WBKIJS
Historical
__SERIES__
ABC of Social and Political Knowledge
__AUTHORS__
Zoya Berbeshkina,
Lyudmila Yakovleva,
Dmitry Zerkin
__TITLE__
WHAT is
HISTORICAL
MATERIALISM?
__TEXTFILE_BORN__ 2006-11-27T04:07:52-0800
__TRANSMARKUP__ "R. Cymbala"
__TITLE_NOTE__
2nd Nnl
i>RO(;Rr.ss PI:BI.I.SHKRS Mosccnv
[2]5*: i ~
Translated from the Russian by Lilia Nakhapetyan and
Gayane Chalyan
Edited by Frances Longman and Vic Schneierson
Editorial Board of the Series: F. M. Volkov (Chief Editor), Ye. F. Gubsky (Deputy Chief Editor), F. M. Burlatsky, K V. KrapMn, Yu. N. Popov, V. V. Sobolev, F. N. Yurlov, V. D. Zotov
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First printing 1985 Second printing 1987
© Progress Publishers 1985
Printed in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
„. 0302020200--028
6es OOIHBJI.
014(01)-87
[3]CONTENTS
Chapter One. THE SCIENCE
OF HISTORICAL MATER IA-
LISM.
THK ESSENCE
OF THK MATERIALIST
VIEW OF HISTORY .... 12
The Subject Matter of Historical Materialism 12 The Emergence of Historical Materialism As a Revolution in Ideas on Society. The Creative Nature of Historical Materialism .... 15
Society and Nature......... 25
Demographic Characteristics and Processes
and Their Role in Social Development . . . 38
Social Being and Social Consciousness . . . 4i(
The Mode of Production As the Material Foundation of the Life of Societv . . . 50
4CONTENTS
CONTENTS
Chapter lu-n. SOCIKTY AND SOCIO- KCONOMIC FORMATIONS .......
What Is Society:' .........
1 he Socio-Kcononuc formation. The Basis and Superstructure of Society .....
History of Society As the Successive Replacement ol One Socio-Kconomtc Formation by Another .............
The Importance of tile Concept LtSocio- Kconoinie = Formation'' for Understanding the Historical Process ..........
Chapter Three. THK STRUCTURK OF SOCIKTY AND SOCIAL RELATIONS
The Concept of Social Structure ....
The Clan, Tribe. Nationality and Nation Classes and Class Relations ......
Socialism and Classes ........
Chapter Four. POLITICAL ORGANISATION
OF SOCIKTY .......
Politics and War .........
The State ............
Why Is the Dictatorship of the Proletariat Necessary? ...........
60 5Chapter I-'m: INTF.LI.KCTUAI, I,IFF OF SOCIKTY. FORMS
OF SOCIAL CONSCIOTS.NLSS
132
Intellectual Life and the Social Consciousness ..............
132
Structure of the Social Consciousness . . .
141
Social Psychology and Ideology ....
142
The Correlation Between the Social and the
Individual Consciousness ...
...
147
Forms of the Social Consciousness . . .
150
Political Consciousness........
150
Legal Consciousness.........
154
Moral Consciousness and Kthics.....
156
Aesthetic Consciousness and the Aits . . .
Mil ~
Philosophy............
165
Religions Consciousness and Religion ...
168
Chapter Six. CULTURK AS A SOCIAL
PHKNOMKNON......
171
The Concept of Culture.......
171
Material and Intellectual Culture ....
173 Bourgeois Culture: Stages in Its Development ..............
177
Socialist Culture..........
181
78 83 84 92 104 123 6CONTENTS
CONTENTS
Chapter Seven. THE MARXIST-LENINIST CONCEPTION OF MAN AND SOCIALIST HUMANISM 188
The Marxist-Leninist Conception ol the Individual ............. 1H8
The Concept of Personality..... 192
Historical Types of Personality..... 193
Socialist Type of Personality..... 19.)
Chapter Eight. HISTORY OF MANKIND AS MAN'S ACTIVITY IN SOCIETY. THE OBJECTIVE LAWS OF HISTORY..... 200
The Objective Logic of History and the Activity of People.........
Objective Laws of History......
Objective Laws and Man's Conscious
Activity. Necessity, Freedom, and Historical
Responsibility........... 20(
Objective Conditions and the Subjective Factor in History.........211
Chapter Sine. THE DRIVING FORCES OF HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT......21:
What Are the Driving Forces of Historical Development?........... 21;
The Decisive Role of the Popular Masses
in Htstorv............21:
The Role of Outstanding Individuals . . 227
Chapter Ten. SOCIAL REVOLUTION
AS A FORM OF HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT...... 232
The Essence and Historical Necessity of Social Revolutions.........233
Historical Types of Revolution. Socialist Revolution and Its Specific Features . . . 239
The Correlation of the Objective and Subjective Conditions for Revolution .... 242
'The General and the Particular in Social Revolution............ 248
Critique of Bourgeois and Revisionist Views
on Social Revolution........253
Chapter Eleven. SOCIAL PROGRESS.....
258
The Notion of Social Progress ....
258
Objective Criterion of Progress ....
266
Historical 'Types of Social Progress . . .
270
Conternporaty Social Progress As Conceived
by Bourgeois Theoriticians......274
Glossary ............281
[8] ~ [9] __ALPHA_LVL1__ FOREWORDMillions of people in all parts of the world are taking great interest in Marxism-Leninism nowadays.
Marxist doctrine has changed from being the scientific prevision it was in the day of Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, to become the foundation of the practical activities of many millions of people.
Transformations have taken place under the banner of Marxism that have radically changed the world-such historic events as the Great October Socialist 10 __RUNNING_HEADER_LEFT__ What is Historical Materialism? Revolution, the building of developed socialism in the USSR, the formation and development of the world socialist system, the social and national liberation struggles, and the victories won by the working class and working people of the world. Marxism-Leninism is exerting an ever growing influence on the destinies of mankind.
``The Marxist doctrine is omnipotent because it is = true,''~^^1^^ said Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. It expresses the interests of society's foremost, progressive forces and fully meets the vital needs of society in its historical development.
The theory, created more than a century ago by Karl Marx and Frederick Engcls, has been further developed in Lenin's works. The names of Marx and Lenin are inseparable. Leninism is the Marxism of the epoch of imperialism and proletarian revolutions, of the collapse of the colonial system and the transition of society from capitalism to socialism. Today, Marxism is absolutely unthinkable without Leninism.
Marxism-Leninism is a single international theory. It serves as a theoretical weapon for all _-_-_
~^^1^^ V. I. I.ruin, "The Three Sources ;iml Three Component Parts of Marxism''. Collected Wnrk.\, Vol. 19, Progress Publishers. Moscow, 1977, p. '23.
11 __RUNNING_HEADER_RIGHT__ FOREWORD peoples lighting for socialism and generalises their revolutionary experience.Marxism-Leninism represents an organic unity of philosophy, political economy, and the theory of scientific communism. The solid foundation of Marxist-Leninist science as a whole comprises the philosophical theory of Marxism-Leninism - dialectical and historical materialism.
The aim of this book is to set out in popular form the main issues of historical materialism, which is an integral part of Marxist-Leninist philosophy.
[12] __NUMERIC_LVL1__ Chapter One __ALPHA_LVL1__ THE SCIENCE__NOTE__ Drop cap on "Dialectical" below. Dialectical and historical materialism are organic parts oi" Marxist-Leninist philosophy. Historical materialism is that part which studies the life of society. Other sciences are also engaged in the study of social life, for example, political economy, educational science, jurisprudence, etc. What is it, then, that distinguishes historical materialism from all other social sciences? Each of these sciences deals with an individual aspect of social life, looking in detail at all its specific laws and features. For example, political economy investigates the economic relations 13 __RUNNING_HEADER_RIGHT__ SCIENCE OF HISTORICAL MATERIALISM existing among people, and the laws of production and distribution of material benefits. Educational science deals with the education and teaching of people. As distinct from these sciences, historical materialism deals with the general aspects of development of society as a whole: the structure of society, the interaction between various aspects of social life, and the general laws and motive forces of social development.
An essential feature of historical materialism is that it considers the life of society from the standpoint of philosophy. It investigates philosophical issues such as the correlation between the material and ideal aspects of social life; the correlation between the spontaneous and the conscious, the objective and the subjective in the historical process; the motive forces of society's evolution; the issue of the essence of man and his place in the world, etc. Historical materialism is therefore a philosophical science about society, part of Marxist-Leninist philosophy.
In literature around the world, the theory of society as an integral system, and of the laws governing its functioning and development is usuallycalled sociology. In actual fact, historical materialism is an underlying sociological theory of Marxism-Leninism, since it studies the general laws of the functioning and development of society as ah integral system. However, historical materialism is not the whole of Marxist-Leninist sociology.
14There are three interconnected levels within the structure of Marxist-Leninist sociology:
1. Individual empirical (specific sociological) studies: the collection of facts and statistics, surveys among certain categories of people (through interviews and questionnaires), etc. MarxismLeninism has always attached great importance to such methods of studying social phenomena and processes. It was this kind of research that Lngels and Lenin relied upon when writing The Condition of the Working Class in England and The Development of Capitalism in Russia, respectively. At present, specific sociological studies are carried out on a broad scale in all socialist countries. In the Soviet Union, for example, careful examination is made of changes in people's attitude to work, relations within work collectives, transformations occurring in classes and social groups, etc.
2. On the basis of individual empirical studies conclusions, scientific generalisations and special theories are made. For example, in studying changes that have taken place among the collective-farm peasants in the LISSR over the period of Soviet power, Marxist sociologists have concluded that the general educational standards, skills and knowledge of this class have risen substantially, that their psychology has undergone a fundamental change, and that in many ways they are drawing closer to the working class and working intelligentsia.
153. When carrying out empirical research, Marxist sociologists rely on historical materialism, i. e. on the generalised knowledge it has accumulated on classes, the structure of society, social laws, etc. In its turn, the generalised knowledge gained as a result of specific sociological studies is a source for the enrichment of historical materialism with new theoretical propositions, and provides a foundation for its creative development. Thus, in the system of MarxistLeninist sociology, historical materialism represents both the general theory and methodology of specific social studies.
As a whole, historical materialism can he defined as
a philosophical and sociological science concerned with the
most general laws and motive forces of the development of
society.
__ALPHA_LVL2__
The Emergence
of Historical Materialism
As a Revolution in
Ideas on Society.
The Creative Nature
of Historical Materialism
Historical materialism (and Marxism as a whole) appeared in the 1840s. Its emergence at that time was by no means accidental. The working class, which had begun an independent revolutionary struggle, needed an understanding of the laws 16 and prospects of social development, a genuine science of society. Marx and Kngels created such a science for the working class and working people of the whole world. They were not only the greatest revolutionaries and leaders of the international proletariat, but also outstanding scholars of their time.
In developing a new theory, Marx and Engels drew on the very best in progressive social thought.
Philosophers before Marx had made many sound judgements with respect to society's development. However, one drawback of all proMarxist theories of society was that they were idealistic.
Idealism is a philosophical world outlook which holds that the primary principle in the world is the spiritual, the ideal. Various idealist philosophers interpret this in different ways: either as God's will, or as an absolute idea, or as the consciousness of an individual subject, etc. They regard the existing world and nature as something derivative, dependent on the ideal. Philosophical materialism is a world outlook directly opposed to idealism.
The materialist view of nature existed in ancient India, China, Greece and other countries. Materialist theories became most widespread in the 18th and 19th centuries. Materialist philosophers believed that nature exists indepen- 17 dently of our consciousness, that it is eternal and is not the result of anyone's effort. They regarded reason and human consciousness as the product of nature's evolution and successfully fought idealistic views of nature.
However, even the most prominent materialists before Marx, such as Ludwig Feuerbach in Germany, and Alexander Herzen and Nikolai Chernyshevsky in Russia, held idealistic views of society.
The life of human society is extremely complex. The natural phenomena which we observe directly are repeated in a more or less regular way, and this helps us to understand their essence. But it is much more difficult to discern such repetition in the development of society, and this prevents one from noticing laws in social development.
Besides, people act in society as beings endowed with a consciousness and will. In their activities they pursue certain pre-set goals and are guided by certain ideas. All philosophers before Marx believed that it was the conscious objectives, ideas and views of people that were the fundamental causes of all changes occurring in society, i. e., the chief factor determining the course of social development.
The idealistic view of society also manifested itself in the denial of the role of the popular masses as creators of history. All history was reduced to the activities of individual personali-
2---1143
18 ties kings, generals and heroes. Armed with this theory, the Russian Narodniks (or Populists revolutionaries of the 19th century who did not knowMarxism) wished to alter the reactionary system existing at that time in Russia by killing the tsar and officials whom the people hated. Real Hie, however, refuted both the practice of the Narodniks and the anti-scientific theory of the Hero and the crowd, according to which the popular masses were seen only as passive onlookers, while heroes were the genuine creators of history.Understandably, it has always been profitable for the ruling classes to prove that it was they who have been elected to sway the historical destinies of peoples. It has also been in their interest to deny the logical nature and real causes of the progressive changes taking place in society. And since the production of ideas (spiritual creativity) in exploiter societies has always been monopolised by the ruling classes, the assertion that ideas rule the world has also played into their hands. Whereas in the 17th and 18th centuries bourgeois sociologists interpreted society in an idealistic way mainly because of their class narrow- mindedness, later on, the distorted idealistic interpretation of history often became a deliberate social option for them. That is why today, too, idealistic views of society are quite widespread in capitalist countries.
19Marxism also recognises the important role which ideas and human reason play in social history. But these ideas and theories, by which people are guided in their practical activities, are ultimately rooted in material economic relations. The recognition in principle that the material aspect of social life is the primary and initial aspect of the historical process is the essence of the materialist conception of history.
Marx and Kngels were the first to extend materialism to society and create the materialist interpretation of history. It was this, above all, that was the basis of the radical revolution which Marxism caused in the philosophical interpretation of society. Stressing this outstanding service to humanity, Lenin wrote: "Marx deepened and developed philosophical materialism to the full, and extended the cognition of nature to include the cognition of human society. His historical materialism was a great achievement in scientific thinking. The chaos arid arbitrariness that had previously reigned in views on history and politics were replaced by a strikingly integral and harmonious scientific theory, which shows how, in consequence of the growth of productive forces, out of one system of social life another and higher system = develops...''~^^1^^
_-_-_^^1^^ V. I. Lenin, op. fit., p. 25.
20The materialist view of society became possible only after the appearance of capitalism, which centralised material production on a national scale. The dependence of various forms of social life on the development of material production became more visible. Contradictions in the capitalist method of production were clearly manifested in crises of overproduction, unemployment, etc. It was under capitalism that the material and economic foundations of classes and the class struggle became exposed. Engels wrote: "...Our present period has so far simplified these interconnections that the riddle could be solved.''~^^1^^ It was under capitalism that the working class came into being and appeared on the historical scene. It needed a scientific conception of social development and a correct revolutionary theory. The working class is characterised by its consistent revolutionary character, and by the coincidence of its class interests with the objective requirements of social progress.
Marxists have never tried to conceal the fact that their philosophy took shape as a theoretical weapon of the working class. Under the banner of Marxism the working class has already made _-_-_
^^1^^ Frederick F.ngels, "Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy'', in: Karl Marx and Frederick Engles, Selected Works, in three volumes, Vol. 3, Progress Publishers, Moscow. 1976, p. 368.
21 numerous historic achievements. In the course of historical struggle more and more people from other social layers and classes have become Marxists.Marx and Engels expounded the materialist conception of history in many of their writings, primarily in their joint works The Holy Family, The German Ideology and Manifesto of the Communist Party. Marx also set out the materialist view of society in Capita., and Engels in Anti-Duhring, The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, and other works.
But why is it that a theory created more than a century ago, far from losing its relevance, should still continue to score new victories? The main reason is that Marxism is a living, creative, and constantly developing theory. Materialist dialectics, the very heart of Marxist science, is a revolutionary doctrine on the eternal changing, development and renewal of the existing world. Nature is in a state of constant change, and human society is transforming even more dynamically. Moreover, the pace of changes in social life is constantly growing. What a host of great events have taken place in the life of society over the last few decades! The scientific theory of social life must, therefore, also change and develop. Indeed, Marx and Engels insisted on just this kind of creative approach to their theory of social development.
22In the new historical conditions which followed the doctrine of Marx and Engels was developed by their successors. A great contribution to historical materialism was made by Lenin, who summarised the new historical experience gained by the working masses in their struggle tor liberation and in building a new life. He creatively evolved Marxist theory on classes, revolution, the state, ways of building socialism, and many other issues. Lenin was a convinced and consistent follower of Marx and Engels. Not only did he work on Marxism in a creative manner, but he also waged a relentless struggle against all traitors to Marxism. He resolutely fought all those who strayed trom the fundamental principles of Marxism, yielding to the impact of bourgeois ideology or complying with a fashion for ``new'' ideas. Today, the struggle against revisionism, i. e., deviation from the basic principles of Marxism, and distortion of Marxist ideas, remains an important task facing the true followers of Marx, Engels and Lenin.
Contemporary social development is marked by new important historical events and processes. Marxism-Leninism at the present stage summarises the experience accumulated during the building of socialism and the improving of mature socialism. It examines the laws inherent in the emergence and evolution of the world socialist community, the prospects for the revolutionary struggle of the international working class and the 23 liberation struggle of all peoples, analyses modern-day capitalism, and determines principles for the peaceful coexistence of the two opposing social systems and a policy for securing peace, etc.
In their works Marxist philosophers interpret the scientific and technological revolution, which is a major phenomenon today, and its social consequences under capitalism and socialism. The most important theoretical documents of the CPSU and works by Marxist philosophers provide an analysis of the global problems facing mankind today, such as the threat of a world thermonuclear war, and urgent problems of ecology, population, food, raw materials, and so on. These are general human problems in the sense that they concern all people living on Earth and cannot be solved by any single country: the joint effort of all nations is required. Marxist literature investigates the essence and causes of emergent global problems and their connection with the class interests of contending social forces and reveals the prospects for their development and ways to solve them.
The analysis of developing reality has produced new categories in Marxist social science, such as "developed socialism'', "the state of the whole people'', and "the Soviet people''. Old notions such as ``civilisation'', "way of life'', etc., have acquired a new content and significance, 24 and this is not only through the study of new data, but also as a result of the new interpretation of processes and phenomena already known.
Marxism-Leninism is a single international theory. It summarises the revolutionary experience of the struggle of all peoples. It has emerged and is developing as a reflection of the international position of, and the nature of the struggle by, the working class of different countries against international capital. MarxismLeninism is the ideological basis of the unity of the international communist and working-class movement, and its revolutionary strategy and tactics. Communists stand for the comprehensive consideration of the social, economic and cultural traditions and the specific conditions existing in a country, and against the mechanical transferring of the experience of one country to another. And yet there cannot be diverse national versions of Marxism -a Russian, a Chinese, and an Italian Marxism, etc. The same is true of historical materialism, the philosophical and sociological theory of social development, whose principal tenets are the same for all countries.
Marxism-Leninism is open for creative development by all Marxist-Leninist parties, on the basis of their experience in revolutionary struggle. Marxists-Leninists collectively develop and improve the single, integral Marxist-Leninist theory, guided in their practical and theoretical 25 activities by the principle of proletarian internationalism.
__ALPHA_LVL2__ Society and NatureThe life of human society cannot be understood outside the context of nature. Recognition of the unity of society and nature is a major and intrinsic principle of the materialist conception of history.
Society is linked with nature, first of all, through its origin. Science has convincingly proved that man evolved from anthropoid apes. The process of the ape turning into man was gradual and extremely prolonged.
There are two chief stages in the formation of man. The first stage was when man began to make the implements of labour: this was the stage of the actual formation of man. Recently, in South and Last Africa the remains of man's earlyancestors have been found in a geological layer 2.5 million years old. Human bones were found together with primitive work implements. The second stage, which began 100,000--40,000 years ago, was marked by the appearance of modern man, i. e. homo sapiens. It is generally accepted that since that time no essential physical changes have occurred in man.
The process of the emergence of man and human society was analysed by Engels in The 26 Part Played by Labour in the Transition from Ape to Man. This work states that it was labour, production and use of work implements that played the decisive role in the emergence of human society. It was this that made man's ancestors straighten up and stand on their feet. In the process of labour the need arose for communication: thus, language appeared. It was labour that singled man out from the animal kingdom and gave him characteristics peculiar only to the human race: the production of labour implements, a highly organised brain, a consciousness and self- awareness, and articulate speech.
As man became separated from the animal world, he ceased to be merely a biological being. Biological properties (physiological needs, natural gifts, etc.) are typical of modern man too, of course, and play a major role in his life. But they do not determine his essence, nor are they any longer his chief characteristics. Man now belongs to the highest form of the motion of matter-to social life. Man's essence is characterised by social relations which comprise the social conditions of his life and which he himself creates. What is meant here is man's affiliation to a certain epoch and social system, a certain class, nation, etc.
Having emerged from nature and become, to a certain extent, isolated from it, society has not broken offits ties with nature. On the contrary, it 27 constantly maintains close relations with nature, and this is an indispensable condition for the existence and evolution of society.
Of course, mankind does not interact with infinite nature as a whole, only with that part of it which is involved in the process of human activity. In the course of history, more and more natural phenomena and spheres of nature assume importance and become necessary for man. for example, in the early stages of human history, man mainly used natural sources of the means ol existence (wild herbs and animals, natural soil fertility, etc.) However, with time, ever greater importance was attached to minerals and energy sources. Today, mankind has started to make active use of outer space for its own purposes. Artificial satellites orbiting the Earth are employed to relay television programmes, transmit communications over long distances, forecast the weather, discover deposits of minerals, and so on.
Nature has diverse significance for the life of society.
First of all, it is very important for production. In the process of production man transforms natural objects in accordance with his needs and requirements: he smelts metal out ot ore extracted from the Earth, he makes use of the energy of rivers, etc. Even in modern-day production, wher the object of labour to be processed is 28 frequently made of synthetic materials (i. e. materials artificially created by man), the initial material invariably comes from nature. For example, plastics are widely used today in the production of household appliances and many other things; but to make plastics, mineral raw materials, such as oil, are needed.
Nature which is of great significance for man in production, is significant in other ways too. Communication with nature helps man maintain and restore his physical and moral fitness. It is no coincidence that people who as a rule live in the countryside and spend much time out-ot-doors live much longer than others.
Nature teaches man to see and understand beauty (the aesthetic significance of nature).
It is also justifiable to speak of nature's educational significance. A careful and thoughtful attitude towards the natural environment develops kindness, and compassion towards the weak and defenceless.
The natural environment plays an important role in man's life. It may either accelerate or retard the development of countries and peoples, and sometimes it has a decisive impact on the development of industries. Thus, a country's favourable situation and the wealth of its mineral deposits promote the development of its society. On the contrary, harsh natural conditions (for example, in the Far North of Europe and Asia) 29 or isolation from the rest of the world (some regions in Central Africa and Latin America) have impeded the development of societythere.
Yet this is not u> say that natural conditions are the chief factor determining the course of social development. Radical changes taking place in society, such as social revolutions, are not caused by changes in the natural conditions, but by the requirements of society itself, by its internal contradictions.
Relations between nature and society are a kind of interaction, which means that not only nature influences the development of society, but society in its turn has an impact on nature.
The interaction between man and nature differs essentially from that between nature and animals. The latter, as a rule, have to adapt to nature or sometimes they influence it insignificantly by the very fact of their presence. Man, on the contrary, modifies nature, transforms it, adapts it to his own needs and requirements.
The scale of society's impact on nature depends on the level achieved by productive forces, on society's energy potential, and on its technical power. These factors were negligible at the dawn of human existence but they have grown enormously today. The scientific and technological 30 revolution makes the scale of society's impact on nature particularly great. Now man's influence on nature is comparable to mighty natural phenomena. For example, when ploughing land, people annually overturn three times as much soil as all the volcanic waste erupted from the Earth over the same period of time.
A particular feature of the present stage of interaction between society and nature is that today the entire surface of the globe has been drawn into the sphere of man's activities. He utilises almost all substances making up the Earth's crust, and almost all the sources of natural energy. Man has even gone beyond the boundaries of the Earth, into outer space.
In many cases man's impact on nature is spontaneous and uncontrolled. While pursuing some short-term, specific objectives, man sometimes cannot foresee the undesirable consequences his interference in nature may have.
At the present time, the increased scale of man's impact on nature and its negative consequences have resulted in the emergence of many extremely complicated problems.
One of these problems is the limited nature of the Earth's natural resources and the necessity of replenishing many of them, and of artificially producing what man requires. Today, experts are unanimous that the reserves of fuel (oil, coal and gas) and of mineral resources in general, are near- 31 ing exhaustion, though there are some differences of opinion on the overall estimates of the globe's resources and of how long they will last. In a number of countries there is an acute shortage of natural resources, such as fresh water, pure air and particularly soil, on which human life is directly dependent. To supply the population and industry with fresh water, the governments of several Middle East countries have been planning very expensive and technically complicated projects, involving the transportation of icebergs by waterways from the Antarctic. As the Earth's population grows and world production increases, natural resources (especially if their use is not brought under control) will gradually be exhausted, for they are as limited as is the size of the globe.
One of the most complex problems facing society today is the growing pollution and destruction of the environment. Industrial waste and exhaust gases ejected by cars pollute the air with poisonous chemical substances; the quantity of carbon dioxide in the air increases, and the quantity of oxygen diminishes. The Earth's soil layer and the World Ocean are also being poisoned and destroyed, as a result of which entire species of animals and plants arc dying out. The various types of pollution upset the equilibrium that has been created in nature over millions of years, destroy the existing harmony of different 32 natural processes, and threaten the very existence of man. An ecological crisis looms large.^^1^^
Science is faced with the problem of studying and forecasting all the possible effects man's activities may have on nature, and elaborating and implementing radical measures to avert the negative results of these effects. Man's practical attitude to nature should be based on the knowledge and application of its objective laws. Man must treat nature with care. He must study its laws as thoroughly as possible, and act accordingly. Marxists believe that it is in this spirit that people, and especially the younger generation should be educated.
While the scale of man's influence on nature depends on the level of productive forces, the character of this influence depends primarily on the socio-economic system. The main culprit of the impending ecological crisis is capitalism. Over the years of its existence, production for the sake of profit, militarisation of the economy and the spirit of egoism and acquisition have caused immense damage to nature.
The crisis of the natural environment, which now threatens capitalist countries, has been de- _-_-_
~^^1^^ Ecology is a science (or a complex of sciences) dealing with the interaction of man and the environment. Ecological crisis signifies the severe disruption of the balance between society and nature, the crisis of their interrelations.
33 veloping over many decades owing to the chaotic use of natural resources. It is closely related to the present general crisis stage of the capitalist system ; together with the financial and energy crises, and other such phenomena, it bears witness to the constant and ever deepening decay of capitalism.Monopolies are essentially characterised by a predatory approach not only to labour resources, but also to natural wealth as a whole. In addition, harsh competition makes big capital economise on the cost of production, and hence, on environmental protection measures.
Powerful corporations launch production in the developing countries, where environmental problems have not yet become as acute as, say, in the USA, West Germany and other developed capitalist countries, and where, and this is most important for monopolies, the legislation on environmental protection is not yet very effective. In this way, new geographical regions are constantly being drawn into the sphere of the ecological crisis.
Since monopolies represent the main source of damage to the environment and the chief obstacle to reaching a solution to this problem, the struggle to protect the environment has become part of the broad anti-monopoly movement led by the working class, the most advanced and organised social force of bourgeois society.
.! 1143
34Immense damage is done to the natural environment by the arms race and imperialist wars.
As hostilities in Vietnam and the Middle East have proved, modern weapons not only impose suffering on the peaceful civilian population, but can also completely destroy what nature has created over the centuries and what man has been building for his own benefit for many generations. It is well known that the war in Vietnam waged by US imperialists caused great damage to nature, destroying vast tracts of the jungle and contaminating reservoirs and rice fields.
The arms race and production of mass destruction weapons causes damage to the natural environment. Radioactive fall-out caused by nuclear bomb tests pollutes the atmosphere, and the disposal of chemical and radioactive waste from the production of weapons of mass annihilation contaminates the waters of the World Ocean. Taking such weapons into outer space and the use of near-Earth space for the preparation of a thermonuclear war is very dangerous. If a thermonuclear war were to break out, it would not only wipe out the overwhelming majority of mankind, but will also make our planet unfit for any kind of life.
However, if only some of the many billions of dollars senselessly spent on the arms race were to be allocated for nature conservation, most of the 35 vital problems involved could be successfully solved.
Even under socialism, the problem of environmental protection and the rational use of natural resources may become very serious. But the approach to it and the opportunities for its solution differ fundamentally from those under capitalism.
Socialism, with its social ownership of the means of production and its planned economy, ensures as a whole the necessary interaction between society and nature, and makes it possible to outline and implement scientifically-based measures to preserve nature.
The Communist Party and Soviet state have always shown concern for the thoughtful use and replenishment of natural resources, in order that they would suffice not only for the present generation of Soviet people, but also for future ones.
The Soviet Union was the first country to implement extensive government measures to protect and transform nature. In the very first years after the Revolution when civil war was still raging, several laws on the protection of the environment were adopted on Lenin's initiative.
A system of special legislation to protect the environment has been adopted in the Soviet Union. As the economy develops, and towns and industrial centres grow, the Soviet state increases allocations for this purpose. The country's 36 policy to make rational use of natural resources and a caring attitude towards the environment in general was formalised in documents adopted at CPSU congresses, in the Soviet Constitution (Arts. 18 and 67), and in Party and government resolutions. At the December 1983 Plenary Meeting of the CPSU Central Committee it was noted that the present scale and development rate of productive forces require a new approach to be taken to the protection of the environment and the efficient utilisation of natural resources. This is a task of enormous economic and social significance, for it ultimately involves the people's health and the careful, thrifty utilisation of the country's national wealth. Moreover, the future is also involved. The conditions under which future generations will have to live depend on how these problems are dealt with today.
The problem of protecting the environment from depletion and devastation has now assumed global proportions. It now faces everyone throughout the entire world, both in developed and developing countries and in capitalist and socialist nations alike. Pollution of the environment has ceased to be a domestic problem of each individual state, since wind and water currents carry toxic substances all over the planet regardless of state borders. Suffice it to say that the USA is responsible for discharging into the atmosphere almost half of the world's industrial waste.
37Many industrialised capitalist countries have erected extra-high smokestacks to prevent waste from falling out in places where industry is concentrated. This is the case in Great Britain, where the air in industrial areas has indeed become cleaner but southerly and south-westerly winds have carried the smoke from these stacks to Scandinavia. Fish have died there in hundreds of lakes and rivers, the growth of forests has been retarded, and the soil, which was never very rich, has become still poorer.
No country is secure from the threat of pollution even if it has no developed industry of its own.
