Kh. Momjan

PROGRESS PUBLISHERS MOSCOW

Translated from the Russian by G. Sdobnikova Designed by V. Kuleshov

CONTENTS

X. H.

BEXH HCTOPHH

MapKCHCTCKoe yienjie 06 oGmecTBeimo-BKOHOMMHecKiix <j>opMau,HHX Ha amjiuucKOM

Foreword

Chapter Prerequisites of the Gopernican Revolution in Social One.

Science.................. 7

Chapter The Main Principles of a Scientific View of Social Two.

Affairs................... 25

Chapter Socio-Economic Formations: the Main Phases of

Three.

Historical Development............ 45

Chapter Historical Progress as a Succession of Socio-Economic Four.

Formations................. 68

Chapter Social Revolution: an Objective Uniformity of Transi-

Five.

Request to Readers

Progress Publishers would be glad to have your opinion of this book, its translation and design and any suggestions you may have for future publications.

Please send all your comments to 17, Zubovsky Boulevard, Moscow, USSR.

tion to a New Formation

Chapter Socio-Economic Formation and Civilisation.....127

Six.

Chapter Wars and Socio-Economic Formations......142

Seven.

Chapter The Emergence and Development of the Communist Eight.

Formation.................

© Ha pyccKOM aatiKe. HsflaTejibCTBo «IIporpecc», 1978 English translation © Progress Publishers 1980 First printing 1980

Printed in the Union o) Soviet Socialist Republics

Chapter The Ascent of History as the Alternative to Social Nine.

Pessimism.................

Chapter The Socio-Economic Formation Doctrine and Its Adfen.

versaries Today...............208

Conclusion....................242

10303---013 . ^M 016(01)---80~^^28^^~^^80^^

FOREWORD

In this book, the author has sought to present the main features of the Marxist philosophy of history and to characterise the motive forces and major phases of mankind's history.

The author centres his attention on the doctrine of socioeconomic formations, which lies at the heart of the dialectical materialist view of the historical process. This doctrine is the result of a thorough and all-round analysis of the real historical process by Marx, Engels and Lenin, and shows the real course of human history, its motive forces, main phases, and the replacement of obsolescent social organisms (old socio-economic formations) by new and more advanced formations.

Since mankind's history is an unbroken succession of socio-economic formations, with old formations giving way to more viable ones, which hold out greater promise and are essentially superior to their predecessors in economic, socio-political, cultural and moral terms, the author has devoted much attention to the problem of social progress, its objective and subjective factors, and the ways of mankind's ascent from lower to higher forms of socio-economic organisation.

The Marxist doctrine of socio-economic formations, like Marxism as a whole, is not only an instrument helping to get an insight into the ongoing social processes, but also a means of transforming the world. In view of the foregoing, the author has tried to show the role and importance of this doctrine in the scientific analysis of our dynamic epoch, its poignant antagonistic contradictions, and mankind's complicated but irrepressible movement towards a new, communist civilisation free from any social or national inequalities, from humiliation and oppression.

In the final part of the book, the author deals with the attempts to refute the Marxist doctrine of socio-- economic formations by many Western sociologists, historians,

philosophers and economists. Their refusal to accept the Marxist concept of social development and their urge to prove its inauthenticity and fallacy are most often dictated by considerations which are very far from science, scientific arguments or conclusions, but stem from political sympathies and antipathies, from the habitual way of life and thinking, from an allegiance to the old, bourgeois social system, which is seen as natural and reasonable in spite of its ``inconveniences''. Many bourgeois students of social affairs reject Marxism simply because the Marxist doctrine of formations makes it impossible to regard that system as reasonable and eternal. History does repeat itself. In the past, many adherents of the feudal-clerical outlook were, perhaps, sincerely perplexed and outraged by the verdict handed down by the 18th century French Enlightenment on the feudal system, which they saw not only as natural, but also as established by God.

Frankly speaking, this book is not meant for those who set their own interests and privileges above the scientific truth, for they can hardly be expected to change their minds. This book is meant for broad-minded, unbiased readers who are ready to open themselves out to new ideas, provided these are true.

Chapter One

PREREQUISITES OF THE GOPERNICAN REVOLUTION

IN SOCIAL SCIENCE

In the mid-19th century, when Marx and Engels formulated the principles of their scientific world outlook and their concept of historical development, the prevailing ideas of society were far from scientific. Advocates of the religiousspiritualist interpretation of history who propounded the providential concept of Jacques-Benigne Bossuet (1627-- 1704) were still prominent on the ideological scene, although their influence had somewhat waned. They tried to modernise their teacher's ideas expressed in writings like Politics Deriving from the Holy Scriptures and Discourse on Universal History. Others, who realised that it was futile to try to explain real human history in religious terms, preferred to develop a secular philosophy of history, but were unable to go beyond the confines of various idealistic, spiritualist interpretations.

The view that human history was created by man and his intellect appeared to be the most realistic and plausible. That concept, which had its origins in the Renaissance period, was expounded by the advanced thinkers of 17th century England arid especially the 18th century French Enlightenment, like Diderot, Helvetius, Holbach and their followers. But their correct urge to interpret history in human terms, without any transcendental elements, did not result in any scientific explanation of social life. In their philosophical anthropologism, they unwittingly vested the functions of the deposed God in great historical personages: statesmen, generals, legislators, founders of religious doctrines, great thinkers, revolutionary leaders, and so on. They were seen as the architects of history, who determined the course and outcome of social progress. But that approach invited thn question about the causes determining the will and consciousness of these great persona ges, (heir choice of goal and instruments for its attainment. Of course, various reasons were offered by way of explana-

tion: interest, thirst for conquest, an urge to maintain sovereignty, spiritual insight, etc., but these reasons themselves called for more profound, fundamental and objective explanations that did not depend on the will and consciousness of individuals, however outstanding. But such explanations did not fit in with the subjective-idealistic interpretation of history, which in the final analysis looked for the motive forces of history not in the objective historical process or in its immanent laws, but in the minds of individuals, without going beyond psychological explanations. Thus, the French philosopher Paul Holbach took the extreme view that major historical events were actuated by psycho-physiological motives. He maintained that "too much acidity in the bile of a fanatic, the hot blood in the heart of a conqueror.. . are sufficient reasons impelling them to undertake wars". '

Then came Hegel, who saw very clearly that it was impossible to explain major historical events in terms of the will and consciousness even of the most outstanding individuals. He maintained that causes were of the same magnitude as their effects and that epoch-making events were bound to have equally fundamental causes. But Hegel, like his predecessors, looked for these causes in the realm of the spirit, though not of the finite human spirit. He saw the phases of human history as phases in the development of an extra-temporal World-Spirit. From this it followed that great historical personages did not create history but simply executed the will of a World-Spirit, acting as its confidential agents.

Later on, we shall return to the important ideas of Hegel's philosophy of history, which did a great deal to pave the way for a scientific concept of history. Let me only point out here that he was nevertheless unable to break with idealism and spiritualism. The idea of an unfolding, self-realising World-Spirit to some extent approximated the idea of God. Hegel himself said that God ruled the world and that world history was the realisation of God's will and his divine plan.

To complete the picture, one should also point out that some thinkers in pre-Marxian social science espoused

naturalistic concepts, applying laws of nature to social affairs. Charles Montesquieu, for instance, vainly tried to trace the influence of the soil and climate on the history of nations. He believed that the geographical environment determined man's needs, and that these needs, in turn, determined the laws and usages obtaining in one social milieu or another. Thus, Montesquieu mistakenly believed that on an island "one part of the population could not be so easily made to oppress the other part". ^l England's example, in particular, refuted Montesquieu's geographical determinism.^^2^^

One will notice that all the thinkers mentioned above looked for the ultimate determinants of the historical process. But the factors they suggested could not be accepted as such determinants. Many reasons, notably, the difficulty of fitting social phenomena into regular and recurrent patterns, suggested the idea of historical indeterminism. Long before neo-Kantiamsm, history came to be seen as the domain of chance, where all events were so individual and unique that they could not be generalised but could only be described. That kind of social agnosticism naturally ruled out any generalisation or scientific foresight in the sphere of social relations.

There are grounds to conclude that by the mid-19th century the science of society, its motive forces, main stages and its ascendant development had still not taken shape. Moreover, as I have already noted, many thinkers doubted or even denied that a science of society and social development could ever exist. Still, in some social disciplines (historiography, philosophy, political economy, jurisprudence, archaeology, ethnography and other spheres), valuable data had already been accumulated and scientific conclusions had been drawn. Some of these scientific observations and conclusions helped to frame the scientific concept of social development.

Back in the 17th and 18th centuries, progressive philosophers and social thinkers noticed the important role

~^^1^^ C. L. Montesquieu, "Esprit des lois". Tn: Oeuvres completes, Vol. 1, Paris, 1950, p. 382.

~^^2^^ One should note that Montesquieu himself suspected that geographical conditions were insufficient to explain Ihe history of nations and looked for additional objective reasons behind historical development.

~^^1^^ Holbach, Systems de la Nature on des Lois da Monde Physique et du Monde Moral, Vol. 1, Londres, 1781, p. 214.

of material interests in man's everyday life, in class and interstate relations, and in the emergence of grave social conflicts, revolutions and wars.

Many thinkers of the 18th century French Enlightenment, especially Helvetius, accentuated the important role of material needs in the history of nations. Thus, Helvetius tried to explain mankind's transition from a hunting and gathering way of life to herding, and from herding to cropping and then on to trade and industry in terms of man's material requirements. He suggested that discoveries were, perhaps, made and geniuses emerged not by sheer accident but in accordance with the needs of the epoch. Although Helvetius was unable to generalise or substantiate his idea and subsequently retracted it, the importance of his surmise can hardly be overestimated. It was noted by Marx, who wrote: "Every social epoch needs its great men, and when it does not find them, it invents them, as Helvetius says." '

Here is how Helvetius formulated the dependence of man's intellectual development on his needs and vital interests: "The spirit is the child of desire and necessity.''~^^2^^

Some other pre-Marxian thinkers noted various important conditions of social development. Thus, the philosophers of the French Enlightenment expressed the idea (albeit in a contradictory and inconsistent form) that the socio-political environment had a part to play in the formation of the individual. Diderot, Helvetius and their followers maintained that to change and improve man's makeup it was necessary to change his living conditions, his social milieu. But by social milieu, they primarily meant the political form of government and were unable to bring out its objective economic basis with any measure of consistency. Another point to note here is that, while emphasising the formative role of the milieu in the life of the individual, Diderot and his followers insisted that this milieu depended on the will and consciousness of outstanding personages. But in those historical conditions, their emphasis (however inconsistent and contradictory)

on the need to change man's living conditions in order to improve his intellectual and moral makeup was spearheaded against the reactionary feudal setup and marked a step forward in the understanding of social development.

Some thinkers, while being unable to give a correct explanation of the origins of private property in the means of production, nevertheless realised the exceptional role of this socio-economic factor in social development.

Thus, the French Enlightenment philosopher of the late 17th and early 18th century, Jean Meslier, pinned all his hopes for true equality and freedom on the abolition of private property and the transfer of land and all the other means of production to the people. He wrote: "Men take over into private property the values and riches of the land, whereas they should have possessed them in common." ^!

Meslier saw private property as the source of social and proprietary inequality, as the cause of the deprived people's untold suffering and of the ceaseless struggle between the rich and the poor, as the motive behind uprisings, revolutions and bloody wars.

Like Meslier, Jean-Jacques Rousseau could not in that historical epoch find a scientific answer to the question about the origins of private property and social and proprietary inequality. Nor could he name the real prerequisites for true equality. It is significant, however, that Rousseau, like Meslier, believed that the chief reason for the historical stride forward from the primitive communal system of social equality to inequality was to be found in the economic sphere, in the emergence of private-property relations. Rousseau wrote: "Equality disappeared, property was introduced, labour became a necessity; and vast forests turned into riant fields, which had to be watered with human sweat and where slavery and poverty were soon sown and grew together with the harvest.''^^2^^ These words also expressed the profound dialectical idea about the antagonistic nature of the historical process: riant fields in contrast with poverty and slavery.

~^^1^^ K. Marx and F. Engels, "The Class Struggles in France, 1848 to 1850". In: Collected Works, Progress Publishers, Vol. 10, Moscow. 1978, p. 99.

- Oeavres completes D'Heluetius, Vol. 2, De L'Homme, A Paris, Chez M. V. Lepetit, 1818, p. 38,

~^^1^^ Jean Meslier, Le Testament de Jean Meslier, Vol. II, Amsterdam, 1864, p. 210.

~^^2^^ .1. J. Rousseau, "Discours sur 1'origine et les fondements de 1'inegalite parmi les hommes". In: Collection complete des Oeuvres, Vol. I, Geneve. M. DCC. LXXXII, p. 133.

Another thinker of the past who recognised the role of private-property relations in human history was Morelly, who believed that the way to ensure mankind's genuine liberation and establish a just and rational social order was to abolish private property. He wrote: " Eliminate property, 1 keep repeating, and you will do away once and for all with a thousand accidents that drive man to desperate extremes. I say that, once man has freed himself of this tyrant, it will be impossible, totally impossible for him to think about crime, to be a thief, a murderer or a conqueror." '

In contrast to his contemporary Gabriel Mably, who also criticised the private-property system but denied any real possibility of a communist society, Morelly believed that it was quite possible to go over to a system based on social property. As for Rousseau, he gave a realistic picture of the disastrous effects of private property, but did not go beyond the Utopian idea of equally sharing out all private property among the people.

Some pre-Marxian social thinkers touched upon the important role of the predominant form of private property in the shaping of the whole system of social relations. Thus, in his Introduction to the French Revolution, the French political figure and scientist, Antoine-Pierre Barnave, accentuated the problem of the development of various forms of production in the context of his teaching on progress.

Beyond any doubt, the idea that social development was an ascendant process helped to arrive at a scientific view of history. Barnave and many other pre-Marxian thinkers had begun to realise that in spite of contradictions, historical zigzags and relapses, mankind's development was nevertheless one of ascent. Jean Gondorcet, a philosopher of the 18th century French Enlightenment, described ten successive epochs, each of which, he maintained, surpassed the preceding one in terms of living conditions, humanity, education, etc. He firmly believed that "man's ability to improve is truly boundless".^^2^^

It was more difficult to answer the question why social development was ultimately ascensional. Many philoso-

~^^1^^ Morelly, Code de la nature, Paris, 1950, p. 255. - Condorcet, Esquisse d'un tableau historique des progres de I'esprit humain, Paris, 1794-1795, p. 4,

phers, including Condorcet, were apt to think that historical progress was due to the immanent ability of the human mind for boundless self-improvement. In other words, they remained within the framework of traditional idealism and overlooked the objective premises for the development of the human intellect itself, but the recognition that human society was bound to develop from lower to higher stages was an important scientific finding.

In tracing the evolution of advanced pre-Marxian social thought, one should note the scientists who variously paid attention to the inherent motive forces of social development, to socio-class contradictions. Early utilitarian concepts, which emphasised the utility principle and the closely related view of egoism as the decisive motive of every individual's vital activity, already spoke of social egoism and social contradictions. Later on, at the end of the 18th and in the early decades of the 19th century, pre-Marxian thinkers formulated the concept of social classes and class struggle. Thus, Francois Guizot, Francois Mignet and Augustin Thierry, French historians of the Restoration period, distinctly tried to present the various periods of history as periods of opposite and clashing class - interests. Guizot, for instance, who took Saint Simon's ideas about classes and class contradictions as a point of departure, saw the French Revolution of 1789-1794 as an armed struggle between the feudals and the anti-feudal forces. He went even farther and noted the class contradictions between the aristocracy and the so-called third estate on the eve of and during the French Revolution of the late 18th century. But having stated the existence of classes and class struggle, neither Guizot nor any other French historian of the Restoration period was able to get at the root at these phenomena. Thus, Guizot at first thought that the class division of French society had an ethnic origin. He mistakenly believed that the Germanic conquerors of Gaul made up the ruling feudal class, which prevailed over the vanquished Romance ancestors, the Gallic-Romans. True, in his Sketches on the History of France, Guizot tried to trace the origins of the aristocracy and the bourgeoisie to land relations and looked for the causes of class conflict in the sphere of property relations in general. Neither Guizot nor any other bourgeois thinker was able to make an in-depth scientific analysis and bring out the

truth that classes and forms of class struggle derive from historically determined modes of production and that the abolition of private property makes it possible to do away with antagonistic classes and then with society's class divisions in general.

Adam Smith and David Ricardo, the classics of bourgeois political economy, also helped to pave the way for a scientific interpretation of history. They noted the special role of labour, of man's production activity in the life of society, and the existence of social classes and class relations. Smith and Ricardo explored the objective economic laws which operate in society independently of human will or choice. Thus, while making the mistake of regarding capitalist society as an absolute, as a "natural order", they correctly pointed out the influence of economic relations on the other structural spheres of bourgeois society. There is no doubt that the works of these outstanding bourgeois economists, and especially Adam Smith's treatise, Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, contained generalisations and characteristics which, when read correctly, could and did become a source of historical materialism. One should remark in this context that in the course of their searching analysis of economic relations, Smith and Ricardo made a fruitful attempt to find the roots of the class divisions in economic relations, but only in the mode of distribution rather than in the mode of production. English classical political economy was unable to take a historical view of social classes, maintaining that the class division of bourgeois society, like that society itself, was the last word in social progress. It fell short of a scientifically consistent and scrupulous analysis of other crucial economic relations. Nevertheless, Smith and Ricardo played an important role in studying the economy, the sphere of social relations that is pivotal to any social organism, to any phase of social development.

The Utopian Socialists of the late 18th and early 19th centuries also did a great deal towards evolving a scientific understanding of history. They highlighted the possibility and necessity of transforming the society of that epoch on just and reasonable principles, relying on the level of social development already achieved. Thus, disenchanted by the results of the French bourgeois revolution of 1789-1794, they advocated the need to go over to a new

social system that would make all men truly equal and free from any form of oppression. Many Utopian Socialists, Saint Simon in particular, had a fairly clear idea of the role of class struggle and revolutions in historical development. Engels wrote about Saint Simon: "But to recognise the French Revolution as a class war, and not simply one between nobility and bourgeoisie, but between nobility, bourgeoisie, and the non-possessors, was, in the year 1802, a most pregnant discovery." ' Undoubtedly, the Utopian Socialists had some idea of the economic basis of the class struggle. But Saint Simon, Fourier, Owen and other Utopians believed that it was possible to go over to a just and reasonable system without any struggle or class cataclysms.

We shall not go any deeper into the theoretical research that led up to the scientific philosophy of history, a science of society, but Hegel deserves special mention.

For various reasons, Hegel's subjective-idealistic philosophy could not, as I have already noted, break with spiritualism and mysticism, with the spirit and traditions of the providential concept of history. But if that were all there was to Hegel's theory, his name would have been largely confined to theosophy, and his doctrine, critically read, would not have become a chief source of Marxism, of the Marxist philosophy of history.

The truth is that Hegel's idealistic system provided a backdrop to a vital and ameliorative idea about world history being a single whole, about historical necessity, and the law-governed and progressive course of social events.

Hegel's Philosophy of History is keynoted by the idea that world history is a rational process, and this tenet coincides with the idea that history is governed by laws, regardless of whether men realise this or not.^^2^^

Hegel's dialectical idea about reason and law in history, rationally interpreted and purged of idealism, could and did provide the long-sought fundamental principle of so-

~^^1^^ Frederick Engels, "Socialism: Utopian and Scientific". In: Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Selected Works in three volumes, Progress Publishers, Vol. 3, Moscow, 1970, p. 121.

~^^2^^ G. W. F. Hegel, Sdmtliche Werke, Jubildumsausgabe in zwanzig Banden. Vorlesungen iiber die Philosophie der Geschichte, Bd. 11, Fr. Frommans Verlag, Stuttgart, 1928, S. 56.

cial science. To be precise, Hegel himself in the main formulated rather than gave scientific answers to the major problems relating to a scientific interpretation of the philosophy of history. It is also true that although Hegel's insights into the law-governed course of history were brilliant, he was unable to substantiate them.

Hegel elaborated the ideas of historical progress advanced by the French and German thinkers of the 18th century Enlightenment, falling back on the ideas about ascendant historical development as peculiarly reflected in the philosophy of Kant, Fichte and early Schelling. But the most important impulse to Hegel's view of history as an ascendant process was, perhaps, prompted by the French Revolution of 1789-1794, which marked the advance from feudalism to bourgeois society.

Hegel had a far from oversimplified, streamlined view of progress. He clearly saw the tortuous and thorny path of mankind's ascent to new and higher phases of social development. "World history," Hegel wrote, "is not a dell of happiness. Periods of happiness are but gaps in it, for these are periods of harmony, absence of contradictions." ^l

Hegel knew very well that historical progress involved periods of stagnation, failures and setbacks. He wrote that there were long periods in world history when progress came to a standstill. Moreover, there were times when great cultural values were destroyed, so that everything had to be started afresh in order "to regain, with a new immense input of time and effort, crime and suffering, the cultural level that had been achieved long ago".~^^2^^

Nevertheless, Hegel firmly believed that zigzags and reversals did not rule out a general course in history seen as progressive development. He saw "regressive phenomena as external accidents".^^3^^

But where are the origins, the causes of such ascendant social development? In Hegel's Philosophy of History we come across many interesting arguments that serve to elucidate this question on the solid basis of historical facts. This applies, among other things, to Hegel's idea on the

role of men's material interests, their vital needs and circumstances of life, which induce them to improve their instruments of labour and gain greater control over the forces of nature.

But such explanations of historical progress ( naturally, in a generalised form) did not fit in with Hegel's objectively idealistic philosophical conceptions.

World history, according to Hegel, was nothing but spirit unravelling itself. He repeatedly emphasised that world history unfolded in the spiritual plane. He did not mean the human spirit, but a timeless World-Spirit, which corresponded to the idea of God. World history, he said, was the history of the absolute spirit, its dialectical development. Hegel's conclusion was that the laws of world history and its progress were to be found in the domain of dialectical logic. So, the development of the real world was governed by the laws that govern the development of the World-Spirit.

That was how Hegel saw the relationship between the material and the spiritual. As an objective idealist, he presented a fantastic, unnaturally inverted reflection of this relationship. But beyond this mystification, one could discern the rational core of Hegel's theory, the dialectical method, which enabled him to penetrate very deeply into the substance of the historical process and its necessity.

Under Hegel's dialectical scheme, each phase of world history sooner or later stopped being rational in view of internal contradictions and, consequently, had no right to exist any longer. It was negated by a new phase of historical development, which, however, assimilated all the positive achievements of the preceding stage, amplifying and enriching them at a higher level.

One should always bear in mind here that in his correct urge to substantiate the intrinsic, indissoluble continuity between the various historical phases, Hegel used totally unacceptable teleological arguments. He wrote: "Just as the embryo contains within itself the whole nature of the tree, and the taste and form of its fruits, so the first manifestations of the spirit contain virtually tht whole of history." ' Such a preformistic view of history's ascendant development was in sharp contradiction with the dia-

~^^1^^ G. W. F. Hegel, Ibid., S. 56.

~^^2^^ Ibid., p. 91.

~^^3^^ Ibid., p. 91.

~^^1^^ G. W. F. Hegel, Op. cit., p. 45.

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lectical spirit, with the dialectical attitude to the emergence of a new quality.

These initial contradictions and delusions, engendered by Hegel's idealistic world outlook, leave their mark on many pages of his Philosophy of History. What Marx, Engels and Lenin had to do was to sift out the viable from the inviable, the rational from the irrational in Hegel's legacy, to glean and give a scientific reading to all of Hegel's valuable findings, which could help to enrich the human mind and become an instrument of real progress. The founders of Marxism-Leninism fulfilled that task in its full compass.

One should also note that for centuries before the emergence of the scientific concept of history many thinkers had tried to typologise social development, to single out the main phases of human history. Without going too far back into history, let us recall the Italian philosopher Giovanni Battista Vico (1668-1744), who was not only one of the first thinkers to suggest that history was governed by laws, but who also tried to specify the crucial stages in the development of any nation. He described three states, or ages, of mankind, through which each nation had to pass: childhood, youth and maturity. In its childhood, he said, every society emerged from a "bestial condition" to an "age of the gods", when it was ruled by a caste of priests and was in the grip of religious doctrines and myths. Through the operation of natural social laws, this theocratic period eventually gave way to an "age of heroes", with secular forms of power (the ancient aristocracy, barbarism and, later, feudalism). Society's maturity was marked by a democratic republic or a limited monarchy, where men were equal before the law. So, to use Vico's terms, "the age of the gods" was followed by "the age of heroes", and the latter, by "the age of men''.

Vico's historical periodisation, however tentative and arbitrary, shows that he had a dawning idea about the succession of different social relations: pre-class---slave-owning and feudal---bourgeois. Another interesting idea he expressed was that one historical period was superseded by another as a result of acute social struggle between the advocates of the old and the new historical periods.

Vico did not openly deny the idea of God or his role in history, but a closer look at his Principles of a New Science on the Common Nature of Nations will show that Pro-

vidence here is politely eased out by the idea of objective and necessary historical laws, engendered by men's natural living conditions. Similarly, the emergence of different historical periods and their necessary succession is not due to divine intervention, but to natural causes which are akin to the causes behind man's transition from childhood to youth and then to maturity.

Vico's ``cyclical'' theory of human history was less logical and substantiated. He maintained that once society reached its summit, "the age of men", it rapidly reverted to its original "bestial condition" in order to start its ascent all over again. This cyclical theory was, perhaps, rooted in the belief that under the bourgeois system civilisation reached its completion, and that a higher stage of human history could hardly be imagined. But since Vico was a spontaneous dialectician and could not accept a fixed or static historical pattern, there was apparently nothing left for him to do but to present history as moving in circles, so that when a society reached its supposedly highest point, it plunged back to where it had started.

These and other similar delusions cannot obscure Vico's merits in advocating the important idea about the existence of qualitatively distinct stages in history, which emerge for natural social reasons.

The founders of Marxism showed a great interest in Vico's ideological legacy, noting his attempts to present historical accidents in the life of nations as manifestations of certain necessary stages of development. Having read Vico's Principles of a New Science, Marx remarked that it had "quite a few brilliant insights". '

The idea of historical stages also found a peculiar expression in Hegel's philosophy of history. He singled out three main epochs in the development of world history: Oriental, Ancient and Germanic (a fairly arbitrary classification), which he saw as phases in the development of the absolute spirit. The ancient Oriental peoples, he said, had no idea of freedom, and the despot was the only individual who was free. Only the Greeks and then the Romans, he said, began to acquire a sense of freedom, but

~^^1^^ Karl Marx/Friedrich Engels, Werke, Bd. 30, Dietz Verlag, Berlin, 1964, S. 623.

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only a few enjoyed such freedom. In defiance of the facts, of the reality around him, Hegel maintained that only the Germanic world had at last come to appreciate that man was essentially free.

Although he chose arbitrary criteria for breaking up history into stages, Hegel, like Vico and other philosophers, looked for qualitatively distinct stages in the development of human history, tried to make out the ties between them, and sought within various limits to establish an ascent from primitive to more advanced social structures.

decrepit feudal system was, according to Engels, an introduction to the French revolution of the late 18th century. But a careful study of Enlightenment writings shows that none of the French thinkers of the day had a strictly scientific idea about the essence of the feudal system, the causes of its emergence and age-long existence. Most of them believed that feudalism was something of a historical misunderstanding, a preposterous accident, a triumph of coercion over reason, etc. One could safely say that none of them had any distinct idea about the objective reasons behind its emergence, prolonged reign and the inexorable unfolding of its crisis and imminent downfall.

Another fact to be noted is that the Enlightenment thinkers, who propounded the need to abolish feudalism and who did a great deal towards its downfall, had only a hazy notion about the society that was to replace the "feudal barbarism". They spoke of an "ideal society" that would be free of feudal privileges and duties, of despotic rule, the spiritual dictatorship of the Church, and so on. They extolled that "ideal society" (which in those historical conditions could only, and in fact did, turn out to be the bourgeois system that had already taken shape within the feudal framework) as a society of liberty, equality and fraternity, and regarded bourgeois property as just and earned by labour.

The absence of scientific notions about the substance of the bourgeois system even at the time of its formation is hardly accidental, for the fact that capitalist relations took shape and developed spontaneously was bound extremely to narrow down the need for their scientific interpretation.

The circumstances changed radically when it was time for mankind to ascend from capitalism to communism, to go over from its pre-history to its true history.

In the course of its development, bourgeois society inevitably gives rise to the material and spiritual prerequisites for a transition to communism through socialism, its first phase. But it would be wrong to conclude on the strength of this axiom that full-scale socialist relations take shape within the capitalist system. The complicated process of transition from private-property, antagonistic-class society to a society without private property, social inequality or class antagonisms, the formation of such a highly developed social organism as communist society is impossible

Such was the background to the emergence of social science, the scientific philosophy of history. Our synoptic view shows that some correct notions and conjectures were submerged in a stream of erroneous ideas about society, social life, its motive forces and the qualitatively determinate stages of development. That was only natural, for any science takes shape in the course of centuries, gradually overcoming its fallacies, false assumptions and unjustified hypotheses, and moving forward to new, more profound and fundamental truths. Such is the record of any science, for science develops historically. Newton's theory could not have emerged in the 14th century, Lomonosov's in the 16th century, and Einstein's even a century before his time. New scientific ideas appear only when the preceding development of scientific thinking has to a certain extent set the stage for them.

Marxism supplemented that correct postulate with an equally important conclusion: ideas (including scientific ideas) are formulated in response to a social need. Take Marxism itself and its historical concept in particular.

Up to a point, history could develop in the absence of any clear-cut scientific notions about the past, present and future on the part of nations and their rulers. Both feudal and capitalist relations, to say nothing of earlier stages of history, emerged and developed spontaneously, without any clear awareness of their substance or prospects.

Here is a typical example. In the mid-18th century, the thinkers of the French Enlightenment levelled poignant and relentless criticism at the feudal relations, the absolute monarchy, the omnipotent Church, and the feudal-- clerical world outlook. That all-round ideological attack on the

without a scientific understanding of social development and the laws of social progress. To use an analogy, one could say that there was a time when vehicles were built without any systematic scientific knowledge or blueprints, but with the emergence of steam and electric engines, the situation changed dramatically. The intricate process of communist construction called for a scientific knowledge of capitalism, its laws and contradictions, the ways of its revolutionary negation and advance towards communism.

So, if the major problems of the transition from mankind's pre-history to its true history were to be solved, men had to develop a science of society and social development. Marxism, with its concept of social development, emerged in response to these imperative demands of the objective course of history. At last, mankind had at its command a science of society, which made it possible to rise to new stages of historical progress in the shortest possible period, with a clear understanding of the optimal ways of attaining that goal with the least suffering for the masses.

Another point to note here is that the development of capitalist relations threw into high relief the main premise of the Marxist philosophy of history: to exist, human society has to produce; the historically conditioned mode of material production in the final count and mostly indirectly determines the society's political and juridical relations and diverse ideological trends; ideas, doctrines and spiritual values play an active role in social affairs, but it is the relations of production deriving from the dominant type of property in the means of production that are the ultimate objective determinants of history.

The proposition that the loftiest ideas are genetically dependent on ``base'' material economic relations, however shocking it may have appeared to high-brow intellectuals, was dictated by life itself.

Indeed, in the conditions of developing, mid-19th century capitalism, the economic basis of class struggle, revolutionary upheavals and ideological clashes was becoming ever more obvious. Life itself revealed the intrinsic connection between the state and its policy and the economic interests of the ruling class.

In these conditions, two brilliant and universally educated thinkers, speaking on behalf of the working class, whose historic mission was to rejuvenate the world and do

away with classes and class antagonisms, carried out a Copernican revolution in social science. It was a great revolution, indeed, for the theory formulated by Marx and Engels exploded the existing views of society and propounded something diametrically opposite. Marxism put an end to "sociological geocentrism" and introduced a `` heliocentric'' model in social science. It saw the motive forces of history not in any mystic spirit, objective or subjective, but in real, material social relations, realising that the realm of ideas was their active reflection. Marxism purged social science of metaphysics, of the static absolute and lack of dynamism. It advocated the dialectical principle of perpetual motion and qualitative transformation resulting from the struggle of interrelated opposites, which lie at the root of any phenomenon, any historical process. In the light of Marxist theory, history revealed itself as a living, perpetual process, which unfolds in accordance with its inherent objective laws, regardless of accidents, zigzags, periods of stagnation and occasional relapses into long past stages. In spite of these deviations and reversals, Marx and Engels said, history was advancing to higher and more rational forms of human society---an arduous but continual ascent. So, Marxism dispelled the primitive idea about society "in general", a society which (like its constituent biological organisms, their natural substance) was immune to qualitative change. The Marxist philosophy of history also refuted the fantastic ideas about historical cycles and closed civilisations, and the attempts to break up history into periods in accordance with arbitrary, purely subjective criteria. On the strength of an in-depth and all-round study of the historical process, its substance and its real, objective laws, Marx and Engels discovered the main phases of mankind's development, the fundamental stages of its progress, which they called socio-economic formations.

To sum up, let me repeat that the revolution carried out by Marx and Engels in social science was, like any other revolution, prepared by the whole course of preceding social development and the theoretical generalisations of the existing achievements in economic and socio-political relations, science and culture.

The primitive attempts to present Marxism and its social doctrine as an ``unexpected'', "chance phenomenon" that was in glaring contradiction with the substance, goals

and traditions of "European civilisation" could only be explained by crass ignorance and bigotry.

Of course, if "European civilisation" is spelled out as private-property bourgeois society, with its social inequality, the sway of the financial-economic elite over the masses of manual and mental workers, its cult of violence and its national and racial discrimination, Marxists unquestionably repudiate such a civilisation, maintaining that their historical mission is to abolish it for good.

I have tried to show the inherent connection between the Marxist concept of social development and the earlier advanced philosophical, economic and socio-political doctrines. As Lenin put it, Marxism did not emerge away from the high-road of world civilisation. It was the supreme theoretical expression of the nascent world order, of the new civilisation, and legitimate heir to all the scientific values created by the human mind. It accomplished its great revolution in social science on the strength of the real achievements of pre-Marxian scientific thinking.

What was the substance of that intellectual revolution? Let us now consider it in greater detail.

Chapter Two

THE MAIN PRINCIPLES OF A SCIENTIFIC VIEW

OF SOCIAL AFFAIRS

In carrying out their revolution in social science, Marx and Eiigels applied materialist dialectics to an analysis of social affairs. That was the only way to elaborate a science of society and its development laws without resorting to supernatural forces, to a speculative ``World-Spirit'' or an equally fictitious "spirit of nations", without overestimating the will and consciousness of great individuals, and so on.

In strict accordance with the real historical process, Marxism discovered the ultimate motive forces of history and historical progress not in the realm of spirit, but in the realm of objective material relations. In contrast to preMarxian sociology, with its futile attempts to explain social being through various forms of social consciousness ( political, juridical, ethical, aesthetic, religious and other ideas and corresponding institutions), Marxism proved that these forms of social consciousness were themselves ultimately determined by social being, by material production and the system of economic relations. Later on we shall find that such a solution of the main question of sociology---the question of the relationship between social being and social consciousness---in no way implies a negation or underrating of the active, transformative role of ideas in history, and the emphasis on the leading role of economic relations has nothing to do with vulgar "economic materialism''.

The priority of material production in mankind's life is rooted in the indisputable fact that man and human society arose and have developed primarily as a result of productive labour. It is common knowledge that, in contrast to biological communities, human society is inconceivable without the development and use of instruments of labour, without productive activity. The human mind itself emerged and has developed as the result of man's labour activity. Society's development level and degree of maturity

are primarily determined by its economic level, the degree of sophistication of its productive forces, and the prospects for their further development.

No amount of high-flown rhetoric in defence of an initial "spiritual substance" can obscure the paramount, decisive role of labour in the destiny of human society. Speaking at Marx's funeral, Engels said that Marx discovered "the simple fact, hitherto concealed by an overgrowth of ideology, that mankind must first of all eat, drink, have shelter and clothing, before it can pursue politics, science, art, religion, etc.; that therefore the production of the immediate material means of subsistence and consequently the degree of economic development attained by a given people or during a given epoch from the foundation upon which the state institutions, the legal conceptions, art and even the ideas on religion, of the people concerned have been evolved, and in the light of which they must, therefore, be explained, instead of vice versa, as had hitherto been the case".^^1^^

Subsequently, we shall return to the fundamental question about the primacy of social being and the secondary nature of social consciousness. And now let us try to specify the content of these basic sociological concepts.

According* to Marxism, social being is based on a historically determined mode of production of the material means of existence. The mode of production consists of two structural elements: the productive forces and corresponding relations of production. The productive forces comprise the means of production (instruments of labour, objects of labour, etc.) and man himself, their chief constituent, who handles these variously sophisticated means of production with the help of definite production skills, running the whole production process.

History also shows that it is not only the type and productive capacity of the instruments of labour that have differed from one historical epoch to another, but also the relations between men in the process of social production. One need merely compare, for instance, these relations in a slave-owning and a feudal society. The slaves had no property of their own, but were themselves the property of

~^^1^^ Frederick Engels, "Speech at the Graveside of Karl Marx". In: Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Selected Works in three volumes, Vol. 3, p. 162.

their masters, for whom they had to work all the time. Peasants in a feudal society are in a different position. Some of them own individual property, but all peasants are in duty bound to work for their landowners. One cannot help noticing that in these societies the means of production are concentrated (in varying degrees) in the hands of the ruling classes, which exploit the oppressed classes in different forms.

So, the relations of production can be defined as specific relations taking shape between men in the process of production. They are determined by the type of property in the means of production prevailing in a given society.

The historically conditioned mode of production is primary and objective because it exists independently of social consciousness, of its diverse forms, and itself determines these forms.

Here is how Marx formulated the principles of the new approach to history: "In the social production of their existence, men inevitably enter into definite relations, which are independent of their will, namely relations of production appropriate to a given stage in the development of their material forces of production. The totality of these relations constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation, on which arises a legal and political superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness." '

At a definite stage, the sophistication of the productive forces inevitably leads to the emergence and development of a new type of production relations and also of politicojuridical relations and ideological trends engendered by the latter.

Thus, when the pre-class communal system, where there was no private property, gave way to a slave-owning society with man's cruel enslavement of man, it was not in accordance with some premeditated plan, but for objective reasons, through the natural development of the productive forces. Slavery became possible only when the developed means of production and higher labour productivity enabled man to produce more material values than he required to support himself. In these new conditions, there was

~^^1^^ Karl Marx, A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1977, p. 20.

no longer any sense in killing the enemy tribesmen taken captive in the course of war. It was more profitable now to make them work in order to appropriate the surplus product they created. That historical example shows how the improvement of the productive forces, the transition from primitive stone implements to metal ones, requiring higher productive skills, logically entailed a transition from the production relations of primitive pre-class society to slavery.

As the economic basis of slave-owning society took shape, it engendered a system of politico-juridical and ideological relations. The slave-holding state, its legal enactments and institutions defended the existing socio-economic order. The prevailing political, juridical, philosophical and religious doctrines fulfilled, more or less openly, the same function, presenting slavery as natural and eternal. But as the internal contradictions within the slave-holding formation aggravated, progressive thinkers began to voice ideas of a different order, slanted against slavery, its cruelty and immorality. These ideas played a most active role in awakening men to an awareness of reality, helping to destroy the society that had turned some men into the property of other men.

An analysis of history enabled Marxism to discover the truth that at a definite stage of social development the prevailing relations of production, the type of property in the means of production begin to hinder the development of the productive forces, give rise to crises, slow down social progress and create intolerable conditions for the bulk of society's members.

The contradictions within the mode of production---those between the productive forces and the relations of production---make it necessary to discard the old relations of production, the old form of property in the means of production, in order to give full scope for the emergence and development of new relations of production that could promote the successful development of society's production capacities and also of all the spheres of socio-political relations, culture and morality.

fn an antagonistic-class society, the contradictions between the productive forces and the relations of production manifest themselves in a struggle of the contending classes. This struggle has its own economic, political and ideo-

logical forms and eventually leads to social revolution and a victory for the new socio-economic formation.

Thus, at i\ definite stage of its development, slavery lost the right to exist and disappeared, as a socio-economic formation, from the face of the earth. Its downfall, as I intend to show further on, was primarily due to economic causes, to the fact that the prevailing relations of production had increasingly obstructed the development of the productive forces, something that entailed disastrous consequences.

Feudal society came to replace the earlier societies because it created more favourable conditions for the development of the productive forces, of the whole system of socio-political and ideological relations. In spite of its harshness, feudalism nevertheless offered greater incentives to work. Thus, in contrast to a slave, whose whole person and labour belonged to the slave-owner, the feudal peasant could keep a share of the results of his arduous labour and enjoyed rudimentary human rights.

Centuries later, a new social revolution, engendered by an extreme aggravation of class contradictions, overthrew the feudal relations. The oppressed peasantry, handicraftsmen and other working people together with the then progressive bourgeoisie toppled the feudal system, which stood in the way of more productive industrial and agricultural labour, hindering economic, sociopolitical and cultural progress.

The newly entrenched capitalist system put through important progressive changes in every sphere of social life. But with its development, the immanent contradictions between its productive forces and relations of production deepened and developed, and at a definite stage of its existence, its upward development gave way to a downturn. This latest stage was marked by deep economic crisis, much more intensive class struggle, uprisings, revolutions, and bloody and destructive wars. The productive forces continue to develop, but their development involves a sharp intensification of working-class labour and is geared to the interests of a small section at the top rather than those of society as a whole. At the final, imperialist stage of capitalist development, the main contradiction of capitalism---that between the social nature of production and the private-capitalist form of appropriation---takes on ever graver and uglier

forms. As a result, capitalism has collapsed in many countries of the world, and their peoples have entered the first, socialist phase of communist society.

This brief retrospect of social development shows that the motive forces of history are to be found in the modes of material production, in economic relations. Let me emphasise once again that it is not the forms of social consciousness (politics, law, philosophy, aesthetic views, morals or religion) that are the primary determinants of history, but the historically conditioned mode of production, the totality of the productive forces and relations of production. This proposition, confirmed by mankind's entire practical record, is the key to the materialist understanding of history. The productive forces and relations of production are primary, material and objective in the sense that they exist outside and independently of social consciousness, and the forms of social consciousness are secondary in the sense that they are engendered by material social reality and, in the final count, reflect that reality, something that does not prevent them from exerting an active, transformative influence on the material basis, from accelerating or slowing down its development, promoting its ascent or, on the contrary, precipitating its downfall.

To avoid a possible misunderstanding, one should emphasise one important circumstance. When Marxism maintains that social being is independent of social consciousness, it does not imply that men engage in material production without any knowledge, production skills or other spiritual qualities. Such an assumption would have been absurd, and Marxism has never said anything of the kind. The Marxist idea is that the forms of social consciousness (politics, law, morality, etc.) reflect the existing objective material conditions, the definite system of production relations corresponding to the development level of the productive forces. Before going on to illustrate this idea, one should point out that man's consciousness originated and developed in the course of his material-production activity. The Marxist philosophy fully accepts the theory that denies the innateness of ideas, putting that theory on a solid scientific basis.

Let us now consider some phenomena which clearly show the dependence of social consciousness on objective material relations. Religion, in particular, is a form of social

consciousness that is farthest removed from society's material basis.

A study of the earliest forms of religion shows that they were a direct reflection of the real conditions of men's existence, their material concerns, fears and expectations. The ignorant, benighted men of primitive society, who were at the mercy of the forces of nature and were unable to understand or explain their causes and substance, lived in fear of these forces and attributed them to imaginary supernatural beings, good and evil. In the light of these primitive fetishes and animistic religious beliefs, primitive men saw natural phenomena as supernatural and fantastic. By means of incantations and magical rites, they tried to neutralise the evil forces and win the support of the good ones.

These earlier religious notions, however fantastic and irrational, reflected in a peculiarly distorted form real, earthly relations, primarily the condition of man's arduous work for survival.

Arnold Toynbee, a British historian of religious leanings, declares "repugnant and inconceivable" the concept that looks for the origins of historical progress in the development of material economic relations rather than in "the progress of individual souls . .. towards God". ' From his mystic, spiritualist premises, Toynbee can hardly be expected to recognise the fact that both the human soul and men's ideas about a non-existent God arose and have developed with the alteration of their living conditions and production activity.

In the more advanced religions of ancient Greece and Rome, the gods and goddesses, their thoughts, passions and acts also reflected men's earthly relations, their vices and virtues, naturally, elevated to superhuman proportions.

The history of religion is a specific reflection of mankind's terrestrial history. Any radical changes in socioeconomic and political relations were sooner or later fantastically reflected in religious doctrines, in a religious picture of the world. Thus, the hierarchy of gods appeared only after the emergence of material, social and juridical inequalities in human society, after it had polarised into rulers and the ruled.

~^^1^^ A. J. Toynbee, A Study of History, Vol. VII, Oxford University Press, London-New York, 1959, p. 564.

The rise of Christianity, for instance, merely shows the dependence of religious ideas on earthly relations, on the material conditions above all. There was good reason why Christianity emerged in the second half of the first century A. D., for at that time the crisis of the slave-owning system entered a deeper phase, its internal contradictions worsened, and the oppressed classes and peoples intensified their attempts to free themselves from slavery and national oppression. But the slave-owning Roman Empire was still strong enough to crush the uprisings of slaves and enslaved peoples, depriving them of any hope for the fulfilment of their cherished ideals. These ideals were gradually transfigured into unattainable dreams with fantastic religious overtones. Thus, the natural urge to throw off the fetters of slavery and the striving towards equality manifested themselves in Christianity in the form of a doctrine about men's equality before God in the next world, their equality in sin. Under the Christian religion, the equality of peoples was interpreted to mean that all men, regardless of ethnic origin or race, could profess the Christian faith. The feeling of love and respect for the enslaved man was construed as universal love, embracing both friend and enemy.

The New Testament still retained several passages expressing the hatred of the oppressed for their oppressors, but punishment of the latter was relegated to the next world. So, Christianity transferred the fulfilment of men's real aspirations for a just and happy life to the afterworld, seeking to reconcile the oppressed with the misery and suffering, the class and national oppression, and all the other crying injustices being perpetrated down here.

Christianity shows very well that ideas are predictated on the material conditions of life. It is not the rise of Christianity that made slavery impossible, as Christian theologians believe, but the other way round: the decline of the slave-owning system, the crisis of its economic basis, its worsening contradictions, and the futile attempts of the oppressed to throw off the yoke of slavery gave rise to the belief in a supernatural Messiah, a saviour. Of course, the ways in which the economic basis determines the emergence and development of religious ideas are far from simple. As I have already said, the social pessimism, the yearning for happiness beyond the real world were primari-

ly engendered by economic causes, by the profound crisis of the slave-owning mode of production. But this pessimism was embodied in Christian religious forms through a reappraisal of old religious doctrines, myths, rituals, and ethical and philosophical ideas. The Marxist view of history has nothing in common with vulgar economic materialism, which seeks to deduce complicated spiritual phenomena directly from economic relations.

The forms of social consciousness are, of course, secondary, ultimately deriving from the material conditions of life and reflecting these conditions in a specific way. This is confirmed by a scientific analysis of the emergence, development and substance of diverse forms of social consciousness, which are rooted in the material environment. That much is indisputable, but it also goes without saying that the forms of social consciousness are not a mirror reflection of the material conditions from which they have sprung.

It is not only religion, which is essentially a fantastic reflection of real, earthly ties and relations, but also other forms of social consciousness, like art, philosophy and ethics, that reflect objective material processes very specifically, selectively and diversely. The newly arising forms of social consciousness not only reflect the new economic relations, but often retain some features of earlier ideological constructions in a sublated form.

In the 14th-16th centuries, capitalist relations began to form in the entrails of feudal society. The new mode of production, based on wage labour organised on capitalist lines, developed slowly but inexorably, gradually advancing upon feudalism and serfdom.

The processes that unfolded within feudal society, in the sphere of production relations, were naturally bound to find an outlet in the spiritual plane. The more progressive thinkers of that historical period began to question, with different degrees of radicalism, the soundness and justice of the prevailing feudal economic and socio-political relations, and also the religion and the Church that sanctified the existing way of life.

The intellectual, cultural-aesthetic and ethical movement of the 14th-16th centuries, known somewhat imprecisely as the Renaissance, expressed in the final analysis the fundamental changes that were beginning to unfold in the

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economic basis of many West European countries. Of course, it would be highly naive to look for a direct, straightforward expression of these changes in the artistic works of the great Renaissance masters, for an open protest against feudalism and the feudal-clerical outlook. Nevertheless, the development of bourgeois relations, of the then progressive bourgeois outlook was indirectly, in the language of art, expressed in the works of Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo and other great masters of that epoch.

The historically progressive bourgeois relations and the ideas adequate to them, a protest against any views that depreciated life on earth and man himself, and glorification of the human mind and will were clearly evident in the art of the Renaissance masters. In their paintings, even New Testament subjects were filled out with human content and Biblical characters were presented as humans. Divested of their supernatural, mystic aura, the saints and apostles in these paintings were represented as human beings, with human feelings and passions. In such a specific, indirect form, the Renaissance masters reappraised the old values and rejected the old maxim of man's conduct canonised by the predominant religion.

The Renaissance reflected the early stage in the formation of bourgeois society. Later on, the deepening crisis of the feudal system and its worsening economic and sociopolitical contradictions ushered in a new phase in the development of the progressive bourgeois outlook, whose proponents laid bare incurable ills of feudal society and feudal ideology. Francis Bacon, "Thomas Hobbes and John Locke in 17th-century England took the first few steps in that direction, and the French thinkers of the 18th century followed in their wake with incisive criticism.

Indeed, the French philosophers of the 18th century Enlightenment---Meslier, Montesquieu, Voltaire, Diderot, Helvetius, Holbach, Rousseau and their followers---launched an irresistible frontal attack on the whole system of feudal relations, feudal property, social inequality, the absolute monarchy and the official feudal Church. Those of the Enlightenment philosophers who rose to a materialist view of the world rejected religion as a form of false consciousness designed, in particular, to justify the feudal enthrallment.

In the progressive anti-feudal ideology of the 18th cen-

tury, the now forms of social consciousness reflected, more distinctly than they did in the world outlook of the Renaissance epoch and the 17th century English Enlightenment, the objectively imperative transition from the feudal to the capitalist mode of production.

These historic facts confirm that the forms of social consciousness are determined by economic relations in an intricate and multistage way.

It would not be right, however, to conclude on the strength of that proposition that the forms of social consciousness, the world of ideas passively follow the development of objective material processes.

These forms are relatively independent. Having sprung from real material relations, the progressive world outlook can anticipate the development of that basis, prognosticate the course of social development and help to realise it.

The progressive French social thought of the 18th century not only reflected the rise and development of bourgeois relations, but was also a prelude to the French Revolution of 1789-1794. The ideas advocated by the Enlightenment philosophers inspired men to storm the crumbling feudal structures, the archaic feudal institutions.

