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a) The Essence of Morality

p Man cannot exist outside society and the human collective which always places certain obligations on the behaviour of its members, so his actions should conform to the interests of society, which reserves judgement as to whether they are good or bad, justified or not.

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p The views current in society of people’s actions, evaluating them as their being either good or bad, justified or unjustified, honest or dishonest, are known as moral views.

p Moral views are codified and embodied in certain rules and standards of human behaviour which people observe in their relations. The totality of moral standards constitutes the morality of a society.

p Thus, morality is a collection of standards and rules of human behaviour in society at a given stage ot its development, expressing society’s views (or those of some class) concerning human actions from the point of view ot good or evil, justice or injustice, honesty or dishonesty.

In addition to moral standarcTsT ther¥ are, of course, certain legal rules operating in society which, like the former, regulate human behaviour. Moral standards, however, differ drastically from legal ones, notably in that legal rules rest on state coercion. If some member of society refuses to observe a certain legal rule, the organs of power will force him to do so. Moral standards, however, do not have such a binding force. They are only backed by the force of public opinion and collective disapproval. Furthermore, while legal rules are established by the state and assume the form of a law, moral standards are established by society or a class by generalising the practice of human relations as well as people’s notions of good, evil, justice, injustice and the moral ideal, which arise under the direct influence of the material conditions of life.

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b) The Origins of Morality

p Idealists hold that morality originated from consciousness, from a spiritual source. The ancient Greek philosopher Plato associated morality with the “idea of good”, which is beyond human consciousness, while Kant related at to the outside world. There are also numerous attempts to trace morality from man’s biological nature and, in particular, from instincts-a mother’s protection of her offspring, the tribal instinct and that of mutual assistance. “Morality is not typical of mankind only, it exists among animals also and only expresses the social instinct.”  [451•1 

p Some sociologists trace the origin of morality to the so-called eternal and unchanging qualities of man’s nature-pugnacity or disposition towards good, etc.

p Marxism has been the first to provide a truly scientific explanation of the origins and essence of morality based on the materialistic understanding of history.

p Morality is a social phenomenon. It arises and exists only in society on the basis of joint production activity in the course of which the need emerges for regulating the relations between the individual and the collective, for defining the obligations of each member of the collective and the measure of punishment for shirking. It was people’s joint labour activity that necessitated the 452 coordination of the actions of the individual with those of the collective, and of personal with common interests. It also helped formulate definite notions concerning everyone’s responsibilities to the collective and judgements of people’s behaviour.

p Initially people’s notions of good and bad, just and unjust, and the corresponding standards of behaviour constituted the only regulators of social intercourse. Later customs and legal rules appeared in addition to moral standards. . Stressing the link between morality and people’s production activity, Engels wrote: “...men, consciously or unconsciously, derive their ethical Ideas in the last resort from the practical relations on which their class position is based-from the economic relations in which they carry on production and exchange.”  [452•1 

But if morality is brought into being by people’s material conditions and their economic relations and also reflects these relations, it cannot be ejernal and should change along with the changes in tEese conditions and economic relations. For example, in the initial stages of human society, when the level of development of the productive forces was extremely low and man was still unable to produce enough for his own subsistence, it was considered moral to slay old people who could not maintain themselves. Later on, however, when the material conditions of life changed and the productive forces developed, 453 enabling people to produce a surplus product not vitally essential for the direct producer’s existence people began to consider such actions immoral. Concern and respect for old people were now considered moral.

c) The Class Nature of Morality

p When society beramp

p classes dras-

p tic changes took place in morality. In the past morality had been the same for all members^f Society, but now this uniformity disappeared. Each class developed its own moral standards, its own morality. This is not accidental, since morality depends on the people’s material conditions of life, and since the antagonistic classes have diametrically opposite conditions of life in a class society it is only natural that these classes should have differing ideas of good and bad, justice and injustice, and that they should be guided by quite different social principles.

p It is always the moral views and the corresponding morality expressing the interests of the ruling class that hold sway in society. The ruling class seeks to make its moral views and corresponding standards binding for the entire society, but since moral standards are not backed by the force of state coercion, as is the case with law, the working people’s public opinion neither recognizes these standards as moral, nor observes them; it disregards the public opinion of the exploiters. With their growing class consciousness, the working people acquire their own moral views 454 and moral principles, which are directly opposite to those of the ruling bourgeois class.