Therefore, joint efforts by all peoples and governments are needed to conserve nature throughout the globe and ensure the possibility of life for future generations. The Soviet government was the first to call on all countries to co-operate towards this cause. Such co-operation exists today among the countries of the world socialist community within the framework of the CMEA. The Soviet Union and other socialist countries also take an active part in various inter-governmental programmes on the protection of the environment within the framework of the United Nations. Much is being done in this respect on the basis of bilateral agreements concluded by the USSR with France, Finland, and other countries.
38 __ALPHA_LVL2__ Demographic CharacteristicsThe normal functioning and development of society depends on the size, density, distribution and other characteristics of the population. There is a special science, demography, which is engaged in studying population. MarxistLeninist philosophy also deals with the problem, because the demographic processes and features play an essential part in all social systems.
Philosophy has produced theories according to which population growth is the basic factor determining the evolution of society. But there have also been other theories which denied the role of demographic processes in social development altogether, holding that they are merely a consequence of the growth of labour productivity.
However, some characteristics of population, for example, its density (i. e. the number of people per unit = area)^^1^^, structure and rate of growth, do exert certain influence over the development of production and other aspects of social life.
For example, at the earliest stages of his de- _-_-_
~^^1^^ The number of inhabitants per one sq.km. is 12 in the USSR, 103 in China, 24 in the USA, 1 in Mongolia, and 202 in India.
39 velopment, man could not oppose the harsh forces of nature on his own. For production to function normally, a certain population minimum is necessary. There must be human resources in order to develop new areas rich in natural wealth. Such regions of the Soviet Union as Siberia, the Far East, and the North are rich in minerals and forests. But the natural conditions there are usually very hard and so the population density is lower than in the European part of the USSR. This, of course, impedes the development of the productive forces in these regions. To attract people, the Soviet government provides various benefits for the inhabitants: higher pay, better living conditions, etc.The composition of the population is an important factor influencing the development of society. In each country besides the economically active, i. e. the working population, there are old people, children, teenagers, students, people in search of work, and housewives. In exploiter societies, parasitic classes, social strata and groups dominate, which participate in consumption but do not, as a rule, participate in production.
The ratio of the various categories of the population to each other, and the proportion of the population engaged in production have an essential impact on the growth of production and consumption of material and cultural benefits. For example, the birth rate is very low in several Euro- 40 pean countries such as West Germany, Austria and Great Britain and the number ot" children and young people in these countries is, as a consequence, small. Therefore, the population there is growing older as a whole, i. e. the proportion of people of advanced years is noticeably increasing. In the future, this process may cause a labour shortage.
Bourgeois ideologists put forward theories according to which population growth is the main factor determining the whole evolution of society. In actual fact, however, although population growth does influence society's development, it does not determine it. Nor does the level of social development depend on population density. It is impossible to use population growth to explain why one socio-economic system is replaced by another.
Population growth itself depends first of all on the type of social system. It cannot be regarded as a purely biological process of human reproduction. Not only nature, but also society influences population growth. This is why a family does not always have as many children as the mother could give birth to. Besides, not all children born live to grow up. This is not only due to biological factors either. Much depends on the social system and the type of existing social relations.
Karl Marx said that there is no abstract law of population in society which is invariable for all 41 historical epochs. He himself formulated the law of population operating under capitalism and showed that while accelerating the rates of population growth, capitalism at the same time created a relatively superfluous population in the form of an army of unemployed who consequently are deprived of the means of existence. The use of technology and automation in production under capitalism worsens the negative consequences of the operation of this law.
Under socialism, the law of population is characterised by the full and rational employment of the working population and its systematic distribution and growth, because the development of production and society serves the interests of the people, and concern for improving the people's welfare is an essential aspect of government policy.
Of course, under socialism, problems concerning various population processes do arise as well. For example, in several socialist countries the birth rate has dropped sharply and the rates of population growth have fallen. Migration of the population over the country's territory and from the countryside to the towns does not always coincide with the interests of the economy and society.
But socialist society can purposefully control population growth processes, and indeed implements many measures to attain this. In the Soviet Union, the German Democratic Republic and 42 elsewhere, families with many children receive special allowances, mothers are granted long prenatal and postnatal paid leave, etc. To channel the flow of population into the regions where it is needed, various benefits are provided there for workers. Socialist society aims to regulate in a comprehensive way conditions which determine the settlement of people throughout the country's territory, migration, birth rate changes, the education and qualification structure of the population of separate economic regions, employment in social production, etc.
At present, mankind has entered a stage in which demographic problems have become particularly important.
Over recent decades, an amazingly rapid growth of the world's population has taken place - the population explosion. During the first hundred millennia of man's existence the world was populated by only a few million people. For a very long time the number grew quite slowly, and in the 17th century was only 600 million. Then the growth rate increased sharply. Over the last three and a half centuries the world's population has increased fivefold. In 1950, there were about 2,500 million people in the world, and today there are over 4,600 million, which means that the world's population has almost doubled over the last thirty-odd years. The acceleration of the population growth rate is primarily explained by 43 the fact that, while the mortality rate in developing countries, especially among children, has on the whole been falling, the birth rate, far from dropping, often reached the biological maximum.
United Nations experts have calculated that by the year 2000, the Earth's population will reach 6,200 million. According to some estimates, there will be 1,300 million people in China, 950 million in India, 350 million in the Soviet Union, 320 million in the USA, 250 million in Pakistan, and 160 million in Nigeria.
At present, developing countries account for 90 per cent of the overall population growth on Earth. There is a profound gap between the soaring growth of the population, and hence the volume of requirements, in these countries, on the one hand, and the level of their production, on the other. The problem of providing enough food, energy resources and work places for this vast number of people is becoming more and more acute. Great difficulties often arise. But it would be incorrect to think that the widespread famine which exists on Earth is merely the result of rapid population growth. It is essentially the harsh legacy of colonialism and the result of the policies of imperialist countries which are spending enormous sums on the arms race. In India, for example, food shortages can chiefly be explained by the fact that the British colonialists held back the development of the productive forces in the 44 country for decades arid obstructed the manufacture of agricultural machinery, the establishment of a mineral fertiliser industry, and other industries necessary for increasing agricultural output. Repeated food crises in some Central American countries are caused by their one-sided specialisation in growing bananas, a situation from which the US monopolies alone are profiting, and which has made the "banana republics" dependent on food imports.
The elimination of all consequences of colonialism is the main condition for improving the food situation in the developing countries of Asia, Africa, and Latin America. These problems can be fundamentally resolved through the comprehensive economic and cultural development of these countries, the provision of work for the ablebodied population, and the elimination of illiteracy.
At the same time, taking into account the urgency of the problems already facing developing countries, it would be erroneous to deny the need for an extensive demographic policy. Several countries must think about slowing down their population growth and stabilising its size. Special legislation and government measures can be applied to control population processes. This kind of government policy is being followed in India, China, Pakistan, Tunisia, Turkey, and elsewhere.
45Many bourgeois sociological theories distort the essence and direction of demographic processes. Marxism considers it necessary to expose them, and to suggest effective ways of dealing with the problems involved.
It was a distorted view of demographic problems that gave rise to Malthusianism and neoMalthusianism, the most appalling trends in bourgeois sociology. The English bourgeois economist Malthus (18th-early 19th century) put forward the reactionary idea that the workers were themselves to blame for their hunger, poverty and all other misfortunes, because the birth rate among them was far too high. Neither capitalist exploitation nor colonialism were in any way to blame. Marx gave the lie to this inconsistent and reactionary theory in Capita., and Lenin exposed it in "The Working Class and Neo-Malthusianism''. Engels described Malthusianism as a "vile, infamous theory ... hideous blasphemy against nature and = mankind".^^1^^
Malthus's ideas are widespread in modern bourgeois sociology, though in a somewhat updated form. Recently, a considerable number of works by his adherents have been published, such as Road to Survival by William Vogt and _-_-_
~^^1^^ Frederick Engels, "Outlines of a Critique of Political Economy'', in: Karl Marx, Frederick Engels, Collected Works, Vol. 3, 1976, p. 441.
46 Population Bomb by Paul Ralph Khrlich. The authors of these books claim that even now there is not enough food for everyone in the world, and that a general famine is imminent, as a result of which hundreds of millions of people will die. Present-day Malthusianists believe that humanity can only be saved from death by starvation through compulsory mass sterilisation, by withholding medical aid to increase the mortalityrate, by discontinuing economic assistance to developing countries, and even by thermonuclear war. Marxists reject these theories and call for a struggle for social progress, for increasing life expectancy and for peace and happiness for all people.If they set about it in earnest, people will in time learn to control the birth rate. Yet a radical solution to all demographic problems is only possible on the basis of profound socio-economic, political and cultural change.
__ALPHA_LVL2__ Social BeingThe fundamental principle of historical materialism, expressing in short the essence of the materialist view of history, states that the people's social being determines their social consciousness. This formula contains an answer to the basic question of philosophy with respect to society. As is well
47 known, the great, fundamental question of any philosophy is that of the relationship between being and thinking. What should be considered as primary, as the world's basis-the spirit or matter, being or consciousness? The answer to this question divides the philosophers of all times into two large opposing camps-materialists and idealists. "Since materialism in general explains consciousness as the outcome of being, and not conversely, then materialism as applied to the social life of mankind has to explain socia. consciousness as the outcome of socia. being.''~^^1^^Social being is the material relations of people to nature and to one another which emerge together with the establishment of human society and exist independently of consciousness. "The fact that you live and conduct your business, beget children, produce products and exchange them, gives rise to an objectively necessary chain of events, a chain of development, which is independent of your socia. consciousness, and is never grasped by the latter = completely.''~^^2^^
Social consciousness is the views, ideas and theories (political, legal, philosophical, religious, etc.), and the social psychology of classes, nations _-_-_
~^^1^^ V. I. Lenin, "Karl Marx'', Collected Works, Vol. 21, 1980, p. 55.
~^^2^^ V. I. Lenin, "Materialism and Empiric-Criticism'', Collected Works, Vol. 14, 1977, p. 325.
48 and other historically formed groups of people.Social being determines people's social consciousness. This means that new social ideas do not emerge in society by accident, but are a reflection of those changes that occur in society's material life: aggravated socio-economic contradictions, vital material needs, etc. Thus the materialist view of history itself did not come into being just because Marx and Engels were born, but because capitalism's contradictions became more acute and the working class needed a revolutionary theory. Radical changes in social being, in people's material life cause corresponding changes in their social consciousness. Thus, in socialist countries the socialist transformation of small-scale peasant economy farming is implemented on co-operative principles. The life and work of the peasantry in production work collectives (formerly everybody worked on individual farms) bring about radical changes in their views and psychology: they become collectivist, internationalist, and socialist.
The relation between social being and social consciousness represents a natural law.
Recognition that society's development is governed by laws is an essential aspect of the materialist conception of history. Philosophers before Marx held that objective laws operate only in nature. In their opinion, society has no laws but is ruled by chaos and arbitrariness. Everything 49 takes place by the will of God or great persons such as tsars, generals, etc. Marx and Engels proved that social development is a natural historical process, i. e., a process operating in accordance with certain objective laws.
The laws of social development are existing, necessary, stable and recurrent links between the phenomena of social life. One such law is the dependence of social consciousness upon social being. There are other social laws, such as the law of the determining role of the mode of production of material benefits in the life of sosiety, the law of the correspondence of production relations to the level and character of the productive forces and the law of the class struggle as the motive force of social development in antagonistic formations.
The objective nature of the laws of social development is based on the fact that they operate independently of the will and wishes of people, independently of whether or not people are aware of them.
However, the laws of history are different from those of nature, above all in the way they operate. Natural laws are manifested in the action of blind, spontaneous forces, while in history one is talking of people who possess a will and consciousness and who set themselves certain consciously determined objectives. The laws of history are therefore the laws of human activity.
4---1143
50 People create their own history, hut not arbitrarily, or at their own whim. Their activities are limited by specific conditions and opportunities. Each new generation inherits the achieved level of production development and prevailing social relations. People have to fulfil the tasks set them by the objective course of social development, relying on the means they have at their disposal. For example, the people of a certain country have thrown off colonial oppression and started building a new life. However, they cannot ignore the objective level of the development of production (often quite low), inherited from the past, and a great many other factors and specific conditions which are not dependent on them. The political consciousness, determination and revolutionary ardour of people have a great role to play in the historical process. Yet, in the final analysis, the material factor, i. e., the material conditions of the life of society, is decisive in the course of social development. __ALPHA_LVL2__ The Mode of ProductionThe formulation of the materialist conception of history necessarily presupposed the elucidation of the role played by the production of material benefits in the life of society.
51Marx and Engels proceeded in their theory of society from the simple and clear fact that before people can engage in politics, philosophy, art, etc., they must have food, clothes and a roof over their head. i. e., their vital needs must be satisfied. And to possess life's necessities one has to produce them.
Therefore the production and continuous reproduction of material benefits is an indispensable condition for society's existence and development.
In the process of producing material benefits people make use of different implements of labour, such as the plough, the axe, lathes, and machines, the energy of water, wind, steam, electricity, the atom and various materials such as wood, stone, metal, plastics, etc. All that people use to produce material benefits, be it work implements (machines, mechanisms, instruments), auxiliary means (industrial premises, roads, canals, energy, fuel, chemicals), or objects of labour (ores, timber, plastics), constitutes the means of production.
No machine or material or energy can produce anything by itself. They are used through man's labour activity. The means of labour and the people who set them in motion through their skills, experience and knowledge are called the productive forces of society. Lenin said that the 52 working people are the primary productive force of = society.^^1^^
In the process of production people necessarily enter certain relations: production relations. The productive forces express people's attitudes to nature and show what resources people use to produce things. Production relations are those which arise between people in the process of production, distribution, exchange and consumption. The main element of production relations is ownership of the means of production. There are two major types of it: private and public. Capitalism, for example, is chiefly characterised by the fact that factories, transport, etc., are the property of capitalists. Public ownership of the means of production is typical of socialism. The productive forces and production relations together comprise the mode of production of material benefits. It is by the mode of production that various historical epochs differ from one another. There have been five successive modes of production of material benefits: primitive- communal, slave-owning, feudal, capitalist, and communist (the latter has two stages, socialism and communism proper).
Marx and Engels discovered the law of the determining role of the mode of production of _-_-_
~^^1^^ See V. I. Lenin, "First All-Russia Congress on Adult Education, May 6 19, 1919'', Collecte. MW.i.Vol. 29, 1977, p. 364.
53 material benefits in the life of society. They proved that each mode of production is characterised by quite definite social phenomena. Certain social structures are formed in conformity with the existing mode of production ; the people's way of life also depends on it; even social consciousness, i. e. the prevalence of certain ideas in society, is actually determined by the mode of production of material benefits. Thus, the parasitic way of life typical of the exploiter class was out of the question under the primitive- communal mode of production : as the level of development of the productive forces was very low, everybody had to work hard in order to survive. Another example: under capitalism or the feudal mode of production, the elimination of class distinctions could not take place; this process can only occur in the communist formation, because it has to be preceded in material terms by the establishment of public ownership of the means of production.The mode of production of material benefits determines the course and direction of historical development. When the mode of production changes, society as a whole undergoes a change. Therefore, the history of social evolution is, above all, the history of successive modes of production.
How then, does production itself develop and the modes of production of material benefits re- 54 place one another, causing radical changes in society?
The roots of change and development of the mode of production should be sought in production itself, and not outside it.
There is a certain logical dependence between the two sides of the mode of production - the productive forces and production relations-with the former playing the dominant role. Production relations are not formed accidentally, or by whim, but depend on the character and level of development of the productive forces. Thus, under the primitive-communal system, primitive tools of labour and the low level of the productive forces made people combine efforts to hunt wild animals, prepare plots of land for tilling, etc. Without this people would simply not have survived, at that time.
The unity of the productive forces and production relations within the framework of one mode of production does not exclude contradictions between them. These are caused by the fact that the productive forces and production relations change in different ways.
Production is not static, but constantly develops and improves. And the productive forces are the more dynamic element. Wishing to produce more and make their work easier, people improve the instruments of labour, accumulate experience and skills. These changes can be quite 55 substantial even within one mode of production.
Production relations are more stable. They also undergo some change, but they essentially remain the same within the given mode of production. For example, during the existence of the capitalist mode of production the productive forces have considerably changed and grown, but the essence of capitalist production relations has remained intact. As before, they are based on private ownership and exploitation. And the bourgeoisie do everything in their power to preserve capitalist production relations.
Contradictions arise between the new productive forces and old production relations. They become acute and cause conflict, as a result of which contradictions are exacerbated in various spheres of the life of society and, above all, in relations between classes. The replacement of old production relations with new ones becomes an essential requirement of social development. Sooner or later, this conflict is resolved in the only way possible: old production relations are replaced by new ones in the course of social revolution.
Nowadays, capitalist production relations ( private ownership of the means of production and private capitalist appropriation) have come into conflict with and begun to impede the development of the productive forces. The fact that there are millions of unemployed in capitalist countries 56 proves that the main productive force of society the working people-is not being used, and moreover, it is frequently being worn away and devalued. The reason lies in capitalist production relations, and primarily in private ownership of the means of production.
The scientific and technological revolution has aggravated the conflict between the productive forces and production relations under capitalism still further.
The contemporary scientific and technological revolution began in the mid-20th century. This is a radical qualitative change in the productive forces of society and the entire culture of mankind resulting from the combination of a revolution in science and a revolution in technology and from the development of science into a direct productive force of society.
The scientific and technological revolution is characterised by such processes as automation, the spread of electronic computers and methods of their application to various fields of man's practical and cognitive activity; radical changes in the power industry-the use of nuclear and other promising types of energy; the production of synthetic materials possessing desired properties; intensive space exploration; etc.
In capitalist society, the scientific and technological revolution serves to aggravate capitalism's inherent contradictions and gives rise to new 57 ones, exposing increasingly clearly the bankruptcy of capitalist production relations. The growth of unemployment, the gradual destruction of the environment and the one-sided development of the productive forces due to militarisation are some of the negative phenomena which accompany the scientific and technological revolution and are caused by private ownership of the means of production and the selfish interests of capitalist monopolies.
Military monopolies with interests in the arms race and in increasing tension in the world have brought mankind to the brink of a thermonuclear catastrophe, which threatens to destroy the productive forces of society and annihilate all life on Earth.
Replacement of capitalist production relations with relations based on public ownership of the means of production has become vital for social development. Socialism is not a whim, not just an ideal cherished by a certain group of people. Socialism today is an urgent requirement of social development as a whole.
[58] __NUMERIC_LVL1__ Chapter Two __ALPHA_LVL1__ SOCIETYAs materialist dialecticians, Marx and Engels criticised previous abstract notions of society as something which had remained qualitatively unchanged throughout human history. They stressed the need for a specific historical approach to the study of society, i. e., for singling out the successive qualitatively distinct' stages of its development. This is not to say, however, that Marxism rejects the idea of society as such.
Human society is the highest stage in the evolution of the material world, the highest form of the motion of matter. Engels thus classified the forms of the motion of 59 __RUNNING_HEADER_RIGHT__ SOCIETY AND SOCIO-ECONOMIC FORMATIONS matter: 1) mechanical; 2) physical; 3) chemical; 4) biological; 5) social. Thus, the life of society is the highest, social form of the motion of matter and takes shape on the basis of all the previous forms.
Societ. is part of the material world which branched off from nature and is a historically developing form of human life.
Societ. is a system, the main elements of which are people. Man is the subject of the historical process. Without man, there is no society. The emergence of society is, above all, the emergence of man. But society should not be understood as a mere conglomerate of people. The various processes within social life, in which man's activity is embodied, such as material production, class struggle, etc., are also an integral part of society. In the course of their activity people are involved in various social relations (material and ideological), which are also an important component of society.
And finally, a major element of social life is the material and cultural values man has created in the course of history, such as technology, art, etc. When analysing society as a system, its basic spheres stand out as relatively independent structural formations: 1) economic; 2) social; 3) political, and 4) intellectual. The economic sphere (the process of material production, the system of economic relations, etc.) has already been consid- 60 ered in the preceding chapter; the social, political and intellectual spheres will be dealt with below.
__ALPHA_LVL2__ The Socio-Economic Formation.Marx approached the analysis of society as a materialist and a dialectician. He saw that all phenomena of social life are combined into an integral system and that society is developing and undergoing qualitative changes. Marx singled out major historical periods in social evolution, characterised by a qualitatively fixed system of economic, socio-political and ideological relations, as well as by definite laws typical of a given period. He called them socio-economic formations, thus introducing the term and concept into sociology. Whereas the category ``society'' expresses the specific character of social life in comparison with nature, the category " socioeconomic formation" expresses the peculiarities of different stages of social development. The socio-economic formation, according to Marx and Engels, is "a society at a definite stage of historical development, a society with a peculiar, distinctive = character".^^1^^
_-_-_~^^1^^ Karl Marx, "Wage Labour and Capital'', in: Karl Marx, Frederick Kngels, Collected Works, Vol. 9, 1977, p. 212.
61Marx elaborated his theory of socio-economic formations in Wage Labour and Capital, A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, Capital, etc. In "What the 'Friends of the People' Are and How They Fight the Social-Democrats" Lenin wrote that in Capita. Marx "showed the whole capitalist social formation to the reader as a living thing-with its everyday aspects, with the actual social manifestation of the class antagonism inherent in production relations, with the bourgeois political structure that protects the rule of the capitalist class, with the bourgeois ideas of liberty, equality and so forth, with the bourgeois family relationships".^^1^^
In the structure of each socio-economic formation there are main formative elements, above all, the basis and the superstructure of society.
The basi. is the system of production relations.
The superstructur. is the system of political, legal, philosophical, ethical, aesthetic and religious ideas, similar ideological relations, and the corresponding institutions. The superstructure comprises the state, political parties, the church, etc.
Each society has its own specific basis and the corresponding superstructure.
Relations between the basis and the superstruc- _-_-_
^^1^^ V.I. Lenin, "What the'Friends of the People'Are and How They Fight the Social-Democrats'', Collected Works, Vol. 1, 1977, pp.' 141--42.
62 ture are governed by laws. The basis determines the character of the superstructure. If the basis undergoes a change, so does the superstructure. However, while dependent on the basis, the superstructure also has its own influence on the latter. The role of ideas, the state, political parties and other superstructural phenomena in the life of society is enormous. For example, the bourgeois state has an important role to play in protecting capitalist property and defending existing relations. Revolutionary theories and the political parties guided by these theories accelerate historical progress.Recognition of the fact that the basis is primary with respect to the superstructure promotes the materialist resolution of the fundamental question of philosophy concerning society. It explains how the mode of production fundamentally determines all aspects of social life, and demonstrates how economic and all other relations in society are interconnected.
The basis and the superstructure are the chief structural elements of the formation. They are specific in each formation and it is owing to them that stages of social evolution differ from one another.
Many other phenomena, besides the aforementioned, are included in the socio-economic formation, e. g. certain historical communities of people (clan, tribe, nationality, nation), classes and 63 other social groups, the family, everyday life, etc. Although it would be a mistake to include them in the basis or superstructure, they do belong to the formation, and differ qualitatively from one formation to another. For example, in the primitive-communal formation people lived in clans and tribes. In class precapitalist formations nationalities exist. Under capitalism, nations are formed from nationalities. In developed socialist society (in the USSR), a new historical community-the Soviet people- has emerged.
A socio-economic formation is not a mechanical sum total of heterogeneous social phenomena that have come together by accident. Marxism treats the socio-economic formation as an integral organism, in which all phenomena are organically linked and interact directly or indirectly. The chief integrating element which binds them all into a single whole is the mode of production of material benefits.
__ALPHA_LVL2__ History of SocietyThere are five successive socio-economic formations: the primitive-communal, slave-owning, feudal, capitalist, and communist. Marx also spoke of the Asian mode of production (and the 64 corresponding formation), having in mind the unique character of the emergence and development of the first class societies in several Oriental countries.
The primitive-communal system was the first socioeconomic formation. Human history began with man separating himself from the animal kingdom and acquiring some specific human features. At that time implements were very simple and imperfect-a stick, stone axe, bows and arrows, etc. People learned to make fire, which was of exceptional importance for mankind's evolution. The only kind of traction used at that stage was man's muscular strength (later on came the domestication of animals). Labour skills, and man's experience and knowledge of the world were very primitive.
Relations between people corresponded to the extremely low level of the productive forces. They were based on communal ownership of the means of production and relations of co-operation and mutual assistance resulting from it. Because of the low development of the productive forces people could only oppose elemental forces by joint effort. Everything they procured was shared equally. They had just enough products to survive. There was no surplus product which some could take away from others. Hence there was no exploitation or economic inequality in primitive society.
65People lived in communities formed on the principle of consanguinity. They were ruled by custom and tradition. Naive religious beliefs reigned among them.
The primitive-communal formation changed and developed very slowly. It existed over tens of thousands of years and disintegrated because of the evolution of the productive forces of society. From stone and wooden tools people moved over to metal ones. They accumulated labour experience. The social division of labour took place; at first, stock-breeding separated from land-tilling, then handicrafts became an independent branch of production (making of labour implements, weapons, clothes, footwear, etc.). The exchange of products of labour developed. There was no longer any need for a joint economy, so clans broke down into families, each family becoming an independent economic unit. A surplus product appeared: now a worker could produce more than he needed to survive. This created the possibility of exploitation. Economic inequality appeared. Those who were impoverished and became economically dependent on their kinsmen or fellow tribesmen were turned into slaves. Prisoners of war became another source of increasing the number of slaves. The clan and tribal hierarchy military leaders, clan and tribe elders, priests, etc.-became the first slave-owners.
The Slave-Owning Formation. Production rela- 66 tions in this system were based on the slaveowners' private ownership not only of the means of production, but also of the labourer, the slave himself. This nature of production relations was determined by the level of development of the productive forces, which was high enough for the emergence of surplus product and exploitation, yet still so low that it was only possible to exploit labourers by reducing their consumption to the minimum.
Instead of relations of co-operation and mutual assistance, typical of primitive society, relations of exploitation took root in the slave-owning formation, i. e. domination of one part of society over the other.
The replacement of production relations caused a revolution in all other spheres of the life of society. Antagonistic classes the slaves and the slave-owners appeared (primitive-communal society had no classes).
In order to keep the exploited masses (the majority of people) in obedience and protect private ownership and exploitation, the state and law were established with various organs of coercion : the army, courts of law, the administrative apparatus, etc.
Substantial changes also took place in social consciousness. Contempt towards manual labour spread among exploiters who regarded it the fate of people of a lower sort; philosophers of the 67 epoch attempted theoretically to substantiate social inequality, etc.
Production relations in slave-owning society to a certain extent served to promote the development of the productive forces. Application of the labour of vast armies of slaves made it possible to build large projects such as waterworks, huge buildings and roads. A new form of division of labour emerged with intellectual labour being separated from manual labour. At that time it was a progressive phenomenon, because the liberation of some people from participating directly in production created opportunities for the rapid development of science, the arts, etc. Later on, however, the possibilities provided by slave- owning production relations were exhausted and they began to impede the further development of the productive forces. The slave-owners, with the cheap labour of their slaves at their disposal, did not try to improve the instruments of production. The slaves had no interest in this either. Indeed, the slave himself, as the chief productive force of society, was degraded by inhuman exploitation.
The further development of the productive forces required the replacement of slave-owning relations by new ones.
Uprisings by slaves and the poorest sections of the population and raids by neighbouring tribes caused the downfall of the slave-owning system. A new formation- feudalism-emerged in its place.
68The Feudal Formation. Under feudalism, production relations were based on the feudal = lords' ownership of the means of production (above all, land) and partial ownership of the labourer, the peasant serf. Feudal lords had the right to the peasant's labour, and the peasants were obliged to fulfil various duties for their lords. At the same time, in feudal society peasants and craftsmen also owned personal property their individual farms or workshops. The peasants, after fulfilling their feudal duties, worked on their own plots of land and were interested in improving the implements and farming methods.
Feudal production relations (above all the material interest of the direct producer in the results of his labour) created new opportunities for developing the productive forces. Agricultural production was being improved, and more was being done to improve soil fertility. Trade and crafts developed, towns expanded and became economic, political and cultural centres.
The feudal mode of production determined the specific features of all other aspects of the life of society.
In the feudal formation, the main classes were the feudal lords and the peasants. Relations between them were antagonistic since they were based on irreconcilable class interests.
The state defended the interests of the feudal lords and tried to preserve and strengthen feudal 69 private ownership. The state apparatus grew markedly as well as the army. The church and religion dominated intellectual life in feudal society.
As time went by, the development of the productive forces came into conflict with feudal production relations and their superstructure. The growth of industrial production in towns required a free labour market, i. e. workers free both of feudal bondage and of means of production. For the productive forces to develop in agriculture, a direct material interest as a major economic stimulus was indispensable. But under feudalism the peasant spent most of his time working for his lord, and was therefore not very much interested in the results of his labour. Within the framework of feudal society, the capitalist mode of production gradually began to take shape. Its further development, however, was hampered by the dominance of the feudal system. Numerous bourgeois revolutions ensued, which resulted in the replacement of feudalism by a new formation, the capitalist one.
The Capitalist Formation. As capitalism strengthened its positions, the productive forces began to grow rapidly. Mechanised industry emerged. Powerful natural forces, such as steam and then electricity, began to be used as energy sources. Large factories, collieries and mines were being built. Marx and Fngels pointed out in the Mani. 70 festo oj the Communist Party that in a short period at the dawn of its existence capitalism did more for the development of the productive forces than had been done during all preceding epochs of human history.
This rapid growth of the productive forces was caused by new, capitalist production relations. These are based on private ownership by the bourgeois class of the means of production and on the exploitation of the labour of hired workers who are deprived of the means of production, and are thus compelled to sell their labour power. The surplus value (i. e. the value created by the labour of the hired worker above the value of his labour power) is appropriated gratuitously by the capitalist.
Thus, relations between classes in capitalist society are antagonistic since they are based on exploitation, on the oppression of the propertyless by the propertied.
Marx made a comprehensive analysis of the capitalist mode of production in Capita., his greatest work. He revealed the fundamental law of the dynamics of capitalist society, and the essence of capitalist exploitation. He showed that the capitalist's drive for surplus value determines the entire dynamics of the capitalist mode of production, including the expansion of production, the improvement of machinery, the intensification of the exploitation of workers, the anarchy of pro- 71 duction, the heightening of competition among capitalists, the deepening of capitalist contradictions, and a monstrous waste of social wealth.
Capitalist production relations (the economic basis of society) required a corresponding superstructure. Methods of political domination used by the exploiter class underwent a change. The right to vote was introduced, and the political freedoms of citizens and their equality before the law were proclaimed. At the same time, the mounting working-class struggle and the reactionary domestic and foreign policies pursued by the bourgeoisie led to an immense increase in the size of the state apparatus, in particular of the armed forces and other means of coercion.
Bourgeois ideas and institutions, used to defend bourgeois class rule and keep in obedience the exploited masses, comprise the dominant part of the superstructure in capitalist society. Alongside and in strong opposition to bourgeois ideas arises the ideology of the working class, and its trade unions and political parties take shape and develop.