The Marxist theory, which arose when the contradictions of bourgeois society began to aggravate, and which was later developed and enriched by Lenin, because a powerful ideological instrument in substantiating the historical necessity of the collapse of the bourgeois system. It pointed out scientifically valid ways and means for building a socialist society. Marxist-Leninist ideas, assimilated by millions of people on every continent, have become a truly inexorable material force of social progress.

In the light of these facts, one can safely dismiss the numerous articles, pamphlets and bulky volumes that accuse the Marxist theory of fatalism and disregard for the role of ideas in social development.

As for Marxism itself, it recognises the influence not only of progressive, but also of reactionary ideas and doctrines. History shows that religious fanaticism intoxicated vast masses of people, making them capable of stoical suffering, heroism and death, and sometimes also of astounding brutality for the sake of their faith, as will be seen from the various "holy wars" in the name of Christ, Mohammed and other mythical and non-mythical religious personages.

3*

The active man-hating role of fascist and racist ideas and aiili-coiuiiiunisi propaganda is also welt-known. Thus, Adolf lliller and his followers managed to mislead vast masses of l.ho (ierman people, fatiaticised by aggressive nationalism and chauvinism, false promises, empty rhetoric about the high mission of the Nordic race, and so on.

Naturally, il is impossible to understand the rise and development of fascism, the reason why the German imperialists unleashed the Second World War, their early successes and eventual defeat without a full assessment of the role of fascist ideas in these historical events.

In view of the need for a full and all-round assessment of the role of ideas in mankind's history, Marxism is deeply interested in their origins, in the causes of their emergence, development and disappearance. It goes without saying that the search for the objective conditions giving rise to ideas and determining their course of development does not imply an attempt to depreciate or underrate these ideas. On the contrary, it shows a desire to obtain precise, scientifically valid data about the ideas being studied, to trace the origins of their strength and weakness.

This point should be emphasised once again: when Marxism maintains that the world of ideas, the forms of social consciousness are secondary arid reflect the world of material values, it does not regard them as second-rate, inferior or insignificant. Those who impute such a standpoint to Marxism have invented it in order to vulgarise and discredit the Marxist doctrine, hoping to score an easier ``victory'' over it. The purpose here is simple and fairly superficial: to portray the materialist understanding of history as a doctrine that neglects spiritual factors and presents history as a predestined succession of definite phases, without reckoning with the human will and consciousness. The enemies of Marxism insist that the laws of social development in their Marxist reading were similar to natural laws, like those of sunrise and sunset or the earth's movement round the sun, that is, laws which operate independently of human will or interference. They allege that Marxism regards history as a spontaneous, impersonal process, where human will and consciousness have as little importance in the turmoil of social events as the ``will'' and ``consciousness'' of a grain of sand in a sandstorm.

Heinrich Falk, one of the many falsifiers of the Marxist

theory, imputes to it this caricature of mankind's road to communism: "Like a boulder rolling down a slope in accordance with strictly definite laws, world history is rolling towards communism, carrying along with it the whole of mankind, which is just such a `boulder' of world history." *

Such estimates of the materialist explanation of history are repeated again and again without much variation. Falk and other theorists of his level deliberately seek to conceal the truth that Marxism has nothing in common with fatalism, with the fatalistic concept of development. The existence of objective social laws, as it was pointed out above, does not depreciate the role of the masses, political parties and outstanding individuals, whose will and consciousness can do a great deal in determining the basis for and mode of the abolition of obsolete social forms and in ushering in the next stage of social progress. The adversaries of Marxism studiously avoid the truth that in regarding history as a law-governed ascendant process, historical materialism has never denied historical accidents or zigzags in social development, periods of stagnation and even gigantic strides backward to stages long past. Nevertheless, the general flow of history is on the whole progressive, advancing towards even higher forms of human society. Similarly, historical accidents do not contradict the truth that, in spite of the vast importance of human will and consciousness, history is regulated by objective laws, which primarily determine the emergence, development and supplanting of the historical modes of material production.

To complete this brief characterisation of the materialist view of history, one should also list the essential features of materialist dialectics, which is a sine qua non of the scientific conception of history.

Marxism not only states the decisive role of material relations, but also considers them in the process of continual change and development.

The world's historical record shows that human society has been constantly changing: primitive man with his crude implements; the rise and fall of the Oriental despotisms; ancient China and India; the Greek and Roman civiiisa

~^^1^^ H. Falk, Die ideolo'gischen 'Grundlagen des Kommu'nismut, Miinchen, 1961, pp. 45-46.

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tions; the feudal Middle Ages with their seemingly perpetual canons of life, incessant wars and peasant uprisings; the onset of the age of machine production; the revolutionary eruptions against feudalism in England, Holland, France, and other countries; the collapse of the absolute monarchies; the entrenchment of capitalism in many countries; the October Revolution in Russia, which marked the beginning of the revolutionary epoch of transition to the new, communist way of life.

Of course, no one can doubt the constant changes in the life of nations and the whole of mankind. The disputes begin when it comes to explaining the causes of the general ferment, the change and development in nature, society and the human mind. What are the causes and the mechanism of the transitions in socio-economic relations, in the state setup, human customs and usages, spiritual culture, ethics and religious beliefs? What is the mainspring of this whole movement?

In accordance with the real processes unfolding in the sphere of objective being and consciousness, Marxism advocates the concept of dialectical development. Under this concept, all phenomena without exception are intrinsically contradictory, comprising mutually repellent, mutually exclusive opposites. These opposites are interrelated and cannot be imagined in isolation from each other. Thus, it is impossible to separate assimilatory and dissimilatory processes in biology, to rule out the unity and antithetical nature of attraction and repulsion, of positive and negative electric charges, corpuscular and wave qualities of elementary particles in physics, etc. Similarly, every antagonistic class society implies the unity and struggle of social classes. Feudal society, for instance, cannot be imagined without its two interrelated and, at the same time, antagonistic classes: the feudal lords and the peasants.

Marxism discovered the mainspring of the self-- movement of all phenomena and processes in the unity and struggle of opposites. Any natural and social phenomenon, however undeveloped and embryonic, always contains interrelated opposites, which develop, intensify and at a definite stage are resolved in one form or another. In the social sphere, aggravated contradictions lead to the victory of the new over the old, to a disintegration of the old unity of opposites, the old social organism or phenomenon.

Slow quantitative changes within the framework of the old quality entail a leap to a new quality. Such a leap does not necessarily imply a short period of time, but always the emergence of a new quality, a new phenomenon. The dialectical concept of development takes as its point of departure the unity of evolutionary and revolutionary development, the unity of slow quantitative changes within the old quality with a relatively rapid transition to a new qualitative state. A point to note here is that both in nature and in society the transition to a new quality does not necessarily involve cataclysms or violent revolutions.

In analysing various historical processes, Marxism devotes great attention to bringing out their basic contradictions and the nature of the struggle between these, to a precise demarcation between the new and the old, the progressive and the reactionary. The dialectical method makes it possible to find optimal ways for speeding up and facilitating the transition from the old to the new quality. An in-depth study of natural and social processes unfolding in society and in nature enabled Marxism to give a scientific reading to Hegel's doctrine on the leap-like transformation of quantitative changes into qualitative ones.

Indeed, a new phenomenon does not emerge all of a sudden, without any preparation, but often after a protracted stage of slow changes within the old quality. But at a definite stage of that slow process, evolution leads up to a leap forward, to the disappearance of the old quality and the emergence of a new one. That is a universal law in the development of nature, society and human thinking. No phenomenon appears instantly without a relatively long preparatory period involving the formation and accumulation of the elements of the future new quality. It is also true to say that nothing can disappear unexpectedly, without a gradual buildup of elements that are opposite to the old quality. These elements gradually erode the old quality and prepare a way for its disappearance. The leap-like transitions from the old quality to a new one can sometimes take a fairly long time. Still, they are inevitable; without them the old quality cannot disappear and a new one cannot emerge.

Dialectics refutes the attempts to reduce development to plain, vulgar evolutionism, which rules out the idea of a transition from one qualitative state to another. According to that erroneous, oversimplified view of the problem,

some phenomena can change perpetually without changing their qualitative substance. These distorted notions give rise, for instance, to the idea of perpetual social relations and institutions. The concept of vulgar evolutionism is used to perpetuate private property, which is said to have existed at every stage of mankind's history, merely changing its forms and continually acquiring more rational features. Further on we shall consider the attempts to perpetuate capitalism on the strength of that concept, which rules ouL qualitative leaps, social revolutions and a transition from the old socio-economic formation that has exhausted itself to a new and higher one. In propounding the idea of ascendant social development and the supplanting of obsolete. degenerate, conservative and reactionary qualities with now progressive and revolutionary ones, the dialectical method rules out the total negation of the preceding phase of historical development. While negating the old social structure, all that is new and truly progressive retains in a sublated form all the valuable achievements of the preceding stage of social development, all the scientific, technical and cultural values that could serve the new social system and promote social progress. Observance of this continuity is a crucial condition of historical progress. Without such rational preservation of all the vital achievements of the negated stage there could have been no process of enrichment, accumulation and buildup of strength and knowledge.

Without aiming to represent the characteristic features of the dialectical method in their full compass, let me point out a few more of its categories that help to understand the historical process and its specifics.

In line with the spirit of scientific cognition, the dialectical method orients the researcher upon bringing out the substance of social processes and phenomena, the laws of their functioning and development. It rejects in principle the ideas of social agnosticism that are in vogue in presentday Western philosophy, the view that objective social laws are either nonexistent or are beyond human understanding. This open or somewhat attenuated agnosticism orients social science upon the phenomenological sphere, upon the world of concrete and diverse phenomena, and warns against ``futile'' and ``metaphysical'' attempts to penetrate into the itinscrutable substance.

Heinrich Rickert, a German philosopher of the early

20th century, who voiced the neo-Kantian standpoint that » scientific generalisation of the historical process was impossible, said that the aim of history was to give a description whose content should coincide solely with isolated and individual objects. '

Rickert and his fellow-thinkers wrote a great deal about the futility of looking for objective laws in history and social science. What the neo-Kantians call historical science lays claim solely to a description of historical, social phenomena without any hope or attempt to discover any necessary regularities in these phenomena. Rickert categorically declared that historical science and science formulating laws were mutually exclusive concepts.^^2^^

This fear of objective historical laws, their full or partial denial and the view that even if such laws did exist they would have been beyond human understanding are also widely spread in present-day bourgeois social science. Further on I shall try to show that this fear of objective historical laws and the possibility of understanding their substance is primarily due to an urge to ``refute'' the MarxistLeninist validation of the historical necessity of mankind's transition to a communist society.

The dialectical method shows the scientific impotence of agnosticism in all its forms and points the way to understanding phenomena, their substance and the laws regulating their existence and development. Dialectics consistently abides by the principle that social practice is the criterion of truth, making it possible to separate precise knowledge from misconceptions.

Scientific dialectics is opposed to indeterminism, to the denial of inherent and necessary connections between phenomena. It orients researchers towards an in-depth study of the conditions under which a given phenomenon or several phenomena are bound to cause the emergence, disappearance or transformation of various other phenomena or processes. Starting from the premise that cause is primary and effect secondary, dialectics takes into account the complicated ties between cause and effect, and the possibility of the latter influencing the former. As it was pointed out earlier, ideas engendered by material relations exercise an a<--

~^^1^^ See: Heinrich Rickert, Natural Science and the Study of Culture, 1903, p. 26 (in Russian).

^^2^^ Ibid., p. 285.

live influence on the basis that has engendered them.

The dialectically interpreted principle of determinism makes it possible to take into account the law-governed and necessary connections between past, present and future social development, so that social reality can no longer be presented as a patchwork of chance phenomena and processes without any logical connections.

Many Western philosophico-historical and sociological doctrines deny historical determinism and the existence of objective social laws. This is often due to a false humanism, to a reluctance to subordinate human will and conduct to some "iron laws" of history. According to this logic, one should also deny the objective laws of nature, which cramp man's "free choice". Incidentally, many philosophers advocate boundless and absolute indeterminism. Here is how one ecstatic ultra-indeterminist formulates his philosophical creed: "The most substantial thing in my ideological convictions boils down to the fact that the notion of the world as a unity is nonsense. I imagine that the universe is diversity without unity, without continuity, without connection and order." '

The writings of many bourgeois sociologists and philosophers of history are keynoted by the idea of social indeterminism. Thus, in one of his earlier writings, An Introduction to the Philosophy of History, the French philosopher and sociologist Raymond Aron declared that there is no law, human or non-human, directing the course of history to a happy or terrible end. All of Aron's later works are shot through with this erroneous social indeterminism.^^2^^

Social indeterminism, which rules out a scientific understanding of history, is still taken for granted by most Western sociologists. Thus, in an article written for the Soviet reader, Daniel Bell argues that "there are no inevitable forces inducing states to industrialise", and that the idea of historical necessity, "the belief that it is inexorable has already worked itself out".^^3^^

We shall subsequently return to the theoretico-cognitive and socio-political sources of these misconceptions. I shall

only note here that use of the dialectical methods in defence of historical necessity does not imply a rejection of historical chance, for Marxism regards the latter as a manifestation of necessity and a supplement to it. Historical necessity makes its way, manifesting itself in diverse accidental forms, but in spite of all the zigzags and accidents it is still necessity.

As I have already noted, many non-Marxist philosophers and sociologists reject determinism, historical necessity, and objective historical laws on the plea that these belittle man, his freedom of choice, creative activity, and so on. But even before Marx's time freedom was denned as nothing but recognised necessity. Marxism specified, elaborated and ameliorated that fruitful idea: men are able to act competently, to advocate realistic, promising and progressive goals, and to thwart the attempts of the reactionary forces to uphold declining, historically doomed regimes only when they have understood the necessary historical laws, their substance and the course of social development they determine. Once the masses, the progressive classes and outstanding individuals have understood the historical necessity, they acquire freedom of action and become conscious architects of history, accelerating its course and promoting dynamic social progress.

In postulating the existence of objective historical laws, materialist dialectics fully appreciates the fact that these laws do not manifest themselves uniformly, in accordance with a standard pattern. One and the same law may manifest itself most peculiarly in different settings and periods. Thus, the law regulating the formation of one and the same social system assumes diverse forms in the East and the West and at different stages of history. The capitalist mode of production, for instance, was established in very different ways in Britain, France, Germany, Russia, the USA, Japan and other countries.

All this makes it clear that those who accuse Marxism of propounding an oversimplified, one-track development of social laws without any breaks, deviations or diversity of form are distorting it beyond recognition. Marxism sees mankind's history as a law-governed but at the same time multiform, multicolour and multivariant process, whereas the critics of Marxism ascribe to it a historical scheme that suggests a railway timetable with exact times of arri-

~^^1^^ Quoted in: J. Lerois, Science, Faith and Scepticism, London, 1959, pp. 34-35.

~^^2^^ See, L'opiam des intellectuels, Paris, 1955; Dimensions de la conscience historique, Paris, 1951; Dix-huit lemons sur le societe industrielle, Paris, 1962; Les disillusions du progres, Paris, 1969.

~^^3^^ Amerika, No. 215, 1974, p. 2 (in Russian).

val and departure, with trains travelling at established :• speeds along preordained routes. The adversaries of Marxism have for decades stoutly refuted the primitive caricature of the Marxist philosophy of history, of the materialist view of historical development that they themselves invented.

In reality, materialist dialectics makes it possible to give a most dynamic and multifaceted picture of the world, with its internal contradictions, unity and struggle of opposites, the world's perpetual renewal, the law-governed disappearance of old, obsolete and blighted qualities and the equally necessary emergence of new, life-asserling ones.

Dialectical thinking, the dialectical method concentrates its attention on contradictions (antagonistic or non-- antagonistic), on their struggle and resolution not because of any particular regard for conflict or collision, but because it seeks to present an adequate picture of reality. MarxistLeninist philosophy sees the interplay of these contradictions as the mainspring of all motion and development.

When Marxism regards the history of antagonistic-class societies and the history of contending classes, it is not in order to indulge its ``biased'' dialectical concept of development, but because such is the actual course of history. Here as in all other parts, Marxism gives a scientific generalisation of real practice, offering mankind a reliable instrument for studying and transforming the world with full account of its objective regularities. In contrast to different versions of the idealistic philosophy of history, which use the purely speculative, a priori approach in elaborating their abstract and lifeless universal schemes and laws in their futile attempts to embrace the real historical process, materialist dialectics starts from the other end. It first looks to reality, reflects its development laws in generalised terms, and draws its scientific conclusions on the strength of a thorough study of past and present history.

Such, in short, are the basic tenets of historical materialism, the Marxist philosophy of history, which is an organic blend of the materialist and dialectical interpretation of social affairs. Let us now consider the Marxist typologisation of history, the doctrine of socio-economic formations, which is pivotal to historical materialism.

Chapter Three

SOCIO-ECONOMIC FORMATIONS: THE MAIN PHASES

OF HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT

1.

As it was pointed out above, mankind's history is an ascent from less developed types of society to qualitatively new and higher types surpassing the earlier ones in all the major economic, social, political, cultural and moral criteria. Marxism designated these qualitatively distinct types of society, which primarily differ from each other in economic structure, in the mode of material production, as socio-economic formations. Lenin called a socio-economic formation "a specific social organism, whose inception, functioning and transition to a higher form, conversion into another social organism, are governed by specific laws." '

Researchers are still debating the number of socio-- economic formations, particularly the existence of an "Asian mode of production", its substance and compass. Lively debates are still going on about the varieties of formations, the transitional stages between them, their structure, and so on.

Leaving these debatable issues aside, let us consider what science has firmly established.

One can definitely say that there are five socio-economic formations which are the basic phases of mankind's development, the chief stages of social progress. These are: the primitive communal system, the slave-owning system, feudalism, capitalism and communism, whose first phase socialism---has already been built in many countries.

Without going into detail for the time being, let us now examine the structure of a socio-economic formation, its Criticism of It in Mr. Struve's Book," Collected Works, Vol. 1, component parts and their correlation. I shall be brief, for I have already in the main described the structure of these formations in characterising the materialist view of history,

~^^1^^ V. I. Lenin, "The Economic Content of Narodism and the Criticism of It in Mr. Struve's Book", Collected Works, Vol. 1, p. 410.

the correlation between social being and social consciousness.

Every socio-economic formation arises on a material foundation: a historically determined mode of production, a specific unity of productive forces and corresponding relations of production. As we already know, the mode of production is primary in the sense that its emergence and development are not determined by any forms of social consciousness, that is, politico-juridical relations, religious, moral or other factors. Every new formation begins with the emergence.and development of a new economic basis, which necessarily gives rise to corresponding politico-juridical relations and ideological forms. It is known, for instance, that the formation of capitalist economic relations preceded the emergence of a new, bourgeois outlook.

The basis of any socio-economic formation, its chief structural element---the mode of production---is characterised by the type of property in the means of production prevailing under that formation. When the prevailing relations of production run into contradiction with the productive forces and impede their development, the given formation inevitably begins to decline and finally collapses. So, the development of a socio-economic formation, its rise and fall are primarily decided in the sphere of the economic basis.

The Marxist philosophico-historical concept sees "the ultimate cause and the great moving power of all important historical events in the economic development of society, in the changes in the modes of production and exchange, in the consequent division of society into distinct classes, and in the struggles of these classes against one another".^^1^^

In stressing the leading role of the mode of production, the economic basis in the structure of the socio-economic formation, one should never ignore the other structural element of the socio-economic formation: the politico-- juridical and ideological superstructure. This must be stressed because attempts have been made to reduce the concept of the socio-economic formation solely to the mode of production. Some resort to terminological formalism, aiming

to equate the socio-economic formation and the economic formation of society. A careful study of the works of the founders of Marxism clearly shows that they believed the economic mode of production to be the basis of the socioeconomic formation, but not the socio-economic formation itself.

In the theoretico-cognitive plane, the erroneous attempt to reduce the socio-economic formation to the economic mode of production stems from an absolutisation of the undeniable truth that the economic basis is the crucial and decisive element in the concept of the socio-economic formation. But in spite of the decisive importance of the economic mode of production, the socio-economic formation cannot be reduced solely to the sum total of the productive forces and relations of production. Lenin wrote that "while explaining the structure and development of the given formation of society exclusively through production relations, [Marx] nevertheless everywhere and incessantly scrutinised the superstructure corresponding to these production relations and clothed the skeleton in flesh and blood. The reason Capital has enjoyed such tremendous success is that this book by a 'German economist' showed the whole capitalist social formation to the reader as a living thing---with its everyday aspects, with the actual social manifestation of the class antagonism inherent in production relations, with the bourgeois political superstructure that protects the rule of the capitalist class, with the bourgeois ideas of liberty, equality and so forth, with the bourgeois family relationships." '

Those who reduce the socio-economic formation solely to the economic basis, in effect, identify historical materialism with primitive, vulgar economic materialism, which disregards such social factors as politics, law, ethics, the aesthetic consciousness, and other ideological forms.

The urge to reduce the analysis of history and its typologisation solely to the definition of the mode of production violates the dialectical unity of the basis and the superstructure, ignores the latter, and dismisses its very important role in the functioning and development of the socio-economic formation as a coherent social organism.

~^^1^^ Frederick Engels, "Socialism: Utopian and Scientific". In: Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Selected Works in three volumes, Vol. 3. p. 103.

~^^1^^ V. I. Lenin, "What the 'Friends of the People' Arc and How They Fight the Social-Democrats", Collected Works, Vol. 1, pp. 141-42.

1 spoke above of the erroneous attempts to reduce the socio-economic formation to the economic mode of production. An equally grave error would be an attempt to minimise in some way the crucial role of the economic mode in the destiny of the socio-economic formation. Thus, some writers believe that pre-capitalist socio-economic formations---the slave-owning society and feudalism---were allegedly determined in the first place by forms of political force, by extra-economic coercion. That implies that the face of these socio-economic formations was not determined by economic relations but by politico-juridical norms. With a superficial approach to the specific features of the slave-owning and feudal society, these could produce the illusion that economic relations are subordinate to politicojuridical norms and institutions. Actually, as we shall see below, under slavery, as under feudalism, the specific forcible forms by means of which the product of the labour of the oppressed classes was appropriated could exist only given political force had an economic basis. This use of force to coerce slaves and serfs to work and to appropriate the results of their labour was effected on a definite economic basis. Under slavery and feudalism, the forms of overt ; political force in appropriating the results of the labour of others were ultimately determined by a system of economic relations depending on the development level of the productive forces. It is true that extra-economic coercion itself did have specific but deep economic roots.

It will be easily seen that, while a minimisation of the role of the superstructure, of politico-judicial and ideological relations in the destiny of the socio-economic formation leads to vulgar economism, any attempt to overestimate the role of political force and to relegate economic relations to a secondary role means a return to Diihring's "force theory" criticised by Engels, a return to trivial historical idealism.

Summing up all these considerations, one may safely say that the socio-economic formation consists of two basic structural elements: the economic basis and the superstructure, with the economic basis being the determining and definitive element. To say this, I repeat, does not imply any negation or minimisation of the role of the superstructure in the development of the socio-economic formation.

``The economic structure of society always furnishes the real basis, starting from which we can alone work out the

ultimate explanation of the whole superstructure of juridical and political institutions as well as of the religious, philosophical and other ideas of a given historical period." ' Some characteristics of society's superstructure need to be additionally specified. The superstructure corresponds to the dominant basis. But does that mean that the superstructure as a whole works for its basis and helps to establish and consolidate it? The views expressed on this point are contradictory. Some say that the defence of the basis is one of the definitive characteristics of the superstructure. Is this correct? Of course, some key elements of the superstructure, like the state, the established legal institutions and the dominant ideology, are designed to justify and safeguard the basis, the existing system of production relations. But such an approach obscures another question: what are we to do, for example, with the system of antifeudal ideas and organisations which had an edge against the feudal basis? We know that, far from safeguarding, these ideas, in effect, helped to unhinge the feudal basis. This incontrovertible fact warrants the conclusion that the superstructure includes not only the dominant politico-- juridical and ideological elements, but also a system of organisations and ideas which are hostile to the existing basis. It turns out that the superstructure is not homogeneous in content. Nor is that surprising, considering that the basis has its own internal contradictions. For instance, in the capitalist mode of production there are growing contradictions between the productive forces and capitalist relations of production. The existence of these contradictions necessarily predetermines the emergence and sharpening of the struggle between the main classes of capitalist society: the bourgeoisie and the workers. The superstructure, which reflects this contradictory unity of the basis, must itself, necessarily, include mutually incompatible ideas and organisations. The dominant politico-juridical bourgeois relations and the ethical, aesthetic, religious arid other ideas are confronted with political parties, trade unions, young people's and other organisations of the working class, with a developed Marxist-Leninist ideology, all of which are in principle hostile to the whole bourgeois way of life.

~^^1^^ F. Engels, Anti-Diihring, Moscow, 1977, p. 37. 4-U642

When considering the slave-holding, feudal and capitalist bases and superstructures, we reckon with the truth that they are dominant in the given countries and regions at the given stage of historical development. But, 1 repeat, it does not at all follow from this fact that there is no room in the superstructure of antagonistic-class societies for ideas and organisations opposing the dominant basis and superstructural relations.

Alongside the main structural elements, the socio-- economic formation consists of social phenomena like ethnic and national entities, the family, way of life, etc., which are influenced by the main dominant structural elements of the formation. It is well-known that as the peoples have moved from one socio-economic formation to another, more developed and improved one, there has been a qualitative change in the family, in the ethnic and national relations, way of life, and so on.

Besides, the dominant economic and superstructural elements have, of course, shaped some of the general features of these social phenomena, but this does not eliminate the truth that in any class formation the fundamental distinctions in the way of life of the various social classes have their own essential and specific features. It is well-known, for instance, that in the capitalist society there is a great gap between the capitalist's and the worker's way of life.

2.

The primitive communal system was the first socio-- economic formation, and it existed on the globe for hundreds of thousands of years. Because the implements of labour were most primitive and were owned by the whole commune, there were no classes and no class exploitation. The first socio-economic formation had the following characteristic features: the members of the commune worked together with the use of the implements jointly owned by all the members of the commune, and distributed the results of their joint work in equal shares. Communal and tribal organisations, naturally exercised the function of administration, directed labour activity, military operations against hostile communes, and so on, but the state as an organ of coercion of one class by another was not yet there. Because labour was collectivist, the social consciousness of the prim-

itive communal system was free from individualism: al that slage of social development, man's interests blended with the social interests. This primitive collectivism was most pronounced in the moral ideas and ethics of those who belonged to the same clan. Religious ideas and all sorts of rituals were markedly developed under the primitive communal system. The superstructure of that system also included primitive aesthetic ideas expressed in similarly primitive drawings, figures, melodies, etc.

The development of the primitive communal system was slow, chiefly because of the difficulty of improving the implements of labour. Thus, it took thousands of years to advance from stone to metal implements. Still, the productive forces developed along an upgrade, carrying the prim Hive communal system along with them from lower slage to higher.

With the development of copper and bronze casting and of metal implements of labour, arid with the growth of labour productivity, men were enabled to produce more than they required for the immediate satisfaction of their needs. The able-bodied member of the commune was now capable of producing a surplus product, and this made it possible for another to appropriate that product. Consequently, the growth of labour productivity itself created the possibility for some people enriching themselves at the expense of others. Engels wrote: "Up to that time one had not known what to do with prisoners of war, and had therefore simply killed them; at an even earlier period, eaten them. But at the `economic' stage which had now been attained the prisoners acquired a value: one therefore let them live and made use of their labour. Thus, force instead of controlling the economic situation was on the contrary pressed into the service of the economic situation." '

That paved the way for the emergence of the first class society, in which men were enabled to make others work for them and to appropriate the results of the labour of those they had subdued. Slavery, as an economic sector, emerged within the entrails of the primitive communal system, but later took shape as an idepcrident socio-- economic formation, which was established among a large number of peoples.

F. Engels, Anti-Duhring, p. 221.

Under the slave-holding relations of production, the slaveowner fully owns Iho means of production, including Lhe labour of the slave, the slave himself and his family. Tin: slave owns no means of production. Like a thing, he tielongs lo his owner, is deprived of any legal protect ion, may he sold, savagely punished, and even killed on his master's orders.

The politico-juridical superstructure of the slave-owning society, and the slave-owning state in the first place, were important weapons in the preservation of the slave-holding relations. The slave-holding ideology, as expressed by the dominant religious, philosophical, ethical and aesthetic doctrines, vindicated slavery and regarded it as something natural and rational.

The so-called free peasants, handicraftsmen and other social strata were also oppressed by the ruling class---the slave-owners---in a spec:lie form.

For all its severity, the slave-holding formation marked, in many respects, an advance over the primitive communal system and a new stage in the development of human civilisation. Up to a point, the use of vast masses of slaves stimulated economic progress, helped to create a sizeable volume of material goods, to build roads, relatively large cities, develop navigation, etc. Oustanding works of literature and art were created under the slave-holding system in Ancient Greece, Rome and other Western and Eastern states.

But the slave-holding formation contained within itself contradictions whose development was bound to lead to its destruction. Indeed, at a definite stage in the development of the slave-holding society, the specific feature of slave labour became most pronounced: it was the lack of any incentive for the slave to increase the productivity of his labour. The dominant type of relations of production increasingly slowed the growth of the productive forces. Up to a point, this organic defect of the system was compensated by an increase in the number of slaves through wars of aggrandisement. But there was, naturally, a limit to this possibility. The attempt to intensify the exploitation of the slaves inevitably induced them to resist and stage fierce uprisings for their right to live in freedom. The last cytadel of the slave-holding formation, Western Rome, weakened by the unceasing struggle between slaves and

slave-owners, fell in the fifth century A.T), under the blows of Germanic and Slavic tribes.

At the beginning of Ihe third century A.D., in a period when Lhe slave-holding society was already in the grip of a crisis, early feudal relations of production began to take shape as a sector within the entrails of the moribund society. In pursuit of economic gain, some slave-owners broke up their lalifundia into smaller tracts and gave these to liberated slaves who were to remain attached to the soil and to pay a cash rent. Subsequently, cash rent was replaced by or supplemented with the payment by the former slaves of a part of their crop to their masters and a duty to expend a sizeable part of their labour in cultivating the farmland of their masters. That socio-economic institution has gone down in history under the name of the colonus system, while the freed slave, together with the small free-born tenant who shared his economic and social lot, was called colonus. That was the pre-history of the feudal socio-economic formation.

Before briefly describing the feudal formation, let me note a peculiarity of historical development. Marxism lias never asserted that all countries and peoples must pass through every socio-economic formation. There have been many instances in history when some country, for many objective reasons, advanced towards feudalism by-passing the slave-holding formation. In our day, we have witnessed the advance of some countries to socialism by-passing the capitalist formation. What is a uniformity is the rise from lower to higher formation, but, as I have said, the passage by all countries of all pre-socialist formations in not imperative.

Now for a description of some of the more essential features of the feudal society, a highly important phase in human history.

Under the relations of production on which the feudal society is based, the feudal lord fully owns the means of production and partially also the serf, who has to work for the former, while also working his own plot of land. The feudal lord had the right to sell or give away his serfs, and to buy others, but the law did not allow him lo kill them.

The establishment of feudal relations, which provided, as compared with slavery, some incentive to work and iiu-

provement of the implements of labour, was an important landmark in the advance of history. Alongside the main contending classes in the feudal society---the feudal lords and the peasants---there were also artisans, an emergent urban bourgeoisie, and a working class.

The history of feudalism is shot through with sharp struggle of the oppressed peasantry against the ruling class of feudal lords. All the other social sections of the "third estate" were in varying degrees involved in that struggle, and at a definite stage (especially in the European countries) the then progressive bourgeoisie began to play a leading role in the mass struggle.

Feudalism, like other socio-economic formations, passed through various stages of development. Wilh time, the emergent social organism entered upon a stage of stagnation and became a reactionary social system.

Like all the preceding and subsequent socio-economic formations, the substance of feudalism, of the feudal mode of production acquired specific features in various countries and regions of the world. These features were to be found in the basis and to an even greater extent in the politico-juridical and ideological superstructure of the feudal society.

The establishment of feudalism was marked by fresh advances not only in the sphere of politico-juridical relations (as compared with the slave-holding society), but also in literature, painting, architecture, music, and so on. Engels was well justified in saying that it was wrong to regard feudalism as a whole as an epoch of stagnation.

The dominant political and juridical superstructure of the feudal society safeguarded the vital interests of the secular and spiritual feudal lords. But ideas and organisations with an edge against feudalism, against the feudalclerical ideology were thrust into the contradictory superstructure of the feudal society. As feudal relations developed the ruling class sought to intensify the economic plunder of the peasantry and other oppressed social strata. The ceaseless peasant disturbances, uprisings, and peasant wars, both in the West and in the East, like the Jacquerie in France in the 14th and 15th centuries, the peasant war in Germany in the 16th century, the peasant war under Pugachyov's leadership in Russia in the 18th century, and other mass peasant acts against their masters were duly

formalised in ideological terms. Thus, there were widespread efforts to expose feudal inequality and oppression through references to biblical texts and the precepts of early Christianity. Frontal attacks were directed at the established Christian Church, which referred to other Biblical texts to justify the acceptance of the feudal system and urged the peasants to resign themselves to submission to their masters.

Radical spokesmen for the anti-feudal opposition, like Thomas Miinzer (1490-1525), the leader and theorist of the peasant and plebeian camp during the peasant war in Germany, stood close to atheism, denying the very idea of a life after death, and insisted on the right to use force to establish justice.

Subsequently, as the internal contradictions of feudalism sharpened, a powerful anti-feudal Enlightenment movement got under way in Western Europe in the 17th century, and especially in France in the 18th century. In a concerted effort, the best minds of the period, among them Meslier. Montesquieu, Voltaire, Rousseau, Diderot, Helvetius and Holbach, exnosed the whole system of feudal relations and the feudal-clerical ideology, and disposed of the sacrosanct feudal values. We already know that this powerful intellectual movement had an immediate effect on the course of history and stepped up the collapse of feudalism in France and in many other countries.

As a result of an entire revolutionary epoch, capitalism confidently and for good overcame and ousted feudalism in many of the leading countries of the world. This revolutionary transition was prepared by long evolutionary social development. Beginning with the 14th century, the embryos of the capitalist socio-economic formation, under which the basic means of production passed into the hands of the bourgeoisie, gradually took shape within the entrails of the feudal society. Under capitalism, commodity production becomes universal and predominant. Labour power itself becomes a commodity and is bought and exploited by the bourgeoisie. The appropriation of the surplus labour of the worker deprived of all the means of production becomes the chief source for the enrichment of the bourgeoisie, which in various forms also exploits the other toiling sections of town and country.

Marxism put a high value on the role of capitalism in

the rapid development of the productive forces and the establishment of an industrial civilisation with its production facilities that could well have been regarded fantastic at the earlier stages of historical development. The important advance in the scientific cognition of the world and in the improvement of technology and its application to production are connected with the emergence and development of capitalism. Capitalist society, especially during its rise, helped to create great cultural values in art, literature and every other sphere of spiritual creative endeavour.

As compared with the preceding social structure, capitalism proved to be an important stage in social progress not only in the economy but also in the socio-political sphere. Despite its limited and inconsistent nature, bourgeois democracy was undoubtedly a marked extension of individual civil rights, as compared with the feudal-estate system and its juridical relations and institutions.

But what has been said should not obscure the fact that the progress effected by capitalism in the sphere of production was attained at the price of ruthless exploitation of millions upon millions of people who were deprived of the means of production and were forced to accept wage slavery. The lion's share of the goods produced under capitalism went to a small minority of those who had amassed fantastic fortunes. When considering the progress effected by capitalism, one should also bear in mind the ruin of many millions of peasants, the savage plunder of the colonial peoples, and the bloodshed in the local, regional and world wars of aggrandisement.

From the outset, the bourgeois state safeguarded the interests of the ruling class and used every means---violent and peaceful---to protect, consolidate and idealise the bourgeois order. The mass media, which are designed to inform the people but are actually instruments of misinformation. have had and continue to have an important role to play in this effort. With the advent of imperialism---the highest stage of the capitalist society and simultaneously the starting point of its decline---the politico-juridical and the dominant ideological superstructure of the capitalist system fully revealed its reactionary nature and became an instrument for fighting social progress.

As in all the earlier class formations, the superstructure under capitalism is also contradictory, and includes many

incompatible ideas and institutions. I have already noted the role of the revolutionary organisations of the workingclass and of the Marxist ideology in preparing the transition from capitalism to socialism.

In contrast to other class formations, lite communist socioeconomic formation and socialism, its first phase, do not take shape spontaneously within the bourgeois society. But tho growing social character of production under capitalism, the shaping and strengthening of the working class and its communist vanguard, and the emergence of a strong alliance between the proletariat and other oppressed social sections of capitalist society provide the most important con ditions for transition to socialism.

The socialist revolution puts an end -whether peacefully or violently---to the domination of the outgoing system and paves the way for a communist society.

Under both phases of the communist formation, there is social property in the means of production and no exploitation of man by man. The capitalist anarchy of production with attendant crises, economic recessions, inflation, and so on, have no room for existence in a society where all the basic means of production are concentrated in the hands of the socialist state, which effects the planned and proportional development of all the sectors of the economy. the social structure and culture. Socialist economic planning does away with unemployment and the worker's fear of the future, which are a curse of the working class under capitalism.

In the first phase of communism, the values which are created are distributed among tho producers in accordance with the quantity and quality of their labour. Socialism, the first phase of communism, goes through several stages of development, When it reaches the stage of maturity, il gradually grows into communism. In that phase, distribution of the goods produced will not, bo effected in accordance with the quantity and quality of a person's labour, but according to his need. The abundance of goods produced by means of a powerful prod uc I ion mechanism with the most extensive use of scientific and technical achievements will help fully to meet man's growing requirements. At the same time, man fostered in the communist spiril will work to the full extent of his abilities.

In the second phase of communism, social classes and

class distinctions, together with the politico-juridical part of the superstructure, will completely disappear. Juridical norms will give way to moral norms, while the state will wither away to be replaced by communist self-- administration. The fulfilment of this task is quite naturally connected with the total disappearance of imperialism and any potential imperialist aggression.

The epoch of triumphant communism will be marked by a high level in the development of forms of social consciousness like philosophy, ethics and aesthetics, permeated with the most consistent and vigorous humanism, love and respect for comprehensively developed man.

The triumph of communism completes the formation type of development in the history of mankind, because there can be no other, more perfect type of property than social property as the basis for the relations of production in some post-communist socio-economic formation. That is not to say that the triumph of communism will mark the end of historical progress. There is no doubt that evolutionary and revolutionary development will continue along an upgrade, but it will be free of political struggle and social cataclysms.

3.

When reflecting on the course of history and reproducing the main phases of development---socio-economic formations---one must take care to avoid any possible oversimplification. We already know that not all the peoples have gone through every phase of pre-communist social progress. It is an incontrovertible truth that some countries have by-passed this or that formation. While rejecting the oversimplified pattern in the succession of formations, one needs to be warned against another possible error. The point is that one and the same formation, with its basic and essential uniformities, is realised in the various countries and regions of the world with its specific features. I have already said this, but the question needs to be considered in somewhat greater detail, because the critics of Marxism, whether consciously or through ignorance, ascribe to it the advocacy of a rigid monotony in the emergence, development and disappearance of socio-economic formations, the idea of a deadening stereotype which is,

in fact, totally alien to the dialectical nature of the Marxist theory. It regards the world not only in the process of its eternal development and renewal, but also in all its diversity.

There has been no instance in history when a socio-- econoinic formation has been identical in every way in various countries at different stages of historical development. The general uniformities of one and the same formation, as we shall subsequently see, have always manifested themselves in peculiar forms. This diversity of forms in whicli the same formation takes shape and exists does not, of course, give any grounds for casting doubt on its existence, and on the general uniformities and qualitative characteristics which are proper to it alone.

We have seen that every socio-economic formation has a number of general, fundamental indicators. Where these are absent, the formation itself does not exist. Thus, it is impossible to imagine the existence of capitalism without the concentration of the basic means and instruments of production in the hands of a relatively small minority, the capitalists, without wage labour, without the appropriation of surplus value by the minority, without juridical institutions and the state, which safeguard the capitalist form of exploitation of labour, without bourgeois ideology. which uses diverse means to idealise and justify the bourgeois economic, social and political system.

There is no doubt about all that, but what is also unquestionable is the fact that the essential and characteristic general uniformities of any formation are manifested in some specific form with various specific features in different ethnic and social environments.

Lenin believed that the scientist's task was "to proceed from the description of social phenomena (and their evaluation from the standpoint of an ideal) to their strictly scientific analysis, which isolates, let us say by way of example, that which distinguishes one capitalist country from another and investigates that which is common to all of them".^^1^^

The dialectic of tho general and the particular permeates the whole of the historical process and the history of any

~^^1^^ V. 1. Lenin, "What the 'Friends of tlie People' Are and How They Fight the Social-Democrats", Collected Works, Vol. 1, p. 140.

socio-economic formation. Here, there is no particular without the general, while the general is expressed through the particular. No socio-economic formation is manifested in ``pare'' form. It is necessarily revealed in different forms. Varieties of a socio-economic formation will be found to exist with different modifications dictated by time and circumstances.

History testifies that no mode of social production constituting the basis of a socio-economic formation has ever been established in the same form everywhere. Summing up this specific feature of social development, Marx wrote: "The same economic basis---the same from the standpoint of its main conditions- -due to innumerable different empirical circumstances, natural environment, racial relations, external historical influences, etc., [may show] infinite variations and gradations in appearance, which can be ascertained only by analysis of the empirically given circumstances." '

Emphasising the crucial importance of general features and general uniformities in the development and functioning of a given formation, Marxism urges consideration of the diversity of forms in which it takes shape in the va rious countries. Such an approach reproduces the actual historical process and is borne out by it.

To begin with, let us say that in virtue of social and natural conditions, the primitive communal system, based on the common ownership of the means of production and free of classes and class antagonisms, assumed highly peculiar forms in various regions. These peculiarities were so substantial that some peoples advanced from the primitive communal system to the slave-holding society, and others on to feudalism.

The study of the slave-holding formation shows how diversified it was in time and space. Now and again it is even hard to refer to one and the same formation the slaveholding despotisms of the Ancient East and the slave-- holding systems of classic Greece and the Republic of Rome in its latter period. Still, these are all varieties of one and the same slave-holding formation, of one and the samo

type of property, and one and the same typo of slave-- holding relations of production.

Feudalism vies with the slave-holding society in the diversity of the forms in which it originated and existed, ll had a different face in Europe, Asia and Africa, and on other continents. In Western Europe itself, it is hard to find quite similar forms in the organisation of feudal society in England, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and other countries of this region.

One reason for the existence of the different versions of feudalism was the fact that in some countries ( Byzantium, Italy, France, and Spain, among others), feudalism began to take shape within the slave-holding society. This naturally left an imprint on the feudal relations in these countries. Feudalism had a different face in countries which had by-passed the slave-holding formation (Russia, Poland, the Baltic region, Germany, England, the Scandinavian and other countries). The transition to feudalism by-passing the slave-holding system predetermined the socio-economic difficulties in the development of feudal relations, the relarding effect of the communal system, tribal ties, etc. In other countries (China, Japan, and others), feudal relations combined with survivals of slave-holding.

Let us take a closer look at Byzantine feudalism. It differed so markedly from feudalism in the West European countries that some scientists have even denied its existence. The Soviet student of Byzantium, Z. V. Udaltsov, says: "Now and again a great divide is run between Byzantium and the West. Byzantium is heavily `orientalised', and brought closer to the countries of the East. Some researchers present the role of the Byzantine state in a hypertrophied form, depicting it as being just short of an Eastern despotism, exaggerate the development in Byzantium of state property in land, of state forms of exploitation of the peasants, and a centralised rent in the form of a tax. Byzantium's ruling class is regarded not as a class of feudal lords, whose material well-being and political influence rested on feudal landed property and exploitation of the dependent peasantry, but as a class of civil servants representing the echelons of a state bureaucratic apparatus." ' By minimising the development of feudal prop-

~^^1^^ See: Problems of the Socio Economic Formation, Moscow, 1975, p. 127 (in Russian).

~^^1^^ K. Marx, Capital, Vol. Ill, A Critique of Political Economy, Progress Publishers, 1977, p. 792.

erty and the seignorial form of exploitation and, conversely, exaggerating the absence of any developed feudal hierarchy and a clearly expressed vassalage, one will easily come to deny the existence of feudalism in Byzantium and to associate its socio-economic system with a variety of the slave-holding society, with the so-called "Asiatic mode of production". Actually, Byzantium had a type of feudal society, because the main economic relations were relations between a ruling feudal elite, which owned most of the land, and an exploited peasantry.

Considering this diversity of forms in which the feudal socio-economic formation originated and existed, Engels wrote: "Did feudalism ever correspond to its concept? Founded in the kingdom of the West Franks, further developed in Normandy by the Norwegian conquerors, its formation continued by the French Norsemen in England and Southern Italy, it came nearest to its concept---in the ephemeral kingdom of Jerusalem, which in the Assises de Jerusalem left behind it the most classic expression of the feudal order." '

This insists on the important idea that the substance (concept) of feudalism cannot be fully expressed in the particular and the individual. It is useless to look for some "pure feudalism" that is always and in all things identical with itself. Elaborating on this idea, Lenin emphasised that there are no ``pure'' phenomena either in nature or in society, and there can be none---"that is what Marxist dialectics teaches us, for dialectics shows that the very concept of purity indicates a certain narrowness, a onesidedness of human cognition, which cannot embrace an object in all its totality and complexity".^^2^^

At a higher stage of history, the diversity in the emergence and development of formations tends to be reduced, but the different ways in which one and the same formation is shaped and exists in the various countries can never disappear. This is borne out by the emergence and existence of capitalism. The transition to bourgeois society was highly peculiar in England, the Netherlands, France, Germany, Russia, the United States, Japan and other coun-

~^^1^^ Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Selected Correspondence, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1975, pp. 458, 459.

~^^2^^ V. I. Lenin, "The Collapse of the Second International", Collected Works, Vol. 21, p. 236.

tries. Analysing the actual process in which the capitalist system, which is identical in nature in the various countries, Marx had good grounds to say that the history of the emergence of capitalism "assumes different aspects, and runs through its various phases in different orders of succession and at different periods". '

This is borne out by the specific formation of capitalism in England and in France. The struggle of the English bourgeoisie for power against the ruling feudal class was carried on through compromise. A section of the English feudal lords, known as the "new gentry", went in for capitalist economic activity, sided with the bourgeoisie on many issues, but did not, of course, give up some of its feudal privileges. The "glorious revolution" of 1688-1689 was a typical compromise between the big bourgeoisie and a large section of the landed aristocracy. The subsequent establishment of capitalism in England ran through a gradual overcoming of feudal relations and institutions, whose survivals will be found to this day in the form of the constitutional monarchy, the House of Lords, and so on.

In France, the abolition of feudal relations was effected in sharper struggle between the bulk of the bourgeoisie, supported by the people, against feudalism and the absolute monarchy. For many reasons, the French bourgeoisie of the late 18th century dared to lead a popular revolutionary movement against the reactionary feudal order and to eradicate them. It is true that after the 1789-1794 revolution attempts were made to restore feudal relations and the monarchy, but these attempts did not and, in fact, could not succeed.

In North America, capitalism took shape in conditions that were very different from those in which bourgeois relations took shape in Britain, the Netherlands, France and other countries and regions of the world. In the country subsequently to be known as the United States, there were no feudalism or feudal obstacles to the development of capitalism. The slave-holding relations in the south of the country were abolished in a relatively short while. This necessarily had an effect on the specific features of US capitalism and determined its rapid development.

~^^1^^ Karl Marx, Capital, Vol. I, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1977, p. 670.

Jn Russia, as Lenin showed so fully and with such depth in his The Development oj Capitalism in Russia, bourgeois • relations took shape in the face of a multiplicity of feudal and serf institutions. He wrote: "In no single capitalist country has there been such an abundant survival of ancient institutions that are incompatible with capitalism, retard its development, and immeasurably worsen the condition of the producers, who 'suffer not only from the de- ; velopment of capitalist production, but also from the incompleteness of that development'." '

The formation of capitalism in Germany, Austria, Italy, Japan and other countries also bears out the dialectic of the general and the particular in the emergence and development of the capitalist society.

Experience shows that as the socio-economic formation develops and consolidates, there is a tendency for its specific features in the various countries to be toned down, although they remain in various forms and proportions. The United States, Britain, France, Italy, Norway, Sweden, Japan and other developed capitalist countries all have their specific features, and these are expressed in the preservation of survivals of feudal relations, the level of scientific and technical achievements, the size of the national- i ised sector of industry, the balance between industry and agriculture, the sharpness of socio-class antagonisms, and so on.

It is not only the basis but also the superstructure that reveals the socio-economic formation to be coherent in substance and diverse in the forms in which it originates and exists. Thus, bourgeois political and juridical relations, which are identical in class substance, are fairly checkered in the various capitalist countries. Different forms of state administration may be erected on the same capitalist basis: the monarchy, the constitutional monarchy, the bourgeois-democratic republic, and the fascist state. There is * even greater diversity within the bounds of the bourgeois ideological superstructure.

The Marxist-Leninist theory urges an in-depth study of the specific features of the capitalist formation in the various countries and regions of the world, at various stages of historical development, and requires precise considera-

~^^1^^ V. I. Lenin, "The Development of Capitalism in Russia", Col- i lected Works, Vol. 3, p. 599.

tion of the socio-economic contradictions and the balance of the contending forces in the concrete country and concrete conditions. This realistic approach, which reckons with the dialectic of the general and the particular in the development of the capitalist society today, helps to work out an effective programme for a transition from the obsolete capitalist relations to the new socio-economic formation.

In conclusion, one must consider the question of whether the dialectic of the general and the particular applies to the emergence and development of the communist formation, notably, its first phase, socialism.

The fact that socialism does not take shape spontaneously within the entrails of the capitalist society but is built in accordance with the laws of social development is of exceptional importance. This is a totally new phenomenon in the history of social progress. But this unique phenomenon in the development of socio-economic formations does not invalidate the truth that because of the uneven development of capitalism and for many other objective reasons the nations pass on to socialism at different periods and from different levels of socio-economic, political and cultural development.

Experience has refuted Kautsky's vulgar mechanistic theory of the productive forces, which sought to determine the possibility of transition to socialism only from a pedantically fixed stage in the development of the productive forces. With that kind of approach, countries should advance to socialism from a unified level of economic development. From this it logically followed that the very process of socialist construction had to be unified as well. It will be easily seen that Kautsky's scholastic approach in effect eliminated the dialectic of the general and the particular in the formation of socialism and cancelled out the question of the diversity of roads leading to it. These erroneous views were imposed on the working-class movement in the epoch of imperialism, at a time when uneven development of the capitalist countries was becoming ever more pronounced, further deepening the differences in the nations' transition to socialism.

Lenin showed the uneven development of capitalism and proved that socialism could triumph even in one individual country, and in so doing naturally gave close attention to

5-0642

the dialectic of the general and the particular in the transition to socialism.

