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p Stretched out before us we have just seen the world in the dismal light it is portrayed by the sense of wretchedness guided by pessimism and nihilism. Let us closely examine this picture, beginning with the demolition of the mythology of despair with its most harassing problem, alienation.

p Every activity, particularly labour, is linked with reification, with the externalisation of man’s creative potential, 136 with the conversion of his essential forces into something material that no longer belongs to the subject of this activity. Such is the way of creating social wealth, of increasing the power of man. The extent of reification may also determine the achieved level of mastery over nature, of the development of the artificial environment. As the objective conditions of labour, the means of production are always reified, but they are not always alienated. It is only ill-advised identification of these concepts that represents the alienation as something immutably accompanying any mode of human vital activity. In reality, as Marx had established, alienation is not an ever-lasting but a historically conditioned and transient state. By themselves labour and social wealth do not lead to alienation, which springs from the social division of labour, from the emergence of private property and spontaneous forms of social relationships. Alienation is a situation in which the various forms of human activity come forward not as their own associated force but as the force of things dominating people, opposing their needs and interests and coming into conflict with their thoughts and expectations.

p In its class-antagonistic form society moved forward towards an ever higher level of the division of labour, and as this advance gained greater momentum the more ruthlessly was the energy of the working man dissipated and the more one-sided his vital activity became. Marx likened this form of development to a pagan idol to whom nectar could only be offered in the skulls of slain enemies. In the epoch of capitalism’s decay the scale acquired by alienation is such that its hostility for man and its destructive effects on society are reaching bursting point.

p The aforesaid explains the heightened interest shown today in the problem of alienation. In considering this problem from the bourgeois abstract viewpoint and identifying alienation with reification, nihilism has from the very outset given it a distorted formulation. Under this approach mounting alienation is severed from the main problem of our day—the transition from capitalism to socialism, mankind’s liberation from capitalist exploitation, imperialist wars and all the ensuing consequences. It obscures the sharp exacerbation of capitalism’s main contradiction—between the social 137 character of production and the private-ownership relations of production—with the resultant disappearance of the notion of alienation as stemming from the concentration of colossal productive forces in the hands of the capitalist class, which leads to the intensification of exploitation and the further impoverishment of the working people.

p Instead of a clear understanding of capitalism’s, especially modern capitalism’s historical destiny, an anti-historical view is taking shape, and it is declared that alienation comes from the social organisation generally, from the factors of its might, from the mode of administering people and from scientific and technological progress. But since it is indeed impossible to stop that progress, much as it is impossible to destroy all forms of social organisation, the impression is given that there are grounds for the nihilistic vision of the world. In this case the outcome of the conflict between society and man is represented as predetermined—either submission to society or flight from it, accompanied by individual psychological methods of surmounting alienation: there is no third way! Since flight without the cover of fig-leaves likewise signifies surrender, both these variants of resolving the problem orientate the mass consciousness on the mode of action badly needed by the bourgeois social organisation. Both methodologically and functionally, the proclamation that alienation i!s a feature of any form of vital activity is an affection of bourgeois thought.

p It profits capitalism to back anti-machinism, the Luddite approach, so that the hostility of private-ownership relations for the development of the individual, for social progress, is interpreted as incompatibility of machinery with humanism. Although dead labour, materialised in machines, does indeed add live labour to itself, and since by virtue of technological progress less and less live labour remains in the end product, pessimistic criticism is unable to discern the main, albeit hidden, contradiction—between the social character of production and the capitalist form of appropriation—behind this superficial contradiction between live and dead labour. This main contradiction surfaces by no means because changes are taking place in technological processes and in the scientific organisation of work. Materialised labour increases through the absorption of live labour only when, reified, 138 it becomes not merely a consumer value but a value capable of growing by itself, in other words, when it becomes capital. Then both the thing and value dominate man. We thus witness the alienation not of live labour (of the workingpeople) and of dead labour (machinery) but of labour power and working conditions, which come forward as an alienated force, as capital.

p Machinery is, of course, not responsible for the endless suffering falling to the lot of the working people. As such it does not give rise to wars, economic instability, unemployment and the immeasurable intensification of labour. Alienation is called forth not by machines but by their capitalist use. Automatic machines and conveyers do not dehumanise labour. They do not turn man the creator into an impersonal functionary and mechanise the relations between people. Man is robotised and his essence is forcibly alienated not by social organisation generally, but by its capitalist form.

p Does not private ownership, whether individual, corporate or etatised, alienate from the worker the product created by him? The growth of technical might becomes a werewolf only under capitalism, where, partially delivered from its former physical stress, labour becomes a heavy press psychologically and intellectually. Participation in such labour is the surest evidence of social dependence. Do not capitalist relations make labour compulsive, turning it into a simple means of subsistence? Because of these relations, to quote Marx, activity comes forward “as suffering, strength as weakness, begetting as emasculating, the worker’s own physical and mental energy, his personal life—for what is life but activity?—as an activity which is turned against him, independent of him and not belonging to him”.  [138•* 

p There is a certain element of truth in nihilistic criticism when it notes the conversion of social reality into a force hostile to the masses. This is seen strikingly in the alienation of the modern bourgeois state, which has become a monstrous, highly formalised bureaucratic system pushing the masses awav from social affairs and concentrating power in 139 the hands of political cliques, technocrats and the bureaucracy. By driving the “lower classes" out of the sphere of politics and administration it usurps the prerogative of adopting all socially important decisions, gains control of people’s thoughts and demands social submissiveness. It seeks to inculcate belief in its own infallibility, suppressing doubts in the efficacy of the hierarchically organised leadership. In the bureaucratised system the individual is not the subject of social creativity but only the passive object of administration, a circumstance that is scrupulously concealed by a maze of democratic trimmings. In a situation where fusing with the monopolies the state apparatus separates itself from society, the severance and mutual alienation of private and social life become inevitable.

