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p So far we have been trying to show that the transmission of socio-historical experience from generation to generation, as a measure of the understanding and practical application of objective laws, is basically a determined process that takes place independently of whether people are aware of its objective character. But since this process is a necessary aspect of the operation of the inner regularities of man’s social life activity itself, it appears as a property of human history that does not belong to any one race, country, or part of the population, or to any exclusive group of people in society. Both the concrete form of the objectification of experience (the basic element of which, in the sphere of material production, is the tool) and its abstract form (in which the advances made at a given stage of knowledge of objective laws are object!lied) have a human character by their very nature and can still not be, in themselves, the exclusive property of a separate nation, let, alone a separate class within society.

p Lack of understanding of that has made for great muddle in men’s minds, even among would-be supporters of Marxism, and has led them into serious errors of a subjective-idealist hue. The ‘leftist’ approach to the problem of the relation of the class and the universal human elements in modern capitalist society objectively harms the communist and labour movement for the socialist transformation of society. In spile of its naivete the position of ultra-lefts influences 220 some students and some sections of the working people who are not acquainted or are unfamiliar with the main propositions of Marxist-Leninist theory. One of the claims of ‘leftist’ extremists who employ ’radical, revolutionary’ phraseology is, in particular, that revolutionary theory is incompatible with recognition of the existence of universal human values in class society, that every social factor in a society split into opposing classes has a class character rather than a general human one, and that the idea of humanism itself is a middle-class, bourgeois one.

p Middle-class culture, of course, as a culture serving the interests of monopoly capital, has a class character rather than a universal, human one. It maintains a private- property psychology and justifies social inequality and the social system based on exploitation of man by man. That also applies to ’mass culture’, the spread of which via the powerful media of the contemporary system of information has as its by no means last aim to divert the masses of the people of capitalist countries from the struggle for socialism, frightening them with propaganda about the danger that communism allegedly presents for the ‘humanistic’ ideals of ’free society’. It would be wrong, however, to conclude from the class character of middle-class culture that capitalist society does not create any material and spiritual values that are a contribution to the general development of mankind and that deserve to be preserved during the transition from capitalist to socialist society. Proletarian, socialist culture does not arise as a result of stark denial of all the achievements of culture made in the preceding stages of social development. Lenin put great emphasis on that in his speech to the 3rd Congress of the Young Communist League: proletarian culture, he said,

p is not clutched out of thin air; it is not an invention of those who call themselves experts in proletarian culture. That is all nonsense. Proletarian culture must be the logical development of the store of knowledge mankind has accumulated under the yoke of capitalist, landowner, and bureaucratic society.^^1^^

p Appealing to the delegates at the Congress, he said:

p It would mean falling into a grave error for you to try to draw the conclusion that one can become a Communist wilhout assimilating the wealth of knowledge amassed by mankind ... without aequiring that sum of knowledge of which communism itself is a result.^^2^^

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p What enormous sense there is in Lenin’s words, which ring like a slogan for rising generations, and which can be met in almost every Soviet school: ’You can become a Communist only when you enrich your mind with a knowledge of all the treasures created by mankind.’^^3^^

p The socialist revolution, while tackling the task of eliminating capitalist, middle-class culture, at the same time ends the exploiter classes’ monopoly of assimilating the true values of human culture, and makes them the birthright of the broad masses. One of the contradictions of a society based on the exploitation of man by man is just that material and spiritual values, which themselves do not have a class character, are in fact appropriated by the exploiters who use them in their own interests. When wo look from this angle at that aspect of socio-historical experience which expresses the level of understanding and practical use of nature’s objective laws, and which is objectified in the concrete form of tools made by people, the general human content of that form comes out with full clarity, because man became distinguished from the animal kingdom as Homo sapiens precisely through his transition to using tools. As for private property in tools, which exists in class, antagonistic society (e.g. under capitalism), what matters is not that they (and the means of production as a whole) belong to capitalists, and are therefore class things, but that they, though not class things by their nature, have nevertheless been appropriated by the capitalists.

p The same can be said of the knowledge of the objective laws of nature amassed by human society, and about use of the advances of the natural sciences in general, and of the technical sciences in particular. The undoubted fact that they are exploited by monopoly capital for its own ends does not mean that the laws discovered by science have a class character.

p The majestic creations of the geniuses of literature and art of the past, who correctly depicted in artistic images the characteristic features of the social life of years long past, the struggle of good and evil, the beauty of nature and of man himself, are equally the cultural birthright of society as a whole, with a general human significance.