While emphasising the epoch-making importance of the (Ireat October Socialist Revolution and the objective and general uniformities in the transition from capitalism to socialism which it embodied, Lenin did not believe that all the forms and methods of struggle used in Russia had necessarily to be applied in other countries advancing to socialism. He warned against any thoughtless mechanical imitation in other countries of the means and methods of struggle which had so brilliantly justified themselves in the course of the revolution in Russia. In one of his speeches Lenin said: "The revolution in Italy will run a different course from that in Russia. It will start in a different way... . We never wanted Serrati in Italy to copy the Russian revolution. That would have been stupid. We are intelligent and flexible enough to avoid such stupidity." '

The dialectic of the general and the particular in the transition from capitalism to socialism, which Lenin so clearly formulated, shows how the truth is distorted by those who insist that Lenin and the Communist Party of the Soviet Union have tried to impose the "Russian experience" on other countries, to make them repeat in every detail Russian ways and means of taking power and building a socialist society. Others have written more grossly about some ``export'' to other countries of the Russian revolution with all its attributes. Lenin showed these inventions to be primitive and trite. He wrote: "There are people who believe that revolution can break out in a foreign country to order, by agreement. These people are either mad or they are provocateurs. We have experienced two revolutions during the past twelve years. We know that revolutions cannot be made to order, or by agreement; they break out when tens of millions of people come to the conclusion that it is impossible to live in the old way any longer.''~^^2^^

The scientific premise according to which the formation of socialism assumes diverse forms was first borne out in practice by the experience of the USSR.

~^^1^^ V. I. Lenin, "Third Congress of the Communist International" Collected Works, Vol. 32, pp. 465, 466.

~^^2^^ V. I. Lenin, "Fourth Conference of Trade Unions and Factory Committees of Moscow, June 27-July 2, 1918", Vol. 27, p. 480.

The Communist Party and the Soviet state, having taken the road of socialist construction in the USSR and being consistently guided by a knowledge of the general uniform ities in the development of socialism, also reckoned with the specifics with which these uniformities are manifested in the various parts of the country with different levels of economic, social, political and cultural development.

The emergence of the world socialist system has once again confirmed the dialectic of the general and the particular in socialist construction and provided an opportunity for developing this dialectic and expressing it in concrete terms. It proved that Lenin was right in saying that the dictatorship of the proletariat, which had one substance, may assume new forms in accordance with the specifics of the economic and socio-political development of the various countries. Indeed, in Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, the German Democratic Republic, Hungary, Poland and other socialist countries, the dictatorship of the proletariat assumed the form of a people's democracy. In some socialist countries, there was no need to deprive the members of the overthrown exploiting classes of their electoral rights. In contrast to the Soviet Union, the concrete conditions in some socialist countries made it possible to have a multiparty system. The forms and periods in which large-scale private property was abolished in the cities differed from country to country.

Consequently, it is right to say that it is a universal sociological uniformity for socio-economic formations to have a single substance and a diversity of forms. Such an understanding of the problem prevents one from regarding varieties of a single formation as independent social organisms and also from ignoring the truth that every socioeconomic formation has its specific features of origination and development in the various countries and regions of the world.

This dialectical approach, when applied to the socialist society, is aimed against the Maoist unification of socialism on the Chinese model, and also against the various inventions concerning the possibility of national or regional socialisms which, at closer inspection, have nothing in common with the scientific view of existing socialism.

Chapter four

HISTORICAL PROGRESS AS A SUCCESSION

OF SOCIO-ECONOMIC FORMATIONS _t

our faces. It is not surprising therefore that men want to discern the face of the future, some with fear and others with justified or groundless hopes.

All are more or less agreed that there are now rapidly growing dangers which, if left spontaneously to develop, could indeed jeopardise the very existence of human civilisation. There is the danger of thermonuclear war, the contamination of the environment, the overpopulation of the globe, and the death from starvation of hundreds of millions of people. These are terrible dangers, and no one denies that they are real. The disputes start at the point where it is necessary to determine the means for averting these calamities and mapping out the perspectives for mankind's future existence and development.

There is a sharp clash of incompatible prognostications concerning the present situation and mankind's future. Marxism-Leninism believes that mankind can make real progress by advancing to a classless communist society. Anti-Marxist concepts claim that the problem can be solved by improving capitalism under some spurious name. This ideological confrontation will be dealt with later. Let us now consider briefly the historical shaping of the concept of social progress.

1.

The idea that social life undergoes change, thai wars and revolutions alter the face of states, and thai there is a succession of forms of economic activity, political administration, mores, customs, religious creeds, aesthetic standards, etc., this idea was expressed long before the science of society originated. The idea that social relations and institutions tend to change was variously reflected in the chronicles of history.

Long before the lifetime of Karl Marx, some thinkers also recorded another social phenomenon: not only docs social life tend to change, but such change is oriented and, on the whole, tends to run on an upgrade. It was noticed that primitive implements of production give way to improved and more productive ones, while (he primitive forms of social and political life give way to more complicated and rational ones. What was most obvious was progress in culture and science.

What has been said above warrants the conclusion that historical progress consists in the replacement of a socioeconomic formation that has outlived itself by a new formation which surpasses the old one in the key economic, social, political and cultural criteria.

This question needs to be considered at greater length. It is safe to say that the problem of social progress is a key one in the contest between ideological trends in our day. What is at issue is not only the substance of social progress, its motive forces and its immediate and long-term prospects. The very existence of progress is being sharply debated. Perhaps it is nothing but a figment of the imagination of social romantics? Is not mankind perhaps moving along a downgrade and is not the twilight of human civilisation at hand? Perhaps the saying "God is dead" should be supplemented with a statement "Mankind is dying''?

These dark apocalyptic visions, which will be considered later, this tolling of the bell for mankind and suggestion of various similes, like that of the locomotive which is rushing headlong to a point at which the rails end, clash with optimistic predictions about the future.

Let us say in advance that in no period of human history has the question of the future so agitated the minds of men as it does today. Why is there such a heightened interest in what is not and in what should be? It is perhaps the fact that this future is not too remote. Indeed, the unprecedented pace of social development and the rapid advance of the scientific and technological revolution tend steadily to reduce the distance between the present and the future. Tomorrow does not lie somewhere beyond the misty horizon of our consciousness and vision. Tomorrow is not something that lies in store for our grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Tomorrow is at hand. It intrudes into our reality and we can feel its breath in

The idea of progress was quite clearly formulated by progressive bourgeois social thinkers like Turgot, Condorcet and Herder, and became the predominant one for many decades of the 19th century. That was a period of capitalism's rapid rise so that the idea of social progress appeared to be quite natural for many bourgeois social thinkers.

But pre-Marxian sociology was unable to show the true substance and motive forces of historical progress and its perspective. Taking the idealistic view of history, it looked to spiritual principles, to the endless capacity of the human mind for improvement (Turgot, Condorcet) for explanations of the upward development of social life. Thus, in his Outlines of a Historical Picture of the Progress of the Human Spirit, Antoine Condorcet assumed that the improvement of human society is as boundless as the flight of human thought itself. He argued that there were no limits to the development of mankind's creative potentialities: "Man's capacity for improvement is truly boundless. Henceforth, progress in this perfectability is independent of any power wishing to arrest it." ' He believed that this was the basis for the uninterrupted historical progress in every sphere of social development. According to Hegel's view, historical progress was an expression of the spontaneous development of the absolute World-Spirit.

In accordance with the idealistic premise, the criterion of progress was also discovered in other spiritual phenomena, in the level of development of this or that form of social consciousness: science, morality, law, the religious consciousness, etc. But what determined these forms of social consciousness and the degree of their development remained unexplained.

Another essential defect of many pre-Marxian concepts of social progress was the undialectical consideration of the ascent of social life. Social progress was regarded as smooth evolutionary development, without revolutionary leaps or movements in reverse. It was seen as uninterrupted ascent along a straight line. Such a view was most pronounced among the philosophers of established capitalism. Thus, Auguste Comte and Herbert Spenser ignored the contra-

dictory antagonistic nature of contemporary social progress, and regarded the struggle of the oppressed classes against the bourgeois system as a ``malaise'' and an obstacle lo the development of civilisation.

Finally, pre-Marxian sociology confined social progress to the framework of the capitalist socio-economic system. The ascent of history was identified wilh l.lie allegedly endless improvement of capitalist relations. Hence the conclusion that any attempt to go beyond the bounds of the bourgeois society was regressive and, in effect,, futile.

We shall see later that all the main mistakes and effects of pre-Marxian social thinking about progress have been inherited and compounded by present-day bourgeois social science.

Marxism overcame these serious mistakes and misconceptions, which were inherent in the pre-scientific notions of historical progress, and discovered the true substance of progress, regarding it as an upward succession of socioeconomic formations that was objective and law-governed.

The founders of Marxism rejected the abstract approach to the question of historical progress, just as they refused to discourse on society in general terms. Marx warned specifically that "the concept of progress is on the whole not to be understood in the usual abstract form".^^1^^ Such an approach meant that phenomena which were progressive in one historical epoch, like the capitalist mode of production, became conservative and reactionary in another epoch. The Marxist requirement of concrete analysis makes one look for the specific elements of progress in the historically transient socio-economic formations.

The succession of socio-economic formations host illustrates historical progress. We have seen that all the formations preceding communist necessarily, one after another, paved the way for their own negation because at a definite stage of development the historically limited type of relations of production dominant in this or that formation came to slow down the development of the productive forces, so paving the way for their own decline, cause the new formation gave room for much faster of the productive forces.

~^^1^^ Condorcul, Esquisse I'esprit humain, p. 4.

7Q

d'uu tableau hisloriqne des progriis

de

~^^1^^ Karl Marx, A Contribution In tin- CrUiijUi: uj Political Ki:<nion> u Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1970, p. 215.

These developed at an ever faster rate. Thus, the stone implements of Chelle culture did not change over a period of nearly 500,000 years, but the transition from steam engines to electric motors took less than 100 years. It took even less time for the switch to the early phases of the industrial use of atomic energy.

Advance in the development of the productive forces induces progress in the development of the relations of production, social institutions, and the spiritual development of society.

The accelerated development of the productive forces is no doubt ultimately connected with the pace of the development and succession of socio-economic formations. Thus, the primitive communal system existed for hundreds of millenia, the slave-holding system, for over 4,000 years, and capitalism in many countries, for only a few centuries.

The development of the socialist society has most clearly shown this acceleration of social progress: it took less than a half-century to build a developed socialist society in the USSR.

This advance will be seen not only in the transition from one socio-economic formation to another, but also within the framework of each formation. Does this mean that throughout its existence every socio-economic formation develops along an upgrade? This is not true of antagonistic-class formations, which at a definite stage of their development cease to be progressive and tend increasingly to slow down the course of history, as it will be clearly seen from the history of capitalism, especially at the imperialist stage of its development. Of course, in the epoch of imperialism there is also a growth (now and again very rapid growth) of the productive forces and of scientific and technical knowledge, and their application in industry, but on the whole capitalism is regressive, engendering destructive forces which jeopardise the very existence of mankind. At its imperialist stage, capitalism blocks the transition to a new social system, which is capable of using the powerful productive forces of society in the interests of the whole people, instead of those of a small minority, for the most rapid economic, socio-political and cultural development of the whole of society and of every individual. The ascent from an old socio-economic formation to a new

n

one is a leap from one qualitative state of society to another, which is fundamentally new. This transition, as we shall see below, is an epoch of social revolution, when the old order is broken down and a new one emerges.

At every stage of history, reactionary class forces, defending the bankrupt order, have resisted historical progress by every means at their disposal. But, as history shows, no reactionary social class has managed to stem mankind's ascent. These efforts have done no more than merely delay for a long time the triumph of the new social system, the new socio-economic formation.

The forces of the advanced social formation work to overthrow the old order, but this should not be seen as a complete rejection of the values created under the old social relations. The process here is a dialectical negation, a negation of the old system, with a retention and multiplication of all its positive material and spiritual advances. Thus, historical progress is not a mere succession of socio-economic formations, but a succession in which the new formation surpasses the old one in every basic indicator: labour productivity, social and political organisation, production of spiritual values, and elaboration of more advanced and lofty norms of morality.

The ascent from one socio-economic formation to another should not be seen as implying that with the emergence of the new and more progressive formation, the old one disappears everywhere and at the same time. This is a complicated and protracted process. The coexistence of different formations is a well-known fact and, in a sense, a general sociological uniformity. Long after it was established, capitalism continued to coexist with feudal countries even in Europe itself. Similarly, socialism now coexists not only with the capitalist system, but also with countries which are at a lower level of social development. What does this suggest? It merely suggests that social development is uneven, and that historical progress is not straightforward. Sooner or later, moribund social structures inevitably leave the historical scene.

Let us note that Marxism-Leninism does not connect its scientifically grounded ideal with the establishment of the communist formation all over the world by means of violent revolutions or civil wars. Because it is intrinsically humanistic, it prefers a peaceful socialist revolution lo effect a

progressive and noble cause like the concentration of the full plontitude of power in the hands of the working class and all the other working people, and the transfer of the means of production created by the people's labour to the people themselves. In Russia, as in other countries, the counter-revolutionary forces took up arms and started a civil war in an attempt to retake the state power, which the working class had, in effect, won by peaceful means. In these conditions, the revolutionary forces, quite naturally, had to counter force with force.

Marxism-Leninism not only insists that the coexistence of socialist and capitalist countries is inevitable, but firmly and consistently stands for the coexistence of countries with different social systems. As I will show later in detail, it rejects---as a matter of principle---any "export of revolution" and forcible imposition of the socialist system on other states, and the use of wars between countries to effect the ascent from capitalism to socialism. Lenin said on many occasions that socialism must win by the power of its example, by demonstrating in practice that it has incontestable advantages over capitalism.

There should be no superficial judgement about historical progress. The development of the productive forces is, of course, the most important condition for social progress, but this truth should not be oversimplified, for spiritual culture can in some instances run ahead of the development of the productive forces. Let us recall, for instance, that the development of the productive forces in 19th-century Russia lagged well behind that of some of the capitalist countries, but that did not prevent it from producing great thinkers, revolutionaries, poets, novelists, composers, artists, scientists and inventors. The point is that the development of culture (and of all superstructure I phenomena generally) should not be linked directly with the level of the productive forces in a country outside the context of the relations of production, of the mature social antagonisms, and of the class and national contradictions. Conversely, a high level of development of the productive forces does not necessarily have to go hand in hand with a similarly high level of spiritual culture. Thus, a relatively high level in the development of the productive forces under monopoly capitalism tend« to slow down the production of aesthetic values, which give way

to ersatz values like "mass culture", growing immorality, and so on.

Superstructural phenomena are known to be relatively independent of the economy, and now and again, this independence can be most pronounced. As regards art, Marx said that some of its peaks by no means correspond to the "general development of society; nor do they therefore to the material substructure, the skeleton as it were of its organisation".^^1^^

Marxism-Leninism, while insisting on the progressive nature of subsequent formations as compared with earlier ones, warns against any simplistic view of this proposition. The new formation does not necessarily surpass the old one in every form of culture. Thus, in some areas of spiritual culture (like philosophy) the feudal society did not match the slave-holding society, but there is no reason to assume that on the whole the transition from the slave-holding society to feudalism meant a regressive movement. Engels rebuked the Enlighteners of the 18th century for regarding the Middle Ages as a mere interruption of history. "The great progress made in the Middle Ages---the extension of the area of European culture, the viable great nations Inking form there next to each other, and finally the enormous technical progress of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries---all this was not seen.''~^^2^^

Historical progress is inconceivable without a continuity between the old and the new formation, between the past and the present, between the present and the future. In this historical relay, generations and peoples pass on to others all of their basic, vital values. But have all the cultural values been involved in the overall tide of historical advance? History says no. For many reasons, for instance, because of geographical remoteness, extreme unevenness in the economic and cultural development of the peoples, it now and again happened in the past that values created in some ethnic medium remained confined to it and disappeared with it. We shall show below that some philosophers and historians have produced anti-progressive conceptions according to which the history of mankind appears

~^^1^^ Karl Marx, A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, Mosco_w, 1978, p. 215.

``....... Selected Works in llirec

• Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, volumes, Vol. 3, Moscow, 1970, p. 350.

as a coexistence of isolated civilisations emerging, developing and disappearing without any mutual exchange of values, without an impact on the development of the material and intellectual gains of other peoples. This view clashes with the actual history of mankind.

Let me emphasise once again that when considering progress as an objective law of historical development, Marxism-Leninism warns against any primitive view of social progress as an uninterrupted and straightforward ascent from the lower to the higher. It does so on the basis of an in-depth and all-round analysis of world history, of the character and succession of socio-economic formation and their internal stages of development. The idea of straightforward social progress was abandoned because mankind's history abounds in unexpected turns and reverses, temporary restoration of reactionary regimes, and the role of chance in social life.

The advanced socio-economic formation has ultimately always triumphed over the reactionary and doomed formation which clashes with the vital interests of the people, and which acts as a drag on the development of the productive forces and of new and advanced social relations. But this victory has never been a foregone conclusion and has never run according to some definite schedule. Now and again, circumstances have led to a temporary defeat of the historically progressive forces, slowing down the solution of objectively mature historical problems. The establishment of capitalism shows how labyrinthine and contradictory the shaping of that formation has been. I have in mind the temporary defeats of the progressive forces and the temporary abolition of important gains in the sphere of economic and socio-political relations.

Objecting to the simplistic view of the Marxist doctrine of progress, Lenin wrote: "It is undialectical, unscientific and theoretically wrong to regard the course of world history as smooth and always in a forward direction, without occasional gigantic leaps back." ' This scientific generalisation, which cautions against any interpretation of upward development as an automatic process and against the ignoring of historical chance, is of important theoretical and

~^^1^^ V. I. Loiiin, "The Juniiis Pamphlet", Collected Works, Vol. 22, p. 310.

practical significance in this epoch of transition from capitalism to socialism. The existence of socialism has shown how hard the reactionary forces have tried to use every means, including war, to destroy the new society in order to reverse the tide of history.

World socialism has all the objective prerequisites for beating back the counter-attacks of imperialism and for winning in the competition with the old system a full and final victory throughout the world. This can be achieved only through the revolutionary activity of millions upon millions of people and purposeful action by the advanced parties.

Vulgar economic materialism regards the course of history, the ascent from one socio-economic formation to another as a purely impersonal and spontaneous process, in which men, with their consciousness and will, are just as unimportant in the maelstrom of social events as grains of sand being driven by the storm. Bourgeois ideologists frequently say that that is the Marxist conception. One of them insists that Marx looked for the will of history in all things, regarding himself as its prophet and interpreter. "History, for Marx, played the role others attributed to divine forces, namely, to lead mankind to the new Eden." ⁱ

Since then, other opponents of Marxism have just as insistently ascribed to Marx and Marxism a pure fatalism and providcntialism, according to which history does all, while man is completely in the power of this mystified history.

The fact is that Marx and Engels rejected the fatalistic view of history and of historical progress. In The German Ideology they said something that was totally different from the notions which people like Meyer ascribe to Marxism. Here is what the founders of Marxism wrote: " History does nothing, it 'possesses no immense will', it 'wages no battles'. It is man, real living man who does all that, who possesses and fights; `history' is not, as it were, a person apart, using man as a means to achieve its own aims: history is nothing but the activity of man pursuing his

aims.

`` 2

~^^1^^ Alfred G. Meyer, Leninism, Harvard University Press, Cambridge (Mass.), 1957, p. 291.

~^^2^^ Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Collected Works, Vol. 4, Moscow, 1975, p. 93.

The Marxist conception of social progress is aimed not only against the fatalistic, but also against the subjective, idealistic, vohmlarislic view. The latter implies a negation of the objective laws of history, which is why it so easily rejects or accepts its own view of progress, giving arbitrary assessments of its substance and converting great individuals into subject of history who, at will, direct the course of historical events.

2.

We have considered some essential features of the Marxist theory of historical progress. It remains for us to establish its criterion, the essential points on which the progressive nature of one socio-economic formation is established as compared with the earlier one. What are the criteria for distinguishing progressive and reactionary phenomena in human history?

First of all, let us note that social progress is multifaceted and runs in many planes. Every specific sphere of social life---economics, politics, law, morality, art, etc.--- have their own special criteria of development, and these cannot be confused without a loss of the concrete approach to the evaluation of this or that phenomenon.

Thus question arises: is it possible in these conditions to have any general criterion of social progress? Many nonMarxist theorists, especially those who propound the " factor theory", the advocates of the idealistic view of a pluralist world, give a negative answer to this question.

Marxism-Leninism takes the very opposite view of this problem. It insists that social life is coherent. What we call socio-economic formations, the basic phases of human history, are living social organisms, social systems which have their own specific structures and which are subordinate to specific laws of functioning and development. If these are not a sum total of discrepant parts, but a dialectical unity, an integral whole, it follows quite obviously that for a comparison of these integral wholes one must have a general criterion to judge of their progressiveness or regressiveness. Because economic relations constitute the basis of any socio-economic formation and ultimately determine every aspect of social life, the general criterion of progress should obviously be found in the sphere of eco-

riomic relations, in the sphere of production, indeed, a look at the historical succession of socio-economic formations will easily show that the more developed formation differs from the less developed primarily in the historically rooted mode of production, in its productive strength, and ultimately in the development of the productive forces and labour productivity.

In his work "The Agrarian Programme of Social Democracy in the First Russian Revolution", Lenin characterised the productive forces as the "highest criterion of social progress". ' This assessment springs from the fact that in the unity of the productive forces and the relations of production, the former constitute the content of the mode of production and are its most dynamic element, expressing the continuity in the development of production. What is more, the development of the productive forces can be clearly determined and precisely measured.

When we compare the primitive communal system, the slave-holding society, feudalism and capitalism, the level in the development of the productive forces provides a precise objective criterion for establishing the degree of historical progressiveness of the socio-economic formation. Marx wrote: "Relics of bygone instruments of labour possess the same importance for the investigation of extinct economic forms of society, as do fossil bones for the determination of extinct species of animals. It is not the articles made, but how they are made, and by what instrument, that enables us to distinguish different economic epochs. Instruments of labour not only supply a standard of the degree of development to which human labour has attained, but they are also indicators of the social conditions under which that labour is carried on.''~^^2^^

One could ask whether in assessing the progressiveness or regressiveness of a social system it is adequate to refer to the level in the development of the productive forces, taken in themselves, without a consideration of the conditions, pace and social consequences of their development.

Such an approach is fraught with gross errors. There is good reason why some anti-Marxist sociologists eagerly separate the productive forces from the relations of produc-

~^^1^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 13, p. 243.

^^2^^ Karl Marx, Capital, Vol. I, pp. 175-76.

tion, so coming up with arbitrary constructs and generalisations. So, Walt Rostow, the author of The Stages of Economic Growth, prefers Lo operate with the productive forces separated from the relations of production when classifying his stages of social development. Outside the social context, the productive forces, and technology in the first place, are frequently set up as the criterion of the progressiveness or regressiveness of a social system. This approach puts the United States in the van of historical progress, because for the time being it surpasses the socialist countries and other capitalist countries in the level of development of the productive forces.

Thus, when the development of the productive forces is separated from the development of the relations of production, from the social structure and the actual conditions and prospects of man---the main element of the productive forces---US imperialism, an avowed enemy of social progress, is converted into its opposite.

But the whole point is that the productive forces cannot be considered outside the context of the relations of production, just as content cannot be considered without form, or form without content.

Let us also take into account that it is wrong to consider facts in a static condition. One has to look at the dynamics of their development. For the time being, socialist productive forces fall short of the productive forces of the most developed capitalist country. But what does that show? It shows that socialism is only the first phase of the communist formation. No new socio-economic formation is capable all at once of revealing all its potentialities and advantages as compared with the old system. It takes the new social system time to realise all its potentialities.

The first phase of the communist society---socialism--- has a type of relations of production which ensures stable and rapid upward development of the productive forces. The nature of the socialist relations of production---- relations of co-operation and mutual assistance among men, relations based on social property, on equal status in face of it---create all the conditions for ensuring the superiority of the socialist productive forces over those of any capitalist country.

Some say that the Marxist criterion of historical progress

is purely economic and is out of touch with man and things human. Accordingly, various values borrowed from abstract, nominal humanism are proclaimed to be the criterion of progress.

There is no ground for the deeply hypocritical assertion that the Marxist criterion is irrelevant to man's status in society. Is it right to forget that man, his present and future, his well-being and freedom, are central to Marxism and the Marxist philosophy? While emphasising the role and importance of the productive forces and the need for their rapid and all-round development, Marxism concentrates on the crucial conditions for man's well-being and genuine happiness. How can there be any genuine humanism in bourgeois society, where men and women are deprived of the basic rights---the rights to work, to housing, to rest and recreation, to education, and to many other things--- without which all of these loudly advertised and sentimental homilies on man and his free development are an affront to those who seek work, housing and food?

When Marxism looks to the productive forces and to the character, conditions and social consequences of their development, it reveals the in-depth foundations of human existence, for that is where the forces will be found which ultimately determine the actual condition of men, their living standards, culture, freedom and potentialities for intellectual and moral development and perfection.

3.

When emphasising the upward development of socio-- economic formations, which can be determined and measured by precise objective criteria, one must specifically stress the peculiarities of historical progress in the pre-socialist class societies.

Their development was profoundly contradictory. There could never have been any accord between the growing economic strength of these societies and the condition of the bulk of the people, the men and women who created all the goods of life. Although, on the whole, the transition from one class formation to another tended to ease some forms of man's enslavement of man, as the masses were released from personal dependence and juridical enslavement, they remained on the whole economically, po-

6-0642

litically and spiritually oppressed. Historical progress was effected at the price of the suppression and limitation of men's endowments and capabilities.

The enslavement of vast masses of slaves was the basis and a historically inevitable condition for the existence of slave-holding civilisation, and the actual foundation on which the economic and political strength of Ancient Greece and Rome, and their spiritual culture developed.

The indissoluble contradiction between historical progress and the hard conditions of the toiling classes' life continued to exist both under feudalism and under capitalism. Marx said with respect to capitalist society: "At the same pace that mankind masters nature, man seems to become enslaved to other men or to his own infamy. Even the pure light of science seems unable to shine but on the dark background of ignorance. All our invention and progress seem to result in endowing material forces with intellectual life, and in stultifying human life into a material force." ⁱ

Since Marx's lifetime, considerable changes have, of course, taken place in the capitalist world. Thus, the trend towards an absolute impoverishment of the working class in some highly developed capitalist countries has been retarded by the growing organisation and resistance of the oppressed masses. Under the pressure of the organised struggle of the working class, and in the presence of the world socialist system, the monopolies are forced to make partial concessions in order to defend their vital interests and class privileges. Let us also note that modern technology requires a definite standard of education for the workers. But these and certain other changes do not go to the root of capitalism, arid consequently do not eliminate the contradictory nature of progress in the capitalist society. No one will deny that millions of men and women in the industrial capitalist countries are barred from the highest achievements of human culture in the present epoch. The bourgeois press in the United States, for instance, has admitted that a sizable section of the young people in the country never read any serious books and are content with ``cultural'' digests. Flow-line production under capitalism

^^1^^ Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Selected Works in three volumes, Vol. 1, p. 500.

devastates the human soul, while the monotony of labour operations stultifies men. It could be that with that kind of worker in capitalist production, Henry Ford felt free to make his brulal and blasphemous statement that a trained monkey could be the ideal worker.

In the industrialised capitalist countries, suicide has become massive and commonplace. Among the suicides are a large number of those who have been disheartened by the hard living conditions, unemployment, poverty, lack of rights, and social, national and racial discrimination. Suicide is a peculiar passive protest against a society that has departed from progress, a society without a future, a society which neglects the ordinary man, his needs, aspirations and expectations.

Among the suicides are thousands upon thousands of young men and women who have hardly started out in life but who hasten to leave this brutal ugly existence, having failed to find the necessary courage to join in the fight for a better life on the principles of active humanism.

According to the West German Der Stern, in nearly all the industrialised capitalist countries there is a disastrous growth in the number of suicides among young people between the ages of 15 and 24 years. In the FRG, the number of suicides among young people under 25 has been growing more than three times faster than the national average. Today, more than 15 out of every 100,000 young Germans commit suicide.

Instead of bringing well-being to men and women, the great achievements of the STR in our day in societies ruled by money have become a source of mortal danger to mankind. In the drive for profits, a handful of greedy billionaires and their servants have been stepping up the manufacture of the means of mass destruction, seeking to frustrate the detente and return the world to the cold war period in an effort to keep it under the threat of a "hot war''.

In the drive for superprofits, businessmen have often contaminated bodies of water, the air and the whole of man's vital environment. In the twilight of bourgeois civilisation, man, at odds with the world, alone, discarded and attacked by all the dark forces of the world, seeks for spiritual and material opiates. The United States, which regards itself as the summit of historical progress, has sur-

«*

83

passed all the other capitalist countries in drug addicts per head of population: drugs worth over $3 billion are sold in the country every year.

In the State of New York alone there are more than 300,000 schoolchildren who regularly use drugs, and 80 per cent of college students are drug addicts.

The situation is no better in Britain, where every other inhabitant of London's central area under the age of 30 years regularly uses drugs. In the FRG, nearly 3.5 million juveniles and young people between the ages of 13 and 23 years are drug addicts. In Italy, the figure is over 600,000, with 20 per cent of them schoolchildren aged from 12 to 16. The reason for the use of drugs are the same: poverty, broken families, solitude, and disillusionment with life.

The Western press is forced to report the growing resort to violence, the urge to use physical force against others, and to put a low price on human health and life. There is no law banning the manufacture and sale of toys which cripple young minds and souls, foster sadism and an inclination to derive satisfaction from the suffering and death of others. A statement issued by the West German Peace Society on the manufacture of barbarous toys said that the urge to infect young souls with striving for murder and destruction was a real schizophrenic disorder.

The free sale of firearms in the United States, which is a source of tremendous profits for the gun-makers, not only makes things easy for criminals but also provides similar opportunities for children and young people whom the cinema, literature and the cruelties of everyday life itself teach to take pleasure in the suffering and death of other people.

In San Diego (California), 16-year-old Brenda Spencer sprayed her school with rifle fire from a window of her home. She fired 40 rounds, killed the schoolmaster and the janitor of the school, and wounded a policeman and nine schoolchildren. She had decided to "try out" her new gun, which she was given as a Christmas present, and it took the police three and a half hours to stop her.^J A Chicago teacher says that the main concern now is not instruction

but self-defence, because many children come to class carrying pistols or knives. '

The San Diego case was, of course, an extraordinary one, but the fact is that the bourgeois society has indeed become a society of violence. This is most evident from the growth of violence among young people. According to the National Teachers' Institute of the United States, in 1977 US schoolchildren committed 100 murders, 12,000 armed robberies, 9,000 rapes, 204,000 assaults on teachers, 200,000 muggings, and 207,000 pilferings. That same year, schoolchildren wrecked $600 million worth of school property.

Capitalism has long since reached a state of development when scientific and technical progress results in growing poverty and suffering for great numbers of people.

In this age of rapid scientific development, the United States has 23 million illiterates, 5 million children nol attending school, and 3 million who have gone to school for less than 5 years.

Marx wrote that the bourgeoisie achieved progress by making individuals and whole nations tread the way of blood and dirt, poverty and humiliation. This has been fully borne out in the epoch of imperialism. In the 400-odd years that capitalism has been on the scene, it has created a gulf between the economic, political and cultural development of the nations. Colonialism has led to the stagnation of whole continents, and has inflicted horrible poverty on the enslaved peoples, leading to the complete extinction of some of them. In 1955, 78 per cent of the population in the underdeveloped countries was illiterate. Their living standards came to 10 per cent and even less of those of the developed capitalist countries, and the average life expectancy, to less than 30 years.

Since the collapse of capitalism's colonial system, the imperialist circles have been seeking ways of plundering the lagging countries, meddling in their domestic affairs, trying to disrupt their solidarity, to pit them against each other, and to maintain the most reactionary, pro-- imperialist regimes. Either directly or through its henchmen, imperialism seeks to put down the countries which have taken the socialist road or which have opled for a socialist

Quoted in: Znamya yunosti (Moscow), February 1, 1979.

Ibid,

orientation. Cuba, Vietnam, Angola, Ethiopia and other nations have had to face the bankrupt colonialists' intense and virulent hatred.

The imperialist circles, which for a long time high-- handedly plundered the colonial peoples, quite naturally refuse to do anything to save the hundreds of men and women dying from hunger and disease.

Such is the social outcome of capitalism and capitalist progress.

No honest and thinking person can doubt that capitalism has performed its historically progressive role and has now become a reactionary force. It prevents the use of mighty energy resources, outer space and the whole STR complex for the benefit of all the nations and of mankind as a whole. Capitalism makes the world annually spend billions of dollars on weapons, billions which could b'e used for peaceful purposes and for raising the people's living standards.

In the presence of capitalism, a devastating thermonuclear war is a real and terrible danger. In the presence of capitalism the contamination of the biosphere, the growing redundant population, death from starvation for vast masses of people, and physical and mental exhaustion of working people under the excessive intensification of labour continue to be present and growing disasters. These can be overcome for good only with the disappearance of the capitalist society.

There is no ground at all, as we shall see later, for the claims by bourgeois, reformist and revisionist theorists that capitalism has been changing its spots, that it is being automatically transformed into some kind of more " rational and just" private-property society. Neither the slaveholding, nor feudal society became everlasting by `` ascending'' to a new type of slavery or feudalism. Once their vital forces had been worked out, they were forced to give way to a fundamentally new system capable of carrying on historical progress. The same destiny is in store for the capitalist formation. A society which has become a drag on historical progress cannot be saved by any amount of makeup, plastic operations, inventions about new and `` progressive'' versions of capitalism, or social myths.

The CPSU Programme contains a scientific summing-up of the course and outcome of the oppressed masses' strug-

gle against contradiction-torn capitalism. It says: "Mankind has learned the true face of capitalism. Hundreds of millions of people see that capitalism is a system of economic anarchy and periodical crises, chronic unemployment, poverty of the masses, and indiscriminate waste of productive forces, a system constantly fraught with the danger of war. Mankind does not want to, and will not, tolerate the historically outdated capitalist system." ⁱ

Historical progress inevitably makes capitalism give way to socialism, under which it will acquire qualitatively new features. Here are the most important of them.

4.

With the transition to socialism all the achievements of progress belong to the people as a whole. This key factor has necessarily had an impact on the tremendous acceleration of the pace of historical development in the socialist world. Let us recall, by way of comparison, that while it took mature feudalism nearly 10-12 centuries to take shape in the West, and capitalism several centuries to reach its highest stage of development in most countries, developed socialism has been built in the USSR and is being built in other countries in a matter of decades.

Many politicians and theorists hostile to socialism have to ponder this fact. They have produced diverse explanations, including absurd and provocative assertions about "forced labour" and so on, under socialism. The truth is that the people themselves have a vital stake in this progress, and they have been given an opportunity for the first time in the history of mankind to act as a full-fledged and responsible subject of history aware of its role. This was most clearly stated by Lenin at the initial stage in the building of socialism: "Only socialism will be the beginning of a rapid, genuine, truly mass forward movement, embracing first the majority and then the whole of the population, in all spheres of public and private life.''~^^2^^

The fact that under socialism progress is effected by the people themselves, for their own interests, not only helps

1 The, Road to Communism, Moscow, 1902 p 480.

2 V I. Lenin, "The State and Revolution , Collected Vol. 25, p. 477.

to accelerate it, but also makes it stable and irreversible. • Whereas all the earlier formations had phases of ascent and descent, progress under communism runs from its lower phase to its higher phase, is not burdened with the possibility of economic crises, or with contradictions that could make it stagnate or cause any protracted stagnation phenomena or retrograde movements.

None of this suggests that socialist progress does not contain any internal contradictions. The unity and struggle of opposites provides the internal source of development and the mainspring of social progress even under socialism, but, as we have seen, these contradictions are not and cannot be antagonistic-class contradictions for the simple reason that socialism has no antagonistic, hostile classes. The contradiction between the productive forces and the relations of production is resolved in due time by bringing the relations of production into accord with the new level in the development of the productive forces. For their part, the improved relations of production give greater scope for the further upward development of the productive forces. The pace of progress in the socialist society is stable and accelerated also because for the first time in history it does not run spontaneously, but is effected consciously, with scientific knowledge of the objective upward development of the new socio-economic formation.

The socialisation of the basic means of production has made it possible to develop every sphere of social life according to plan. For the first time in mankind's history, progress has become a process which is directed and controlled in a planned manner, with all the advantages that this brings.

Many Western theorists are aghast at the social consequences of the STR in the capitalist society, but will not or cannot see that it is not technology itself but the moribund and irrational capitalist system that is now the source of all the terrible consequences of such progress.

The advantages of the socialist society help not only to accelerate the STR to the utmost, but also to put its achievements at the service of the whole people and turn it into a source of growing prosperity and spiritual efflorescence.

The conscious and planned nature of historical progress under socialism poses the very important problem of gain-

ing an in-depth knowledge of the objective laws and conditions of such progress, correct planning and precise quantitative and qualitative fulfilment of plan assignments. Whereas anarchy in production is an inalienable feature of capitalist progress, which by its very nature cannot be realised in any other way, any breach of the planning principle has a grave effect on socialist progress and turns against its very substance.

Let us note that while possible departures from the norms and principles of the socialist society are not inherent in its substance, they can and frequently do occur, and may have a very negative effect on the potentialities of the new social system. I mean the wars imposed by the imperialist forces on socialist countries and the arms race which makes them spend vast amounts of money for other than productive purposes. At the same time, failure to fulfil plans, irresponsible attitudes to one's duties, stealing of social property, obtaining of unearned income, breaches of labour discipline and similar things can have a highly negative effect on the development of socialism. One could well ask where the source lies of all these negative effects and attitudes, considering the fundamental merits of the socialist system. The whole point is that it is easier lo restructure social relations than the mentality and morality of men. It takes more than a few decades to do this, for there is a need to educate not just a majority of the population in the socialist society, but the whole of it in a spirit of socialist consciousness.

Painstaking educational work and. wherever necessary, relentless and systematic drives against every breach of legal and moral norms in the socialist society are the key condition for its upward development.

The Communist Party guides the creative endeavour of the masses, avoids all laissez faire and drift, and always takes care not to ignore the objective uniformities of socialist progress.

If a simile were required for the advance to communism, it would be an ascent to a new summit of human civilisation prepared by the whole of history's preceding objective development, instead of Mr. Folk's suggestion of a ``boulder'' rolling down towards it. And any ascent requires a mustering of forces, self-discipline, courage and a clearly mapped out route.

Let us note that the planned and proportional nature of socialist progress is historically rooted. At the earliest stages in the formation of socialism in the USSR and some of the other countries, the planning principle had to exist for some time alongside ungoverned processes in economic life. Even under mature socialism, elements of ungoverned development remain. Let us also recall that in the past the production of the means of production in the USSR developed for several decades very much faster than the light industry. For a certain period, the existing situation and the limited resources did not allow the country to increase capital investments in agriculture, and so on.

The establishment of developed socialism in the USSR, which rests on its own scientific and technical basis and has powerful productive forces, has opened up fresh potentialities for faster and more harmonious development of all the sectors of production, and faster growth of the people's material and cultural standards. The high level of education, the all-round development of the individual, and the steady extension of the horizon of the individual's freedom and self-assertion constitute an organic part of socialist progress, of the progress of humanity.

The new Constitution of the USSR, adopted in 1977, is a constitution of developed socialism, marking a most important milestone in the development of the communist society.

The improvement of the socialist mode of production helps to consolidate the socialist society, to obliterate the boundaries between friendly classes, and gradually to overcome the essential distinctions between manual and mental labour, and between town and country. Developed socialism is a new stage in the advance and drawing closer together of the socialist nations, in their fraternal unity. A new historical entity---the Soviet people---has taken shape in the Soviet Union. The critizens of the USSR belong to various nations, big and small, but all take great pride in simultaneously being members of the one Soviet people.

The socialist society's appropriations to increase the working people's real wages and further improve their working and living conditions have been growing from year to year. The socialist state annually spends vast

amounts of money to improve the facilities for the working people's rest, leisure and medical treatment, and to make the whole people go in for physical culture and sports. The growing life expectancy, the elimination of many dangerous diseases, the slowdown in premature ageing and so on, all of these are evidence of the socialist society's genuine humanism and growing concern for man and his health.

More and more working people in the socialist countries are involved in science and culture. These countries have total literacy. With every passing decade, more and more men and women have a complete secondary and higher education. Socialism rejects the ideal of some mass ersatz culture, for it gives the peoples access to genuine culture that ennobles them, makes them strong of spirit, creative and actively humanistic.

In his report to the 25th Congress of the CPSU, L. I. Brezhnev noted the upward development of the Soviet socialist society along every line. He said: "We have created a new society, a society the like of which mankind has never known before. It is a society with a crisis-free, steadily growing economy, mature socialist relations and genuine freedom. It is a society governed by the scientific materialist world outlook. It is a society of firm confidence in the future, of radiant communist prospects. Hefore it lie boundless horizons of further all-round progress." '

The advantages of developed socialism make it possible to accelerate the STR. Conversely, the great achievements of science and technology pave the way for a gradual growth of developed socialism into the highest phase of communism. By building up new production capacities and boosting labour productivity, the USSR and other socialist countries create the prerequisites for the abundance of goods and services which will gradually make it possible to go on from the socialist principle of distribution among men of the values they have created---in accordance with the quantity and quality of their work---to the communist distribution according to requirements. This will be the greatest phase of historical progress and the establishment of man's fullest material and spiritual well-being, the most

~^^1^^ Documents and Resolutions. XXVth Congress of the CPSU, Moscow, 1976, p. 105,

consummate system of social equality with all the necessary conditions for the individual's all-round development.

A new type of historical progress free from the struggle between classes and nations, free from all social cataclysms, political revolutions and wars, will be inaugurated with the triumph of communism throughout the world. This progress will not result in a replacement of communism by some other, newer socio-economic formation, because the triumph of communism will mark the completion of the formation type of social development. The point is that if a new socio-economic formation is to emerge there is a need for the emergence of new relations of production, and a new type of property in the means of production surpassing communist social property. But it is impossible to conceive of a higher type of social property that could replace communist social property.

It would be very wrong to assume that the triumph of communism will mark the end of historical progress, leaving mankind on a treadmill. On the contrary, mankind's true history will start with communism, as it rapidly moves upward in an evolutionary and revolutionary ascent to new summits of the space age.

It would be Utopian and fictional to try to imagine the content and phases of progress in the communist society in any concrete terms. But one thing is sure: mankind will not cease its multifaceted development, and will not abandon the road of ascent and improvement.

But in spite of all this---rather, because of the circumstances mentioned above---the advocates of the old, capital ist formation are very unwilling even to use the term ``progress'', preferring the vaguer terms of growth and change. One of them says, for instance, that "no laws of social development, and consequently of progress, have as yet been discovered".ⁱ

Bourgeois sociologists have been casting around for fresli arguments against the concept of progress. One of them wrote: "There is no law of history that guarantees progress, or guarantees it in a linear or any other regular sequence. Whatever we believe to constitute progress, we can see decline as well as growth, retrogression as well as progress in history.''~^^2^^

I have already said that historical development is not free of zigzags or retreats. There have been many cases in history when tribes at a relatively lower level of social development destroyed historically more developed social organisms. In living memory, the fascists carried out their invasion in an effort to hurl mankind back centuries into the past. There are forces in the modern world which not only seek to destroy everything that is new and progressive, but now and again manage to achieve their aims in some sectors, substituting neocolonialism for colonialism, and imposing reactionary regimes on some nations. But are these acts capable of stemming the growing struggle against imperialism, militarism, and against the forces which want to prevent mankind from rising to a new stage of historical development?

The zigzags and retreats in historical development cannot invalidate progress as the general trend in history.

The denial of historical progress entails the equally wrong denial of the law-governed nature of historical development. If there are no objective laws in history, as many Western sociologists claim, it is also meaningless to speak of the law-governed nature of historical progress. So we find Georg G. Iggers, a US historian, declaring: "We can accept the idea of progress today only with serious qualifications. Progress as yet is only a hypothesis

~^^1^^ M. Ginsburg, The Idea of Progress, Greenwood Press, London, 1953 p. 48.

~^^2^^ H. B. Mayo, Democracy and Marxism, Oxford University Press, New York, 1955, p. 166.

5.

In conclusion of this section on historical progress, we must take a short look at the conceptions which distort the problem of mankind's upward development.

Ours is an age of great social progress and transition to a new socio-economic formation and new and more efficient economic and socio-political relations. It opens up real prospects for the establishment everywhere of a fair distribution of goods and services, for social equality and a new and genuine democracy. The triumph of the new social formation lays a sound basis for the establishment of the individual's freedom and all-round development and of the highest humanistic and moral consciousness,

and a very questionable one." ' It remains for us therefore, merely to believe in the possibility of improving human life.

Anti-Marxist philosophers argue that progress is not a scientific concept but only a value judgement, with the subjectivism and ambiguity which is allegedly inherent in all value judgements.

Among the many idealist philosophers coming out against scientifically viewed progress is the well-known sociologist Raymond Aron, one of whose books is entitled The Disillusions of Progress.^z His only exception is science and technology, whose achievements can be quantified. While not denying that economic development means an increase in the quantity of material goods created, he denies progress in the economic sphere on the plea that the more developed economy is not necessarily a more fairly organised economy. He writes: "It has not been demonstrated that man's condition in labour improves with the growth of production per head of population. Nor has it been proved that the distribution of the available goods between individuals has necessarily become more equitable with the development of the collective wealth.''~^^3^^

Aron will hardly suspect us of sympathising with feudalism and capitalism if we assert, in accordance with the historical facts, that the working conditions of the serfs were relatively better than those of the Roman slave. Similarly, while in no way idealising bourgeois progress we must state that a wage worker is relatively better off than the serf.

Expressing his idea in concrete terms, one could agree that the growth of social wealth under present-day capitalism has not led to a fairer distribution of the created values. On the contrary, the rich have become much richer than the workers. But mankind's history does not end with capitalism, which has to give way to another form of human community that not only increases the social wealth to a much greater extent, but also distributes it truly equitably: first, in accordance with the quantity and qual-

ity of the worker's labour, and then in accordance with the requirements of every individual without exception.

Aron's idea about the absence of progress in the sphere of justice is not a new one. Let us recall what Karl Jaspers said about technical progress, a sphere in which history can be regarded as an ascent. But he hastened to add: ''Mankind itself, man's ethos, his goodness and wisdom do not progress. Art and poetry are understandable to everyone, but not everyone is capable of being involved in them, because they belong to the people and the epoch that has produced them and enabled them to reach a unique level of development. Consequently, there is scientific, technical progress, which steadily extends our potentialities, but there is no progress in the human substance." '

If the philosophy of history upheld by Jaspers and his followers were true, mankind would have still been content with the cave drawings of the paleolithic era and the ethical standards of cannibalism.

Many other Western philosophers, historians, sociologists and politologists try to distort the idea of progress, because they have realised that it is futile to deny it. The main purpose of present-day anti-Marxist sociology is to prove that the transition from capitalism to socialism and communism is not historically inevitable.

Over the past several decades, diverse concepts have been spun out to deny actual historical progress in our epoch and to rule out the historical necessity for the transition to communism. Let us recall the once fashionable theory of convergence, which held that the two types of "industrial society"---capitalist and socialism---were bound to converge and merge with each other. This easily eliminated the need for any transition from capitalism to socialism. Actually, the theory of convergence was a badly camouflaged theory of the absorption of socialism by capitalism.

For the same purpose of perpetuating capitalism some theorists sought to prove that capitalism has long since been a thing of the past, because the development of technology and the very logic of industrialism has led to an automatic disappearance of private property. This idea is best illustrated by one version of the technocratic conception

~^^1^^ The American Historical Review, No. 1, October, 1965, p. 16.

~^^2^^ R. Aron, Les desillusions de progres. Essai sur la dialectique de la modernile, Paris, 1969.

~^^3^^ Raymond Aron, Dix-hu.it lemons sur la societe industrielle, Paris, 1962, p. 83.

~^^1^^ Karl Jaspers, Vom Ursprung und Ziel der Geschichte, ArtemisVerlag, Zurich, 1949, p. 317.

mainly propounded by Thorstein Veblen, the author of the books Engineers and System and Absentee Ownership and Business Enterprise in Recent Times, and James Burnham, the author of The Managerial Revolution. They and others claimed that the United States had already gone through a "peaceful revolution" in which the owners of capital ceased to control their capital and gave way to managers (executives). If this is so, it only shows the parasitic nature of the ruling class in contemporary capitalist society, for most tycoons no longer have any socially necessary function to perform in the process of production and exchange. The fact that there has been some separation between the function of capital ownership and the function of capital management does not in any important way change the nature of capitalism. The fact that managers now run production does not at all imply a disappearance of capitalist property, the power of the capitalists and their corporations, or the power of a collective capitalist like the present-day bourgeois state.

I shall return to a critical analysis of the concepts being put forward as an alternative to the Marxist doctrine of the socio-economic formation. At this point, let us note the overriding urge in anti-Marxist doctrines to substitute the idea of the capitalist society's gradual improvement, never going beyond its limits, for the idea of genuine progress and upward development. While the social pessimists blame all the ills and social nightmares on scientific and technical progress, many quasi-optimists assure us that such progress is the cure-all for the ills of capitalism, that it will enable capitalism to get its second wind, and produce a horn of plenty to clothe and feed one and all. This is being said at a time when the old contradictions of capitalisjn have been gaining in depth and new ones sDeadily growing, and when the social consequences of the STR in the private-property society terrify every honest and knowledgeable person. Those who have undertaken the hard work of proving the possibility of the capitalist society's unlimited improvement have to conceal what cannot be concealed: the chronic crisis phenomena, the inflation, the unemployment, the diverse forms in which the individual's rights are infringed, the growing social inequality, the growing danger of war, which, is stoked up by the imperialists.

The deep crisis which has hit the bourgeois society has

forced its theorists to seek various ways of progress in order to rule out the socialist alternative. I have mentioned those who believe that the bourgeois society can be improved by the boundless potentialities of science and technology. Among them are ideologists who make up a school of "social criticism", and who say that mankind's salvation depends on its psychological and moral improvement. This is not a new discovery at all, and is a fairly primitive version of historical idealism.

``In contrast to the technocratic Utopias of progress", Academician Pyotr Fedoseyev writes, "the 'social critics', making up a trend in the approach to historical progress which is highly heterogeneous and inwardly contradictory, are convinced that progress is possible only by humanising the social system, reorganising society on the principles of new 'psychological orientations and attachments', a new consciousness awakened through the individual's self-- consciousness, an improvement of man's inner world, and his intellectual and sexual emancipation." '

The "social critics" assume that to escape from the state of crisis there is a need for the attitude to nature always to be filled with a poetic sense (Jean-Marie Domenach), they urge the establishment of a "moral economic system on a world scale" (James P. Grant), the elaboration of a universal human morality as a synthesis of the most positive elements of earlier cultures (Helio Jaguaribe), etc.^^2^^ It will be easy to see that these pious hopes do not go beyond the framework of sentimental dreams that are supposed to have a universal human appeal. The "social critics" are more specific when it comes to socialism and the MarxistLeninist conception of historical progress. Edgar Morin, Cornelius Castoriadis and others have tried very hard to distort the substance of existing socialism and the "socialist model" of development. Whereas Morin generously, but with many reservations, admits that socialism has some application for the economically underdeveloped countries, Castoriadis will not even hear of socialism and denies the very possibility of a socialist type of development. He flatly declares that there is only one type of development, namely,

~^^1^^ P. N. Fedoseyev, Dialectics of Our Epoch, Moscow, 1978, pp. 148-49 (in Russian).