p However, nihilistic criticism, first, regards the depersonalised rule of the bureaucracy as a demoniacal force and even as an inevitable evil unanimously cursed but from which there is no salvation. It sees some meaning only in anarchic resistance to this rule, not because the mosquito bites of such resistance can in any way shake this rule but only because they give some satisfaction to the participants in these mutinous actions. Second, nihilistic criticism believes that power of any kind brings alienation. As far as it is concerned, the ideal citizen and the ideal man, the “man of organisation" and .simply man do not fit into one and the same person. It thus identifies those against whom the activity of the bureaucratic systems is directed with those whose interests it serves. The class character of the state’s bureaucratic leadership remains outside the field of vision. Once more everything is blamed on the complicating social processes and, at the same time, false charges are made against the democratic organisations of the working people, against socialist statehood.

p Criticism of this sort does not, of course, cause any anxiety among the ruling elite, and even disguises fairly well the very fact of the elite’s political supremacy, diverting attention from the actual reasons for the growth of the bureaucracy (rooted in the need to strengthen the shaken capitalist order), absolutising its might and seeking to discredit the only real force of the struggle against it, the social organisations of the working people.

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p Nihilistic criticism’s attitude to the bureaucracy is typical of its approach to the entire range of social problems. The seeming concreteness of this criticism and the fact that it contains some signs of the times should not delude anybody: it is totally abstract and entirely purged of class indications. In its theoretical postulates this criticism brings society and the individual into collision as two poles. From the very beginning it ignores the question of what individual and what society it is concerned with as obscuring the substance of the problem. Then society is proclaimed as being despotic and indifferent to the destinies of the individual, while the individual is said to be suffering and alienated. What it suggests is neither more nor less than turning the entire axis of human existence, directing efforts not towards changing society and the objective condition of the individual in it, but towards the self-transformation of the individual in order to win at least a little freedom in the only sphere where it can be won, namely, the sphere of the spirit.

p But any objective analysis of the relationship between society and the individual requires a class approach. Antagonistic society is internally fragmented. The ruling class is vitally interested in preserving alienation, i.e., the actual relations that are unseverable from bourgeois society—-exploitation, private property, and the disfiguring division of labour. In order to perpetuate these relations use is made of the power of the state machine, bureaucratisation and control of behaviour. The ruling class imposes its ideas and world outlook on the masses.

p By demanding, on behalf of the individual, the shedding of all socially approved standards and kinds of behaviour, nihilistic criticism mirrors the narrowness of the means of “entering” society set by the outworn system of state-monopoly capitalism (hindering the assimilation of culture in a way other than utilitarian or asocial). This becomes abundantly clear in a comparison with the vast possibilities that our epoch gives (and demands from) the individual. The thirst for “naturalness” wrongly conveys the social need for the harmoniously developed individual, whose potential strength has matured and requires scope for unrestricted development, for the unfolding of creative initiative and activity. Nihilistic criticism quenches this longing for an integral 141 individual perversely, limiting itself to prescriptions for winning freedom by overtly or covertly impinging upon social guidelines and norms. In appearance only the concrete existence of man is counterposed to the social system. Actually, this criticism tears the individual away from all concrete relations, driving him into the ghetto of abstract definitions. By tirelessly fighting for the mythical rights of the mythical abstract individual, it not only does not protect the interests of the individuals of the oppressed classes and strata against their oppressors, but also betrays these interests, diverting the masses from the struggle for them.

p Also, this criticism of society attacks science on the pretext of defending the individual. It goes no farther than recognising the historical alienation of science, of knowledge, from man. It argues that the bourgeois form of scientific progress and the entire accompanying range of contradictions are a timeless contradiction between science and man. It holds that any specific form of the acquisition and functioning of knowledge is an immanent feature of the existence of knowledge generally. But cannot science exist without its achievements being appropriated for narrow class interests or used for military purposes? As though science itself and not its specific social form of development implants the inveterate prejudices of anti-intellectualism.

p In its attacks on science the criticism of society declares that knowledge has spread out inordinately. The time required to assimilate it is clearly growing faster than man’s expectancy of life. Hence the conclusion that like the Tower of Babel culture is growing out of man’s reach because of its complexity and volume. The day is not far distant when even pioneer scientists will have to admit their inability to raise this tower of knowledge by even a single millimetre. It is asserted that, having become a “thing in itself”, culture is ceasing to be a uniting element and that it is leading ultimately to mankind’s disintegration, to cultural wildness, to barbarity. The irony of scientific development, it is alleged, is such that a supreme tragedy awaits us precisely where we permit ourselves thoughtlessly to draw confidence in our might.

p In this area, too, criticism distorts actual processes. To say nothing of the fact that the development of science itself 142 opens up hitherto unknown ways of effectively assimilating culture, ways that afford protection against the overwhelming deluge of information, it must be borne in mind that it is wrong to represent the assimilation of culture solely as a process of individual absorption of expanding knowledge. Nihilistic criticism says nothing of the decisive circumstance that capitalism shamelessly appropriates the results of the scientists’ co-operative work, doing this in such a way as to prejudice mankind, science and scientists. Impasses and critical situations are created not by the immanent laws of scientific development, as nihilism would have us believe, but by the private-ownership form of the socialisation of intellectual labour that obstructs the free development of science, the conversion of science into the common property and means of the all-sided development of people.

p Further, criticism declares that scientific development creates the irremovable threat of intellectual hypertrophy. The point it makes is that the intensification of thinking carries compensations: it alleges that as thoughts pulsate more and more strongly, the senses grow increasingly helpless and emotional deficiency becomes increasingly clear-cut. Is this not indicated, it asks, by the widening gulf between man and nature, by the sinister symptoms of brutalisation and moral impoverishment, by the decline of the role played by art in people’s lives, by the fall of the prestige of humanitarian knowledge? It tries to persuade us that “modern man" regards emotional life ironically, as the antipode of prudence, the dependable logic of science and a constructive life. Nihilism argues that if emotions only prevent people from getting used to a rational way of life, their suppression is the pass to reality, the payment for feeling “at home" in the cold, mechanical world, for the possibility of attuning themselves to the rhythm of contemporaneity.