Capitalism is the last exploitative system. As it advances, production becomes increasingly social in character. Yet capitalist production remains under the control of private owners, preserving the private capitalist form of appropriation. This is the fundamental contradiction inherent in 72 capitalism and manifested in other contradictions: between labour and capital; between well organised production at individual enterprises and the anarchy of production throughout society; between the tendency of production to grow indefinitely and the limited nature of solvent demand. The basic contradiction of capitalism is also apparent in periodical crises of overproduction.
Capitalism's antagonistic contradictions give rise to a fierce class struggle between the working class and the bourgeoisie. As it fights the bourgeoisie, the working class allies itself with the peasantry, and with all oppressed and exploited strata. Having rallied the working people around itself, the working class accomplishes a socialist revolution. It overthrows the rule of capital and gives birth to a new, communist, formation.
The Communist Socio-Economic Formation. The communist socio-economic formation is a natural successor of capitalist society. It is based on public ownership of the basic means of production and envisages the highest level of material production and intellectual development. The final aim of society's transformation along communist lines is to create conditions for the free and all-round development of each person and society as a whole.
There are two successive stages in the evolution 73 of the communist formation: socialism and communism proper.
Historical experience has proved the necessity of a period of transition from capitalism to socialism. The latter cannot emerge directly from capitalism, for the difference between them is too great. The transition from capitalism to socialism requires radical qualitative changes in all spheres of the life of society: ownership, distribution of material and cultural benefits, etc. A whole historical period is needed to effect these changes which begins when the proletariat assumes political power and ends when socialism has been built.
Socialism is the first stage of the communist socio-economic formation. It is characterised by public ownership of the means of production, a planned economy, and the absence of exploitation of man by man. Production is aimed at the maximum satisfaction of the material and cultural requirements of all members of society, taking into account the existing level of the productive forces.
Socialism emerges as a result of the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism. Therefore, the level of development of technology and of production skills workers attained under capitalism is the starting point for building a socialist society. Socialism inherits what has been created in this sphere by capitalism, and production develops 74 further. Yet this level of production is insufficient for creating an abundance of consumer goods and fully meeting the requirements of all members of society.
One characteristic feature of socialism is distribution according to work done. There is no social group of people under socialism who live at the expense of others and do not work themselves. Everybody works, and relations among people in production are marked by friendly cooperation and mutual assistance.
The principle of socialism states: "From each according to his abilities, to each according to his work''. This means that socialist society obliges each of its able-bodied members to work conscientiously for the benefit of society to the best of his ability. Society remunerates him for his work in accordance with his qualifications and the amount and quality of the work done. Pay is higher for skilled work than for unskilled. One who produces more, receives more. But if an ablebodied person does not work he has no right to receive anything from society: "He who does not work, neither shall he eat."
There are two friendly classes under socialism - the working class and the peasantry -which create material values in industry and agriculture respectively. The intelligentsia, the social stratum engaged in skilled mental work, such as scientific research, engineering and the arts, is constantly 75 growing in numbers. The political life of society under socialism is marked by the leading role of the working class and its revolutionary party, the extensive development of democracy, and the involvement of the masses in social and state administration.
As the first stage of communism, socialist society is not absolutely .free from vestiges of the past. The old form of division of labour is not yet overcome, and distinctions still persist between people engaged in intellectual and manual labour and between town and countryside. Survivals of the past are felt for a long time in all spheres of the life of society. Under socialism, a fundamental revolution takes place in people's views, mores and customs, and new traits develop, such as a new attitude towards work. However, there are still people in socialist society who retain the old ways and customs, who place personal interests above those of society, and who are not free from old prejudices. Rebuilding the people's consciousness on new, socialist foundations is one of the most complicated tasks to be carried out in the course of socialist construction.
The development of the socialist stage takes much longer than could have been predicted.
Socialism is a developing, improving society. It goes through several qualitatively different stages in its evolution, such as the building of the groundwork of socialism, the building of socialism 76 in the main, the complete and final triumph of socialist society, and the achievement of" developed socialist society. Developed socialist society was built for the first time in the USSR. The people of Russia were the first people in the world to accomplish a socialist revolution and successively pass all the landmarks of building a new society. In the 1960s and early 1970s, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, the GDR, Hungary, and Rumania also embarked on building developed socialism.
Developed socialism is not a special stage of the communist formation, but a definite period of the socialist stage. It is a society where an economic base, a social structure, and a political system running on socialist lines have been fully established and where socialism continues to develop relying on its own foundation.
Society achieves developed socialism by overcoming the low development level of production and effecting a marked rise in it. There can be no talk of developed socialism until private ownership of the means of production and class antagonisms disappear. When antagonistic classes cease to exist the dictatorship of the proletariat is no longer necessary, and it develops into the power of the whole people, with the working class at the head. Marxism-Leninism triumphs over all ideological and political trends hostile to socialism, and society becomes united, bound together by common goals and interests.
77It would be wrong to imagine that developed socialism is a society perfect in all respects. The concepts ''developed" and ``mature'' socialism show that the new system has matured in comparison with its initial period. In developed socialist society there remain difficulties, problems and tasks still to be carried out. Developed socialism is a prolonged historical period; the Soviet Union is at the beginning of this period. Only practice will show how long it will continue, what specific forms it will assume, and what stages it will pass through.
Further improvement of developed socialism also means advancement towards communism, while achieving communism is the final goal of the radical revolutionary transformation of society.
Communism differs from socialism, its lower stage, first of all by the gigantic development of the productive forces, which become capable of creating an abundance of consumer goods and so implement the fundamental principle of communism : "From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs."
Under socialism, social ownership of the means of production has two main forms- state and cooperative; under communism, there will be single ownership of the whole people. Labour will cease to be only a means of subsistence and will become a primary need, in the same way as the need for 78 food, air and communication with other people.
There will be no classes under communism and the essential distinctions between town and countryside, and between people engaged in manual and intellectual labour will disappear. There will be no peasantry or working class, but onlyworkers of communist society.
The state will be replaced by communist social self-government. Such social phenomena as politics, law and religion will no longer exist.
Freed from material concerns, people will develop all their abilities and talents. A short working-day will leave them much time to engage in the arts, sport and science. Man will develop under communism comprehensively and harmoniously. Intellectual wealth, moral integrity, and physical fitness will be blended in him.
Everything in the world is developing and communist society will not be static either. It will develop, improve, and advance further.
__ALPHA_LVL2__ The Importance of the ConceptThe Marxist theory of the socio-economic formation has great significance both for philosophy and for other social sciences.
In all the diversity of historical events and 79 phenomena, this theory made it possible to reveal the unity ot world history.
The process of the evolution of human society is extremely varied. Peoples and countries each go their own way, differing in many respects from each other. But the concept "socio-economic formation" has made it possible to reveal similarities and a recurrence of essential features and to understand the unity of the historical process. A capitalist country in East Asia, for example, may differ in many ways from European capitalist countries like France and Great Britain. But their very essence, the feature which makes all of them capitalist countries, is the same: private ownership of the means of production, exploitation of wage labour by capitalists, the anti-popular nature of the capitalist state, etc. They all belong to the same socio-economic formation- capitalism.
The primitive-communal system is the earliest social formation. For the overwhelming majority of peoples it was replaced by a class society. In the long run all peoples will arrive at communism. This is the general path of the development of mankind. However, specific historical conditions can considerably change the social process from country to country. Throughout history there has been interaction between countries and between peoples which have led, and those which have lagged behind in their economic development. 80 This is why some peoples rniss out certain class socio-economic formations in their evolution. For example, the Slavs, Mongols and several other peoples bypassed the slave-owning formation. At present many peoples which have not gone through the capitalist formation have opted for non-capitalist development and are engaged in a gradual transition to socialism. Today, when socialism has taken root in many countries, it is possible for many peoples to miss out the capitalist socio-economic formation and move towards building socialism.
When comparing successive socio-economic formations, we see that they are rungs on the ladder of historical progress. Each new socio- economic formation surpasses the previous one in the development level of the productive forces and culture, in the degree of freedom, etc.
The socio-economic formation serves as a unit of the scientific periodisation of the historical process for all social sciences. In studying the history of any country (and world history as well), one should first of all single out the socio-economic formations through which it has passed.
The concept "historical epoch" has been introduced to characterise periods of world history in accordance with their leading trends.
A socio-economic formation is always connected with a historical epoch. However, they are not identical. Each social formation is qualita- 81 lively different from the others. The epoch is the historical period of time during which a certain stage of social development takes place and events occur. The epoch can be a stage in the development of a socio-economic formation, or the formation as a whole. For example, there was the epoch of slavery and the epoch of feudalism. Then came the epoch of the establishment of the capitalist formation and early bourgeois, anti- feudal revolutions, followed by the epoch of the height of capitalism. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, capitalism moved into its highest and final stage-imperialism. Thus came the epoch of imperialism and proletarian revolutions. There are epochs of transition from one socioeconomic formation to another. We are at present in a transitional epoch in world development, moving from capitalism to socialism and communism. This transition embodies the chief trend, the main content of the contemporary epoch, which is characterised by the struggle between two opposing social systems, by socialist and national liberation revolutions, the downfall of imperialism, the collapse of the colonial system, the shift towards socialism by more and more peoples, and by the triumph of socialism and communism the world over.
Lenin wrote that in order to discover the content of an epoch one has to know which class is central to it, "determining its main content, the
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82 main direction of its development, the main characteristics of the historical situation in that epoch, etc.''~^^1^^Central to the modern epoch is the international working class and the world system of socialism.
The essence of the present epoch is closely related to its main contradiction, between socialism and capitalism. It demonstrates on a global scale the contradictions existing between labour and capital. In one part of the world (the world socialist system) the workers dominate led by the working class, while the other part of the world (the world capitalist system) embodies the domination of the bourgeoisie.
_-_-_~^^1^^ V. I. Lenin, ``Under a False Flag'', Collected Works, Vol. 21, 1980, p. 145.
[83] __NUMERIC_LVL1__ Chapter Three __ALPHA_LVL1__ THE STRUCTURE1 here are both natural (sex, age and race) and social distinctions between people living in society. Unlike natural ones, social distinctions are the result of the historical development of society. For example, class distinctions appear when the primitive-communal system disintegrates and private ownership, economic inequality and exploitation come into being. Social distinctions form the basis of the social differentiation ( division) of society. Stable social communities (clan, tribe, nationality, nation, family, class, profession, etc.) emerge in different ways and in different historical periods.
84Such communities have existed in the history of mankind for hundreds and thousands of years. The most important of them (classes, nationalities and nations) act as subjects in the historical process : it is through their activity that major historical events occur.
Connected with one another and mutually interdependent, these communities form the structure of society.
Each socio-economic formation has a specific social structure which is dependent on the mode of production of material benefits. It alters when there is a change in the mode of production.
__ALPHA_LVL2__ The Clan, Tribe,The clan and tribe were the most ancient forms of human community. Clans emerged at the same time as man (40--100 thousand years ago).
The clan is a community of blood relations with a common ancestor, and only comprising about 30--50 people. Its chief characteristics are the following: 1) a common name after the founder of the clan; 2) a common language; 3) common customs and traditions; 4) common religious rites and beliefs.
The clan conducted a joint economy based on common ownership and equitable distribution. It was headed by a council, which included all the 85 adult men and women and elected and replaced the elders and military leaders. Marriages between members of the same clan were prohibited.
The clan was a vital stage in the development of mankind, and one can see its distinctive features in the history of peoples all over the world.
Several closely related clans united into a tribe, which was not only based on ties of kinship but also had a common language and territory.
Clans and tribes existed under the primitivecommunal system and played an enormous role in the evolution of society. As time went on, however, economic processes outgrew the framework of the clan and tribal organisation of people which began to impede social development, having become historically obsolete. The traces of clan and tribal relations, still to be found in certain countries, are the result of the uneven course of world historical development.
The clan and tribal form of community was replaced by the nationality, which is typical of class pre-capitalist societies. As distinct from the clan the nationality is based not on kinship but above all on common territory, language and culture. A nationality is also characterised by the weak economic ties between its members.
Nationalities were formed in different parts of the world at different historical periods. And as 86 historical communities of people, they continue to exist today.
Economic factors, such as the gradual abolition of feudal fragmentation and the emergence of a single national market, played the decisive role in the emergence and development of nations. Thus, a common economic life represents the main feature of a nation. Marxism-Leninism sees the nation as a stable historical community of people, formed on the basis of a common economic life combined with a shared language and territory, common cultural characteristics, consciousness and psychology.
Nations should not be confused with races. Racial distinctions are external biological characteristics of people. The emergence of races dates back to the initial stages pf the formation of man and human society. Human races, i. e. distinctions in the physical features of people, emerged in ancient times, when the formation process of modern man was underway. Their appearance was related to the different geographical and climatic conditions under which primitive people lived, and to the fact that groups of people remained isolated from one another for millennia and the level of development of their productive forces was extremely low. Racial features (the colour of the skin and hair, the shape of the skull and nose, etc.), which formed under these conditions, were of an adaptive and protective nature. 87 Further on, as people migrated and resettled, races mixed and numerous racial varieties came into being.
Generally accepted classification includes three large racial groups: 1) Negroid (black); 2) Caucasian (white); and 3) Mongoloid (yellow).
Scientific research has proved beyond any doubt that there are no distinctions whatsoever in the way of thinking, or in the intellectual or physical abilities of people belonging to different races. Nevertheless, reactionary bourgeois ideologists propagate unscientific concepts of " superior" and ``inferior'' races, asserting that some races are predestined by nature for domination, and others, for subordination.
In the USA and other capitalist countries, racial discrimination, or persecution of people with skin that is other than white, is widespread.
Racist ideas always served the interests of slaveowners and colonialists. Today, bourgeois ideologists are trying to prove that the peoples of former colonies are psychologically unprepared for an independent existence. However, even if certain non-white peoples are indeed backward, this is not because of the colour of their skin or hair, as some bourgeois ideologists maintain, but the result of the colonial oppression which kept them for centuries subject to the will of their white exploiters.
Now, having freed themselves from colonial 88 oppression, the peoples of former colonies and dependent countries are successfully developing their economies and cultures. Particularly marked progress is being made by those countries which have chosen the socialist path.
Today there are two types of nation: capitalist and socialist; they have contrasting socio- economic bases, class structures, political systems and mentalities.
Capitalist nations were formed with the emergence of capitalism. They are based economically on the capitalist mode of production and capitalist production relations. Capitalist nations are internally divided into two antagonistic classes - the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. There is an incessant class struggle within such nations. Relations between capitalist nations are those of domination and subordination; national inequality and hostility, mutual distrust and national egoism are typical features.
In bourgeois ideology and politics the character of relations between capitalist nations is marked by nationalism. The latter manifests itself in the preaching of national isolation and the exclusiveness of a given nation, distrust of and hostility towards other nations. Nationalism has two forms. On the one hand, there is the greatpower chauvinism of the dominant nation, characterised by a scornful attitude towards other nations; it is extremely reactionary and therefore 89 firmly rejected by the working class. The nationalism of oppressed nations, on the other hand, displays a tendency to fight for independence and against imperialism and therefore the proletariat supports it. As Lenin wrote: "The bourgeois nationalism of an. oppressed nation has a general democratic content that is directed agains. oppression, and it is this content that we unconditionally = support."~^^1^^ The nationalism of some of the Asian and African countries which are fighting for their independence belongs to the latter kind.
The progressive tendency in the nationalism of oppressed nations, however, is temporary and transient owing to the temporary nature of the historically progressive role of the national bourgeoisie in the national liberation movement.
Socialist nations are formed under socialism, out of the nations and nationalities which existed in capitalist society. They are based on economic relations of co-operation and mutual assistance; they are not divided into the exploiters and exploited, but are composed of friendly classes and social groups that share vital interests and are united by internationalism.
Such nations exist in the Soviet Union and other socialist countries. In a socialist multinational state, like the Soviet Union, relations _-_-_
~^^1^^ V.I. Lenin, "The Right of Nations to Self- Determination'', Collected Works, Vol. 20, 1977, p. 412.
90 between nations display two main features: 1) development and prospering of each nation and 2) their increasing drawing together or rapprochement.The rapprochement of nations is becoming the main tendency, a process which is manifested in many definite phenomena. The Russian language plays a great role in bringing the Soviet peoples closer together and strengthening their friendlyalliance and unity. According to the latest census in the USSR, 153.5 million people named Russian as their native tongue (of them, 137.2 million were Russians and 16.3 million, people of other nationalities). Besides this, 61.3 million people stated that they had a fluent command of Russian as their second language. And they had learned it of their own free will. The desire to know Russian is quite natural for the peoples of the Soviet Union. There are over 100 various nations, nationalities, and ethnic groups living in the USSR, each with its own language. To communicate with one another, they have to have a common language. And Russian has become the language of communication for all these peoples.
With the achievement of developed socialism in the USSR, the prospering and drawing together of nations within a single socialist state has resulted in the formation of a new historical community-the Soviet people. This is not some sort of ``supranation'', but a new social and intcr- 91 national community of people living in the same country, having a single economic and political system, a common Marxist-Leninist world outlook and a common culture.
The drawing together of nations will ultimately end in their merging. However, the merging of nations and the overcoming of distinctions between them is a prolonged process which will not be completed in the near future. Marxists believe that this process should neither be impeded, nor in any way accelerated.
Bourgeois nationalism is opposed by proletarian internationalism.
Internationalism is a fundamental principle of the ideology and policy of the working class and its party. It embodies the international solidarity of the working people of various countries in their fight against capitalism, for social and national liberation, and for socialism and communism.
Internationalism has its roots in the common class interests of the proletariat and the ultimate aim of its struggle, irrespective of the state or nationality to which its members belong. It emerged at the dawn of the international communist and working-class movement; Marx, Engels and Lenin gave it a theoretical substantiation. Marx and Engels also formulated the now famous internationalist slogan: "Workers of all countries, unite!"
Alongside the concept of proletarian interna- 92 tionalism, Marxists-Leninists also make extensive use of the concept of socialist internationalism, which is the idea of proletarian internationalism developed to reflect modern-day conditions. Socialist internationalism extends, not only to relations between the proletariats of all countries, but also relations between socialist nations and nationalities within a multinational socialist state.
Relations between countries engaged in building socialism are also based on the principles of socialist internationalism. The socialist community of nations developing within the world socialist system signifies a new landmark on the path of the development of mankind and a prototype of the future community of free peoples.
All genuine Marxists-Leninists are true and consistent internationalists. They place particular value on active internationalism and its implementation in everyday activities.
__ALPHA_LVL2__ Classes and Class RelationsIn formations where production relations are based on private ownership of the means of production, classes and class relations are the chief elements of the social structure. Lenin gave the following definition of classes in his work "A Great Beginning": "Classes are large groups of people differing from each other by the place they occupy in a historically determined system of 93 social production, by their relation (in most cases fixed and formulated in law) to the means of production, by their role in the social organisation of labour, and, consequently, by the dimensions of the share of social wealth of which they dispose and the mode of acquiring = it."^^1^^
Here Lenin points out the chief economic characteristics of classes. However, class distinctions are also manifested in politics, everyday life, ideology, etc. Each class has its own political consciousness, morality, etc. Ultimately, however, all of them are determined by economic distinctions, which are the most important distinctions of all.
The most essential class characteristic is people's relation to the means of production. It is this which determines all other characteristics. Indeed, it is because the bourgeoisie in capitalist society owns the basic means of production that it appropriates in the form of profit the bulk of the material and cultural values that society creates, and dominates not only in the economic sphere, but also in politics and ideology.
Recognition of the fact that classes differ mainly in their relation to the means of production leads to exceptionally significant revolutionary conclusions. Abolishing classes and building a classless society involves the abolition of private
_-_-_~^^1^^ V. I. Lenin, ``A Great Beginning'', Collected Works, Vol. 29, p. 421.
94 ownership of the means of production and, as Lenin put it, "placing al. citizens on an equa. footing with regard to the means of production belonging to society as a = whole".^^1^^ Public ownership of the means or production forms the economic basis of socialism. That is why the demand to socialise the means of production on socialist lines is the main point in the programmes of the parties which are building, or intending to build, socialism.Classes have not always existed. The way in which they emerged was dealt with at length by Engels, in Anti-Duhrin. and The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State.
Engels analysed the process of the emergence of classes from the materialist standpoint. He proved that the formation of classes depends directly on economic factors and the development of material production.
Classes appeared in the period when the primitive-communal system was disintegrating. The most general precondition for their emergence was the development of the productive forces which brought about a surplus product, division of labour, exchange of goods and private ownership of the means of production. The emergence of a surplus product made exploitation possible. _-_-_
~^^1^^ V. I. Lenin, "A Liberal Professor oi Equality'', Collected Works, Vol. 20, p. 146.
95 Prior to its emergence, to take from a person what he had produced meant to doom him to death. Now, however, he produced more than he needed to survive, and so the surplus product could be appropriated by another person without any drastic consequences: the producer could still live and work, i. e., he was able to create more surplus product. The development of forms of exchange and the growth of labour productivity were conducive to the emergence of private ownership of the means of production. As a result, economic inequality appeared: some had more while others had less, and still others nothing at all. The propertyless became dependent on the propertied.The earliest class society in history was the slave-owning one. The class of exploiters-the slave-owners-was initially formed by way of isolating the clan and tribal hierarchy from the rank and file within the community, e. g. priests, elders, and military leaders. The exploited class was formed out of prisoners of war made into slaves, as well as clan and tribe members who had fallen into debt.
In different regions of the world classes emerged at different times and had their own specific features. According to historical research, the earliest class societies appeared in Egypt and the Middle East countries in the late 4th and early 3rd millennium B.C. For the majority of the peoples classes have existed for several millennia. 96 However, in several countries that lagged behind in their economic development and have only recently liberated themselves from colonial oppression (e. g. in Tropical Africa), the process of class formation is still underway.
Each socio-economic formation (except for the primitive-communal system) is characterised by a definite class structure and inter-class relations, comprising both main and secondary classes of the given society. The main classes are those that were created by the given mode of production. In an antagonistic class society they are the class which owns the basic means of production, and its antagonist- the exploited class. The slaves and slave-owners in a slave-owning society, the peasants and feudal lords under the feudal system, and the proletariat and bourgeoisie under capitalism are the main classes in antagonistic societies. There are also secondary classes, which are not brought about by the dominant mode of production (e. g. free craftsmen in a slave-owning society, peasants in a capitalist society, etc.). In addition, there are various social strata which are not classes but are essentially similar to classes such as the intelligentsia and the clergy. Classes in themselves are not uniform. For example, under capitalism there are the industrial and the agricultural proletariat. Within the bourgeois class there is the petty bourgeoisie, as well as the middle and monopoly bourgeoisie.
97Some peoples had castes-hereditary and very isolated groups of people occupying a certain place in the social structure. As a rule, castes had traditional occupations, and contacts between them were very restricted. Features of the caste structure existed in the social systems of many ancient and medieval states. In Ancient Egypt, there was a privileged caste of priests; in Japan, the Samurai, etc. In India the caste system was all-pervading.
In some countries, traces of caste division remain to our day. Castes have always been a serious impediment to social development and are even more so today. It is impossible to overcome backwardness in the East without the eradication of caste distinctions and prejudices.
As classes emerge, an inter-class struggle begins. History shows that class struggles have taken place in all antagonistic societies. Marx and Engels wrote in the Manifesto of the Communist Party that the history of all known antagonistic societies had been the history of class struggles. "Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guild-master and journeyman, in a word oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended, either in a revolutionary re-constitution of society at large, or in the
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98common ruin of the contending = classes.''~^^1^^
Bourgeois ideologists, intimidated by the class struggle of the workers, are trying to prove that it is accidental and impedes historical progress. Rejecting these inventions, Marxism-Leninism has proved that class struggle is inevitable. The source of the class struggle is the contrasting nature of class interests. In capitalist society the interests of the worker and the capitalist are opposite and irreconcilable. The bourgeoisie as a class is interested in increasing exploitation, preserving the capitalist system and strengthening its economic and political domination. The working class, by virtue of its position under capitalism, is interested in the elimination of exploitation, private ownership and the social oppression based on it, arid in the destruction of the exploiter state. Marx and Engels showed that the class struggle is the motive force behind social development in antagonistic formations. At a certain stage of social evolution, the class struggle inevitably leads to social revolution. And revolution is the peak of the class struggle, when the revolutionary class assumes political power and a cardinal change is brought about in all social relations. Through social revolution, the transition is made from the _-_-_
~^^1^^ Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, ``Manifesto of the Communist Parly'', in: Karl Marx, Frederick Engels, Collected Works, Vol'. 6, 1976, p. 482.
99 old to a new socio-economic formation, i. e. historical progress is achieved. A revolutionary class struggle is the only way to carry out the urgent tasks of social development.In each antagonistic formation the class struggle has its own specific features determined by the mode of production and the class structure of society.
Capitalist society is one of profound social contrasts and class antagonisms. Class contradictions have become simplified since, as capitalism advances, society is more and more polarised into two opposing classes - the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. The class struggle of the proletariat is better organised and developed than the class struggle in the preceding formations.
The earliest form of the proletarian class struggle is its economic struggle, i. e. protection of its current economic interests (the struggle to obtain wage rises and improved labour conditions, the fight against unemployment, etc.). It is during this struggle that trade unions, which are the first organisations of the working class, appear. The economic struggle is vitally important and undoubtedly brings positive results. Yet it cannot solve fundamental problems: it does not organise the working class into a single whole; political organisations do not emerge in its course; class consciousness does not take shape.
The political struggle is the promotion by 100 Emacs-File-stamp: "/home/ysverdlov/leninist.biz/en/1987/WHM294/20061127/199.tx" __EMAIL__ webmaster@leninist.biz __OCR__ ABBYY 6 Professional (2006.03.0) __WHERE_PAGE_NUMBERS__ top __FOOTNOTE_MARKER_STYLE__ [0-9]+ __ENDNOTE_MARKER_STYLE__ [0-9]+ workers and other oppressed sections of the population of their political interests, the fight for sharing political power and, ultimately, for the establishment of working-class domination in the system of political relations.
The political struggle in its conscious form is impossible without an ideological struggle, which comprises its intellectual foundation, without a theoretical substantiation of political objectives and without educating the working class in the socialist spirit.
Today, the class struggle has assumed certain important features related to the characteristics typical of the epoch. The development of the world socialist system into a decisive factor in the evolution of mankind, the growing general crisis of capitalism, and the scientific and technological revolution have all had a marked influence on the content and forms of the class struggle.
Of indisputable importance is the fact that today the struggle of the workers in each country against the rule of capital forms part of the world revolutionary process, which incorporates, in addition to the working-class movement in bourgeois countries, the development of existing socialism and the national liberation movement. Today it is difficult to separate the revolutionary movement in any developed or developing capitalist country from the international (global) confrontation of the two world systems, with the 101 world system of developed socialism and the international working class opposing the capitalist system.
Today, the ranks of the working class and the size of its Marxist parties are steadily growing, as is the level of political organisation of the working class and other working people. Today, there are Communist parties in almost 100 countries, and the overall number of Communists exceeds 70 million. The role of Communist parties in the capitalist and developing countries is also growing. In Western Europe alone, around 800,000 people have joined their ranks over the past decade. The major forms of the class struggle are becoming increasingly intermingled, and political action is mounting.
The social basis of the class struggle is now expanding with the middle strata of society, a considerable part of the intelligentsia, and young people joining ranks with various strata of the working class. Mass social movements directed against monopolies are stepping up their activities and the anti-war movement is spreading.
As the working-class and communist movement gains in scope and force, the need arises to intensify the struggle against opportunism and revisionism-because the new contingents joining the communist movement sometimes bring with them elements of bourgeois and petty- 102 bourgeois ideology and mentality. Revisionism is an attempt to revise Marxism-Leninism on the pretext of developing it. This leads to opportunism : a direct betrayal of the interests of the working class and a rejection of its struggle against capital. Both phenomena are products of bourgeois ideology and mentality.
Bourgeois theoreticians, right-wing socialdemocratic ideologists, and revisionist critics of Marxism deny the significance of the class struggle in present-day capitalist society. The views held on this issue by the theoretical leaders of the British Labour Party are typical. While not denying the inevitability of class political conflicts in the past, they assert that now there is no ground for the existence of such contradictions in Britain, and that differences of opinion concerning class privileges, including on economic issues, can be successfully resolved within the democratic system of the bourgeois state. The actual status of the working class in Britain, however, by no means corresponds to the assertions of Labour leaders. Just as in other West European countries, class conflicts, including those related to political issues, are a common thing in Britain. Suffice it to say that today's peace movement, which is led by the workers, undoubtedly has a class political side to it. Demonstrations against the threat of a nuclear catastrophe represent a protest against the policies of imperialist ruling 103 circles which are incompatible with the vital interests of the people.
Certain theoreticians, declaring that they are ``friends'' of the workers and even Marxists, substitute antagonism between nations, i. e. between the rich and poor nations, for the class struggle and class antagonism. In their opinion, the national liberation movement and the class struggle of the peoples of Africa are conditioned primarily not by the fundamental socio-economic contradictions typical of these countries, but by a clash of two types of nationalism: the ``Western'', which is allegedly liberal and inclined to compromise, and the ``Eastern'', which is " aggressive" and leans towards communist ideology. They assert that the strengthening of ``Eastern'' nationalism represents a great danger to mankind. Historical experience has shown, however, that conflicts arising between nations and the ideology of nationalism which reflects them are inseparable from class contradictions. The resolution of the latter facilitates the establishment of friendly relations between nations. It is not nationalism, which breeds hostility between peoples, but proletarian and socialist internationalism that has always been the principle upheld by the revolutionary working class.
The theory of a "world countryside" as opposed to the "world town" is doing great harm to the international class struggle which the 104 workers are waging against their exploiters. It is essentially directed against recognising the leading role of the working class in the revolutionary movement. This view is held by those who substitute an invented antagonism between the peoples of the West and East, the North and South, for the class approach to the evaluation of international forces fighting for freedom, democracy and socialism.
__ALPHA_LVL2__ Socialism and ClassesMarxism was the first to prove that the class division of society is historically transient and that such a division is only typical of the epochs in which private ownership dominates. However, the abolition of classes is not a single act but an entire historical epoch. The first and very important step in this direction is the transition period from capitalism to socialism. All countries which have opted for socialist transformation must go through this stage.
Socialist revolution causes a radical change in the class structure of society.
In the period of transition from capitalism to socialism the economic system becomes multistructural. Three classes exist in most countries in this period: the working class, primarily connected with the socialist economic structure; the working peasants, mostly representing the small- 105 scale economic structure; and capitalist elements in town and countryside, attached to the capitalist economic structure. The class of feudal lords ceases to exist. The working class becomes the leading force in society. Capitalist elements, though they do exist, have greatly undermined positions (they are deprived of political power, a considerable part of their property is nationalised, etc.).
Since antagonistic classes exist in the period of transition from capitalism to socialism, struggle between them is unavoidable. But here the correlation of class forces differs from that obtaining prior to the socialist revolution: the working class possesses political power, while the bourgeoisie is deprived of it. The forms of the class struggle are also different since they reflect the specific character of the transition period.