p In capitalist society, for example, the morality of the capitalists, the bourgeois morality, predominates. Private ownership of the means of production serves as the economic foundation of this morality. Yet in the view of the Russian proletarian writer Maxim Gorky, private ownership disunites people, arms them against one another, creates an irreconcilable clash of interests, lies to conceal or justify this clash and corrupts everybody with a torrent of slander, hypocrisy and malice.

p The principle of sale and purchase dominates in bourgeois society. Everything is a commodity. Not only consumer goods can be bought, but also people, their blood and conscience. Money becomes the main criterion of human relations. Those who have money, no matter how they acquired it, are considered honest and enjoy respect. In his pursuit of profit, the bourgeois would flout moral standards and would commit crime.

p Bourgeois morality fosters egoism and individualism. “Man unto man is a wolf”, “self comes first”, “charity begins at home”, “ everybody for himself”, “only God cares for everybody"—such are the principles of bourgeois morality.

p But apart from bourgeois morality, a new higher morality emerges in bourgeois society, the morality of the progressive class called upon to liberate mankind from poverty and exploitation. This is the morality of the proletariat.

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p It takes shape as the proletariat joins battle against the exploiters and as soon as it develops a class consciousness. Mikhail Kalinin, a prominent Soviet public and political figure, wrote that proletarian morality took shape in work-in factories and workshops.

p The principles of the proletarian morality are directly opposite to those of the bourgeoisie. Whereas bourgeois morality rests on individualism, egoism and a disregard for society and the collective, proletarian ethics is based on collectivism and comradely mutual assistance.

p Characterising tne revolutionary workers, Marx wrote: “...Brotherhood among people is not an empty phrase for them-it is the truth; and the whole beauty of humanity looks at us from their work-roughened faces.”  [455•1 

p In capitalist society the word “comrade” sounds as a call for unity in the struggle against the oppressors, and is a symbol of proletarian power, the organisation and unity of its ranks.

p The sense of comradeship becomes especially pronounced after the overthrow of the exploiters, the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat and of socialist ownership of the means of production which, in contrast to private ownership that rouses hatred among people, unites people, and stirs and develops this sense of comradeship.

p Proletarian morality, being the morality of a 456 class, is. at the same time, the morality of all working people. This is because in its struggle against the exploiters the proletariat defends not only its own interests, but also those of the entire nation, inasmuch as it wages a struggle not only for its own liberation from the capitalist yoke, but also for that of all working people. So during the building of communism, the morality of the working class becomes gradually transformed into a communist morality, which expresses the interests of all working people.

p By communist morality we mean everything that “serves to destroy the old exploiting society and to unite all the working people around the proletariat, which is building up a new, a communist society.”  [456•1 

p Communist morality is thus subordinated to “the interests of the proletariat’s class struggle.”  [456•2  “Communist morality is based on the struggle for the consolidation and completion of communism.”  [456•3 

p Communist morality, besides the principles of collectivism and comradeship already mentioned includes certain other principles and rules. These are loyalty to the cause of communism; affection for the socialist motherland; honest labour for the sake of society; protection and accumulation of socialist wealth; awareness of social duty and intolerance of infringements on social interests; 457 humane relations and mutual respect; honesty and truthfulness, simplicity and modesty in public and private life; mutual respect in the family and concern for the upbringing of children; intolerance of national and racial hostility; irreconcilable attitude towards enemies of communism, of peace and the freedom of nations,- fraternal solidarity with the working people af all countries, with all nations of the world.

Communist morality takes shape and consolidates itself in the fight against bourgeois morality, against the vestiges of the past in people’s consciousness and actions. “The higher the level of our society in its development,” it was stated at the 25th CPSU Congress, “the more intolerable are the still occurring departures from the socialist rules of morality.”  [457•1 

d) Elements of the Universal in Morality

p Despite its class nature, morality includes standards of behaviour that are common to different classes and different epochs, and are of a universal human nature. The presence of such standards is explained by the fact that any people’s collective requires that all members of society should observe certain elementary rules of behaviour without which the existence of human society is inconceivable. Among such standards are 458 the parents’ concern for children and the children’s affection for their parents, respect for old jjgpple. politeness, modesty, keeping one’s wordT and standards condemning hooliganism, rape, and so forth.