p The universal human value of the results of labour embodied in ‘humanised’ nature, which appear in the form of tools from the stone axe of antiquity to modern machine tools with programmed control, in the image of the 222 formulas of Einstein’s theory of relativity given outward shape on paper, the novels of Lev Tolstoi, or the paintings of Raphael, is quite clear, and it does not present any special difficulty to understand it.

p It is a much more complicated business to discover the universal human content in the social relations of people themselves who are divided into opposing classes in class society, when the essence of man, as the ’aggregate of all social relations’ is manifested primarily as a class essence. This point deserves more detailed examination, because the answer is linked with further concretisation of the concept ‘man’ on the plane of the method of investigation that we have adopted, which consists in ascent from the abstract to the concrete.

p Objective laws operate independent of consciousness, of course, not only in inanimate and animate nature, but also in society. Each of the different forms of the motion of matter, including social life, has its own qualitative determination distinguishing one from the other, but from the angle of the possibility of man’s understanding and practical application of the objective patterns underlying each form of the motion of matter, there is no difference in principle between them; he can understand and use the laws of development not only of nature but also of society.

p The objective laws of nature, and those of society, while qualitatively different, are at the same time interconnected as laws of matter in motion independent of consciousness, in which one form of motion develops from another. This link finds expression as well in the understanding of objective laws. As Engels put it:

p Just as one form of motion develops out of another, so their reflections, the various sciences, must arise necessarily out of one another.^^4^^

p The general and the particular features of the objective laws of nature and society find reflection not only in the process of understanding them, but also in the course of their application. This theoretical mastery does not yet lead automatically to their practical mastery, i.e. to use of known laws in man’s practical activity. When an objective law is understood people may or may not apply it for various reasons, may use some of the results of its operation and not others, or may use separate laws in order lo eliminate undesirable consequences of the operation of others.

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p The process of understanding and practical use of the objective laws of developing society also finds reflection in the accumulation of experience as an indicator of the level reached during the process. While the concrete form of the objectifying of experience in relation lo nature is ’ humanised’ objects of nature altered by man, experience in regard to society is objectified in a transformation of the relations of people themselves, and in the definite form of their social organisation. The concrete form of experience asserts its concreteness in its having its special object in each form of activity and in its manifesting itself in a special shape. Its abstract form, however, i.e. language, preserves its universality in the expression and accumulation of knowledge both of the laws of nature and of those of social development. From the subjective aspect, the concrete form of experience of people’s interaction with one another is manifested as an ability to achieve a certain organisation in joint activity, on the basis of a given mode of material production, while the abstract form is displayed in knowledge of the conditions for attaining that organisation.

p The primitive group was already a certain organised whole connected by its members’ mutual dependence on one another in their common struggle for existence. As already remarked, moreover, the individual member of the primitive social organisation functioned as a species being. The undifferentiated character of clan and individual interests characteristic of the classless, primitive communal system was succeeded in the course of society’s development by a social differentiation of people, and society was split into opposing classes. The inner logic of the transition of classless society to a class one has been brought out by historical materialism, which demonstrates that the cause lay, in the final analysis, in development of the productive forces of society. While their level of development was so low that a man could not produce more than was needed to sustain his life, there was no sense in converting one man into the slave of another. The slave would only have been able to feed himself and would not have yielded a surplus product to be appropriated by someone else. There was consequently no basis for the rise of private property and exploitation of man by man.

p With growth of the productive forces a man began to produce more than the bare minimum needed to sustain his life. A surplus appeared that could be appropriated by 224 someone else while preserving the life of the producer himself. The development of such a surplus meant the rise of a possibility of exploitation of man by man. But, in order to convert that possibility into reality, there had to be conditions that would inevitably lead to its realisation.

p Within the context of our scheme S -> M—>- N, growth of the productive forces (understood as a process of joint mediated interaction of men and objects and forces of the natural medium external to human society) still did not predetermine the inevitability of the rise of exploitation of man by man. With development of the surplus mentioned above two equally possible paths were open to society, in fact, from the logical standpoint: (a) a possibility of the surplus’s being appropriated by some of the members of society, separating off into an exploiter class; and (b) a possibility of ever fuller satisfaction of the needs of all members of society through equal distribution of the increasing product of labour among all its members.

p At first glance it is more logical to suppose that society would have taken the second road; the force of the traditions of primitive society (and it is impossible not to reckon with that really imposing force) made for preservation of the equality of members of the community in the distribution of material goods. But history witnesses that society took the first road in its development, i.e. the path of the appearance of exploiter classes. It did not take it, moreover, because of the ‘evil’ will of people themselves, though that ‘evil’ will was inevitably present in history equally with ‘good’ will, and was involved in realisation of the historical process.