p In its analysis of emotional hunger, nihilistic criticism heavily accentuates some of the elements it has noted correctly. Actually, an abstract division between the intellect and the senses is only an expression of deeper contradictions. Has emotional deficiency overwhelmed all senses or only those that are ousted and suppressed by the very conditions of bourgeois existence? For example, criticism 143 acknowedges that fear, despair, hatred and bitterness are deepening. However, it is not the scientific and technological revolution but its catastrophic development in the capitalist social structure and the crisis of bourgeois individualism that shape the situation in the market of human emotions. Indeed, the feelings that help to organise and consolidate human society and to foster humanity are rated very low, while the greatest value is placed on qualities that lead to success, to a career in its individualistic interpretation.

p Without sparing the most sombre colours, nihilistic criticism aims its most savage attacks on the social sciences. Lost in the labyrinth of narrow practicism, bourgeois social science is indeed unable to embrace the entire process of social life. Preoccupied with polishing sociological techniques and procedures, with the creation of the instruments for picking up facts, it is an example of gross indifference to science’s humanitarian purposes. While providing the bourgeois organisation with operational means, such a science is unable to draw up workable programmes for the removal of social evils. But the helplessness of empirical functionalism, social engineering’s inability to resolve fundamental problems and justified criticism of sociology’s narrow specialisation and its preoccupation with microdecisions are not sufficient grounds for the nihilistic attitude to social science as a whole.

p Further, it is unquestionable that when bourgeois sociology is engaged in the production of universal doctrines it operates with arbitrarily interpreted facts. It assumes the not very honourable mission of ideologically serving “its own" social organisation, eulogises its good sense and fights all sorts of heresies with grim determination. Alienated from humanistic ideals, inspired by conservational zeal, devoid of the spirit of true criticism, and least of all interested in truth, it cannot help man. Can a “pure” social science, devoid of class partiality, be conceivably created? A social researcher inescapably adopts a definite ideology expressing the interests of one class or another. As regards the sense of wretchedness and the criticism guiding it, they feel that the ideological content of the manipulation of minds is almost the key cause of all misfortunes. Wishing to avoid finding themselves among the recruits, they eagerly join the 144 proponents of deideologisation. The sense of wretchedness and the nihilistic criticism inspiring it are facing a hopeless dilemma: they have to choose between a social science that cannot be humane and ideologically independent, and an ideology that cannot be scientific and somehow assert its humaneness.

p But why should a dilemma concerning bourgeois social science be regarded as universal? Does partisanship in all cases close the door to an objective analysis? The interests of the progressive class do not reject but, on the contrary, presuppose the striving to cognise truth. Whereas in the past the coincidence of partisanship and objectivity could be achieved only partially, Marxism-Leninism combines class partiality for the interests of the proletariat and all other working people entirely with scientific objectivity. As an ideology, Marxism-Leninism opposes all the fossilised systems of bourgeois dogmas mystifying reality, all varieties of sham consciousness. It is a science disclosing and cognising social reality without distortion. Its hallmarks are creativity and unity of the quest and propagation of truth—ideas do not lose their scientific qualities; they become the material force of social organisation and mass action.

p Further, nihilistic criticism sets science off against philosophy, holding that the latter’s purpose is to surmount science’s imaginary limitation and analyse the tragic estrangement of human existence—loneliness, suffering, fear, death—which is inaccessible to scientific cognition. However, if philosophy’s specific interest in man is not founded on scientific data and the application of scientific methodology it inevitably leads to mysticism and irrationalism. Marxist-Leninist philosophy has long ago shown the absurdity of the tenet that man’s freedom is divorced from historical necessity, that it is unforeseeable and causally undeducible from his social condition. On the basis of its materialistic understanding of history it demonstrated that only by remaining within the framework of a strict scientific approach can an answer be given to “What is the world?" and, consequently, to the questions of “What am I?" and “What must I be?" Having evolved a scientific outlook on the world, it established that the self-cognition and self-change of man take place in the process of remaking the world; it linked 145 the existing with what should be and gave an objectively true understanding of happiness and the meaning of life. Of course, both happiness and the meaning of life also have their subjective side and are therefore most directly dependent on people’s convictions, on their practical activities. Besides, happiness is intimate and purely individual. Science cannot foresee all the mutations of the character, thinking, will and destiny of each individual. But it gives a general characteristic of these concepts, substantiates the true orientation of human activity and shows the road to the humanisation of social relations. Science is inseparable from consistent historical optimism.

p The scientific and technological revolution is opening up immense possibilities for human happiness. It allows delivering mankind from hunger, poverty, back-breaking labour and material need. Instead of serving the world of things, man will be able to make things serve as a means satisfying not only requirements but also the highest need—the harmonious development of man’s strength and abilities.  [145•*  Nihilistic criticism futilely brandishes the bogey of frightening productivity, which, it alleges, inevitably leads to hedonistic ideals and a torture by happiness. The latter rest on hated labour, consumer cares, unending fear, neuroses and growing immorality.

p No such inevitability exists. The scientific and technological revolution can make life spiritually rich, healthy and long; it can help to free people’s consciousness from myths and moss-grown prejudices. But capitalism is hostile to mankind’s vital interests and progressive aspirations. It erects obstacles to the utilisation of the possibilities provided 146 by the scientific and technological revolution, diverting a huge proportion of science’s discoveries and colossal material resources for military purposes and dissipating national wealth.

p Let us return to the problem of alienation. Nihilism would not have been true to itself had it made allowance for the revolutionary surmounting of alienation. Properly speaking, its prime designation objectively lies in showing that it is impossible to surmount alienation in this manner, in orientating the sense of wretchedness on removing it by purely psychological means. Criticism does not go beyond stating the pernicious effects of alienation. It cannot understand that exploitation has stimulated the accumulation not only of alienation but also of the social wealth concentrated in machinery and the individual. Moreover, it cannot understand that until a certain period society’s differentiation into classes was historically inevitable and therefore justified, and that it is therefore meaningless to ask whether the price paid for progress had been much too high. The “normal” unalienated world matures not in the imagination or somewhere outside history, but begins at a definite time, in the “topsy-turvy world" itself.