p These universal moral standards should not be considered in isolation from their historical context. Like the principles that express the interests of a particular class, Universal ethical norms are also an outcome of social development. Having arisen in the remote past, they are passed down from generation to generation, taking on a richer form. Different epochs create different conditions for the universal moral standards. Though in origin they are not associated with classes, the relations dominating in a class society leave a definite imprint on them, and in this way change them in one direction or another. For example, the lust of enrichment, a permanent feature of the exploiters, and the constant want of the working people, have often led to distortions and violations of the elementary rules of human behaviour. ”. . .The fundamental social cause of excesses, which consist in the violation of the rules of social intercourse, is the exploitation of the people, their want and their poverty”, Lenin wrote.  [458•1 

Only in a classless society, with new comradely relations among all its members, can there be conditions for the observance of these rules of behaviour. And though in contemporary socialist society an apparatus of coercion is required to 459 ensure their observance, with the transition to communism the basic rules of social behaviour will be observed by all people without any coercion: their observance will become a habit. Thus, with the establishment of socialist and, later, of communist society, the sphere of tmivercal acpects in morality widens.

e) The Criterion of the Truth in Morality

p Since in society classes have different views concerning good, evil, justice and injustice, i.e. different and even directly opposite moral standards, the question naturally arises as to which of these views and moral standards are true and what is the criterion for the moral truth.

p There are many points of view on this problem, but for bourgeois sociologists the one common feature is that all of them, as a rule, reject objective criteria of morality.

p The moral relativists claim that it is impossible to establish any reliable criteria for drawing a demarcation line between moral and immoral. “To define the correctness of actions,” Hellmuth Stofer writes, “one last and decisive argument is missing. ... The obligation ... rests empirically on multifarious commandments and prohibitions, whereas the correctness of the ideals, taken as a criterion, represents no more than a supposition.”  [459•1 

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p The positivists also reject objective criteria for the evaluation of ethical views. In their opinion, the notions of good, evil, better and worse are simply designed to express the fact that a certain individual considers the given action to be such. The opinion of that individual is not, however, binding for other people who may have their own and differing opinions on this score. It is thus simply impossible to establish which of these opinions is true.

p Cassius Keyser’s viewpoint is a relevant example. He writes: “Ethics has its roots in certain sentiments. What the sentiments are is indicated by such terms as right, wrong, good, bad, better, worse, evil, duty, obligation, ought, ought not. Like everything else, the ethical sentiments are what they are. Wherever they occur, whenever they occur, they occur as facts, as facts of nature. . .”,  [460•1  i.e. as strictly individual phenomena. They are erratic and fragmentary. They differ with various individuals and at different times, they depend on the circumstances and time. Because of this, he continues, the rules engendered by ethical opinions and the views associated with these rules are also different and subject to change.

p Keyser holds that all moral principles and views must be grouped so that each group includes only those that do not contradict each other. There will then be as many moral systems as there are groups. 461 According to Keyser, as many moral systems can be built as there are different opinions among people, but since their number is infinitely large, so is that of morals.

p Each of these systems, Keyser claims, will reflect the ethical opinion of some man and on this strength it is true, since it records an actual fact of reality.

p Keyser fully ignores the fact that, despite differences in moral judgements between some people, there is something common in them, which is determined by the position these people occupy in society and in the production of material goods. This common element in evaluating a phenomenon assumes the form of a system of moral principles recognised by all members of the group, say, the representatives of one class, though some members of the group will certainly evaluate this phenomenon differently. Individual ethical views will also occur, but neither these variations nor the individual approach in evaluating phenomena in the least preclude the existence of an ethical system common for the representatives of the class. This system will exist and hew its way forward as a general trend through all these many variations.

p Thus, we see that idealist philosophy, while speculating on the individual nature of people’s ethical views, rejects the common nature of moral standards for social groups and, at the same lime, the objective criterion of morality.  

p So how is the question concerning the criterion of morality and the truth of moral standards solved?

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The morality of each epoch and of each class reflects the material conditions of life and the economic situation of people. It is this that determines the historically relatively changing nature of moral views and standards. Similar to the development of the material conditions of human life, objective progress may also be observed in the realm ot morality. Marxism solves the question concerning the truth of morality with iespect to this progressive development of society. A morality that to the maximum extent conorms to the, prnirp.isiup. vancement of society, while safeguarding the future and reflecting the tasks ot society’s progressive development, is the truer morality. And only the proletarian communist morality can be such a morality. On the issue of which form of morality in capitalist society is the true one, Engels writes : ”. . .The maximum elements promising permanence which, in the present, represents the overthrow of the present, represents the future, and that is proletarian morality.”  [462•1