In summing up the experience gained over the first few years of socialist development in Soviet Russia, Lenin named the following forms of the class struggle: 1) suppression of the resistance of the exploiters; 2) civil war; 3) ``neutralisation'' of the petty bourgeoisie, particularly the peasantry; 4) the use of bourgeois experts; and 5) introduction of a new labour discipline. The first form is universal and inevitable for all countries. The second form is not inevitable. It occurred in Rus-- sia, where domestic and foreign counter- revolution had succeeded in imposing civil war on the 106 workers. In Vietnam and Korea the people had to wage a war of liberation against US interventionists and their local accomplices. In several other countries, however, class struggle has not been so acute. Asian and African countries have their own specific features in the development of class relations in the transition period from capitalism to socialism. Prior to socialist revolution, the class structure in these countries was very complicated because their economies had been warped by imperialism, and in some, capitalist relations were intertwined with feudal, pre- capitalist and even pre-feudal relations. Lenin repeatedly said that in highly-developed capitalist countries it is more difficult to start a socialist revolution, but, after the revolution has been consummated, it is easier to achieve socialism, and less time is required to build = it.^^1^^ At the same time, in backward countries, where it is often easier to start the revolution, "it is extremely difficult to continue it and consummate = it".^^2^^ Lenin formu- _-_-_
^^1^^ See: V. I. Lenin, "Extraordinary Seventh Congress of the R.C.P.fB.), March 6-8, 1918. Political Report of the Central Committee, March 7'', Collected Work.',, Vol. 27, 1977, p. 93; "Session of the All-Russia C.K.C., April 29, 1918'', Collected Works, Vol. 27, p. 291 ; "Report Delivered at a Moscow Gubernia Conference of Factory Committees, July 23, 1918'', Collected Works, Vol. 27, p. 547.
^^2^^ V. 1. Lenin, "Report Delivered at a Moscow Gubernia Conference of Factory Committees, July 23, 1918'', Collected Works, Vol. 27, p. 547.
107 lated the following dependence: "The more backward the country which, owing to the zigzags of history, has proved to be the one to start the socialist revolution, the more difficult is it for that country to pass from the old capitalist relations to socialist = relations."^^1^^ The tasks which characteristically face such countries in the period of transition from capitalism to socialism are the formation of national contingents of the working class, the strengthening of its economic and political positions, the overcoming of the economic and cultural backwardness of the country, the fight against tribal or racial egoism, etc.Building a socialist society means abolishing private ownership of the means of production and the exploiter classes. The class structure of society undergoes a radical change. Socialist society is a society of the workers. The community of the workers' vital interests enhances their socio- political and ideological unity. The establishment of this type of society is a historic triumph and a great step towards a classless society. However, the abolition of the exploiter classes and class antagonisms does not signify the elimination of classes in general. Even at the initial stage of _-_-_
^^1^^ V. I. I.enin, "Extraordinary Seventh Congress of the R.C.P.(B.), March 6-8, 1918. Political Report of the Central Committee, March 7'', Collected Works, Vol. 27, p. 89.
108 developed socialism classes and class distinctions are still in evidence.The existence of classes under socialism is based on the distinctions that are still manifest in their relation to the means of production and on the substantial differences in the nature of work. The working class is attached to public ownership, and works at public enterprises. The peasantry under socialism is also attached to socialist ownership, but in the form of group, co-operative ownership. Because of the distinction between those engaged in intellectual and manual work, the intelligentsia also continues to exist as an independent social group. The intelligentsia comprises people engaged in intellectual work.
Developed socialist society is characterised by the drawing together of classes and social groups and the gradual disappearance of the distinctions between them. Economically this process is based above all upon the rapprochement between the two forms of socialist ownership and the prospect of their merging into common ownership by the whole people. The considerable distinctions between people engaged in intellectual and manual work are also gradually disappearing. The workers and peasants have always been mostly engaged in manual work. Under socialism, however, and especially with the spread of the scientific and technological revolution, it is becoming increasingly intellectual: greater scien- 109 tific knowledge and intellectual contribution to the work process are now required of workers. For its part, intellectual work (i. e. the work of engineers, scientists, doctors, etc.), is becoming increasingly technological, requires sophisticated machinery, etc. Developed socialist society in the Soviet Union has already taken a great stride towards a classless society. In connection with this, it was announced at the 26th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union that the classless structure of society will mainly be established within the historical framework of developed socialism.
The process of the elimination of class distinctions is not spontaneous, but it is being organised and directed by the Communist Party and the socialist state. The formation of a homogeneous society will be accomplished with the triumph of communism.
The theory of classes and class relations presupposes an important requirement of Marxist methodology, to wit, to give a class analysis of social phenomena in class society. In order to comprehend and assess correctly a social phenomenon or historical event, it is necessary to elucidate its class content or class aspects, to understand which classes stand behind it and whose interests it ultimately serves. As Lenin said: "People always have been foolish victims of deception and selfdeception in politics, and they always will be un- 110 til they have learnt to seek out the interest. of some class or other behind all moral, religious, political and social phrases, declarations and promises.''~^^1^^
All the political parties that have ever existed represented the interests of certain classes, but by no means all of them have openly professed their class affiliation and genuine goals. Exploiter classes and parties more often than not try to camouflage themselves with a fafade of non- partisanship and ``objectivity''. The ideological defenders of obsolete social relations direct their efforts chiefly at blurring class contradictions and the class content of social phenomena. Lenin therefore insisted that parties should not be judged by their names, declarations or programmes, but by their deeds.^^2^^
Communists openly admit the class orientation of their ideology and politics. Indeed they have no need to hide their party commitment, since this stand is entirely in line with Marxist-Leninist theory. The objective course of social development coincides with the aspirations of the workers led by the most revolutionary class, the proletariat, for they are interested in the replacement of capitalism by a new, communist system and must _-_-_
~^^1^^ V. I. Lenin, "The Three Sourees and Three Component Parts of Marxism'', Collected Works, Vol. 19, p. 28.
^^2^^ See: V. I. Lenin, "The Grand Total'', Collected Works, Vol. 17, 1974, p. 294.
111 carry out this historically necessary act. In order to achieve its fundamental aims the working class requires the laws of the development of social reality to be reflected in the most adequate and precise way.Marxists-Leninists proceed from the fact that the more consistently the principle of a class approach to social knowledge is implemented, the more precise and effective the results will be. At the same time, the deeper the knowledge of the laws of social development, the fuller that development corresponds to the interests of the working class and its party.
In his works Lenin gave an analysis of social phenomena and processes which is noted for an organic unity of scientific objectivity and a lucid assessment from the standpoint of the working class.
This is clearly manifested in his elaboration of the issue of democracy and dictatorship, which had always been crudely distorted by all kinds of opportunists and renegades. Exposing their idle talk about "pure democracy'', "democracy for all'', and "freedom in general'', Lenin showed that there is no supra-class democracy, nor can there be any: there is either bourgeois or socialist democracy. The character of democracy is determined by the property relations prevailing in the given society and by the class which holds power.
Bourgeois democracy is the implementation of 112 the power of the propertied minority over the exploited majority. It is also wrong to speak of dictatorship "in general''. Dictatorship is always exercised by a definite class-the dominant onewith the aim of maintaining and strengthening its own positions. Any kind of bourgeois democracy is dictatorship by an exploiting minority over the workers. The dictatorship of the proletariat, on the other hand, is political domination carried out by the proletariat in the interests of the workers, and in alliance with them; it is directed against an insignificant minority-the overthrown propertied classes.
A class approach to the study of social phenomena is also important for a correct analysis of the complicated and contradictory processes within contemporary international relations. It is the key to studying reality and a reliable guide for tackling urgent tasks of social development.
[113] __NUMERIC_LVL1__ Chapter Four __ALPHA_LVL1__ POLITICALM hen classes come into being, they bring to life a new social phenomenon called politics. Politic. is the relationship that obtains between classes, nations and other social groups within a country or between countries. Politics does not cover all and any relations between classes but specifically those pertaining to the struggle for state power, its order, orientation, methods and means; to relations with other countries; to internal competition between parties, etc. Lenin defined politics as the relation "of al. classes and strata to the state and the = government".^^1^^
_-_-_~^^1^^ V. I. Lenin, "What Is To Be Done?'', Collected Works. Vol. 5, 1977, p. 422.
114We distinguish between internal politics, or relations among classes, parties, and nations comprising a single state, and external politics, embracing external relations. The two are closely interrelated, with the former being determining.
It has been proved historically that external politics is a continuation of internal politics. States behave on the international scene much the same way as their ruling classes do at home. In an exploiter society, the internal policy of oppression is balanced out externally with a striving to enslave other nations and a policy of intimidation of and aggression against them. This holds true for contemporary bourgeois states, and notably for US imperialism - reactionary to the extreme both internally and externally.
Aggressive foreign policies are dangerous to peace, and, not infrequently have plunged nations into war. War as an organised armed struggle between states is generated by a society of antagonistic classes. War is a continuation of politics by other, violent, means. Lenin wrote: "The policy which a given state, a given class within that state, pursued for a long time before the war is inevitably continued by that same class during the war, the form of action alone being changed.''~^^1^^ Hence, the oppressive and reaction- _-_-_
~^^1^^ V. I. Lenin, "War and Revolution'', (.nllecled Wnrks, Vol. 24, 1977, p. 400.
115 ary policy of the exploiting classes leads to unjust, predatory, imperialist wars. Just wars are wars of social or national liberation waged by oppressed classes and nations (civil war and national liberation war). The same applies to wars against aggressors. The Great Patriotic War of the USSR and the war of other nations of Europe against Nazi aggression, the Vietnam war and the Korean war waged against US imperialism were just wars.The emergence of socialism gave the start to the world's passage to a new historical epoch without wars. The absence in socialist society of social antagonisms, generating war, and of classes whose interest lies in war and the arms race is reflected in the socialist countries' foreign policy of peace and friendship among nations.
Nowadays, thanks to the existence of the world socialist system and the support of the socialist countries' peace policy by the broad masses in all countries, it is quite possible to curb the aggressive ambitions of the imperialists and to banish wars from the life of society. It is evident to many people that today there is no alternative to peaceful coexistence among nations, and that the only way to achieve further social progress is to eliminate war, to prevent a nuclear conflict.
The relationships of classes and other groups in a society are regulated by various organisations, institutions, unions, associations, and so on, 116 which comprise the political system of society. The principal units of a political system are the state, political parties, workers' trade unions, peasant unions, youth leagues, and other organised bodies.
Some have a definitely political character and constitute the core of the political system (the state, political parties, workers' trade unions, youth leagues, and some others); whereas others (writers', artists', composers' and other such unions, sports clubs, cultural societies etc.), while not strictly neutral from the class point oi view, have no pronounced political character.
The ruling classes maintain their interests and exercise their rule through the political system, relying primarily on the state and political parties.
The political system exists in a class society only. It may be antagonistic or non-antagonistic, depending on the type of class relations.
The political system in a society of antagonistic classes is (he more complex in structure. The existence of exploiting and exploited classes causeits division into two contending parts with unequal strength: the organisations and institutions of the ruling class whereby it imposes its dictatorship, and the organisations of the oppressed class (its political parties, trade unions, and so on), through which it fights for liberation.
In a socialist society relations between classes 117 and other social groups are those of alliance and co-operation ; consequently, the political organisation is a close-knit, unified system of bodies regulating the social and political relations between all individuals and groups. Its key units in the developed socialist society of the USSR are: 1) the socialist state of all the people; 2) the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (the core of the Soviet political system); 3) the mass organisations: 4) work collectives.
__ALPHA_LVL2__ The StateThe state is the principal unit of the political system. The Marxist-Leninist doctrine of the state is set forth in Frederick Kngels's The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State and Anti- Diihring, and in V. I. Lenin's The State and Revolution and The State.
There was a time when no state existed. It emerged as a result of society's historical development. There was no state, nor was it needed, in the primitive community where there was no private property and no classes. Society's life was regulated by force of habit and tradition, the authority of the elders or the tribal council which represented the common interests of people.
Private property and economic inequality, classes and class antagonisms emerged due to the 118 development of the productive forces. No longer was it possible to settle society's affairs collectively because different classes had different, antagonistic, interests. It had become essential to protect private property, the right of one class to exploit another, and to hold down the oppressed masses constituting the majority of society. That was what the state was formed for. "The state is a product and a manifestation of the irreconcilabilit. of class antagonisms. The state arises where, when and insofar as class antagonisms objectively canno. be reconciled.''~^^1^^
The state is a class-oriented entity. In an antagonistic society it is controlled by the economically dominant class, which uses it primarily to suppress its class enemies. As Lenin wrote, "The state is a machine for the oppression of one class by another, a machine for holding in obedience to one class other, subordinated = classes."^^2^^
The exploiter state has two essential functions (directions). Its internal function, realised in the state's internal policies, is to control the suppressed, exploited masses, and is conducted by open coercion through an army of officials, intelligence agencies, the judiciary, prisons, etc. The _-_-_
^^1^^ V. I. Lenin, "The State and Revolution'', Collected Works, Vol. 25, 1980, p. 392.
~^^2^^ V. I. Lenin, "The State'', Collected Works, Vol. 29, p. 380.
119 external function of the state, realised in the state's foreign policy and diplomacy, stems from its internal function and amounts to protecting the state's interests in the international arena, providing for reliable military defence, and ensuring success in military or political aggression against other states.Today, as in the past, there is a qualitative difference between states. To each type of production relations corresponds a definite type of state. The type of state expresses its class essence. From this point of view, states differ above all according to the class whose interests they protect. The four basic types of state are: the slave-owning, feudal, capitalist, and socialist state. There are also nonbasic types of state. The number of states today exceeds 150, among them socialist, capitalist, and socialist- or capitalist-oriented developing states. The world population comprises 2,000 nations, nationalities, and ethnic groups, including minute tribes of several hundred people and large nations of several hundred million people.
The state takes different forms-according to the manner in which the dominant class exercises its rule. The forms of rule depend on historical conditions, the correlation of class forces, and external influences. A state can be either a monarchy or a republic. A monarchy is either an autocracy or the constitutionally limited rule of one person (king, emperor, shah, etc). A republic 120 is ruled by elected bodies. Most bourgeois states are republics (the USA, France, Italy, and others). Some capitalist countries are monarchies, as a rule, constitutional monarchies (Belgium, Great Britain, Japan, Morocco, and others).
According to the system of government there arc unitary states (a single entity) and combined states (federations). A federation is a union of several juridically relatively independent state units such as states in the USA, the Lands in the Federal Republic of Germany, the Union Republics in the USSR, etc. The USSR, for example, is a federative state uniting fifteen Soviet socialist republics. The Soviet federative state has proved to be a historically viable form of socialist statehood in a multinational country.
Determining the essence of a state from the point of view of its political regime is of the utmost importance. The political regime is the set of methods used in exercising power, showing the extent to which democratic rights and freedoms are realised. The regimes prevalent in contemporary bourgeois states are: parliamentary, military dictatorial, fascist, semi-fascist, and so on.
Advocates of capitalism deceive the workers and hold forth about the progressive role of the modern bourgeois state, which they describe as a "welfare state" caring equally for the interests of all classes and social strata. In fact, however, the bourgeois state (however democratic its form of 121 rule) is first and foremost a machine for suppressing the workers by means of the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie.
The bourgeois slate became still more reactionary with the advent of imperialism at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century. Imperialism, as Lenin pointed out more than once, spells reaction all down the line, primarily in state and political affairs. The social base of the bourgeois state is contracting. Once it represented the big bourgeoisie and the relatively wide strata of the petty bourgeoisie, while now it is strictly a committee for the management of the affairs of the monopoly bourgeoisie. Imperialism furthers the extensive development of state-monopoly capitalism, merging the monopolies and the state into a single power for enriching the monopolies, suppressing the working-class movement and national liberation struggle, protecting capitalism, and waging wars of aggression.
Both the internal and external policy of the imperialist state is essentially reactionary and directed against the mass of the people. The bourgeois state today interferes vigorously in labourcapital relations, often assumes partial control over wages and salaries, limits or outlaws strikes, and puts pressure on trade unions.
As state-monopoly capitalism develops, the national economies of bourgeois states, like all other spheres, are militarised to an unprece- 122 dented extent. The power of the military- industrial complex (capitalists profiting from the arms race and closely associated with the military) increases. None other than the military-industrial complex determines the foreign and home policies of the United States today, obstructing peaceful settlement of international issues. Militarism, the worst manifestation of the bourgeois state's reactionary essence, has created a grave threat to peace and to life on Earth.
Being essentially reactionary and against the people, the bourgeois state cannot be used for the cause of socialist revolution or for any radical, revolutionary change in society. The state in antagonistic societies is geared to exploiting, suppressing, and oppressing the people. Socialist revolution eliminates all forms of social exploitation. That is why the bourgeois state cannot be used by the working class for achieving its aims; the workers must tear it down in the course of the socialist revolution and replace it with a new, proletarian, state. This is equally true for all countries aiming to do away with capitalism and achieve far-reaching socialist transformations, as borne out by the experience of all revolutions, both victorious and not victorious. All the countries building socialism had first to demolish their bourgeois state machine. Of course, not all institutions of the bourgeois state are to be eliminated. There is no need to destroy those state institu- 123 tions, such as the post and telegraph, which are socially neutral and are not levers of exploitation. To destroy them is to cause disarray.
First to be destroyed are institutions protecting the old, exploiter social order, such as the bureaucracy and the law-enforcement agencies. As history has shown, destruction of the old state and its replacement with a new, socialist state proceeds differently from country to country. The process may be short or long, it may destroy all or preserve some of the old institutions, such as parliament (while completely changing their nature, principles, and style of work). Destruction of the bourgeois state machine is common for all socialist revolutions.
__ALPHA_LVL2__ Why Is theAs a result of socialist revolution, the dictatorship of the proletariat replaces the destroyed bourgeois state.
The dictatorship of the proletariat is power of the workers led by the working class whose objective is to build a socialist society.
The state is always a dictatorship of this or that class. The political power of the workers means a dictatorship of the overwhelming major- 124 ity and is therefore the fullest possible form of democracy in a class society.
The dictatorship of the proletariat is common to all countries that embark on socialist transformations, and indispensable for building socialism. Lenin said: "Whoever has failed to understand that dictatorship is essential to the victory of any revolutionary class has no understanding of the history of revolutions, or else does not want to know anything in this field.''~^^1^^
Adversaries of Marxism tell lies about the dictatorship of the proletariat, classifying it as violence or terror, asserting that it rules out all forms of democracy. Revisionists hold that the dictatorship of the proletariat, while it is right lor a number of countries, is not necessarily so in all eases of socialist construction.
But let us see what makes the dictatorship of the proletariat a historical necessity.
1 he proletariat needs a dictatorship, first o( all, to break the resistance of its class enemies. The exploiter classes go to all lengths to regain political power and their lost privileges. They are not reconciled with defeat and, not infrequently, turn for aid to imperialists in other countries, who hate the revolution and are prepared to crush it _-_-_
~^^1^^ V. I. Lenin, "A Contribution to the Ilislon, of the Question oflhe Dictatorship'', Collected Work*. Vol. 31, 1982, p. 340.
125 whenever and wherever it takes place. To protect the revolution and suppress the resistance of the exploiting classes is a major objective of the dictatorship of the proletariat. History has shown that the revolution must be able to defend itself. In other words, the dictatorship of the proletariat is the workers' class struggle continued in new historical conditions and in new historical forms.On the other hand, suppression of class enemies is not the principal objective of the dictatorship of the proletariat. The workers use power to build socialism, achieve far-reaching changes in the economy, culture, socio-political relations, and in other fields. The dictatorship's principal objective is construction. As Lenin said, "the essence of proletarian dictatorship is not in force alone, or even mainly in force. Its chief feature is the organisation and discipline of the advanced contingent of the working people, of their vanguard, of their sole leader, the proletariat, whose object is to build socialism, abolish the division of society into classes, make all members of society working people, and remove the basis for all exploitation of man by man.''~^^1^^
The dictatorship of the proletariat achieves another important task establishment of the working class's leadership of the peasantry and _-_-_
~^^1^^ V. 1. Lenin, "Greetings to the Hungarian Workers'', Collected Work*, Vol. 29, p. 3H8.
126 other workers with the aim to ensure their complete and final break-away from the bourgeoisie and involve them in socialist construction. The essence and the highest principle of the dictatorship of the proletariat is the alliance of the working class with all other workers. The working class cannot achieve the tremendous goals of socialist construction single-handedly, without allies, or win and retain power, suppress the exploiters, and achieve deep-going social transformations. The alliance of the working class with the peasantry and all other workers is another law of the fight for socialism common to all countries, assuming various forms in accordance with the specific historical conditions.Proletarian dictatorship takes on various forms reflecting the essential characteristics of the country in question and the specific historical conditions in which it finds itself at the time of the transition to socialism. "All nations will arrive at socialism - this is inevitable, but all will do so not exactly the same way, each will contribute something of its own to some form of democracy, to some variety to the dictatorship of the proletariat, to the varying rate of socialist transformations in the different aspects of social life,'' wrote = Lenin.^^1^^
Historically, the first form of dictatorship of the _-_-_
~^^1^^ V. I. Lenin, "A Caricature of Marxism and Imperialist Eeonomism'', Collected Works, Vol. 23, 1974, pp. 69--70.
127 proletariat was the Paris Commune. Although its life was short-from 18 March 1871 to 28 May 1871 when it was crushed by domestic and foreign counter-revolutionaries, the Paris Commune produced a significant historical experience. Soviet power, another form of proletarian dictatorship, originated as a result of the victorious socialist revolution in Russia. This form of government, produced by the masses themselves, conformed with the needs of the struggle of the workers. Soviets developed as class organisations, i. e., bodies elected by and from among workers, peasants and the working intelligentsia. During the transitional period, elections to Soviets were based, not on the territorial, but on the production principle-deputies to Soviets were elected directly at industrial enterprises, army units, etc. Millions of workers elected to Soviets have learnt the art of government. When the proletariat came to power, the Soviets, which originated as organs of the armed uprising of 1905, became the bodies through which the proletariat exercised its dictatorship. They are simultaneously bodies of state and broad social organisations. The first Soviets were purely proletarian organisations, i. e., represented the most revolutionary class; as they progressed, they increasingly enlisted the participation of other strata, and eventually became organisations of the entire working population. 128Following the Second World War. dictatorships of the proletariat were established in a number of European and Asian countries in the form of people's democracy. The essential features of this form of proletarian dictatorship were the broad social base of the revolution, its relatively peaceful development, and assistance of the Soviet Union. Its singular feature is a popular front, a massive socio-political organisation involving various democratic bodies and headed by a Marxist-Leninist party. Unlike the Soviet Union with its historically shaped one-party system, most of the socialist countries in Europe have more than one party represented in the government. In a number of these states, Communist and Workers' parties maintain fruitful tics with non-proletarian democratic parties. A few socialist European states have preserved their traditional, albeit transformed, parliamentary institutions. There are other distinctions, too. And the experience of these countries, like that of the Soviet Union, is of vast importance for the international working-class and national liberation movements, for the struggle for socialism.
Other forms of the dictatorship of the proletariat will possibly emerge in the future.
Dictatorship of the proletariat is not the final objective of the workers but the prime means for building a new society. Having fulfilled its histori- 129 cal functions abolition of exploiter classes, establishment and consolidation of a socialist society the dictatorship of the proletariat progresses into a state of the whole people, the form of state power meeting the conditions of developed socialism.
Dictatorship of the proletariat and the state of the whole people are two stages in the development of the socialist state. Since at the second stage there are no exploiter classes, the state is no longer a means of class coercion. It protects the interests of all workers. Still, the state of the whole people does apply coercion towards those individuals who break the law or the standards and principles of socialist society.
The state of the whole people provides for the all-round progress of developed socialist society and for the achievement of the objectives of communist construction.
To achieve the objectives of communist construction, the state exercises its powers internally in such spheres as the economy, safeguarding of socialist property, law-enforcement, maintaining balance between production and consumption, culture and education, and externally in furthering co-operation and mutual assistance within the socialist community, peaceful coexistence of states of different socio-political systems, reliable defence against external military aggression, support for national liberation struggles,
9---1143
130 and the fight for peace and for international detente.The working class retains its leading place in the state of the whole people.
The Communist Party of the Soviet Union sees its prime objective in securing the further development of the state of the whole people, and of socialist democracy.
The transition from the proletarian dictatorship into a state of the whole people is a historically inevitable stage in all countries building developed socialism.
The state will not exist forever. With the building of communism, it will cease to be necessary and will develop into communist public selfgovernment. This, however, will take a long time.
The state will wither away as a result of internal economic conditions: the productive forces will have reached the highest level, the two forms of socialist ownership will have merged into one, ownership by the whole people, labour will have become a prime and vital need of every individual, and the communist principle of distribution, "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs'', will regulate the life of society.
External conditions are also highly relevant,
for so long as there exists the threat of imperialist
aggression, there is need to provide for reliable
131
defences. From this it follows that the state will
not wither away before the correlation of forces in
the world is so much in favour of socialism that
there will no longer be a threat of aggression
against the socialist countries.
[132]
__NUMERIC_LVL1__
Chapter Five
__ALPHA_LVL1__
INTELLECTUAL LIFE
OF SOCIETY.
FORMS
OF THE SOCIAL
CONSCIOUSNESS
__ALPHA_LVL2__
Intellectual Life
and the Social Consciousness
Historical materialism studies the intellectual sphere in its entirety, and looks into all its functions. The concept of social consciousness encompasses all types of intellectual activity. Elements that make up the intellectual life of society pass through the social consciousness before they take shape. This serves as a criterion when attributing this or that social phenomenon to the sphere of intellectual life. It follows that all social phenomena derive from social being and are organically linked with the social consciousness.
Social consciousness is a functioning system of intellectual life, 133 __RUNNING_HEADER_RIGHT__ INTELLECTUAL LIFE OF SOCIETY comprising the interplay of the social and the individual consciousness, the ideological struggle between social groups and classes, and the exchange of views, ideas, and theories, their origin, development, and influence on the masses.
Lastly, the social consciousness functions jointly with the social institutions through which it takes the form of actual ideological relations.
Social being determines the social consciousness; this, however, does not go to say that ideas derive directly from the development of the productive forces, from production.
The development of the productive forces is expressed in the social consciousness through changes taking place in the basis, i. e., the economic structure of society. It is through the basis that production ultimately shapes the character and development of the social consciousness and ideology.
Accordingly, the materialist philosophy of the 19th-century Russian revolutionary democrats reflected the material needs of the society of that time and the grave conflict between the peasant serfs and the serf-owning landed gentry; it was the theoretical groundwork for the idea of a peasant revolution. Consequently, the materialist philosophy in question was rooted in the sharpening of the class struggle between the peasants and the landlords, which, in turn, reflected the sharp contradiction between the new productive forces 134 associated with the development of capitalism and the old, feudal, relations of production that had begun to act as a brake on the progress of the new productive forces.
The ideology of Russian materialists and revolutionary democrats drew its strength in the ties with the oppressed people and was itself an expression of the people's interests and aspirations. That is why it was an advanced ideology.
Thus, when examining the sources and character of this or that form of social consciousness it is relevant to base the conclusions not only on the given level of production, but also on the character of the basis, the material needs of society, and the entire course of the class struggle generated by the economic system of that society. The social consciousness may fall behind social being, or vice versa. And all this can be explained only if we recognise the relatively independent development of the forms of the social consciousness.
As Engels stressed (in his letters on historical materialism of the 1890s), various elements of the superstructure enter into complex relationships with each other and with the basis. In this interaction, economic development is, in the final analysis, the driving force of development, but only in the final analysis. Engels therefore points to a certain relatively independent development of the forms of social consciousness.
135Where does this relative independence derive from? Primarily from the continuity in the development of each form of the social consciousness. The arts, science, and philosophy of each period of history repose on the material accumulated in the preceding period. If we overlook this continuity, we will not understand the development of ideology. It is hardly possible to study the culture of the Renaissance, of Italian humanitarianism, unless we take into account the heritage it received from antiquity.
Nor is it possible to comprehend the Utopian socialism of Saint-Simon and Fourier without taking account of French materialism. In his AntiDiikring, Engels describes Utopian socialism as essentially reflecting the contradictions of capitalism while in form continuing and developing the positions of the 18th-century French Enlighteners. Engels wrote: "Like every new theory, modern socialism had, at first, to connect itself with the intellectual stock-in-trade ready to its hand, however deeply its roots lay in [material] economic facts.''~^^1^^
As we have seen, there is a certain continuity in the development of the social consciousness, and while every ideology essentially reflects the socioeconomic contradictions and relations of the _-_-_
~^^1^^ Frederick Engels, Anti-Dutirinf., Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1975, p. 25.
136 given age, it is in form a continuation or a result of a critical analysis, or some other form of use, of the preceding ideological heritage.This continuity should not he conceived as a simple reproduction of past ideas. The ideological heritage can be made use of in different ways: it may be accepted or critically analysed or even rejected, or taken as a starting point. Whatever the case, there is never any gap in the development of ideology. No one can start from scratch. neither philosopher nor artist; in some way, he always leans on what was achieved by his predecessors. This is a relevant point, because there is no progress without such continuity.
Insofar as there is continuity in ideological development, economics and economic relations influence the development of ideology through the material and the specific features of the given form of the social consciousness. As Engels pointed out in a letter written in the 1890s, in this realm the economy creates nothing anew, but it determines the way in which the thought material is altered and further developed. And as Engels added, even this occurs for the most part indirectly. Thus, Engels conceived the continuity of the forms of the social consciousness as a reason that explains the relative independence in which these forms develop.
Another reason is the interaction of various forms of the social consciousness, of various ele- 137 ments of the superstructure occupying different positions in relation to the basis. The state and law are closer to the basis and therefore express the interests of the ruling class most fully. Other elements of the superstructure, such as philosophy and religion, arc farther from the basis, and, as Engels put it, tend to soar in the air. In the final analysis, they, too, reflect the economic system of society, although not directly, but through the state and politics. Thus, the elements of the superstructure interact among themselves through certain intermediate links. Every form of the social consciousness reflects social being differently-in the form of the political or the legal consciousness, etc. This is another reason behind the relative independence of the forms of social consciousness.
Lastly, a relevant point is the social division of labour. In his letter to C. Schmidt, Engels pointed out that the emergence of different forms of the social consciousness may be better understood from the point of view of the social division of labour. Every ideological field is also a branch of the division of labour in intellectual production. The emergence of the state, for example, is accompanied by the appearance of professional politicians, jurists, etc.; with art becoming a form of the social consciousness there appear artists for whom creative work becomes a profession.
Alongside the division of labour in material production, there is, as we have seen, division of 138 labour in intellectual production.
