p The objective logic of history is manifested in the objective laws of history. Karl Marx discovered these laws. En gels wrote: ”Nothing happens without a conscious purpose, without an intended aim. But this distinction, important as it is for historical investigation ... cannot alter the fact that the course of history is governed by inner general laws.”   [203•1  Lenin consistently defended the Marxian conclusion that the socio-histoncal process is objective in character. He stressed that all movement of society is governed by laws that are "not only independent of human will, consciousness and intentions, but, rather, on the contrary, determining the will, consciousness and intentions of men.”   [203•2 

p The laws governing social phenomena are that common element in the essenc. of phenomena which underlies their movement and development. Science formulates them as theoretical definitions and statements. The laws of historical reality are defined as universal (pertaining to the substance of all social phenomena), essential, 204 necessary, and recurring links between phenomena, their components, trends, etc., which form the inner objective side of any historical activity and of social relations.

p What all laws of the life of society have in common is their objective nature. People can learn the laws of history, can change their knowledge of them. But they operate regardless of whether or not we have learned them. Prior to Marxism there had been no scientific theory of revolution, though social revolutions did occur. Laws governing the life of society are not created or abolished by individuals, classes, nations, or parties. They operate irrespective of whether their operation is favourable or unfavourable to individuals, parties, classes, or nations. It goes without saying that ruling classes strive to establish and sustain the social relations that are the basis of their domination (e. g., the bourgeoisie defends relations based on private ownership of the means of production). This, however, does not alter the objective character of the laws of history.

p In the final count, laws follow from the material conditions of the life of society, from material production; they originate as society or a socioeconomic formation originates, and their operation ceases when the socio-economic conditions that generated them cease to exist. Unlike natural laws, the laws of human history govern 205 men’s social activity and social relationships. Consequently, they cannot exist and do not operate prior to or outside history and the life of society. The general and essential components, the relevant and recurring links that science defines as objective laws, are found in social activity, economic life, class struggle, politics, or the cultural development of the masses. The historical process alone shows people that the operation of these laws derives from the very roots of the life of society and it is this process that determines the normal functioning and development of a social system or its components (economy, social sphere, political life, etc.).

Social formations are governed by universal historical, general, and particular laws. Universal historical laws govern the entire history of mankind ; general laws govern several formations; particular laws govern the functioning of individual societies or just some fields of the life of society. Interrelated universal historical, general, and particular laws govern the development of all societies, whether capitalist or socialist, for every society is a dialectical unity of the general, the particular, and the singular. Historical processes generated by the operation of objective laws are called law-governed or regular.