p Utopian short-sightedness, much as blind negation of estrangement, is alien to historical optimism, which begins with the realisation that the maturing of the socio-economic conditions that change the character of social development and the forms of distributing social wealth is inevitable. These may and will be communist forms. However, to adopt a genuinely optimistic world outlook it is not enough to recognise that evils retreat with the irreversibility of time. This sort of optimism is helpless in the face of the myths of the sense of wretchedness. It may even paralyse the revolutionary activeness, consciousness and the sense of responsibility for the present and the future. However well developed the material conditions for the negation of late capitalist society, be it thrice outworn and injurious, that society will not perish automatically. The ruling class is partially aware of this circumstance with the help of its ideology, and it partially listens to the evidence of its delicately sensitive instinct of class self-preservation. While there’s life, there’s hope! That is precisely why so much 147 effort is expended to bourgeoisify the masses, to foster the sense of contentedness.

p Whereas it is dangerous to belittle the possibility of opposing the sentence of history for a certain period, it is even more dangerous to exaggerate this possibility. Such exaggeration is a major source of nihilism, which bases its speculations on it and uses these speculations to justify itself. From the fact that the imperialist bourgeoisie is making desperate efforts to preserve its position in the world, the conclusion drawn by nihilism is not that the revolutionary forces have to step up their activity, accumulate and polish their experience of struggle, extend the front of that struggle and strengthen inner unity, but quite the opposite: since the demolition of alienated society does not become mechanically irreversible, one cannot generally hope for its removal.

p This brings us to the decisive point both of mythologisation and demythologisation—the problem of revolutionary consciousness and action. Nihilistic ideology does not disguise its hostility for the revolutionary negation of alienation, persistently imparting this hostility to the sense of wretchedness at all levels and in all aspects. Nihilism directs its main effort not simply to the fight against the sense of contentedness and its understanding of the world, although this has been proclaimed as its principal orientation. The stated direction of its main effort should delude nobody: whatever the direct object of nihilism’s critical attacks is, these attacks always imply the undermining of socialist consciousness and revolutionary practice. And here is the central point. Whereas the philosophy of the sense of contentedness condemns revolution, the fundamental break-up of the social structures, on the grounds that it is allegedly not a social need and prevents “healthy society" from developing, the philosophy of the sense of wretchedness holds that “sick society" can be negated. But it sees neither the aims nor the forces of negation, believing that all revolutionary designs and actions are doomed to failure on the alleged grounds that today the banner of revolution can rally only handfuls of fanatics, declassed persons, people disgraced socially and small groups of misfits, while the masses in the heartland of capitalist society 148 are indoctrinated by contentedness and are unable even to question the rationality of the bourgeois organisation, properly understand their condition or do anything to change it.

p Nihilistic ideology dins into the head of the rank-andfile agent of capitalist social life: the West did not follow the road of Marx; only the backward, primitive East, and partially at that, took the road charted by Lenin. Although today it is hard not to see the grandiose revolutionary changes that have already been accomplished or are currently taking place in the world, the object of ideological manipulation continues to be told that no revolution is possible in capitalist society because there the working class has allegedly been absorbed and has lost its former class-consciousness.

p The criticism of society maintains that the technical and social changes of the past few decades have transformed the working class. Organic structural modifications have led to a certain upsurge of culture, a certain rise of education and an increase of free time, which have allowed if not the workers then some of their children to enter new fields, notably white-collar careers. If as yet not by their social condition, then in any case by the forms of their leisure, their preferences and requirements, by their way. of life the workers are allegedly being deproletarianised. They have become simply the lower stratum of the huge “middle class" and are eager to speed up all the processes leading to the eradication of their status as social pariahs, to the realisation of the hope of “what if”, akin to the religious expectation of salvation, to confidence in a better future. It is asserted that since they are no longer an exploited class, the workers have ceased to be a class fighting for revolution: the former pariah of the social organisation has now occupied far from the last place in it.

p Nihilistic criticism says that having made the working class happy consumers, the organisation has made it submissive and neo-traditional, given it a socio-psychological complex of contentedness and impressed individualistic aims on its consciousness. A person belonging to this “class of wage workers values chiefly what improves his status, his freedom of movement and his incomes, in other words, 149 his condition in the group”.  [149•*  The activity of workers allegedly no longer goes further than group egoism, does not range beyond the fight for the redistribution of the national income in their favour. The functioning of working-class organisations, it is asserted, only contributes to balancing interests in the social system, involuntarily helps to strengthen that system, fosters the “socialisation” of workers, facilitates the remoulding of their interests into partnership with the interests of the bourgeoisie; these organisations are being turned into an element uniting bureaucratically organised society. Criticism claims that this relates not only to the Right Socialists and the leadership of the yellow trade unions, but also to the Communists. If the latter are not sectarian groups, they allegedly become reformist parties from whose field of vision revolution and communism disappear as the ultimate aim of the struggle. The calls for an anti-capitalist front, for class-consciousness and for organised efforts are wasted on the working class.

p However, despite nihilism, development is moving along the road of Marx and Lenin. To begin with, in capitalist society the working class has been and remains an exploited class. The average welfare statistics so frequently referred to by criticism give a distorted picture. Criticism may be likened to the observer, in whose opinion two persons, one of whom stands in icy water and the other on a frying pan, “on the average" feel not bad. After all it is not accidental that bourgeois statistics are sarcastically described as the chief of the inaccurate sciences.

p For some reason this “shrewd” criticism does not see the huge mass of people (in New York alone there are a million of them) existing solely at the expense of philanthropic programmes, forgets those who cannot afford to give their children an education, those for whom medical assistance is inaccessible to the extent that they prefer to die rather than to fall seriously ill. This criticism permits itself the luxury of soaring high over comparisons of minimum cost of living with the incomes of the “lower classes”, irresponsibly letting itself be diverted from the growth 150 of poverty belts, the housing problem, social insurance, unemployment—technological, seasonal and partial—and so forth. It cannot be said that these facts pass unnoticed altogether, but they are moved to the fringe of social life and are regarded as shortcomings of the system, as temporary anomalies.