The forms of the social consciousness being relatively independent, they react in their turn upon social being. Vulgar economic materialism reduces all forms of the social consciousness directly to economics and, consequently, does not recognise the role of ideas. By denying ideology its relative independence and looking upon all ideological phenomena as a direct result of economic development, the economic materialists playdown the role of ideology in social development. Considering the economy as the only active force in social development, they usually conceived the various forms of the social consciousness as passive offspring of the economy.
Marxists-Leninists have always opposed this interpretation of the role of social ideas. Lenin combatted the Economists and Mensheviks who drifted to vulgar "economic materialism".
Unlike vulgar materialism, historical materialism recognises the vital role of ideas and the reverse influence of ideas, theories, and political institutions upon the development of social being. This influence can be of different kinds insofar as ideas can be reactionary or progressive. Reactionary ideas slow down the development of societywhile progressive ideas accelerate it, helping resolve the successive problems of social development.
139For all that, Marxists-Leninists do not see ideas as the prime mover of social upheavals. The reason for revolutionary overturns is rooted in the material conditions of society. When people come to realise the conflicts and contradictions in the economic development of society and to recognise the new requirements posed by this development, they obtain the intellectual weapon for resolving these conflicts in new social ideas.
Marxism-Leninism, as we know, looks upon ideas as a great force of social development. Marx wrote that under certain conditions ideas turn into a material force-when they take possession of the minds of the = masses.^^1^^ Advanced ideas are not enough to sweep away obsolete social institutions. Ideas as such cannot alter the life of society; they become a great and vital force only when they seize upon the minds of the masses, when they win over classes. Only then can they be translated into practice.
The Marxist-Leninist conception of the role of ideas in social development is of special significance in comprehending the development of socialist society. Here the role of advanced ideas vastly increases, for they accelerate the develop- _-_-_
~^^1^^ See Karl Marx, "On the Jewish Question'', in: Karl Marx, Frederick Kngels, Collected Works. Progress Publishers, Moscow, Vol. 3, p. 155.
140 ment of society and its progress towards communism.The extent to which ideas influence the development of society hinges chiefly on the following:
(1) the character of the given social system and the objective laws of its development;
(2) the character of the ideas, and the extent to which they reflect the material requirements of this society;
(3) the extent of the assimilation of these ideas by the masses.
On these three conditions depends the growth of the role of ideas in a socialist environment.
As to the last condition, there is a cardinal difference between Marxist ideas and the preceding philosophical ideas. By their very nature, Marxist-Leninist ideas can win over the masses, for they express their vital interests. Consequently, they spread so widely as no other advanced ideas did in the past.
The ideas of Marxism-Leninism are cardinally different from all preceding ideas in character and because they precisely reflect the material requirements of society. And the more accurately ideas reflect the urgent requirements of society, the bigger their role in society. From this point of view, the ideas of Marxism-Leninism play a bigger role in social development than any preceding progressive ideas ever have played.
Lastly, the increasing role of ideas in socialist 141 society is explained by the character of the social system and the objective laws of its development.
The socialist economy does not develop spontaneously. Its economic laws are consciously applied by society. Socialism by its very nature cannot be spontaneous, for its development depends on the conscious activities of the millions upon millions of workers. Socialism is truly built by the workers led by the Communist Party and the socialist state, which take account of the operation of the economic laws. This factor accounts for the enormously increased role of the advanced outlook and the conscious activity of the masses in the socialist environment.
In socialist society, too, social being is the determining factor, while the social consciousness is a reflection of social being. But the role of social ideas increases within the framework of this general dependence of the social consciousness on social being. It is very important to take this into account when building socialism and communism.
__ALPHA_LVL2__ StructureAs an intellectual side of the historical process, social consciousness is not a sum total of individual outlooks but an intellectual entity possessing an inner structure comprising various levels and 142 historically conditioned forms. The following factors comprising the structure of the social consciousness may be singled out:
1) different levels: social psychology and ideology ;
2) individual consciousness and social consciousness ;
3) chief forms of the social consciousness: politics, law, aesthetics, ethics, philosophy, and religion.
__ALPHA_LVL2__ Social Psychology and IdeologySocial 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.).
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.
Those, in sum, are the features characterising social psychology as the first and directlyexpressed stage of the social consciousness.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
146This deliberate influence conditions their organic tie, determines the influence of ideology on social psychology, the ideologisation of sociopsychological phenomena.
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.
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.
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.
__ALPHA_LVL2__ The Correlation BetweenThe social and individual consciousness exist as an entity, primarily due to the common sourcethe social being of people, which determines both the social and the individual consciousness. Their common basis is social and historical practice. Modifications in social being generate corresponding modifications in the social consciousness, while the individual consciousness and the intellectual development of an individual reflect them and are directly dependent on the relevant elements of the social consciousness.
Though they make up a unity, the social and individual consciousness nevertheless considerably differ in content and character, in how they take shape and in their principal functions.
The subject of the individual consciousness is the individual concerned, and its content is a reflection of the social being of the individual and 148 the concrete conditions in which he has grown up and lived.
The social consciousness, on the other hand, is a reflection of social being only. Being the aggregate consciousness of many generations, it relates to society as a whole, but not in the sense of a personalised society with its own reason. Society as a collective bearer of the social consciousness cannot be likened to an individual. Marx wrote: "It is wrong ... to consider society as a single subject, for this is a speculative = approach."^^1^^ Every society, particularly in our age, is the unity oi diversity (classes, social strata, nations and nationalities, professions, and other socially and economically diverse groups). Similarly, the social consciousness is a unity of diverse elements having essentially different measures of community, i. e. elements applying to, say, the entire world community or to just an individual community, or to a class, a social stratum, nation or nationality, professional group, etc.
While it exists in the consciousness of individuals and acts as a multilateral intellectual link between people, the social consciousness as a whole is an outward entity in relation to individuals, an intellectual environment with which the _-_-_
~^^1^^ Karl Marx, A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1977, p. 199.
149 individual consciousness has numerous and diverse links (relationships).These relationships are selective. It is not as though every new idea in the consciousness of individuals is transformed into the social consciousness, nor are all elements of the social consciousness accepted by individuals. There may, indeed, be differences between the social and individual consciousness if some views of the individual diverge from or even go counter to those of society, class, etc.
There are divergences of different kinds: progressive - when the individual's consciousness is a bearer of new elements, holds a correct picture and a deeper understanding of reality, and when in general it corresponds to progressive social relations and answers the needs of social progress; or regressive - bearing elements that contradict progressive social relations and the needs of social progress.
Communist construction causes appreciable changes in all the structural elements of the social consciousness, especially in science, and the ordinary consciousness is intellectualised; the psychology of the masses drops most of the survivals of past days; morality begins to reflect communist ideals and principles; and the individual changes intellectually. The communist consciousness rises to a higher order, and people become more committed to social and labour activity. It is 150 easier to plan the development of society for the long term, and to ensure its scientific management.
__ALPHA_LVL2__ FormsEach form of the social consciousness-political, legal, moral, aesthetic, philosophical, or religious - reflects a definite aspect of social being. The key aspect in a class society is the political consciousness.
__ALPHA_LVL2__ Political ConsciousnessThe political consciousness is the system of ideas and attitudes, sentiments, and objectives underlying the activities of classes and social groups and reflecting their economic interests. It can be considered on the plane of political ideology and psychology. Political psychology is: the feeling of class solidarity, friendship, animosity, hate, patriotism, nationalism and chauvinism, internationalism and cosmopolitanism, political pessimism or optimism, political interests, illusions, attitudes, etc.
Political ideology is the most concentrated expression of the interests and objectives of a social class, and its attitude towards other classes or social strata and the state. Political ideology is ideas and views of a class reflecting its attitude 151 towards class struggle, revolution, national liberation, and relations between nations; it embraces problems related to society's political system, the state, law, war and peace, and others.
The political consciousness is inseparable from political activity, for it is realised in this activity through political institutions, classes, parties, and mass organisations and movements.
The political ideology encompasses the basic standpoints and ideas expressing the attitude of a definite class towards a given social system, and its view at the course of history in general.
First, the political ideology of a class seeks to prove the necessity of the social system of which that class is the bearer. Thus, bourgeois ideology seeks to prove the necessity of the capitalist mode of production, maintaining that capitalist production relations are rational, for the bourgeoisie has a vital stake in them. Accordingly, the working class upholds the necessity of the communist mode of production.
Second, the political ideology embraces the ways and methods of consolidating and developing a given social system.
Third, the political ideology justifies the choice of political relations and forms of class struggle, and the political structure of society, seen as the most rational by the class in question.
The political ideology is distinctly class-mod- 152 vated. All classes have their own political ideology which promotes their interests.
The political ideology is inherently linked to political organisations and institutions through which classes promote their class interests. The ruling classes exercise their political activity through the state and legal organisations and institutions.
In capitalist society political parties are bearers of political ideology. They formulate the objective. facing the given class and the methods and forms of achieving them. These are put down in the policy-making documents of the party and in the speeches and writings of the party's leaders.
The political programmes of bourgeois parties are deliberately vague. They are couched in democratic rhetoric and hold forth on liberty and human rights. The promises that abound in them are rarely fulfilled.
The ideas of imperialist bourgeois politicians, notably in the USA, are clear examples of political adventurism. In the present conditions, when stockpiles of mass extermination weapons are growing on a vast scale, they pose a grave threat to civilisation.
The political ideology of socialism is formulated and developed as the ideology of the working class and its party, as the political self- awareness of this class and its guide to action. As the ideology of the proletariat-a consistently pro- 153 gressivc and revolutionary class whose interests correspond to the objective laws and main trends of social development-the socialist political ideology is consistent, progressive, revolutionary and scientific.
The political ideology of the working class has its theoretical substantiation in the MarxistLeninist theory of class struggle and dictatorship of the proletariat, in the Marxist-Leninist doctrine on the bourgeois and proletarian state and law, socialist and national liberation revolutions, and the inevitability of the defeat of capitalism and the triumph of socialism. Marxist-Leninist views also underlie the doctrine on the causes and nature of wars in the age of imperialism, on just and unjust wars, and on the coexistence and peaceful rivalry of the opposite social systems of capitalism and socialism. Marxism-Leninism is working consistently for peace among nations and against imperialists and warmongers. This political ideology stands for equality and friendship among all nations and races, for national sovereignty and national independence. Socialist political views form the basis for the policies and practices of the Soviet socialist state and the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, as well as for the policies of the Marxist-Leninist parties of other socialist countries.
154 __ALPHA_LVL2__ Legal ConsciousnessThe legal consciousness is closely connected with the political consciousness. It originates together with the state and law. Law is created and enforced by the state and is therefore binding for the entire community.
The legal principles and theories of the ruling class seek to justify the legitimacy of the corresponding social system and social relations. Law imparts a legal character-``lawfulness''-to the property relations that exist under the given social system. Second, legal principles and theories are to propose and justify legal institutions, standards, and forms best corresponding to the social system and form of ownership.
This summarises the specific features of legal principles and theories.
The socialist and the bourgeois legal consciousness are essentially different.
When capitalism was taking shape, the legal principles of bourgeois democracy played a progressive part (equality before the law, protection of the rights and freedoms of the individual, etc.). However, bourgeois legal principles proclaim equality de jure, and thereby cover up the de facto inequality. Although within the framework of bourgeois democracy the working class in a number of capitalist states has been able to wrest from the bourgeoisie a few concessions in social 155 legislation, it remains an exploited class. With the transition to imperialism, monopoly capital undermines bourgeois-democratic legality, promotes fascisation and the establishment of police states. The workers' struggle for democracy thus becomes part of the struggle for socialism.
The socialist legal consciousness reflects and consolidates socialist production relations that rule out exploitation of man by man. During the transition from capitalism to socialism, and under socialism, the community must have law, legal standards and regulations protecting socialist property and establishing the proper correlation between labour and consumption.
Socialist law as established by the Constitution of the USSR is a reliable guarantee of man's basic rights- to work; free medical care; all forms of education (including higher); social security; true participation in the management of industrial enterprises, collective farms, and educational establishments, in the administration of towns, republics and the country as a whole.
Socialist legality guarantees all citizens equality before the law and equality of the law for all, serving as a true expression of justice. This principle applies to all citizens without exception. Socialist law is distinct in that it indissolubly links the rights and the duties of citizens, which is but another indication of its just character, for social justice demands not only equality of all members 156 of society before the law, but also equality of their duties. Use of rights only, while avoiding duties, is an injustice and an abuse of the law.
The socialist legal consciousness, embodied in law, generates in citizens an awareness of their rights and duties and helps them abide by socialist legislation and correctly apply socialist law. In a socialist society, observance of the law is enforced by the state. An important part, however, is played by the socialist legal consciousness, which makes for voluntary and conscious observance of the law. Hence, education in the spirit of the socialist legal consciousness is of vast importance for maintaining socialist law and order and preventing crime.
__ALPHA_LVL2__ Moral ConsciousnessThe philosophical conception of moralit. denotes a set of views, standards of behaviour, and personal traits; the term ethic. denotes the theory of morality.
Historical materialism, based on the latest data in anthropology, approaches the emergence and historical development of morality from a truly scientific standpoint, starting from (a) the purely social nature of morality and (b) the determining role of labour. Marxism teaches that labour gave rise to social and labour relations, the ability to 157 produce instruments of labour, articulate speech, and intellectual culture: the arts, ethics, etc.
In primitive communities, relations were regulated by numerous unwritten rules of conduct which reflected the elementary demands of society with respect to the individual. Behaviour complying with these elementary rules was approved of and encouraged, while any violation of the rules was disapproved of. The moral consciousness originated as a direct reflection of primitive man's relations with other members of the community and the community as a whole and as his consciousness of these relations. In its embryonic form it represented collective concepts of desirable and undesirable, and of permissible and impermissible, conduct.
Historical materialism rejects the theological theories of morality being generated by "the will of God" and developed by the influence of religion.
Elementary ethical standards actually preceded religion. It was only later that they became part of religious beliefs, taboos and rites. In primitive communal society there existed moral standards and taboos that had no religious or mystic character.
Moral qualities or actions do not derive from man's biological or ``animal'' nature. This view identifies morality with instinct (female protecting its offspring, herd instinct).
158In actual fact, animal instinctive behaviour has nothing in common with morality or ethical relations among human beings, including the early stage of human society. Historical materialism sees human nature as a sum total of all social relations.
Marxism-Leninism was the first to produce a scientific understanding of morality as a form of the social consciousness that specifically reflects socio-economic being.
Morality is of a historical and class nature: it changes with changes in the life of society and in the relations of production.
At the time when the bourgeoisie came to grips with feudalism and the feudal ideology, bourgeois morality had a certain progressive content. At that time the bourgeoisie and its ideologists were fighting against the morals of the feudal nobility, religious hypocrisy, etc. As time went on, the bourgeoisie became a reactionary class and shunned its early principles and ideas. Nowadays, bourgeois morality is extremely reactionary, cynical and unscrupulous.
Communist morality, related to socialist ideology and fully developed under triumphant socialism, represents a new set of moral values. Communist morality counters the individualism and egotism of bourgeois morality with collectivism, solidarity, socialist humanism, friendly co- operation and internationalism. Lenin attached tre- 159 mendous importance to education in the spirit of communist morality precisely because it generates and develops new sentiments and traits, and sweeps out survivals of old bourgeois and pettybourgeois psychology - old customs and practices inherited from capitalist society.
As the successor of the working class's revolutionary morality, communist morality has the same content, for it teaches workers to suit their conduct to the interests of their class, to dedicate their lives to the cause of revolution. In the conditions of the struggle against Russian tsarism and the bourgeoisie, the working-class morality was primarily spearheaded against the old bourgeois system, against capitalists and landlords. During socialist and communist construction, the communist morality is enriched with new principles and gains a new content: it promotes the education of people in the spirit of communism. The communist morality is centred on "the struggle for the consolidation and completion of communism''.~^^1^^
The communist morality helps mould the new type of man - a collectivist whose aim is to serve the interests of society, the welfare of all.
Three stages of the communist morality may be _-_-_
~^^1^^ V. I. Lenin, "The Tasks of the Youth Leagues'', Collected Works, Vol. 31, p. 295.
160 singled out in the first, socialist phase of communism.(1) A transitional period starting with socialist revolution in the course of which old morality is rejected and a historically new morality is established. Renouncing bourgeois morality, the moral consciousness of the revolutionary masses elaborated upon the preceding progressive morality, first and foremost the proletarian morality.
The moral consciousness of the revolutionary masses did not simply renounce the old and accept the new: in the course of the drive for a new life, new principles and standards of behaviour were developed.
The Great October Socialist Revolution of 1917 made for the development of a new value in man's moral consciousness, socialist patriotism. It is radically different from the old type of patriotism in that it originates as defence of the idea of socialism and communism and a struggle against imperialism. Socialist patriotism embraces national and international values. Socialist collectivism, also a new moral value, is a continuation of proletarian collectivism, and an expression of friendly socialist mutual assistance and co- operation of people free from exploitation. Socialist collectivism is related to other values brought into being by socialist revolution such as fraternal solidarity among workers everywhere in the world and the friendship and brotherhood of those who 161 fight for communism and freedom, against wars of aggression, and against racial and national discord. Thus, history itself proved the idea advanced by the founders of scientific communism, that revolution is necessary not only because it is the only way of overthrowing the ruling class, but also because it is only in revolution that the rising class gets rid of the old and can build a new foundation for society.
(2) The second stage, associated with the completion of socialist construction, saw profound changes in the consciousness of the broad masses. The result was the single morality brought about by the socio-political and ideological unity of the Soviet people, a unity created by socialism. Whereas there were antagonistic classes in the period of transition from capitalism to socialism, each with its morality, standards, and rules of conduct, the triumph of socialism resulted in rallying all social groups on the basis of the same essential interests, and made possible the forging of a single, communist morality.
(3) The third stage is related to the phase of developed socialist society. This is the stage of the moulding of a new type of man: intellectually rich, morally pure, and physically perfect.
11---1143
162 __ALPHA_LVL2__ Aesthetic ConsciousnessThe artistic attitudes of the society concerned are aesthetic consciousness. It embraces aesthetic feelings, tastes, interests, notions, ideals, and the concept of beauty.
The aesthetic consciousness was generated in ancient times by the requirements of man's labour. Labour also underlay the ability to assess reality aesthetically (i. e. through aesthetic feelings), and the development of artistic imagination and artistic thinking.
Aesthetic. is a higher-theoretical-level of the aesthetic consciousness. It is a science of art, a theory of art dealing with the subject matter of art and its relation towards reality, artistic methods, and artistic criteria, art genres, and so on. Aesthetic theory arises in a class society, is a component of the ideology of the class in question, and as such expresses its essential aesthetic and other interests.
Art is a specific form of social consciousness reflecting reality in artistic terms.
Under the head of art come architecture, painting, sculpture, literature, music, dancing, the theatre, and the cinema; such special arts as photography, the circus, pop culture, and television; the applied arts (industrial design, the decoration of sports facilities); individual sports 163 events (rhythmic gymnastics, figure skating); interior decoration, landscaping, etc.
Common to all art forms is their depiction of reality through, say, music, painting, etc. The artistic quality of art is distinctive and common to all art forms.
Art has a cognitive function, influences the formation of a person's character and shapes his ideas and feelings. Art is progressive if it reflects progressive ideas.
In a class society, art is of a class character. On the other hand, in a society of antagonistic classes, too, there are authors, artists, etc. whose work is linked with the interests and strivings of the workers and with progressive ideology. That is why their works transcend the confines of their own age and retain their significance for subsequent generations. Such are the works of Theodore Dreiser, Bernard Shaw, Romain Holland, Thomas Mann, Ernest Hemingway, and many others. Their common feature is belief in man, and a vigorous protest against the oppression and humiliation of the people.
Soviet art and literature have assimilated the best creations of the world's classical literature and, of course, of the literature of the Soviet peoples. Soviet art and literature have absorbed the critical realism in the works of Pushkin, Gogol, Nekrasov, Tolstoy, Chekhov, Repin, Mussorgsky and others.
164At the same time, Soviet art is a new development in art in the conditions of a new, socialist, social system.
Art is a most important factor influencing people's life and a factor of aesthetic education. Soviet art is based on socialist realism, the main principle of which is to give a true portrayal of reality in its revolutionary development in line with the Marxist-Leninist world outlook.
Soviet art is never indifferent to questions of society's development. On the contrary, its function is to promote education of people in the spirit of internationalism, Soviet patriotism, and dedication to the interests of the state. Socialist art is centred on tightening its ties with the people, on accurate and artistic representation of the multifarious socialist reality, on vividly depicting all that is new and genuinely communist, and on exposing everything that impedes society's progress.
Folk art exercises a tremendous direct influence on the arts. This is true for all classes. Art is all the more progressive if it is linked with the creative endeavours of the popular masses, and if it is realistic. Art that is remote from the life of the people is barren, lacking in content, and close to total ideological and artistic failure.
As has been shown by the practice of socialist construction in the USSR and other socialist countries, socialism creates conditions for art to 165 be assimilated by the masses, for talent to develop and art to flourish in all ways and all national forms. The popular essence of art is all the more pronounced under socialism, and so is its basic principle-accurate portrayal of reality. Continuing the revolutionary and critical tendency of the realism of the past, socialist realism portrays the ugly face of capitalism and exposes capitalist survivals, vigorously opposes naturalism, formalism, deideologisation, and isolation of art from reality and from the people.
Socialist realism is dynamic and has a distinct purpose. It challenges the artist to keep pace with life, to look ahead, to be a revolutionary romanticist, in a certain sense, and to see romanticism in the everyday struggle for a better future.
Art enters a new, higher, level in the environment of developed socialism: art forms and styles become ever more numerous and varied, folk and amateur arts flourish, and the workers' aesthetic tastes become more refined.
__ALPHA_LVL2__ PhilosophyPhilosophy is a form of social consciousness that represents a general idea of the world and of man's place in it, i. e., it gives people the essential principles of their world outlook.
The two opposite camps or trends in philosophy are materialism and idealism, which give dif- 166 terent answers to the principal question of philosophy: the relation of consciousness to matter. The history of philosophy is the history of the struggle between materialism and idealism, reflecting the struggle of classes. In this sense MarxismLeninism provided the theoretical basis for the partisanship of philosophy.
Idealism has always been the ideology of the classes departing from the stage of history, that is, a reactionary ideology. The German idealism of the late 18th century and early 19th century, for example, was a reaction to the French Revolution of 1789 and to French materialism.
Materialism is the ideology of the up-and- coming, historically progressive, classes. Such was 17th-century English and 18th-century French materialism.
Russian 19th-century materialism holds a special place in the history of philosophy. Inasmuch as it was tied up with revolutionary democracy, it was superior to the West European pre-Marxian materialism.
Pre-Marxian materialism had serious drawbacks, being metaphysical, contemplative, and inconsistent (history was approached from a purely idealistic standpoint).
Dialectical and historical materialism was a new chapter in the history of philosophy. It stood for a revolution in philosophy, accomplished by Marx and Engels. The philosophy of dialectical 167 and historical materialism is cardinally different from all preceding philosophies in that it is connected with the emancipation movement of the masses. Unlike all preceding schools and trends in philosophy, as well as current bourgeois-idealistic doctrines, dialectical materialism is the world outlook of the broad popular masses. In Marxist philosophy, and in Marxism-Leninism in general, the proletarian masses have found a vehicle of their self-awareness and a means for revolutionary change in society.
Dialectical and historical materialism is a scientific foundation for building communism, a sharp theoretical weapon of the people's revolutionary struggle.
By making masterful use of the achievements of science, Lenin developed Marxism as a whole, raised Marxist philosophy to a higher level in the new historical conditions, and enriched the revolutionary theory with new ideas.
Marxist-Leninist philosophy plays an important part in the life of society and in communist construction: 1) as a scientific theory and method of cognition and of the revolutionary transformation of reality; 2) as a key to the correct understanding of scientific discoveries, and to the philosophical problems posed by various sciences; this is very important nowadays, for science is rapidly developing; 3) as a powerful weapon in the ideological struggle with capitalism, as a means for 168 exposing unscientific bourgeois philosophy and ideology; 4) as a foundation for combatting of religious views and furthering the scientific vision of the world.
__ALPHA_LVL2__ Religious ConsciousnessThe religious consciousness is a specific form of social consciousness that produces an unscientific reflection of reality. It is faith in the supernatural -in God, in spirits, in life after death, and the like.
Originally, religion sprang from the domination of nature's elemental forces over primitive man; religious ideas were a fantastic reflection in men's minds of the external forces that dominated over them.
Religion's diverse social role can be traced throughout the history of class society. The present day also provides numerous examples of the different ways in which religious dogma is being used by contending socio-political forces. Heterogeneous social and political make-up of those united by identical religious beliefs accounts for the wide spectrum of diverse views.
Religious establishments and organisations are increasingly occupied with current social problems, both so-called global problems (relating to war and peace, ecology, food, energy, etc.) and those pertaining to socio-political development, 169 culture, morality and the conscience and responsibility of citizens.
Marxist-Leninist parties pay due attention to the role of religion in contemporary social development and to its influence on the masses. Marxists show deep regard for those who work for peace, whatever their religious belief. Differences in attitude to religion must not be an obstacle to international co-operation among fighters for democracy, freedom, and independence, among all peace-loving forces in the world. On the other hand, Marxists combat the alliance of reactionary clericals and the forces of imperialism and aggression.
When the basis changes, the superstructure does not change accordingly at once. It changes some time afte. the basis. And this lag accounts for the survival of old ideas and notions, including religious notions in the life of society. More, old habits and customs are extremely tenacious and long-lived, and survive in the new environment as aftermaths of past times.
Marxism-Leninism provides the only correct scientific criticism of religion as a social phenomenon maintained and encouraged by the exploiter classes.
In the setting of developed socialism, Soviet people move farther and farther away from religion, espousing the materialist views and overcoming religious illusions that hold down people's 170 civic activity. Humanist objectives related to the development of the personality are achieved by atheistic education and the propaganda of the materialist vision of the world.
[171] __NUMERIC_LVL1__ Chapter Six __ALPHA_LVL1__ CULTUREThe conventional concept of culture is based on the historical approach which enables us to identify the peculiarity of the life of society as compared to nature. In the broad sense of the word culture means all that has been created by man as distinguished from all that has been given him by nature. Originally, the word ``culture'' ( deriving from the Latin - cultura - tilling, cultivation) was applied to man's cultivation of the environment, to denote achievements reached in conquering elemental forces. This concept was most widely applied by historians, ethnographers, and archaeologists in the 19th century, 172 during the rise of bourgeois culture.
Subsequently, bourgeois theoreticians, influenced by idealistic conceptions, confused the issue badly when trying to reduce its content to ideas only.
Historical materialism disagrees with this treatment of culture, which places it within purely intellectual brackets while disregarding its foundations in reality. It expands the concept of culture to denote not only intellectual production but the production of life, first and foremost, material life, which constitutes the fundamental and determining milieu for human activity. MarxismLeninism sees culture as the sphere of social labour activity (of the workers and progressive classes and strata in general) embracing both its material and intellectual forms rather than the individual's intellectual self-education.
The correct approach to culture rests on the theory of the socio-economic formations and the analysis of the development of the productive forces and the relations of production and the superstructure in a given society. These concepts, nevertheless, cannot substitute for the notion of culture, for the latter embraces achievements in all fields of man's activity, the aggregate of the results of his intellectual and manual labour, and identifies the peculiarities of such achievements pertaining to definite historical periods, societies, nationalities and nations. Man's creative endeav- 173 our in all realms and his attitude to labour are the source of culture and a most important indication of society's progress. Historical materialism provides a meaningful definition of culture as labour and creative effort, considering it as a definite qualitative level of society at a definite stage of development. Culture has a more specific manifestation in the level reached by the productive forces and production relations, by material and intellectual production, by science, literature, art, etc.
It follows that culture is the sum total of the material and intellectual achievements of society constituting its cultural traditions and underlying the further progress of humanity. In a class society, culture assumes a class character both in ideological content and practical orientation.
__ALPHA_LVL2__ MaterialHistorical materialism distinguishes between the material and intellectual sides of culture which are dialectically interrelated and interdependent. Material culture embraces qualitative achievements identifying the extent to which man has mastered nature, the level of the instruments of labour, the technical level of production, people's technical skills, the scientific organisation of 174 labour, ministering to man's material and everyday needs, etc. Instruments of labour are the core of material culture which are nowadays increasingly becoming the materialised achievements of science. The level of culture is also expressed in the skills and knowhow applied in material production. In this sense we may speak of the "labour culture" of any definite historical epoch. The level of culture is seen in other material elements of the life of society, namely, in the objects of nature worked by man (e. g. cultivated soil), in objects man uses in his everyday life (clothing, furniture, utensils-for culture implies that man uses them), scientific, academic, and medical equipment, and so on.
Intellectual culture embraces qualitative achievements expressing the scope and level of natural and social knowledge, the breadth of vision, and the extent to which progressive ideas and positive knowledge have been assimilated by society; that is to say, intellectual culture is the sum total of qualitative achievements reached in science, education, ethics, literature, and art. It also embraces political ideas, political education, and legal relations. Intellectual culture is also embodied in language, speech, thought (logic) and standards of behaviour.
Historical materialism believes in the organic unity of material and intellectual cultures, the latter being secondary and relatively indepen- 175 dent, but, on the whole, developing in organic unity with material culture. In his work "On Cooperation'', Lenin wrote that "to be cultured we must achieve a certain development of the material means of production, must have a certain material base.''~^^1^^ While reposing on this material base, intellectual culture, which is an integral process, at the same time exerts a certain influence upon it.
As any social phenomenon that is of "validity to all = epochs'',^^2^^ as Marx said, culture is a product of definite historical conditions. Thanks to these it has sense and content. This explains why every socio-economic formation is characterised by a culture peculiar to it. When a socio-economic formation is replaced by another, more progressive one, more progressive culture takes the place of the old culture. Marx wrote: "In order to examine the connection between spiritual production and material production, it is above all necessary to grasp the latter itself not as a general category but in definite historical form. Thus for example different kinds of spiritual production correspond to the capitalist mode of production _-_-_
~^^1^^ V. I. Lenin, "On Co-operation'', Collected Works, Vol. 33, 1973, p. 475.
^^2^^ Karl Marx, A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, p 210.
176 and to the mode of production of the Middle Ages.''~^^1^^Historical materialism approaches the wealth of culture that has been created throughout the various stages of class society's historical development from a specific historical position. Nevertheless it admits that there are cultural values that are acceptable to people regardless of class and retain their significance for subsequent generations. Similarity of cultural traditions, values, and practices are observed in various periods and in many nations. There are elements of culture that are not of a class character, Lenin said. He stressed that all the valuable elements of what has been created in capitalist society, notably, the technological and cultural gains of large-scale capitalism, should be properly used for = building socialism.^^2^^
In antagonistic societies, the growth of the universal element of culture proceeds within the narrow confines of class-limited intellectual production. Hence, there is no such thing as the culture of all the people in an antagonistic society, in spite of general elements. Even these elements, being a reflection of the interests of the ruling class, are often distorted. The correlation between _-_-_
~^^1^^ Karl Marx, Theories of Surplus-Value, Part I, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1969, p. 285.