~^^2^^ See: C. Castoriadis, J.-M. Domenach, J.P. Grant ot al, Le Mythe da diveloppement, Editions du Seuil, Paris, 1977.

7-0642

the capitalist type. ' In a generous mood he is willing to allow that the former is a modification of the latter.^^2^^

Such is the theoretical level of the assessments and conclusions drawn by the "social critics". Their psychologised and ethicised views of development and progress have nothing in common with reality and actual progress. The whole of this ``socio-critical'' scholasticism is directed against mankind's ascent to socialism, in an effort to create the illusion that capitalism, for all its shortcomings, continues to be the only real basis for social progress.

In order to establish the idea of a flourishing and insuperable capitalist society, there is a need to blacken the system which is coming to replace capitalism with historical inevitability. The quasi-optimists say that socialism is an aberration in the normal course of history, a "social anomaly" which, like any other anomaly, cannot be viable. Right after the October Socialist Revolution, its enemies kept voicing the hope for Russia's early return to the path of "normal development". When the attempts to effect such a ``return'' by means of arms failed, the enemies of socialism began to spin out their ideological subversion, suggesting that socialism was bound to degenerate, that the revo- f lutionary spirit would surely wane. Against the background of this endless talk about the degeneration and decline of socialism in the USSR, many countries in the world have gone on to socialism, and the world socialist system has > emerged with its irresistible influence on the course of con- ° temporary history.

^

But perhaps the most amusing element of this idea that [ communism is bound to "work itself out" is that this will ^; result from the success of socialist construction, a radical ^! improvement in the people's material conditions, and the rise of their cultural and moral standards. This is surely a most extravagant idea: as the new social system comes to reveal most fully its inexhaustible potentialities for the people's benefit, they will begin to regard themselves as individuals, with a heightened sense of individuality that will make them shun ``egalitarian'' communism.

History shows that all the descending and doomed social classes have used force and falsehood in an effort to continue their existence. They used every foul means to put

down the heralds of the new, more progressive social order, and tried to present it as meaningless and Utopian.

But history also shows thai no moribund order lias succeeded in sidestepping the laws of history, or stopping the march of time and mankind's upward development.

Having played its once progressive role, the capitalist society necessarily prepared in the course of its development objective prerequisites for its inevitable decline.

No force on earth can stem historical progress, the ascent to the new formation, to a more rational and more justly organised social system, communism.

In the light of actual history, we have every reason to assert that it is subordinate to the law of progress, to the law of upward development. This itself is a revolutionary transition in the form of leaps from one socio-economic formation to another, more developed and promising, and capable of creating mightier productive forces, a better system of relations of production, a higher culture and loftier moral consciousness.

Attempts have been made to deny this idea of mankind's upward development by means of extravagant conceptions, including the theory of the historical cycle.

The idea that mankind, having gone through a definite set of stages, returns to its starting point in order to go over the same ground once again, sprang from the immaturity of sociological thought still fettered by mythological superstitions. Let us add, however, that at one time this idea of the historical cycle contained some rational guesses. Thus, Vico's unscientific idea of the social cycle included the suggestion that the laws governing history were objective. There is no doubt that his anticipation of a coming phase in social development, which he called the ^uage of men", expressed the hope for a system free from class privileges and inequality among the estates. That was, in effect, the idea of establishing the then, progressive bourgeois order. The presence of such ideas and urges in Vico's historical conception needs to be noted and duly appreciated.

It is quite another matter to insist on the historical cycle in our day, when science and historical experience have refuted the idea of social development as a cycle, with an everlasting repetition of past historical phases. Of course, one could, with an arbitrary interpretation of the facts, identify the primitive communal system with the future

~^^1^^ Ibid, p. 119.

~^^2^^ Ibid.

7*

communist society and present socialist equality as a reIm'n to the ``equality'' of the early Christian communities, or to discover capitalism in the ancient world and then declare that everything is repeated and tends to return to the starting point, so that there is nothing new in this world.

Such assertions by present-day advocates of the social cycle are based on superficial and formal analogies, and are stamped with subjectivism. These analogies are most frequently dictated by reactionary political purposes, on the one hand, and the unwillingness and often inability to understand that history is not just a constant succession of its basic phases, but one that leads to a fundamental qualitative improvement of every aspect of social life.

If one has to designate the movement of history by means of a geometric line, it is better to adopt the spiral that keeps advancing with a mere semblance of returning to the starting point. Every new historical stage, denying everything that is moribund and reactionary, simultaneously preserves and develops the achievements of the earlier generations in the sphere of production, social organisation of technology, culture and moral values. This rules out any return to past phases, or any kind of treadmill.

Another theory aimed against historical progress is that of closed and isolated civilisations which allegedly arise, develop and die, leaving nothing or almost nothing for subsequent generations. This is an idea most actively propounded by Oswald Spengler and Arnold Toynbee. Despite some essential differences in the interpretation of many sociopolitical and sociological problems, they are at one in holding that different human civilisations have very little in common with each other and develop independently from each other, without interbreeding or enriching each other. None of them is a historical prerequisite for some other and there are no genetic ties between them.

The conception of isolated and closed civilisations produces a false picture of mankind's history and dismembers the coherent historical process, setting each constituent element against all the others. This conception rules out any possibility of universal historical laws and denies mankind's forward development. But if each civilisation is regarded as being unique and isolated from all the other civilisations, the problem of historical progress as the general line of human history is no longer relevant. Each civil-

isation, having reached its peak, goes down to decline, leaving no legacy that could be further developed.

``Instead of a monotonous picture of a linear world history," Spengler wrote, "... I see the phenomenon of a multiplicity of powerful cultures .... Each has its own idea and its own passions .... Each culture has its own potentialities for expression, which arise, mature and wane, and which are never repeated again .... In the whole of world history, I see a picture of everlasting formation and change, a miraculous shaping and withering away of organic forms, while the official historian regards it as a kind of tapeworm, tirelessly building up one epoch after another." '

Those who issue such diatribes against the unity of the historical process and social progress tend to absolutise the qualitative features of different civilisations and grossly to ignore that which is common to them all. The interconnection and mutual enrichment of cultures and civilisations can be denied only by ignoring actual history. Did not ancient Chinese and Indian philosophy, art and religion provide one of the ideological sources for the culture of ancient Greece? Did not Roman culture, for all its specifics, inherit many of the values created by the Greeks? Consider the syncretic nature of the Christian religion and its genetic ties with the Greco-Roman world and with the messianic ideas and mythology of Judea, Persia, Egypt and Phoenicia. These facts show that the closed-civilisations theory is not true.

Wherever peoples belonging to different races established contacts with each other they exchanged not only goods but also production habits and ideas. Given the right conditions, the more advanced of these were adopted by other peoples. This applies, above all, to scientific ideas, a fact borne out by the history of Marxism, by its origination and development. It emerged in Western Europe, specifically in Germany, and spread to all the other countries and continents, providing peoples belonging to different civilisations with spiritual weapons in their struggle.

History shows beyond any doubt that the establishment of one and the same mode of production in various countries of Europe, America, Asia, Africa or Australia inevitably engenders similar politico-juridical ideas and institutions,

' Oswald Spongier, Der Untcrgang des Abendlandes. Umris.ti' einer Morphologie der Weltgeschichte, Erster Band, Oskar Beck, Munchcn, 1921, p. 29.

similar phenomena in the sphere of moral consciousness, in literature and the arts, and in the whole structure of economic, social and cultural life.

It is not a movement in some fantastic or irrational cycle but the origination of similar-type socio-economic formations that causes the repetition of historical phenomena. Thus, the triumph of capitalist relations in Japan produced material and spiritual phenomena similar to those which had earlier taken shape in Europe. Let me emphasise once again that the essential features of capitalism, of capitalist culture naturally assumed specific forms in Japan, as they did in other countries.

History is no wastrel, and nothing or virtually nothing is lost in mankind's rational experience. Achievements in any sphere of being and cognition, regardless of geographical or ethnic origin, gradually spread to all the other peoples and regions of the world.

The unceasing mutual exchange of material and spiritual values is a key condition for historical progress.

It is safe to say that neither the theory of the historical cycle, nor the idea of isolated civilisation, both of which have an edge against the doctrine of historical progress, are not scientifically based, and cannot for that reason invalidate the idea of mankind's upward development.

In the light of actual history, we have good reason to assert that it is governed by the objective law of progress, the law of upward development. This ascent itself takes shape in the form of leaps, of revolutionary transitions from one socio-economic formation to another, a more developed and promising one and capable of yielding mightier productive forces, a better system of relations of production, more developed juridical and political institutions, a higher culture and moral consciousness.

Making headway through all these difficulties and overcoming resistance from the reactionary forces, which can, up to a point, slow down the pace of history's upward development, mankind inexorably rises to new summits of perfection. There can be no return to past socio-economic formations. It is impossible to return the socialist countries to capitalism, just as it is impossible to return Britain, France, Italy and other capitalist countries to feudalism.

Historical progress, like time, is irreversible. Whatever the accidents, it has only one direction, which is forward.

Chapter Five

SOCIAL REVOLUTION: AN OBJECTIVE UNIFORMITY OF TRANSITION TO A NEW FORMATION

1.

The world historical process appears as a revolutionary replacement of old and waning formations by new, more progressive, viable and promising ones.

Social revolutions marking the establishment of new formations are just as diverse as the formations themselves. These revolutions differ radically from one another in socioeconomic and political content. They also differ in the forms in which they are realised.

When considering social revolutions in the broad sense of the word, we have in mind above all the leap-like transition from the old social order to the new. This is a breakin gradualness, a transition to a new quality, and the origination of a fundamentally new social system. The old formation, whatever its advocates say, does not run along a line of endless evolutionary development and improvement. The old formation does not evolve; it is not integrated, it does not merge or coalesce with the new progressive social system, as the advocates of the various versions of the theory of convergence assert.

At some stage of their existence, the old relations of production necessarily begin increasingly to slow down the progress of the productive forces and society's upward development in all the main parameters. In time this is determined by and coincides with the growth within the old society of economic, socio-political and ideological prerequisites for a change of the old order. Such a period in the life of the old formation is marked by a sharp aggravation of contradictions between antagonistic classes, and this culminates, at a definite stage, in the replacement of the old formation in a given country---and then in the others as well---by a new formation.

Thus, social revolution, taken in the broad context, is the triumph of a new system over the old. But let us note here that the preparation and realisation of a social revolution

can be a very protracted historical process. It is hard to say, for instance, how many ages it took for the evolutionary processes to culminate in the first social revolution: transition of the primitive communal system to the class society in many countries of the ancient world.

Social revolution is a dialectical leap which is neither sudden nor instant, but is a transition of quantitative evolutionary changes into radical, qualitative changes, and the emergence and establishment of a new formation.

Marxism prefers to speak of epochs of social revolution, by which it means periods of historical development in the course of which the new formation becomes the dominant form of human community living first in one or several countries and then in most of the others as well.

Social and political revolutions are organically connected with each other. In one way or another, every social revolution is connected with a set of political revolutions aimed against the reactionary social order. It is also true that no political revolution can be separated from social revolution and the tasks it tackles.

In scientific writings one will find the concept of social revolution connected with the whole aggregation of socioeconomic, political and ideological transformations related to the elimination of the old and establishment of a new socio-economic formations as a whole. As I have said, social revolution runs through a whole historical epoch.

Political revolutions of one type or another are most frequently connected with the overthrow of the reactionary order and the establishment of a new social system in individual countries.

While social revolutions run over great historical periods, political revolutions, even a series of such revolutions aimed against the defenders of the old social order, take much shorter historical periods. Thus, the political revolutions in the 17th century which established the capitalist order in Britain took just over two decades. In France, it took even less time to eliminate feudalism. It is true that temporarily the reactionary forces managed to restore the old relations and institutions, but in its advance the new social system made any return to the feudal system and the monarchy a hopeless undertaking.

Marxism draws a distinction between revolutions which involve the use of force in the takeover of power and civil

wars, and relatively peaceful revolutions, which are, of course, not quite free from some form of coercion, but this does not assume the form of armed struggle.

This distinction between revolutions is dictated by history itself. It shows that when the old social order has been overthrown in a number of important states in this or that region, the ruling classes of other states belonging to the doomed formation do not risk resorting to the use of armed force because they realise that their situation is hopeless. In Sweden, Norway and other European countries, the establishment of capitalist relations in the 18th and 19th centuries took place in relatively peaceful conditions.

The struggle of classes with diametrically opposite and irreconcilable interests is the motive force of social revolution in antagonistic-class societies. Sooner or later, this struggle ends with the victory of the class which carries with itself a new mode of production and a new type of property, and which opens up prospects for much faster development of the productive forces. This historically progressive class creates better politico-juridical relations and a more developed and humane culture and morality.

One should note, however, that the struggle of the main antagonistic classes does not always end with the victory of the oppressed class. Thus, the class of slaves did not and could not become the leader of a new social revolution, ushering in an advanced mode of production and establishing a new socio-economic formation. As a result, both slaves and slave-owners disappeared from the arena of history, while the class of feudals took over the baton of social progress.

A similar situation also arose in the feudal society, where peasants and feudal lords were the chief contending classes. There is no doubt at all that the intense and sharp struggle carried on by the peasantry for centuries against the foundations of the feudal order helped to unhinge it. Still, it was the bourgeoisie that became the leader of the anti-feudal social revolution and ushered in the new mode of production. It led the struggle by all the oppressed people, the indentured peasantry in the first place, against feudal oppression and the absolute monarchy.

Throughout the centuries, revolutions have had an exceptionally progressive role to play in mankind s history, helping it to rid itself of everything that is stagnant, de-

crepit and reactionary, to effect great advances, and to establish a more rational and fairer order in the world.

The founders of Marxism noted that in revolutionary periods history begins to develop at a great pace. In such periods, Marx said, each day is equal to 20 years, because the contradictions which had been building up over a long period in the course of slow evolution are rapidly resolved.

Social revolutions have always been carried out by broad masses of people. Only the energy of millions has helped to overthrow the old social order, which appeared to be as solid as the Himalayas, to establish a new social order, and to defend it against persistent attempts by the overthrown classes to return the good old days and the old system.

The overthrow of the power of the reactionary class and the winning of state power for the establishment of a new social system and its defence against attacks by the counter-revolutionary forces is the key issue of any revolution.

The French Revolution of 1789-1794 showed, for instance, that its success was assured only by the heroic efforts and the courage of the popular masses, and their readiness to defend the new social system. In contrast to palace revolutions and ``revolutionary'' coups, all genuine revolutions, marking a tremendous stride forward in social development, have been carried out with the active participation of the masses.

One must add, however, that the revolutions carried out by the popular masses in the pre-socialist period of history, while lifting mankind to a higher stage, did not realise its true aspirations and hopes, did not establish the ideals for which the popular masses had gone into battle. All the main gains of such revolutions went to the class which had led the revolution. Thus, the inspiring ideals of liberty, equality and fraternity proclaimed by the French Revolution of 1789-1794 were not and could not be realised by it, because it meant a replacement of one antagonistic-class society by another, which was,, it is true, historically more progressive.

However, this cannot cast doubt on the great progressive historical role of all social revolutions, because they inevitably lead to the emergence of new phases of history, the ascent from one level of social progress to another, more important and fundamental one.

No wonder all avowed enemies of social progress, all those who have tried to perpetuate obsolete social systems have always fiercely attacked the very idea of revolution, claiming it to be an "orgy of bloodshed", a "destructive act" and a disruption of the "normal course" of things. Revolutions, objectively prepared by the whole course of history, were presented as being the handiwork of `` demagogues'', ``misfits'', ``rioters'', and so on.

Reactionary historiographers tried hard to present revolutions as resulting from accidental circumstances, from various errors made by the ruling circles of the toppled social system. Many books have been written to prove that the successes of the English revolution of 1640-1660 resulted from "bad mistakes" made by Charles I and his advisers. Even more ``accidents'' were invented to ``explain'' the reasons for the victory of the French Revolution at the end of the 18th century.

In revolutionary periods, as in the historical process in general, accidents are inevitable, but the whole point is that here, too, they arc an expression of historical necessity. Ideologists who want to discard the objective and necessary basis of revolutionary transformations try hard to conceal the historical necessity and to set up the role of accidents as an absolute in order to explain revolutionary transformations in social life by means of accidental errors, mistakes, omissions, etc.

Still unsatisfied, they sought to prove that revolutions were futile, and suggested the idea that throughout the whole of human history revolutions inevitably ended in defeat, without attaining their goals. Thus, the fall of the Jacobin dictatorship was presented as a defeat for the French bourgeois revolution of 1789-1794, although it did fulfil its historical mission, abolished feudal relations, eventually overthrew the absolute monarchy, established the then progressive capitalist system in France, and unhinged feudalism throughout the whole of Europe.

The aphorism that "the revolution devours its children"' was designed to generalise the destruction of revolutionaries and their Utopian aspirations.

The "ideologists of order" who stood up for conservative principles made short shrift of the revolution on paper and declared it to be a futile act of despair, at best urging reforms from above in contrast to social revolution. These

reforms carried out with the consent of the reactionary ruling classes, and frequently on their initiative, were rxegarded by the champions of the old order and their servirars as acts of great wisdom, and as effective ways of " improving society". The reforms carried out with the "consent of superiors" most frequently turned out to be acts of defence of the waning socio-political system and measures to prevent social revolution. This is evident from the long history of right-wing Social Democracy, whose leaders have come, ruled and gone, with capitalism remaining intact.

The authors of many works, big and small, have argued the futility of revolution and the potency of reform. Thus, Hans Wassmund, the author of a book entitled Theory oj Revolution, ignored actual history when claiming that no revolution had ever radically done away with the legal and moral pillars of society, for the old traditions had always made a comeback sometime after the revolution.^J He is aware that the modern world is in need of serious social transformations, but in the spirit of traditional reformism argues that these should be carried out "without violence or revolutionary explosions".^^2^^

There are some curious aspects to these efforts to `` exorcise'' revolutions from history. Giinther Nenning oven tries to convert Marx himself into a convinced reformist. We are told that under the influence of the defeat of the 1848 revolution and the Paris Commune of 1871, Marx decided that the idea of "bloody battles" had to be abandoned for the way of peaceful reforms.^^3^^ This is a thorough distortion of Marx's thinking. Marx had never seen social revolution as mutiny or rebellion, and condemned individual terrorism and extremist leftist methods of struggle. He had never separated reforms and revolution, but advocated reforms won by the working people in struggle against the ruling regime, i.e., reforms from below, which weakened the positions of the ruling classes. He regarded such reforms as a part of the revolutionary process in which the old social system is eliminated. He also envisaged peaceful socialist revolutions, with the emphasis on revolutions,

that is, processes doing away with the foundations of the old society and advancing towards a new formation. He remained true to these principles to his dying day. ID the last period of his life, he was as resolute as ever in rejecting ``left'' and right-wing opportunism. The claims made by Nenning and his associates ore not borne out either by any statements or practical acts on the part of Marx the revolutionary.

The idea of substituting reforms from above for revolution will be found in many other works dealing with mankind's development.

Thus, Melvin J. Lasky ' makes no secret of his bias against Utopian visions, seductive oversimplifications and revolutionary quests. He says that revolutions in mankind's history were a triumph of emotions over reason. Although he regards Utopias and revolutions as the motive force of past history, his hope is that reason will triumph over emotions and visions, with reforms taking over from revolutions for good.

Lasky is aware that contemporary Western society cannot live or develop without serious changes, but not so serious that they should jeopardise the legality of the fundamentals of the bourgeois society. He rejects any revolutionary change in the world of private property and urges its gradual improvement.

That is, once again, no now idea. The social revolutions which Lasky reduces to Utopias and explosions of emotions were, in fact, true expressions of the "reason of history", expressions of historical necessity and the crucial moans of mankind's advance towards a new and more progressive typo of social organisation.

Let us note that Lasky, liko many others before him, returns to the image of the ant-hill as a form of social organisation. His urge is to transform present-day society into a human ant-hill. But this question arises: how is the ruling class to be induced to abandon its parasitic existence, its way of life which is based on the appropriation of the product of the labour of millions upon millions of

~^^1^^ Hans Wassmund, Revolntionstheorien. Sine Einf&hrung, Verlag C. H. Beck, Miinchen, 1978, p. 63.

~^^2^^ Ibid., p. 121.

~^^2^^ Giinther Nenning, Realisten oder Verraten? Die Zukunjt der Sozialdemokratie, C. Bertelsmann Verlag, Miinchen, 1976, p. 15.

~^^1^^ Melvin J. Lasky, Utopia and Revolution. On the Origins of a Metaphor, or Some Illustration of the Problem of Political Temperament and Intellectual Climate and How Ideas, Ideals, and Ideologies Have Been Historically Related, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago and London, 1976.

working people? How are the multimillionaires and their servitors to be induced to become "industrious ants"? Lasky and his associates advocate reason but find themselves captive to age-old preconceptions.

The social revolution which puts an end to mankind's pre-history and ushers in the era of its genuine history has been subjected to the greatest falsification. This is the socialist revolution, the transition from antagonistic-class societies to the classless, communist formation. There is no doubt that this is the sharpest and most difficult transition in the whole of mankind's history. Below we shall consider some of the essential aspects of the social revolution which puts an end to every form of man's oppression by man, to every type of social inequality, to all social antagonisms, all wars, big and small, and provides men with the possibility of all-round development for the happiness and well-being of one and all.

2.

In contrast to all earlier social revolutions, the socialist revolution, whose aim is to put an end to classes and class antagonisms once and for all and to establish the communist socio-economic formation, has its own specific and unique features.

The transition from the slave-holding society to feudalism and from feudalism to the capitalist society were transitions from one type of antagonistic-class society to another. Those revolutionary transitions were complicated, and the shaping of the new socio-economic formations entailed great difficulties. All the more difficult is the transition from capitalism to communism, which is based on a total rejection of all the principles on which the antagonisticclass society is based. This is a great break with the private-property system which was dominant for centuries, a break with the mentality of class egoism, with the justification and glorification of the right of a privileged minority to rule millions upon millions of men and women.

Let us also note that the bourgeoisie is larger than all the earlier private-property classes, and is better armed to maintain its power. It can make use of the potentialities of the scientific and technological revolution and intensification of the labour of its wage workers to multiply its

profits and so bribe the upper sections of the working people and carry out some reforms. In short, it is better adapted to giving away some of its profits in order to maintain its power. Add to this the fact that no earlier ruling class had in its possession such mass media for informing, or rather for misinforming, the oppressed.

All of these and other circumstances complicate the tasks of the socialist revolution. Nor can one discount the fact that in contrast to capitalism, for instance, socialism does not take shape spontaneously within the entrails of the bourgeois society. When bourgeois revolutions broke out, their task in the main boiled down to bringing the new politico-juridical superstructure into correspondence wilh the capitalist basis, whose main features had long since taken shape within the feudal society.

But one cannot ignore the decided advantages which the socialist revolution has for establishing the communist socio-economic formation. This revolution is led by the working class, which in the course of capitalist development tends steadily to grow numerically, is organised and united. It creates its own revolutionary vanguard, the communist parties, which carry the socialist consciousness into the spontaneous working-class movement and which direct the action of the revolutionary class.

In contrast to earlier social revolutions, the advanced class---the architect of the new formation---acts as an international force, a fact which gives the socialist revolution great might.

Let us recall that bourgeois revolutions were carried out with the active support of the peasant masses, artisans and workers. But these toiling social sections were only temporary fellow-travellers of the bourgeoisie, because with the overthrow of the feudal order they were saddled with a new master in the form of the victorious bourgeoisie. In the socialist revolution, all the working classes and social sections become true allies of the working class, and this gives the socialist revolution great sweep and strength.

Another great advantage of the socialist revolution i& that it is a period of social development when new and advanced social relations are built up with a scientific knowledge of the objective laws of historical progress.

The winning of state power is the main issue in the socialist revolution, as it is in any revolution. The socialist

revolution puts all power into the hands of the working class and its allies, so for the first time in history allowing the once oppressed toiling masses to use state power to defend the gains of the revolution and to build a socialist society. This leads to the establishment for the first time in human history of genuine democracy, which is produced by the revolutionary people to defend their vital interests and to assure themselves of the broadest and most essential rights.

In contrast to all the social classes which sought to perpetuate their power and state, the victorious working class, guided by the communist party, puts through social transformations which at the second phase of communism should lead to the disappearance of all classes and class distinctions, and to a transition from the socialist state of the whole people to communist self-administration.

The working class and its allies, which constitute the overwhelming majority of capitalist society and which produce all the goods of life, seek to carry out the socialist revolution by peaceful means, without armed uprisings or civil wars. But the whole point is that the bourgeoisie refuses to accept its defeat and to submit to the will of the overwhelming majority of the nation, and resorts to arms in order to restore its lost positions.

This is fully borne out by the history of the Great October Socialist Revolution. Relying on an overwhelming majority of the people and expressing its vital interests, the working class, led by its Bolshevik vanguard, effected a peaceful takeover. It was the internal and external counterrevolution that was to blame for the sharp and sanguinary form which the first victorious socialist revolution assumed, because the counter-revolution wanted to reverse the people's decision and to retain the old order and the old fetters. That was a bad miscalculation.

Let us recall that popular power was also established in Chile by peaceful means, and then it was the counter-- revolution that first resorted to arms in order to destroy it. History repeated itself, but on that occasion, in contrast to the October Revolution, the Chilean Revolution did not succeed in maintaining its positions.

The socialist revolution, like all the other revolutions which led to the establishment of new socio-economic formations, has assumed diverse forms depending on the con-

crete historical conditions in the various countries, and its essence was expressed in specific forms.

The Marxist-Leninist classics showed that socialist revolutions could run in peaceful and non-peaceful forms. They also anticipated that the industrialised capitalist countries could go on to the new society directly through a socialist revolution. They said that other, less developed countries, with feudal survivals in the economy and in the political system, would pass through the stage of bourgeois-- democratic revolution, which would develop into a socialist revolution. They also took into account the possibility of transition to socialism by-passing the capitalist stage of development.

Lenin had a great part to play in creatively developing all the component parts of Marxism in the light of the new historical situation, and of the new, imperialist stage of capitalist development. He gave a new solution to a number of important questions of the socialist revolution and established the fact that different countries would go on to socialism at different periods.

Lenin saw the socialist revolution as an entire historical epoch of transition from capitalism to socialism, as an upward revolutionary process advancing from one country to another, from one region to another.

Lenin, a brilliant revolutionary thinker, theoretically substantiated and led the first victorious socialist revolution in Russia. He justly saw the Great October Revolution as the birth of a new era, the emergence of a new socioeconomic formation, and mankind's ascent to a new phase of historical development.

Lenin, like millions of other people all over the world, was delighted with the heroic feat of the proletariat of Russia and its communist vanguard, and clearly saw the role of the October Revolution in mankind's renascence, but he was far from assuming that the socialist revolution would take the same form and run the same course in all the countries, as it did in Russia. Let us recall his warnings against attempts at imitating the forms and methods of struggle of Russia's revolutionary forces for the overthrow of capitalism and for state power.

At the same time, Lenin and his followers were clearly aware that any socialist revolution in whatever country or region must solve the cardinal problems that were solved

8-0642

by the October Revolution in the most essential features.

There is no doubt that any attempts to minimise or ignore the experience of the October Revolution are a departure from real socialist revolution, whatever the sophistry and hypocrisy that may be used to cover this up. Lenin wrote: "It is the Russian model that reveals to all countries something---and something highly significant---of their near and inevitable future." *

Within three decades since the October Revolution, socialism advanced beyond the boundaries of one country, and the resultant world socialist system fully confirmed Lenin's prediction. All the countries which reached socialism in their specific ways necessarily had to tackle what were essentially the same cardinal tasks which the October Revolution had solved: the winning of power by the working class and its allies, the elimination of capitalist property at different periods, the establishment of socialist property in the means of production, and the building of a socialist state and a corresponding superstructure. The communist party, equipped with the Marxist-Leninist ideology, was the leading force in all these countries.

The victory of the socialist revolution in Russia and then in many other countries provided convincing confirmation of the Marxist-Leninist doctrine of socialist revolution and the inevitable revolutionary replacement of the obsolete formation by a new, advanced and rising formation. The scientific prediction concerning the historically transient nature of the bourgeois system and its inevitable replacement by communism was confirmed in practice.

It is not surprising that bourgeois public thinkers, tasked to stand up for the capitalist system, tried very hard to refute the law-governed nature of the socialist revolution and its historical necessity. This needs to be considered in somewhat greater detail to disprove the arguments of the ideologists of the capitalist system, who seek, like all the ideologists of the reactionary social classes that have left the historical arena, to present social revolution as an invention of anarchists, trouble-makers, Utopians, etc., as the result of accidental circumstances, mistakes by ruling circles, and so on. One could think that if the rulers

of 5th-century Rome were more clever, the slave-holding system could have lasted to this day. By the same logic, feudalism could have flourished in Europe in our day if the feudal rulers of 18th-century Britain and France were more circumspect and vigorous.

Those who are discarded by history turn out lo be amazingly unable and unwilling to understand the meaning of historical development, its substance and objective perspectives. This was very well illustrated by the experience of those who tried to console themselves with the idea that the collapse of capitalism over vast areas of the world was no more than a historical accident. Let us consider the attempts of those who claim that the establishment of an entire socio-economic formation, a key phase in mankind's history, is due to subjective errors and mistakes by the defenders of the old order. Those who set up accidents in history as an absolute and deny that it has objective uniformities still seem to hope that it is possible to overcome the "accidental departures" and return to the old system, to restore it by some ways and means.

3.

For long decades, the bourgeois philosophy of history, political economy, sociology, politology, jurisprudence, and the whole system of the bourgeois interpretation of social life regarded the capitalist society as the culmination of historical development, the last word in social progress, the much-desired and discovered rational form of social organisation harmonising with man's "immutable nature''.

The defeat of the Paris Commune and other revolutionary actions by the proletariat was regarded by bourgeois ideologists as evidence that capitalism was invincible and everlasting. They easily ``refuted'' Marxism, declaring it to be another social utopia which would go down like all the other earlier futile dreams about a new world order, a social system without masters and servants.

Just when it had apparently been proved that the bourgeois society---an idealised system of wage slavery---was everlasting, the Great October Socialist Revolution, prepared by Lenin's party, broke out and ushered in a new era and a new socio-economic formation. The victory of the October Revolution showed very well in practice that the

8*

115

~^^1^^ V. I. Lenin, " `Left-Wing' Communism---An Infantile Disorder", Collected Works, Vol. 31, p. 22.

fundamental theoretical conclusions and predictions of Marxism about the inevitable downfall of capitalism and its replacement by socialism were true.

The October Revolution overthrew the bourgeois order on the vast expanses of Russia, breached the front of world imperialism, shook the capitalist system to its foundations, and started off its general crisis.

What the theorists of capitalism had declared to be false and Utopian, broke through into life as a tangible and incontrovertible truth, as a law-governed product of the efforts of millions of people, and as a necessary and highly important logical element in world history. Marxism-- Leninism, repeatedly ``refuted'' and ``destroyed'', scored a victory which was unequalled in the history of social thought and practice. This naturally further deepened the crisis of bourgeois ideology and prepared the collapse of what appeared to be its immutable symbols of faith and dogmas. The overt and covert ideologists of capitalism, unwilling to accept their defeat, started to distort the substance and historical role of the Great October Socialist Revolution, of existing socialism, and the prospects for its further development. As the socialist world developed and gained in strength, this fundamental distortion of the actual historical facts became ever more subtle, expressing the bourgeoisie's urge to mislead as many people as possible and to throw false light on the present, past and future of the new social system.

The class commitments of bourgeois ideologists, the habitual dogmas, the idealistic and anti-dialectical methodology has prevented them from seeing phenomena as they are in substance, from getting an insight into things, understanding the objective uniformities of social development, and putting the right interpretation on the new historical reality which took shape after the first victorious socialist revolution.

Initially, bourgeois and reformist theorists claimed that the October Revolution---the greatest social revolution in mankind's history---was a "wild mutiny" which would be put down within days. However, the revolution gained in strength as millions upon millions of working people of different nations rallied to its banners.

The long civil war against the Soviet state and the interventionists' drive ended in a defeat for the counter-rev-

olution. The peoples of Russia, led by Lenin and the Communist Party, got down to building a socialist society.

In that highly disadvantageous situation, bourgeois scientists resorted to a dodge which was not quite new. They declared that the October Revolution was accidental. There was nothing new about this, because the defeated advocates of feudalism also claimed that the French bourgeois revolution of 1789-1794, which had been prepared by the objective course of social development, was a departure from the "natural order" of things.

What was the basis of such talk about the ``accidental'' nature of the October Revolution? Even before the great social revolution in October 1917, the leaders of the Russian Mensheviks, adopting Karl Kautsky's vulgar economic theory of the productive forces, argued that Russia was not ready for a socialist revolution. This Menshevik thesis was subjected to withering criticism by Lenin. He said that Russian industry did indeed lag behind the industry of some other capitalist countries, but added that in Russia monopoly capitalism was growing into state-monopoly capitalism. In his work The Impending Catastrophe and How to Combat It, he proved this by giving the statistics for the engineering, oil, coal, sugar, and other industries. He went on to draw the conclusion that the only way forward from state-monopoly capitalism led towards socialism. He sharply criticised the Mensheviks and SRs, who refused to see the real economic prerequisites for the victory of a socialist revolution in Russia and presented socialism as "some remote, unknown and dim future".^J

In his work, Our Revolution, and in his speeches, Lenin pointed to the Menshevik theorists' dogmatism and their inability and refusal to understand the specific features of the Russian revolution and its deep socio-economic, class roots. Criticising the Mensheviks, notably, N. Sukhanov, Lenin wrote: "Infinitely stereotyped, for instance, is the argument they learnt by rote during the development of West-European Social-Democracy, namely, that we are not yet ripe for socialism, that, as certain `learned' gentlemen among them put it, the objective economic premises for socialism do not exist in our country.''~^^2^^

~^^1^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 25, p. 363.

~^^2^^ V. I. Lenin, "Our Revolution", Collected Works, Vol. 33, pp. 477-78.

Lenin and the Bolsheviks proved beyond any doubt that the lower level of development of the productive forces in Russia, as compared with that of some other capitalist countries, was compensated by the depth of the class and national contradictions and the conjunction of the working-class struggle for socialist transformations with general democratic tasks, with the struggle of millions upon millions of people against the survivals of feudalism, for an end to landed estates, and with the struggle of the oppressed peoples against national-colonial enslavement. Only by ignoring the objective character of these deep-seated socio-economic contradictions could one irresponsibly refer to the absence of real premises for a victory of the socialist revolution in Russia.

The dispute between the Bolsheviks and their adversaries concerning the ways of Russia's historical development was fully and finally settled by life itself in favour of the Bolsheviks. If we find decades after the victory of the October Revolution that the discarded, exploded, superficial and sophistic arguments of the Mensheviks are once again being brought to light, is that not an indication of the deep crisis of present-day social science and its lack of any weighty arguments against the law-governed character of the social revolution which establishes the new, communist socio-economic formation?

Years after the October Revolution, bourgeois ideologists continued to bewail the ``accidental'' omissions of the Russian counter-revolution and worked hard on recommendations to prevent any "socialist accidents" in other parts of the world.

Some Western writings about the October Revolution give an idea of the "scientific level" on which its social premises and substance are analysed. Nowadays, bourgeois ideologists can no longer ignore the impact of the October Revolution on the course of world development. Nevertheless, in defiance of logic, they still try to explain it away by referring to various accidental events. They believe, for instance, that if the Menshevik-led Soviets had displayed some common sense and restraint in their passions, Lenin would have been completely isolated and nothing would have come of his ambitions.

In many bourgeois writings on the 50th anniversary of the February and the October Revolution, the

Bolsheviks' victory is still said to have been due to the mistakes, miscalculations and the lack of any clear awareness and firm will on the part of their adversaries. Those, we are told, are the reasons for the victory of the socialist revolution. The only thing that remains to be explained is why reason, will and resolution tended to abandon the enemies of the October Revolution so easily and on so many occasions.

For more than a half-century after the victory of the October Revolution, bourgeois and reformist theorists, seeking to prove that the great revolution had been accidental, and the programme for socialist construction in Russia unrealistic and Utopian, had quite obviously worn dunce caps. Nor were they enlightened by the fact that this `` artificial'' and ``accidental'' revolution not only managed to defend itself but has also become a factor revolutionising the whole world, the whole of human history.

Now, over 60 years since the Great October Revolution, some bourgeois and reformist ideologists seem to have an inkling of the futility of their attempts to explain away a great epoch-making phenomenon like the October Revolution as an accident. Nowadays, many of them, even the most avowed enemies of socialism and the socialist revolution, find it uncomfortable to read the trite statements of W. Schlamm, who claimed that another company of soldiers at Kerensky's disposal could have averted the October Revolution.^^4^^

Still, bourgeois thinkers refuse to abandon their habitual stereotypes in falsifying the origins and substance of the revolution which ushered in the new socio-economic formation. Thus, A. Ulam, in one of his latest anti-Soviet books, claims that the October Revolution was an accidental success for a handful of desperate men.^^2^^

While being unwilling to give up the idea of the October Revolution's "accidental character", some bourgeois theorists are now inclined to give more cautious and likely versions of their idea. Thus, the British historian J. Keep prefers to talk about the erroneous policy of Russian tsarism, instead of the mistakes of individual leaders of the

~^^1^^ W. Schlamm, Germany and East-West Crisis, New York, 1959, p. 171.

~^^2^^ Sec: A. Ulam, Ideologies and Illusions, New York, 1976.

old regime, about tsarism's inability to keep in touch with the real situation, make the necessary compromises, put through the necessary reforms, etc. Keep suggests that if the tsarist power had been more flexible and inventive, there would have been no October Revolution at all. ' One need hardly comment on this methodology of ``ifs'' and ``buts''.

Even non-Marxist scientists tend to protest against this high-handed expulsion of any objective necessity and uniformity from the historical process. Thus, the British historian Paul Dukes says: "In a real sense, the events of 1917 had been prepared by the whole previous course of Russian history, and to emphasise out of proportion ' turning points' at which tsarism could have righted itself is to distort that course.''~^^2^^

Seeing that the ``accident'' version has collapsed, bourgeois ideologists are now prepared to admit that there were sufficiently good grounds for overthrowing the old social order in Russia. Indeed, they are already prepared to admit that the October Revolution had been inevitable, but only to deny its socialist character in the next breath. They claim that the Bolsheviks had been "too hasty" in designating as a socialist revolution what had actually been a peasant revolution. What is the basis for this `` discovery'' of Keep and his associates? It turns out to be the incontrovertible fact that in old Russia peasants made up a majority of the population and that they were actively involved in the revolution. But it pays to recall in this context that during the French Revolution at the end of the 18th century peasants also made up a majority of the population and were actively involved in that revolution. But on the strength of that no self-respecting historian has declared the French Revolution of 1789-1794 to be a peasant revolution.

The nature and substance of a revolution are determined by the vital and fundamental tasks which it has to fulfil. The French Revolution of 1789-1794 abolished feudal relations and established capitalist relations, and this determined its bourgeois character. Similarly, the October Rev-

olution put an end to the capitalist system in Russia and ensured the formation of socialist social relations, and this expresses its socialist substance.

One should think that bourgeois sociologists are aware of these elementary truths, but what are they to do if their task is, at all costs, to show that the revolutionary transition to socialism is not law-governed? Some bourgeois theorists decided to recognise the victory of socialism in Russia, but only in order to rule out the possibility of its repetition anywhere else. For these purposes, "Russian socialism" was declared to be a unique phenomenon resulting from a unique concurrence of circumstances in the Russia of 1917, the product of the unique "Russian soul", the "age-old Russian rebelliousness", etc. But with the spread of socialism beyond the boundaries of Russia and the emergence of the world socialist system, these superficial constructs became meaningless.

A search was begun for new ways of denying the lawgoverned collapse of capitalism and the historical necessity for a social revolution establishing communism. The most radical ``abolitionists'' of socialism said that it was not the first stage of the new formation but only an aggregation of ways and means for overcoming socio-economic backwardness and gradually carrying the country to Western civilisation, that is, capitalism.

The US Sovietologist Robert C. Tucker is one of those ideologists who seek to reduce the role and importance of socialist revolution and socialism to a specific means of involving "backward countries" in industrial civilisation. He says: "The communist revolution ... is a revolution of under development, and this in two senses: (1) the revolution typically comes about in the setting of underdevelopment and (2) it becomes, after the achievement of power by the communist movement, a long-term effort to overcome the country's underdevelopment, a revolution of modernization." '

So, according to Tucker and his associates, socialist revolution does not lead to a new socio-economic formal ion. communism, but is merely a transition from backwardness to capitalism.

~^^1^^ See: J. Keep, The Russian Revolution. A Study in Mass Mobilisation, London, 1976.

~^^2^^ Paul Dukes, A History of Russia, London, 1974, p. 208.

~^^1^^ Robert C. Tucker, The Marxian Revolutionary Idea, W. W. Norton and Company, Inc., New York, 1970, pp. 137-38.

Another advocate of the "modernisation theory", Professor G. Germani, believes that the modernisation reached in modern industrialisation and urbanisation is conducive to the emergence of a genuine world history, a real planetary system which firmly rests on the internal significance of all parts of the world, within the framework of new technology and the new economy.^^1^^

There is no need specially to explain that by new technology and the new economy Germani means the technological potential and the economy of industrial capitalist countries, so that the planetary system is capitalism, under whatever signboard, but always with its private property.

One will easily see that such an interpretation of the basic functions of socialism is no more than a variant of the notorious theory of convergence, which most blatantly ``substantiated'' the gradual swallowing-up of the socialist society by capitalism. But this question inevitably arises: if the whole meaning of socialism is to help socioeconomically backward countries to move towards capitalism, how are we to explain the enmity of the imperialist circles for socialism, and their efforts in one way or another to stop the transition to a socialist society? Let us say, briefly, that even in Sovietological circles the idea of converting socialism into a stage on the way to capitalism is regarded as being extremely extravagant and unpromising.

The urge to perpetuate bourgeois society and to rule out its revolutionary ascent towards socialism has repeatedly produced attempts to declare socialism a utopia, which may be tantalising but unrealistic.

Here is a view expressed by Zygmunt Bauman and accepted by many of his associates. Despite the actual existence of the socialist society, he does not blush to declare that "socialism has been, and to some extent still is, the utopia of the modern epoch".^^2^^

For decades, Raymond Aron, an inveterate anti-- communist, has been plugging the idea that socialism is unfeasible. In one of his books he insists that the socialist revolution in Russia was an accident because at the beginning of the First World War that country "was still pass-

~^^1^^ See: G. Germani (ed.), Modernisation, Urbanisation and the Urban Crisis, Boston, 1973, p. 49.

~^^2^^ Zygmunt Bauman, Socialism. The Active Utopia, London, 1976, p. 36.

ing through the initial stage of industrialisation" '. In his unmatched zeal, Aron actually ``closes'' the socialist world. One of the chapters in his book is entitled "The Undiscoverable Socialism".^^2^^ He seeks to prove that it is impossible to discover the existence of socialism anywhere in the world. But the whole of his book is shot through with obvious fear and hatred for socialism. The thoughtful reader will ask Aron this question: can anything that does not really exist arouse such an acute sense of hatred and such panic fear as the author displays at the very mention of socialism?

The whole of bourgeois social science today has concentrated its efforts on denying the further advance of the social revolution which is designed to establish the communist formation throughout the whole world. While denigrating existing socialism, inflating its imaginary or real difficulties of development, trying to root out socialism in the various countries by force of arms and forcibly to prevent more nations from advancing towards socialism, bourgeois politicians and ideologists resort to diverse tricks and dodges in order to "cheat history" and to block the objective course of social progress.

A false interpretation of the substance and effects of the scientific and technological revolution in our day is one of the diverse ideological means used to refute the advance of the socialist revolution and substantiate the invincibility of capitalism.

The STR is presented as a magic means for resolving all the deep-seated contradictions of the capitalist society, as a cure-all for the ills of capitalism, as the factor that will help to stabilise it and restore it to its lost positions.

Let us say, for the sake of clarity, that very few Western theorists now risk defending capitalism under its own title, for it has discredited itself in the minds of millions upon millions of people on every continent. Let us also note that no one will now openly claim that capitalism is everlasting. Bourgeois sociologists designate many different societies which are either on the way to replacing the "old capitalism" or have already replaced it "calmly and smoothly". These are social myths like the ``industrial'',

~^^1^^ Raymond Aron, Plaidoyer pour I'Europe decadante, Paris, 1977, p. 65.

~^^2^^ Ibid., pp. 205-53.

``post-industrial", ``mass'', ``technetronic'', and other societies. I shall deal with these myth-making efforts later, but at this point let me merely note that all these invented societies are, in fact, different versions of capitalism, because each has private capitalist property either in overt or covert form, and social inequality and other essential attributes of capitalist society are maintained with various reservations.

Many theorists of the imperialist bourgeoisie suggest the possibility and necessity of preventing any further development of the socialist revolution, and the possibility and necessity of reviving and rejuvenating capitalism. In one way or another, this miracle is connected with the scientific and technological revolution, which is allegedly capable of eliminating social revolution and the ascent to the new socio-economic formation from the agenda of history. But the whole course of social development today shows that this miracle is not on. Life shows very well that the STR, far from helping to overcome the deep-seated and irreconcilable contradictions of capitalism, in effect, produces new contradictions.

The vast profits of the monopolies, profits obtained by the intensification of the labour of the proletariat, of all the working people, and by the direct and indirect forms in which the backward peoples are being plundered enable the employers to pay somewhat higher wages to a relatively small section of the workers, to reduce the solidarity of the oppressed, and to pacify them with unfulfillable promises. By these and similar other means, the social system, which has become a drag on social progress and a source of grave danger for the future of mankind, seeks to perpetuate itself, but its efforts are futile. The growth and deepening of economic crises, the increasing numbers of the unemployed, and the steady growth of the working-class strike struggle in industrial capitalist countries show that the stake on the STR as an instrument for salvaging capitalism is totally illusory.

Quasi-scientific constructs of bourgeois theorists, who seek to cross out the social revolution, will themselves be crossed out as futile efforts to stop by means of incantations the operation of the objective laws of history and mankind's historically inevitable ascent to a higher stage of social development.

There is no ``revival'' of capitalism in sight, despite the sworn affidavits of the bourgeois quasi-optimists. Everything has a beginning and an end, and capitalism cannot avoid what is in store for it, just as all the earlier socioeconomic formations failed to avoid their lot.

The great achievements of science and technology, and the modern level in the development of the productive forces are in ever sharper and irreconcilable contradiction with the private-property character of social relations. The steady socialisation of production makes the removal of private-capitalist appropriation imperative. Capitalism has long since become an anachronism and the greatest injustice of the epoch. The reams of paper wasted by Aron and his followers to prove the reverse cannot refute this incontrovertible truth.

Let me emphasise in conclusion that the doctrine of social revolution, which Jn its advance leads to the establishment of the communist formation everywhere, duly takes into account the specific features of the revolutionary transition to the new social order.

The socialist revolution will make headway, peacefully or non-peacefully, depending on the existing situation, and the behaviour of the overthrown exploiting classes and their foreign patrons.

The socialist revolution does not at all rule out extensive and deep-going democratic reforms in the interests of the working class and all the other working people. These reforms prepare important conditions for the victory of the socialist revolution and increase the chances of a peaceful takeover and maintenance of power.

The socialist revolution can grow out of the oppressed peoples' national liberation struggle against imperialism and can carry them to socialism, by-passing the capitalist phase of development.

In present-day historical conditions, the socialist revolution can win both in one individual country and simultaneously in a group of countries. Thus, the possibility of a regional West European socialist revolution carried out by the joint efforts of the working class and the other working people of France, Italy, Spain, Portugal and other countries in the region is a fully realistic one.

It is hard to list all the forms and methods for putting through a socialist revolution, for they are diverse, while

the socialist revolution has one and the same purpose of handing state power to the working class, to the whole people for defending the gains of the revolution, for abolishing the capitalist relations and establishing socialism, for socialising the basic means of production, and for establishing social and national equality.

The diversity of the forms and methods in putting through the socialist revolution once again shows up the futility of the attempts to present the forms and methods of the October Revolution as being canonical and binding on everyone. Let us recall how resolutely Lenin rejected this vulgar and oversimplified approach.

Now and again it is claimed that the followers of Lenin seek to impose on all countries a rehearsal of the experience of the October Revolution in every detail, but that is not true.

The whole point is not to repeat the specific forms and methods of the October Revolution, but its substance, which is the substance of any true socialist revolution, namely, the overthrow of the capitalist order with the use of methods that are most suitable for the given country and region and the establishment of the socialist phase of the classless communist society.

Summing up the above, one could say that revolutionary transitions from one socio-economic formation to another are a universal and objective sociological uniformity. Evidence of this comes from the whole history of mankind. No efforts, however powerful the will behind them, could avert the collapse of the old formation and the establishment of the new one. For a time, the old socio-economic formation went in for serious compromises, sought to " renew itself", resorted to reforms, tolerated the emergence and development in its entrails of the new socio-economic sector, looked to convergence with the new social organism, and modified the strategy and tactics of its self-- preservation, but in spite of all this was unable to stem the social revolution. The latter---taking more or less time and assuming various forms---swept away the old formation and established the new social order, the new formation.

Such is the truly great role of social revolutions in accelerating the pace of history, in creating new material and spiritual values, and in giving men greater power over the elemental forces of nature and over their own social relations.

Chapter Six SOCIO-ECONOMIC FORMATION AND CIVILISATION

It is interesting to explore the actua' interrelationship between the concepts of formation and civilisation. The difficulty here is that past and present thinkers have always tended to give the concept of civilisation widely differing and often mutually exclusive readings. One can safely say that hardly any other concept in social science has been used to designate so many different social phenomena.

Students of civilisation agreed on very few points. Thus, they agreed that civilisation was a definite qualitative state of social life in various countries or parts of the world. They maintained, with various essential or inessential reservations, that civilisation was a concrete, original form of existence of a material or spiritual culture or a specific aggregation of the two. Many non-Marxist researchers made a point of emphasising the unique nature of civilisations, their isolation from each other, and the absence of any genetic ties or continuity between them. But when it came to singling out the essential feature of civilisation, sharp disputes arose. What material or spiritual factor was system-forming, substantive and definitive for civilisation? What factor bound the various elements of civilisation into an organic whole and determined its complection?