p In this case, for some reason nihilistic criticism forgets about the wage freeze and the depreciation of wages through inflation. Neither does it say anything about nervous fatigue, exhausting labour, industrial injuries, managerial despotism, the forced self-restriction in the satisfaction of cultural requirements, the bitter competition in the labour market, and the courage that is required to wring every concession from the bourgeoisie by an organised struggle. It fails to take into account the general growth of requirements and the living standard, the rise of the cost of labour power, which has grown more productive and therefore requires larger outlays for its reproduction.

p Criticism along bourgeois lines gauges the welfare of workers by the number of things consumed by them, forgetting that “misery displays the colours of civilisation”.  [150•*  It will be remembered that in Marx’s lifetime there were no cars, television sets or refrigerators and that capitalist production did not feel the pressure of the need for producing mass consumer goods. “A house,” Marx noted, “may be large or small; as long as the surrounding houses are equally small it satisfies all social demands for a dwelling. But let a palace arise beside the little house, and it shrinks from a little house to a hut.. . . Our desires and pleasures spring from society; we measure them, therefore, by society and not by the objects which serve for their satisfaction.”  [150•**  Quite naturally, therefore, the needs of the working class are measured in accordance with the growth of social wealth and not by themselves. The needs of the workers have an objective source; they do not lie in the “expansion of desires”, “excessive appetites”, or a reluctance to comprehend capitalist society’s limited possibilities. 151 Nihilistic criticism uses the gambit about the envy of workers, about them constantly blackmailing society, in the hope of proving that the working class is sinking in the bog of consumption.

p Even the apologetically inclined American sociologist Bernard Barber has had to acknowledge that “during the last century or so in Western society, despite the emergence of mass-consumption economies, class differences in styles of life have not disappeared but have become somewhat more subtle than they used to be. That is what we mean when we speak nowadays of ’inconspicuous consumption’, by which we mean not wholly invisible consumption but only relatively less visible consumption.” We may say “that the trend has been and continues toward what I have called the pattern of gross equality and subtle inequality. This trend reflects and strengthens similar changes in the stratification structures themselves. If it looks as if differences of prestige, of authority, of income, or of style of life are no longer present, this is usually an illusion which is dispelled by closer inspection of actual social reality.”  [151•* 

p Improvements in the material condition and cultural status of workers sharply increase the need for more interesting activity and spiritually rich prospects (educational, social and professional), and for the eradication of factors fostering demoralisation. But, coming up against the wall of the workers’ social inequality in productive and nonproductive spheres, this growing need only brings acute anguish because it cannot be met without radically changing all the foundations of capitalist society.

p The very circumstance that they are an exploited class evokes discontent among the workers with industrial society’s official state of affairs (needless to say, this does not rule out the existence of a segment, consisting chiefly of the workers’ bureaucracy, inveigled into the trap of contentedness). But even the workers’ spontaneous discontent differs from the sense of wretchedness. The latter’s morbid discontent can only destroy the spirit, instil fear of the 152 future, of the course of history, associated with the preaching that the world is moving towards a catastrophe.

p The discontent of the working class is not burdened by helplessness, by a predisposition to pessimism, to nihilism. However, since it is spontaneous, it does not give workers an adequate understanding of their condition and tasks. For instance, impoverishment may reduce a certain segment of the workers to social submissiveness or promote them to spontaneous revolt, to explosions of anger and hatred. No direct dependence exists between the revolutionary consciousness and impoverishment. In spite of what Aristotle preached, society does not necessarily have to have many poor people to be filled with elements hostile to the prevailing order. Revolutionary consciousness may be induced by the most diverse activity and feeling.

p The workers are a fighting class. This is determined by the social conditions of its existence and has an objective significance. The working class holds the key position in industry and by virtue of its activity is capable of achieving a higher degree of organisation than any other class. Moreover, having no private property or social privileges it is the sole consistently revolutionary class. As regards “group egoism”, we must bear in mind the historically exceedingly important circumstance that the working class bears much of the great burden of the bitter struggle to liberate all mankind.

p Of course, the scientific and technological revolution has introduced structural changes in the population’s social composition. But it has not dissolved the working class or led its consciousness to accept the status quo. Only he can think otherwise who ignores the main thing, the relationship of classes to the means of production and their place in a historically definite system of production, who identifies society’s class division with its professional division.

p The world outlook and morals of the working class and its social activity are not determined, in the main, by transient circumstances, by factors of non-productive life (consumption, leisure or enjoyment), or by organisational and technological factors (the technical content of labour, the professional structure, the cultural and technical level), although the impact of these circumstances and factors 153 should not be ignored. But whatever the changes that take place in organisational and technological relations and in the behaviour of the workers as members of an organisation, they cannot cancel the fact that labour contains the social relationship between the worker and the capitalist, who appropriates surplus value. Similarly, however much the consumer guidelines and the forms of consumer activity in free time change, they cannot remove the fact that consumption is only an element of the reproduction of labour power as a commodity and spells out nothing more than a continuation of the productive activity of workers.

