Labour, people’s conscientious and purposeful activity by which they alter natural objects, adapting them to satisfy their own requirements. Labour is the first and main condition for man’s existence. It was thanks to labour that man stood out from the animal kingdom, managed to master the elements, making them serve his own interests, learned to make implements of labour, and was able to develop his skills and knowledge. All together, this determined the further progress of social development. The labour process consists of three main aspects: (1) man’s deliberate activities, i. e., labour itself; (2) the object of labour; (3) the means of labour, with which man acts on the object of labour. In their labour activities, while procuring means of subsistence, people enter into relations of production with one another. The character of labour and the form in which labour power is united with the means of production depend on the dominant mode of production. In primitive society, there was communal collective labour and communal ownership of the means of production and products of labour. With the appearance of commodity production, labour acquires a two-fold character (see Abstract Labour; Concrete Labour). In class antagonistic societies, the direct producer is subjected in the labour process to fierce exploitation by the owners of the means of production, while most of the results of his labour are appropriated by the exploiting classes. Under the slave-owning mode of production a contrast arises between mental and physical labour, and this becomes more acute under capitalism. The capitalist mode of production, based on the exploitation of wage labour, cripples people physically and morally, chaining them to the performance of a certain production operation and turning the worker into the appendage of a machine. The organisation of labour in bourgeois society rests on starvation discipline, on the constant threat of being thrown out of work and ending up among the army of the unemployed, on the working people’s fear of losing their means of subsistence (see Unemployment). Under capitalism, therefore, labour for the worker is a heavy burden and an enforced duty, devoid ot any creative content. The character of labour changes drastically under socialism, when every producer works for himself and for his own society, where there is no exploitation of man by man and man’s labour power is no longer a commodity. Labour for the benefit of society determines man’s status in it. The right to work is guaranteed. Labour becomes directly social, a component of the planned labour organised on the scale of all society, turning into the worker’s free, creative activity. Socialism eliminates the antithesis between mental and physical workers. Comradely cooperation, mutual assistance among people free from exploitation, and a new attitude to work on behalf of society as being the most important social cause develop and gain in strength during the building of socialism and communism. Free, conscientious labour discipline of the workers, united by the lofty goal of building communism, provides the basis for the socialist organisation of labour. Socialist emulation is a vivid manifestation of the new attitude towards labour. Socially useful work and its results determine man’s status in society. Universality, the need and duty of every able-bodied member of society to take part in socially useful work is a characteristic and inalienable trait of labour under socialism. The universality of labour is expressed in the right to work. The Constitution of the USSR says: " Citizens of the USSR have the right to work (that is, to guaranteed employment and pay in accordance with the quantity and quality of their work, and not below the state-established minimum), including the right to choose their trade or profession, type of job and work in accordance with their inclinations, abilities, training and education, with due account of the needs 185 of society. This right is ensured by the socialist economic system, steady growth of the productive forces, free vocational and professional training, improvement of skills, training in new trades or professions...” In addition, under socialism every able-bodied citizen is duty-bound to work conscientiously, and strictly observe work and production discipline. The socialist state controls the measure of work, since labour for society has not yet become the prime vital necessity; it shows concern for a comprehensive improvement of working conditions, a reduction and, eventually, elimination of arduous labour on the basis of comprehensive mechanisation and automation of production. With the building of the material and technical base of communism, improvement of the socialist relations of production and the growth of people’s communist awareness, socialist labour develops into communist labour, becoming not only a means of subsistence, but also the primary vital necessity of the comprehensively developed person, a source of creative inspiration and delight.