There were also disputes over the causes behind the emergence and disappearance of civilisations, their rise, decline and fall. These and many other problems relating to civilisations, their substance, motive forces and mutual relations are still being discussed.

I am not going to consider all these debatable issues in their full compass, but shall confine myself to the interrelationship between formation and civilisation. It goes without saying that to deal with this question one has to analyse not only the substance of the socio-economic formation, as I tried to do earlier, but also the concept of civilisation. So, I shall have to take a closer look at some of

these debatable issues. Of course, the task is not an easy one, and I am not sure whether I can present a clear and convincing picture of the scientific solution of these problems.

In Marxist-Leninist theory, civilisation has been analysed from different angles and in different contexts. As this theory has developed, it has given a deeper and broader scientific insight into the problem of civilisation, the time of its inception, and its different substance in antagonistic-class societies, on the one hand, and under socialism, on the other.

In accordance with the basic propositions of the materialist view of history, the founders of Marxism tied in the emergence and development of civilisation with the emergence and improvement of society's productive forces and the resultant social division of labour. Engels wrote: " Civilisation is that stage of development of society at which division of labour, the resulting exchange between individuals, and commodity production, which combines the two, reach their complete unfoldment and revolutionise the whole hitherto existing society." '

On the strength of research carried out by the wellknown ethnographer and sociologist L. Morgan and others, Engels thought it right to single out, in accordance with the ever more complicated economic relations, periods of savagery, barbarism and civilisation. In the first period, men largely lived by gathering natural products. In that period, they used primitive implements, but there was no material production as such. The period of barbarism Engels saw as one of herding and cropping, when the output of products was increased through human activity. And the period of civilisation, he said, was a period of "industry proper, and of art".~^^2^^ From this it does not follow that at the two earlier stages mankind had known nothing either of production or of art. What Engels meant was that under savagery and barbarism there was no industry or art in the proper sense of these words.

The making and use of stone and other primitive imple-

ments is a condition for the existence of human society even at its earliest stages. This also applies to spiritual culture. In its earliest, infantile and fragmentary forms it is an intrinsic feature of human life even under sav agery, as it will be seen from the rock drawings and other archaeological finds dating back to the earliest stages of the primitive communal system. There is no question about this, but nor is there any doubt that only a qualitatively new stage in the development of instruments of labour, in man's productive activity, and also in spiritual culture marks the emergence of civilisation. From the primitive spiritual culture characteristic of the earliest stages mankind advanced to writing and literature, took the first few steps towards scientific knowledge, and acquired technical skills. It was Marx who said that civilisation "begins with the invention of the phonetic alphabet and production of literary monuments; hieroglyphic inscriptions on stone are an equivalent".^^1^^

But the civilisation that took shape within the entrails of private-property society is inseparably linked with social inequality, exploitation of the majority by a minority, the emergence of law, politics, the state, and a dominant ideology that are intended to defend the private-property system and suppress any attempts on the part of the enslaved people to throw off their degrading yoke.

So, the emergence of civilisation, which marks an outstanding stage of social progress in the development of material and spiritual culture, brought with it the class enslavement of the bulk of the population. The classics of Marxism-Leninism repeatedly emphasised this contradictory nature of the civilisation that arose in the antagonistic-class society, and maintained that the major task of the working class was to put an end to private property, wage slavery, and all the other forms of man's oppression of man, and to create a new civilisation free from antagonistic contradictions, whose economic, social, scientific, technical and cultural achievements would be within the reach of one and all. Later we shall return to this new and ennobling civilisation. Let us now try to formulate a rough definition of civilisation.

~^^1^^ Frederick Engels. "The Origin of the Family, Private Property and State". In: Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Selected Works in three volumes, Vol. 3, p. 330.

~^^2^^ Ibid., p. 209.

~^^1^^ Marx-Engels Archives, Vol. IX, Moscow-Leningrad, 1941, p. 2 (in Russian).

9-0642

Civilisation, as we have seen, is a historical concept, it emerges at a definite stage of social development, when social division of labour, private property, classes, class antagonisms, law and the state arise with the improvement of the means of production. It means not only the emergence of production in the proper sense of the word, hut also the formation of a qualitatively new stage of spiritual culture, with writing, literature, embryonic science and primitive machines.

This definition is undoubtedly crucial but, in my opinion, it is not exhaustive. In effect, it coincides with the definition of antagonistic-class society and does not help to distinguish one civilisation from another. To give a fuller answer to this question, we should take into account the distinctions between class societies and their varieties in different parts of the world. It is well-known, for instance, that the slave-holding society had its distinct specific features in the East and in ancient Greece and Rome.

The distinguishing features of a given civilisation are ultimately to be found in the class formations, in their specifics in different parts of the world and different periods. This cannot be considered as a concrete and comprehensive definition of the substance of civilisation, but is a necessary and crucial characteristic.

Thus, we assume a unity (rather than an identity) of formation and civilisation, but do not stop at that.

In scientific writings, civilisation is sometimes defined as a concrete and peculiar unity of material and spiritual culture. If culture is seen as an all-embracing concept designating everything that has not been given by nature but has been created by human minds and hands, one can accept such an approximation or identification of culture and civilisation. One can accept this, first of all, because any marked development of material and spiritual culture coincides with society's division into classes, while the Marxist view is that civilisation took shape with the emergence of private property, classes, class antagonisms and the state.

Consequently, we regard civilisation as a specific, historically conditioned unity of material and spiritual culture. More precisely, civilisations are socio-cultural complexes taking shape and existing in different parts of the world in different periods of time and distinguished by specific

techno-cconomic, social and cultural features. The rise, development and decline of any civilisation has its objocl.ive causes. The motive forc.es of r.ivilisalion are to bo found deep inside it, in its internal contradictions, whose realisation determines its history, stages of growth and decline. This approach rules out any attempts to explain the development of civilisations solely by the external influence of other civilisations. So Marxist dialectics orients the researcher to look for internal uniformities in the development of civilisation and the necessary stages of its maturity, for the internal causes which inevitably lead to its replacement by a more advanced and viable civilisation.

Dialectical analysis is essentially a qualitative analysis aimed at bringing out the fundamental distinctions between the object being studied and other comparable objects. In comparing civilisations, the dialectical method devotes much attention to their qualitative specific features, whose loss means that a civilisation is no longer what it was. This has nothing to do with the idea of isolated, closed civilisations, which we shall consider later.

Every civilisation is an integral system of interacting structural elements, a living social organism in which these elements do not play equally vital roles. The ties between them are not simply functional, but causal: some phenomena in the social organism engender and determine other phenomena, and any civilisation has a substantive, determinative basis. This proposition is generally accepted. The disputes begin when it conies to specifying this basic element. Many Western sociologists predicate civilisations on some spiritual element: religion, ethical and aesthetic perception of the world, different types of world outlook, and so forth.

The idea about the primacy of the spiritual phenomenon, which is seen as the key to any civilisation, still prevails in non-Marxist sociology. Homo hierarchicus, a book by the French researcher L. Dumon, is characteristic in this respect. The author justly criticises various superficial, formal comparisons and parallels, which are of little use in the study of civilisations. He also justly rejects the attempts to study civilisations outside the context of their change and development. He aims at a meaningful analysis of civilisations, but makes it difficult for himself by

9*

looking for the substantive basis of civilisations in the ideological sphere, which, lie believes, "cannot ho conditioned by any other aspects of social life or reduced to these". ' Dumon argues against the materialist conception of history and dismisses the attempts to explain ideological phenomena by economic relations.

At the Ninth International Congress of Sociologists ( Uppsala, 1978), the problem of civilisation was considered in some panels of the Congress, in the 14th working group in particular. Sociologists who did not share the materialist conception of history upheld the traditional idealistic views on civilisation, seeking to trace the specific features of different civilisations to various spiritual phenomena or their specific combination.

These and other similar views were rightly criticised by Marxist researchers (Academician Yu. Bromlei, Professor M. Mchedlov, Professor Yu. Minkov, and others).

Marxists do not deny that every civilisation has its specific spiritual makeup, which leaves an indelible imprint on the whole civilisation and all its structural elements. But it is another matter whether this spiritual makeup is indeed fundamental. Going back to Dumon's book, let us note that the facts he presents invite a different conclusion from the one he draws: it is the material conditions of life that provide the foundation, the groundwork for the ideological superstructure in all its diversity. Mankind's history proves beyond any doubt that religious or other ideologies are not primary factors, for they are themselves determined by the material conditions of life and are specific reflections of these conditions.

While rejecting any attempts to present various forms of spiritual culture as the determinative factors of civilisation, one should not oversimplify the matter by declaring primitively read material culture to be such a decisive factor. Thus, some look for the specifics of one civilisation or another in the instruments of labour or labour skills, abstracting themselves from the dominant forms of property and production relations.

For all the contradictory connotations of the concept of civilisation, dialectical analysis makes it possible to single out some of its important features.

Any civilisation is always based on material production that has reached a relatively high level. The historically conditioned mode of production is the primary phenomenon which determines the face of any civilisation.

This view of the question gives grounds for approximating

the concepts of civilisation and socio-economic formation-.....

by the latter Marxism means an integral system of economic relations and corresponding politico-juridical and ideological relations and corresponding politico-juridical and ideological relations.

We do not seek to identify these two concepts. The theory of civilisation is aimed at bringing out the specific features distinguishing one civilisation from another, the specific interrelated production and cultural skills, racial and ethnic entities, and the peculiar cultural, ethical, aesthetic, religious and other values that make up a given civilisation.

It is wrong to identify civilisation and formation because, for one thing, some civilisations outlasted several socio-- economic formations, changing markedly in the process. Thus, if one can speak of a West-European civilisation, it may bo said to have acquired essentially new features in rising from slave-holding society to feudalism and then on to capitalism.

It is also true that different civilisations emerged and existed simultaneously or in different periods within the framework of one and the same formation (like feudalism).

All this is beyond question. I am convinced that nor is there any reason to doubt that the way to a strictly scientific understanding and comparison of civilisations is inseparably linked with the doctrine of socio-economic formations. History shows that any civilisation at any concrete historical moment, any variety of that civilisation is baaed on some variety of a definite socio-economic formation. When speaking of the Roman civilisation, for instance, we cannot abstract ourselves from the slave-holding formation, from its Roman variety, from the economic basis of that formation and its specific superstructure. The Roman civilisation can never be derived from the Roman Pantheon, from the substratum of Roman spiritual culture, the ethical code of the Roman ruling class, or even from the development level of the means of production. Such .attempts have never In-lpcd anyone to uncover the specific snbslance of the Uotnan civilisation, whose ``secret'' can only be discovered through

^^1^^ L. Dumon, Homo hierarchicus, Paris, 1970, p. 3.

a study of the slave-holding formation and its Roman variety.

As I pointed out earlier, different civilisations can arise on the basis of one and the same socio-economic formation. What are the reasons for such a divergence? First of all, it is due to the specific features of the varieties of one and the same socio-economic formation. This is the main but not the only reason. Real history shows that every civilisation brings to the fore some forms of material and spiritual culture, way of life, family traditions, ethics, level of scientific knowledge, specifics of the dominant religious and ethical consciousness, criteria of the beautiful, and so on. The peculiar and unique combination of these phenomena affects all the other aspects of a given civilisation and manifests itself as its synthetic characteristic and chief determinant.

Indeed, every civilisation has its own spiritual orientation and cultural values. But this specific makeup of a civilisation, as expressed in its juridical, political, ethical, aesthetic and religious views and institutions, is ultimately determined by the historically conditioned mode of production lying at the basis of that civilisation.

So, every civilisation is based on some variety of a definite socio-economic formation. That is why the concepts of formation and civilisation can hardly be separated even in the abstract. Nevertheless, in speaking of civilisations \vo emphasise the culturological aspect of the problem, the specifics of a civilisation's material and spiritual culture, its contribution to the intellectual mastering and transformation of life.

Ancient Egypt and Rome were two varieties of one and the same slave-holding formation and had a number of common features. But there were also some clear-cut distinctions between them in the sphere of material and especially spiritual culture. The Egyptian and Roman civilisations differed markedly in instruments and forms of labour, politi cal and juridical practices, specifics of state administration, way of life, moral code, family and marital relations, religion, religious rites and institutions. They differed in the aesthetic perception of reality and had their own concepts of the beautiful, which are evident in tlioir architecture, sculpture, painting, folklore and literature.

In bringing out the specifics of different civilisations, re-

searchers mainly concentrate on socio-cultural, superstructural phenomena, on culture in the broad sense of the word. where they look for the generic signs of civilisations. One can hardly object to such an approach, to the quest for the most important criteria of civilisations in the spiritual makeup of various social and ethnical entities. Marxism ha^v nothing against a special study from a culturological angle of superstructural phenomena under different formations in order to bring out the "spiritual substratum" that permeates the given superstructure and determines its qualitative distinctions. Perhaps, that is what justifies the existence of the concept of civilisation alongside that of socio-economic formation.

In the quest for this "spiritual substratum", one should bear in mind that it is ultimately determined by the material mode of production, by society's socio-economic, class structure. So long as this dialectico-materialist principle is observed, a special analysis of the important, qualitatively peculiar, epoch-making stages of mankind's culture (in the broad sense of the word) is of paramount scientific interest.

The theory of civilisations, when considered in the con text of the theory of socio-economic formations, is put on a solid scientific basis and substantiated with authentic, verifiable facts. Such an approach can safeguard the theory of civilisation from arbitrary subjectivist readings, from social myth-making, and also from an unwarranted multiplicity of connotations.

Up to now, we have considered the system of civilisations in its, so to speak, horizontal aspect, as an aggregation of typologically similar socio-cultural complexes that can exist in different regions of the world either simultaneously or in different periods. But there is also a vertical aspect, rein I ing to the diachronic replacement of some civilisations brothers and genetic kinship.

In accordance with historical reality, dialectics considers civilisations in their genetic continuity. Every new civilisation, while negating the preceding one, nevertheless retains all the essential material and spiritual achievements of preceding social development. As a rule, no civilisation ever disappears without having prepared (he necessary prerequisites for its own negation and for the emergence of a new social reality, a new system of production and cultural

values. Moreover, many civilisations took shape within tho entrails or on the basis of the achievements of the preceding civilisation and only at a definite stage of social maturity emerged as independent entities.

Such a view of the question is spearheaded against the doctrine of closed civilisations, whose advocates, in their correct urge to bring out the specific, characteristic features of civilisations, go to the extreme of absolutising their qualitative peculiarities and draw the erroneous conclusion that civilisations are such specific organisms that there can be no point of contact between them. They assure that these monadic civilisations arise, develop and disappear all on their own, without borrowing anything from one another.

Have there ever been any isolated civilisations of that kind? Indeed, in some instances, for various geographical or other reasons, some civilisations were for a time cut off from the rest of the world. Thus, the Maya civilisation was fully isolated from the other civilisations up to the beginning of the 16th century. One could list several such examples, but these cannot refute the more or less close ties be- ? tween different civilisations. It has now been proved that Ancient Egypt maintained lively ties not only with Mediterranean countries, but also with China and India. This also applies to the contacts between the Greek and Roman civilisations and the ancient civilisations of the East. Numerous facts testify to the exchange of material and spiritual values between peoples belonging to different civilisations.

The mutual exchange of values between different civilisations is particularly manifest in the sphere of material culture. Thus, trade and economic ties help to put the technical achievements of peoples belonging to one civilisation within the reach of the peoples of another civilisation.

We do not share the view that some peoples create material and spiritual values, while others simply adopt these. In more or less similar historical conditions, the peoples did not necessarily adopt the values of other civilisations, but created these independently. There is no doubt about this, but it would be wrong on the strength of this to rule out any direct or indirect cultural cross-fertilisation. Thus, in the folklore of different peoples, however original, one often ' finds themes that migrate from one civilisation to another, now and again substantially paraphrased.

The interrelationship between different religious systems

is also quite obvious. Take the syncretic nature of Christianity, which borrowed many of its religious, philosophical and ethical ideas from Judaism, from Oriental religious doctrines on the death and resurrection of gods, and from the vulgarised legacy of Greek and Roman philosophers and ethicists, the Stoics and neo-Platonists.

Of course, there have been instances not only of mutual enrichment and continuity between civilisations, but also sharp clashes between them, coercion, and the suppression by the representatives of one civilisation of the cultural values of another civilisation. The history of colonialism and neocolonialism shows this very well.

Nevertheless, the clashes between civilisations can hardly serve---logically or historically---as proof of the theory of closed, isolated civilisations. History refutes this dortrine, which is not only scientifically groundless, but can also be used for justifying aggressive racist and chauvinistic programmes.

In strict accordance with the historical process, Marxism advocates the concept that the entire human civilisation on the whole develops along an upgrade, and that different civilisations interact and enrich each other. This view of the problem helps to substantiate the international drawing closer together of all the peoples, whatever the civilisation they belong to.

Tho Marxist theory takes into account that the history of different civilisations has not always been a history of their mutual enrichment. We have noted the clashes and confrontations between them. Moreover, civilisations have not always developed along an upgrade, but have known stagnation and regressive movements. Ethnic groups at lower stages of civilisation sometimes overran and destroyed states that had reached a higher stage of material and spiritual culture, a higher level of civilisation. Nevertheless. the destructive forces subsequently waned and the centres of higher civilisation, seemingly destroyed once and for all, returned to life and continued their upward development. We have considered only some aspects of the problem and have noted the exceptional importance of the Marxist. dialectical method in the study of civilisations, their sub stance, specific features, motive forces, stages of development, and the replacement of obsolete and declining civilisations with more viable and advanced ones. Let us now

look at some of the specific features of the communist civilisation, toward? which the whole of mankind is now advancing. What are the fundamentally new features of this civilisation?

and class antagonisms changed its form but not its substance. In attacking the feudal civilisation, the bourgeois revolution used the slogan of liberty, equality and fraternity. But the civilisation it engendered was again based on new forms of inequality and coercion. It could not have been otherwise, for the new version of the pre-communist civilisation was still based on class antagonisms.

As the bourgeois civilisation aged and drew to a logical close, its inherent vices deepened and extended.

Lenin gave a memorable description of the contradictory nature of imperialism, the highest stage of capitalism. He wrote: "Bourgeois civilisation has borne its luxurious fruits. America has taken first place among the free and educated nations in level of development of the productive forces of collective human endeavour, in the utilisation of machin ery and of all the wonders of modern engineering. At (lie same time, America has become one of the foremost countries in regard to the depth of the abyss which lies between the handful of arrogant multimillionaires who wallow in filth and luxury, and the millions of working people who constantly live on the verge of pauperism." '

By now, the bourgeois civilisation has come to manifest itself more openly as a civilisation of enslavement and coercion. Multimillionaires and the millions of the unemployed, intensification of labour and unhealthy conditions for vast masses of working people, suppression of dissenters and even removal of presidents who do not suit the military-industrial complex, proliferating crime, racial discrimination, sexual ``permissiveness'' and drug addiction are all signs of a dying civilisation, as many of its advocates have had to admit. No other civilisation of the past, in leaving the historical scene, resorted to such terrible crimes. The dropping of atomic bombs on Japanese civilians, sadistic methods of warfare against the Vietnamese people, the efforts by the most reactionary imperialist circles to set up and maintain fascist regimes, and the frenzied arms drive that can lead to a disastrous third world war are all features of the degenerating bourgeois civilisation.

It is only natural in these conditions that the whole of advanced mankind pins its hopes on the growth and

The communist civilisation basically coincides with the concept of communist formation. But here, too, the concept of civilisation is used to emphasise mostly social and cultural indicators, naturally attained on the basis of the new society's economic advantages. In this instance, one can also speak of a socio-cultural, ethical and aesthetic `` substratum'' which permeates all the values of the communist civilisation, of communist culture in the broadest sense of the word.

One should first point out that the communist civilisation is taking shape and developing on the basis of a critical assimilation of the outstanding past achievements of the bourgeois civilisation. But this historical continuity cannot obscure the fact that in one decisive aspect the communist civilisation is a fundamental negation of all the preceding civilisations.

What I mean is that the pre-communist civilisation emerged and developed as an antagonistic-class social phenomenon with intrinsic irreconcilable social contradictions, enmity and struggle between the oppressors and the oppressed. The growing productive forces increasingly made it possible to multiply mankind's assets but the lion's share of the values created went to the privileged classes, the owners of the basic means of production, while the bulk of the population---the enslaved---were barely able to make both ends meet. Similarly, the pre-communist civilisation created outstanding spiritual values, but a huge section of the people at the bottom of the social pyramid had no access to these.

The socio-cultural, moral ``substratum'' of that civilisation manifested itself in social inequality and hostility, in open or veiled anti-humanism, an extreme humiliation of the working man, his physical and spiritual enslavement, and numerous forms of suppression of his rights and freedoms.

This briefly outlined complex of the key indicators of the pre-communist civilisation based on private property

~^^1^^ V. 1. Lenin, "Letter to American Workers", Collected Works, Vol. 28, pp. 62-63.

strengthening of the communist civilisation. It is just over 60 years old and is in the first phase of its existence. It has yet to travel a long road, but even on the strength of what has already been achieved every honest-minded person will recognise the existence of a new civilisation, new in terms of all the fundamental economic, social, political, cultural and moral criteria.

Marx described communism as genuine humanism. These words reveal the essence, the unique peculiarity of the communist civilisation, with its real concern for the individual, for his inalienable right to freedom and happiness. This is the first ever civilisation where progress is free from antagonistic contradictions and where all its achievements belong to the people.

In the pre-communist civilisation, greed and lust for higher profits were the main motive force, society's goal, the chief concern of the ruling classes. In the new and humane civilisation, the goal of production is to serve the people, to meet their material and spiritual requirements to an ever greater extent.

Social property in the means of production provides a solid basis for the communist civilisation, ruling out all forms of social inequality and social injustice, the existence of antagonistic classes, of oppressors and oppressed. Communism not only leaves no place for contending classes, but at the higher stages of its development will lead to a socially homogeneous society, when classes will disappear altogether.

In accordance with its humanistic principles, the communist civilisation does away with all national antagonisms and establishes the principle of internationalism, of the peoples' fraternal unity. In all the earlier civilisations, the stronger ethnic group, goaded on by the exploiting classes, sought to supplement the class oppression with national oppression. In the communist civilisation, something `` inconceivable'' happens: the more advanced socialist peoples have taken the way of selfless assistance to the economically and culturally less developed peoples.

The new civilisation gives the masses access to high culture, rouses them to creative endeavour and turns them into real architects of history who act on the basis of an in-depth study of the objective laws of social development.

Lenin wrote that under socialism, "for the first time in the history of civilised society, the mas a of the population will rise to taking an independent part, not only in voting and elections, but also in the everyday adminislntlion of the, slate". '

In its advance, the communist civilisation puts an end to the "fragmented man" and opens up the way for the all-round development of the individual, ennobling him and bringing out all his creative abilities.

Throughout the long centuries of the pre-communist civilisation, the egoistic, man-hating morality of the ruling classes had full sway in society. The communist civilisation lias created a new moral code, permeated with sincere and consistent humanism, deep respect for the human individual, friendship and mutual understanding.

Neither hostile propaganda nor ideological subversion can blacken the new and truly humane civilisation which can create not only powerful instruments of production, but also a totally new individual, opening up all the ways for his self-assertion and improvement.

~^^1^^ V. I. Lenin, "The State and Revolution", Collected Works. Vol. 25, pp. 492-93.

Chapter Seven WARS AND SOCIO-ECONOMIC FORMATIONS

one slave-holding despotic state fell and another won, the .slave-holding system continued to exist and develop. Hut. at the next stage, when the contradictions between the productive forces and the slave-holding relations of production were aggravated and when slave-holding began to decline, wars between states became more frequent and unhinged the slave-holding system as a whole. The dialectics of history was such that these wars of aggrandisement unsettled and weakened the social system, so inducing its decline and objectively working for historical progress. This fully applies to the ceaseless wars in the feudal period. But one has to make a number of essential reservations when considering the role of interstate wars in the development of the capitalist system. At the initial stage, when capitalism was establishing itself, wars by advanced capitalist powers against reactionary feudal forces and their abettors were just and progressive. At the next, more developed stage, wars between, bourgeois states did not have any substantial effect on the fortunes of the capitalist system taken as a whole. With the advent of imperialism---the final stage of capitalism---wars between capitalist countries and increasingly between groups of capitalist countries began markedly to deepen the internal contradictions of the capitalist formation. However hard these wars may have been for the millions of working people involved, these wars, especially the two world wars, objectively promoted the growth of the forces that were to put an end to imperialism.

It cannot be denied that the First World War and Russia's defeat in that war did promote the emergence of the revolutionary explosion, and the overthrow of tsarism and the capitalist-landowner order. But it would be a mistake--- and some W^Testern historians make this mistake---to regard the lost war as the basic cause of the socialist revolution. That revolution had deep socio-economic and political prerequisites which had matured over a very long time. Let me emphasise that the lost war was not the basic cause of the revolution, although it did promote its origination. It would be more precise to say that up to a point both the war and the revolution had common causes. When joining the war, tsarism to a certain extent sought to damp down the terrible internal contradictions and to avoid a revolution.

Though war can and frequently does promote a revolutionary explosion, Lenin, the Bolsheviks and all true Marxist

The role of wars between states in the history of socioeconomic formations is of considerable scientific interest. What is the role wars have to play in the collapse of some formations and the establishment of others? Do they servo the upward development of society? I think that it is impossible to give a simple answer to this question when one considers wars between states and not revolutionary struggle, uprisings and civil wars, which have been and are being carried on by forward-looking social classes in response to the armed force used by the reactionary classes to maintain their positions. No one, for instance, can cast doubt on the progressive role of the French Revolution of 1789-1794 or the wars of liberation which revolutionary France carried on against the forces of the counter-- revolutionary French aristocracy and against the armed intervention by the states which sought to return France to the old order.

It is hard to overestimate the role and importance of the Great October Socialist Revolution and the heroic war the Soviet state had to carry on against the armed forces of inlernal and external counter-revolution.

Nor is there any doubt that the peoples' wars for liberation from colonialism and neocolonialism, and from every form of foreign oppression are just and progressive.

Let us consider, however, the wars which states belonging to the same or to different formations fought against each other. In order to decide whether these wars were progressive or reactionary, their substance needs to be concretely analysed so as to determine their goals. Because the nature and purposes of these wars were so different and specific, one cannot hope to obtain a straightforward answer.

Let us look at the historical evidence. Up until a certain period, wars fought between slave-holding states had no substantial effect on the course of social development. While

internationalists opposed imperialist wars of aggrandisement, called for a declaration of war against war, and for a mustering of all the forces Lo put an end lo the social system which produced plunderous wars, involving the death of millions of working people of different nationalities. True socialism rejects all wars of aggrandisement, even if they are objectively able here and there to promote a victorious socialist revolution, as in Russia in 1917 and other countries after the Second World War. We shall return to this question when specially considering the role of wars in the emergence of the communist formation, of its first, socialist phase.

Resuming our consideration of the role of interstate wars in the fortunes of socio-economic formations, we can safely draw one incontrovertible conclusion which is in complete accord with the facts of actual history. It is that at the descending stages of antagonistic-class formations---- slaveholding society, feudalism and capitalism---it is not only the internal class contradictions but also interstate contradictions which are aggravated and which engender interstate wars. These wars not only increase in number but also become more devastating. They shake the very foundations of the formation and push it into decline.

There is a need to make one important reservation. The presence in the modern world of the socialist system alongside the outgoing capitalist system is a real factor which helps to contain the wars which spring from the very nature of imperialism. Even the most aggressive imperialist circles can no longer allow themselves the satisfaction of resorting to wars with impunity in order to resolve contradictions between imperialist countries. As for the tantalising prospect of profiting at the expense of the USSR and other socialist countries, this can hardly be done nowadays: the adversary happens to be very strong and, despite his sincere devotion to peace, is capable of retaliating in a devastating manner.

When considering the role of interstate wars today in the fortunes of socio-economic formations, we find two extremely erroneous concepts which may have the most dangerous consequences for mankind as a whole, if any attempt is made to translate them into practice. The first of these starts from the assumption that the waning capitalist system can be perpetuated by means of armed force. The sec-

ond, propounded by the Troskyites, neo-Trotskyites and Maoists, who cover up their extreme reactionary aspirations by means of loud leftist catchwords, starts from the need to give revolution a ``push'' by means of war and implanl a so-called socialism by meddling in the affairs of other states. Practical attempts to realise either conception inevitably entail an outbreak of another world war.

Let us note from the outset that although their goals appear to be mutually exclusive the authors of both conceptions ignore the objective nature of social uniformities and practise a primitive voluntarism which assumes that they will find the world just as they want it. In both instances there is an overestimation of the role of political force and war in the fortunes of social systems.

The "force theory" is well analysed in many writings, notably in Engels' Anti-Diihring, which showed how Diihring distorted the causal nexus between economics and politics. Engels wrote: "The formation of political relationships is historically the fundamental thing, and instances of economic dependence are only effects or special cases, and are consequently always facts of a second order." '

In accordance with existing reality, Marxism has shown that neither war nor political force can be converted into a factor of decisive importance in history. War can neither help to produce a new socio-economic formation nor destroy a viable social system. Here, in complete accord with the materialist view of history, it is economic relations that are the crucial force. Wars originate from economic antagonisms and can in no sense be regarded as the architects of socio-economic systems. Politics, of which war is an instrument, is a concentrated expression of economics. But politics is ultimately determined by economic relations, by economic antagonisms, so that war as a means of implementing policy with the use of arms depends on the economic system and cannot in any sense engender it. Socioeconomic formations emerge and leave the stage when the objective conditions, notably economic conditions, mature for such events.

Politics, and consequently the violent, armed forms of its realisation, certainly have an active role to play in the interaction between economics arid politics. Wars between

~^^1^^ Frederick Engels, Anti-Diihring, p. 195. 10-0642

states can slow down or accelerate various processes which determine the development of .socio-economic formations. But they cannot do more than that.

Let us recall that the slave-owners of Ancient Home engaged in endless wars in order to increase the number of their slaves and so compensate for the low productivity of slave labour. Slave-holding Rome was a threat to many other states, imposed its power on them, enslaved other peoples, and brutally put down their uprisings. This appeared to show that Rome's power was inexhaustible. Actually, the addiction to aggression expressed the deep-seated and growing crisis of Rome's slave-holding system. Indeed, Rome's drive was evidence of a fatal disease eating away at the entrails of that powerful ancient state. It sowed the wind and reaped the whirlwind. It aroused fierce hatred among all the peoples it oppressed and enslaved. Nothing could save the slave-holding system, which even then relied on brute force, looked to war for salvation and inevitably went down to defeat.

Long before that, other slave-holding states in the East and the West faced the same lot. There again, war did not help to safeguard a social organism which had been drained of its vital forces.

Let us also recall the futile attempts to put down the French bourgeois revolution at the end of the 18th century and to restore the old order by means of war. In effect, the defeat of the reactionary feudal forces had a beneficial influence on the establishment of bourgeois relations in France which were then progressive.

In 1815, the so-called Holy Alliance was set up by feudal Austria, Prussia and tsarist Russia to suppress revolutionary and national liberation movements. The founders of the Holy Alliance sought to stem the tide of history with the help of guns and mortars. But within fifteen years, the Holy Alliance had broken up under the pressure of revolutionary processes in Russia, France, Belgium, Poland and other countries, so proving that armed force cannot help to stem revolutionary processes for any lengthy period of history.

It is safe to say that both the First and the Second World wars were started by the imperialist powers not only to redivide the world but also to suppress the growing revolutionary movement and to stabilise capitalism.

Nazi Germany, together with the other participants in the Munich deal, started the Second World War in Hie hope of stamping out the "red menace", dealing a death blow lo the socialist system, and stopping the growing international influence of the Great October Socialist Revolution. But the whole imperialist system was weakened by the defeat of Nazi Germany, fascist Italy and militaristic Japan, the most aggressive detachments of imperialism. So, far from justifying the hope of undermining the forces of socialism, the war actually deepened the general crisis of capitalism and pushed that system closer to the point of its extinction. Many countries in Europe and Asia fell away from the world capitalist system, while the peoples of many colonies rose boldly to fight for their freedom against the weakened imperialism and won it.

Consequently, social practice shows that wars cannot help to destroy a new socio-economic formation which has been produced by objective historical development. Wars can slow down its spread and consolidation. Indeed, they can help to overthrow a new social system in this or that country, but they cannot prevent the establishment of a new socio-economic formation as a whole. They cannot do so not out of any fatal predetermination or some peculiar providentialism, but for tangible reasons which can be analysed and taken into account. Wars cannot eliminate a new socio-economic formation because it carries with it a higher level of development in social production and social organisation, and a more perfect form of political administration, which is why it can and does produce a deterrent military potential enabling it to retaliate with superior blows and so to safeguard itself.

One other thing also needs to be taken into account, for it is most pronounced in the establishment of the communist formation, of its first, socialist phase. States which resort to war in an effort to suppress the new social system as a rule have progressive social classes sympathising with socialism, looking to its victoiy and helping to defeat the aggressive forces to the best of their ability.

All of this shows that in the course of historical development wars started in defence of economically, politically and spiritually depleted systems eventually end in defeat. Had it been otherwise, mankind would still have been at the slave-holding stage.

to*

We have noted the failure of imperialist attempts to Slippress socialism by means of war. But did those who began to make the imperialist countries' policy in the post-war period actually learn any lessons from the outcome of the Second World War? No, they did not. One would think that, history makes mad those it wants to destroy. The veterans of the cold war and the most reactionary and aggressive circles of the imperialist bourgeoisie continued to hope that they would manage to do what Hitler and his men had failed to do. Indeed, the hope that the arms race, the preparation of big and small wars, reckless military gambles, political violence and military blackmail can stop the tide of history and the course of social progress has been and remains the supreme philosophical wisdom of the advocates of the cold war.

For the monopolists, wars have been and continue to be a means of solving their economic problems, of obtaining super-profits and making fantastic fortunes. How can all this be compared with elementary common sense, concern for true prestige and genuine national interests, or respect for the loudly proclaimed religious and moral values? As far as the monopoly elite and its true servitors are concerned, these are no more than hollow words. For these superbusinessmen, money is the only hard value. Words can always be substituted by others, they can always be interpreted, other words can be used to go back on promises, but money, big money in the form of gold is the real thing. This kind of money is always solid.

The policy of brinkmanship in the cold war period, the arms drive and the flood of dirty literature in defence of armed aggression, all sprang from the urge to make fabulous fortunes, to "roll back communism", to stamp it out to regain the lost rights of unrestricted plunder of the once colonial nations, and establish for all time an empire of the US monopolies and their European and Asian junior partners.

Behind the stereotype talk of a "Soviet menace", the frankest politicians and ideologists have wasted heaps of paper urging the need to use atomic weapons in order to preserve the last formation of social inequality and wage slavery. The leader of the US ultras, Goldwater, and his fellows urged the use of atomic weapons against the Vietnamese people and then, apparently, against all the nations and regimes they do not like.

The militarists, throwing up their usual screen of talk about freedom and civilisation, pushed the idea of the necessity and inevitability of an "atomic settlement" of the conflict between capitalism and communism. The well-known aircraft designer Alexander de Seversky, a one-time tsarist officer, was a prominent prophet of a global nuclear war. He likened the Soviet Union and the United States to two lead-grey thunder clouds charged with growing electrical potentials with opposite signs whose inevitable discharge would occur with terrible force. He rejected any idea of limiting or eliminating nuclear weapons. He held that the way out did not lie in eliminating nuclear weapons, but in eliminating war. But how was this to be done? He wrote: "Global wars will end with World War III; this will be our last great war. The world will then live either entirely under freedom or entirely under communism." ' This was written by a man who knew very well what modern nuclear weapons could do.

Leaving aside this trite and tired contrast of freedom and communism, which implies the identity of freedom with the tough power of the financial aristocracy, let us note that Seversky, who had once seen for himself the fury of the revolutionary masses in Petrograd and who had a narrow escape, fails to take into account the role of the masses in our epoch. They are now strong enough to prevent gentlemen like Seversky to stage their "last great war". These gentlemen will have to find another game for themselves to play, considering that this time they will have nowhere to flee to save their own skins.

The arms drive, the military threats, the efforts to intimidate ``nervous'' people, and the "dirty war" which was carried on in Vietnam by IIS imperialism did not strengthen capitalism but shook it and discredited it in the eyes of more and more millions of people all over the world. It is true that in the meantime the arms merchants were making a lot of money.

During the cold war, the idea that capitalism could and needed to be defended and revolutionary processes -damped out wilh the use of weapons was not only propounded by many anti-communist ideologues but also ronslilnlod the

' Alexander P. de Seversky, America: Too Young to Die! New York, 1961, p. 159.

basis of the military-strategic plans of some imperialist countries.

This task of doing away with the "communist menace" and stabilising the capitalist system with the use of armed force was spelt out by the authors of a notorious book, A Forward Strategy for America. They made no secret of the fact that the world balance of forces was steadily changing in favour of socialism and against capitalism. They wrote:

``The United States and the Free World are confronted by a deadly challenge. Within less than a generation the cause of freedom and the prestige and influence of the United States have been progressively so weakened that the West-at-bay is no longer a figure of speech but a precise statement of a real condition .... The 'ebb and the flow' should, by now, be an understood characteristic of communist strategy. Thus far, the tide has been coming in stronger every period of ebbflow. The operational advantage in the contest, which is literally a contest for the future of man upon this earth, is shifting to the side of communism. This slippage of power opens a period of mounting concern for America and her associates and a time for great decisions." '

They analysed and rejected any half-way measures for enhancing the prestige of the United States and its partners, and wanted the "great decision" to take the form of a sudden nuclear attack on the communist world in order to establish US domination of the world. They went on: "For the first time in history there exist weapons permitting a technologically armed superpower to conquer the entire world. The master method of world conquest is a surprise attack utilising nuclear explosives of high power designed to destroy the competing superpower's military force".^^2^^

The successful preparation and implementation of this perfidious and devastating blow, in effect, constituted the substance of the "forward strategy for America". But if the enemy managed to withstand the first sudden thermonuclear blow and retaliated? The authors of this incendiary book were forced to reckon with this unpleasant prospect

and to moderate their yearning for a pre-emptive nuclear war. They urged the buildup of a military superiority that would make it possible to attack without a declaration of war. In one way or another, they pinned their hopes on the use of force, and added this pompous passage: "We are confronted by an opponent who sees to it that the `normal' processes of history shall not remain normal. Our lot is conflict. History brings us 'not peace but a sword'. Will our hands grasp it?" '

During the cold war period and, unfortunately, even after the relaxation of tensions in international relations, a sizeable number of Western politicians, military men, politologists, sociologists and journalists continue to regard nuclear war as the most important means for preserving the "free world". Having lost hope of scoring a victory over communism in peaceful economic and cultural competition, they expect to stop the shrinking of capitalism's `` Lebensraum'' with the use of armed force. This was most frankly advocated by the US strategic scientist Herman Kahn in his book On Thermonuclear War. It is a curious fact that Kahn sought to console his readers with the prospect that not everyone would be killed in the forthcoming war. and that not all the houses and industrial enterprises would bo razed to the ground. From his book we learned that the people remaining in the world and the means of subsistence at their disposal would be adequate to keep history going. Another consolation was that war is terrible, but then the world itself is terrible as well, the difference between the two being merely one of degree and level.

Kahn accepted control of armaments, but it was a special type of control designed to prevent the development of a bomb that would actually split the globe down the middle. That would, of course, be going too far, for then Mr. Kahn would have no place to put his desk in on which to write his war-mongering books.

He was also worried by another thing. Would not the people remaining after a thermonuclear war in the capitalist world start toppling the pre-war governments and pre-war social institutions? He hastened to draw the attention of these governments to the need to take the most stringont measures to "maintain law and order''.

~^^1^^ R. Strausz-Hupe, W. R. Kintuer, S. T. Possony, A Forward Strategy for America, Harper and Brothers Publishers, New York, 1061, pp. 396-97.

~^^2^^ Ibid., p. 14.

Ibid., p.

These and similar other prophecies and calls, which clash with elementary logic and honesty, are designed to produce a sense of fanaticism and war hysteria so as to prepare for another world war. The imperialist powers have always allowed full freedom for the propaganda of war, for the defence and popularisation of their militaristic programmes and glorification of war as a means of ``self-assertion'' and the "nation's spiritual improvement". No state institution in the capitalist countries prevents the publication of books like James Jones's A Thin Red Line, which contains these words: "This book is cheerfully dedicated to those greatest and most heroic of all human endeavors, War and Warfare; may they never cease to give us the pleasure, excitement and adrenal stimulation that we need." ^l

The spirit of the cold war and its savage irrationality were also loudly expressed in a book by William S. Schlamm, who admits that the need for an atomic war against the socialist countries is not caused by any fear of an armed attack on the United States and its allies. Schlamm does not believe in such a possibility, and writes: "The substance of the conflict between communism and the West ... is that communism wants peace and flourishes in conditions of peace. This desperate situation is unparalleled in the history of mankind.''^^2^^ Capitalism, Schlamm admits, can no longer exist without resorting to wars. Wars and preparation for them have become something like a natural condition for the existence of that social system, which can maintain its existence by means of threats of thermonuclear war and active preparation for it: "In order to survive, the West must resolutely strive to carry on war.''~^^3^^

But while Kahn, Schlamm and other advocates of the idea of rescuing the capitalist formation by means of wars between states and the use of thermonuclear weapons wrote their books, many Western scientists, political leaders and public figures felt that, despite their anti-Marxist and anticommunist views, they had to repudiate these wild manhating conceptions. These political leaders and scientists well realised the absurdity and mortal danger of a thermonuclear war for the fortunes of capitalism itself. Lot us

~^^1^^ James Jones, A Thin Red Line, New York, 1962, p. 2.

~^^2^^ W. Schlamm, Die Grenzen des Wunders, Zurich, 1959, p. 185 (emphasis added---A nth.).

^^3^^ Ibid.

recall in this context what Charles E. Osgood, President of the American Psychological Association, said about the urge to resolve socio-political problems with the aid of the hydrogen bomb: "It like a man saying he would use dynamite to get rid of the mice in his house." ' John Newman, a prominent US public figure, said that Herman Kahn's book was shot through with a bloodthirsty irrationality of a kind he had not seen in any other book. His conclusion was that no one had the right to think or write things of that kind.

But Newman and other present-day bourgeois humanists do not realise that under imperialism the "bloodthirsty irrationality" of the advocates of thermonuclear war is typical and natural. Kahn, Jones, Seversky and their like have no monopoly on what they are saying, because these ideas are also accepted by a section of the ruling class in the imperialist countries, which most fully and adequately expresses the substance of imperialism, its logic, its boundless corruption and inhumanity, and its wild dream of preserving the old and moribund world with the use of thermonuclear weapons in a total war.

Forward-looking mankind has good reason to assert that the society which needs wars of aggrandisement, destruction and bloodshed for its existence, a society which threatens mankind with a worldwide thermonuclear war in this atomic age, keeps it in a state of tension and fear and makes it waste a large part of the human energy on the making of weapons of mass destruction, that such a society has signed its own death warrant. Its collapse is a necessary condition for mankind's genuine renascence and man's ennoblement.

The development and strengthening of the socialist world, the growth of its influence and might, the spread of the anti-war movement involving the popular masses in the capitalist world and the developing countries have shaken tho positions of the cold war advocates and shown that the capitalist order cannot be perpetuated by means of thermonuclear blackmail. More and more bourgeois statesmen are corning to understand the actual situation, so opting for peaceful coexistence and detente, which the Soviet Union and the other socialist countries have always consistently and firmly advocated.

~^^1^^ Ch. Osgood, An Alternative lo War or Surrender, New York. 1962, p. 66.

``The passage from the cold war, from the explosive confrontation of the two worlds, to detente," L. I. Brezhnev said, "was primarily connected with changes in the correlation of world forces. But much effort was required for people---especially those responsible for the policy of states ---to become accustomed to the thought that not brinkmanship but negotiation of disputed questions, not confrontation but peaceful co-operation, is the natural state of things." '

The changing situation in the world has forced some of the erstwhile supporters of ``brinkmanship'' and atomic blackmail to moderate their bellicosity and to ponder the following question: are nuclear weapons really so reliable for maintaining their beloved social order and for "curbing communism''?

The evolution of views on this issue is epitomised in Herman Kahn's new book, which he wrote together with William Brown and Leon Martel. They are forced to admit thai the domestic political scandal and ten years of useless war in South-East Asia undermined the leading position of the United States in international affairs. But perhaps nuclear weapons could help to achieve in socialist Vietnam what could not be done with conventional weapons? Here Kahn displays a laudable caution: noting the changes that have occurred in international relations and stating the end of the cold war, he points out the growing awareness of the fact that atomic war, or even a major war with the use of conventional weapons, is impossible. The three authors take every opportunity to emphasise the danger of any military weakening of the West, but to be quite fair one has to note that their objection to nuclear war is quite clearly formulated. They claim that the present leadership of either superpower is aware that nuclear war would result in tremendous devastation, and that this awareness is in itself a very strong deterrent.

But a sober assessment of the achievements of the detente, the advance of peaceful coexistence, and business contacts between the socialist and the capitalist system should not prevent one from seeing the efforts of those who seek (o poison the international climate, aggravate relations between countries with different social systems, and step up

the arms race on which the arms merchants are making their fabulous fortunes.

The idea of defending capitalism by means of wars, military threats, the arms race, etc., has not been shelved but is still an ideological weapon of the anti-communist forces, which seek to return the world to the cold war period and to frustrate every reasonable attempt to hold back the arms race, to ban the manufacture of thermonuclear weapons and new means of mass destruction, and to exclude war from the life of society.

The rejection of these reasonable and realistic measures, which are designed to benefit the whole of mankind, shows that war is still being regarded as a means of defending and perpetuating the doomed and obsolete private-property formation. Having lost hope of winning the peaceful competition with socialism, the most aggressive circles still pin their hopes on armed force. In order to justify the highly unpopular idea of war, the arms race, etc., the adversaries of detente make use of a poorly veiled lie. They claim that the socialist countries have been trying to lull the Western world into a sense of security in order to deliver a crushing thermonuclear strike and impose socialism on other countries by force. Innumerable books, booklets and articles describe the "crafty schemes" of the USSR, whose only pursuit is alleged to be preparation for a big war in order to devastate "Western civilisation", implant socialism and establish its own world domination. But this is only a rehash of the wild Maoist visions of a victory for "world revolution" through a third world war, presented as Marxist-Leninist ideas, and the authors of these provocative inventions are very well aware that Marxism and Maoism are incompatible and antithetical.

The claim that the USSR is allegedly preparing for the first thermonuclear strike is being backed up with "frank admissions" by the Soviet Union's statesmen and military leaders. Here is someone called Leon Goure, who has produced a book entitled War Survival in Soviet Strategy. USSR Civil Defence. He claims that what the Soviet Union has been doing in civil defence is preparation for thermonuclear war, a buildup of strength to deliver the first, strike against the adversary. Goure claims that since the 1960s. Soviet spokesmen have allegedly been declaring that the first strike needs to bo delivered by the armed forces of the Soviet Union presumably to forestall an attack from the West.

Documents and Resolutions. XXVlh Congress of the CPSU,

p. 20. 154

What are these statements by "Soviet spokesmen" which serve the author as proof of the Soviet Union's intention to deliver the first thermonuclear strike? He quotes Admiral of the Fleet S. G. Gorshkov as saying that the task of the Soviet Navy is most resolutely to block the way of aggression from the sea and to ward off a strike against the USSR". One will easily realise that this does not at all indicate any desire on the Soviet Union's part to make first use of nuclear weapons. But perhaps such an intention will be found in statements by Marshal A. A. Grechko, whom Goure also quotes. Here is what the Marshal said on this point: "The Soviet Armed Forces must be prepared at any moment and in the most difficult situation to beat back and frustrate aggression, whatever its origin and whatever the means and modes used, including nuclear weapons." '

Indeed, all the other statements by Soviet leaders to which Goure refers deal merely with the need to ward off aggression. He has been unable to find any statement urging the need to deliver the first thermonuclear strike. Does Mr. Goure really think that in order to demonstrate its total dedication to peace the Soviet Union has to give up all the necessary measures for strengthening its defence capability?

Goure and many others who make the false claim that the USSR wants to implant socialism by means of war are very well aware of the persevering and persistent efforts of the Soviet Union and other socialist countries to exclude war, especially thermonuclear war, from the life of society, not to resort to arms in settling the conflicts and resolving the contradictions that arise between states, to stop the development of new mass-destruction weapons, and so on.

They are also well aware of the USSR's proposals for an agreement repudiating a first thermonuclear strike. Still, they prefer to spread rumours about a "Soviet menace" to enable the military industrial complex to obtain billions in appropriations, so forcing the socialist countries, for their part, to spend large amounts of money on defence instead of using it to accelerate socialist construction and improve the people's well-being.

The capitalist monopolies with a stake in the arms business have enough money to bribe all the mass media, the

politicians, the journalists, the writers and the quasi-- scientists who are prepared tit ``prove'' and popularise the lie of the century, the very profitable idea of a "Soviet threat". The important thing to note is that the most rabid advocates of a cold war revival, making fortunes on the instruments of death and destruction, are as a rule themselves the sponsors of aggressive foreign policy and create dangerous hotbeds of tension, notably, in the Middle East, and in any area wherever this is possible. China's rulers now have an important role to play in fanning the war hysteria. The organisers of genocide in Kampuchea and military operations against Vietnam and other neighbouring countries also seek to cover up their aggressive plans with references to the much tattered idea of a "Soviet threat", which has always served as an ideological smokescreen for potential aggressors. Let us recall that Adolf Hitler and his henchmen sought to justify their plunderous attack on the USSR on the plea of some "Soviet threat''.

Still, the USSR's honest, principled and peace-loving foreign policy turns out to be stronger than the propaganda noises about a "Soviet threat", and even those who stand directly or indirectly to gain from this campaign are forced to recognise as much. Evidence of this comes from a book by Admiral of the Fleet Hill-Norton, entitled No Soft Options. For a number of years (until 1977), he was chairman of NATO's supreme organ, its Military Committee, and he is still in the habit of seeing terrible dangers from every hand, with the Soviet Union and its army naturally the source of all these dangers. But the odd thing is that, according to his own admission, many people in the West fail to see any threat coming from the East. The clearly dissatisfied admiral writes: "People continually ask whether there is a threat to NATO or to its individual memberstates. Others go further and assert that there is no threat." ' One would think that the admiral, with his wide-ranging military knowledge, would seek to dispel the misconceptions of the USSR, but, to be on the safe side, he still urges that the arms race should be whpped up and more money poured into it to rule out any "soft options''.

This work, like thousands of other books and articles in the West, seeks to resuscitate the moribund "positions

~^^1^^ P. Hill-Norton, No Soft Options. The Political-Military Realities of NATO, C. Hurst and Company, London, 1978, p. 16.

~^^1^^ A. A. Grechko, On Guard of Peace and Communist Construction Moscow, 1971, p. 64 (in Russian).

of strength" policy, which is the most futile one to pursue in dealing with the powerful but fundamentally peaceful Soviet state, and the other countries of the socialist community.