p Despite the allegations that the workers are being deproletarianised, the working class is growing numerically (even if we take into consideration the section directly engaged in material production, but if we take into account all the branch contingents of the working class, including those engaged in the non-productive sphere, we shall find that this class is growing not only numerically but also in proportion to the total numerical strength of the gainfully employed population). Used in capitalist society to step up the exploitation of the workers and increase the profit rate, the scientific and technological revolution leads neither to integration nor to the creation of a “middle class society”.  [153•*  On the contrary, it deepens class polarisation and aggravates the antagonism between labour and capital. One way or another, it is marked not by unification on the basis of converging ideologies or on the basis of general deideologisation, but by further ideological demarcation, polarisation and the exacerbation of the struggle between two irreconcilable ideologies as the dominant feature of spiritual life in our times. In the epoch of capitalism’s general crisis, the growth of political instability and the changes in depth in social and economic relations and the social consciousness of the masses, the militant spirit of the working class and its political parties, its readiness to take decisive action in the name of democratic and socialist ideals are winning increasing support among the non-proletarian strata. 154 Underlying this support is the objective conflict between the interests of the handful of monopolists, who are finding themselves in growing isolation, and the interests of the entire people. These facts have to be admitted even by communism’s undisguised enemies. “Empirical investigations,” we read in a major anti-communist publication, “have shown that optimistic descriptions of the harmonising effect of the cmbourgeoisement of the working class and its absorption into the ’levelled middle-class society’ are frequently premature.”  [154•* 

p However strong and intensive it may be and whatever headway it may make from time to time, social suggestion running counter to the interests of the working class and other categories of working people should not be overrated. Nihilism makes a fetish of the significance of mind, desire and emotion manipulation, exaggerating the extent to which the sense of contentedness has become widespread and consolidated, and arbitrarily abstracting itself from the class nature of socio-psychological control.

p History teaches that such suggestion is always, though in varying degrees, opposed by the social auto-suggestion of the masses springing from their experience, from the notions empirically formed by them of their own interests. A spirit of rebellion that surmounts servile humility is thus born. Psychologically it stems from the suffering and accumulated anger and hatred of the oppressed for their oppressors; morally from a sense of responsibility to one’s class for one’s behaviour, and duty to resist, from sincere patriotism and faith in the value of labour and the dignity of the worker; politically from one’s understanding of “ recompensing" and “levelling” justice. People have never been simple victims of egoism, slaves of fear, weak-willed objects of tyrannical manipulation.

p In the direction consistent with the interests of the masses the strength of auto-suggestion is growing. With the emergence and development of the scientific ideology of Marxism-Leninism, spontaneous auto-suggestion is realising 155 itself at the highest level, finding in Marxism-Leninism an objectively true reflection of the possibilities of the working people and aims and means of their struggle. This ideology leads the social discontent of the working class to a criticism of the capitalist system, which enriches the vague, emotional hatred of it, frequently concentrated on minor points and false aspects, with logical consistency and systematisation, a scientific analysis of capitalism’s contradictions, organisational principles, strategy and tactics of struggle, and the needed perspectives. It shows the historic mission of the working class and rules out the acceptance of exploitation as a natural state of affairs or the view that the working people are the “junior partners" of the exploiters.

p This has sounded the death-knell of the practice of drugging the mass consciousness. The epoch, in which it is easier to make people believe they are pieces of lava on the Moon than themselves, is coming to a close. Through its participation in the democratic and socialist movement and its assimilation of Marxist-Leninist ideology the working class is proving able, while resisting the ideological and psychological pressure of monopoly capital, to acquire a revolutionary socialist consciousness and historical optimism.

p Nihilistic criticism is trying to present precisely this enlightenment of the social consciousness, this release of the working people’s revolutionary energy, to the sense of wretchedness (playing on its intellectualist, elitarian or simply petty-proprietor prejudices) as a rebellion of the man in the street. The methodological viciousness of this assertion lies in the fact that nihilistic criticism regards the views and modes of action of the masses undifferentially. In the “topsy-turvy world" there is, of course, a mass of people who are egoistic and narrow-minded in their needs and feelings. This mass is controlled by the ruling class and used by it for conservative and sometimes Rightextremist purposes. Nihilistic criticism depicts as normal and even typical the stereotype views, feelings and behaviour of this mass. The crisis of the individual of this mass is given out as a crisis of the individual generally in the epoch of the scientific and technological revolution.

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p But this is only one aspect of the question of the mass. The other is that a new collectivist individual, a fighter, thinking progressively and acting in accordance with his convictions, is being moulded in the course of the workingclass struggle. Free of consumer and pessimistic inertness, able to stand up against conformist allurements and the philosophy and psychology of despair, this individual develops an immunity against the influence of the myths spread by bourgeois propaganda and does not succumb to the voluntaristic temptation of revolutionary rebelliousness. These are the individuals who join the ranks of the revolutionary mass, whose actions eloquently refute the dogmas and arguments of nihilistic criticism.

p The revolutionary masses in industrial society have their own organisations fighting for the immediate and end goals of the proletariat and all other working people. Nihilistic criticism slanderously accuses them of opportunism in theory and time-serving in practice. But the workers’ struggle for their direct interests does not make them proponents of any status quo, captives of the sense of contentedness, helpless victims of individualist suggestions, demoralisation and mass bourgeois culture. The Communist parties are uncompromisingly fighting Right and “Left” opportunism. However, if the Communist parties themselves do not call for immediate revolution and if they adopt a serious attitude to election campaigns and the strike struggle, pursue an innovatory policy and strive for deep-going democratic reforms restricting the power of the monopolies and making it possible to wring all sorts of concessions from the capitalists, improve the material condition of the working people, eradicate the remnants of pre-bourgeois relations, and so forth, this in no way turns them into proponents of neoreformism. Even where they take part in government affairs and parliamentary activity, such participation is not directed towards strengthening the capitalist system, and instead of leading to social partnership it enlarges the proletariat’s front of struggle.

p Only political adventurists who refuse to accept a gradual advance are unable to understand the features of the presentday class struggle and the link between the struggle for democracy and the struggle for socialism. The mass 157 revolutionary consciousness of the majority of the people is shaped not only by agitation and propaganda. The alignment of forces can indeed be changed and the broad masses enlisted to the side of the vanguard only in a persevering, day-to-day struggle for the interests of all contingents of working people. The struggle for major democratic reforms creates the conditions and the springboards for the revolutionary replacement of capitalism by socialism. The measured advance of the proletarian legions is regarded as capitulation only by petty-bourgeois impatience, which cannot understand whether the movement is at the stage of upswing or decline.

p How did the sense of wretchedness, directed by nihilistic criticism, overlook the actual revolutionary forces of modern times? The fact is that while publicly claiming to be independent of the pressures of apologetics and adaptive views, the sense of wretchedness finds itself, without suspecting it, entangled from head to foot in a web of dogmas decreed by official bourgeois ideology. From the vast arsenal of this ideology it borrows the most fashionable ideas and ecstatically inhales their poison.