p Subjective-idealist conceptions that try to explain the transition from the primitive communal, classless system to class society by its having come into the head of some members of that community to grab part of the objects of consumption over and above what he needed to support life, or to fence off a patch of land and say ’this is mine’, are incompatible with the materialist conception of history. The conversion of classless society into a class one was not dreamed up by anyone; it was the product of society’s inner development, arising by force of circumstances that were not dictated by a supernatural power or imposed by the wilful decision of some individual. The cause was the social division of labour at the stage of society’s historical development when people could not subordinate operation of the 225 objective social laws created by it to themselves, and had therefore lost control over its results.

p Up until then, man, together with the clan (of which he was an integral part, and within which he produced everything needed to sustain his life, without losing control over the product of his own labour) could depend only on external nature and on relations within the clan, of which he was an equal member by virtue of birth. With the division of labour he was cut off from the umbilical cord of the primordial community; now he no longer directly produced, together with the clan, the whole set of products needed to sustain his life. He became an independent partial producer of some concrete type of product that did not constitute the whole of the set of vitally necessary goods. He was only a herdsman, a landworker, a potter, or a tailor.

p On the historical plane, of course, this independent producer did not appear once ready-made, and mutual exchange could not in fact immediately acquire the character proper to simple commodity production. But, to simplify our exposition, we can abstract the fact that the subject whose activity was limited to a certain sphere of material production as a result of the division of labour was originally not a separate individual but a group of people united, for example, in a clan, family, or caste.

p The social division of labour thus led to the product of labour becoming an indirect, mediating link in people’s relations with one another, and these relations themselves, too, acquiring the form of relations between things. A thing, as a commodity that mediates the mutual link between people, contains the dialectical contradiction proper to a mediator, and has a dual character, the true nature of which was revealed by Karl Marx.

p People’s mutual dependence stemming from their joint activity was already a great force in primordial society. But this force was not then separated from them or counterposed to them as an alien force standing above them. With the rise of a social division of labour the position was sharply altered. People, not yet understanding what in fact had happened, fell under the power of their own interdependence, which now already stood above them as an alienated, mysterious, dominant force. Once this alienated force had appeared, irrespective of whether or not people wanted it, its personification as a political power was not long in 226 coming. Figuratively speaking, the ‘throne’ had been built and it simply remained to fill it.

p It is quite explicable that it was occupied, in fact, by the economically dominant class. Along with the splitting of society into opposing classes the state appeared. The force of people’s mutual dependence in the field of material production was not dreamed up but was appropriated by the exploiter class and converted by it into a force defending its class interests.

p The economically dominant class became the politically dominant one by means of the state. The force of the state machinery was put into action to defend the exploiters’ interests. The dominant class’s ideas were confirmed as the dominant ideas in society, and the exploiters not only condemned the working people to material poverty but also appropriated to themselves the right to preferential use of spiritual wealth, leaving the exploited in darkness and ignorance.

p The forms of exploitation of man by man changed over the ages; slavery and serfdom were succeeded by economic constraint of the working class under the flag of formal equality. The force of people’s mutual activity did not, however, cease to bear the character in any exploiter socioeconomic formation of an estrangement or alienation from the people themselves. The splitting of society into classes is the negation of aggregate man, confirmation of the counterposing of the concept ‘individual’ man to the species concept of social man. But that does not, in general, mean that the concept ‘man’ does not reflect a real content. It functions in consciousness in general as a mental reflection of man’s most common properties that actually exist in society.

p If there is no worker in general in real life, i.e. no abstract worker, but only concrete, living workers, each differing in some way from the others, it does not mean that the worker in general exists only as a concept in someone’s consciousness. In its developing class battles the working class demonstrates the reality of its existence in practice and comes forward as a force capable (in alliance with other progressive forces) of ensuring the transition from capitalism to socialism.

p It is just the same with the concept of man in general. In real life there is no abstract man, but there are quite definite, concrete individuals. That still does not mean, 227 however, that the concept of man is a myth with nothing to correspond to it in real life. It is quite difficult to lay bare the specific, universal human content in social relations, especially when mankind is split into antagonistic classes, but that does not mean that such general human properties do not exist. They are embedded in the very nature of man, and inevitably appear along with his differentiation from the animal kingdom, and develop together with the development of human society.

p In an antagonistic society the general human properties that constitute the specific peculiarity of man are difficult to discover, not because they do not exist, but because they are manifested in special forms. They cannot be manifested directly as universal properties in that society because they are woven into the fabric of class relations. Since the splitting of society into classes signifies the negation of aggregate man, none of the classes can present itself as such. Aggregate man also cannot find his direct reflection in the aggregate of classes taken statistically. That thesis can also be extended to capitalist society and its main classes—workers and capitalists.