The Soviet Union has initialed many realistic proposals to limit armaments, to ban the manufacture and use of nuclear weapons, and to exclude interstate wars from the life of society.

The socialist countries have consistently held that in accordance with the rules of international law and in the spirit of the elementary norms of morality, no state is entitled to resort to weapons in order to maintain a social system which a majority of its people reject. The people alone have the right to choose and establish the socio-- political system they want. Whatever the people's choice---- whether it is historically right or wrong and however it may contradict the interests, the economic, political, militarystrategic and other calculations and considerations of other states---no state has the right to cancel out the people's choice by means of arms, by meddling in the internal affairs of another state. The whole of forward-looking mankind wrathfully protested against the atrocities of US imperialism in Vietnam, and the fact that the US militarists were forced to stop their war against the Vientnamese people shows that the overwhelming majority of men and women in the world cherish these legal and moral principles.

The more sober-minded politicians and public figures realise that it is futile and disastrous to seek a return to the cold war, and that to brandish thermonuclear weapons is a crime. Thus, G. F. Kennan categorically warns that nuclear war would be a catastrophe for all the countries involved. He writes: "It is of the most profound importance that the proliferation of nuclear weapons be halted. These weapons, which are much too terrible to be in human hands---ours or anybody else's---must be eliminated from the spectrum of possible military instruments. I am deeply distressed that the United States government takes no helpful action along these lines." '

He levels incisive criticism at the dirty propaganda designed to pervert the Soviet Union's domestic and foreign policy, to present it as an aggressor aiming to rock the foundations of the Western world and overwhelm it with the use of force. Keuuan says that the West is in the grip of a deep crisis, and is rotting at the core without any interference from the Russians. He says: "Show me first an America which has succesfully coped with the problems of crime, drugs, deteriorating educational standard, urban decay, pornography, and decadence of one sort or another--- show me an America that has pulled itself together and is what is ought to be, then I will tell you how we are going to defend ourselves from the Russian." '

He flatly rejects the idea that the Soviet Union could attack any other country or that the Soviet leaders could start a thermonuclear war, and points to the aggressiveness of the most irresponsible leaders from among the US ruling circles. He dismisses the idea that the Soviet leaders could use thermonuclear weapons for aggressive purposes, saying that they would never "commit great acts of destruction purely for the sake of destruction. They are Marxists whose political purpose undoubtedly requires the spread of the ideology and the expansion of Soviet power; . . . but I don't think the wanton destruction of large numbers of people fits in with their purpose. This is not the Marxist line at all.''~^^2^^

Kennan says that the USA's system and foreign policy meet with ever greater disapproval not only among the American people, but also among all other peoples who cherish their freedom and dignity.

An interesting point to note is that in his article, " America in a Hostile World", Zbigniew Brzezinski voices similar views, admitting the peoples' growing indignation at the foreign expansion of US business. But in contrast to Kennan and many other cautious and sober-minded US analysts, Brzezinski hopes that the disgruntled peoples will have to reckon with America's real power. He concludes his article with a presumptuous statement that is highly dangerous for the USA itself. He writes: "Above all, it is vital

~^^1^^ G. Urban, G. Kennan, "From Containement to... Self-- Containment". Conversation with G. F. Kennan, Encounter (London), Vol. XLVII, No. 3, September 1976, p. 34

~^^1^^ Ibid., p. 36.

~^^2^^ Ibid., p. 38.

to remember that ultimately it is only America that has the power to shape a hostile world for itself." '

Such statements remind one of the leaders of the Third Reich, who believed that the whole world would ultimately have to reckon with Germany's overwhelming might.

Some people think that one specific feature of mankind's history is that men have nothing to learn from it and that the words "lessons of history" are meaningless. It appears that Brzezinski has an equally low opinion of historical experience.

The attempt to maintain an obsolete social order by means of interstate wars and the urge to put down the new social system in this or that country through armed threats or military operations are not only absurd and Utopian in the light of history, but are also in crying contradiction with the juridical and moral norms whose violation can merely produce chaos and arbitrary acts in relations among states. In our day, juridical and moral nihilism can actually lead to an outbreak of a thermonuclear war.

the fundamental tenets of Marxist sociology concerning the objective nature of social development and the necessary and law-governed transition from capitalism to socialism. Marxism-Leninism just as emphatically rejects the "export of revolution" and "export of counter-revolution''.

Engels expressed the Marxist attitude to the role of wars in establishing socialism as follows: "One thing alone is certain: the victorious proletariat can force no blessings of any kind upon any foreign nation without undermining its own victory in so doing. Which of course by no means excludes defensive wars of various kinds." '

There we have a very clear-cut statement: revolutions cannot be exported like goods from one country to another. They originate when the necessary objective and subjective conditions and factors are there. They originate whenever social antagonisms between the contending classes in a given country are at fever pitch. Socialism cannot be imposed on a people, because socialism must be a matter for the people themselves to decide. Lenin wrote: "Socialism cannot be decreed from above. Its spirit rejects the mechanical bureaucratic approach: living, creative socialism is a product of the masses themselves.''~^^2^^

Socialism is not created on orders from above: there is even less chance of creating it on orders from outside. That is why throughout its existence Marxism lias rejected the conspiratorial tactics, the efforts to implant the new social system while ignoring the masses' will and level of consciousness and organisation.

The idea of establishing socialism by means of wars among states, by means of armed force is not a Marxist one. It was developed by some ``Leftist'' trends, especially by Trotskyism in accordance with its unscientific, subjectivist and voluntarist methodology. At one time, Trotskyism suggested the adventurist plan for using the Soviet state and its army to carry out ``revolutions'' in other countries, but this was rejected in principle by the Communist Party and the Soviet state as being alien and hostile to the spirit of Marxism-Leninism.

Up to now we have mainly considered the futility and reactionary nature of the attempts to maintain the obsolete social system by means of aggressive wars. Let me add that the socialist system has now been consolidated and has built up a military potential with which the most aggressive imperialist circles have to reckon. The peace forces' organised, purposeful and effective struggle is capable of preventing the use of wars to counter-revolutionary ends.

Let us now consider the following aspect of the matter: is it possible to establish a socialist system by means of wars against imperialism carried on by the states of the world socialist system?

Some think that Marxism, while rejecting defence of a reactionary order by means of aggressive, counter-- revolutionary wars, allegedly allows for the possibility and need to use the armed forces of a socialist state to establish socialism in other countries. Actually, the idea of implanting socialism through wars among states has nothing in common with Marx, for it is a voluntarist approach which contradicts

~^^1^^ Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Selected Correspondence, p. 351.

~^^2^^ V. I. Lenin, "Meeting of the All-Russia Central Executive Committee, November 4 (17) 1917", Collected Works, Vol. 26, p. 288.

~^^1^^ Z. Brzezinski, "America in a Hostile World", Contemporary Review (London), Vol. 229, No. 1330, 1976, p. 244.

11-0642

In the very early days of the socialist state, Lenin attacked the ``Lei't-wiiig" Communists, who wanted to step up the international revolutionary process hy means of wars against capitalism. Lenin wrote: "Such a `theory' would be completely at variance with Marxism, for Marxism has always heen opposed to `pushing' revolutions, which develop with the growing acuteness of the class antagonisms that engender revolutions." '

Nowadays, it is the ``Left-wing'' doctrinaires in the international working-class movement who reject the idea of peaceful coexistence among states with different social systems and advocate Trotskyite-type projects.

Maoism, has to be specially considered. In practice, the Maoists have found common ground with the extreme reactionaries, with fascist regimes like the Chilean junta, with the NATO generals, and with forces seeking to suppress the world national liberation movement. They have carried on subversive activity against the countries of existing socialism and have indulged themselves in issuing absurd and extremely reactionary ``Leftist'' calls, like the call confidently to look to a new world war for a victory of some Sinicised socialism throughout the world. They have established contacts with the most reactionary imperialist circles, while claiming, for their dogmatic purposes, that interstate wars can be ended only after the abolition of the capitalist system.

There is no doubt that the abolition of capitalism would mean that all social antagonisms, all economic and political causes of war would be totally and finally eliminated. But the Maoists, who are highly ``revolutionary'' in their verbiage, say that the imperialist powers cannot be forced to accept peaceful coexistence with the socialist countries so as to ensure peace even before the total collapse of capitalism. One will realise that the Maoists' denial of the possibility of peaceful coexistence and their idea that a third world war is fatally inevitable is designed to reject the struggle for peace, for detente and disarmament. The Maoists' adventurist calls boldly to advance towards a thermonuclear war, without fearing it or reckoning with its devastating consequences, and to be prepared to build

a "wonderful future" on the ruins of the nations incinerated in a thermonuclear war are brave and highly hypocril - ic calls which help Iho imperialist warmongers. Indeed, it turns out that, far from trying to avoid war, one lias to seek it in order to increase the world revolutionary potential and allegedly to bring on the total victory of a world socialist revolution. These false and provocative inventions are capable only of discrediting Marxism and existing socialism among sizeable numbers of poorly informed people.

We find, therefore, that those who distort Marxism-- Leninism in an ostensibly revolutionary elan adopt the Trotskyite formula according to which war is a source of revolution and the crucial means for establishing the new socio-economic formation. It was no accident at all that even at the initial stages of the Maoists' open rupture with Marxism and the countries of existing socialism, the Trotskyites hastened to voice their sympathies for the Maoists, for their ``ultra-radical'' answer to the problem of war and revolution.

The Fourth International, an organ of Trotskyism, fully endorsed the Maoist statements which, as it asserts, differ sharply from the "sickly-sweet official Russian statements about the possibility of 'peaceful coexistence' ''.

The Trotskyite provocateurs, like their Maoist associates, regard every act and word in defence of peaceful coexistence and protection of mankind from a thermonuclear disaster as ``sickly-sweet'', because by contrast they claim to be the most resolute revolutionaries. True Marxist-- Leninists reject the idea of implanting socialism by means of interstate wars, but simultaneously extend disinterested assistance to the peoples rising to struggle against imperialism and standing up for their state independence and freedom.

In conclusion, let me emphasise the idea which is aimed against attempts to set up interstate wars as the main cause of social revolutions and the crucial condition for the emergence of new socio-economic formations, including communism.

No new formation results from wars between states, but from an extreme aggravation of class antagonisms. One needs to draw a distinction between these two different social phenomena, and it is not right to identify these two forms in which social antagonisms are resolved, namely,

~^^1^^ V. I. Lenin, "Strange and Monstrous", Collected Works, Vol. 27, pp. 71-72!

11*

interstate wars and revolutions. The former spring from contradictions between states, and the latter, from contradictions between classes. Of course, these two types of social antagonisms are not separated by a gulf: one need merely recall that interstate wars are a continuation of politics by other, armed means, while politics is (he sphere of interclass relations. Let me stress once again that both revolutions and interstate wars ultimately have the same basis---economic and socio-class contradictions---and interact with each other. There is no doubt that it is the working classes which suffer most from interstate wars between antagonistic class states, for these aggravate class antagonisms, fortify the oppressed in their urge to put an end to the social system which is not only based on exploitation but also converts them into cannon fodder.

There is no doubt that wars between states aggravate class antagonisms and can, in some conditions, accelerate revolutionary processes. With this in mind, Lenin said that in the past there had not been a single revolution not connected with war, but one has to be a diehard dogmatist to construe his words about past history and definite historical conditions as meaning that in the present epoch there can be no revolutions without wars, and then go on to establish a solid cause-and-effect nexus between war and revolution. What Lenin said and wrote, and the whole spirit of the Marxist-Leninist theory make it impossible to convert war into a necessary, constant and inevitable cause of revolution. One need merely recall the Cuban revolution in order to understand the absurdity of setting up interstate wars (a factor capable of promoting revolution) as a necessary cause of revolution.

The socialist society is now over 60 years old, and its experience shows that it needed lasting peace among nations, instead of interstate wars, to develop and establish itself. The fear of the wild anti-communist, William Schlamm, is quite justified: socialism needs peace and flourishes in time of peace. The real connection between socialism and peace has been very well understood by Schlamm, one of the most avowed enemies of the new social system.

The struggle for peace is a continuation of genuine socialist policy in international relations. For the socialist state, peace is not a tactical slogan but an expression of

its substance. The society which eliminates social antagonisms and establishes relations of mutual assistance and friendship among men must have a deep revulsion against, any attempt to turn nation against nation, to engender a new worldwide shambles. By its very nature, socialism rejects man's oppression of man and one nation's oppression of another with equal consistency.

Throughout its history, the USSR did not and could not aliow itself to launch any aggressive wars against other states. The wars the Soviet Union was forced to carry on were all defensive wars. The USSR lias never intended to use its strength to encroach on the freedom and independence of neighbouring states, like Finland. Turkey. Iran and China.

The forces hostile to the Soviet Union have tried hard to distort this truth. They have niosl often tried to twist the 1956 events in Hungary and the 1968 events in Czechoslovakia. In these countries, the counter-revolutionary forces tried to overthrow the socialist system established by the people and to restore the old order. Is it surprising that the USSR and other socialist countries responded to the call by the fraternal peoples and prevented both the ``noisy'' and the ``quiet'' counter-revolution from triumphing. One can, of course, understand the extreme disappointment of the various intelligence services which had prepared and financed the Hungarian and Czechoslovak acts, but their provocative wails over their fiasco cannot drown out the truth: the socialist states fulfilled their internationalist, duty and helped the peoples which had fallen victim to violence and intrigue in maintaining the social and state sys tern they had chosen.

The socialist community of nations wants peaceful coos - istence with capitalism because it is sure that its new, young and highly creative socialist society will win the economic, political and ideological competition and struggle against capitalism. Peaceful coexistence is a form of class struggle which enables socialism to attain its historical goals without wars, without the use of armed force. Socialism is sure of victory because it has inexhaustible potentialities for economic growth, rnllnral development, genuine equality and the greatest, freedom for one and all.

Socialism tends l.o win the world by means other than wars against capitalist countries. It wants to win and will

win the world by setting a good example, by presenting a now social structure, a new system of truly humane relations among men, and new spiritual values which ennoble and glorify man.

Considering the prospects and ways for the development of socialism, Lenin expressed his firm and sincere confidence in these words: "Peace . . . will further our cause infinitely more than war.. . . Peace . .. will open channels for our influence a hundred times wider." ^^1^^

This fundamental tenet, according to which the establishment of socialism does not call for wars, should not be construed to mean that socialism wants peace on any terms. That is something the aggressive forces should understand and never forget. Their every attempt to break the peace will draw a crushing rebuff from the socialist world. It is futile to expect the socialist world to make one concession after another for the sake of peace, or that fear of a thermonuclear war could paralyse the socialist counttries' will. That is a profound and dangerous delusion.

The Soviet Union and the other socialist countries have to build up their defence forces for the sake of peace, for the peaceful victory of socialism. If the wild militaristic forces of imperialism gain the upper hand and start a war against the socialist community, capitalism will be incinerated in this war.

Summing up what has been said about wars in the destinies of socio-economic formations, one must state that wars have been unable to frustrate the upward development of the historical process or to prevent transition from the old and moribund formation to a new, more viable and progressive one. There are no facts in history to prove the opposite. All the countries of an emergent socio-economic formation gain in strength and develop as they overcome every obstacle and beat back armed attacks from moribund regimes. Conversely, states of the outgoing formation have never been able to perpetuate their existence by means of wars.

But it would be wrong to draw the conclusion that wars have a small part to play in the decline and ascent of social systems. Let us recall that the raids by the Hun no-

mads led by Attila wrought economic, socio-political and cultural destruction in the more developed states and so delayed historical progress for long periods. Conversely, the wars fought by revolutionary France hundreds of years later, at the end of the 18th century, helped to erode feudal relations and to establish the then progressive capitalist system.

According to the logic of things, advanced social systems could be established without wars. But that would be ari abstract possibility, because as a rule the doomed regimes resort to armed force to keep going.

Let us also note that in pre-socialist antagonistic-class societies the fact that a country belonged to this or that socio-economic formation did not produce any constant, so-called formational solidarity. At any rate, the fact that states belonged to the same formation did not at all prevent them from fighting each other in countless wars.

There is a radical change in the situation with the transition to existing socialism. Let us consider the principles and some aspects of formational solidarity under socialism.

'V. I. Lenin, "Ninth Congress of the R.C.P.(B.)", Collected Works, Vol. 30, pp. 452-53.

Chapter Eight

THE EMERGENCE AND DEVELOPMENT OF THE COMMUNIST FORMATION

sites for doing away with private-capitalist appropriation of what has been produced by the efforts of an overwhelming majority of citizens. The very development of capitalism produces the demand for bringing the social character of production into conformity with the social appropriation of the created values.

Another specific feature in the shaping of communism is the winning of political power in order to do away with capitalist relations and build a new society. When political power in Britain, France and other countries passed into the hands of the bourgeoisie in the 17th and 18th centuries, capitalist relations in the economy were already fairly developed.

Let us also note that all the formations preceding communism developed spontaneously, without any scientific knowledge of the objective laws operating in these formations. No bourgeois theorist has been able to produce anything like a scientific analysis of the substance of capitalist relations and the prospects for their development. This was first done by Marx in his Capital.

The theory of scientific communism, the laws of its functioning and development, the main stages of its formation, and the set of key economic, socio-political and ideological measures which need to be taken for successfully building the new society were all formulated long before the victory of socialism.

For the first time in mankind's history, the concentration of all the basic means of production in the hands of the people, as represented by their state, made it possible 1" manage all the key social processes in accordance with n plan. Socialisation of the basic means of production and planned management put an end to economic crises, unemployment, and social inequality, and established equality for all the socialist nations in economic, political and spiritual development.

A narrowing down of the sphere of spontaneous and accidental development in social life is a characteristic feature of the communist formation. Only in a planned social ist society is it possible to anticipate and prevent many negative spontaneous processes and to limit accidental plu¹ noincna to a maximum.

Let us consider this key feature of the society organised on communist lines.

1.

The shaping of every socio-economic formation is subordinate not only to general sociological uniformities, but also to the uniformities which are proper to it alone. Communism also has its special laws of origination, functioning and development. An in-depth and all-round knowledge of these laws is highly important in building the new society in the most favourable conditions and in the shortest possible historical period. Let us recall once again that the communist formation and socialism, its first phase, do not take shape within the entrails of the preceding society, as did all the earlier socio-economic formations. Thus, the capitalist mode of production took shape under the predominance of feudal relations. This was possible because, for all their essential distinctions, feudalism and capitalism were no more than social organisms embodying two varieties of one and the same private property. There was nothing to prevent capitalist relations from emerging and developing under feudalism as an independent economic sector. But the socialist economic sector cannot arise within the capitalist society because its formation entails a socialisation of the means of production, elimination of private property and other measures which are inconceivable in a capitalist society.

This does not suggest that in its development capitalism does not prepare the objective prerequisites for the establishment of socialism. Indeed, the emergence of socialism is prepared by the growth and deepening of the internal contradictions of capitalism and the emergence and strengthening of the working class and its communist vanguard.

The development of capitalism goes hand in hand wilh growing socialisation of production, while the form of appropriation remains private, capitalist. Stimulated by scientific and technical progress, the social character of production under capitalism objectively prepares the prerequi-

There are various indicators---general and particular--- for establishing the extent of social progress and the level of development of human civilisation. It is safe to say that one of these important criteria of the development of this or that social system is the extent to which it limits the power of the accidental and spontaneous over society and the individual. There is such a thing as the balance between spontaneous and conscious elements in social development, meaning the extent to which society, social groups and individuals are capable of narrowing down the gap between the conscious goal of their activity and its ultimate results. A look at human history from this standpoint will easily reveal one general trend: the nearer a social organisation stands to the beginnings of human history, the stronger is the power of spontaneous natural and social forces over men, and together with this also the role of accidents in the life of society and the individual.

Let us note that while the growing power of men over the spontaneous forces of nature will be most clearly seen in the ascent from the primitive communal system to capitalism, the narrowing down of the sphere of spontaneous development and chance in social life is not as easily discerned. Indeed, it is hardly possible even to compare the scientific and technical progress achieved by capitalism with that in any other period of past history. And what about the power of chance and ungoverned social development? To this very day, even developed capitalism is in the throes of haphazard development, with the most unexpected turn and outcome of events and a tragic effect on the lives of men. Paul Lafargue had good grounds for saying the following: "The whole of modern economic development increasingly transforms the capitalist society into a vast international gambling house where the bourgeois win and lose capital because of some events of which they are not aware, which defy any prediction and reckoning, and which appear to them as chance, as good luck. The unknowable reigns in the bourgeois society as it does in the gambling house." *

The power of chance was even greater at the earlier stages of social development, The low level of economic, social and cultural development, the confusion and obscurity

~^^1^^ Paul Lafargue, Le determinisme economique de Karl Marx, Paris, 1909, p. 306.

of social relations themselves did not allow men to gain any clear awareness of the conditions of their social existence, to set the goals of their socially meaningful activity with a knowledge of what they were about, and to narrow the gap between the desired and the practical results of their activity. For long centuries, spontaneous, ungoverned and anarchic development has been---and largely still remains---a characteristic feature of social life in pre-- socialist societies.

In this situation, it was not only individuals but whole states that were unable to look to the future with any kind of confidence, to expect their desires and goals to be realised, and to safeguard themselves against the blows of blind fate. Chance appeared to reign supreme over one and all. The destinies of men, nations and states were decided by some impersonal force which appeared to be as inexorable as it was unknown and arbitrary. In the mythology of Ancient Greece, the lot of men and the gods themselves was ruled by Moirai, the goddesses of fate. The almost totally fettered state of men, the extremely narrow bounds of their freedom, of conscious choice and design, and the insignificant chances of realising scheme and desire were specifically reflected in the religious mentality.

Throughout the centuries, very few people could claim that they had chosen their place in society of their own accord, mapped out their way in life and traversed it just as they had wanted to.

The situation underwent a radical change with the emergence of the revolutionary working class in the historical arena and the victory of socialism in many countries.

The socialist society, by converting the basic means of production into the property of the whole people, planning economic development and guiding all social processes in the light of science, puts an end to the anarchy of production, economic crises, recessions and inflation.

A new era in mankind's life opens with the socialisation of the means of production and the scientific organisation of the whole of social life, with a transition from ungoverned development and the play of chance to scientific management of every sphere of social life, anticipation of the future, and effective measures for preventing and doing away with negative and anti-social processes and phenomena.

Objective conditions and subjective mistakes, insufficient discipline here and there in building the first phase of communism can, of course, and frequently do produce highly undesirable consequences, like nonfulfilment of plans in terms of quality and quantity in some industries, short supply of some consumer goods, and so on. But these do not spring from the nature of the socialist economy, but from breaches of its principles, and this is naturally resisted by state and Party organisations and the working people.

Anti-communist circles try hard to inflate these shortcomings and omissions in order to denigrate the historical advantages of socialism and the socialist way of life. But many Western ideologists admit that it is hard to overestimate the role of conscious creative endeavour and planned activity in every socially important sphere of life.

One should also bear in mind that socialism is only the first phase of the communist society, so that all the advantages of the planned society will come fully to light with the establishment of the second phase of the communist formation. This will be a new era in men's life, an era of the conscious making of history, a transition from the realm of blind necessity to men's full, unlimited and free activity on the basis of the objective laws of social development. Mankind's history will then fully develop in accordance with well-studied laws, as man is released from the power of blind and inexorable chance. The sense of uncertainty and fear of the present and the future will disappear for good. Man will be enabled freely to choose his occupation and move from one socially useful type of activity to another as he sees fit and in the interests of society, confident of obtaining the desired results of his efforts and fully developing all his endowments. Henceforth, man's life and work will proceed in an atmosphere of complete solidarity with other men, in an atmosphere of mutual support and assistance. In these conditions, the unforeseen and unexpected events in human life and the whole of society will be reduced to the barest minimum.

This optimistic conception, which expresses firm and well-grounded faith in the possibility of man's establishing control over cognised necessity, in the possibility of extending the boundaries of freedom for society and the individual, and sharply narrowing down the sphere of un-

governed development and chance, springs from the actual basis and objective development of human history in our day. This optimism is very solidly based.

But as in other instances, it is up to men to use their minds and hands in turning this prospect into concrete reality as soon and as fully as possible, otherwise even the most necessary processes could be slowed down and frequently delayed for long periods.

Today, as never before, mankind's vanguard forces are capable of ridding historical progress of the most dangerous zigzags and accidents: thermonuclear war, the threat of fascism, attempts to maintain and strengthen the power of the monopolies, the power of the most aggressive and irresponsible circles of imperialism. Everything depends on the conscious, organised and purposeful struggle of millions upon millions of men of good will for peace, democracy, the independence of nations, and solid friendship between them.

In this struggle for progressive and humane goals, the nations of the world rely on the growing might of world socialism, whose conscious and planned development is an important source of its rapid movement forward.

The task is to make the most effective use of this remarkable feature of socialism, an inexhaustible source of its might and accelerated progress.

2.

Another essential feature also has to be brought out in the emergence and development of the communist formation. It is of great interest, especially when seen in the perspective of the further expansion and strengthening of the world socialist system. It is internationalism, which permeates the substance of the communist formation as an objective uniformity according to which it takes shape. This means a new type of international relations established by the socialist countries with each other, relations of co-operation and mutual assistance, which fully take into account each socialist country's interests and those of the socialist community as a whole. This is a totally new objective uniformity which governs the shaping and existence of this socio-economic formation.

To appreciate this new uniformity, let us recall that in the pre-communist formations the fact that countries belonged to the same formation did not produce or maintain any organic ties of solidarity. The fact that countries belonged to the same slave-holding, feudal or capitalist formation did not prevent them from having hostile relations and fighting endless wars against each other. Consider the feudal society, whose history is not only one of class struggle, but also of fierce wars between feudal states, between groups of feudal lords and between individual feudals.

Similarly, the fact that countries belonged to the capitalist formation did not turn them into brothers. Let us recall that capitalist Britain tried hard to slow down the development of capitalist industry in its colonies, including North America. In 1750, the British government enacted a law prohibiting the erection in Britain's colonial possessions of large industrial enterprises like metal-- working mills, and so on. Capitalist Britain was resisting the development of capitalist relations in the colonies. It resorted to wars to deprive the emergent capitalist countries of their independence. Only as a result of the 1776- 1788 war did the United States win its independence from capitalist Britain. Let us also recall that capitalist Britain in effect led the invasion by the feudal countries to suppress the French bourgeois revolution of 1789-1794. Internal counter-revolution in France enjoyed Britain's extensive support. In early 1793, Britain openly joined in the war against revolutionary France. Britain wanted to restore the old order in France because for competitive reasons it preferred to have a weak feudal state as its neighbour.

For the same considerations of rivalry, the industrial capitalist countries tried to slow down the advance of new countries from feudalism to the bourgeois society and to maintain the most reactionary pre-capitalist relations. It is true that in the epoch of imperialism the industrial capitalist countries, having started to export capital and seeking areas of cheap labour, were forced to promote the emergence of industrial production, but they did not do so in virtue of "formational solidarity'' or out of any desire to end the feudal forms of exploitation and extend the boundaries of the capitalist system. Their only urge was to make higher profits. Characteristically, British imperialism simultaneously took steps to slow down the development of

so-called native industry, as will be clearly seen from the economic policy conducted in India under Viceroy Lord Curzon, beginning with the late 19th century. Other imperialist states also pursued such a policy in the interests of their own bourgeoisie.

When compared to the endless wars between states belonging to the same feudal socio-economic formations, the local and world wars fought between capitalist countries have been even more devastating.

Consequently, there is evidence in past and present history to show that formational community, the fact that countries belong to one and the same social system does not as a rule eliminate the sharp contradictions between the ruling exploiting classes in various countries belonging to the same formation. Of course, that does not make it impossible for them to join together to commit acts of aggression against a common enemy. This "wolfish solidarity" was most clearly expressed in the futile `` international'' efforts by the imperialist circles of different nations to put down the first victorious socialist revolution in Russia. Similarly, soon after the First World War, the erstwhile enemies---the Entente countries and their adversaries---joined together in suppressing the revolutionary movement in Germany, Hungary, Austria and other countries.

The changing balance of forces in the world arena in favour of socialism has forced the defenders of the capitalist system to consolidate their forces in order to slow down the world revolutionary process, to prop up the shaken positions of imperialism, to overcome the irreconcilable contradictions in the capitalist system, and here and there, wherever possible, to go over to counter-attacks against the world socialist system.

But even with the emergence and development of the multinational capitalist monopolies, the Common Market, NATO and similar aggressive international military-- political associations of imperialism, the latter is being torn by deep-seated internal contradictions. In his Report to the 25th Congress of the CPSU, L. I. Brezhnev said: " Interimperialist rivalries and discord in the Common Market and NATO have grown sharper. The greater power of the international monopolies has made the competitive struggle still more ruthless. The governments of capitalist countries are making repeated attempts to moderate the con-

tradictions and come to terms on joint anti-crisis measures. But the nature of imperialism is such that each endeavours l(j gain advantages at the expense of others, to impose his will. Differences surface in new forms and contradictions erupt with new force." *

Bourgeois theorists, who are deeply alarmed over the future of capitalism, have written big and small treatises in order to justify the need for consolidating the "free world". They have proposed diverse projects to eliminate the antagonism between the capitalist countries and to strengthen the spirit of mutual understanding and solidarity between the countries of the "Western civilisation". However, one point has escaped the comprehension of these advocates of a "capitalist international": the confrontations and contests between the capitalist countries are rooted in the antagonistic-class society itself, in its economic foundation and its peculiar relations of production. Indeed, if the relations of production in pre-communist societies have been relations of oppression and exploitation of a majority of the people by slave-owning, feudal or capitalist minorities, this principle of subordination and oppression of the weak by the strong must inevitably seep through to the relations between states. This ingrained, innate principle of aggressiveness must necessarily operate in relations between states belonging to the same social system. As a rule, this erodes formational solidarity, which gives way to considerations of one's own advantage, unbridled egoism and an urge to grasp and hold as much as one can.

The sharp antagonistic struggle between the ruling classes of the same private-property formation reached a high point in capitalist society. As it developed, capitalism not only produced nations, but also aggressive bourgeois nationalism. The latter is used not only to confuse the oppressed classes, to fight against the national liberation movement and, most vehemently, against socialism, but is also a means for "justifying^^1^^" expansionist acts by some imperialist states against others.

Capitalism has made obvious the truth that private property is, in effect, a force which erodes classes and na-

tions. It is a constant source of hostility and strife. That is why the fact that countries belong to the same formation will not produce lasting unity or mutual understanding, or eliminate class and national antagonisms wherever this or that form of private property is supreme.

Bourgeois and revisionist theorists have tried to set up as a universal law the confrontation between states belonging to the same private-property formation, suggesting that it also applies to the development of the communist society. Those who advocate "national communism" insist that countries which take the communist road of development must sooner or later display profoundly contradictory urges and trends which will explode the " international illusions". These anti-communists insist that the `` abiding'' nationalist practice and ideology will gain the upper hand over "ephemeral internationalism" so that, like capitalism, the socialist system will inevitably break up into different ``communisms'' with their own irreconcilable " national antagonisms''.

Francois Fejto, a strident and restless anti-communist, makes free play with the facts, which he interprets from the standpoint of expediency and advantage, and insists that internationalism is not immanent in communism. He believes that communism has not brought anything essentially new into the sphere of international relations, because, he says, after a short period of revolutionary romanticism the communist countries refused to take the class approach to foreign policy problems. Their national interests, which are supposedly in conflict with the imperatives of ideology, eventually come to supplant the latter. One of the advocates of "national communism", P. Lendvai, argues that the sense of national self-awareness is frequently stronger than ideological kinship, and by "ideological kinship" he means proletarian internationalism which, it turns out, cannot long remain effective. The renegade Fejto, accustomed to thinking in terms of bourgeois practice and theory, quotes another renegade, Milovan Djilas, who claims that any communist state born of the revolution seeks gradually to transform itself into a national state or to be more precise, into a form of national communism. One will easily realise that these and many other enemies

i Documents and Resolutions. XXVth Congress of the CPSU, pp. 33-34.

12-0642

of the working class and socialism seek to blow up and absolutise bourgeois-nationalist ideas and feelings (which cannot, of course, disappear the day after a socialist revolution) so as to present them as uniformities governing the development of the communist society as well. Whenever there are no serious arguments against communism, such are simply invented. That is not a hard job and is, incidentally, well paid in the capitalist society.

The politicians and ideologues of imperialism, whether avowed or camouflaged, have been trying hard to drive a wedge between the countries of the socialist system, suggesting that genuine national sovereignty is incompatible with any international obligations, and that the vital interests of the various socialist nations cannot be concerted.

This programme for dividing the fraternal communist parties and socialist countries is backed up by the revisionist concept of different "models of socialism", which are so different that rivalry and confrontation between them allegedy become natural and inevitable.

Bourgeois and revisionist theorists frequently refer to the fact that socialism emerges in countries which differ substantially from each other in levels of economic, sociopolitical and cultural development, and in social and national traditions.

There is, of course, no doubt that socialism in the various countries arises in different ways. It is a general sociological uniformity that every socio-economic formation has one substance and diverse forms in which it takes shape, and this naturally also applies to the communist society, to its first phase. Let us recall these words of Lenin's: "All nations will arrive at socialism---this is inevitable, but all will do so in not exactly the same way, each will contribute something of its own to some form of democracy, to some variety of the dictatorship of the proletariat, to the varying rate of socialist transformations in the different aspects of social -life.''~^^1^^ This prediction of Lenin's has been fully borne out by the experience of all the countries which have already reached socialism.

But the fact that the ways in which socialism takes shape in the various countries are diverse does not at all pre-

determine the emergence of contradictions, alienation or mistrust between them. Provided a consistent internationalist policy is pursued, there are no fatally predetermined antagonisms latent in the peculiarities of advance by the various countries to socialism.

But facts and logic are ignored by those who crave tc``legitimate'' confrontation between socialist countries. They have wasted heaps of paper to suggest the absurd idea that countries which have built socialism are not free from confrontation and antagonisms. It turns out that even under socialism, formational community does not do away with inequality between nations, does not end the competitive struggle between "different socialisms" or "national communisms''.

How are these absurd inventions justified? To make their false assertions credible, the enemies of Marxism and socialism try to inflate the imaginary or real difficulties in the shaping of the new formation.

To prove the inevitability of antagonistic contradictions and confrontation between socialist countries, bourgeois and revisionist ideologues refer to the counter-- revolutionary acts of the overthrown exploiting classes in Hungary, Czechoslovakia and other countries of the world socialist system. The fact is that these acts merely show that the overthrown exploiting classes refuse to accept their defeat and still hope to restore the old order.

All these insinuations and provocative inventions cannot cover up the truth that for the first time in mankind's history the victory of the socialist revolution has provided solid grounds for the fraternal unity of nations. For the first time in history, the fact that countries belong to the communist formation, to socialism, its first phase, engenders genuine formational solidarity, organic ties and co-- operation among these countries as they work to realise their common goals.

In the established socialist system, each country's achievements consolidate the socialist community, which, for its part, stimulates the rapid economic, social, political and cultural development of each socialist nation.

Despite the hopes and expectations of the enemies of communism, socialism does not produce divisions and contradictions between the countries of the new formation, but stimulates the strengthening of their international commu-

~^^1^^ V. I. Lenin, "A Caricature of Marxism and Imperialist Economism", Collected Works, Vol. 23, pp. 69-70.

12*

nity, their fraternal solidarity and mutual assistance. In his Report to the 25th Congress of the CPSU, L. I. Brezhnev said that this process was an objective uniformity. He added: "The ties between socialist states are becoming ever closer with the flowering of each socialist nation and the strengthening of their sovereignty, and elements of community are increasing in their policy, economy, and social life. There is a gradual levelling up of their development. This process of a gradual drawing together of socialist countries is now operating quite definitely as an objective uniformity." ^l

This uniformity first revealed itself in the development of the multinational Soviet Union. The great working class of Russia and the whole Russian people did their utmost and provided fraternal, disinterested assistance to the economically lagging nations of the USSR to enable them to develop faster and overcome the actual inequality among the country's nations. It is no secret that this policy could be realised only at the cost of some slowing down in the development of Central Russia, for the purpose of bringing about the even development of the socialist society in the Soviet Union. That was the first instance in the history of mankind when a big and strong nation used its superiority to help the lagging nations instead of plundering them. This unique fact alone epitomises the international nature of socialism and the specific features of the shaping of the communist socio-economic formation.

``The history of this exploit began literally from the earliest days of the Revolution. As early as 1918 Soviet Russia, herself starving and in ruins allocated tens of millions of rubles for irrigation works in Turkestan. While the Civil War was still being fought, decisions were taken to send food supplies and to extend financial and technical aid to Azerbaijan; substantial funds were remitted to the railwaymen of Kharkov and the miners of the Donets coalfields, and important assistance was given to the economy of Byelorussia, Armenia, and Soviet Lithuania and Latvia.''~^^2^^

On the initiative of the men and women workers of Ivanovo-Voznesensk, the RSFSR government gave Soviet Armenia the gift of a set of looms which became the basis for Armenia's textile industry and, among other things, helped to develop and strengthen its working class. The RSFSR drew on its own scarce resources to give fraternal assistance to other Soviet republics. '

One of the key characteristic features of the young Soviet state's nationalities policy was its urge to meet the interests of the once oppressed peoples to the best of its ability, as far as its own resources allowed. In November 1922, Lenin said: "Our five years' experience in settling the national question in a country that contains a tremendous number of nationalities such as could hardly be found in any other country, gives us the full conviction that under such circumstances the only correct attitude to the interests of nations is to meet those interests in full and provide conditions that exclude any possibility of conflicts on that score.''~^^2^^

The vital interests of socialist nations can draw closer to each other and become identical because the interests of the working class and of all the other working people are international by nature. There can be no divergence between the correctly understood interests of the worker, the working people, the peasantry, and the intelligentsia, whatever their national origin. The development of nationalities in the USSR first confirmed the truth of this.

The Great October Socialist Revolution provided support for all the revolutionary forces rising to the struggle for socialism.

Let us recall that the antagonistic contradictions between countries belonging to the same exploiter-class formation are rooted in the relations of production, in the mode of production which is based on the oppression of some classes by others.

There is good reason to assert that the shaping and development of the communist socio-economic formation in an atmosphere of solidarity and mutual support among the

~^^1^^ Thus, in the difficult year of 1921, the RSFSR sent Soviet Georgia 350,000 poods of grain, and Armenia, 750,000 (see the newspaper Zarya Vostoka, November 16, 1922).

~^^2^^ V. I. Lenin, "Interview Given to Observer Correspondent", Collected Works, Vol. 33, p. 386.

~^^1^^ Documents and Resolutions, XXVth Congress of the CPSU, p. 9.

~^^2^^ L I. Brezhnev, Following Lenin's Course. Speeches and Articles, (1972-1975), pp. 63-64.

countries belonging to this formation are also ultimately determined by the specific features of its relations of production, which are relations of mutual assistance and cooperation among the working people, relations based on social property and ruling out any form of inequality or oppression. The fundamental characteristics of socialist relations of production---relations of solidarity, mutual assistance and equality---permeate, with historical necessity, the relations among all the countries belonging to the communist formation.

Thus, internationalism is rooted in the very substance of the communist formation, in the historical mission of the working class, which eschews every form of oppression. Consequently, internationalism is not only a policy and ideology, but the key principle which pervades all the economic relations between countries belonging to the communist formation. The policy and ideology of internationalism spring from the substance of the relations of production under socialism, from its economic basis.

But from this key proposition it would be wrong to draw the conclusion that internationalist policy and ideology can take shape spontaneously, automatically, in virtue of the internationalist nature of socialist relations of production. Let us recall that the socialist law-consciousness, morality, aesthetic views arid tastes, the scientific atheist world view, and the dialectico-materialist philosophy as a whole are also ultimately determined by the socialist basis relations, which does not in any way eliminate the need for active and purposeful efforts to establish the communist ideology in the struggle against phenomena and ideas which are alien to socialism.

The CPSU and other fraternal communist parties fully take into account the conservative nature and tenacity of the nationalistic attitudes and views which the exploiting classes have consciously implanted for centuries with all the means at their disposal. The Marxist-Leninist parties regard the complete elimination of the survivals of bourgeois nationalism as a key condition for strengthening and developing socialism. Indeed, if internationalism springs from the substance of socialist relations of production, if internationalism and socialism are principles which interpenetrate each other and constitute a single whole, and if the gradual drawing together of the socialist countries and

the strengthening of their international ties is an objective uniformity, any departure from internationalism is, naturally, a departure from socialism and inevitably distorts and weakens it. It is also true that scrupulous and consistent application of the principles of internationalism are a key condition for accelerated social progress under socialism and a most important prerequisite for its gradual development into communism.

The role and importance of internationalist policy and ideology in developing and strengthening the world socialist system predetermine Marxism-Leninism's fundamental rejection of every form of nationalism, and of every concession to it, however partial. Internationalism is an integral and indivisible concept. Any, even ``insignificant'' departures from internationalism are fraught with the gravest consequences for the fortunes of socialism if they are not immediately identified and overcome.

L. I. Brezhnev says that some theorists abroad are inclined to interpret internationalism in a free-wheeling manner, so much so that virtually nothing remains of internationalism. Some pseudo-innovators have talked themselves into asserting that the Marxist-Leninist view of internationalism is ``obsolete'', and so believe that it should be dropped. L. I. Brezhnev made this emphatic statement: "In their opinion the internationalism substantiated and promoted by Marx and Lenin is outmoded. But as we see it, to renounce proletarian internationalism is to deprive Communist parties and the working-class movement in general of a mighty and tested weapon. It would work in favour of the class enemy who, by the way, actively coordinates its anti-communist activities on an international scale. We Soviet Communists consider defence of proletarian internationalism the sacred duty of every MarxistLeninist," '

Socialist internationalism is closely connected with a recognition of the full independence and sovereignty of every nation within the world socialist system. The principle of internationalist unity rules out any form of inequality among the states and repudiates interference in their domestic affairs.

~^^1^^ Documents and Resolutions. XXVth Congress of the CPSV, p. 37.

Bourgeois propaganda frequently has renegades and revisionists interpreting these principles after their own fashion. This turns sovereignty and independence into means for isolating the socialist countries from each other. We discover that each country must look solely to its own affairs and be guided by the principle of everyone for himself and the devil take the hindmost. Each must make sure that it has the maximum benefit for itself from ``co-operation'' with the other countries, while never burdening itself with the fulfilment of its commitments. The principle of mutual assistance should be reduced to obtaining the utmost assistance from the ``fraternal'' countries.

It will be easily seen that this view of `` internationalism'' reproduces the typical relations which exist among capitalist countries doing business with each other, when, quite naturally, they never have any ``internationalism'' on their minds.

As a result of these distortions, the vital principle of existing socialism---internationalism---is converted into a hollow phrase which is designed to cover up the most common nationalist practices.

Bourgeois propaganda also wants to present the principle of the socialist countries' sovereignty, the principle of noninterference in each other's affairs as total isolation of the socialist countries from each other. Some ``theorists'' even go to the extent of declaring that the assistance given to socialist Vietnam when it fell victim to imperialist aggression was interference in Vietnam's internal affairs, an expression of hegemonism, of "red imperialism", and so on, on the part of the USSR and other socialist countries. Similarly, the assistance extended to the peoples of Hungary and Czechoslovakia to beat back the drive by internal and external counter-revolution is shamelessly presented by bourgeois propaganda as interference by the USSR and other socialist countries in the domestic affairs of Hungary and Czechoslovakia, as a distortion of the slogans of internationalism and mutual assistance.

Bourgeois and revisionist ideologues, whether overtly or covertly attacking proletarian internationalism and the socialist countries' unity, mutual assistance and co-operation by encouraging diverse forms of nationalism, national narrowness and national isolation, have pursued the fairly clear aim of dividing the socialist countries to make it

easier for the aggressive imperialist circles to "deal with them''.

The crude and fairly primitive lie spun out by the anticommunists about internationalism, the role of the international unity of the socialist countries in the destinies of world communism is clearly designed for simpletons or for those who want to be ``deceived'' and who hope to become popular with philistines by attacking existing socialist internationalism and extolling "national uniqueness''.

The CPSU and all the other fraternal communist parties, starting from the organic unity of socialism and internationalism and regarding the gradual drawing together of the socialist countries as an objective historical uniformity, continue to work to harmonise the interests of all the socialist nations. They have consistently pursued their policy of mutual assistance and the strengthening of mutually advantageous economic ties. The political unity of the socialist countries and their exchange of cultural values have been growing from year to year with strict observance of the principles of complete sovereignty and noninterference in each other's domestic affairs.

Without this consistent international co-operation in economics, politics, science and culture, the consolidation and tremendous successes of the socialist countries would have been inconceivable. CMEA data show very well the great importance of the socialist community countries' economic integration for their accelerated development. Each socialist country desires, to the extent of its economic development and its actual resources, to make the greatest possible contribution to the common cause, being guided by the socialist principle of fraternal co-operation and mutual assistance. The whole CMEA mechanism is working to align the socialist countries' economic development at the highest level. That is the road the nations of the Soviet Union took in achieving their historical successes and demonstrating the creative power of genuine socialist internationalism. Today, the CMEA countries are travelling the same road, and their activity is laying the foundations for a future economic, socio-political and cultural unity of the nations of the communist formation.

Let us recall in this connection the economic integration of the nine West European capitalist states, as embodied in the European Economic Community. Their relations

185.

with each other are marked by mistrust, subterfuges, intrigues, and each country's urge to secure the best terms at the expense of the others. All the ills which spring from capitalist relations such as self-seeking, individualism and competition are to be found there.

The "national egoism" which is predominant in the EEC has been emphasised by many analysts, including Britain's one-time Foreign Secretary Lord Chalfont, who feels that in the long term the community has no future.^^1^^

The developed socialist society which has been built in the USSR and is being built in other socialist countries opens broad vistas for further consolidating the international community of socialist nations, and this will be a key prerequisite for the gradual growth of socialism into communism.

The CPSU and all the other fraternal communist parties are resolved steadfastly to strengthen their policy of full and actual equality of nations, establishing the principle of their sovereignty and independence and forging unbreakable ties of brotherhood and solidarity. Whatever the new mask bourgeois nationalism dons in its efforts to divide the revolutionary forces, whatever its tricks and dodges, it will be jointly rebuffed by the forces which regard the unity of the world communist and working-class movement and the growing socialist community of nations as the bulwark of world peace and the most crucial condition for the establishment of the communist formation.

Internationalism has been and continues to be a specific feature of the communist formation and the decisive condition for its development and final victory.

Chapter Nine

THE ASCENT OF HISTORY AS THE ALTERNATIVE

TO SOCIAL PESSIMISM

The Marxist conception of social development, the doctrine of socio-economic formations, is permeated with scientifically grounded optimism. For all the zigzags, retreats, states of stagnation, acute crises, temporary victories of reactionary regimes, sanguinary world wars, and so on, mankind is moving along an upgrade. Sooner or later, the reactionary forces and the social order they stand for are defeated and have to give way to classes and parties which help to establish a qualitatively new economic, social and political order, with the emergence and development of more perfect forms of human culture and moral values.

This optimism has nothing in common with the quasioptimistic conceptions, with a naive and exaggerated Panglossian faith that everything is for the best in this best of all possible worlds. Marxist optimism is realistic, for it is based on a scientific analysis of the objective process of historical development and full awareness of the actual potentialities and obstacles in the way of the rise to new levels of social progress. The doctrine of socio-economic formations is the scientific basis for the optimistic view of the world. It does not issue prophecies but provides evidence on the basis of actual history to back up the idea of ascent, the idea that mankind has been steadily rising to new levels, steadily increasing its power over the forces of nature and its own social relations. This optimism gives men strength in achieving realistic and progressive goals. It gives them the ideological weapon for combatting present-day social pessimism and its corrupting influence.

~^^1^^ See: G. Chalfont, "Britain in the European Community", Stadia diplomatica (Bruxelles), No. 6, 1975,

Many philosophers and sociologists in the West take a pessimistic view of the world, regarding life as a succession of cheerless and highly tragic events, and mankind's history as a fatal movement towards degeneration and ex-

tinction. For that reason, we must analyse the origins and substance of social pessimism and its peculiarities and role in the struggle of ideas today.

Pessimism already permeated the most ancient forms of the religious world view, and that is not surprising because in one way or another every religion rejects or disparages the values of "this world", which it regards as a "vale of sorrow", a "vanity of vanities", and holds that death brings release from "suffering on earth", seeking a true life in the "next world", a transcendental, extra-sensual imaginary world.

History shows that pessimism tends to spread in periods when one socio-economic formation, with its mode of production of material goods, form of property and man's exploitation of man, has to give way to another, historically more perfect social order. The outgoing ruling class tends to regard its own decline as the decline of society and civilisation as a whole. The most ecstatic and mystically minded ideologues of that class present the collapse of the old social order as the end of the world, a disaster of cosmic proportions. They cannot and, to some extent, will not realise that the destruction of the habitual way of life, which they find advantageous, is a necessary condition for the emergence and development of a new society capable of providing stronger stimuli for labour, the development of social production, and improvement of living conditions. History shows that the pessimistic world view also tends to spread among the oppressed classes which are incapable of carrying on an active struggle to eliminate the old order which oppresses them most brutally in the period of its agony.

The collapse of the slave-holding system produced profound pessimism in the dominant slave-holding ideology. For many ideologists of the slave-holding elite, the world appeared to have lost its colours and smells, its rationale, and the right to any further existence. Marcus Aurelius insisted that humanity was nothing, a whiff of smoke. The neo-Platonic philosophy most clearly expressed the idea that man was doomed, that his life on earth was pointless, and that his hopes for a better life here were illusory, preaching contempt for earthly joys and issuing calls for the mortification of the flesh.

The collapse of the slave-holding order was reflected in

a fantastic way in early Christianity, in its outright rejection of the value of life in "this world". The profound disappointment in the possibility of salvation without the help of supernatural forces, condemnation of the existing relations among men, predictions of a "last judgement" and an "end of the world", which we find in the early Christian writings, especially in the Apocalypse, reflected the actual conditions in the period of decline of the slave-- holding formation. Defeats of the masses in their struggle for emancipation inevitably produced in their midst feelings of pessimism, but the hopelessness of the ``victors'' had much deeper sources, because these sprang from their sense of being historically doomed.

We find the same picture during the decline of the feudal society. As feudalism moved towards its historical end, the ideologues of the ruling estates increasingly came forward with sinister predictions about mankind's future. They regarded life "on earth" as a short and temporary abode on the way to everlasting life in another world, presented visions of an imminent "last judgement", and urged extreme asceticism, rejection of sensual joys and suppression of the passions. However, this did not prevent members of the elite from enjoying themselves at great dances and fancy-dress balls and indulging themselves in the basest sensual pleasures. One popular saying at the time---"apres moi le deluge"---reflected the frame of mind at the royal court in France shortly before the bourgeois revolution of 1789-1794.

As the people's wrath against the feudal exploitation grew, the ruling elite began to claim that any attack on the feudal-absolutist monarchy was an attack on society in general. The monarchist-minded clergy preached eschatological ideas with the greatest vehemence during the great bourgeois revolution in France. Reactionary philosophers like Joseph Marie de Maistre and Louis Bonald insisted that the substitution of bourgeois relations for feudal relations posed a mortal threat to civilisation and the further existence of mankind.