p Let us compare the theses of the sense of contentedness with antitheses of the sense of wretchedness. The former believes that the capitalist world is arranged quite reasonably, while the latter sees in that world the embodiment of the absurd. They are united by their unqualified recognition that the state-monopoly organisation is profoundly effective, stable and omnipotent, since it ensures a high level of labour productivity, technological progress, universal welfare and social stability. It is asserted that this miracle is accomplished through the self-negation of traditional capitalism, through the integration of classes, through social equilibrium, through quiet changes, pretentiously called revolutions, in the sphere of property and the distribution of incomes, and through centralised bureaucratic management of industry and social affairs.

p We already know the true worth and designation of these theories and arguments. However, accepted by the sense of contentedness as fundamental premises, these illusions are repeated word for word by the sense of wretchedness. But how does the conclusion of the thesis 158 that “if a system is omnipotent it is good" differ in principle from the conclusion of the antithesis that “the system is bad even if it is omnipotent"? The only difference is perhaps that those preferring the thesis are prepared to and do give the worshipped system direct and unconditional support, while those who accept the antithesis render the intimidating system obscured support by the fact that they urge the renunciation of the struggle against it. Naturally, the system itself prefers open and uncurtailed support, but in difficult times it is prepared to rest content with indirect support. It is only intolerant of those who fight it.

p But let us continue our comparison. As we have earlier ascertained, the sense of contentedness is convinced that by raising the consumer standard and intensifying sociopsychological manipulation the system can integrate all the main social groups, with few, chiefly individual, exceptions, with a uniform consciousness, united by standard beliefs and behaviour strictly in accordance with the role played by each group. Its point of departure is its contention that normal man is an escapist, a philistine, a consumer entirely or mainly, and that therefore the system will always have mass support.

p But do not these selfsame fictions befuddle nihilistic criticism, which easily yields to the propagandist rhetoric and suggestions of official, optimistic theories? What change is introduced by the fact that the sense of contentedness sees in this solid grounds for the triumph of its faith in the rational character of industrial society, while the sense of wretchedness regards this as the cause of indignation that evolves into unending despair? The sense of contentedness proclaims with satisfaction that the masses have lost their revolutionary potential, that they have become contented and conservative, that universal deideologisation and depoliticisation are approaching; people, it asserts, have at last become engaged in what they should be occupied: hastily dropping their unpleasant duties they are getting down to pleasurable consumption. The sense of wretchedness repeats the same idea, but for the sake of symmetry changes the evangelistic expression to the sad mien of an admirer of the Ecclesiastes. Further, it is quite immaterial 159 that some people feel the need for psychologically lifting alienation by themselves and others do not (or they delegate this function to the system itself, which carries it out with the aid of the ideology of consumption, neohedonistic practices and show business); to some extent, a person’s general state is his own affair.

p As it looks into the mirror the sense of contentedness believes without the shadow of a doubt that it gets a normal perception of the world. But the same image appears in the mirror when the sense of wretchedness looks into it. Neither finds its own class nature (which, generally speaking, is not so striking as, say, its other distinguishing features—age, professional-psychological, national, and so on), the determining elements of coexistence and the social functions carried out by them. This is precisely a case when guilt falls not on the face but only on the mirror—the dogmas, guidelines and strictly demarcated boundaries of bourgeois thinking. The latter is inevitably mythical (with optimistic or pessimistic undertones) in all its tiers: from premises to end conclusions.

p Nothing so clearly explains the speciousness of the confrontation in the integral manipulating bloc and lays bare the ideological kinship between the senses of wretchedness and contentedness as state-monopoly capitalism’s indulgent attitude to nihilism’s critical attacks. The bourgeois organisation shows a certain toleration of nihilistic criticism. This may be least of all interpreted as a manifestation of inherent democracy or an impetuous desire for self-improvement. Only the sense of contentedness attributes to it these qualities and pious motivations, seeing in the gestures of toleration an additional reason for its trust for this “democratic” organisation.

p However, the bourgeois organisation is savagely intolerant of criticism that exposes its true aims, shows the secret mechanisms of its activity and calls for a struggle against it. It allows only criticism that makes capitalism’s incurable ulcers and vices look like harmless defects, miscalculations, and so on. Criticism is free only as long as it does not step beyond the boundaries laid down for it. Any violation of these boundaries does not go unpunished. That is when criticism feels the tactics of arm-twisting, the organisation’s 160 punitive power. It may be accused of libel or of unconstitutional action, of unpatriotic and subversive thinking. It may find itself taken to court, ostracised by controlled public opinion or subjected to administrative or financial pressure. The extent and forms of repressions depend on the overall alignment of strength between the forces of reaction and progress in the conditions obtaining in capitalist society, on the combination of innumerable political, legal and other factors. On them depends the very possibility of muffling, suppressing or curbing audacious criticism.

p What sort of criticism is regarded as permissible in capitalist society? The label loyal is awarded to criticism of certain defects, individual actions, institutions and establishments, persons involved in illegal and the most odious machinations, and also to criticism of those who voluntarily or involuntarily betray the ruling class, in short, criticism from the positions of the sense of contentedness. But we find that criticism inspired by the assessment of capitalism as an absolute but inevitable evil is also permitted. In the epoch of crisis the bourgeois organisation has to twist and dodge and permit what was formerly banned. As we have seen, nihilistic criticism of alienation, dehumanisation, the predominance of machines, bureaucracy and bondage to things stems from the premise that the vices of capitalism are those of any industrially developed system and therefore insuperable. It cannot understand the objective dialectics of good and evil, with the result that it believes that both the one and the other are absolute, and cannot grasp the idea that any evil is such only for its times, while capitalism’s immanent development gives birth to the forces of negation. The only freedom it values is the right to say “no”.