p Marx, had already noted in one of his early works that

p in the fully-formed proletariat the abstraction of all humanity, even of the semblance of humanity is practically complete; ... man has lost himself in the proletariat.^^6^^

p The class of capitalists is also not the representative of all humanity. Capitalist monopolies control the economic life of capitalist society and exercise political functions in it either directly or through their representatives, passing that off as actions performed in the name and interests of the whole nation. But the alienation of the working class, whose product and labour process itself no longer belong to it, is at the same time estrangement of labour from capital, and alienation of the class of capitalists as an exploiter class.

p The alienation of the exploiters has an essential peculiarity, of course. In The Holy Family Marx and Engels remarked:

The propertied class and the class of the proletariat present the same human self-estrangement. But the former class feels at ease and strengthened in this self-estrangement, it recognises estrangement as its own power and has in it the semblance of a human existence. The class of the proletariat feels annihilated in estrangement; it sees in it its own powerlessness and the reality of an inhuman existence.^^6^^

228 The capitalist class’s claims to express the interests of society as a whole are in fact only an attempt to give its vested interests an illusory form of general interest.

p Aggregate man, who is lost in class society, being an expression of real, universal human qualities, is only capable of finding himself again through ’negation of the negation’, through the abolition of class society. He exists in class society as the possibility of its elimination. This possibility can be realised in struggle to end the society based on exploitation of man by man. It actually found and finds its practical expression in class struggle, which is the driving force of the development of class-antagonist society. The progressive social forces fighting to eliminate the old forms of social life, and to establish a new system, correspond to the needs of society’s further development, and enter this struggle as the bearers of human relations.

p There was a time, for example, when the capitalist middle class was the spokesman in essence, as well as in form, of the interests of society as a whole. That was the time when this class, which arose in the womb of the feudal system, led the fight for overthrow of the power of lay and spiritual lords. But that period was historically limited and ended with the middle class’s seizure of state power. The measure of expression of the interests of the nation as a whole was then the degree of revolutionary consistency in the fight against the old ruling classes. With its coming to power the middle class ceased to be revolutionary. The middle class, capitalist state, which came forward formally as the spokesman of the interests of the whole nation, became in essence a weapon defending the interests of the class of capitalists.

p So, with the splitting of society into opposing classes, experience of man’s struggle for social equality and for emancipation from all forms of exploitation and oppression was thus amassed in class battles of the oppressed against the oppressors, of progressive forces against the forces of reaction. Images of courageous freedom fighters who led revolutionary actions (like Spartacus, Pugachev, Marat, and other leaders of the revolutionary masses) have always gone down in history as spokesmen of the hopes of the oppressed and destitute for a truly human, rational, just society. The onward march of history led, finally, to a time when capitalist society had moulded a working class capable of realising the historic mission of emancipating mankind from 229 all forms of exploitation of man by man, while knowledge of the separate aspects of social reality accumulated by people led to discovery of the objective laws of social development. The credit for that discovery belongs to Karl Marx and Frederick Engels. Since then, true humanity, reflected in the ideas of communist humanism, has found embodiment in the struggle to overthrow the dominance of capital and to build socialism and communism. Middleclass ideologists, when pointing out that Marxist-Leninist theory is based on recognition of the need for class struggle in class-antagonist society, often try to picture matters as if this theory lacked any moral, universally human content. We would recall here that right-wing Social Democratic interpreters of Marxism, like Karl Kautsky, Heinrich Cunow, and others, had already in the last century attacked Marx’s theories as lacking an ethical basis.

p The ‘ethical’ basis of the building of a classless society, characteristic of the spokesmen of Utopian communism, was subjected to sharp criticism, in fact, by the founders of Marxism-Leninism. The transition from capitalism to socialism is an inevitable process dictated by objective necessity, independent of consciousness. The era of socialism and communism does not set in as a result of people’s good intentions or moral self-perfection. At the same time, however, no one else has demonstrated, as the founders of scientific communism did, and with such definiteness, that objective necessity finds its reflection in man’s consciousness in the form of various ideas, including ’morally tinged’ ones. When these ideas correctly reflect the maturing objective needs of society, they are grasped by the masses and become a material force transforming society. Discovery of the patterns of social development does not, in itself, lead to social transformations. Just as the natural force of fire can result, on the one hand, in calamitous conflagrations, but on the other hand it can, when tamed by man, bring him undoubted benefits, so spontaneous operation of the objective laws of society, once discovered and explained, can be directed into a channel desirable for society. But to do that it is necessary not only to explain the human world but also to apply the explanation in order to transform it in practice.

