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p The law of negation of the negation operates in socialist society as well, but in a specific way.

p The dominance of socialist property, the absence of antagonistic classes, the socio-political and ideological unity of the Soviet people fully preclude such forms of negation in Soviet society as social revolution, class battles and sudden political explosions characteristic of antagonistic class societies.

p Under socialism the old is negated when it becomes clear that it no longer corresponds to the new conditions 116 and tasks, when the objective prerequisites for its overcoming mature. The Soviet people, led by the Communist Party and the Soviet Government, consciously replace the old, that which hinders progress, by the new. In the Soviet Union there is a continuous process of supplanting obsolescent machinery by new, more improved, of replacing old forms of organisation of production and economic management by new forms, etc. The negation of the old and obsolete reinforces the economic, political and ideological mainstays of socialist society and is one of the important factors of its progressive development.

p The development of socialist society is marked by steady progress and vigorous advance towards communism. This is one of the principal distinctions in the way the law of negation of the negation operates under socialism.

p The Soviet Union, the world’s first socialist country, is a recognised standard-bearer of social progress. It is admired by the working people of the world who link their hopes for a brighter and happier future with it.

p The sources of its unprecedented progress are to be found in the very nature of the socialist system, in the great ideas of communism. The great cause of socialist construction is an inexhaustible fount of the creativity and enormous energy of the Soviet people which enable them to tackle the most complicated tasks.

p Of course a certain advance, which is fairly rapid when conditions are favourable, takes place in capitalist society too.

p But there this movement is limited and one-sided. Priority development is given to those branches of industry which bring the employers big profits; this especially applies to plants working on military contracts. Under capitalism periods of advance give way to periods of deep recession, of crisis.

p In socialist society, on the other hand, progress is continuous in all spheres of economic, political and cultural life. This is strikingly demonstrated by the high rates of development in the USSR.

p Industrial growth rates in the USSR are considerably higher than in the more industrialised capitalist countries. The Soviet Union needed 40 years to increase industrial output 30 times, while it took the United States, Britain 117 and Germany from 80 to 150 years to make similar progress. Moreover, in these 40 years the USSR had to fight in devastating wars which wrought great destruction in the national economy and retarded its development.

p Great changes have taken place in agriculture since the establishment of Soviet rule. Once a backward, petty-goods peasant economy, it is now a large-scale socialist economy capable of supplying industry with raw materials and the population with food products in ever increasing quantities.

p Soviet science and culture have many great achievements to their credit. Not so long ago the country was backward with nearly 80 per cent of the population illiterate, but it has now become a land of universal literacy where the transition to universal secondary education has been completed in the main. Soviet universities and colleges train millions of highly-qualified specialists. Artificial satellites of the Earth and Sun, powerful space rockets and interplanetary spaceships, atomic power plants, the first in history manned orbital space flights of Soviet citizens attest to the enormous scientific progress in the USSR and are a symbol of the creative power of triumphing communism.

p It would be wrong, however, to assume that under socialism progress follows a straight line. Here too development has a spiral-like character and in various spheres of social life there is a certain repetition of stages already passed.

p In particular this applies to economic management in the USSR, democracy, socialist emulation, culture, public education and other spheres where some of the current forms and methods are, so to say, a revival and development of the old but only on a new, deeper and broader foundation which makes for their fuller development and maximum efficiency.

p Hence, this is not an absolute repetition, not a mechanical imitation of the old but a qualitatively new state, a transition to a higher level with the preservation of positive experience.

p The first communist subbotnik that was organised in Soviet Russia in 1919, for example, signified a prompt accomplishment of the production tasks facing the production collective. It was shock work of the workers at their jobs: a group of workers at a Moscow marshalling yard 118 repaired locomotives and carriages and performed loading and unloading operations in their off-work hours without remuneration, in the course of which their productivity of labour was higher than during the ordinary performance of their duties. This subbotnik attracted Lenin’s attention and he called it a “great beginning”.

p Later, however, communist subbotniks were chiefly organised for the purpose of fulfilling various auxiliary tasks, including the cleaning of production premises and compounds, city blocks, construction sites, etc. This was a justified measure during the periods of economic dislocation and economic rehabilitation. But with the growth of socialist production such subbotniks led to the elimination of personal responsibility and irrational use of qualified manpower, which divested communist subbotniks of their basic principle, shock work in off-work hours at places of employment.

p Recently, the original form of the subbotniks has been revived, but on an incomparably higher level. Today the entire Soviet people, the masses, and not merely individual groups of workers take part in them. The communist subbotniks which are organised on the anniversaries of Lenin’s birth are nation-wide shock-work shifts of the people at their work places. The enormous economic and moral effect of these subbotniks leaves the old indicators far behind.

p In this chapter we have discussed the basic laws of materialist dialectics. These laws furnish the key to understanding universal motion and development in the material world, reveal their sources and driving forces which are contained in internal contradictions. These laws disclose the leap-like, progressive character of development; they show that reality makes progress through constant replacement, through negation of the old by the new.

To gain a better idea of development we should now turn to the main categories of materialist dialectics.