p This criticism is nothing less than disguised justification of the capitalist system. The tactics of struggle suggest that it does not hurt to use it since its attacks, however loud they may seem to be, do not deviate from the basic ideological principles of bourgeois thought. Whereas the system brutally persecutes communist and genuinely democratic criticism, it makes every effort to absorb nihilistic iconoclasm, directing it into the channel of hare-brained social 161 schemes or onto the tested road of moderate reformism. The system includes nihilistic ideas in the content of mass culture after popularising them, so that they can be used for its own purposes. These ideas are disseminated by the huge mass media apparatus, thus making the mythology of despair an object of consumption not only of “highbrows” but also a popular commodity of mass culture, a bijouterie with specific indications (misfits eulogised as heroes, the laudation of a nomadic way of life, the stigmatisation of bourgeois life, traditions and idiom, the romanticisation of the individual’s self-isolation, of his flight from society). Belonging to neither this nor that group of society, these ideas are easier to sell to the mass consumer, and all because regardless of what it imagines and how it presents itself nihilistic criticism is devoid of genuine criticism and independence. This “most resolute" criticism of manipulation is being itself manipulated.

p It forgets with staggering ease that only recently, taking pride in its firmness and dauntlessness, it has urged people to bear in mind the treacherous reefs and cunning traps, the ability of dehumanised society to hobble and adapt any criticism to its own needs the moment the latter stands gaping. Not a trace has remained of its own warnings about the dangers of capitalist society’s sham toleration: in the long list of designations everything may be given a role and used to maintain the equilibrium of the social organisation.

p The fact that nihilistic ideas are disseminated without hindrance creates the illusion that there is freedom of thought. In this freedom for nihilistic propaganda is seen a means of flexible adaptation to the bourgeois system, a means of gradually moulding a conciliatory (or, rather, a pacified) consciousness and achieving a link-up between criticism from positions of wretchedness and contentedness. In turn, this pursues the objective of demonstrating the “viability” of the system itself, its ability to get on with ideologies “hostile” to it, and establish seignorial relations with them. The system tells, as it were, the sense of wretchedness: “If the devastating criticism you level at me helps to kill pain and assuage the sense of alienation, go ahead and criticise as much as you like. Relief is given 162 not by a priest but by confession. If you wish to do even a little rioting—go ahead. You will be quieter later.” This sort of “democracy” on the part of the social system, which grants nihilistic criticism license to freedom, gives no grounds whatever for admiration, especially as it inspires this criticism’s demagogic attacks on the working class, Marxism-Leninism and the socialist countries.

p Still, it must be admitted that it is not easy to manipulate the sense of wretchedness and the criticism emanating from it. Both are in many ways spontaneous, a living protest against the ruling elite’s rigid regulation of all spheres of life, against the increasing enslavement of the individual, against the restrictions on and formalisation of his freedoms. At grassroot level they have many elements of realism and democracy. Bourgeois ideology seeks to control them, regardless of whether they are a pettybourgeois protest or a form by which the most soberminded among the ruling class itself see that the old foundations are doomed. In one way or another, every effort is made to keep criticism within the bounds of bourgeois orthodoxy and utilise its ideas as a means of attaining the overriding aim of bourgeois ideology, namely, justifying the existing system, reducing the masses to submission and directing them without hindrance.

p But because it is spontaneous, the criticism by the sense of wretchedness is sometimes more barbed than usual and gets out of control. When that happens it not only erodes the ideology of consumption and acquisition (the cost which is commonly covered by a disguised apologia, by the reinforcement of conformism at the other end, by a relaxation of socio-psychological tension) but may induce revolutionary feeling, democratic and socialist ideas, in other words, lead to a result that could be fatal to the bourgeois organisation. It may provide a way out to new ideological heights outside the boundaries of the bourgeois world outlook. This is why the organisation regards the criticism from the camp of the sense of wretchedness with mixed feelings: it is vitally interested in a closer alliance between the content of nihilistic ideas and the sense of wretchedness, but at the same time it wants to consolidate such outlets from nihilism as would reinforce the embourgeoisement of the 163 mass consciousness. An analysis of this problem opens up yet another chapter in the dialogue with nihilism.

p But before dealing with it, let us again return to the ill-starred question of whether the world is reasonable or inhabited by monsters of absurdity and irrationalism. What we have said above allows us to brand both the evaluating arguments about the world being bad, about it going from bad to worse and their opposites as unwarranted. The very fact that they are put forward and logically or psychologically supported indicates that the thinking having recourse to them is unable to cope with the contradictions and paradoxes of the modern world. All this thinking can do is to record its various aspects in the most abstract manner, and it finds itself stuck in them. In its fossilised formulas and contradictions the world is simplified and depicted as one-sided: either as beautifully rational or as shockingly irrational. This thinking ignores the world’s sensuous concreteness and the “universal modesty of the mind" when thought has the great capacity for treating “each thing according to the latter s essential nature”.  [163•*  Or this thinking remains in a state of irresolution, doubt and scepticism, when the world seems to be good and bad at one and the same time, which conforms to the requirements of the person abandoning the sense of contentedness for the sense of wretchedness. Unwieldy bourgeois reason also restricts the possibilities of theoretical analysis, which together with it cannot extricate itself from the bog of contradictions.

p So far as any scientific view is concerned, the world cannot achieve a state that may be described as absolutely reasonable or totally unreasonable. The only reasonable thing is the steady movement from lower to higher forms. What is burdened by unreason is not the world but what hinders its infinite development. Whereas for nihilism and pessimism reality is unreasonable and reason is invalid, for the scientific view only the continued existence of the historically outworn system is absurd. In our day the communist system is bringing with it a new, reasonable reality linked with the triumph of man’s social freedom.

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The dialectics underlying the scientific picture of the world “is a scandal and abomination to bourgeoisdom and its doctrinaire professors, because it includes in its comprehension and affirmative recognition of the existing state of things, at the same time also, the recognition of the negation of that state, of its inevitable breaking up; because it regards every historically developed social form as in fluid movement, and therefore takes into account its transient nature not less than its momentary existence; because it lets nothing impose upon it, and is in its essence critical and revolutionary”.  [164•*