p The lever of this transformation is the active, practical activity of people themselves. The separate aspects of the laws operating in society which they have discovered, and 230 which are manifested as growing social needs, and equally as knowledge of the laws of social development, must not only be reflected in consciousness in the form of definite ideas, but at the same time must become definite standards of people’s behaviour, and their guide to practical activity. One way or another, these standards inevitably become the measure of human actions and consequently have a moral content.

p The objectively maturing necessity to replace capitalism by socialism is manifested in the standards of communist morality, which functions as a direct, impelling cause directing the behaviour of millions of people in their struggle to realise the ideals of building a truly just society. That aspect of the matter was distorted by the above-mentioned theoreticians in their struggle against the ‘ethical’ basis of Marxism; they claimed that, since the onset of the era of socialism was as inevitable as the dawn after a dark night, the more the working class took the road of active political struggle to eliminate capitalist social relations, the more it had an interest in developing the productive forces of capitalist society. Matters came to the point that the socialist revolution, made in Russia in 1917 under the leadership of the working class led by the party of Lenin, which laid the basis for practical triumph of the ideas of Marxism, was declared nothing more nor less than un-Marxist, on the grounds that the level of development of the productive forces in Gzarist Russia was below that reached in several capitalist countries in the West. So the critique of the ‘ethical’ basis of Marxism led to denial of the revolutionary role of Marxist-Leninist theory and its transforming character, and to rejection of struggle for socialism.

p While the working class fights to preserve itself as a class within capitalist society, it acts in both form and essence as the spokesman of partial, class interests. During that struggle it can win satisfaction of separate demands and secure more favourable living conditions. Marxists-Leninists have always been resolute supporters of that struggle, but at the same time have pointed out its limited character. Economic forms of class struggle encourage growth of the workers’ class consciousness but cannot, of themselves, lead to liquidation of the system of capitalist ownership of the means of production.

p The universal human struggle, in its full sense, is also the struggle of the working class, the aim of which is to 231 overthrow the power of capital and abolish the socio- economic formation based on exploitation of man by man. The ultimate aim of that struggle is the building of socialist and communist society. It is in the struggle for communism that general human qualities, lofty human morality, and the beauty of man’s emotions and reason are revealed. Only in that struggle does the working class come forward as the spokesman of the interests of society as a whole. And whatever middle-class sociologists may say about the establishing of human relations between capitalists and workers, truly human relations are only possible under capitalism as relations of struggle for the socialist transformation of society.

p Communism is based, as a science, on understanding and application of the objective laws of social development; by virtue of that it has a deep ethical grounding. Universal human morality is manifested in the character of Communists. There is no more noble aim than the great goal of building communist society, the most just and truly human society. ’Communist morality,’ Lenin said, ’is based on the struggle for the consolidation and completion of communism.’^^7^^

p The struggle to build communism is mankind’s struggle against inhumanity. Anyone can join the ranks of the battlers for communism, irrespective of what class he belongs to, when he properly understands his human dignity. History knows many examples of individual, middle-class persons who have taken the side of the Communists. The great truth of the ideas of Marxism-Leninism enabled them to rise to the level of the interests of society as a whole, and led them to break with their class, which had become a brake on the path of social progress.

p The building of socialist society, the first phase of the communist socio-economic formation, is a decisive step toward eliminating alienation of the results and process of the activity of the mutually related members of society, an estrangement that is a consequence of the social division of labour. By basing themselves on discovery of the objectively operating laws of social development, people acquire the faculty of employing the force generated by their own activity as their own force, which is not counterposed to them as a hostile social factor enslaving them. For the first time in history the state is becoming the real and not the fictitious representative of the overwhelming majority of 232 the public, and then of the whole nation. The historical fact that the social division of labour led, in certain historical conditions, to the division of society into antagonistic, opposing classes still does not mean that the division of labour is linked, in any conditions, with an inevitability of the division of society into classes. The social division of labour was a direct cause of the rise of class .society because it was formed in conditions when society could not secure its control over the production and consumption of material goods in the interests of each and all.

p Liquidation of the negative social consequences of the division of labour, and above all of the exploitation of man by man, is not therefore linked with inevitable elimination of the division of labour itself. On the contrary, every attempt at forcible elimination of the historically formed division of spheres of activity in the production process would lead to disruption of society’s productive forces, with all the results stemming from that.

p It is not a matter of eliminating the division of labour but of altering the conditions in which it necessarily produces and reproduces exploiter classes. That is realised through liquidation of private ownership of the instruments and means of production, and putting them at the disposal of society, so as, on the basis of knowledge and application of the objective laws of social development, to ensure planned, proportionate development of the productive forces and, at the same time, harmonious perfecting of social relations and of each individual.