Meanwhile, so long as the capitalist system was on an upgrade, the ideologues of the bourgeoisie were inspired passionately to stand up for the idea of upward development, predicting everlasting prosperity and a radiant future for the human race.

But as the internal contradictions of the capitalist system deepened and sharpened, and the revolutionary movement against the capitalist order grew, the elated optimism gradually gave way to doubt and vacillation, and to an eroding presentiment of the ``future''. Since then, bourgeois politicians, economists, philosophers and sociologists have been beset by concern, alarm and fear.

While the soldiers and gendarmes of the ruling class were in the act of suppressing the uprising by the workers, peasants and oppressed peoples, while volleys of shots were fired at the Pere Lachaise cemetery, and the last defenders of the Paris barricades fell to the ground, the red flag of the defeated communards proudly fluttered over broad expanses of the world as a symbol of hope for all those who are oppressed and humiliated, as a signal for another and even more terrible storming of the social system which prevents human beings from being human, from equally enjoying all the goods of life produced by their own industrious hands and their creative minds. Such a system can be neither natural nor everlasting. It has lost its moral authority and its very right to exist. It holds within itself grave danger for mankind's present and future, and has to be replaced by a new and just social system.

These ideas and feelings, scientifically substantiated by Marxism, are being accepted by ever greater numbers of men and women all over the world. It is true that they are still badly organised and persecuted, but the future belongs to them. The most far-sighted members of the ruling class have to admit that as capitalism develops, the forces, above all the forces of the working class, designated by history to put an end to the last exploitative society are being rallied with historical inevitability.

In this situation, pessimism begins to permeate the whole ideology of the bourgeois system, its literature, art, philosophy and ethics. There is a widespread feeling that life is irrational and useless, that there is no hope for a better future, and this results in sharp and hysterical attacks on the idea that social life develops along an upgrade and is gradually improved.

Spokesmen for man-hating pessimism, among them Schopenhauer, Hartmann and Nietzsche, are set up as idols by the decadent bourgeois intelligentsia.

In his book, The World as Will and Idea and in other

writings, Schopenhauer rejected every form of rationalism and optimism, declared any hope of a better future to be illusory, and insisted that the "will to life" should rightly be destroyed.

Hartmann, a follower of Schopenhauer's, elaborates on his pessimistic view of history and attacks three myths which he holds to be equivalent: the possibility of happiness on earth, social progress, and happiness in a world beyond. The evolution of the unconscious, which, according to Hartmann's mystic philosophy, is at the basis of the world, ends with the latter's destruction. The ultimate goal of the world's development is release from the suffering which life inevitably produces. Nonexistence alone brings the desired tranquility. This philosophy of death was naturally adapted to paralysing the will of the masses in their struggle against exploitation and oppression, for a new social system prepared by the whole course of past historical development, and for new social relations fit for man to live under.

In Nietzsche's philosophy, this profound social pessimism assumed an extremely aggressive misanthropic form. His philosophy sprang from fear of the working-class movement and socialism, and from a sense of looming disaster, which is why it was a call for a brutal massacre of the revolutionary forces and a justification of the most monstrous violence against the people. His ravings naturally became one of the sources of the ideology of the Nazis, who tried to enslave the peoples, destroy the socialist system in the USSR, put down the masses' irrepressible movement towards a new social order, and establish their own "world order" with the use of bombs, death camps and gas chambers.

The emergence of the world system of socialist states after the Second World War and its rapid development together with the deepening crisis of the capitalist system and the decline of its moral authority intensified the pessimism in the midst of the ruling exploiter class.

In a collection of answers to a questionnaire circulated by Bertelsmann, the West German publishers, we find the following answer: "At no other time has man been so lost and so hopelessly disoriented in his world as he is today. The two world wars and political vicissitudes have shaken the state foundations with such a force that most men no

longer have a clear political goal before them. Fundamental spiritual principles have also become questionable to such an extent that we no longer have anything to rely on. We find ourselves abandoned and helpless in a hostile and terrible world hemmed in on all sides." '

Addressing the 13th International Congress of Philosophy in Mexico in 1963, Francisco Larroyo spoke of a growing sense of fear and of the worst possible apprehensions produced by the ever faster pace of history. He declared: "In our day, sudden and important changes take place in every sphere. Are they favourable or unfavourable? Pessimistic voices are heard, and pessimism is a human frame of mind which produces fear and now and again also a painful anxiety. Indeed, never before in history has man had so many reasons for alarm as he has today.''^^2^^

The sociologist Otto Veit gives a fairly precise picture of the state of things when he writes: "The contemporary [bourgeois---Auth.] history of philosophy is keynoted by the idea of an apocalyptic end. Collapse, disaster, decline, twilight, end, one will find all these words in any study of the history of culture. They are linked with the old social order, with the old economic system, with the whole system of values or, more generally, with the culture of the West.''~^^3^^

Hundreds and thousands of books and articles describe this "rush to death" and sound the death-knell. "There is a growing awareness of imminent ruin tantamount to a dread of the approaching end of all that makes life worth living.''~^^4^^ "The twenty-fifth hour ... it is not the last hour; it is one hour past the last hour. It is Western civilisation at this very moment. It is now.''~^^5^^ "We are entering upon a time comparable with the darkest periods of human history.''~^^6^^

In a paper entitled "Twentieth-Century Version of the

Apocalypse", Franklin L. Baumer musters much evidence to show the broad spread in present-day Western writings of eschatological attitudes and expectations of some end of the world in the offing. He says that he does not want excessively to extend the sphere which is in the grip of pessimism. Still, in an obvious exaggeration, he declares: "Twentieth-century apocalyptic reflects the pain and suffering and blighted hopes of the peoples of an entire continent and is confined to no single age-group or nation or class." ' We find the same pessimistic attitudes in many other writings. Thus, Jacques Monod says: "What we find unfolding before us today is a gulf of darkness.''~^^2^^

Two other writers, M. Albert and J. Ferniot, claim that mankind is entering upon a period of fear and uncertainty, for it does not know which way development will run.³ Of course, social pessimism does not affect only the outgoing classes, but also a section of the nonproletarian strata of the working people. But this should not obscure either its actual vehicles or its real causes.

Some have tried to discover the origins of pessimistic ideas in our day in the sphere of ideas and emotions, in the sphere of side-effects. Actually, however, it is the deepening general crisis of capitalism that is the source of the presentiment of some looming disaster, the bitter idea that life itself is irrational and that everything is doomed to destruction, the "sickness of the spirit", the "fear of life" and hopelessness. It is capitalism that is the root of all the social pessimism in our day and of the fear of the rapid advance of history.

Social pessimism is often due to an urge to prevent the advance of the new social system, to make a bogey of it, and paralyse the masses' will to fight for its advent. This urge is particularly pronounced in the loud buffoonish statements of the so-called "new philosophers" in presentday France.

Only a short while ago, many of them were seen as noisy and importunate ``Left-wingers'', but now they are called the "New Right", and with good reason.

~^^1^^ Franklin L. Baumer, Cahiers d'histoire mondiale, Paris, Vol. 1, No. 3, January 1954, p. 627.

~^^2^^ Jacques Monod, Le hasard et la necessite, Paris, 1970, p. 186.

~^^3^^ See: M. Albert, J. Ferniot, Les vaches maigres, Gallimard, Paris, 1975, pp. 8-9.

~^^1^^ Otto Friedrich Bollnow, Die Kraft zu leben. Bekenntnisse unserer Zeit, C. Bertelsmann Verlag, Gutersloli, 1963, p. 23.

~^^2^^ Memorias del XIII Congreso Internacional de Filosofia, Vol. 1, Mexico, 1963, p. 177.

~^^3^^ Otto Veit, Die Flucht vor der Freiheit, Frankfurt am Main, 1947, p. 3.

^^4^^ K. Jaspers, Man in the Modern Age, New York, 1933, p. 63.

~^^5^^ G. V. Gheorghiu, The Twenty-Fifth Hour, New York, 1950, p. 49.

~^^6^^ Germain Bazin, "The Devil in Art". In: Satan, New York, 1952, p. 366.

13-0642

Althougn the "new philosophers" propound a wide spectrum of contradictory views, they have one thing in common: they are all afraid of Marxism and socialism. They seek to intimidate the man-in-the-street with a " communist threat", with "Marxist dope", and so forth, to spread hatred for Marxism, for the Marxist concept of social progress, and the Marxist doctrine of mankind's inevitable ascent from capitalism to communism.

Realising that the masses in France and other countries show a growing and unquenchable interest in Marxist ideas and socialism, the "new philosophers" are doing their utmost to distort the Marxist theory of socialist society.

In their attempts to set up vulgar anti-communism and anti-Sovietism as a scientific doctrine, the "new philosophers" (like A. Gluksman, B.-H. Levy, J.-M. Benoist, and J. P. Dolle) begin from afar, first attacking the French thinkers of the 18th-century Enlightenment, who believed in mankind's upward development, advocated the possibility and necessity of historical progress, and worked for a transition from "feudal barbarism" to a new, more reasonable and fairer society. But why should historical progress be impossible? Why should mankind resign itself to its hard lot? Why should it be impossible to carry out a revolution paving the way to a new, rationally organised and humane society?

According to the "new philosophers", mankind's sufferings are due to state power, an ineradicable evil. Gluksmaa is up in arms against Fichte, Hegel, Marx and at the same time against Nietzsche, who in one way or another expounded ideas justifying the right of the state to exercise control over its citizens.^^1^^

Having borrowed from the anarchists the threadbare dogma that all power is an "ineradicable evil", the "new philosophers" declare that all revolution, historical progress, and advance to freedom and a brighter future are illusory, for every revolution engenders new evil by establishing a new state power. B. H. Levy writes: "There is no revolutionary alternative to power that would not very soon be reduced to a caricature of the old one.''~^^2^^

Hence, Levy goes on, there is every reason for unrelieved gloom and pessimism. The decline of capitalism, which

' A. Gluksman, Maitres penseurs, Paris, 1977.

~^^2^^ B.-H. Levy, La barbarie a visage humain, Paris, 1977, p. 30.

inevitably entails a new upsurge of mankind's creative potentialities and the emergence of a truly human world, is shown as the twilight of a "night without sunrise". '

These and other similar ideas propounded by the "new philosophers" are meant to impress upon the masses that any new social order engenders a new power, which means new and harsher forms of man's subjection and alienation. To ``substantiate'' this thesis, the "new philosophers" repeat the old falsehood that socialism "has not taken place". They have done their utmost to denigrate the existing socialism, to present a picture of it that would suit its worst enemies. After that, it does not take much to deny the existence of real socialism and dismiss it as Utopian. Thus, J. M. Benoist declares that "communism is dead".~^^2^^

All these manipulations are meant to convince millions of men and women living outside the socialist world that there is no chance of a better future, to cloud their minds with pessimism, and persuade them to resign themselves to capitalism as the "lesser evil''.

As hundreds of years ago, fear of life produces illusory hopes of salvation in another world beyond. The latent religious pessimism carries a very simple message: one should not overrate the life down here, because it is no more than a short-term ordeal on the way to attaining everlasting bliss.

The most extreme pessimistic concepts in religion declare life to be not worth the effort of pinning on it any radiant or stable hopes. This life is irrational in character and purpose, it is inseparable from suffering, and has no substantial value. It is a fabric of the sharpest and most insoluble contradictions which turn man into a victim. It is madness to seek to understand these contradictions, let alone try to resolve them. Man's "sinful nature" leaves him no hope of a better lot in this life. It remains for him stoically to resign himself to this life with all its insuperable troubles, calamities and suffering. The most he can hope for is to ease the evil, but never to eliminate it. That is a view adopted by many religious and idealistic trends in present-day philosophical thinking in the West, notably, Christian existentialism.

~^^1^^ Ibid., p. 131.

~^^2^^ See: L'Express, No. 1380, January 30-February 5, 1978, p. 68.

13*

195

In one of his books, Gabriel Marcel, a prominent spokesman for Christian existentialism, sorrowed at the sight of man under attack by the forces of evil. His alarm is justified and largely springs from a sincere compassion for "suffering people". He quotes Max Picard, the author of a book entitled L'homme de neant (Man of Nonexistence), as saying: "I am sure that we are nearing the end of human history. It is probable that many of us will witness the apocalyptic events marking its end." ' As a Christian, Marcel also seeks a final answer to the problem of human being in some life in the hereafter. But like many present-day religious thinkers, he does not abandon the idea of `` ordering'' terrestrial affairs. But because he rejects the actual organised struggle of the masses against war and against a social life which inevitably produces inequality, oppression and humiliation for millions of men and women, and hostility and hatred between classes and nations, he has to fall back on measures which cannot produce any tangible results. For genuine collective effort in struggle, he substitutes the activity of small groups, which are peculiar communities of like-minded persons.

What kind of activity is it? It is a purely spiritual effort at moral self-improvement by members of the group asserting Christian values. One can either accept or reject these values, but no one will be able to forget the fact that for centuries the Christian consciousness and Christian activity have been unable to check the evil and avert sanguinary wars even among Christian states. Marcel evidently understands this, and so he turns to the looming catastrophe.

Those who preach religious pessimism assert that in our day man is even more unhappy because he overrates his own powers and assumes that he is capable of transforming life down here, and of converting it from a vale of sorrow into a vale of happiness. Man has drawn closer to the earth and away from his God. That is the fideistic stand used in the efforts to explain the tragedy of 20 thcentury man. In this age of science and technology man has gained much knowledge, but, the pessimists insist, this has produced new and insoluble problems and has

confused man's mind. Despite his superpowerful instruments, man has become much weaker, so much weaker that he could fall victim to his own inventions. What then is to be done in these conditions? Man must return to God, say those who pretend that a return to the Middle Ages is an advance. They assert that the urge for the secular things of life separates the soul from God to the same extent to which it prevents men from becoming spiritually mature.

The evil in this life exists for man, but was not created by him. To reduce the evil somewhat, one has to accept it as inevitable and to adapt oneself to it. "Finally the individual has no choice but to accept the God-given order." ' It would appear that God's order is a harsh and cheerless order for many, if not for all.

Religious pessimism now tends to launch much more intense attacks than ever before on the Promethean philosophy, the philosophy of man's active struggle for his happiness. In scientific terms, the Promethean philosophy signifies mankind's confidence in its own strength and an awareness of the fact that history is made by the peoples, and that nothing can halt their steady improvement and advance towards a radiant future.

Let us note that alongside the trend in religious thinking which seeks to perpetuate and to sanctify human suffering in this life, while relegating ``optimism'' to another world, some forward-looking members of the clergy have expressed other views. I have in mind men like Hewlett Johnson and 0. Fielding Clarke, who may not have abandoned the metaphysical idea of a life beyond the grave, but have enough common sense and humanism to realise that life on this earth can and must be renewed on communist lines. In a specific form, they express the incompatibility of the peoples' creative efforts, of their hope for a better lot for man, and the cowardly and humiliating pessimism which corrupts the soul.^^2^^

Many Western philosophers, sociologists and politicians are aware that the pessimistic view of development is not rooted in the secret recesses of the human soul or in some thanscendental elements, but in the reality of life, in the sphere of social relations. The US sociologist Robert

~^^1^^ George P. Grant, Philosophy in the Mass Age, Hill and Wang New York, I960, p. 51.

~^^2^^ See: 0. Fielding Clarke, Christianity and Marxism, Moscow, 1977.

~^^1^^ G. Marcel, Leg hommes contre I'humain, La Colombe, Paris, 1951, p. 161.

L. Heilbroner says: "For what happened in three decades of the twentieth century was a cataclysm of realities infinitely more powerful in changing men's attitudes than the mere erosion of ideas. From 1914 through 1945 Europe experienced a compression of horror without parallel in history: the carnage of the First World War, the exhaustion of the depression, the agonizing descent of Germany into its fascist nightmare, the suicide of Spain, the humiliation of Italy, the French decay, the English decline--- and finally the culminating fury of World War II. Before the cumulative tragedy of these years all optimistic views failed.''^^1^^

Of course, not all the optimistic expectations and predictions failed. It was only the optimistic frame of mind which sprang from confidence in the bourgeois law and order, in the bourgeois humanism, from faith in the immutability and constant progress of the bourgeois civilisation that was eroded. Indeed, the disastrous events of the first half of the 20th century mentioned by Heilbroner did undermine confidence among some in the possibility of upward development, development without war, without the fascist nightmare and without the machine's enslaving oppression of man. But these terrible social calamities also confirmed the idea that the radical, revolutionary transformation of society on other social principles could lead humanity out of the dead end and open before it boundless horizons.

The idea that pessimism is engendered by the capitalist type of social relations had gone home even to those who are totally unconcerned with Marxism. Indeed, it is an idea which now has to be accepted by many bourgeois philosophers and sociologists, like Arnold Toynbee. He is clearly aware that the decadent mood and loss of faith in a better future are determined by the general crisis of the bourgeois civilisation and the capitalist order of things: "The future of the Western middle class---this tiny minority is in question now in all Western countries; but the outcome is not simply the concern of the small fraction of mankind directly affected; for this Western middle class---this tiny minority---is the leaven that in recent

times has leavened the lump and has thereby created the modern world. Could the creature survive its creator? If the Western middle class broke down, would it bring humanity's house down with it in its fall? Whatever the answer to this fateful question may be, it is clear that what is a crisis for this key-minority is inevitably also a crisis for the rest of the world." '

One will easily see Toynbee's biased attempt to ascribe supernatural qualities to the Western bourgeoisie. His suggestion that the whole of mankind would collapse with the bourgeoisie is ridiculous. But the point here is this: the admission that the capitalist system is mortally ill is the basis of contemporary pessimism and the fear which the advocates of the old society feel. This admission is valuable because most of those who write about pessimism insist on looking for the causes of the "universal disorder" and the eschatological fear everywhere, except the bourgeois society itself, whose social structure contradicts the vital interests of all the peoples.

Present-day social pessimism is quick to argue the " destruction of the world" through an inevitable nuclear cataclysm. Below I intend to deal specially with the prospect? for war and peace, but here let us merely note the idea that mankind's self-destruction is fatefully inevitable.

In nearly all the capitalist countries there is a host of books containing predictions and descriptions of the destruction of a "humanity gone mad" in a total, global and devastating war.

The authors of these books make no effort to seek the roots of the wars of aggrandisement in our day in the contradictions of the exploitative society, but concentrate on whitewashing capitalism and putting the blame for the militaristic hysteria on "human nature", which they declare to be the motive force behind the self-annihilation of the human race. They keep talking about man's sinfulness, his innate belligerence, the tragic contradiction between man's mental and moral development, and similar other inventions, so as not to point to the Pandora's box from which all antagonistic contradictions spring.

The most bellicose and shameless spokesmen for the

~^^1^^ R. L. Heilbroner, The Future as History, Harper Torchbooks, New York, 1960, p. 46.

~^^1^^ A. Toynbee, Civilization on Trial, and the World and the West, Cleveland and New York, 1963, p. 30.

imperialist bourgeoisie and the Maoist ideologues with them insist that thermonuclear war will be fatal and that socialism will be to blame for it all. But decade after decade, socialism keeps demonstrating its vital concern for peace, acting as a dedicated and mighty champion of world peace, while the fairy-tales about "red imperialism" are still a part of the warmongers' ideological arsenal.

However, it is increasingly harder to make people believe that a world war is fatally inevitable. Millions of men and women are beginning to realise that war must and can be averted. Millions of people are coming clearly to realise that war or peace depends on the consciousness, will and activity of the nations, on their ability to make the aggressive forces retreat and to keep out of power the political parties which look to war and the arms race and take a hostile attitude to the peaceful coexistence of states.

The idea that war is not fatally inevitable has also been driven home to some bourgeois leaders, many of whom admit that there is a real and present danger of war, but do not regard it as being inevitable.

Mighty forces headed by the socialist powers stand guard over peace. They are capable of cutting short the moves by militarism and of eliminating wars from the life of society as a means of settling contradictions and conflicts between states. The peoples' growing will for peace and their loud warnings, backed by action, to those who are playing a hopeless game and have put their stake on war, add up to a great and sobering force. A world thermonuclear war is not inevitable. Only a handful of people want war, while millions upon millions of men and women in all the countries of the world want peace. One could say that the peoples have always wanted peace, but that did not prevent the outbreak of war. But times have changed. The peoples not only want peace, but have the strength to stand up for it.

The preachers of social pessimism also trot out other arguments to back up their sinister predictions. Thus, there is the widespread idea that the human organism has reached the limits of its adaptability to the sharply changing environment. What does this mean? This means the excessively accelerated pace of life, the stringent technical regime in production, the nervous stresses and tensions, the radioactive pollution of the air, the soil and the wa-

ters, the sharp change in foodstuffs with an increase of harmful ersatz additives in them, and so on.

There is no doubt that these phenomena are having an extremely negative effect on the life of millions of men, undermining their health and reducing their life span. Consider the following fact: the United States, a country with a relatively high standard of living, has the world's highest percentage of mental patients. The Scandinavian countries, also with fairly high living standards, have the largest number of suicides. The gravity of the situation is compounded by the fact that in these countries the number of mental patients and suicides has been growing from year to year.

The intensification of labour, physical and nervous exhaustion, unsatisfactory living conditions, uncertainty of the future, and constant fear of losing one's job and one's means of subsistence cause diverse diseases, including cancer and cardiovascular diseases. The nuclear tests in the atmosphere, water and outer space have created a situation which is a hazard to health and the life of great numbers of people. One author wrote in 1958 that "out of a total population of two and a half billion people, approximately 600,000,000 people are doomed to develop cancer sometime in their lives and 466,000,000 of them will die of cancer".^^1^^ To put this in the right perspective, we should recall that these calculations were made at the height of the atomic and hydrogen weapons tests. But it is still true that cancer is a terrible danger for man.

There are many other terrible phenomena capable of generating fear and lack of confidence in the future. Now and again it would seem that the machine, the handiwork of man, has turned upon its creator as a monstrous and devastating force, seeking to empty his mind and heart and turn him into a docile appendage. These fears are manifested in expressions used by Western sociologists, theologians, and writers, like the "robot era", "man under the robot's heel", "the robot ousts man and everything that is truly human", "mutiny by mechanical robots", and " robots can become the real beasts of the Apocalypse". The machine is identified with the demonic element, which has burst its way into the 20th century to destroy man physi-

~^^1^^ Clement A. Tavares, Cancer and the Atomic Age, Vintage Press, New York, 1958, p. 12.

cally and spiritually. The Swiss theologian Emile Brunner wrote in 1949 about the "technical era": "Uncounted millions of men massed together in soulless giant cities; a proletariat without connection with nature, without a native hearth or neighbourhood; it means asphalt-culture, uniformity and standardization. It means men whom the machine has relieved from thinking and willing, who in their turn have to 'serve the machine' at a prescribed tempo and in a stereotyped manner. It means unbearable noise and rush, unemployment and insecurity of life, the concentration of productive power, wealth and prestige in a few hands or their monopolisation by state bureaucracy." '

Such evaluations of "technical fetishes" and the " tyranny of the machine", with all the ensuing consequences, are naturally capable of suggesting to some sociologists that the human race, deprived of its "natural environment", is doomed to biological degeneration. The sociologist Charles Baudouin assumed that "with his technology man is creating a new artificial environment to which he will never be able to adapt".^^2^^

There is no ground at all for the attempts to absolutise and universalise some truly negative phenomena and to proclaim that they are fatally insuperable. Consider the contamination of the air, the soil and the waters with radioactive fallout, which does much harm to human health. But is that inevitable? Have not the peoples of the world expressed their will through the adoption of the Soviet Government's proposal for banning nuclear tests in the three media? There is no doubt that the socialist countries' perseverance, the peoples' mounting struggle and world public opinion can play their part in attaining general and complete disarmament, a great humanistic goal.

Mankind's lot can be eased and relatively better conditions of existence created for it through the ongoing detente, a sharp reduction in the great burden of military expenditures, and a total ban on the production and testing of thermonuclear weapons.

In their drive for higher profits, the omnipotent monopolies ignore the interests of the bulk of the population

in the capitalist countries and neglect concepts like humanity, good, truth and justice. For them, virtue lies in multiplying their fabulous profits.

``Capital eschews no profit, or very small profit, just as Nature was formerly said to abhor a vacuum. With adequate profit, capital is very bold. A certain 10 per cent, will ensure its employment anywhere; 20 per cent, certain will produce eagerness; 50 per cent., positive audacity; 100 per cent, will make it ready to trample on all human Laws; 300 per cent., and there is not a crime at which it will scruple, nor a risk it will not run, even to the chance of its owner being hanged." '

That was written over a century ago. A great deal has changed since then, except the capitalists' yearning for high profits and their indifference to the means by which they make them.

Even under the private-property relations, organised efforts by the working class, the peasantry, the intelligentsia and the small and middle bourgeoisie can to some extent slow down the dehumanisation of society.

The social reforms secured through organised struggle by the people against the monopolies are capable of giving an impetus to social progress despite all the pessimistic predictions.

When the capitalist system of social inequality and exploitation gives way to socialism, the broadest prospects for humanising labour will be opened and mankind will put an end to the alienation of labour. Unemployment will be eliminated under a planned economy on the basis of social property in the means of production. Machines will no longer oust men and will become their greatest aides in vanquishing the forces of nature for the benefit of society as a whole. The negative consequences of automation are not at all connected with machines, but with the capitalist system, and all of these will disappear. A ramified system of machine production, mechanisation and automation will release man from arduous labour. The machine, a product of the human intellect, will help to enrich man's spiritual life and help the individual in his all-round and harmonious development. Man's spiritual and physical improvement will be based on a rapid development of the

~^^1^^ Emile Brunner, Christianity and Civilisation II, New York, 1949, p. 9. Quoted in: F. L. Baumer, Op. cit, pp. 630-31.

~^^2^^ Automation. Positions et Propositions, Fribourg, 1957, p. 147.

See: Karl Marx, Capital, Vol. I, p. 712.

productive forces, science and culture, leading to an abundance of fairly distributed goods and services.

Let us note that some Western scientists who do not accept Marxism do realise that there is a connection between the terrible social phenomena and the capitalist organisation of society. Thus, the US scientist Graham Smith says that, apart from everything else, the contamination of the biosphere is due to the unplanned location of social and production activity, the overpopulation of the cities, the very high concentration of industrial enterprises in some areas, and other specific features of state-- monopoly capitalism. He believes that these problems have been caused not only by lack of planning and the exploitative approach of the landlords, but also by an increase in the number of agricultural companies. Present-day society, Smith says, tends to disintegrate into amalgamated urban areas which are beyond the control uf the faceless bureaucratic state, so that these agricultural companies have a negative effect on local resources, the air and the waters. ^l

The growth of the world's population is a special point emphasised by the social pessimists in their doomsday predictions. These are the sophistic arguments of the Malthusians and the neo-Malthusians about the ``disastrous'' and fatal consequences of the rapid growth of the population, which they regard as the cause of the growing poverty, the zoological individualism, and the bellum omnium contra omnes.

The old and new followers of Malthus insist that all the "social cataclysms", revolutions, national-liberation and interstate wars are due to a relative overpopulation of the world.

Karl Jaspers wrote: "The unlimited increase in the number of men, which is approved everywhere as a natural phenomenon and which has the blessings and support of churches and states, is in the present conditions an aggressive act leading to armed conflicts.''~^^2^^

Jaspers, of course, does not seek a solution of this problem through social transformation, the abolition of private-property relations and the handover of the means of

production to the people. He insists that the solution lies in limiting the birthrate: "If peace is to be maintained, if the disappearance of everyone is to be avoided, the requirements of political morality concerning a reduction in the birthrate must be met." '

If one were to believe some bourgeois sociologists, the greatest danger facing mankind is an overpopulation of the globe. Aldous Huxley insists that the "accelerating increase of human numbers" is the most terrible problem of our day.~^^2^^

The US neo-Malthusian William Vogt insists that there is an ``insoluble'' contradiction between the growth of population and the relatively low rate at which the production of consumer goods is being developed. He is one of those who insists that the • birthrate should be cut, if that is at all possible, and claims that the population avalanche is bound to lead to a disaster. "The population explosion is both more dangerous and more immediate than the H-bomb.''~^^3^^ He adds that in our day the production of life is even more criminal than the taking of life.^^4^^

More moderate neo-Malthusians assume that the growth of the world population will become an insuperable force holding back the growth of its living standards and even depressing them. The US demographer W. Taylor writes: "If mankind strives to populate the earth with teeming masses of people, their standard of living will keep dropping.''~^^5^^

In view of the fact that the density of the world population now tends to grow faster than its well-being, bourgeois demographers, who do not see any radical ways of resolving this contradiction, wax hysterical, begin to toll the bell for mankind and predict its inevitable spiritual and physical degeneration. In order to ``save'' mankind, some of them venture the opinion that it is impossible to end wars, overcome disease, reduce the death rate, and so on, because in a kind of perverted humanism they think

~^^1^^ Ibid., p. 142.

~^^2^^ Aldous Huxley, Brave New World Revisited, London, 1958, p. 22.

~^^3^^ William Vogt, People! Challenge to Survival, New York, 1960, p. 224.

~^^4^^ Ibid., p. 152.

~^^5^^ W. Taylor, Natural Resources (lectures delivered at Berkeley University), New York, 1959, p. 242.

~^^1^^ See: G. J. C. Smith, H. J. Steck, G. Surette, Our Ecological Crisis, New York. 1974.

~^^2^^ K. Jaspers, Die Atombombe und Zukunft des Menschen, Miinchen, 1961, p. 141.

that wars, disease and the high death rate can help to balance out the "production potentialities" with the growing number of ``mouths''.

But perhaps there are rational and humane means for achieving such a balance? Indeed, there are, and they spring from the actual course of social development.

The problem of overpopulation is a key one for many countries, especially for those which are economically underdeveloped.

The difficult problems arising from population growth can be solved, largely if not fully, through the total elimination of colonialism and neocolonialism, and their hard legacy. The former colonial and dependent countries must be given aid without strings to develop their economy. They have a right to demand of the imperialist countries a return to them of a part of the immense wealth of which they were plundered in the long years of colonial domination. Provision of this aid is a key task of the United Nations.

There is no doubt that normal economic, social, spiritual and cultural development of the once oppressed peoples and appropriate measures for regulating population growth will yield positive results and will show in practice the biased and flimsy nature of the fatalistic and pessimistic claims about mankind's destruction as a result of its growth.

This problem can be fully and effectively solved by radical measures like the socialisation of the means of production, the establishment of a worldwide planned economy and a powerful production apparatus helping to make full use of the immense potentialities of atomic energy, physics, chemistry, biology and other fields of science and technology.

Let us bear in mind that because of unfavourable natural conditions vast areas of the Earth have not been developed. Specialists estimate that in the near future the area of land now in use (some 1 billion hectares) could be multiplied tenfold. The use of agrotechnical achievements alone could help to increase farm output per head of population by 1.5-2 per cent a year.

The Soviet Academician N. N. Semyonov wrote: "It will apparently be no Utopia to assume that by the end of this century or by the beginning of the next one the genera-

tion of electricity throughout the world could be increased, say 100-fold, that is, the power supply per man could be raised to 10 kw of installed capacity. This could help to mechanise every type of industrial production, agriculture and household labour. A further increase of electricity generation by, say, another 10 times could make it possible rationally to control the climate, because in this event the energy generated every year could come to about 5 per cent of the solar energy absorbed in that .period by our planet." ^l

The exploration of outer space and the emergence of human civilisation beyond the bounds of the Earth could open up limitless possibilities before mankind. That is, of course, a prospect for the relatively remote future. But even while remaining in its cradle, the Earth, the communist society, with its planned and proportionally organised economy, could produce an abundance of goods and services fairly distributed among men by putting at the service of one and all the great and steadily growing scientific and technical potential.

This shows that there is no ground at all for the talk about a fatal conflict between man and his environment, about the inevitable decline in living standards because of mankind's numerical growth, about the biological degeneration of the human race, its self-exhaustion, the inevitability of a thermonuclear cataclysm, and so on. These pessimistic predictions result from a hypertrophied view of existing conflicts, an unwillingness and inability to see the historical perspective and the actual forces capable of eliminating social evil in all its forms, and to realise that, once established, communism will provide a stable and indestructible basis for the flourishing of mankind's creative powers.

The ideology of social pessimism, the sense of doom and deadening fear of the future are being overcome and will be fully overcome in the transition to the new socio-- economic formation, the society of genuine and full-fledged humanism.

The idea of history's ascent, the idea of social progress has been and remains the alternative to social pessimism.

~^^1^^ See: Historical Materialism and the Social Philosophy of the Bourgeoisie Today, Sotsekgiz, Moscow, 1960, p. 219 (in Russian).

Chapter Ten

THE SOCIO-ECONOMIC FORMATION DOCTRINE AND ITS ADVERSARIES TODAY

the 19th century. Today, as in the past, bourgeois, reformist and revisionist thinkers deny that this doctrine has a materialist basis, with the decisive role belonging to the aggregation of economic relations, and the mode of production, which ultimately determines all the other spheres of the social entity, the social system---human society. Indeed, if the fundamental importance of the mode of social production could be invalidated, the materialist view of history, the Marxist typologisation of the historical process could be discarded.

Many reasons, notably, ideological-class motives, have prevented major spokesmen for the bourgeois philosophy of history and general sociology, like Pitirim Sorokin, Raymond Aron, Arnold Toynbee and Oswald Spengler, from accepting as the basis of human history the mode of production, without which there can be no human society at all. Some of these bourgeois theorists admit that the Marxist conception of history has "some merits", only to discard it as a whole. They are also willing to accept the role of economic relations, but only as one of the equal elements of historical interaction.

While urging a stand over and above "ideological preconceptions", which is free from materialist or idealist monism in comprehending the historical process and its typologisation, they themselves seek a basis for the historical movement in the realm of the spirit. Many bourgeois philosophers of history frankly declare that the substance of history and its typologisation will be comprehended not on the strength of some ``earthbound'' empirical fact like production, but of types of culture and civilisation, which are based on specific spiritual values. The peoples, the bourgeois theorists claim, have not differed in how they have produced the material means of their existence, but in how they thought, how they perceived truth, beauty and the ethical ideal, and the god they worshipped.

The Marxist socio-economic formation doctrine is being criticised in the light of traditional idealism and spiritualism, as will be seen from the assessments and characterisation of the substance of the historical process and its typologisation by some of the most prominent bourgeois thinkers in the philosophy of history and sociology. Thus, Arnold Toynbee has based his conception of a pluralistic system of isolated civilisations on some form of religion:

The ideological struggle of our day is centred on the Marxist-Leninist doctrine of socio-economic formations. All the philosophico-historical and general sociological bourgeois conceptions are either directly or indirectly aimed against the Marxist doctrine of the law-governed succession of socio-economic formations and their upward development.

Bourgeois sociologists cannot accept the idea of the emergence of qualitatively specific social systems, their development and inevitable negation by higher socio-- economic formations because it makes nonsense of the idea that the antagonistic-class society is everlasting, and also because it provides the theoretical arguments for social revolution and mankind's inevitable ascent from capitalism to communism. -In more general theoretical terms, the denial of the Marxist doctrine of socio-economic formations is designed to reject the materialist view of history. One can well understand this, because the doctrine of socioeconomic formations, which organically blends materialism and dialectics in history, is the core of historical materialism, the Marxist-Leninist philosophy of history.

Bourgeois theorists are fairly well aware of the importance of this doctrine in exploding the diverse social myths of our day. They are also aware of the role it has to play in analysing the current world revolutionary process, the emergence of developing countries, and the study of fundamental developments in the world socialist system.

It is, of course, impossible to examine all the distortions of the Marxist conception of socio-economic formations, which is why I shall consider here only the most typical and current of them.

Many of the methods by means of which bourgeois sociology seeks to refute the socio-economic formation doctrine are not new at all and date from the second half of

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every new civilisation sprang from a new religion, he says. "Civilizations ... have forfeited their historical significance except in so far as they minister to the progress of Religion." ' Toynbee is very well aware of the deeply critical state of Western civilisation, or, in other words, of the capitalist society, and naively assumes that it could be saved by a reformed religious consciousness.

The well-known US sociologist Pitirim Sorokin counters the Marxist doctrine of socio-economic formations with his own typologisation of history, being guided, as he says, by social types of ideology. From the positions of objective idealism, which is close to the idealism of Plato, he suggests the following supersystems: ideational, sensate and idealistic. Each of these supersystems has several logical premises. One will gain an idea of his method of typologising history from his ideational supersystem which is based on the religious consciousness. He writes: "In the beginning [of the sociocultural world] was the word [ meaning] ___ And the word [meaning] was made flesh and

dwelt among us [acquired vehicles and agents].

``If not in the time, then on a logical plane the word [meaning] is the first component of any cultural phenomenon; when it is made flesh [acquires vehicles and agents], it becomes a system of this empirical sociocultural reality.''~^^2^^ This blatantly idealistic and purely speculative conception is contrasted to the Marxist socio-economic formation doctrine, which adequately and in a theoretically generalised form reflects actual historical process, mankind's real history, its substance, its main stages and general direction.

Slightly refurbished biological and psychological conceptions of social phenomena are used to refute the materialist view of history, the doctrine of socio-economic formations. Again and again we discover attempts to explain social cataclysms and wars by the innate aggressiveness of "human nature". Many writers seek to solve the major social problems of our day not through radical economic and social transformations but through an improvement and humanisation of the human soul by means of social psy-

chology. The US Professor M. Segall, the author of a book entitled Human Behavior and Public Policy, pins great hopes on social psychology, which, he claims, can teach men to voice indignation against inhuman goals and try to overcome disease, poverty and other problems agitating mankind.

Like many others, Segall tries to eliminate all the antagonisms of the epoch by means of psycho-political suggestion. It is not surprising that his programme is designed to ennoble men and make them happy without doing away with the real sources of evil: the social and proprietary inequality of men and peoples, the social system which organically breeds and deepens a whole complex of class, national and racial antagonisms, and carries the threat of thermonuclear disaster. But at some point, apparently aware that he has overdone the absolutisation of the means of psycho-political improvement of the capitalist system, Professor Segall recalls sinful matter. But in what context? He suggests that human activity should be intensified through a greater protein intake. One would think that the businessmen and the leaders of the military-industrial complex, who orchestrate capitalism's aggressive domestic and foreign policy, suffer from protein deficiency.

I have dealt with the writings of this US professor at some length to show the true worth of the ``ideas'' which are set up in contrast to the scientific view of social life, of its motive forces and perspectives.

With the advance of scientific and technical progress, which has brought out the role of men's productive activity in the fortunes of society, some bourgeois sociologists find themselves being forced to pay tribute to the "economic factor" in the present-day "industrial society". Apart from everything else, this turns out to be a forced acceptance of "some elements" of the Marxist view of social development. But this particular acceptance of Marxism tends to invalidate it and to reject the materialist view of history and the doctrine of socio-economic formations. Take the theory of the "industrial society''.

Those who want to keep in step with the times no longer frankly appeal to religious, ethical, aesthetic and politicojuridical ideas as a spiritual foundation for society and the periodisation of the historical process. Accordingly, technology is presented as the maker of modern history. This is

~^^1^^ A. Toynbee, A Study of History, Vol. VII, Oxford, 1959, p. 449.

~^^2^^ P. Sorokin, Social and Cultural Dynamics, Vol. IV, New York, 1941, p. 95.

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a ``partial'' acceptance of Marxism, for technology is, after all, closer to economics than to the idea of God. But whereas Marx and his followers regard technology as an element of the productive forces, which are, in turn, closely bound up with a definite type of relations of production, Walt Rostow, Raymond Aron and other advocates of technical fetishism claim that technology is primordial and autonomous. It is the crucial element in the structure of the industrial society and is the criterion for dividing the history of society into "traditional societies" and modern " industrial society''.

It will be easily seen that this oversimplified division of mankind's history into traditional and nontraditional societies automatically eliminates the question of socio-economic formations and the mode of material production, their fundamental groundwork. The "traditional societies" include the primitive communal system, the slave-holding society and feudalism, while the modern, nontraditional society covers capitalism and socialism. For the sake of precision, let us say that Rostow prefers to speak of stages of economic growth and to establish class distinctions at these stages, but his main concern is to show that economics in! the Marxist sense of the word cannot be regarded as the leading element of social development, and the various types of economic relations cannot provide a basis for typologising the historical process. While Rostow is not very careful in scientific terms when defining socio-economic formations, he nevertheless clearly counterposes his stages of economic growth to the Marxist theory of socio-economic formations. He writes: "As against our stages---the traditional society; the preconditions; take-ofi; maturity; and high mass-- consumption---we are setting Marx's feudalism; bourgeois capitalism; Socialism; and Communism." '

What is it then that Rostow does not like in the doctrine of socio-economic formations? It is the insistence that the economy, as the aggregate of the productive forces and the relations of production, has the crucial role to play. He writes: "Although the stages-of-growth rejects the notion that the economy as a sector of society---and economic advantage as a human motive---are necessarily dominant... the

central phenomenon of the world of post-traditional societies is not the economy---and whether it is capitalist or not---it is the total procedure by which choices are made." ' From the incontrovertible fact that society is a living organism, an entity, Rostow suggests that the materialist view of history is a form of "economic materialism" with its inherent denial or extreme neglect of politico-juridical, ideological and other noneconomic factors.

Like Aron, Rostow flatly objects to the division of social relations into material and spiritual, and to the doctrine of basis and superstructure. Both claim that the systemic approach to society as a living organism, as an entity, makes it impossible to regard economic relations as the material foundation of society. Aron writes: "One has to consider all the human activities as significant, and refrain from contrasting the basis, seen as something material, to the superstructure, regarded as an ideological order.''~^^2^^

Aron is quite aware that Marxism-Leninism attaches exceptional importance to revolutionary political struggle and the role of advanced ideas in the historical process. His purpose is to negate the role of correctly comprehended economic relations in the entity of human society, the socioeconomic formation, so as to eliminate the problem of the relations of production, property relations, and the need to do away with capitalist private property for the sake of social progress in the world today. Rostow, Aron and other bourgeois theorists find it much more congenial to set up socially neutral technology as the instrument for solving all the cardinal social antagonisms in the present-day bourgeois society. They claim that in its immanent development, technology eliminates all the class antagonisms, the social revolution, and the need for transition to socialism and communism, and provides everyone in a reformed capitalist system, which they designate as the industrial society, with TV sets, refrigerators and washing machines in a life of plenty.

Rostow insists that instead of cause-and-effect connections between the economy, on the one hand, and socio-political and ideological relations, on the other, there is only an interaction, a functional connection between the structural ele-

' Ibid., pp. 148-50.

~^^2^^ R. Aron, Dix-hnit lemons sur la socifte indnstrielle, Gallimard, Paris, 1962, p. 59.

~^^1^^ W. W. Rostow, The Stages of Economic Growth, Cambridge, 1960, p. 145.

ments of the system. One would think that this should make the US sociologist eliminate, as a matter of principle, the question of priority either of material or nonmaterial factors in the historical process. Actually, his idea of the interaction of material and nonmaterial relations leads him to believe that "inner requirements", curiosity, the emotions and other psychological elements are the motive forces behind economic or, rather, technical development. It turns out that the activity of the capitalists and capitalist corporations cannot be simply explained by their urge for enrichment because in the US society the activity of businessmen must be seen "in terms of the full range of human motives and aspirations". '

Rostow's idealistic distortion of the historical process will be clearly seen in another of his books, entitled Politics and the Stages of Growth, in which he sets out to show the interconnection between economics and politics, both of which operate as individual factors in social development. Let us note that when considering economics, Rostow has in view its sectoral structure, national income, mode of consumption, etc. He studiously avoids the question of the system of relations of production and the type of property in the means of production. Having eliminated the definitive feature of the economy, Rostow finds it easy to deny the leading role of the economy within the system of social relations. In a preface to the book, he sets forth the basic methodological principles for studying the interconnection between economics and politics, and says that his initial assumption is that "societies are interacting organisms and economic factors do not enjoy a peculiar priority.''~^^2^^

With this idealistic methodology, Rostow tries to sort out the most intricate economic and political problems of the 20th century. Some of his observations are correct, but his overall defective methodology, and his political sympathies and antipathies prevent him from understanding the most important historical uniformities of the epoch, its basic contradiction, and the contest between outgoing capitalism and socialism, which is taking over. He tries to reduce the competition and struggle between the two opposite forma-

~^^1^^ W. W. Rostow, Op. cit., p. 153.

~^^2^^ W. W. Rostow, Politics and the Stages of Growth, Cambridge, 1971, p. X.

tions to a struggle between "Western democracy" and "Eastern centralism", and uses other formulas borrowed from the anti-communist arsenal.

Rostow's defective assumptions lead him to make some remarkably trivial abstract-humanistic incantations. At the end of his book, he writes: "Modern science and technology have rendered all men brothers whether they like it or not; by creating a network of intimate interaction which links the domestic life of nations to their external dispositions as never before, quite irrespective of distance and ideology, postures of amity or hostility or indifference. One can hope that this fact would gradually strengthen the theological and humane counsel in our cultures that human brotherhood is, in fact, the ultimate reality." '

The brotherhood of men and nations is not an invented perspective. But this brotherhood can be realised only through the elimination of capitalism, the last exploitative formation, with its inevitable feature of some men and nations enslaving other men and nations. Rostow wrote his book to defend capitalism, to try to invalidate the idea that it has to give way to another socio-economic formation, which raises man to unprecedented heights and sets him up as the supreme value.

Thus, Rostow's defence of sociological pluralism and emphasis on the role of technology culminate in a poorly veiled and trivial idealism in explaining phenomena like society and social development. Similarly, Aron's reasoning about the pluralism of factors in social development and the significance of economic relations lead to the assertion that man's yearning for knowledge is the basis for the development of technology, which, for its part, determines the whole historical process.

It remains for us to emphasise that this peculiar technological idealism, which is aimed against the Marxist doctrine of socio-economic formations, is patently apologetic with respect to the capitalist system. We find the same train of thought in the writings of Zbigniew Brzezinski, the US President's National Security Adviser, in which he uses technology, torn out of the social context and set up as a fetish, for unbridled myth-making. As Aron and Rostow, Brzezinski presents technology, almighty and subject only

Ibid., p. 332.

to its own inner logic, as the substitute for the objective laws of social development. It is the maker of history and the main factor which determines all the social changes, the changes in morals, social structure, values and society as a whole.

Which way does this all-powerful technology lead, what social changes does it produce, what kind of future does it impose on humanity? What is the "dynamic prospect" according to Brzezinski? He writes: "Although I do not mean to minimize the gravity of America's problems---their catalogue is long, the dilemmas are acute, and the signs of a meaningful response are at most ambivalent---I truly believe that this society has the capacity, the talent, the wealth, and increasingly, the will to surmount the difficulties inherent in this current historic transition." ' So, according to Brzezinski, the current transitional period is not one of ascent from capitalism to socialism, but a period of consolidation and stabilisation of capitalism which has mastered technology. He assures us that, bar some disaster, "at the end of the century America will still be a significant force for global change, whether or not the dominant subjective mood is pro- or anti-American".~^^2^^

We have here a technocratic version of the argument used to back up the everlasting nature of the capitalist socio-economic formation and to ``refute'' the Marxist doctrine of social progress. Still, a careful reader of his book will feel that the author is fearful of the communist perspective. He injects large doses of pseudo-optimism concerning the future of capitalism in order to reduce the fear of any `` unexpected'' developments. But one must say that he is not very successful in his attempts. Take this statement about the Soviet Union: "The concentration of Soviet scientific researchers in institutes remote from industry, has meant that research breakthroughs have either never been developed, developed only for military purposes, or developed only after considerable delay.''~^^3^^ How is one then to explain the accelerated scientific and technical progress and its ever growing role in Soviet industry? No serious-minded bourgeois econo-

mist can deny this fact. Developed socialism harmonises the achievements of the scientific and technical revolution with the advantages of the socialist economic system, and its front-ranking science and culture.

In the Tenth five-year period (1976-1980), industrial output in the USSR, for instance, is to go up by 36 per cent, with the industries which determine scientific and technical progress in the economy and the efficiency of social production---the chemical and petrochemical industries, the whole complex of engineering and metal-working, and the power industry---developing at a specially high rate. The past decade has been marked by a rapid growth of such upto-date industries as the nuclear power industry, electronics, aerospace, the laser industry, and the production of especially pure metals.

Brzezinski's writings and political activity reveal an ugly combination of fatalism and voluntarism. He pins his hopes on accelerated technical progress as a factor that should keep capitalism going and help it to prosper. The scientific and technological revolution, he hopes, should inevitably and automatically consolidate the private-property society, carry it along an upgrade and establish it for all time. But he is sufficiently well informed about the facts, and they do not induce any euphoria: he is well aware of the gravity of the growing ills of the capitalist society in the United States. But while his colleagues increasingly look for salvation to reforms, which should either avert, delay or ease the fatal denouement, Brzezinski is one of those who are more inclined to resort to voluntarist acts to eradicate the evil. He looks to the use of force, the arms race, threats of war, a return to the cold war period, and all manner of intrigues and provocations against the socialist world and against the national liberation movement of the peoples which want to be masters of their own destiny. In short, Brzezinski naively believes that the world can be shaped to the liking of the mighty monopolies and the militaryindustrial complex. Neither Brzezinski nor his masters have learnt anything from their ignominious defeat in the "dirty war" against ``small'' and heroic Vietnam. Brzezinski refuses to see the inexorable logic of history in that scandalous fiasco of the US imperialists. He hopes that the next time things will turn out to be better, if they try hard enough. He works in this kind of voluntarist ecstasy, giving his ad-

~^^1^^ Z. Brzezinski, Between Two Ages. America's Role in the Technetronic Era, New York, 1970, p. XVII.

~^^2^^ Ibid., p. 35.

~^^3^^ Ibid., p. 157.

vice and framing intrigues, banking on the Maoists and all the other big and small allies and henchmen of US imperialism in an effort to stem the advance of history, which he and his patrons do not like. This man, who keeps shouting and making insinuations about a "Soviet threat", himself resorts to threats and intimidation against all " intractable regimes" and actually plays with fire, without giving it another thought.

Such is the face of one of the theorists and politicians of imperialism. But the loud-mouthed and bellicose Brzezinski has clearly lost his sense of proportion, evoking not only ironic smiles but also a sense of indignation. No wonder that even in the United States and other capitalist countries the more realistically minded and cautious bourgeois statesmen and public figures have voiced alarm over the restless activity of the US President's National Security Adviser, and insist that this too blatant and zealous theorist and practitioner of anti-communism and militarism should be kept in check.

Summing up what has been said, we find that it is altogether futile to try to cast doubt on the materialist view of history and the doctrine of socio-economic formations in the light of objective or subjective idealism, by trying to substitute for the actual historical facts and processes arbitrary and biased explanations and typologisations of history by means of abstract and invented criteria.