^^2^^ See V. I. Lenin, "'Left-Wing' Childishness and the Petty Bourgeois Mentality'', Collected Works, Vol. 27, p. 349.
177 the class elements of culture and the general, nonclass, elements changes with the course of historydue to the changing type of prevailing production relations.Nowadays, cultural ties and the range of cultural intercourse among nations are so great as to involve many hundreds of millions of people. In many respects, that is due to the mass media: the press, radio, and television.
The socio-philosophical content of culture is being enriched by the ever new forms of man's activity, which has produced such concepts as "ecological culture'', "space exploration culture'', etc. The principal features of culture are determined by the economic, socio-political, and intellectual requirements of our day, as well as the interests of definite classes.
__ALPHA_LVL2__ Bourgeois Culture:Turning to the history of bourgeois culture and its chief milestones, we might say that it took shape at the time of the rise of a new class, the bourgeoisie, and that it inherited the achievements of classical antiquity. It developed most rapidly at the time of the first bourgeois revolutions proclaiming "freedom, equality and fraternity'', and was consonant with the interests of the popular masses and the needs of social progress and the develop- 178 ment of bourgeois society that had come to replace feudal society. The transition of capitalism to its imperialist stage gave rise to a crisis of bourgeois culture.
A very tangible problem is the low level of public education. In capitalist society, the opportunities the children of an average family have to receive a good education or enter university are very scarce. For example, the education level in Britain is dropping visibly: 40 per cent of schoolchildren leave school at the age of 16 and receive no further education or vocational training. Three thousand university lecturers lost their jobs in 1981, and many more will be let go in due course. The inadequate opportunities of getting a proper education is only one of the things that bar the workers from culture. It is highly doubtful, too, that the several million jobless, especially the young people, who are cut off from culture, should be able to enjoy the fruits of the nation's intellectual life, much less take part in it.
In capitalist society, creative effort in the cultural field is also limited above all from the point of view of the numbers of those who engage in it; many of them belong to the minority that have had access to culture from a very early age. Films, plays, novels, and other works of art, are, in fact, commodities that must have a market before they can be produced and sold. A vivid example is provided by the cinema, for here production costs 179 have risen tremendously. But the market for these commodities is limited for the publisher, art dealer, film producer, cinema hall owner, etc.. will purchase and distribute only that, be it even in bad taste, which will bring in returns.
The decay of bourgeois culture is manifested in the rejection of high cultural values, in unscientific and reactionary social nature of political and economic conceptions, philosophy and sociology, ethics and aesthetics, as well as in the crisis of bourgeois humanism unable, in the new conditions, to establish ways and means for the individual's free, all-round and harmonious development. It is increasingly evident that the decay of culture and moral values is inherent in imperialism.
The population at large is kept away from culture; instead, it is served the products of "mass culture" which is a low-grade substitute for genuine artistic values that are supposed to be too complex for the uninitiated masses to appreciate. The aim of this is to hoodwink the masses. The broadest coverage in the so-called popular press in the USA and Western Kurope is given to violence and scandal, to pessimism, cynicism, cruelty, and pornography, to say nothing of downright political deceit. Similarly, television shows concentrate on murder, cruelty, police violence, low-grade mystery plots, and sex. The same may be said of the cinema, books, art, 180 music, and the theatre. Most of the products of "mass culture-" are of the lowest level. There are striking differences of opinion among bourgeois critics concerning mass culture; it is either hailed as a miracle ot modern civilisation offering vast possibilities for disseminating knowledge and aesthetic values, or dismissed as an elemental lorce ol civilisation that substitutes surrogates lor genuine art.
Unreasoning "freedom of sell-expression'', lack of political orientation and unbridled spontaneity are interpreted in bourgeois society as the ultimate in artistic freedom. Bourgeois conceptions dismiss the link between culture and a definite system of social relations, a definite mode of production; they approach cultural issues from idealistic or ``technocratic'' positions, stripping intellectual culture of class content and of any socially conditioned character.
A clear indication of the profound intellectual crisis is the ``counter-culture'' movement in the developed capitalist countries, especially prominent since the sixties. It undoubtedly contains certain elements ol criticism of the contemporary bourgeois society; it dismisses its culture, the capitalist etho. (the complex of fundamental values) and the West's repressive civilisation. However, the social criticism of capitalism contained in the ``counter-culture'' movement is unable to replace bourgeois culture with a genuinely 181 progressive system of cultural values. Although many youth organisations in the USA and other developed capitalist countries are displaying a generally negative attitude towards bourgeois culture (Which is another indication of the deepening intellectual crisis of bourgeois society), their wish to rid themselves of the dismal realities prompts young people to seek escape in drugs, religion, and mysticism. Pornography and eroticism is a kind of intellectual opium that bourgeois society has been feeding its young with.
Given the powerful labour movement of the present day and the realistic prospect of radical social change in the capitalist countries, youth terrorism, leftist mysticism, drug-addiction, and eroticism are profoundly reactionary processes, however benevolent the subjective motives used by bourgeois ideologists to justify them. The progressive forces must therefore intensify their work among young people in order to counter the reactionary forces that are seeking to drive the youth into a dead-end with socialist culture and the ideals of scientific communism.
__ALPHA_LVL2__ Socialist CultureWith bourgeois culture degrading and gripped bydeep crisis, there is only one way for the further progress of culture the socialist way. Cultural development in the USSR and other socialist countries has shown that socialism criticallv assi- 182 milates and revives all the best elements of the preceding cultures.
More, socialism systematically and purposefully creates a totally new culture. This is chiefly made possible by the cultural revolution, which is a common feature in the development of all nations building socialism and communism. Lenin saw cultural revolution as a qualitative change in the intellectual life of society which is brought about by socialist change in the economic and political system and which, at the same time, exerts a strong reverse influence on this change, aiming ultimately to make the people the real subject and creator of culture.
The existing socialism has enriched history with the experience of intellectual emancipation of the workers. The Soviet Union rid itself of the scourge of illiteracy in the space of one generation. The workers are creators and consumers of culture. The new, socialist, intelligentsia, which comes from the working class and peasantry, has outstanding achievements to its credit in science, technology, and the arts.
In 1982, 80 per cent of workers in industry and 65.5 per cent of collective farmers had a secondary or a higher education. Today, secondary education is compulsory in the Soviet Union. Instruction in both higher and secondary specialised schools is free of charge; students receive grants.
183Soviet society today is 100 per cent literate. Over three quarters of those working in the national economy have a higher or secondary education. A total of over five million people are engaged in one form of education or another. An extensive network of cultural and educational institutions has been developed, the output of books, newspapers, and magazines is growing continuously.
Socialism offers vast possibilities for advancing science and has placed it at the service of the entire people. The number of people engaged in all fields of research has reached 1,300,000. The Soviet Union is in the forefront in the study of social development, in the natural sciences, and engineering. The Soviet Constitution, which is the epitome of all that has been reached during the sixty years of Soviet government, ensures equal rights to all citizens, irrespective of their origin, nationality, place of residence, etc., including the right to education, to equal access to all achievements of the material and intellectual culture, and guarantees freedom of and necessary conditions for partaking in all forms of culture. The state works to preserve and multiply intellectual values and promotes their extensive use for raising the people's cultural level.
Under socialism, the creation of a new culture implies the creation of new forms of public and home life, labour and social relations.
184It also implies people's conscious and active assimilation of the standards of civilised behaviour. Such behaviour should be marked by consideration and self-control, on the one hand, and, on the other, a deliberate observance of the standards and rules of community life that complies with the interests of the community and hence ol the individual himself, and not the interests of this individual alone. Hence the collectivist character of such behaviour.
Soviet culture is socialist in content, multifarious in national form, and internationalist in spirit and character. It has blended the diverse cultural values created by all Soviet peoples. Its inherent features are the popular character, communist partisanship, proletarian internationalism, socialist patriotism, historical optimism, revolutionary humanism, collectivism, communist ideas, and rejection of bourgeois ideology and the survivals of the past in people's minds and conduct.
The level and condition of the intellectual culture of mature socialism arc shown by the newfeatures manifested in all its spheres politics, ideology, morality, aesthetics, science, education, labour. The political culture of a mature socialist society is characterised by a high level of legal consciousness, Soviet patriotism, and internationalism. The ideological culture of mature socialism is distinguished by the primacy of the 185 materialist world outlook. Socialist morality is characterised by the Soviet people's sense of commitment and conscientious attitude to public duty. The essential feature of aesthetic culture is the harmonious all-round development of the individual, i. e. refined aesthetic taste and aesthetic attitude towards work and life. In a mature socialist society labour, home Hie, and personal relationships rise to a higher cultural level. Culture has become an important factor in the socioeconomic and intellectual progress of Soviet society.
In evaluating the role of the national and international in intellectual culture, historical materialism proceeds from the following principles: the free development of nations, of the national character, facilitates rather than impedes the development of the international; international culture is not devoid of national traits inasmuch as it is based on the all-round development ol national cultures; the convergence of nations and nationalities seen under socialism underlines the differentiation of mankind in terms of the richness and diversity of intellectual life. The dialectic of the national and the international means that the progressive national traits are essentially international, and that the latter inevitably assumes national forms: in this correlation, the international plays the leading role.
In the socialist environment, culture develops 186 systematically under the guidance of the Communist Party and Soviet government. This has nothing in common with "cultural dictatorship" ascribed to Communists by bourgeois ideologists. Historical materialism is equally opposed to authoritarianism, administrative methods and arbitrariness in the management of cultural development and to spontaneity and unrestrained permissiveness. All possible opportunities are created for citizens to develop and creatively apply their natural gifts and faculties.
The state policy of developing culture in the USSR consists in the following: (1) maintaining a balance between the socio-economic and the cultural development of society; (2) asserting the communist ideology and high quality in socialist art, and strengthening its ties with the life of the people and communist construction; (3) raising the social and ideological payload of culture as a whole, and enhancing its influence in the sphere of communist education-promoting the friendship of Soviet peoples, the sense of citizens' commitment to society, moulding a progressive morality and ideological convictions; (4) heightening the impact of culture and art in the drive to carry out crucial socio-economic, scientific, and technological tasks, creating favourable social and political climate in work collectives, evening out the considerable differences between life in town and life in the countryside, and shaping the har- 187 moniously developed individual.
Underdeveloped socialism, the role ot culture becomes ever more significant in the intellectual development of Soviet people, in shaping adequate facilities for leisure, in promoting communist education, in developing science and technology, and in implementing important socioeconomic tasks.
Culture in the high sense of the word has become part of the Soviet way of life. It extends to all spheres, improving people's work and life, and establishing a sound ideological and moral atmosphere in every collective and every family. A significant role is played by cultural institutions: community centres, libraries, museums, amusement parks, and professional art and literature.
Socialist politics and culture are opposed by the politics and culture of reaction, chauvinism, and militarism. Reactionary politics has given rise to a threat to culture and civilisation on a global scale. This adds special significance to Lenin's thesis that culture must be politically committed. All of us who care for the future of culture and civilisation and seek their further advancement, cannot stand aloof from the world-wide struggle for the lofty ideals of a truly active way of life in the material and cultural senses. The ideal of culture is to defend the humane policy of peace, democracy, and socialism, to safeguard the achievements of civilisation.
188 __NUMERIC_LVL1__ Chapter Seven __ALPHA_LVL1__ THE MARXIST-LENINIST1 he Marxist-Leninist conception of man has inherited and continues to develop all the best elements in the theories of its humanist predecessors. In particular, Marxism has elaborated on the thesis of the 18th-century French materialists that man is the product of the social environment and education by adding that people change this environment in the process of their activity.
Marx and Engcls dismissed the bourgeois abstract and anthropological approaches to man. According to the anthropological theory, man, taken as a point of departure, is a purely biological entity. This 189 __RUNNING_HEADER_RIGHT__ MARXIST-LENINIST CONCEPTION OF MAN principle, alive in contemporary bourgeois sociology, discounts historical analysis based on the objective laws ot social development and concentrates on the individual, on the "generally human" traits of man. Ibis principle is, in Lngels s words, "incapable of telling us anything definite either about real nature or real man.''~^^1^^ Unlike the anthropological theory, Marxism- Leninism interprets man as a totality of socially conditioned and individual traits.
When defining the essence of man, Marx concentrated primarily on the inevitable, eternal, and determining factor of man's being -one that had turned the biological being into the human being. This factor is labour, "an eternal natureimposed necessity".^^2^^ Man's human essence is expressed in labour, in activity.
Objective reality transformed by man's labour, the products of man's labour, has become the reality of human life, man's world, his "second nature''. The products of man's labour are the ``second'', ``humanised'' nature with respect to nature proper.
Man is a social being, a personality, an individ- _-_-_
~^^1^^ 1'rcdciuk Kneels, "l.tului^ 1' euerbai ii and the laid ol ('lassical (icmian Philusi >|)h\~, in : Karl Marx and 1' red crick Kuijcls, Si'ln-li-t. IIV/,A in ihrcc volumes. Vol. !i. p. %0.
^^2^^ Karl Marx. Capita/. Vol. I. Progress Publishers. Moscow. 1!)71, p. .'')().
190 ual. As regards his personality and his role as the subject of history, man is in the final count the product of the specific historical social relations in which he lives and works. Man's intellectual essence is socially conditioned and incorporates features typical of the prevailing aggregate of social relations expressing definite legal, moral and aesthetical standards of the society or class. This law governing the shaping of personality shows the significance of social relations and the ways for the progress of the individual. At the same time the Marxist-Leninist approach takes into account the multitude of man's individual traits.Marxist-Leninist theory, while recognising the determining role of production relations, emphasises the necessity to study the role played by the entire range of social relations in personality formation, to take full account of the influence of the micro-environment, living conditions, the family and the people's individual traits.
Another inherent feature of the MarxistLeninist conception is its close link with practice, with the revolutionary activity of the workers. As a result of a profound analysis of history and the obtaining social developments, in particular the lessons of the proletariat's class struggle, Marxism-Leninism pinpointed the socially conditioned reasons for man's enslavement and outlined the ways for man's emancipation.
191The Marxist-Leninist theory of liberating the creative abilities of the worker has defined the main reason for man's enslavement (the capitalist system), the chief historical force that liquidates that rea^"" (the proletariat), and the means for this emancipation (socialist revolution). The Marxist-Leninist theory of class struggle, socialist revolution, and the dictatorship of the proletariat does not preach coercion, as bourgeois falsifiers would have us believe. It offers scientific proof of the means necessary for ending man's enslavement by man and for achieving truly humane relations among people.
Lenin attached primary importance to the moulding of the new type of man-a dedicated fighter and revolutionary. He emphasised that the making of a socially significant individual is linked with his development as an active revolutionary personality. Disproving the assertion that revolution is not able to change man's inner self and changes only the ``outer'' conditions of man's existence, thus exerting an adverse influence on the personality, Lenin stressed that it is in the revolutionary struggle that one becomes a personality, asserts freedom and dignity, and develops one's abilities to the full. Conversely, philistine adjustment to an exploiter social system suppresses or cripples the personality and breeds all types of socially undeveloped and intellectually repressed individuals who live in constant 192 fear of everything: the police, strikes, and participation in social movements.
Historical materialism sees man as the ultimate value. People's welfare and happiness must he the ultimate goal of any humane society.
__ALPHA_LVL2__ The Concept of PersonalityKach man is a personality, i. e., a bearer of socially significant traits. That is to say, each person is at one and the same time a product of the social environment and an original and unique expression ol this environment, ol the general in life and in his or her social group. Social traits of greater or less degree are inherent in every personality inasmuch as man is switched into the system ol social relationships. While it recognises the social essence ol the personality, historical materialism does not dismiss man's purely biological and psychological traits.
The structure of the personality comprises : (I j social orientation, world outlook, interests, needs, moral traits; (2) specific individual make-up temperament, endowments, elementary needs; (3) experience the extent and quality of available knowledge, skills, and habits; (4) individual peculiarities ol various psychological processes.
All components of that personality are to a greater or less degree dependent on the world outlook, the latter being the core of this structure. 193 To reveal the essence of the personality is to analyse the nature of its world outlook. An individual world outlook is the privilege of every person as a social and thinking being. There is no such thing as a person without a world outlook, that is to say, without notions or ideas of the world and of man's place in it, or of the meaning of human life.
The world outlook is the ultimately generalised and systcmatised view of the surrounding world - the natural phenomena, society, and oneself-as well as man's principal attitudes, convictions, socio-political, ethical and aesthetic ideals and principles of cognition and evaluation of material and intellectual phenomena stemming from this general picture of the world.
Kach personality assimilates the values of the life of society in its own way, to a different degree. The greater the degree to which the personality assimilates obtaining specific historical social relations, the more significant it is; the richer it is, the more fully does it express the essence of the given social relations.
__ALPHA_LVL2__ Historical Types of PersonalityHistorical materialism holds that there is no such thing as immutable human nature -man being the product of his time and, in a class society, a representative of a definite class. Social class distinctions condition the various historical types of 194 personality. Two types of personality that of the capitalist and that of the worker are typical of capitalist society. The capitalist is first and foremost the owner of the means of production. The worker owns no means of production. The worker's personality is shaped in the process of his intercourse with fellow-workers and their joint struggle against the capitalists.
Despite society's division into classes and the class roots of the personality, all people living in one historical age share certain features, like national character, culture, everyday habits and customs, etc., conditioned by life in the same society, common production relations, contacts, and reciprocal influences. Their intercourse and mutual influence, as well as common conditions of life, can result in certain changes in people's social status and attitudes. For example, when a ruined peasant (or an out of work intellectual) becomes an ordinary workman, his social status. and with time his attitudes too, undergo a corresponding change, becoming essentially the same as those of other workmen. Accordingly, when a peasant grows rich or a worker's son who has had a good education finds a lucrative job which in time makes him a stockholder or even a firm manager, he is bound to join the class of the bourgeoisie and to acquire a bourgeois psychology and ideology.
195 __ALPHA_LVL2__ The Socialist Type of PersonalityThe founders of scientific communism foresaw that the first phase of the new socio-economic formation would see the appearance of the socialist personality, conditioned, like the entire history of mankind, by labour and the obtaining system of social (material and intellectual) production.
The new, socialist, man appeared, as they had predicted, as a result of the victorious Great October Socialist Revolution of 1917 in Russia, the dedicated labour and struggle of the Soviet people, and the establishment of the socialist world system.
The behaviour and personal traits of the people of the new, socialist, type are essentially conditioned by the qualitatively new system of social relations and the new social environment. The content of the social changes that occurred in the USSR shows that Soviet society step by step eliminated the exploitation of man by man; all material and intellectual wealth serves the worker, labour having become not only a means of livelihood but also a means of serving society; relationships among people are marked by the development of social homogeneity, harmony, collectivism and fraternal co-operation.
Not only the content, but also the way in which the social environment influences the consciousness and behaviour of man has changed.
196Humanism, scope and intensiveness are the essential new features that socialism has introduced into the influence that society exercises on the personality.
Four groups of traits characteristic of the new, socialist, type of personality may be singled out.
The first group is related to the personality's attitude to socialist society as a whole.
The socialist type of personality is an ideologically motivated personality sharing the goals and principles of the communist ideology and placing above all else the interests of society. Hence the socialist personality's highly developed sense of responsibility for the country and its riches, the worker's sense of dignity, optimism, single-mindedness, confidence in the future, sense of political involvement and labour enthusiasm, etc. Naturally, these traits are witnessed in different people to different degrees.
The second group of traits is related-to the individual's attitude to labour. Under socialism, labour acquires additional content; it becomes a means for serving the common good, the people, socialism, as well as a means for sustaining life. The everyday work of a workman, peasant, or office employee becomes public affair rather than a personal business; and in this the person in question displays his or her abilities and socio-political activeness.
Consequently, an interest in the substance and the results of one's labour effort are registered on 197 a mass scale. People are not only out to earn money, but are also concerned with the general aspects of production, the satisfactory operation of the shop, enterprise, or office. Capitalism, on the other hand, counterposes the sphere of production to home and personal life, and thereby divides the traits of the person into two distinct groups- ``professional'' or ``technical'' and personal traits. Socialism has bridged this gap between the personal and the professional; here professional skills and traits become dignified and of personal significance. "He feels at home when he is not working,''~^^1^^ said Marx about the worker in capitalist society. Of the worker of a socialist enterprise we may justly say that he feels at home when he is working, as well. The worker at a socialist enterprise leads a full life when he is at work. Work for the benefit of socialist society is considered service for the good of the people and the essence of living. This is another essential trait of the socialist personality.
When the worker's attitude towards his work changed, his attitude towards culture and education changed too. Knowledge, science, men of science, highly educated persons arc held in the highest esteem. The workers feel a need for edu- _-_-_
^^1^^ Karl Marx, "Economic and Philosophic: Manuscripts of 1844'', in: Karl Marx, Frederick Engels, Collected Works, Vol. 3, p. 278.
198 cation and learning. An intensive intellectual liftis inherent in Soviet reality, as is the striving to achieve knowledge and attain cultural goals. In tact, a wide range of intellectual needs is inherent in the new, socialist personality.The third group of traits relates to the socialist personality's attitude towards other individuals. This personality orientation is best illustrated by the ties between the goals and the standards of people's behaviour. In capitalist society, the officially proclaimed goals and the standards by which members of society are guided are in constant and insuperable conflict, which is fanned by the social nature of capitalist appropriation, the antagonism between class or group interests and the necessity felt by the various classes or social groups to protect their interests. Hence the constant conflict between classes or nationalities, and, accordingly, between proclaimed goals and obtaining standards of conduct.
Socialist society as a whole has common goals and principles. That unity rests on the foundation of common interests, for the principles of socialist society-democracy, collectivism, and internationalism are standard practice for all citizens and public bodies. The community of the vital interests of classes and social groups, friendship and mutual assistance among Soviet peoples that have replaced the exploitation and antagonism that prevailed in tsarist Russia find expression in polit- 199 ical and ideological unity, fraternal co-operation, mutual assistance, collectivism and internationalism. Inherent in socialist society is respect for each individual as such, irrespective of his or her origin or nationality. Public-spiritedness, work, knowledge, and integrity are the criteria of the socialist personality.
Lenin wrote that the goal of communist society is to ensure "ful. well-being and free, all-roun. development for al. the members of = society".^^1^^ ~ The harmoniously developed individual is the ideal of communism. As Lenin pointed out in his work ``Left-wing'' Communism -an Infantile Disorder, "Communism is advancing and must advance towards that goal, and will reach it...to educate and school people, give them all-round development and an all-round training, so that they are able to do everything."~^^2^^
_-_-_~^^1^^ V. I. Lenin, "Notes on Plckhanov's Second Draft Programme''. Collected Wurks, Vol. 6, 1977, p. 52.
^^2^^ V. I Lenin, "'Left-Wing' Communism an Infantile Disorder" Collected Works, Vol. 31, p. 50.
200 Emacs-File-stamp: "/home/ysverdlov/leninist.biz/en/1987/WHM294/20061127/294.tx" __EMAIL__ webmaster@leninist.biz __OCR__ ABBYY 6 Professional (2006.03.0) __WHERE_PAGE_NUMBERS__ top __FOOTNOTE_MARKER_STYLE__ [0-9]+ __ENDNOTE_MARKER_STYLE__ [0-9]+ __NUMERIC_LVL1__ Chapter Eight __ALPHA_LVL1__ HISTORY OF MANKINDOuman history is a chain of generations, cultures, civilisations, and ages. The ground for the present was laid in the past, and the ground for the future is being laid in the present. Our time has witnessed the appearance of many sovereign states in place of former colonies in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. The present of the newly independent states-their political, economic, and cultural development is laying the foundation for a happy future.
History, as we know, has its own objectiv. logic, that is, a linkage of major events and ages unrelated to man's volition or consciousness: a 201 __RUNNING_HEADER_RIGHT__ HISTORY OF MANKIND AS MAN'S ACTIVITY historical orientation that exists independently of the human consciousness. But historical development is not determined by any supernatural forces or by any biological laws, and much less by some psychic, subconscious element. The objective logic of history follows from the fact that changes in social relations depend on the material and economic conditions, development of the productive forces; improvements in the sociopolitical and ideological forms of life are determined by the economic basis and the socio-class structure that expresses it. The objective logic of history is the necessary change of socio-economic formations, including changes in the economic structures, and, indeed, in the type of life of society and the historical forms of communities (from clan or tribe to nations and international communities). The logic of history also amounts to qualitative changes in political institutions consonant with the evolution of economic relations, as well as a reassessment of ideological values. Hence the Marxist definition of social development as a natural-historical process or an objective process similar in a way to the changes taking place in nature.
The notion of objective in social science means that there have never been generations or nations able to choose the way of life according exclusively to their taste or volition in disregard of the material conditions thev have largely inherited 202 from the preceding society. We might say that every generation moves forward by leapfrogging the one before. In order to take a firm hold on life, people inevitably use the obtaining level of labour and produetion or the foundation for it laid by preceding generations, as well as the existing social relationships and material, technical and intellectual wealth. This to a considerable extent determines the character, orientation, and forms of the economic and other performances of the current generation and shapes the relevant links among people. On the other hand, every individual engages in various types of activity or enters into relationships with other individuals consciously; for example, every individual exchanges material goods and intellectual values, takes part in local self-government, etc. But the chain of events and the general relations and development trends that take shape do not depend on the goals of individuals and, what is more, are never fully appreciated by people. These processes are the aggregate result of the activities of many people, of the infinite variety of wills and aspirations. Marxist science is far from any one-sided treatment of history, and does not identify the process of history with some objective mystical force. The task of science is to establish the role of the conscious will in history and find the root causes for the socio-historical activity of individuals, classes, and nations.
203 __ALPHA_LVL2__ Objective Laws of HistoryThe 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.''~^^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.''~^^2^^
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, _-_-_
~^^1^^ Frederick Kneels, "Ludwii; Feuerbach and the End of Classical (iennan = Philosophy'', in: Karl Marx and Frederick Kneels. Seli't/t'il \\ittk\ in three volumes. Vol. 3, p. 366.
^^2^^ V. I. I.enin, "What the `Friends of the = People'' Are and How They Fit;!]! the Sorial-Drimx rals''. C.ulli'cled Warks. Vol. 1, p. 166.
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.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.
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.
206 __ALPHA_LVL2__ Objective LawsMay one recognise that history is governed by objective laws and also recognise man's conscious (free; activity:' The human consciousness, alter all, cannot cover the entire chain of events. Is it possible to blend historical necessity and human freedom?
The reply of the adversaries of Marxism is a resolute "no''. Either you have objective laws, they say, or conscious activity, either historical necessity or freedom. The former rules out the latter, they say, and vice versa. Inasmuch as historical materialism recognises the objective laws of history, its critics aver that it ignores the part played by the conscious activity of classes, parties, and individuals. But this misses the mark.
Necessity should not be confused with inevitability. The objective laws of history, as we have already said, are laws governing human activity. They cannot operate outside the activity of the popular masses, of social classes. Yet people consciously and freely create history if they take guidance in their knowledge of historical laws.
Social laws shape the conditions and tangible opportunities for successful development. Society's task is to discover these conditions and 207 opportunities, and to realise them through practical activity. The society that copes with this task will achieve success in its bid for progress; the one that does not, will wonder about in the labyrinth of history, will stagnate or backpedal. Historical success is ensured by knowledge of the social laws and by appropriate action.
The development of capitalism leads inevitably to revolution. But revolution does not break out by itself. It took the popular masses in Russia, in other countries in Europe and Asia, in Cuba, Nicaragua, Angola, and Ethiopia a whole historical period of titanic effort to prepare and achieve revolution and the triumph of socialism.
We know from history that in 1917 a revolutionary situation had taken shape not only in Russia but also in Germany and Hungary and other lands. In all of them there had even been revolutionary eruptions. Yet until 1945 the Soviet Union, on the one hand, and Germany and Hungary, on the other, developed in totally different directions. While in Russia the revolution was victorious and socialism was being built, in Germany and in Hungary the revolutions ended in a blood bath and power was taken by the most reactionary, fascist forces. Not until Nazism was defeated did Hungary and East Germany return to the path of socialist revolution; today, they are building a socialist society. But what titanic effort did it cost! Freedom fighters routed the enemy 208 and did away with exploitation only thanks to the revolutionary organisation and leadership ol their Communist parties, and their indestructible fortitude.
We all know what selfless effort it took the Cuban people to crush the anti-popular dictatorship of exploiters and open the way to socialism.
Thus, objective laws do not function with predestination. Action of social forces is needed to carry them into effect. Hence the historical responsibility of the people and their vanguard for the destiny of progress in their country. Historyvindicates those who realise the objective necessity of revolutionary change and strive to secure it, even at the price of immense effort and sacrifice. History has vindicated many of those who selflessly fought for the freedom of the people and assailed what seemed to be indestructible bastions of the old order.
History does not vindicate those who rely on spontaneity and wait for freedom to fall into their laps, who make deals with reactionary forces and betray revolutionary ideals instead of taking resolute action when objective conditions are more or less ripe for it. Likewise, history does not vindicate those who disregard objective conditions and regularities, and kindle the fire of premature struggle that senselessly devoures hundreds or thousands of freedom fighters while the hour of freedom is put off for many years.
209Historical activity can be spontaneou. or conscious. Accordingly, laws operate spontaneously or are consciously applied by society.
Spontaneous activity is activity centred on the nearest aims and interests, and that discounts long-term and ultimate goals and results. Here the historical operation of social laws manifests itself as the result of a struggle between contending forces. Social forces, like forces of nature, are blind, violent, and destructive. One example of historical spontaneity is the operation of the law of competition in capitalist society.
Conscious activity is activity by united social forces planned and co-ordinated on the scale of society in the interests of all society or of a class. Conscious activity takes into account and achieves the ultimate goals and results. Systematic economic, political, and cultural activity in a socialist state is a specific expression of objective laws as manifested through conscious activity.
Although all people have reason, this does not mean that they make history consciously. By conscious historical activity we mean knowledge of the laws and perspectives of society's development by the people, by political parties, and conscious subordination of their activity to the realisation of these laws. When once we understand the objective forces, wrote Engels, and "when once we grasp their action, their direction, their effects, it depends only upon ourselves to subject
14---1143
210 them more and more to our own will, and by means of them to reach our own ends."^^1^^Conscious historical activity is historical freedom. It follows that freedom is not at cross purposes with historical regularities; on the contrary, freedom is achieved through understanding and realising them. Historically, social freedom is nothing but life and activity based on the knowledge of the laws of reality. Freedom to live, act, think, and make decisions reposes on the objective regularities that govern society and nature. Mankind has been able to create highly advanced technology and to organise production on a mass scale because it grasped the laws governing production. Similarly, men have learned to fight lethal diseases because they have cognised the essence of diseases. Progress of civilisation signifies progress of freedom.
Historical spontaneity is conditioned by private ownership of the means of production and by opposite class interests. Conscious historical activity, on the other hand, asserts itself on the basis of social ownership of the means of production and relations of social unity.
