrates its ideology not around “ traditionalism” and “conservatism” but around the idea of society’s “transformation” and “renewal”, which is propagated no longer as “capitalist” but as “industrial” or even “ postindustrial”.

p While the anti-communism of the first type is studiously ideological, the exponents of “industrial” and “post- industrial” society present and regard their concepts as a means of resolving purely practical problems, namely, the ways and means of speeding scientific and technological progress. The argument with communism is conducted not only for the sake of such abstract concepts as, for instance, the freedom and sovereignty of the individual (although these concepts remain in the arsenal of the ideological struggle), but on a practical basis: over the effectiveness and harmony of industrialisation, the rates of industrial development, the level of mass consumption, and so on. In this context “maximum efficacy” in scientific and technological development, the “highest living standard”, and so on, are declared essential attributes of the American way of life—the concept widely used by the apologists of state-monopoly organisation.

p Naturally, nothing is said of the fact that scientific and technological achievements are effectively used by the monopolies in their own interests, or that scientific and technological progress is accompanied by acute social conflicts. More, they say nothing of the existence of class inequality in the standard of living or of the mass forms of poverty that come into bold relief against the background of the swift growth of production.

p Here the basic objective is to show that the Soviet way is an ineffective method of industrialisation or a method that requires much too high a price for one achievement or another. This logic of anti-communism is not so blunt and aggressive as the logic of the “ultra-Lefts”. Its propaganda 303 is geared to American state-monopoly capitalism that wears the mask of a “welfare state” and is, at the same time, virulently anti-communist.

p History has shown that in the long run these two orientations of anti-communism go hand in hand, complement each other, although at the present stage they are externally antipodal.

p This dichotomy (hysterical individualism—bureaucratic authoritarian collectivism) represents two mutually crossing lines that, while coming into collision, turn into each other. Although antagonistic, both are spearheaded primarily at the progressive forces, at communism. The proponents of each of these lines support various anti-communist laws. They combine the demand for economic decentralisation and freedom of the individual with the demand for the unconditional suppression of all progressive views, which they qualify as subversion.

p In short, a sort of universal pattern is created: everything in keeping with the interests and views of the reactionaries is proclaimed “genuinely American” and “patriotic”, and everything that clashes with these interests and views is attributed to communism. Communism is depicted as a sort of demoniacal force in whose programme are concentrated all social evils. Needless to say, the Christian pattern which portrays history as a cosmic struggle between the divine and the diabolic, is the most suited for this interpretation. Indeed, the “godlessness” of communism that allegedly has “satanic protection” is a favourite theme of anticommunism.

p As soon as an organisation or a politician articulates statements that fall out of line of the interests and attitudes of the reactionaries, a chorus takes up the chant about the “Red menace”, “communist conspiracy” and “subversion”. Any pretext will do, say, the attitude to Cuba or to the struggle for peace.

p The vague, hidebound, narrow and perverted notions underlying the mass consciousness of capitalist society are the 304 key condition for the continued prevalence of bourgeois ideology, especially as this ideology is riddled with vague, perverted and ill-defined notions, is eclectic by nature and is unable to offer a coherent social theory. The conversion of bourgeois thought, which is in the throes of a desperate crisis, into a material force is being increasingly made possible by the skilful manipulatory work of bourgeois ideologists and propagandists. They have learned to use many phenomena and specifics of social psychology for controlling the mass consciousness. Moreover, they have learned to use some objective regularities of social psychology in order to direct the formation of the mass consciousness, giving it a definite mood, receptivity and emotional hue.

p When we say that and-communist propaganda has been able to influence the social ideology and psychology of bourgeois society, we have in mind the fact that the bourgeoisie still manages to slow down and, in some cases, halt the withering away of capitalist values in the mass mind of bourgeois society.

p However, the way in which the value systems function is such that the old systems are replaced not at once but only as a result of a long struggle against the new.

p The dialectics of relationship between the prevailing ideology and the predominant relations of production are such that initially ideology moves into the forefront, then for some time it harmonises with the relations of production, and ultimately begins to lag behind. The relations between people change with the advance of social production, but the dominant ideology continues to assess these relations in the old way and assert the values that have reached a critical age and no longer correspond to the state of these relations, suiting the departing ruling class, especially as that class has the means of securing these values. Even when a new progressive ideology triumphs, the old ideology clings on to life for a long time in the new society because some facet of it remains convenient and advantageous to individuals or entire social groups, in other words, 305 it helps to justify and to some extent realise their special individual or group requirements in contradistinction to the dominant social requirements.

In bourgeois society the prevailing values had taken shape and settled in the social psychology as a result of the people’s past experience and have their roots in the period when the bourgeoisie was still a revolutionary class. This is what enables the bourgeois ideologists to counterpose the value categories of individualism to collectivism, which has not been tested in practice (by the working people of the capitalist countries). The fact that the people have no direct experience of a collectivist way of life allows the bourgeoisie to misrepresent the actual significance of socialism’s slogan and give it a meaning that cannot be attractive to the mass consciousness brought up in the spirit of diametrically opposite values and traditions.