Let us note that some incorrect ideas concerning socioeconomic formations will also be found in some Marxist writings. I have in mind, in particular, the attempts to draw a sharp dividing line between the capitalist formation and earlier socio-economic formations. Thus, some assert that the actual socio-economic formation arises only with the emergence of capitalism, because earlier societies had allegedly been based on extra-economic coercion, which is why the face of society had been shaped by politics, by political force, instead of economic relations.

This mistake, which obviates the need for considering the doctrine of socio-economic formations as a universal historical conception, was more explicitly expressed in some speeches in the discussion held by the French Communist Party's Marxist Research Centre in October 1971. One speaker, for instance, claimed that Marx could not and did not have any coherent doctrine of socio-economic forma-

tions, and that economics was the basic determining factor only under capitalism, while there allegedly was a reverse correlation between economics and socio-political relations in pre-capitalist societies.

Those who say that the existence of extra-economic coercion makes economic relations secondary and derivative, forget the fact that extra-economic coercion itself has economic, material roots. To ignore this fact is to make a serious departure from the materialist view of history.

The attempt to reject the concept of socio-economic formations and to confine oneself to the concept of mode of production is another departure from historical materialism and the historical truth. Of course, the mode of production is the economic foundation of any type of society, but the historical picture is oversimplified if the historical process is typologised only in accordance with the mode of production. Marxism-Leninism regards socio-economic formations as living social organisms, as specific systems of social relations, as social entities. The urge to reduce the analysis and typologisation of the historical process to bringing out the mode of production results in a neglect of the role of the superstructure and of its great importance in the functioning and development of the social organism, the socio-economic formation.

Another mistake is to present all the exploiter-class societies as varieties of one and the same socio-economic formation. There is no good reason for obliterating the substantial distinctions between the relations of production in different exploiter-class societies, between slave-holding, feudalism and capitalism.

Considering once again the efforts by bourgeois theorists to negate the doctrine of socio-economic formations and the materialist view of history, let us note that many bourgeois sociologists seek to objectivise the typologisation of the social process and to produce mental models which have no analogy with actual reality, but allegedly help to order the stream of historical events and to introduce some logical order into the phenomenological world. In the second half of the 19th century, Max Weber tried to fight the Marxist doctrine of socio-economic formations with his own doctrine of "ideal types", which were arbitrary mental constructs allegedly helping the historian and sociologist to systematise individual social phenomena that in virtue of their nature

allegedly defied scientific generalisation. Weber and his neo-Kantian and positivist followers used his doctrine of "ideal types" of society to disprove the Marxist doctrine of socio-economic formations and to present actually existing formations as arbitrary logical constructs. Weber was right in one sense: the concept of socio-economic formations is indeed an abstract one. But he tried to cover up the truth that this abstraction, in contrast to his "ideal types", is a scientific abstraction adequately reproducing objectively existing formations.

It is important to criticise Weber's "ideal types" of society because today, as in his own lifetime, attempts are being made to gnoseologise the doctrine of socio-economic formations and present it as an "ideal type", so stripping the socio-economic formation of its objective historical content.

The Soviet press has criticised the attempts to apply a modified version of Weber's "ideal types" to socio-economic formations and to regard these formations as a logical construct, as a theoretical ``model'', without trying to establish it in objective reality.

Bourgeois sociology has attacked not only the idea of materialism in history, but also the doctrine of the dialectical development of social life, and there is a certain logic in this: after all, if one could disprove the idea of the dialectical development of history, of the leap-like transitions from one social system to another, and the idea of the upward development of social organisms, this would mean the abolition of the Marxist doctrine of formations.

The attacks on the dialectical conception of social development are being carried on from the standpoint of vulgar evolutionism, which rules out the dialectics of the discrete and the indiscrete, and leap-like transitions from one social system to another, a standpoint which holds that the substance of abstract man is immutable and that it determines the equally qualitative monotony of mankind's history.

Social indeterminism is a bourgeois apologetic conception which is aimed against the socio-economic formation doctrine and against the view of history as a natural historical process. This conception does, of course, have its theoreticocognitive roots. The complexity and contradictory nature of the historical process, with its rapid advances, protracted periods of stagnation, reverse movements, difficulty in detecting repetitions of historical phenomena, the seeming prev-

alence of chance in social life and so on, can, of course, lead to the idea that the historical process is indeterminate, that it lacks necessary links, objective uniformities, real qualitatively peculiar types of social organisation of men. But there is an even better reason why bourgeois philosophers and historians incline to indeterminism and subjectivism, and this reason needs to be taken into account. It is the ideological-class function of the bourgeois philosophy of history and general sociology, whose purpose is to refute the idea that mankind has been advancing in a law-governed manner from capitalism to communism, and it is for this purpose that they deny the idea of any social law, of any necessary ascent by society along the stages of social progress.

Indeterminism, which is organically connected with subjective idealism, is as old as idealist philosophy generally. One cannot say that present-day social indeterminism has gone a long way since the days of Windelband and Rickert. But that is what happens to all the false ideas which differ in form but do not undergo any substantial change, as Lenin emphasised when comparing Berkeley's subjective idealism and the idealism of the Machists at the turn of the century.

As at earlier stages of history, the advocates of social indeterminism assert that there are no objective laws in ac. tual, empirical history. They say that a law is a generalisation of scattered phenomena and can be effected by the human intellect in accordance with the rules of logic. Here we find the old Kantian idea that the intellect introduces rules and order into the chaotic agglomeration of historical facts and situations. In our day, indeterminism is aimed mainly against the Marxist doctrine of objective historical laws, objective phases in human history, that is, against the view of history as a law-governed succession of socioeconomic formations.

Among the critics of the Marxist doctrine of socio-- economic formations who have been most zealous in the post-war period we find the neopositivist and anti-communist Karl Popper. In his loud book entitled The Poverty of Historism, and his equally pretentious work, The Open Society and Its Enemies, he has put together everything that the indeterminists before him said, in an effort to overthrow Marxism together with the objective laws and necessary histori-

cal phases, socio-economic formations. Like a prayer, Popper keeps repeating that the future depends on us alone and that we are not subject to any historical necessity whatsoever. Another tenet he keeps repeating is that the absence of objective laws makes it impossible to predict the future before us. Assuming that the "meaning of history" implies the existence of some objective social laws, he claims that "it is we who introduce purpose and meaning into nature and into history.... History itself ... has no end nor meaning." ^^1^^ In his voluntarist jargon, Popper declares that because there are no laws, meaning or purpose in history, we can decide to give it all three, and we can proclaim the struggle for an open society and against its adversaries as the goal and meaning of history. Considering that Popper's "open society" is capitalism, its adversaries, the advocates of socialism in the first place, will easily detect the ideological-class function of social indeterminism in our day.

The imperialist circles, seeking to preserve the old social world by every means at their disposal, regard indeterminism, irrationalism and voluntarism as the ideological weapon they need. One will agree with Massimo Salvadori's idea that in the bourgeois society the ruling classes have "accepted voluntarism as a principle and have practiced it".~^^2^^ Salvador! quotes spokesmen of the US ruling circles, including the former President Harry Truman, who refused to recognise the existence of any objective economic laws or to accept the idea that nothing can save the old social system from destruction---be it keen insight or strong willpower---if it is on its way to decline and disappearance in virtue of the workings of immanent, objective laws.

Social agnosticism is also used together with the other conceptions by bourgeois ideologists to criticise the Marxist theory of social development and the doctrine of socio-- economic formations. Social agnosticism is a denial of the possibility of gaining a knowledge of historical laws, even if they existed, and a claim that it is even more hopeless to predict any future forms of human community living.

One cannot say that present-day bourgeois sociologists are not casting around for a general theoretical conception

~^^1^^ K. R. Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies, London, 1957, p. 278.

~^^2^^ M. Salvadori, The Economics of Freedom, Pall Mall Press, London, 1959, p. 151.

which could provide a knowledge of the substance of the historical process and the phases of its development. But there can be no positive results in this quest because it is being carried on in the light of philosophical idealism and anti-dialectics. The fact is that philosophical idealism cannot yield authentic knowledge in any area, because it itself is a distorted and unscientific reflection of reality. The repeated and quite natural failures of the attempts to produce a general sociological theory on the basis of idealism, and the degeneration of this theory into a set of dead, a priori, scholastic constructs have further helped to fortify the positions of narrow and creeping empiricism and of sociological agnosticism, which is organically connected with it. The main reason why the latter has continued to exist and even to expand its sphere of influence in bourgeois sociology is that it is aimed against the Marxist doctrine that the substance of historical processes can be understood and that the future human society can be scientifically prognosticated.

Raymond Aron has tried to find additional arguments against the idea that the substance of the historical process can be understood, with special emphasis on the idea of the plurality of historical facts, which are contradictory and carry a diversity of messages, and this is allegedly why they cannot be scientifically assessed.

Another French philosopher, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, keeps attacking the idea that historical processes are cognisable chiefly from Bergsonian positions, seeking to prove that social life is a peculiar thrust which has no meaning, logic or consistency. Every historian, he claims, regards the historical facts and connects them up with each other in the light of his own feelings, thoughts, interests and considerations. This suggests that there are as many histories and historical conceptions as there are historians and sociologists. In an effort to apply his conception to politics, Merleau-Ponty denies the possibility of any policy based on a scientific historical and sociological conception, simply because history defies scientific study. Real politics, he writes, "does not seek to embrace the whole of the historical process, but takes man as he is, that is, a being living and working in an obscure world, resolving his problems alone, and at best trying to invest facts with some moral values". '

~^^1^^ Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Les aventures de la dialectique, Paris, 1955, p. 8.

Because life is a set of isolated events which are not linked as cause and effect, because the past is not latent with the present, while the future has no basis in the present, Merleau-Poiity concludes, it is hopeless to expect to have any precise knowledge of the order in which historical facts and situations succeed each other. With such an approach there is naturally no room for any typologisation of the historical process, history is not studied as a succession of different civilisations, supersystems, etc., and, of course, socio-economic formations in the first place.

The French idealist philosopher Henri-Irenes Marrou takes a similar stand in rejecting the possibility of cognition of essential historical phenomena in order to establish qualitatively specific stages in history.

He does not accept the extreme subjectivism in historical cognition, according to which there are as many histories as there are historians. Each historian, he says, "is rooted with all the fibres of his being in the milieu to which he belongs, the social, political, national and cultural milieu .... The historian is not alone as he advances to meet the task; he approaches past history as a rerpesentative of his group." '

But from this basically correct proposition, Marrou draws the erroneous conclusion that objective authentic historical knowledge is impossible. He studiously avoids the fact that the ideologues of advanced classes, to say nothing of those of the working class, have been variously capable of reproducing the objective truth in history, and that here the movement has been from relative objective truths to absolute truths.

Marrou applies to the sphere of social life the principles of group subjectivism and absolute relativism, and denies the possibility not only of objective, generally valid knowledge of the past, but also of present and future history. The Marxist conception of social development and the doctrine of socio-economic formations, according to Marrou's logic, is no more than a conception "of a definite social group", which is why it cannot, allegedly, have general scientific validity. But the whole point is that it is social practice and not subjectivist scholastic reasoning that recognises or rejects general scientific validity. Aron, Merleau-Ponty, Mar-

~^^1^^ Henri-Irenes Marrou, De la connaissance historiqae, Paris, 1955, p. 278.

rou, and many other bourgeois philosophers and sociologists cannot and will not understand that the Marxist typologisation of history and the doctrine of socio-economic formations are not some a priori speculative logical scheme which is imposed on the actual historical process from outside. On the contrary this doctrine uses the logical method to produce an adequate picture of the actual movement of history and to establish its most important qualitative stages. None of these philosophers or their followers is capable of giving an intelligible explanation of the brilliant confirmation in practice of the scientific predictions made by the founders of Marxism-Leninism. It is certainly worth while to ponder the fact that nearly seventy-five years before the October Socialist Revolution in Russia, Marx and Engels gave a scientific substantiation of the revolutionary transition from capitalism to socialism.

A large number of bourgeois theorists have tried to `` refute'' the Marxist typologisation of history and the proposition that the historical process is a transition from economically _T socially and culturally less developed formations to more developed formations. It takes more than a stream of speeches and writings to refute the Marxist typologisation of history and the Marxist conception of social progress. To refute them, one has to prove that the transition from the primitive communal system to the slave-holding system, and from it to feudalism, and so on, did not signify a growth in the productive forces, an improvement, within limits, of the relations of production, of politico-juridical norms, a growth of culture, etc.

The only thing the attacks by the bourgeois philosophy of history and sociology on the Marxist doctrine indicate is the deep crisis of bourgeois social science, the loss of every scientific perspective and, of course, the hard lot of those who, in the interests of a class doomed by history, have to ``refute'' truths borne out by experience. They are in the same position as those who at one time had to refute the theory of Copernicus and Galileo for the benefit of the feudal-clerical ideology.

Spokesmen for right-wing and ``left-wing'' opportunism, trying to keep in step with their bourgeois colleagues, display much zeal and inspiration in distorting the Marxist doctrine of social development generally, and the Marxist conception of socio-economic formations, in particular. Con-

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sider, for instance, the theoretical level of the reasoning we find in the writing of one ideologue of right-wing opportunism, Willi Eichler. He says: "History does not run in accordance with indefeasible laws. It is wrong to think that its course can be contemplated with a sense of pessimism or optimism. Democratic socialism regards history as the activity of responsible men designed either for good or evil." ' This right-reformist theorist has repeated word for word what the indeterminists in the bourgeois ideological camp have been saying.

Right-wing revisionists like Garaudy and Fischer also radically distort the Marxist doctrine of socio-economic formations. Keeping in step with the avowed ideologues of the bourgeoisie, they refer to the scientific and technological revolution in an effort to do away with the problem of social revolution and to put in place of the basic antagonistic contradictions of capitalism some of its secondary and tertiary contradictions, by pushing the working class into the background of socio-political life and by minimising, in a Kautskian spirit, the role of the subjective factor, especially the role of the communist party and of revolutionary theory. This is a technocratic version of reformism. Garaudy tries to produce some kind of sociological centaur, by combining a socialist basis or, rather, a system of socialised means of production with many elements of the superstructure of the bourgeois society.

Just now, the right-wing revisionists are mainly concerned with obscuring the basic uniformities of socialism and producing diverse ``socialisms'' on that basis.

The ``leftist'' revisionists have recarved the Marxist-- Leninist doctrine of socio-economic formations and distorted the substance of the communist formation out of all recognition, also rejecting the concept of the two phases of the communist socio-economic formation. They ignore the substance of the first phase of communism, claim that communism begins with petty-bourgeois levelling, and transfer communism itself into a remote future. Let us note that the Maoists, like the right-wing revisionists, have been producing their own sociological centaurs in an effort to tie in

some system of socialised means of production with anti-- socialist policies and bourgeois nationalism.

One of the numerous concepts designed to deny historical materialism and its major section---the theory of socio-- economic formations---is that of the "organisation society". According to this concept, the motive forces of social development are to be found not in the sphere of material production, but primarily in the management of economic, social and ideological relations.

There is no doubt at all that as social affairs have become more complicated, the management of production and distribution has come to play a far more important role than ever before. Of course, anarchy of production, competitive struggle and a drive for superprofits are still intrinsic to capitalism and rule out planning and management on the scale of the whole state. Nevertheless, even capitalist society cannot do without a measure of planning and management on a smaller scale.

As for socialist society, it can exist and successfully develop only on the basis of scientifically valid plans and scientific management of all social processes.

Present-day historical idealists tend to absolutise the growing importance of management in various forms, regarding it as the decisive factor of social development. In this age of the scientific and technical revolution, management, seen as an intellectual phenomenon, as a totality of ideas being put into practice, is meant to put historical idealism on a more scientific, respectable basis.

In a book entitled On the Reconstruction of Historical Materialism, a spokesman of the "Frankfurt school" Jurgen Habermas declares the "ability to administer" to be the main criterion of historical progress. In ``reconstructing'' (or, rather, abolishing) historical materialism, Habermas explains the transition from one formation to another by the type and level of the "mode of administration". He writes: "I am inclined to distinguish socio-economic formations by their organisational principle.... Organisational principles explain the mechanism through which societies extend their structurally limited capacities for administration." '

~^^1^^ Protokoll der Verhandlnngen des Parteitages der Sozialdemokratischen Partei Deutschlands vom 18. bis 23. Mai 1958 in Stuttgart, Stuttgart, 1958, p. 308.

~^^1^^ Jurgen Habermas, Zur Rekonstruktion des Historischen Materialismus, Surhkamp Verlag, Frankfurt am Main, 1976, p. 136.

Habermas arbitrarily separates the productive forces from the relations of production, declaring the latter to be an "extra-economic category" and a "form of social integration''.

His main aim is to dematerialise historical materialism, ignore the historically conditioned modes of material production, and lay down arbitrary criteria for the typologisation of the historical process. In place of the real socio-- economic formations scientifically analysed by Marxism, Habermas offers his own system of "social formations": neolithic (archaic) societies, early societies of high culture, developed societies of high culture, and modern technological societies.

Habermas distinguishes one society from another, on the one hand, by the development level of the productive forces outside the social context and, on the other, by the totality of spiritual and cultural values, whose chief and decisive component is the "culture of administration", the "culture of organisation''.

It is not hard to see that what remains of historical materialism ``reconstructed'' along these lines is only the productive forces and elements of the ideological superstructure. What has disappeared? The production relations, the relations of property, which are to productive forces as form is to content. Habermas is one of those theorists who seek to obviate the problem of forms of property in social development. They think that this could help them imperceptibly to obviate the need for abolishing the capitalist form of private property, capitalist relations of production, which are now the main obstacle in the way of social progress.

A point to note here is that Habermas regards both capitalism and socialism as "modern technological societies", so removing the question of transition from the former to the latter.

While setting himself up as an original philosopher, Hahermas merely refurbishes some of the stereotyped ideas of anti-Marxist sociology.

Take his attempt to identify historical materialism with vulgar economic materialism, as advocates of every other anti-Marxist social concept seek to do. It is common knowledge that Marxism attaches great importance to political, juridical, ethical, aesthetic and other forms of social consciousness in historical development. Nevertheless, Habermas

keeps emphasising, in the wake of other adversaries of historical materialism, Marxism's nihilistic attitude to the "sphere of interaction", which he sees as including spiritual factors like moral consciousness, practical knowledge, the educational process, and so forth.

Habermas maintains that only his "reconstruction of historical materialism", of the theory of socio-economic formations, makes it possible to accept the materialist view of history, but only as one constituent of a "comprehensive evolutionary theory". Habermas deprives the latter of its materialist and correctly interpreted dialectical basis. By way of concession, he is prepared to accept the materialist view of history (in reconstructed form) as fit for explaining societies that existed before developed capitalism, for now extra-economic criteria have come to play the decisive role.

When reading Habermas' overcomplicated and contradictory historico-philosophical speculations, one might almost prefer those philosophers and sociologists who look for history's motive force in various spiritual factors without any camouflage, reservations, or acceptance of "some partial truths" of the Marxist philosophy of history. Of course, their conclusions are equally unscientific and at odds with actual history, but they are at least straightforward.

The Marxist doctrine of socio-economic formations is closely connected with the scientific theory of social progress. I have tried to show that the present-day opponents of this doctrine attack determinism in history, the allowance of objective social laws, and historical progress.

The important thing to note is that the denial of law-- governed social ascent and of historical progress is not always made openly, for while some opponents of Marxism reject the idea of progress generally, others pay lip service to social progress, but invest it with a content which in a veiled form nullifies the scientific view of historical phases and law-governed ascent from one less developed formation to a higher one.

In the latter instance, progress is taken to mean a ceaseless evolution of a definite system, namely, capitalism. This should not lead development beyond the framework of the bourgeois society, or to its replacement by a higher, qualitatively new type of social organism. We have seen that Brzezinski, for instance, has tried to perpetuate capitalism by turning some mystified technology into a fetish.

Many bourgeois theorists suggest that capitalism could outlast God himself, if it harnessed the scientific and technical revolution. This bourgeois pseudo-optimism asserts endless progress for bourgeois society, which is camouflaged by means of various new tags like the ``industrial'', "post-- industrial", ``technotronic'', ``mass'', and other similar societies which, at close inspection, turn out to be various models of the private-property capitalist society.

To give their prophesies a scientific look, those who spin out various social myths have to appeal to subjective versions of determinism, social uniformity and the law of social progress.

It turns out that these most frequently boil down to a vulgar evolutionism, wilich rejects out of hand the idea of any qualitative revolutionary leap, any transition to a new social organism, to a fundamentally new mode of production, with its corresponding socio-political and ideological relations. Simply speaking, this vulgar sociologism denies the need for and inevitability of socialism replacing capitalism, and insists that capitalism can be endlessly improved, and that all the economic, socio-political and cultural values can be achieved within the bounds of the capitalist formation.

Bourgeois economists, philosophers, sociologists and politologists have written a host of books to give credence to their efforts to invalidate the doctrine of socio-economic formations, of objective historical laws, and the scientific conception of historical progress.

Let us recall Daniel Bell's models of the post-industrial society, which is based on the highest level of scientific and technological development, an unprecedented growth of productivity, which turns out to be capable of defusing all the social antagonisms and bringing happiness to one and all. Bell believes that this super-industrial society will naturally be ruled by "the creative elite of scientists and the top professional administration". ' But what happens to the monopolists, the owners of the basic means of production? Perhaps, these means of production will be taken away from the capitalists and handed over to society as a whole? No, not at all. But it turns out that in some unexplained way the

real masters of the industrial complex allegedly cease to play the leading role in society.

Other bourgeois ideologists have issued warnings against oversimplified pseudo-optimistic conceptions. They are not inclined to cover up the mortal dangers lurking in wait for the capitalist society, and prefer to spell them out. Among them is the US futurologist Alvin Toffler, the author of a bestseller entitled Future Shock, whose sinister predictions have made many superficial optimists ponder the coming future shock for capitalism. In 1975, Toffler issued another book in which he re-emphasises the looming danger and tries to suggest a way for saving the capitalist society. "What is happening, no more, no less, is the breakdown of industrial civilisation on the planet and the first fragmentary appearance of a wholly new and dramatically different social order: a super-industrial civilisation that will be technological, but no longer industrial." '

So, as one could have expected, there is to be no transition to communism from the doomed capitalist system which fetters social progress, turns science and technology against man, produces the danger of a thermonuclear cataclysm, pollutes the biosphere in the drive for superprofits, and plunderously wastes energy and other resources. The transition is to be from an industrial civilisation to a super-- industrial civilisation. The latter turns out to be a capitalist civilisation, with the capitalist property in the means of production still a fundamental feature. Indeed, Toffler has written about capitalism's ``eco-spasm'' in order to prevent an ``eco-infarction'' with a lethal outcome. He wants to believe that "sick capitalism" can not only be cured of all its ills, but can become a flourishing capitalism. This is clearly testified by the closing lines in his book: "The years immediately ahead will no doubt be painful. But if the notion of automatic `progress' to naive, so is the notion of inevitable `retrogression'. If we can look beyond the immediate, we glimpse breakthroughs to something not merely new, but in many ways better and alarming symptoms that so frighten us---they may be birth symptoms instead of death symptoms.''~^^2^^

~^^1^^ D. Bell, The Coming of Post-Industrial Society. A Venture in Social Forecasting, New York, 1973, p. 213.

~^^1^^ Alvin Toffler, The Eco-spasm Report, Bantam Book, New York J976, p. .i

~^^2^^ Ibid., p. 108.

The whole course of present-day social development shows that there will be no revival of capitalism. Life itself has blasted the myth that the scientific and technological revolution can resuscitate capitalism, give it new viability, make it young again and capable of overcoming the deepseated internal contradictions. On the contrary, the scientific and technological revolution has sharpened all the basic contradictions of capitalism and produced new ones which are as dangerous to the capitalist system as the old ones.

The 25th Congress of the CPSU gave an analysis of the growing antagonisms in the capitalist economy, in class relations, and in the whole of bourgeois society's political and ideological superstructure. In the CPSU Central Committee's Report to the Congress, L. I. Brezhnev said that the growing ideological and political crisis of the bourgeois society "afflicts the institutions of power and bourgeois political parties, and undermines elementary ethical standards. Corruption is increasingly open, even in the top echelons of the state machinery. The decline of intellectual culture continues, and the crime rate is rising." '

Toffler himself does not deny many of these depressing facts, but he and his colleagues hope for some kind of miracle to eliminate the current ``eco-spasms'' of capitalism and help it to rise again under the new name of super-- industrial civilisation.

Toffler very frequently makes use of the concept of justice. He asserts that the supreme principle of justice will rule every sphere of the future super-industrial civilisation. But what kind of justice is there to be in this Utopian civilisation, if it is still to be dominated by the super-- injustice of billion-dollar fortunes concentrated in the hands of those who enjoy all the goods of life, mostly without engaging in any socially useful labour?

There will be no revival of capitalism, whatever Toffler and his colleagues say. Everything has a beginning and an end, and the capitalist society will not be able to escape this dialectic like all the earlier socio-economic formations.

In the Report to the 25th Congress, L. I. Brezhnev said: "It is farthest from the Communists' minds to predict an

'automatic collapse' of capitalism. It still has considerable reserves. Yet the developments of recent years forcefully confirm that capitalism is a society without a future." ' This conclusion was made on the strength of a scrupulously scientific analysis of the actual social processes in our day, in complete accord with the doctrine of socio-economic formations, their historical nature, and inevitable decline of each, to pave the way for the new society which excels the old formation economically, socially, politically, intellectually and morally.

Most bourgeois sociologists, economists, demographers and futurologists are unable, like Toffler, to cover up the terrible effects of the scientific and technological revolution under state-monopoly capitalism. Many of them believe that these devastating phenomena will be produced by any " industrial civilisation", whether capitalist or socialist. Some of these theorists reject out of hand the formational division of society, so that, according to their logic, all the pre-- capitalist structures were merely a quest for capitalism, the one rational and viable social system. In accordance with another equally ``scientific'' version of the theory, socialism is an "undeveloped capitalism". The suggestion is that there is no capitalism or socialism but merely developed and developing countries.^^2^^

The purpose of all these ``formational'' exercises is to spread the negative social consequence of the scientific and technological revolution under capitalism to the socialist society as well. This abstract extra-formational approach makes it possible to blame everything on scientific and technical progress, including man's "corrupt nature", the ``limitations'' of the human intellect, the "working out" of man's moral potentialities, and so on. This is done to conceal the actual cause of the calamities of our epoch, which is capitalism.

In order to do away with capitalism, which has doomed hundreds of millions of colonial slaves to immense suffering, and which now stands in the way of overcoming the terrible consequences of colonial and neocolonial oppression,

~^^1^^ Documents and Resolutions. XXVth Congress of the CPSU, p. 34.

~^^1^^ Documents and Resolutions. XXVth Congress of the CPSU, p. 34.

~^^2^^ See: R L. Heilbronner, An Inquiry into the Human Prospect, New York, 1974.

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bourgeois ideologists try to revive Malthusianism as an argument that millions of men and women in Asia, Africa and on other continents die of hunger because there are more of them than can be fed.

The bourgeois idea of "zero growth", that is, a sharp artificial brake on population growth ``generally'', a limit on the number of production enterprises (also ``generally''), and the demand, which is Utopian under capitalism, for a total end to environmental pollution, and other loud proposals are aimed against the effects, and not against their "global cause", which is capitalism. The main suggestion is this: for "global problems" to be solved, there is no need to substitute for capitalism another economic and socio-- political system. Capitalism is ``unwell'', it is true, but it can be cured, and not only cured but actually given fresh forces to create a happy future for everyone.

The bourgeois philosophy of history and sociology, trying to keep in step with the times, have been living off the problems which our dynamic age poses before the whole of mankind, the global problems and contradictions. Marxists have no intention of underestimating the actual global problems. Everyone knows of the role the Soviet Union and other socialist countries play in the struggle for peace and peaceful coexistence between countries with different social systems. This is a truly global problem of the first magnitude.

Nor have Marxists any intention of underestimating the role of the working class and all the other working people in the capitalist countries, and their struggle against the monopolies, which are mainly responsible for the contamination of the human environment.

The Soviet Union and other socialist countries are true friends of the people in the developing countries and are prepared to do their utmost to help them overcome the economic and cultural lag and put through measures for saving millions of men and women from mass diseases and death from starvation.

Everyone has heard of the stand taken by the Soviet Union and the socialist community countries on the use of outer space for peaceful purposes only.

Global problems are actual problems, and require effective solution, but we have seen that some, while formulating global problems in the sharpest terms, try to push aside

the equally imperative social problems arising from the ideological contradictions between the two world systems and to make people forget that the main content of our epoch is transition from capitalism to socialism on a world scale. That is why there is this effort to put the capitalist and the socialist system on the same footing in terms of ``sinfulness'', of the emergence of global problems, although every honest person knows that imperialism is to blame for the continued danger of war, the contamination of the biosphere, the dangers of the population explosion, and so on. Is it not clear that so long as capitalism exists, together with its powerful capitalist monopolies, one cannot hope seriously to consider economic planning in the individual capitalist countries, to say nothing of global planning.

A work by Mesarovic and Pestel entitled Mankind at the Turning Point, shows very well their attempt, wittingly or unwittingly, to use actual global problems in an effort to eliminate the question of mankind's radical social improvement by going beyond the capitalist socio-economic formations. The two authors ignore the existence of different socio-economic formations and the division of the world into two contending social systems, socialism and capitalism. Without any reservations, they broadly operate with the concept of an integrated mankind, one world economy and even a world government. In an article in the French press, Mesarovic declared that he had reached the conclusion "that the world is a living being whose organs have to work in perfect equilibrium with each other in order to ensure differentiated homogeneous growth which we have called organic growth". '

That is a fine ideal, but it can become a reality only after the total collapse of the capitalist formation and mankind's transition to communism. That is an aspect of the problem Mesarovic and Pestel studiously avoid. With their kind of interpretation of global problems, we have a Utopian conception which ``denies'' the basic ideas of the socio-economic formation theory, the problem of social revolution, and society's ascent from capitalism to socialism. With the use of somewhat different methods, Mesarovic and Pestel revive the biased and reactionary Utopian theory of

~^^1^^ L'Express (Paris), No. 1221, 1974, p. 41.

16*

Convergence, which Marxist-Leninist writers have subjected to a fundamental critique.

In every age, the champions of the outgoing socio-- economic formation did their utmost to present it as viable. Even when the foundation of the old system had been eroded, its ideologues claimed that it was at the height of its prosperity. However, this could not inject fresh strength into the old order, and it had to give way to a new social organism as an embodiment of social progress.

Throughout the whole of history, the defenders of terminally sick, declining societies sought to vilify the new historical reality, the viable and ascendant socio-economic formation. There was a time when the ideologists of the feudal system tried to slander and denigrate the then progressive bourgeois relations, the new political system with its ethical and aesthetic values. In their fear of the future, of the new society that was confidently advancing to replace the old one, the ideologists of the doomed feudal formation abused the nascent society in every way and resorted to lies and ideological subversion, paying no attention to facts or logic.

But all that is nothing as compared with the manoeuvrings of the defenders of the last private-property society. They are not only doing their utmost to exaggerate the difficulties and mistakes in building the new, socialist society and prophesy its inevitable downfall, but even seek to deny its very existence.

At the 9th World Congress of Sociology in Uppsala (Sweden) in August 1978, some speakers flatly denied the existence of real socialism in the world. One of them said, for instance, that socialism did not and could not exist either in the German Democratic Republic or in any other country. Smearing the distinctions between the first and the second phase of communist society and, naturally, finding that socialism did not have the characteristics peculiar only to the higher phase of communism, he drew the conclusion that socialism was a myth. However unlikely this may seem, some of the more prominent and apparently reputable defenders of the bourgeois system, like Raymond Aron, have taken the same view.

Seeking to set himself up as an objective researcher, Aron appears to give credit to the October Revolution and the Bolshevik Party. He writes: "Millions of people on every

continent continue to admire the Promethean feat of 1917 and the heroes of Bolshevism. How can one doubt the judgement of history, a tribunal that does not judge by considerations of morality but by success?" '

Aron admits, though not without chagrin, that the West European communist parties, while keeping their distance from "their red metropolis, are still bound to it by their common faith".~^^2^^

Aron admits the powerful influence of socialist ideas on the "West Europeans and Third World leaders".~^^3^^ Moreover, he maintains that Europe has been mystified and taken captive by Marxism-Leninism.

This fear of the growing influence of socialism induces Aron and other theorists to declare socialist society a utopia, an ideal which has an attraction for the masses but which can never be translated into reality.

In formulating this absurd assertion, Aron seeks to dismiss existing socialism as an illusion, however, fascinating. In Marxism itself, Aron distinguishes a scientific stream from a Utopian stream. He maintains that Marx's analysis of some specific features of capitalism in 19th-- century Britain was scientific, but that when Marx spoke of the future, of the inevitable transition from capitalism to socialism, he left the sphere of science and came out as a prophet and a Utopian.

But the transition from capitalism to socialism has actually occurred in many countries. Aron, however, declares that it has not. He simply announces, like his colleague at, the sociological congress, that socialism is a utopia and Marxism-Leninism is nothing but a prophecy, yet another form of religion. He maintains that socialism is merely an industrialised society, and that the masses in the USSR and other countries have not built socialism, but a version of one and the same industrial society congeneric with capitalism. But can a bourgeois ideologist so hate a kindred system? Aron apparently suspects that his assertion does not carry conviction and seeks to substantiate it by inventing spurious arguments. Following in the wake of the reaction-

~^^1^^ R. Aron, Plaidoyer pour L'Europe decadents, Paris, 1977, pp. 195-96.

~^^2^^ Ibid.

~^^3^^ Ibtd.

aries of the past, he overaccentuates and absolutises the difficulties faced by the builders of the new world, their real and imaginary errors and mistakes. To validate his arguments, Aron appeals to the testimony of liars and provocateurs of every stripe who have betrayed the Soviet people, putting his main stake on the monarchist Solzhenitsyn, on the strength of whose testimony Aron draws the conclusion that socialism is a myth and Marxism-Leninism is nothing but a form of religion.

But the champion of a "declining Europe", who devoted a whole book to the abolition of existing socialism with apparent success, gives himself away by his phenomenal fear of socialism, inviting this question: can a sensible man so fear a ``monster'' which he has himself proclaimed to be an illusion?

Many other present-day adversaries of socialism have also taken up the idea that socialism is a utopia and that the whole of mankind can never go over to a communist civilisation, brandishing that idea as an ideological weapon.

Thus, the French sociologist Pierre Ansart speaks of the wide spread of "positive Utopias" which, he says, are coming to replace the "rational ideologies". He ranks socialism among these Utopias, saying that it can never be translated into reality.' Another researcher, Robert C. Tucker, maintains that socialism is no more than a "religious proposition", and that Marxism is "one of the grand aberrations of the human mind on its long and continuing journey towards self-clarification".^^2^^

Zygmunt Bauman's book, Socialism. The Active Utopia, occupies a prominent (and unedifying) place among writings of that kind. Tt hinges on the idea that "socialism has been, and to some extent still is, the utopia of the modern epoch".^^3^^

But what is to be done with the existing socialist countries and their community? Like Aron and some other researchers, Bauman argues that there is nothing socialist about these countries, which have only carried out rapid industrialisation, urbanisation and nationalisation with the

help of revolutionary measures. As a result, he says, a number of ``modern'' ' states have emerged in Eastern Europe. He carefully sidesteps the question of the socio-economic and political nature of this group of states, for otherwise he would have to admit that socialism is a reality. He presents socialism as a utopia, as an ideological and political outlook, and "a constantly active critical leaven within the texture of present society".^^2^^ Socialism, he maintains, is nothing but a "counter-culture of capitalist society".~^^3^^ He confines this dematerialised socialism to the spiritual sphere, the sphere of culture, where, he says, it can play an active role as an ideal, as a slogan for the future. But any attempt to realise this ideal, Bauman warns, is bound to lead to its distortion. He asserts without furnishing any proof that the attempt to realise the socialist ideal has already led to its distortion.

All these sophistic arguments against existing socialism bring us back to Eduard Bernstein's notorious formula: "The ultimate aim of socialism is nothing, but the movement is everything", which reduced socialism to a utopia and was meant to substantiate the need for a gradual improvement of capitalism.

The attempts to deny the existence of real and successfully developing socialism is preposterous and unprecedented in the history of ideological struggle. One will recall that even the most fanatical defenders of feudalism, who abused and denounced bourgeois society in the name of God, did not go to the extent of declaring it a utopia.

Aron and his fellow-ideologists, who set themselves against the objective laws of social development, which has led to the victory of socialist society, show that their reactionary ideology is in deep crisis.

Aron may possibly have an inkling of the historical futility of combating Marxism-Leninism and the scientific conceptions of the law-governed ascent in the development of history. When reading his books---L'opium des intellectuels. Les disillusions du progres, and My Defense of Our Decadent Europe---one will sense the author's hardly veiled pessimism, and his lack of faith in a miracle that could turn

~^^1^^ P. Ansart, Ideologies. Conflicts e.i Pouvoir, Paris, 1977.

~^^2^^ Robert C. Tucker, Philosophy and Myth in Karl Marx, Cambridge, University Press, 1972, pp. 21-25, 242.

~^^3^^ Zygmunt Bauman, Socialism. The Active Utopia, George Allen and Unwin Ltd., London, 1976, p. 36,

~^^1^^ Ibid., p. 82.

~^^2^^ Ibid., p. 51.

~^^3^^ Ibid., p. 36.

``sinister communism" into a spectre. Aron can hardly believe in the everlasting nature of the order under which the affluence of an insignificant minority is based on the backbreaking, cheerless and alienating labour of a vast mass of wage workers. It seems that the deeper Aron's awareness of the growing importance of capitalist civilisation, the more assiduous he is in seeking to assure himself and others that the impossible could come true, that a building with an eroded foundation is solid, and that the habitual and well-loved relations, institutions and values are immutable and everlasting. He has loudly announced to the world that socialism "has failed to take place", and that Marxism is in crisis. But the odd thing is that Bernard-Henri Levy, one of the "new philosophers", a kindred soul and a synthetic pessimist, appears to be imploring Aron to stop his conjuring efforts. In an attack of frankness he declares: "Contrary to our expectations, and to our stubborn denial of Marxism, it feels well, as well as never before. The crisis of Marxism exists only in our heads and in our books." '

Although this may upset Aron, on that occasion, apparently in a bad mood, Levy quite accidentally spoke the truth. It is the anti-Marxist camp that is actually in crisis. Our dynamically developing world demonstrates the power and viability of Marxism-Leninism and its theoretical generalisations and assessments.

Capitalism is, indeed, a society without a future, a truth which cannot be refuted by the tricks and dodges of bourgeois, reformist and revisionist ideologists. They cannot invalidate the Marxist-Leninist prognostications and the clearcut conclusions of the doctrine of socio-economic formations, which has been tested by history.

While the diverse bourgeois-idealistic schemes and patterns and all manner of sociological myths are exploded as soon as they appear, the Marxist doctrine of socio-economic formations has continued to play an important part in the scientific analysis of the present-day revolutionary process, helping to produce correct answers to the burning problems of our day. This doctrine, an organic part of the MarxistLeninist theory, helps to sum up the practice of building the communist formation, to establish more precisely the

stages in the development of its first phase---socialism---and to map out the prospects for the gradual transition to communism, the higher phase. The Marxist doctrine of socioeconomic formations is of exceptional importance in analysing the development of the newly free countries and in establishing the possibility for the former colonial countries' advance to socialism by-passing capitalism.

Like every scientific theory, the doctrine of socio-economic formations is not only a methodological instrument for the cognition of reality. It is creatively developed by the theorists of the communist parties in accordance with the new social conditions and in the light of all the advances in the social sciences. The in-depth and all-round analysis of the specific conditions and social effects of the scientific and technological revolution under socialism and under capitalism, and a comprehensive study of the social revolution in our day which leads to the victory of socialism throughout the world are of exceptional importance in developing the doctrine of socio-economic formations.

That the socio-economic formation has the same substance expressed in a diversity of forms in the various countries and regions of the world has become a problem of special importance. This fully applies to the communist formation and to socialism, its first phase. Marxism-Leninism rejects the idea of some ``unified'' socialism, but the acceptance of the diversity of forms in which socialism takes shape has nothing in common with the attempts to invent as many ``socialisms'' as there are countries and regions in the world. This is a distortion of the problem which springs from a neglect of the essential, fundamental and general features of socialism, and which produces ideas about all manner of national and regional socialisms. The idea of a ``multimodel'' socialism militates against the unity of the international communist and working-class movement and against the world socialist system.

^^1^^ Bernard-Henri Levy, La Barbarte h visage hnmaln, Bernard Grasset, Paris, 1977, p. 206.

CONCLUSION

The transition from capitalism to the communist formation was marked by the emergence of political parties voicing the interests of the working class, and of its brilliant leaders and theorists: Marx. Engels and Lenin.

The historical record clearly shows that it is wrong to ascribe the emergence of any socio-economic formation to the efforts of political parties or their leaders and ideologists. They arise when the objective prerequisites for them have taken shape. This does not rule out or in any way depreciate the role of social classes, political parties and great historical personages, of their conscious and well-- organised struggle.

In presenting the theory of socio-economic formations, we mentioned the various attempts to dismiss it as an arbitrary construct, to disprove the idea of the dialectical negation by a rising formation of the old and declining one, which has become a drag on progress and has no longer any right to exist.

But all these attacks on the formations theory cannot be substantiated by historical facts. These attacks are either dictated by selfish considerations or result from an extremely oversimplified and schematic reading of the formations theory.

This is natural, because to refute the Marxist conception of social development one would have to refute mankind's history itself. One would have to prove that the primitive communal system, slave-holding, feudalism, capitalist society and socialism, the first phase of communism, are figments of Marxist imagination. To discard the formation theory, one would have to efface the fundamental distinctions between these societies, to confuse, say, feudalism with capitalism or capitalism with socialism. One would have to prove that there has been no ascent from lower to higher societies, no social revolutions that led to the replacement of obsolete formations with new and more progressive ones.

The adversaries of Marxism, some of whom may even suspect that their attempts are futile, are nevertheless proparod to distort the real historical process and the undeniable stages of mankind's historical ascent in order to square accounts with the Marxist theory, which they have not understood or cannot accept.

To ``debunk'' the scientific theory of social development, its critics deny the very idea of objective historical laws.

We have looked into the crucial problem of historical materialism: the doctrine of socio-economic formations and their upward succession. The facts we have considered and their scientific analysis show that the formations doctrine is of exceptional importance for a correct view of past and present history, for a clear and realistic understanding of mankind's future.

The unbiased reader is bound to have noticed one extremely important circumstance. In contrast to all the past and present idealistic doctrines on the course of world history, its motive forces and major stages---doctrines that are purely speculative, a priori and artificial---the formations theory draws its conclusions in strict accordance with the objective course of history. It organically derives from real history, typologising it with due account for the qualitatively distinct phases of social development.

In its historical realism, the Marxist theory of social progress has discovered the causes of the historical ascent from lower to higher phases without going beyond the framework of history, without resorting to supernatural forces, spiritualistic constructs, or some absolute spirit with arbitrary stages of development.

The Marxist theory does not deny or depreciate the role of outstanding individuals in history, but it rejects the primitive attempts to substitute the will, consciousness, goals, passions and impulses of individuals, however great, for the objective laws of world history. The truth is that objectively maturing great historical changes require and engender political parties, ideologists and leaders, and not the other way round. Thus, the rise and development of capitalist relations provided the basis for the once progressive bourgeois ideology, opening up free scope for the creative activity of the great men of the Renaissance epoch, the English and French Enlightenment of the 17th and 18th centuries, for outstanding revolutionaries and statesmen.

Turning their back on historical reality, many Western sociologists, as we have seen, deny the law-governed nature of history and the very existence of any objective laws in social development, regarding history as the realm of unpredictable and incognisable accidents.

Other theorists still regard history as a closed circle, where sooner or later everything repeats itself, ascent gives way to descent, and vice versa. Under this artificial scheme, the peoples advance along an upgrade only to reach their social zenith and take a downturn.

We saw that according to another popular concept in Western sociology, capitalism, armed with the achievements of the scientific and technological revolution, is bound to live forever, ``refuting'' all the predictions of Marxism and its formations theory. According to this ``optimistic'' concept, capitalism (under some convenient alias) is constantly changing and improving, and will never go the way of earlier formations.

All this is being said in an epoch when capitalist society's "living space" is steadily shrinking, and when the scientific and technological revolution is increasingly deepening its old intractable contradictions and generating new ones.

All these attempts to refute the theory of socio-economic formations show that so long as one is moved by selfish interests, one will seek to refute any ``dangerous'' truth, as it happened, for instance, with the heliocentric system, Darwin's teaching, or the theory of relativity.

It is common knowledge that any fundamentally new scientific truth is always attacked and derided, passionately ``refuted'' and anathematised. All these refutations, however, inevitably come to nothing, while the newly discovered truth sooner or later gains the upper hand, broadening mankind's intellectual horizons and increasing its revolutionary potential for transforming the world.

It would, of course, be an oversimplification to say that in attacking the formations theory all its opponents aim at purely selfish, pragmatic goals. The matter is much more complicated. Some may be unable to accept this theory because of intellectual inertia, the deadweight of old doctrines about society and social development incompatible with Marxism. Another handicap in this context is that many are not prepared to think dialectically, that is, to make out the unity of opposites, their continual development, and the

ieapiike transition from one phenomenon to its opposite, to notice the break in continuity, the negation of a given quality with a retention of its positive elements, and the unity of evolutionary and revolutionary development. In other words, many Western sociologists advocating streamlined evolutionism cannot adopt the dialectical view of society, which is governed by the law of progress, the law of replacement of old social organisms with qualitatively new and higher ones, enabling man to extend his mastery of nature and social relations and broaden the horizons of human freedom.

Without a dialectical understanding of the substance of historical processes, the critics of Marxism cannot see the true ties between the basis and the superstructure of a formation and groundlessly accuse Marxism of economic materialism, of ``ignoring'' the politico-juridical and ideological elements in the social process.

Ignorance of the dialectics of the general and the particular prevents them from understanding the concrete development of a given formation, the diversity of the forms of its emergence, existence and disappearance in different countries and regions of the world. Their anti-dialectical attempts to absolutise the specific features of one and the same formation at different historical stages and in different countries, and their equally erroneous disregard for its substance, its general features and basic uniformities, lead to grossly erroneous conclusions, to a complete muddle. Such a distorted view makes it impossible, for instance, to recognise the existence of feudalism as a formation, for it had marked distinctions in different parts of the world and never existed in ``pure'' form. So, the argument goes, the feudal formation with its essential indicators never existed, but there were only countries with various feudal features. The same goes for all the other formations. We have already noted the attempts to deny the existence of scientifically interpreted socialism with its essential features and uniformities and, by absolutising the particular, to invent many `` socialisms'', all of which differ from one another and have nothing to do with real scientific socialism. According to this logic, the general uniformities lying at the root of a given formation are ignored and denied, for they manifest themselves differently in different countries. A biologist arguing along the same lines would have to deny the exist-

ence of a biological species solely because it has different subspecies.

Let us consider some other delusions largely engendered by the anti-dialectical approach.

The Marxist doctrine of socio-economic formations never maintained that all countries should go through all the formations we know. As I pointed out earlier, many countries by-passed the slave-holding formation, and some countries have risen to socialism by-passing capitalism. A simplified, anti-dialectical view of historical uniformities gives rise to the idea that such by-passing of some social phases by individual countries obviates the question of law-governed social development and, consequently, refutes the doctrine of socio-economic formations. Such by-passing is seen as impressive ``proof'' that the formations theory is intrinsically contradictory.

In effect, however, all these hasty ``refutations'' of the scientific nature of the formations theory stem from a nondialectical approach to the problem.

The critics of Marxism cannot or refuse (through ignorance or through an urge to distort the truth) to understand the simple fact that historical materialism in general and the formations doctrine in particular do not aim to reproduce the course of history pedantically in every detail, that they are not meant to substitute for historical science, for the whole system of social sciences. Historical materialism is a general methodology for the study of history, its motive forces and main stages, its general direction, global sociological uniformities, and forms of their manifestation.

The idea that history develops along an upgrade and in accordance with definite laws, owing to changes, first and foremost, in the sphere of economic relations, is pivotal to the formations theory.

The fact that some countries by virtue of concrete conditions can by-pass this or that formation cannot cast doubt on the main idea of the formations theory, that of ascent from lower societies to those that are more developed in economic, socio-political and spiritual terms.

The circumstance that some countries have by-passed the slave-holding society, feudalism or capitalism cannot refute the important truth that the existence of these and other formations and the transition from lower to higher forma-

tions are an established historical fact, the key uniformity of social development.

Nor does the by-passing by this or that country of one of the class formations contradict conventional determinism, for such a ``skip'' has objective, necessary reasons. The transition of some countries to socialism by-passing capitalism was quite natural considering the existence of the USSR and other socialist countries, which gave selfless economic assistance to the less developed countries, helping them to overcome their backwardness and to create in a short period productive forces whose emergence under `` normal'' capitalist development would take centuries. It is easy to see that once there is a powerful world system of socialist states there is no historical necessity for economically lagging countries to plod along the capitalist road in the name of some "formatioual pedantry", for capitalism itself is in a state of senile decay.

One could recall many other flimsy arguments against the formations doctrine. But it is obvious as it is that all such unsound arguments against a theory that is a strictly scientific replication of the actual historical process indicate a profound crisis of the basic lines of anti-Marxist social thinking. This is due punishment for the attempts to vindicate an obsolete social system.

The merits of any instrument fully reveal themselves in the labour process itself. The formations doctrine is a scientific instrument for the cognition and transformation of social relations, and its merits stand out with adequate fulness in the scientific analysis of past history, the specification of its major landmarks, and the discovery of their substance and the motive forces behind their emergence, development and disappearance.

The scientific validity of the formations theory manifested itself most forcefully in the prediction of the historically inevitable transition from bourgeois society to communism. It was Marx and Engels who predicted this transition in the mid-1840s on the basis of historical materialism and the doctrine of socio-economic formations. About 70 years later, a socialist revolution won out in Russia, and in another 30 years there emerged the world socialist system. These events dealt a crushing blow at the pseudo-scientific theories that sought to present capitalism as everlasting and dismissed socialism as an idle utopia.

The victory of socialism on vast expanses of the Earth was a victory for Marxism-Leninism, for historical materialism and the doctrine of socio-economic formations. So, the theory has stood the stringent test of social practice, proving its worth as a true, viable and invincible theory.

The formations theory remains an indispensable methodological instrument for an in-depth and all-round analysis of the world revolutionary process, of the transition to the new, communist formation on a global scale. The strength of this theory, as that of Marxism-Leninism as a whole, is due to its close ties with the developing social practice. Our dynamic age with its diverse and deep-going revolutionary processes predetermines the creative development of the formations theory, inviting new generalisations, assessments and conclusions.

The rapid progress of the whole system of social sciences also helps to enrich and deepen the formations theory, to specify some of its propositions and review those that have been outdated.

In the course of an in-depth study and generalisation of all that is new in social affairs and social science, the formations theory can fully perform its methodological function in studying the historical ascent.