Socialist construction is on the whole a consciously conducted process-but this must not be understood too simplistically. Socialism also _-_-_
^^1^^ Frederick Engels, Anti-Duhrin., p.~331.
211 knows spontaneous processes (like the unpredictable results of individual economic decisions or the consequences of outside conditions). All the more so when the new society has not yet taken firm root and there still are remnants of the old class structure, while the material and technical base and culture are insufficiently developed. The higher the development of the new society, the narrower the sphere of spontaneity. Under socialism, the decisive condition for the ``leap'' into the realm of freedom is a profound study of the laws governing the new society, and scientific organisation of the management of social processes. Today, scientifically substantiated management of society is a basic demand set by the Communist and Workers' parties in socialist countries. __ALPHA_LVL2__ Objective ConditionsThe concepts objective conditions and subjective factor of history reflect the correlation between the objective logic of history and its laws, on the one hand, and man's conscious activity, on the other. Study of these concepts is important for understanding the processes of revolutionary transformation and socialist construction.
Objective conditions include conditions of historical activity that are independent, at a given 212 stage, of the will and consciousness of individuals, classes, or parties making history. The organisation, awareness, single-mindedness, and will involved in carrying out historical tasks constitute the subjective factor.
The environment, social and natural, the totality of inner and outer circumstances, make up the objective conditions. Primarily, the objective conditions for social development are material and economic conditions (the level of the productive forces and the production relations), as well as the social structure and the class and national relations. The correlation of class forces shaping inside the country, for example, is of immense significance for the advance of revolution. There are other objective conditions independent of the will of people in a given historical period : the state of political relations, the level of culture, etc.
The subjective factor is made up of scientific knowledge of social phenomena, of the laws of history and any other conscious forms whereby man exercises influence on the social conditions of life. Although in the past the workers had no knowledge of the laws of history, most of them took part in the revolutionary struggle consciously, for they had empirical knowledge (based on experience) of the necessity of overthrowing the ruling exploiter class.
When building socialism, the subjective factor first of all includes the leadership of the Com- 213 munist Party guided by Marxism-Leninism and relying on the people's socio-political awareness, good organisation, and the ability of the people's vanguard and the people itself to carry out the tasks set by the Party; society's ethics; scientific achievements, etc.
What is the correlation between the objective conditions and the subjective factor? Historical materialism is against underestimating either of them. The objective factor plays the determining part in social development. It governs:
(a) the necessity of development as well as the various ways, forms and potentials of development;
(b) the tasks, aims, and motives of activity. Mankind sets itself only those tasks which it is able to carry out in the obtaining conditions;
(c) the arsenal of means for carrying out these tasks.
It is mostly the objective conditions that shape the character and results of activity. As already mentioned, conscious activity on the scale of society as a whole is only possible under certain socio-economic conditions, i. e. in the absence of antagonistic classes.
While the objective conditions play the determining role, the subjective factor, in its turn, exerts a reverse influence on the objective conditions. Without it progress is impossible. Objective necessity is not realised by itself, but through the 214 struggle of classes, nations, and states for their own interests and goals. Ignoring the subjective factor is characteristic of vulgar (one-sided, unscientific) economic materialism.
Under certain conditions, the subjective factor may even play a determining role. For example, the subjective factor (revolutionary party, revolutionary consciousness, good organisation of the workers) is decisive when the objective conditions for the triumph of the revolution have already taken shape.
The Marxist-Leninist understanding of the correlation between the objective conditions and the subjective factor in history is a trustworthy beacon for revolutionaries combatting arbitrariness, spontaneity, and belief in predestination of events. Past experience shows that the workers and their vanguard can be victorious in the struggle for the new society if they understand the laws of social development and have learned to apply them in the specific conditions obtaining in their country, and if they are organised into a closebuilt army of fighters for socialism.
[215] __NUMERIC_LVL1__ Chapter Nine __ALPHA_LVL1__ THE DRIVING FORCESHaving defined the history of mankind as people's activity, historical materialism poses and solves yet another question, that of the driving forces behind socio- historical development.
As noted in the preceding chapters the development of economy, of socio-political structures, and intellectual phenomena occurs through the clash of inner contradictions, first and foremost in the mode of production, i. e. between the productive forces and production relations, and also between society and nature, the basis of society and its superstructure, the objective conditions and the subjective factor, etc.
216Though objective contradictions are the source of development, they do not resolve themselves spontaneously but by the efforts of the masses, of classes, nations, and parties headed by outstanding personalities. The social forces that tackle the problems and tasks posed by the objective course of history are the driving forces of historical development. The concept of driving forces covers the totality of reasons, stimuli, and motives that prompt the mass of the people, classes, and parties to engage in historical activity. They include social requirements, interests, goals, and ideals. Engels wrote that the real ultimate driving forces oi history, the driving causes, are "those motives which set in motion great masses, whole peoples, and again whole classes of the people in each people; and this, too, not momentarily, for the transient flaring up of a straw-fire which quickly dies down, but for a lasting action resulting in a great historical = transformation".^^1^^ The driving force of modern history Engels defined as "the fight of ... classes and ... the conflict of their interests".^^2^^
Consequently, the concept of the driving forces of history includes subjects of historical activity as _-_-_
~^^1^^ Frederick Engels, "Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy'', in: Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Selected Works in three volumes, Vol. 3, p 367
^^2^^ Ibid., p. 368.
217 well as factors motivating people's actions and social activity.Unlike bourgeois sociology, historical materialism identifies the driving forces of history from the standpoint of its fundamental principle that material economic life is primary and intellectual phenomena are secondary. Historical materialism dismisses the assertions of idealist thinkers who assume that the driving forces of history are intellectual phenomena like "the evolution of ideas'', "the power of the historical spirit'', "scientific progress'', and the like. Inasmuch as the basis of every society consists of the mode of production of material benefits, the popular masses and their activity as the main productive force of society constitute the chief driving force of history.
The material requirements and interests of the mass of the people, of classes and nations are the principal social causes behind the demands of the objective laws of history. Requirements and interests are shaped by the obtaining level of development of society and the existing system of social relations. Men's cardinal interests reflect the character of economic relations. Material interests are the form in which economic relations express themselves. An antagonism of interests is inevitable in a society based on private ownership of the means of production. With the abolition of exploiter classes and the establishment of com- 218 mon ownership of the means of production arises a unity of the interests of different social groups.
Whatever people do is done to satisfy their requirements and interests. This social activity is prompted by social requirements and social interests. A social requirement manifests a social being's need in a definite material or other condition pertaining to man's life: good labour conditions, collective appropriation of the products of labour, participation in the management of enterprises, etc. The significance of intellectual requirements grows in present-day society. As the saying goes, man lives not by bread alone.
The diverse social and individual requirements are not isolated from one another. They are intrinsically connected and form a single natural system. Man's requirements are the more diverse the higher the level of society's development. The rise of human requirements is a universal historical law of development. This law operates to the fullest extent when the exploitation of man by man is ended. Socialist society broadens the scope of the socially relevant requirements, while the sphere of irrelevant requirements, those that hold down the creative element of the personality and that impede its physical and intellectual development is restricted.
The constantly growing material and intellectual requirements of the people, above all in creative activity, the necessity to satisfy these require- 219 ments, arc a powerful stimulus for economic and cultural development.
Requirements are indissolubly linked with interests, which express the orientation of an activity towards the realisation of certain needs. Interest is not a pure act of the consciousness, but also has an objective side. A common interest, for example, exists not only in the consciousness of the members of society, but "first of all in reality, as the mutual interdependence of the individuals among whom the labour is = divided".^^1^^ Common interest blends the infinite multitude of diverse desires and actions of thousands and millions into a single activity, and is the foundation for common aims, tasks, and motives. In a class society, the common interests of the exploiters, the rich, oppose the common interests of the exploited, the poor.
As a rule, the ruling classes try to pass off their own interests for the interests of the entire nation. From this bourgeois ideologists draw the conclusion that the contemporary bourgeois state is a ``welfare'' state.
As the workers fight the exploiters, they become increasingly aware of their own interests and the incompatibility of their interests with the
_-_-_~^^1^^ Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, "The German Ideology'', in : Karl Marx, Frederick Fngels, Collected Works, Vol. j, 1976, p. 46.
220 interests of "the rich and famous" of this world. This process of class self-education proceeds in the complex conditions of fighting the bourgeois mentality and attitudes which capitalist propaganda tries to impress upon the minds of the workers.Only under socialism is a close interlacement of social, group, and individual interests possible, and the antagonism of interests gradually disappears.
A real unity of society takes shape and is consolidated. Nevertheless, the state of the new society should not be idealised. Past experience shows that it takes a people that has accomplished a socialist revolution quite a long time to learn to be the sole owner of the entire social wealth-to learn this economically, and also politically and psychologically, developing a collectivist consciousness and behaviour. That is why, even after the socialist production relations are established, some preserve, even develop, individualist ways, the desire to make good at the others' expense, at the expense of society. The essential feature, however, is clear: under socialism the social interests are held in common by the entire nation; they are a powerful driving force of economic, social, and intellectual development.
``Everything which sets men in motion must go through their minds, but what form it will take in the mind will depend very much upon the cir- 221 cumstances.''~^^1^^ These words of Engels's help understand the role of the intellectual driving forces of historical development. Social relations, requir<-nents, and interests are realised in the form of ideological values, i. e. views, ideals, principles and goals. As the masses assimilate the revolutionary ideology, it becomes a material force and a powerful stimulator of revolutionary action. One example is the role of the MarxistLeninist ideology, which was the intellectual foundation of building a socialist society. Ideological unity of the people shaped by the revolutionary ideology is a driving force of unheard of power.
__ALPHA_LVL2__ The Decisive RoleThe recognition that the popular masses play the decisive role in history follows directly from the materialist view of history. One of the most important conclusions of Marxism is that the popular masses are the main productive force in society. All pre-Marxian ideologists, like the contemporary theoreticians and politicians in the _-_-_
^^1^^ Frederick Engels, "I.udwie; Fcuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy'', in: Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Selected Works in three volumes, Vol. 3, pp. 367--68.
222 capitalist countries, reject the role of the popular masses as the main driving force of social development. Bourgeois ideologists have invented lots of scornful names for the masses, like "faceless mass'', ``mob'', "unruly despot of history'', " destroyer of civilisation'', etc. The idea of a so-called elite (i. e. select group) -political, technocratic, scientific, etc., has been put into circulation, and the old reactionary theory that history is made by supermen is being peddled in a new wrapping.These and similar unscientific ideas pertaining to the role of the popular masses cannot, however, disprove historical realities. The contemporary world revolutionary process the basic content of our age is run neither by an ``elite'' nor by ``supermen'', but by the broad popular masses, for it is the latter's interests that reflect the objective requirements of the laws of history.
The popular masses is a definite concept in historical materialism, neither merging with nor opposed to the concept of class. The popular masses are a totality of classes and social, including national, groups and strata interested by virtue of their objective status in society in carrying out historical development.
Lenin's definition of the masses helps understand their class structure: "It is common knowledge that the masses are divided into classes, that the masses can be contrasted with classes only by contrasting the vast majority in general, regard- 223 less of division according to status in the social system of production, with categories holding a definite status in the social system of production...''~^^1^^
The popular masses are first and foremost the workers for they are associated with the basic sphere of the life of society, that of material production. At certain stages of historical development, the workers are joined by the non-working sections of the population. To wit, broad strata of the national bourgeoisie and intellectuals take part in the national liberation movement together with the workers. They all form the popular masses, a single front, which fights for national liberation and progress.
The decisive role of the popular masses in historical development may be seen in all the basic spheres of the life of society. As the main productive force, the masses are creators of all material values and of technological progress. Every day and every hour, millions of workers change and improve labour operations and substitute new for old instruments of labour. By this they lay the ground for major technological innovations introduced by outstanding inventors and scientists. The source of discoveries and inventions is to be found in what is being done every day by ordi- _-_-_
~^^1^^ V. I. Lenin, "'Left-Wing' Communism - An Infantile Disorder'', Collected Works, Vol. 31, p. 41.
224 nary workers and in the experience they amass over years and centuries.Creating material values, the workers provide for the creation of material preconditions for the development of intellectual culture, for in the absence of means of subsistence society could not advance science, art, philosophy, etc., or in other words, could not engage in intellectual production.
The activity of the popular masses in the sphere of intellectual culture is not confined to the creation of the material conditions for the life of society. The popular masses take direct part in intellectual life. Efforts by innumerable generations created language as the instrument of thought. The intellectual experience of mankind is also embodied in the laws of logic. The popular masses have created the treasures of folk art, which has always been and will remain an inexhaustible source of ideas for outstanding figures in the arts.
Neither the existence of social relations nor changes in them are possible without the activity of the popular masses. The persistent struggle of the oppressed led to the abolition of slavery and serfdom; national liberation struggle brought about the collapse of colonial systems; and capitalism, for all its power, is being undermined by the communist movement. The new, socialist, system is the result of the conscious 225 effort of the masses directed by Communist parties.
As for the limits and possibilities, the scope and depth of the mass effort, it is different under different historical conditions. The extent to which the masses exercise their role of the driving force depends on a number of conditions: (a) the character of the economic and socio-political system and the social status of the workers conditioned by the former; (b) the character of changes taking place in society; (c) the level of social awareness and organisation of the masses.
Undoubtedly, contemporary capitalist society cannot completely halt the activity of the popular masses; that is why capitalist ruling circles seek to give it a direction favourable to their own goals. Monopolies encourage workers' labour activity in order to gain more profit; bourgeois politicians seek to divert workers from political struggle and restrict their activity to strictly personal gain. These efforts of the ruling classes have caused a considerable part of the working class, including workers in industrialised capitalist countries, to remain politically passive.
Existing socialism abolished exploitation and thereby rooted out all class reasons for restricting the activity of the workers. Socialism's achievement in developing the historical activity of the masses is well known throughout the world. The permanent growth in the rate and scope of the
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226 workers' activity is directly related to consolidation and improvement of the economic as well as socio-political and ideological base of the new social system.Marx and Engels formulated the law of the growing role in history of the popular masses as follows: "Together with the thoroughness of the historical action, the size of the mass whose action it is will therefore increase.''~^^1^^ And Lenin wrote: "The greater the scope and extent of historical events, the greater is the number of people participating in them, and, contrariwise, the more profound the change we wish to bring about, the more must we rouse an interest and an intelligent attitude towards it, and convince more millions and tens of millions of people that it is necessary.''~^^2^^
Our age offers convincing proof of the general sociological law of the growing activeness of the popular masses in social development. The world revolutionary process and socialist and communist construction are indeed the result of the revolutionary activity of the workers guided by _-_-_
~^^1^^ Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, "The Holy Family'', in: Karl Marx, Frederick Engels, Collected Works, Vol. 4, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1975, p. 82.
^^2^^ V. I. Lenin, "The Eighth All-Russia Congress of Soviets, December 22--29, 1920. Report on the Work of the Council of People's Commissars, December 22'', Collected Works, Vol. 31, p. 498.
227 Communist and Workers' parties. Consequently, the rate and scope of revolutionary change in society are largely determined by the activeness of the masses and their degree of commitment to the cause of progress. __ALPHA_LVL2__ The RoleWhile recognising the popular masses as the main driving force of social development, historical materialism does not deny the role of outstanding individuals. Their activity is not counterposed to the activity of the masses or classes, but is considered as being directly linked to the latter, i. e. as part of the popular masses' overall struggle for progress.
The emergence of a specific outstanding figure is no more than an incident in the history of any country. In his or her place there could be another outstanding figure. What is not fortuitous is the fact that history produces outstanding individuals. People who make history are of different ability. They act in different conditions and represent different social groups. Thus, they contribute differently to the common historical cause. Outstanding figures are those who have made the weightiest contribution to the development of a people or country or to the overall progress of mankind.
228The demand in outstanding figures is generated by the very logic of mass or class activity. The latter is effective if it is organised and directed in accordance with a movement's common goals and interests. History has shown that a class cannot win political supremacy unless it produces its own political leaders, its own advanced figures capable of organising and leading a social movement.
Class leaders head social movements and perform the following general functions: they work out the programme of the movement and the effective means and methods for implementing it, and organise the masses to fight for the programme goals. In our day, tasks of this kind are carried out by political parties led by the most experienced and the most able individuals from the point of view of the given class.
The history of the fight for socialism has borne out Lenin's criticism of the pseudo-revolutionary idea that there should be "no authorities''. The proletariat needs "thoughtful, experienced and knowledgeable political = leaders".^^1^^ The proletariat needs authority in the sense that young workers need the experience of seasoned fighters against exploitation and oppression, those who have taken part in a number of revolutionary _-_-_
^^1^^ V. I. Lenin, ``~`Left-Wing' Communism An Intantik' Disorder'', (itilhcled IVork^, Vol. 31. p. 52.
229 lights and who have learned from revolutionary traditions and their broad political outlook. Lenin saw Marx, his theory and revolutionary experience as such an authority. The twentiethcentury world communist movement has also produced such an authority for the proletarian fighters for socialism - Lenin. Lenin's historical magnitude is also recognised by non-communist progressives: for all progressive people throughout the world his name is inseparable Irom events and developments that have changed the world in the twentieth century.In every country, the revolutionary movement generated outstarding fighters and leaders of the masses: Jose Marti and Fidel Castro in Cuba, Ho Chi Minh in Vietnam, Agostinho Neto in Angola, Lrnst Thaelmann in Germany, Antonio Gramsci and Palmiro Togliatti in Italy, Maurice Thorez in France, and so on.
Outstanding figures are shaped and produced by certain historical developments, in particular in periods when the old social system is breaking up and a new system is surfacing. At a time when the new has not fully developed but is taking root, colossal effort is needed to reveal the possibilities and ways for achieving it. The talent of a trailblazer is needed to recognise it, to understand it, and to help others see it. Outstanding figures are needed to carry out the multifarious historical task of breaking the fetters of the old, rejecting the 230 moribund, helping the birth of" the new and progressive that answers the interests of the advanced classes, and rallying them for the fight to achieve the triumph of the new.
Outstanding individuals possess qualities that allow them to promote the work of carrying out the great social tasks of their time. Inasmuch as they are capable of founding a social movement, to see farther than others, and inasmuch as they want to change the existing system, they play an outstanding role in the history of the world.
From the point of view of historical materialism, the activity of an outstanding figure always expresses the interests of a progressive class. The role played by this figure is determined by his or her class and the place it occupies in the social movement in question. The more progressive the class, the greater the figures this class advances. At the same time, these individuals exert a powerful influence on historical development so long as they work for the interest of their own class, for urgent social goals. From the history of the working class's fight for socialism we know quite a few names of those who played an important part and enjoyed authority among the masses while they were revolutionary fighters, and lost their influence the moment they left their ranks.
Marxism-Leninism recognises the significant role played by outstanding figures, but rejects any form of hero worship or the cult of individuals. 231 Never will it set oil" an individual against the masses, classes, or parties. Personality cult is foreign to the science of revolution and the practice of existing socialism. When and where these instances do appear, for certain temporary reasons, they harm the revolutionary movement and socialist construction.
[232] __NUMERIC_LVL1__ Chapter Ten __ALPHA_LVL1__ SOCIAL REVOLUTION1 he unity of the objective logic of history and people's conscious activity manifests itself in social revolutions. Social revolutions express the general objective law of transition from one socio-economic formation to another. They are also the peak of the class struggle of the oppressed against their oppressors, and the highest form of the conscious historical creativity of the masses.
The Marxist-Leninist doctrine on social revolutions combines analysis "of the objective state of affairs and the objective course of evolution [of history Author. with the most emphatic recognition of 233
SOCIAL REVOLUTION
the importance of the revolutionary energy, revolutionary creative genius, and revolutionary initiative of the masses- and also, of course, of individuals, groups, organisations, and parties that are able to discover and achieve contact with one or another = class".^^1^^The theory of revolution in general, and socialist revolution in particular, is the theoretical and ideological nucleus of the strategy and tactics of Communist parties. Acceptance or non- acceptance of this theory is the dividing line between genuinely Marxist revolutionary parties and reformist currents in the present-day workers' movement.
It is therefore important for every genuine lighter against exploitation to assimilate the dialectical-materialist foundation of the theory of social revolution.
__ALPHA_LVL2__ The EssenceSocial revolution is a radical change in the system of social relations resulting in transilion from one socioeconomic formation In another.
A social revolution should be distinguished _-_-_
~^^1^^ Y. I. Lenin, "Against Boycott'', (,'ollfdfd U'orkx, Vol. 13. 1978, p. 36.
234 from revolutions occurring in individual spheres of society (the industrial, scientific and technological revolution, etc.) and from qualitative evolutionary changes that occur in every society. Lastly, it should be distinguished from war.A social revolution is a process of resolving the major socio-political and socio-economic class contradictions that have developed in a given society. Contradictions that grew for decades or even centuries surface in the course of revolution. For example, the revolutionary process in Cuba resolved numerous contradictions: between the Cuban nation and US imperialism; between the ruling national oligarchy (backed by the US monopoly bourgeoisie) and the other strata of Cuban society, including the urban petty bourgeoisie; between the bourgeoisie, the landlords, the moneyed tenants, the usurers and bankers, on the one hand, and the workers, on the other; between the needs of the national economy and the dominant reactionary superstructure; between Cuban national culture and the North American imperialist ideology, and so on.
Social revolutions are brought about by objective necessity. The main reason for social revolution is the conflict between the productive forces (the requirements of their development) and obsolete production relations that impede economic progress. Such production relations have ceased to be the social form for the development 235 of the productive forces and have, indeed, begun to act as fetters on them. Consequently, social revolution ultimately leads to changes in the system of economic relations, primarily the relations of ownership.
Economic contradictions are the deepest reason for social revolution, while their immediate reason is the complex of social-class contradictions, in the first place those between the ruling class and the oppressed masses, between the reactionary superstructure and the elements (or system) of new economic relations that have burgeoned in the womb of the old society.
Inasmuch as the ruling class and the existing economic relations are held up chiefly by the state, the main contradiction resolved by revolution is the contradiction between the exploited classes and the state of the ruling class.
The first and principal question of revolution, both in the strictly theoretical and in the practical political sense, is the transition of state power from one class to = another.^^1^^ Hence every social revolution is a political revolution, which does not mean, of course, that every political coup is a social revolution. Coups d'etat are frequent in some developing countries. But they do not lead to radical socio-economic and political change. _-_-_
~^^1^^ See V. I. Lenin, "Letters on Tactics'', Collected Works, Vol. 24, p. 44.
236 What is changed are only individual (often insignificant) elements of the prevailing regime.Henee, social revolution is necessary not only from (he economic point of view, but also from the social-class and political. An overturn in the political superstructure is conditioned by the overturn that has already gradually and essentially occurred in the basis fin the case of prosocialist revolutions) or by the premises for such an overturn in the basis (in the period preceding socialist revolution). It is conditioned by the basis because the political superstructure of the ruling class has come into conflict with the new conditions and requirements of development of the economy and the entire system of social relations. It has ceased to express the interests of the social groups that carry forward the progressive forms of social relations and are able to ensure the satisfaction of the urgent socio-historical requirements and carry out the tasks of further historical development.
``The destructive force of a revolution,'' Lenin wrote, "is to a considerable degree dependent on how strong and protracted the suppression of the striving for liberty has been, and how profound is the contradiction between the outmoded ` superstructure' and the living forces of our times.''~^^1^^ _-_-_
~^^1^^ V. I. I,emu, "'I wo Tactics of Social-Democracy in the Democratic Revolution'', Collected Works, Vol. 9, 1972, p. 57.
237 Lenin's conclusion was borne out by the experience of the Great October Socialist Revolution in Russia, the Cuban and other revolutions. Their destructive force stemmed from the contradictions that had accumulated for centuries, from the acuteness of these contradictions, and from the coercion that the reactionary classes visited upon the workers and all progressives.The conditions for an overturn develop not only in the sphere of economic and socio-political relations. Its premises grow also in the sphere of intellectual culture. The old social ideas and attitudes, and social psychology, which reflect the way of life of the ruling classes, are no longer able to serve the interests of progress and are thus rejected by the new social forces. The latter create their own world outlook and their own ideology. As a rule, an overturn in the socio-economic and political spheres is preceded by a most acute struggle against old ideas and for the new, progressive ideology. Before the revolutionary classes accomplish a revolution, they become aware of the necessity of a revolution and of the ways and methods of carrying it out, and thus assimilate a new ideology. The change in the sphere of ideology, however, is completed on the soil of those new conditions that result from the triumph of the revolution.
The evolution taking place in many of the contemporary exploiter societies is a persuasive 238 example of the ripening of conditions for an overturn in all the main spheres of the life of society. Here contradictions are mounting between the social character of production and the private form of appropriation, between the monopolies and the people, between the workers and the exploiter classes, between the status of the working class and the other strata of workers as the main productive force and their actual social position and lack of political rights. Today it is no longer possible to ignore the gap between the growing wealth of developed capitalist countries and the poverty suffered by many of the young states that have only recently become independent of colonial rule. More and more staggering is the abyss between the colossal development potential of the productive forces and their onesided and irrational use, the predatory exploitation of manpower and of natural resources, and between the vast prospects of historical development offered by the revolution in science and technology and the imperialist threat to destroy civilisation in the flames of a thermonuclear war. All these economic and social contradictions manifest themselves in the degradation of culture, alienation of the individual, and, more importantly, in the conflict between the interests of the broad masses and the political superstructure of the exploiter classes, the bourgeois machinery of state in the first place.
239As noted in the policy documents of the international communist movement, today the capitalist system has on the whole matured for social revolution. This is seen in the intensification of the numerous intrinsic contradictions of contemporary capitalism.
In sum, social revolution is a law of historical development in class exploiter societies. It occurs when the old social system has exhausted its potential for development and cannot serve as a foundation of society's objective necessity for further advance in the interests of the broad masses, and when no reforms carried out by the ruling classes can lead society out of the impasse.
__ALPHA_LVL2__ Historical Types of Revolution.Social revolutions are distinguished by their character (type), driving forces, and objective and subjective conditions. The type of social revolution is determined by the historical tasks it carries out and the social forces that accomplish it.
From history we know of such types of revolution as anti-feudal (bourgeois) revolutions accomplished under the leadership of the urban bourgeoisie, anti-imperialist, national liberation, and socialist revolutions (in the imperialist epoch). In many countries socialist revolution is to be pre- 240 ceded by anti-imperialist, national liberation or people's democratic revolution.
The first stage of the Cuban revolution, for example, was of a people's democratic and antiimperialist character. It consisted of the establishment of the revolutionary-democratic dictatorship of the people (the working class and the peasantry), radical agrarian reforms, elimination of the foundations for imperialist domination, and other democratic social changes. The driving forces behind the Cuban revolution were three classes: the working class (roughly one million people), the working peasants (around 300,000 people), and the urban petty bourgeoisie, from which many students and office workers came. These forces were in effect fighting three wars: for national liberation, against pre-capitalist (feudal) survivals, and against capitalism. The radical petty bourgeoisie aspired to leadership. But already at this stage, the working class was the actual leader of the revolution. The composition of the driving forces and the leading role of the proletariat determined the character of the Cuban revolution and its uninterrupted advance to the socialist stage.
The socialist revolution is the highest type of revolution; it secures transition to socialism, i. e. to the social system that eliminates any and all exploitation of man by man and, consequently, social-class antagonisms. Its tasks are of a larger 241 scale and of a creative rather than destructive nature.
The socialist revolution creates conditions for a gradual elimination of society's division into classes, i. e. for establishing a system wherein social evolution will cease to be a political revolution.
Marxist-Leninist theory singles out the following features of the socialist revolution:
(a) The socialist revolution is an objective law of society's transition to socialism. The need for it derives from the main contradiction of capitalism, that between the social character of production and the private character of appropriation. It is begotten by the basic class antagonismthe antagonism between labour and capital-as well as other intrinsic contradictions that resulted in the general crisis of capitalism. The objective necessity of the socialist revolution is a topical issue in the current ideological struggle.
(b) The socialist revolution is -the peak of the class struggle of the working class and its allies against the exploiters. Only a class struggle that has attained the stage of a proletarian revolution can secure radical change in society along socialist lines.
(c) The socialist revolution is at one and the same time an objective process and the result of the conscious historical activity of the masses, which they gear to their scientific ideology and in
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242 which they are led by the Marxist-Leninist party.(d) The socialist revolution signifies destruction of the old bourgeois machinery of state and the establishment of a new type of state-the state of the working class.
(e) The socialist revolution is an entire era in the historical overturn of the system of social relations, an era of building new social relations based on social ownership of the means of production, an era of establishing the economic and social system essentially aimed at satisfying as fully as possible the needs of man and of his allround development.
(f) The socialist revolution, in any country, is not only conditioned by the development of intrinsic class contradictions and the struggle against the exploiters, but is also closely linked with the proletariat's international struggle against world capital. Proletarian internationalism is a principle of the socialist revolution and a necessary condition for its ultimate triumph.
__ALPHA_LVL2__ The CorrelationAs has already been mentioned, any social revolution is a law-governed phenomenon, and occurs under definite objective preconditions. The radi- 243 cal one is the conflict between the developing productive forces and obsolete production relations reflected in the antagonism between the ruling and the non-ruling classes. Yet a revolution occurs only when a revolutionary situation is present, i. e. when a set of necessary specific socio-political conditions for the overturn, speaking of the maturation of social contradictions, has taken shape. A revolutionary situation signifies a crisis of the ruling class's political system, increased privation and need of the oppressed classes, a considerable increase in the activity of the masses. It develops for various reasons, including economic upheaval, bankruptcy of the policies of the ruling class, national or racial conflicts, struggle against the domination of foreign imperialism, the threat of losing national independence, defeat in war, etc.
The emergence and development of a revolutionary situation is a contradictory process. It entails a fight of the opposing trends of social development. The development of a revolutionary situation is always opposed by the tendency to stabilise the situation, by reactionary forces who go all out to protect, even strengthen, their positions. Factors promoting the development of a revolutionary situation are countered by factors impeding this process, factors that break up the interaction of the already existing elements of the revolutionary situation. These factors mav be said 244 ``to clot up" the channels of the revolutionary process.
In Latin America in the late fifties and early sixties, the factors that impeded the revolutionary situation from developing were US imperialism's influence on the domestic situation; the army acting as the main counter-revolutionary force; the heterogeneity of the workers. Resolute action by the vanguard of the revolutionary masses, including guerrilla warfare, was needed for a revolutionary situation to take shape. The practice of revolutionary struggle, however, has not borne out the belief that a seat of guerrilla warfare can of itself create an objective revolutionary situation.
It follows that the maturing of a revolutionary situation is a spontaneous process, nothing more. Essentially objective, this process may be accelerated by revolutionary forces, developing from the complex of existing conditions in the basis and the superstructure.
