p Social consciousness embraces all the outlooks, views, and theories dealing with social life in general and its individual aspects as reflections of the existing production relations in people’s minds. Social being is initially and in a way inconclusively expressed in social psychology, which encompasses immediate ideas, notions, sentiments and moods that arise in people from day to day, reflecting their position in society and prompting them certain social acts. Insofar as in every class society each class occupies a certain position in the system of production relations and has certain specific interests, we speak of class ideas, notions, and sentiments, or class social psychology. Bourgeois psychology exists as long as capitalist elements exist, and withers away as they disappear. The same is true for the serf-owning landlord’s or 143 the slave-owner’s psychology, or for that of slaves or serfs. Social psychology is the distinctiveness of the intellectual pattern, of the consciousness of a class. Social psychology expresses the status and interests of a class vaguely, unconsciously, and spontaneously rather than deliberately. Being essentially a reflection of the status of a certain class, social psychology is largely determined by traditional outlooks that pass from generation to generation and reflect the social status of the class concerned or its precursors. To wit, the working class was initially composed of ruined peasants, artisans and members of other petty-bourgeois strata. That is why petty-bourgeois elements influenced the development of a working-class psychology for a long time, in particular at the stage when spontaneity prevailed in the working-class movement. The force of habit, of old customs and outlooks is tremendous when these customs and outlooks are ingrained in millions of people. The history of the workers’ movement shows how enormously difficult it is to overcome old outlooks. Besides, no class is isolated from other classes. It is in permanent contact with, and under the constant influence of, other classes, of their psychology and ideology. In capitalist societies, the bourgeois outlook penetrates the workers’ consciousness in different ways, economic as well as intellectual (existence of a " labour aristocracy”; bourgeois ideology exerting 144 influence upon the working class through the church, press, theatre, cinema, etc.).

p Social psychology embraces political, moral, aesthetic, etc. outlooks which have no distinct boundaries. Social psychology is a sum total of these outlooks that are closely interrelated and not fully conscious.

p Those, in sum, are the features characterising social psychology as the first and directlyexpressed stage of the social consciousness.

p In content, ideology is similar to social psychology, both reflecting social being, the status ol social classes and groups and their interests. On the other hand, it is a higher form of the social consciousness. Ideology is a theoretical consciousness oj the self or the system of ideas and views of a class or social group.

p Generally, the elaboration and spread of an ideology is a conscious process, a result of men’s purposeful activity expressing the interests of a certain class or social stratum. The founders of social theories, doctrines or systems are called upon to answer the needs and requirements of their own class arising in the course of economic development. Still, the content of ideological theories is not a direct product of society’s material conditions, ideology being a relatively independent process reflecting social being through the mediation of many elements.

p Social psychology is, from its inception, the 145 consciousness of the masses, while ideology is generated in the minds of individuals ( theoreticians or ideologists) of a certain class by economic, political, etc., conditions, and then spreads to a definite social mileau.

p Ideology is a system of viewpoints, ideas, and theories underlying the class and party evaluations and standards, objectives and programmes, directives and slogans. In other words, standards, evaluations, programmes, etc. are parts of the ideological system. Ideology expresses itself in science and art, state politics and the policies of classes and their parties, in legal systems, ethics, etc.

p Theories occupy the most important place in an ideological system for they constitute the essence of the ideology and determine its level, which places ideology above social psychology.

p Historical materialism calls attention to the interrelationship of ideology and social psychology, while bourgeois sociology and social psychology as a rule reduce ideology to consciousness, and consciousness to social psychology. This is the basis for the manipulation of the mass consciousness in bourgeois society aimed at neutralising the impact of Marxist-Leninist ideology.

p According to Marxist-Leninist philosophy, ideology relates to social psychology not directly but through the intermediate ideological influence, i.e., deliberate introduction of ideas and views into people’s minds.

p This deliberate influence conditions their organic tie, determines the influence of ideology on social psychology, the ideologisation of sociopsychological phenomena.

p Thus, examining ideology in its correlation with social psychology offers no few possibilities for examining ideology as the core of the social consciousness and its enormous activeness. Progress in socialist society is ensured only when Marxist-Leninist theory is applied to concrete problems in the economic, social, political, or any other field of daily life, and when the masses accept the theory-becoming conscious builders of a new society.

p The Communist ideology was worked out by Marx, Engels, and Lenin, and introduced to the workers’ movement from outside, from the sphere of philosophy and social thought. With the victory of the socialist revolution, communist ideology acquired new features, which are now growing increasingly important.

p Theoretically valid, democratic, revolutionary, and humanistic communist ideology differs cardinally from bourgeois ideology which justifies and blesses exploitation, the aggressive policies of imperialism, nationalism and chauvinism. Unlike bourgeois ideology, communist ideology is winning the hearts and minds of millions of people by its genuinely honest, integral, and optimistic ideals. It is the ideology of a rising class, of a 147 new society, of peace and friendship among nations.

These new features derive from, and develop in, the increasingly irreconcilable and bitter class struggle waged in the world arena against the adversaries of socialism, against bourgeois ideology and revisionism.