p Abolition of the exploitation of man by man, which is an enormous advance on mankind’s historical road, does not lead to immediate disappearance of all the negative consequences of the division of labour. Demarcation of spheres of activity between the members of society limits the activity of each of them, and ties them to performance of more or less limited operations repeated day after day. This chaining of each individual to a certain form of labour, which society cannot eliminate without disrupting the foundations of material production, and so of society itself, is a visible contradiction of each individual’s striving for free, all-round development.

p That contradiction will be resolved in the course of building socialism and communism. Even when a given type of work does not give one inner satisfaction, and the sphere of activity cannot be changed for a number of vital 233 circumstances, one has nevertheless to work, because society depends on the work of each individual: and in the final analysis the well-being of society as a whole, and so one’s own well-being, hang on it. The very fact of awareness of the social significance of a given type of socially useful labour, once the system based on exploitation has been eliminated, makes labour more attractive in the eyes of workers as a conscious need to work equally obligatory for everyone. Obligatory labour for the good of all society, which each member is aware of as a necessity, ceases to be the curse of humanity. Awareness of this necessity as yet represents liberation from oppressive chaining to monotonous activity only in an abstract, ideal form. But this abstraction is a reflection of a real transformation of people’s relations during the socialist revolution, transformation that leads to abolition of ruling classes that have lived by appropriating the results of others’ labour.

p The elimination of exploiter classes and building of socialist society lead to this, that mutual exchange of activity no longer acts as an alien force impoverishing people. That does not mean, of course, that the force disappears. On the contrary, people’s interdependence continues to operate, given developing division of labour. The estrangement is eliminated to the extent that conscious, scientific regulation of production and consumption is really ensured, based on all-round allowance for the operation of objective laws. Subjectivism in direction of the economy that does not take objective laws into account leads to that force coming out again into the open as a necessity counterposed to people. The deep foundations of a strengthening of the role of the subjective factor in a scientifically organised society lie in people’s getting the opportunity, during joint activity, relying on knowledge of the objective laws of social development, to build their relations both with their environment and with each other in the fullest possible agreement with the requirements of these laws.

p Truly human sensuous activity presupposes the existence and further development of accumulated human experience. The amassing of experience, as a process of the subject’s ever-increasing domination over the object, is essentially a creative process. Creative activity elevates and ennobles man, irrespective of the material or theoretical field in which it finds application, and not only maintains his specifically human qualities but also develops them 234 further. Creative labour gives man profound inner satisfaction.

p In order for each individual’s labour to become creative work, a whole series of social conditions is needed, whose creation becomes the real business of society for the first time, when it is freed of exploitation of man by man. One of these conditions is that each member of society should be given broad opportunities to assimilate and master the human experience amassed in the field of activity he prefers, and which most fully corresponds to his natural inclinations and capabilities. He has the right and duty to draw just what he needs from the treasury of historical experience, so as himself to have the chance to make his contribution to its further development. The social individual’s development is what functions as the basic foundation of production and wealth.

p Growth of the knowledge and skill of the working people of socialist society, who constitute the main productive force, leads to gradual elimination of the negative consequences of the social division of labour. But these consequences can only be fully liquidated in a society in which an abundance of material wealth and its distribution according to the needs of each member have been achieved, i.e. under full communism. Insofar as the overwhelming majority of the members of society can choose their trade or profession as they will, without disrupting normal functioning of production, their labour will become voluntary and creative, satisfying their inner vital needs.

p It is possible that in the first stage of a highly developed society that has achieved material abundance, not everyone will yet be able to be guaranteed work that fully coincides with hi? inclinations. The interests of the development of production may still require the obligatory involvement of certain masses of people in forms of work that for one reason or another are not attractive, and society will have ro ensure performance of those types of work in the interests of all members of society. It is quite possible that communist society will find the answers to such problems while preserving the voluntary aspiration of highly conscious workers to make their contribution to the common cause without loss of their individuality.

p Even such conscious self-limitation of freedom of choice of sphere of activity, however, nevertheless remains a limitation at this stage of development. Constant performance 235 of monotonous operations in the labour process, whether physical or mental, ultimately impoverishes man both physically and mentally. The real symphony of labour is only heard tutti when these operations are not an end in themselves but a means of harmonic movement and development of man’s intellectual and physical powers, and a source of joy and happiness for the living human organism. The most important moment in man’s emancipation from the enslaving forces of the division of labour, together with the transmutation of the forces caused by that division into a factor controlled in the interests of society as a whole, is liberation of the individual from dulling, monotonous operations and their transfer to machines.

