p Before applying to the life of society dialectical materialism’s principle of the primacy of matter over consciousness we must distinguish between material and spiritual phenomena in society and determine the law-governed patterns of their interrelationship. Marxist sociology custojnarily uses the term “social being" t-g dpnnt-p malerial phenomena in society and “social consciousness" to describe spiritual phenomena.

p Social being includes the activity of people aimed at creating the objects and material goods that are essential for their life-food, clothing, housing, means of transport and so forth. This activity is performed with the utilisation of the means of labour created by society, acting upon nature with the aim of adapting it to society’s needs. During this labour activity people establish certain relations between one another, on the one hand, and between themselves and nature, on the other. The relations between people and nature manifest themselves and are embodied in definite kinds of means of labour, while those between people themselves are expressed in the form of ownership of the means of production and in the 429 corresponding forms of distribution of the means of labour and the material goods produced.

p Social being thus consists primarily of the relations among people which arise in the process of the production and distribution of material goods, i.e. production relations.

p Even though people’s production relations represent the major aspect of social being, the latter also includes certain other aspects, such as the material relations arising between spouses within the family, the relations between parents and children, as well as certain (material) cultural and every-day relations.

p The totality of material relations within which the real process ot human lite proceeds, as well as that ot the material conditions oi human existence, constitute social being.

p Whereas the concept “social being" is associated with the material life of people and the conditions for creating material goods, “social consciousness" is related to their spiritual life and the specific features of society’s spiritual creativity.

p Social consciousness is the totality ot ideas, theories, views, outlooks, feelings, customs and traditions existing in society and reflecting the nt onrile nd the material conditions of their lite.

p Social consciousness reflects social being to the extent that consciousness generally reflects the reality existing outside and irrespective of the former. A concrete expression of the general philosophical principle that consciousness reflects 430 the reality existing outside and irrespective of it, this thesis, when applied to social consciousness, includes a number of specific features that make it an independent sociological principle related to a specific aspect of the interrelationship between consciousness and being. Indeed, applied to general philosophical (i.e. dialectical materialist) principles consciousness reflects reality as an image or copy of it, while in the sociological context (i.e. historical materialist), the consciousness (of society) reflects social being not by making copies of the latter and not in the form of images or pictures of its component parts, but rather in the form of dependence on it and the determining nature of the contents of social ideas, outlooks, feelings, strivings and other economic conditions of human life.

p For example, the recognition of a marriage of convenience as being moral in capitalist society undoubtedly reflects the economic conditions and social being of the bourgeoisie, based on the domination of private capitalist property and commodity-money relations. But it is not an image of this being or this economic position; it is conditioned and brought to life by the latter. Or take another example: the teaching of the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle that some people, by their natural qualities, were destined to become slave-owners, while the others to be slaves, reflected the social being of the slave-owners and their striving to theoretically substantiate and justify the slave-owning mode of production. This teaching was not, however, an exact reproduction 431 of the actual situation and social being concerned though it was undoubtedly brought into existence by this social being.

p We must not think that since social consciousness reflects social being in the form in which the content of the former is conditioned by the latter, this type of reflection cannot be a copy of social being and cannot assume the form of objective truth. Under definite historical conditions the content of social consciousness may represent objective truth. This may be so wnen verification of the actual situation corresponds to the interests ot some ruling class, or when its interests conTorm to the requirements of the objective material development ot society s lite and to the trends of change in social being. For example, the social consciousness of the progressive classes who oppose historically obsolete forms of social being does, as a rule, contain the objective truth that to one or other degree reflects the actual situation. Thus, when the bourgeoisie was fighting feudalism, which had become historically obsolete and acted as a brake on the further progressive development of society, its social consciousness to some extent reflected the actual situation, i.e. it contained elements of the objective truth. Later on, when capitalist private property became an obstacle to the further development of the productive forces and when a historical need arose for replacing it with socialist property, the social consciousness of the bourgeoisie and, in particular, the theories produced by its sociologists, could no longer originate from the actual situation. On 432 the contrary, they sought to prove the continuous nature of capitalism and the necessity of its eternal existence and began, either intentionally or unintentionally, to distort its social consciousness.

p Social theories and diverse sociological views do not become genuinely scientific and do not start to reflect the objective truth until the time when the capitalist socio-economic formation begins to decay and the proletariat, interested in knowing the actual laws of social development in order to fulfil its historical mission-the abolition of private property and of the exploitation of man by man, as well as the building of a classless communist society-comes on the historical scene.

p The Marxist thesis of the decisive influence of social being on social consciousness helps to reveal the reflection of material contradictions, the class struggle, through the prism of ideological struggle. Indeed, whereas certain social ideas and theories arise as a reflection of social being and are determined by people’s economic conditions, consciousness cannot be uniform and above classes in a class society. Each class forms its own consciousness and understanding of the surrounding world in conformity with the economic conditions of its being. In antagonistic society, the social being of different classes is not the same and may even be diametrically opposite. The antagonistic polarity of social being inevitably leads to antagonisms in the realm of consciousness and to clashes of diverse ideas and views. In order to keep one’s bearings in social life and to be able 433 to sort out the diverse opinions, social ideas and theories, it is essential to bear in mind the class nature of social ideas and theories.

p “People,” Lenin wrote, “always have been the foolish victims of deception and self-deception in politics, and they always will be until they have learnt to seek out the interests of some class or other behind all moral, religious, political and social phrases, declarations and promises.”  [433•1 

p It should be remembered that in society the ruling class seeks at any price to impose its views on the broad sections of the working people and to make these views dominant. It succeeds to one or another degree since it has the material means and controls the entire propaganda apparatus-the press, radio, cinema, theatre and so forth.

“The ideas of ruling classes,” Marx and Engels wrote, “are in every epoch the ruling ideas: i.e., the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force. The class which has the means of material production at its disposal, has control at the same time over the means of mental production, so that thereby, generally speaking, the ideas of those who lack the means of mental production are subject to it. The ruling ideas are nothing more than the ideal expression of the dominant material relationships. . .”  [433•2