p As we have already said, human activity differs from the actions of animals in that man puts instruments of production between himself and nature, forcing objects and forces of nature to interact with one another in his interests. Man is freed more and more of the necessity to affect objects and forces of nature directly by the organs of his body in the process of transforming them, the aim of which is to satisfy his needs. ‘Humanised’ nature is becoming a direct productive force on an ever-growing scale, including the material embodiment of human experience, i.e. people’s knowledge and skill.

p Sooner or later the time will come when man will transfer all heavy work onto instruments he has made, leaving for himself, in the field of material production, only the creative functions of control and management, repair and maintenance and the setting up of systems, machines, etc. But he is not in a position to do that when the results of the action of the forces of nature tamed by him, meant for the existence of society as a whole, are appropriated in the interests of a dominant class. Without the abolition of private property in the instruments and means of production the overwhelming majority of the members of society not only will not achieve an easing of their fate through use of machines but, on the contrary, will become simply appendages of the technical monsters they have created. The introduction of the latest advances of science and engineering into production and its ‘robotisation’ under capitalism lead to growth of chronic unemployment, make the broad masses of the workers fearful of their future, uncertain of the morrow, and afraid of finding themselves among the ‘surplus’ people.

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p The socialist social system opens up broad opportunities for eliminating the negative social consequences of the present-day scientific and industrial revolution in conditions in which the productive forces can be developed in a planned way in the interests of society as a whole, and when people’s relations of production exclude exploitation of man by man. It is a classless society—a natural stage on the road to communism—in which the universal, human features begin to be manifested in the relations of each and everyone precisely as universal human relations and not class ones. These features are already beginning to take shape in developed socialist society. We call them characteristic features of the new man, while we call the creation of the social conditions for development of his character, and the adoption of measures of social influence to stimulate this development, social education of the new man.

p Conclusions (that in our view are important and relate to certain aspects of social progress) follow from the universal, human character of social and historical experience as a measure of understanding and practical application of objective laws, and from the peculiarity of experience, which consists in its being not the process of activity but its result and starting point (a feature we call the intermittence of experience).

p The intermittence of experience contains the possibility of passage of that part of mankind which, for one reason or another, has lagged behind the highest level of development of a given period, to the highest level, by-passing several intermediate stages. There is no need ’to invent the bicycle’ again each time. In order, for example, to develop modern means of communication, a backward country need not necessarily repeat in practice the whole history of the development of railway transport, beginning with Watt’s steam engine or the locomotive of the Cherepanov brothers. That applies not only to genesis of the productive forces as application of known objective laws of nature but also to utilisation of the objective laws of the development of social relations.

p Insofar as the laws of social and historical development are known to some of mankind, and utilised by them in practice, socially backward countries get an opportunity to restructure their life consciously, taking into account the experience being amassed by socially advanced countries. This experience can be taken as the starting point not only 237 in countries with developed capitalist relations but also in ones whose development was held back by long colonial domination.

p Economically less developed countries can take a noncapitalist road of development, guided by Marxist-Leninist theory (which for the first time scientifically substantiated the inevitability of the onset of the era of socialism and communism) and relying on the practical experience of the peoples of the Soviet Union and other socialist countries, and can take the road of building socialism, by-passing the intermediate stage of the capitalist socio-economic formation (which inevitably had to be passed through with spontaneous operation of the not-understood objective laws of society).

p Marx, Engels, and Lenin spoke of the possibility of a noncapitalist road of development, and pointed out some of the obligatory conditions necessary for furthering its realisation. The main condition, in particular, is victory of the socialist revolution in advanced countries and help for backward countries from them.

p Lenin, stressing the extraordinary importance of help for underdeveloped countries, said:

p with the aid of the proletariat of the advanced countries, backward countries can go over to the Soviet system and, through certain stages of development, to communism, without having to pass through the capitalist stage.^^8^^

p Marx’s well-known thesis, in the foreword to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, that

p no social order is ever destroyed before all the productive forces for which it is sufficient have been developed, and new superior relations of production never replace older ones before the material conditions for their existence have matured within the framework of the old society,^^9^^

p does not contradict the possibility of a non-capitalist road of development.

p This statement applies to the history of all mankind’s development, because history is a determined process, and mankind as a whole cannot ‘jump’ any stage of its social development. But it is not absolutely necessary for all peoples and countries to go through all the stages of development one after the other, if there is a chance of using the experience of a more progressive social structure amassed by some of mankind as the starting point for further development.

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p Nations emancipated from colonial slavery face a radical problem: what road should they advance by? the capitalist or the socialist? A correct choice can be made by taking into account the social and historical experience amassed by mankind. And this experience indicates that socialism is a higher stage of social progress than outlived capitalism.

p The nations of Asia, Africa, and Latin America see a graphic example of what great results can be won in social development in the life of a single generation in the experience of socialist development of the backward periphery of old pre-revolutionary Russia.

p The experience accumulated by the socialist countries of restructuring social relations on the basis of knowledge of the objective laws of society’s development is the birthright of all mankind. For the peoples of countries that are fighting to achieve actual independence from imperialism, and not just illusory freedom, and are pursuing a really independent policy, there are no insuperable obstacles to utilising that experience.

p Experience of the struggle for mankind’s freedom, acquired over the course of its history, finds expression in the unity of the theory and practice of building communism. Sociohistorical experience, as a yardstick of understanding and practical utilisation of objective laws is also a yardstick in that respect of the freedom of mankind. As Engels wrote in Anti-Diihring:

p Freedom ... consists in the control over ourselves and over external nature, a control founded on knowledge of natural necessity; it is therefore necessarily a product of historical development. The first men who separated themselves [from the animal kingdom were in all essentials as unfree as the animals themselves, but each step forward in the field of culture was a step towards freedom.^^10^^

p The fundamental dialectical thesis about freedom as knowledge of necessity is confirmed by the whole course of socio-historical development. In our time it has a special ring, when crisis situations that have a global character are exacerbating people’s relations both with the environment and among themselves. Man’s broad-scale intervention in natural processes has given rise to ecological problems that are causing alarm for the future of mankind. Attempts are being made on that background to counterpose the need to defend nature and safeguard the human environment to the Marxian thesis of man’s taming of 239 natural forces, and his owing his emergence from the animal kingdom and progress along the road of freedom precisely to the fact that lie knows how to put the laws of nature to his service.

p This counterposing is intended for persons who are poorly acquainted with the principles of dialectical materialism or who do not know them at all. According to Marxism, as we have already said, the eternal and natural condition of life, including man’s, is exchange of matter between the living organism and the external natural medium. From that standpoint breach of that condition, including an alteration of the environment that would make such exchange impossible, would lead to the death of humankind. The fact that man, unlike animals, carries out this exchange both directly and in many respects indirectly, through ’ humanised’ nature, in noway alters the ’eternal and natural condition of life’.

p Furthermore, since men know and utilise precisely objective laws of nature for their purposes, and so are classed as creatures possessing reason, a rational attitude to the objects and forces of nature must, it would seem, include in itself a prevision of the results to which the operation of the objective laws employed by man may lead. For by objective laws are meant, in dialectical materialism (as we have already said more than once), precisely those laws that operate independently of the consciousness, will, and desires of the individual, of social classes, and of mankind as a whole. And if people’s activity were to lead to a change in the environment that made it objectively unfavourable for human life, they would have to kiss life good-bye.

p The fact that the need to defend the environment has a universal, and not a class, character, does not remove the question of which social system is best able to cope with these problems, but rather poses them even more sharply: the system based on common ownership of the means of production, on planned management of economic affairs, and on inculcating a feeling of collectivism in people? or the system under which the means of production are in the hands of private owners, and the supreme law of business activity is the chase for maximum profit, while the common interests are sacrificed to selfishness?

p Advocates of scientific communism who consistently defend their class position do not oppose class to the universally human, but on the contrary see the sense of class 240 struggle in a restructuring of society that will most correspond to people’s hopes for a life worthy of every man. The consistent struggle of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and the Soviet government to maintain peace throughout the world, to consolidate friendship between nations, and to prevent a thermonuclear catastrophe, corresponds to that principled position.

p Notes to Chapter 9

p  ^^1^^ V. I. Lenin. The Tasks of the Youth Leagues. Collected Works, Vol. 31 (Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1982), p. 287.

p  ^^2^^ Ibid., p. 286.

p  ^^3^^ Ibid., p. 287.

p  ^^4^^ Frederick Engels. Dialectics of Nature (Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1976), p. 250.

p  ^^5^^ Marx, Engels. The Holy Family, or Critique of Critical Criticism (Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1975), p. 44.

p ^^6^^ Ibid., p. 43.

p  ^^7^^ V. I. Lenin. Op. clt., p. 295.

p * V. I. Lenin. Report of the Commission on the National and Colonial Questions to the Second Congress of the Communist International on 26 July, 1920. Collected Works, Vol. 31 (Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1982), p. 244.

p * Karl Marx. A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1977), p. 21.

 ^^10^^ Frederick Engels. Anti-Diihring (Progress Publishers^ Moscow, 1975), p. 137.