Being a prior condition for revolution, a revolutionary situation alone is, however, insufficient to bring about a triumphant revolution. For a revolution to take place the objective preconditions for it must coincide with the developed subjective factor, which consists of the following elements: the masses are to be ideologically prepared and determined to engage in a revolutionary struggle; the revolutionary forces are to be 245 well organised ; there is to be an organised revolutionary vanguard able to lead the masses in the fight against the old system. Lenin substantiated as a law of revolution the development of a nation-wide revolutionary crisis-a combination of socio-economic, socio-political, ideological and psychological factors leading up to a triumphant revolution.
The shaping of the objective conditions for revolution and the subjective factor is a very complex process, for the reactionary forces seek to hold it down by all possible means. To overcome these forces means to close the breach between the objective conditions of the revolutionary process and the unpreparedness of the masses for a revolutionary struggle, i. e. to close the breach between the vanguard and the bulk of the workers.
The question of how the material preconditions and the subjective factor are combined to produce that single force which destroys the old system, is one of the most important questions of the strategy of a revolutionary party. In substance, the triumph of a revolution hinges upon it. The various revolutionary contingents settle the issue differently, depending on the conditions existing in each country. In Cuba and in Nicaragua, for example, the earliest form of the revolutionary process was guerrilla warfare.
The shaping and development of the subjective 246 factor is a multi-faceted process. Its substance is the training and activity of the most advanced class, first and foremost the working class, as the leade. or vanguard of the revolution, and its ability to unite and to rally all other working and non-working strata of the population. VVe see from history that the subjective factor is not immutable. It must gain strength all the time, and build up its capacity for action in order to ensure that the revolution is permanently on the offensive.
The world knows of the tragic consequences of the defeat of the revolution in Chile. During the three years that the Popular Unity government was in power, it carried out revolutionary change of an anti-imperialist and anti-oligarchic character. The revolutionary process in Chile followed a peaceful (unarmed) course, but it was broken off by a fascist military coup. The Communist Party of Chile sees the main reason for this temporary defeat of the revolution in that the working class had not managed to exercise its hegemony consistently and to the full and proved unable to isolate the other sections of workers from the bourgeoisie. Pressed by the many difficulties, the Popular Unity front showed a lack of cohesion, which, to a considerable extent, was due to the leadership's political errors.
The party did not have a clear enough programme for seizing all power in the country and 247 accomplishing a transition to the next stage of the revolution. Neither did the workers see-due to their insufficient political knowledge and experience - the necessity for taking over all power. The result was that the Communists were not backed by an active force able to secure a final solution. The reactionaries were quick to make use of the weakness of the revolutionary forces. Backed by the covert support of US imperialists, they slaughtered the peaceful Chilean revolution. The Chilean events bore out once more the wellknown adage that a revolution that cannot defend itself is bound to perish.
Whatever the form - peaceful or otherwise- of the revolutionary process aimed at destroying the old, exploiter, socio-political system and establishing a new system, it has nothing in common with evolutionary development and reformism.
Reform does not provide for the main thing - which is a radical overturn of the prevailing political system, of the economic and social structures. Hence, Marxism-Lenin ism rejects reformism as an idea of struggle for a new society, although it does not entirely reject the method of reforms. Revolution cannot get along without reforms, without certain changes in various sectors of the life of society. Still reforms are no more than an auxiliary means of struggle, both at the stage of preparing a revolution and during its accomplishment and completion. Agrarian 248 reform and many other democratic changes, for example, are of immense importance in people's democratic, anti-imperialist and anti-feudal revolution. It follows that in the hands of the revolutionary forces reform is a means of revolutionary change, while in the hands of the reactionary classes it is either a concession to the masses or a manoeuvre in face of the threat of a revolutionary crisis or a means of consolidating their own positions.
__ALPHA_LVL2__ The General and the ParticularThis is an essential question of theory and political practice. It is especially relevant today, when revolutionary processes consist of various stages: anti-feudal, people's democratic, national liberation, and socialist revolutions. Correct definition of the strategic and tactical tasks and of the driving forces at each of the stages, is possible only if the general and specific features of the revolutionary process are properly taken into account.
The general in social revolutions is their basic content. Each revolution is the peak of a class struggle in which the broad masses take part. Revolution is possible only in the presence of matured objective preconditions that coincide with the subjective factors. Revolution is always largely a conscious and organised struggle of the 249 oppressed classes against the domination of reactionary forces. There can be no revolution without a revolutionary ideology assimilated by the masses.
The particular in a revolution is manifested first and foremost in the forms and methods that are applied to change society.
The dialectic of the general and the particular is of vast theoretical and practical significance in socialist revolution. The Great October Socialist Revolution of 1917 in Russia, like revolutions in other countries, has shown that there are general laws governing socialist revolutions and the specificity of their operation and realisation. It fully bore out Lenin's scientific prediction made in 1916 that "all nations will arrive at socialism - this is inevitable, but all will do so in not exactly the same way, each will contribute something of its own to some form of democracy, to some variety of the dictatorship of the proletariat, to the varying rate of socialist transformations in the different aspects of social life.''~^^1^^
The general laws of socialist revolution manifest its essence; the specific features manifest its specific substance and form in specific historical conditions. The general laws include leadership of the broad strata of workers by the working class, whose core is the Marxist-Leninist party; _-_-_
~^^1^^ V. 1. I,ruin, "A Caricature of Marxism :md Imperialist Economism'', Collected Works, Vol. 23, pp. 69--70.
250 accomplishment of a revolutionary overturn; establishment of working class rule in one or another form, alliance of the working class with all other strata of workers; abolition of capitalist ownership and establishment of socialist ownership of the means of production; socialist change in agriculture; systematic economic development in the interests of the people; accomplishment of a cultural revolution; solution of the national question; establishment of equality and friendship among peoples; defence of socialism against foreign and domestic enemies; solidarity with the workers in other countries-proletarian internationalism.As to the specific features, they are manifested in three areas -the specific structure of the driving forces; the form of the revolutionary overturn, and the specific features of the sovereignty established by the working class, and of the forms and methods of revolutionary change accomplished in the economy and in culture. A triumphant socialist revolution is possible if the general laws operate. It is impossible, on the other hand, for revolutions in different countries to be accomplished according to a cut-and-dried formula. To overestimate either the role of the general laws or the specific features is equally wrong in theory and dangerous on a practical political plane.
The 20th century gave birth to various forms of revolution against capitalism. These forms are: 251 socialist revolutions in more or less developed capitalist countries (like the Great October Socialist Revolution of 1917 in Russia); socialist revolutions in relatively less developed capitalist countries developing from anti-fascist revolutions (as in Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland, and Romania;; socialist revolutions accomplished in countries of undeveloped or less developed capitalism and backed by socialist countries, as in Cuba. Each of the enumerated forms of the revolutionary process showed evidence of the general laws that were first manifested in the Great October Socialist Revolution. Yet each also had its specific features. These derived largely from the fact that the socialist revolutions developed out of anti-imperialist or national liberation revolutions.
To be able to work out a specific programme lor accomplishing socialist change in a country, the leading parties must necessarily take account of the specific features of the revolutionary process. At the same time, by recognising that there are general laws governing all revolutions one also recognises that revolution in any given country is part of the single world-wide revolutionary process impelled by the ingrained contradictions of the capitalist system and must not be viewed in a narrow national conlext. Hence the special significance for the triumph of a revolution of proletarian and socialist internationalism, of 252 relations of solidarity and mutual co-operation between countries, peoples, and parties striving lor socialism.
The world revolutionary process consists ot a merging of diverse revolutions begotten by the capitalist system. Their qualitative differences and contradictions are conditioned by the uneven development of countries and peoples that were or still are under the domination of capitalism. The present epoch is first and foremost an epoch of socialist revolutions and of the global transition from capitalism to socialism, of the consolidation and advance, in many countries, of existing socialism, which is becoming a world social system. The Communist movement in capitalist countries is an important part of the world revolutionary process. Absorbing various sections of the working class and a large percentage of urban and rural employees and intellectuals, the movement keeps expanding and increasing its revolutionary power. This is borne out by the growth of Communist parties in many countries and their increasing influence on socio-political reality, and in particular by the extensive participation of Communists in the struggle against the capitalist offensive on the rights of the workers.
National liberation revolutions occupy a definite place in the growing world revolutionary process. Their most deep-rooted reason is the antagonism between imperialism and the forces 253 supporting it inside individual countries, on the one hand, and the broad popular masses fighting for national liberation and progress, on the other. National liberation revolutions are aimed against decayed socio-economic and political relations that have become a brake on the advancement of national economies and cultures. Inasmuch as these relations are indissolubly linked with capitalist structures in imperialist countries, revolutions in dependent countries deal a blow to the capitalist world system, and by so doing complement the communist movement.
Existing socialism has become the bulwark and the main force of the entire world revolutionary process. Today, the course of historical development is determined by the struggle between two world systems-the socialist and the capitalist. Past experience shows that existing socialism is the most reliable buttress of the forces of peace, democracy, and freedom. The strength of world socialism is the guarantee of new triumphant liberation revolutions.
__ALPHA_LVL2__ Critique of BourgeoisIn the past two decades there has been a growing interest on the part of bourgeois sociologists in issues related to social revolution. There has even 254 appeared a special branch of bourgeois sociology "sociology of revolution" or " revolutionology'', which specialises in theoretical and political aspects of social revolution and in ``refuting'' the Marxist-Leninist doctrine of socialist revolution.
Bourgeois ``revolutionologists'' seek to portray social revolution as fortuitous and brought about not by objective causes but by purely subjective factors. To them, revolution is a negative phenomenon : sheer destruction and an obstacle to the progress of society. Many sociologists identify it with coups d'etat and mutinies. Some go so far as to identify it with war. Of late, many of them substitute the problem of scientific and technological revolution for social revolution.
``Refutation'' of the theory of socialist revolution and denial of the historic role of the proletariat as the grave-digger of capitalism and the creator of a new society occupy a most conspicuous place in the reasoning of bourgeois ideologists. Critics of Marxism-Leninism resort to both overt and covert distortions of the theory of revolution. They assert, among other things, that there is no theory of revolution but only a series of contradictory ideas put forward by Marx and Engels on the one hand and Lenin on the other. Anti-Communists consider that Marx saw revolution as a natural historical process that could only take place in countries with a highly developed 255 economy and advanced socio-political relations. Lenin's idea allegedly ignores this premise of Marx's approach to revolution, and maintains that c^.cial revolution is independent of any economic and .^ocial conditions and can occur in any country even a backward one. Hence, they assert, social revolution is not a law of contemporary social development but the result of conspiracy.
In bourgeois theoreticians' opinion, socialist revolution is not justified in terms of the efforts applied, for the sacrifice is great and the result little.
Likewise, bourgeois sociologists deny the international relevance of Marxist-Leninist theory of socialist revolution and maintain that it does not apply to developed capitalist countries.
The Marxist-Leninist theory of socialist revolution is also attacked by right-wing Socialists, who have declared so-called democratic socialism as their ultimate goal and are planning to reach it without class struggle and revolution- by reform and spontaneous change of capitalism into socialism. Right-wing socialist theoreticians and politicians deny the leading role of the working class in present-day history and ascribe it to intellectuals.
The attitudes of revisionists are essentially similar to social-reformism. They call themselves Marxists but in fact reject the fundamentals of the theory of revolution. They also deny the necessity 256 of radical revolutionary change in capitalist society. This is manifested first and foremost in their view of the bourgeois machinery of state, which, they say, should not be destroyed-it should be applied, together with bourgeois democracy, to the changed conditions. They are not daunted by the fact that no right-wing Socialist government or Socialist party has yet achieved this in a capitalist country.
Although ``reformers'' of Marxism-Leninism write about revolution and socialism, they in fact ignore the experience of revolutions and existing socialism in the USSR and in a number of other countries. They say there is a "third way" to socialism. Actually, this way is the way of reform, presupposing gradual evolution of bourgeois society into a socialist society. They question the leading role of Marxist-Leninist parties and reject the necessity of revolutionary theory for a revolutionary movement.
While believing that they have made a new contribution to Marxism, theoreticians and politicians of this sort declare that present-day Communist parties have ceased to be "parties of ideology''. They defend "ideological pluralism'', that is, the idea of Communist parties without an ideology, i, e. without a system of views expressing the fundamental interests of the working class.
Here the question is one of whether the practice of the world communist movement and the 257 living experience of the triumphant socialist revolutions give grounds for conclusions of this sort. The answer is no. The real historical experience of struggle for socialism is being counterweighed by spurious hypotheses based on abstract negative reasoning. By this logic anything that is propounded by Marxism-Leninism and borne out by the practice of existing socialism should be rejected. Yet history has shown that sooner or later the rejection of revolutionary theory leads to the loss of orientation in politics and is thus fraught with grave dangers for the working class and all the people of a given country.
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[258] __NUMERIC_LVL1__ Chapter Eleven __ALPHA_LVL1__ SOCIAL PROGRESS __ALPHA_LVL2__ The Notion of Social ProgressIt is hardly possible to ignore the radical changes taking place in the life of nations and states. It is evident that our world has undergone fundamental change. All continents are contributing to this general development. Never has history advanced at so rapid a rate as today. The hurricane of change has swept over all spheres of human life: the economy, engineering, politics, social relations, intellectual culture, and way of life. In these conditions, issues pertaining to mankind's future naturally merit keen attention. Hence one of the most urgent problems facing social science is 259 __RUNNING_HEADER_RIGHT__ SOCIAL PROGRESS that of the general direction of the historical process. Whither is mankind moving? Is it moving forward to ever more improved and sensible forms of the life of society, or backward to degradation? Is the new society-providing freedom and allround development for all- already taking shape in the present or is a "future shock" in store for mankind, as some bourgeois theoreticians would have us believe, and it will be gripped by a mass crisis? In other words, is history making progress or is progress unnatural? And, for that matter, what is social progress?
The correct answers to all these questions are found exclusively through the materialist approach to history. Marxism-Leninism counterposes the scientifically substantiated conclusion about the objective and regular character of social progress to all sorts of bourgeois reactionary Utopian views on historical development. Historical materialism draws on real historical experience to prove that the substance of contemporary social progress consists in the revolutionary transition from capitalism to socialism on a global scale.
The idea of improving human nature and society had been aired long before Marxism originated. Prominent thinkers of the Renaissance wrote of mankind's radiant future and resolutely opposed the religious fable of paradise beyond the grave. Even stronger and more convincing 260 sounded the idea of progress, belief in reason and a future just society advanced by the 17th- and 18th-century Enlighteners. These philosophers, who were expressing the interests of the then progressive capitalist class, sought to substantiate the idea of progress. Their views reflected the optimism of the rising bourgeoisie, its desire to eliminate the feudal pillars of society, and its belief that freedom, equality, and justice will triumph.
French thinker Jean Jacques Rousseau linked the potential and necessity of progress to man's ability of improving himself which is inherent in human nature. Rousseau stressed that this ability is practically limitless, and, coupled with advanced age, gradually elevates man from his primitive state; it stimulates growth of knowledge as well as of delusions, vices, and virtues; it makes man a tyrant over himself and over nature.
Rousseau linked mankind's progress with the progress of man's reason. He held that the great overturn had taken place due to the invention of two arts-metal processing and land cultivation.
Another French theoretician, Condorcet, known for his Esquisse fun tableau historigue des progres de fesprit humain (Sketch of a Historical Picture of the Progress of Human Reason], characterised progress as the development of man's natural ability to perceive the world, recognise the essential and significant in what he perceives, to retain, iden- 261 tify, and combine what he perceives, etc. Like Rousseau, Condorcet linked social progress to the human consciousness, reason, and the ability to cognise; improvements in the state of humankind Condorcet associated with eliminating inequality between nations, the progress of equality between various classes of one nation, and the genuine improvement of man.
German philosopher Hegel was well ahead of his predecessors in understanding progress. Hegel undertook to prove the objective character and to substantiate the content of human progress. Social development is complex and contradictory, he stressed, and world history is not an arena of happiness. Periods of happiness are blank pages in world history, for they are periods of harmony and of an absence of struggle of opposites.~^^1^^
Being an idealist philosopher, Hegel associated progress with the struggle of opposites in the realm of the consciousness and defined it as the self-development of the world (in the final account, divine) spirit. A champion of progress, Hegel nevertheless limited it to certain historical boundaries. For him, the acme of historical progress was the world of German Christendom, the Prussian monarchy.
_-_-_~^^1^^ Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Vorlesungen ilber die Philosophic der Geschichte, Stuttgart, Fr. Frommanne Verlag, 1928, p. 56.
262The ideologists of rising capitalism believed in, and called for, progress, and tried to substantiate the need for it by associating it with the advancement of reason, science and education, whereas bourgeois theoreticians of the 19th and early 20th centuries took an opposite view. Capitalism's period of bloom was in the main completed by then, and the world entered the era of imperialism and proletarian revolutions. That posed a real threat to the bourgeois social system. And (as had happened many times in history), the threat to the survival of the exploiter class was identified by its ideologists as a crisis of human civilisation. Social pessimism replaced ideas of progress. Wails over an allegedly imminent crisis replaced forecasts of forms of social progress.
The proletariat, which had by then entered the historical arena, assumed the historical mission of the struggle for progress, launching a battle against the exploitation of man by man. The theoreticians of proletarian struggle critically reassessed the views of preceding thinkers on progress and developed them on a new and genuinely scientific basis into a logical philosophical theory.
Lenin held that the chief flaw of all the theories of social progress preceding Marxism was their abstract idealist character. Aspiring to universality, these theories were nevertheless unable to explain the real process of social development. 263 Lenin wrote: "The gigantic step forward taken by Marx in this respect consisted precisely in that he discarded all ... arguments about society and progress in general and produced a scientifi. analysis of one society and of on. progress-capitalist.''~^^1^^
The Marxist-Leninist understanding of progress is based on the dialectico-materialist conception of history. Social progress is a regular, rising, forward movement of human society from the lower to the higher forms. The idea of social progress signifies rejection in principle of any attempts to perpetuate any social system. This idea recognises the fact that human society changes and develops, and considers history as an essentially conditioned process of social development.
Historical materialism says that man's rising to higher forms of the life of society cannot be ascribed first of all to the autonomous activity of reason. Progress is an objective historical result of the creative effort of the popular masses - primarily in the sphere of material production (economy), and on its basis - in the sphere of intellectual culture. Materialism does not deny the power of the human intellect, without which creative effort is not possible in any sphere. Materialist science asserts, though, that the mind is a _-_-_
~^^1^^ V. I. Lenin, "What the Friends of the People Are and How They Fight the Social-Democrats'', Collected Works, Vol. 1, p. 145.
264 product of historical development and that its content reflects the outer, objective world.The substance of social progress includes change of one mode of production, one social system, for another.
In their productive activity, people constantly and on an increasing scale change their environment, adapting it to their needs. They change the environment to satisfy their interests, they improve the methods of assimilating nature and advance their material culture.
When acting upon nature and improving instruments of labour and the means of production, people change themselves and develop their abilities. By improving their culture and satisfying some of their requirements, people create material and intellectual preconditions for the emergence of other requirements and, therefore, for assimilating new cultural values. The result is an unbroken chain of improvements on human requirements, which means that cultural progress is a method of mastering nature.
Naturally, social progress is not confined to the material, economic sphere. One of its inalienable elements is mankind's ascent to more intricate and more rapidly developing social and political structures, to higher and more substantive historical types of social consciousness and intellectual culture as a whole. Using the widespread term `civilisation', one might say that social progress is 265 mankind's ascent to higher forms of civilisation. And the higher it ascends, the fuller is revealed man's creative essence and universal nature as the subject of material and intellectual activity. From primitive stone tools to computers and spaceships, from myths about the surrounding world to the heights of scientific thought, from ancient forms of contact based on blood kinship and immediate links in the struggle for a livelihood to diverse inter-personal, intra-collcctive, inter-collective, class, national, and international relations, and from primitive man, a grain of sand in the ocean of elements that governed his life, to the omnipotent intelligent being that man is today are the seven-league steps of human progress.
Historical materialism identifies the steps of social progress as socio-economic formations. Science judges of the stages of development by the successive formations. They are the only objective criteria for breaking up world history into periods.
Progress is the powerful stream of history that results from the merging of numerous rivulets embodying the efforts by many millions of people and many generations living in different ages. Its general law is acceleration.
We know from history that at certain times, and even during whole epochs, society either progressed slowly or did not progress at all. Yet
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266 regress during a certain time could not alter the general historical course of humanity, that of consistent progress. Low rates of progress were characteristic of primitive communal, slave, and, to a considerable extent, feudal societies. For millennia, man was content with the same sources of power (draught animals, wind). Centuries passed without a single major discovery or improvement. Capitalism vastly accelerated the rate of development, first of all of industrial growth, illustrated, among other things, by the spectacularly rapid growth of the urban population.Progress is far quicker at present. Socialist and national liberation revolutions caused major social changes in short periods. The world has literally changed in the lifetime of just one generation : the socialist world system came into being, colonialism collapsed, many countries and peoples embarked on independent development.
__ALPHA_LVL2__ Objective CriterionSocial progress can be judged from many different angles: intellectual development, improved morality, technological progress, increased welfare, the flourishing of arts, access to culture, etc. Certainly, each of these factors characterises the forward movement of specific spheres of the life of society. Which of them is the objective, determin- 267 ing indication (criterion) of social development?
Inasmuch as material production is the fundamental and determining sphere of the life of society, the objective indication of social advancement is economic development. As Marx stressed, it is not the articles made, but how they are made, that enables us to distinguish different historical epochs.^^1^^ Lenin defined development of the productive forces as the touchstone of social development.^^2^^ The socialist construction programmes in countries that have accomplished socialist revolution take into account this theoretical conclusion of the fundamental role played by the development of the productive forces.
When defining the general criterion of social progress it is necessary to bear in mind that the productive forces always develop within the framework of specific production relations that are necessary forms of people's material activity and the foundation of all other relations. It is also important to note that the character of production relations manifests the state and direction of the development of the productive forces, including the development of the main productive _-_-_
~^^1^^ Karl Marx, Capita., Vol. I, p. 175.
^^2^^ See V. I. Lenin, "Eighteenth Congress of the R.C.?.(!!.), March 8-16, 1921. Summing-up Speech on the Tax in Kind, March 15'', Collected Works, Vol. 32, 1973, p. 235.
268 force, i. e. of man, in a specific historical period. Production relations, as we know, determine how the productive forces are used - that is to say, whose interests are served by the input of labour and what the relation of the masses is to this input. That is why, specific historical forms of production relations are also an objective criterion that enables us to distinguish the standard of one country from that of another country, and one historical epoch from = another.^^1^^ Thus, the character and state of production relations in a given society is a significant element of the overall objective criterion of historical progress.The state of the productive forces and the character (type) of the corresponding production relations are manifested in the progress of human freedom. Its facets are: economic freedom, political freedom, creative freedom, freedom of conscience, and so on.
Extended social freedom is a significant indicator of social progress. It reflects social development towards the liberation of man from the domination of the spontaneous forces of nature and society, from social oppression of all kinds.
It follows that the criterion of social progress is of a complex character. Its determining element _-_-_
~^^1^^ Sec V. I. Lenin, "What the `Friends of the People' Are and How They Fight the Social-Democrats'', Collected Works, Vol. 1, p. 140.
269 is the condition of the productive forces and the social orientation of their development. Its other elements are: the extent to which man has mastered the elemental forces of nature and developed his own creative abilities as reflected by the rising productivity of labour and by man's own improvement as the subject of labour and the extent to which he is liberated from the domination of spontaneous social forces, from socio- political inequality and intellectual backwardness. The greater the potential for the development of the productive forces and for heightening production efficiency, for the advancement of all social relations, for the free development of individuals and of the creative effort of the workers and for applying their abilities to meet their material and intellectual requirements- the more progressive is the society.That is why, when defining the extent to which this or that society is progressive, it is necessary to take into account not only the level of its economic development, but also its achievements in socio-political and intellectual development. Today, the social aspects of progress are becoming increasingly important. They are: the social orientation of labour; the extent to which the production potential and the entire culture are developed and applied in the interests of the popular masses; the standard of living of the masses; status in society.
270Identification of the general criterion of historical progress does not preclude the use as criteria of the forward movement of various social systems or various spheres of the life of society. Topical, too, is the question of the criterion of socialism and of its historical phases. Correct understanding of the criteria of the development of the entire sphere of intellectual culture and its various domains-morality, the arts, and science, is of theoretical and practical significance.
__ALPHA_LVL2__ Historical TypesProgress should not be treated abstractly. Account should be taken of the specific features of the historical development of social systems. Accordingly, there are three types of social progress : development based on primitive communal relations; progress in societies with antagonistic classes; socialist (communist) progress.
Progress is different in societies with different social formations in its class orientation and in depth, structure, and trends. In antagonistic societies, progress works in the interests of the exploiting classes at the expense of the exploited workers. It is characterised by unevenness, for, as a rule, progress in some countries is gained at the expense of other countries; social development is attained through class struggle and social revolu- 271 tions. Here, the spontaneous form of development is typical.
All these peculiarities give expression to the essential feature of progress in exploiter formations-its antagonistically contradictory character. It reflects periods of rise and of decay, the dramatic eclipse of some cultures and states and the rise of others, periods of rapid advance and of stolid stagnation. From its inception, the progress of civilisation has been unfolding as a process of opposition-between intellectual and manual labour, town and countryside, and between classes; there was also a contradiction in the fact that the fruits of progress, a result of the labour of the masses, were appropriated by the exploiters. That was at the root of the striking contradictions in the history of societies, in the development of peoples. The progress of the productive forces is extremely uneven, as we see in particular from the worker to power (energy) ratio in various societies. Today, roughly 70 per cent of the world's population live as their ancestors did hundreds, even thousands, of years ago-by hunting, fruit-gathering, or basically by agriculture. Only one-fourth of mankind lives in industrialised capitalist and socialist countries.
The unevenness, one-sidedness, and contradictoriness of social development are most vividly manifested in the consequences of the scientific and technical revolution in capitalist societies, in 272 the aggravation of global problems, in the danger of an ecological crisis and, lastly, in the threat posed by imperialism to the very survival of life on earth.
Today mankind faces a choice: to be or not to be, to reach new heights of culture or to perish in an atomic conflagration. This sums up the conflicting nature of progress. This conflicting nature does not derive from malicious intent on the part of politicians or scientists. Much less does it derive from socialism, which reactionaries accuse of all deadly sins. The ominous threat to mankind is posed by the system based on exploitation, by the forces of imperialism striving to halt the course of history, even at the risk of destroying all civilisation. Progressives throughout the world are sure that mankind can be saved. As history has already shown, the future of mankind is not degradation, nor is it restricted progress or zero growth. The future of mankind lies in socialism, in the constantly accelerating advance of all its aspects.
Both theory and practice have shown that socialism is the most advanced system in history. It creates conditions for the steady and constantly accelerating growth of mankind's material and intellectual forces. No other society or formation has so far provided for or reached the rates of growth of material and intellectual culture attained by socialist societies. The socialist system 273 does away with social oppression and the exploitation of man by man; it establishes relations of friendly co-operation and mutual assistance; it provides for the free creative activity of the popular masses. The socialist system creates the preconditions for the harmonious development of the personality. Socialist society is a society developing and functioning, to an ever greater degree, on a scientific foundation. Unlimited prospects of progress are open to it. The difficulties involved in the development of the socialist countries are difficulties of growth, not decline. They are mainly due to the initial weakness of the foundation of socialist construction, for in many countries the productive forces and culture had been of a very low level prior to the triumph of revolution. From the very outset, the revolutions in these countries had to deal with a large number of problems of backwardness, the consequence of imperialist and colonialist domination.
Still, no other historical period is comparable to the present period of revolutionary change in the life of society. The course of history has shown that the 20th century is an age of mounting socialist progress. It is not only the pace of history that accelerates in the new society. Socialist progress is becoming a systematic process. The harmonious development of the various spheres of the life of society is becoming ever more appreciable.
The development of socialist society does not 274 rule out contradictions nor a certain element oi unevenness. The overcoming of objective contradictions, the struggle of the new with the old, is an objective law of history. It cannot be ruled out or dismissed. Still, the contradictions of socialist progress are qualitatively different from those seen in capitalist societies. The class foundation for social antagonisms or social conflicts is abolished. The emerging non-antagonistic contradictions are settled through the improvement of economic, social, and political structures and the further growth of society's material and intellectual potential.
__ALPHA_LVL2__ Contemporary Social ProgressThe Marxist vision of contemporary progress is opposed by the views of bourgeois futurologists.^^1^^ Two kinds of attitudes to progress can be singled out in the motley assortment of futurological ideas. Some sociologists recognise progress, albeit with reservations, but distort its main criterion. In their view, the principal indicator of social development is technology and technological progress, which, they hold, provides solutions to all _-_-_
~^^1^^ Theoreticians who study issues pertaining to the forecasting of" the future.
275 social problems and class contradictions. US sociologist Brzezinski maintains that modern-day technology and especially electronics are increasingly becoming the principal determinants of social change, altering the mores, the social structure, the values, and the global outlook of society.^^1^^ In his view, the impact of science and technology on man, on society, is the chief source of social change. Describing the models of the future affluent society, advocates of this view call it ``postindustrial'', ``technetronic'', " superindustrial" civilisation, and so on. US sociologist Alvin Toffler, for example, holds that to save society it is necessary to pass from the sick capitalist society to a superindustrial civilisation.A typical feature of all views on the future ``affluent'' society is the desire to prove theoretically that it is possible to modernise the existing capitalist system. It is specially stressed that it is possible to overcome, or at least modify, the contradiction between labour and capital. Likewise, Brzezinski sets out to prove that today the relations between entrepreneurs and workers are dominated by issues pertaining to obsolete professions, employment guarantees, leave systems, the organisation of leisure, profit-sharing, psychological well-being, and the like. Toffler sees the cause
_-_-_~^^1^^ Z. Brzezinski, Between Turn Agei, The Viking Press, New York, 1970, p. XIV.
276 of all the troubles of the masses in present-day capitalist societies as deriving from the crisis of the industrialised society. Hence, he says, it must be replaced by the so-called postindustrial civilisation.Another peculiarity of this viewpoint, i. e. conceiving technological progress as the force that can save = capitalism,^^1^^ is the attempt to describe socialism as an industrialised society following a capitalist path. Meanwhile capitalist society, the USA in particular, is described as the vanguard of modern progress.
Let us take a closer look at these views. First of all, they make for a one-sided treatment of the role of technology while ignoring the significance of socio-economic relations. Secondly, they art rank apologies of capitalism, while they ignore its essential antithesis to the socialist system.
Historical materialism, as we know, attaches tremendous importance to the development ol science and technology. It also proves that the scientific and technological factor is realised exclusively through the system of socio-economic relations. Hence the difference between societies. Judging by the technological level alone it is hardly possible to determine the differences in the character of socio-economic systems. It is hardly _-_-_
~^^1^^ These views are called technological idylls in Marxist publications.
277 possible, if at all, to establish the difference between society in Congo and in Zaire from the purely technological aspect of production. Their levels of technological development are more or less the same. The essential difference between the two societies lies in the socio-economic relations obtaining in these countries, Congo being socialist-oriented while Zaire is capitalist-oriented.Advocates of "technological idylls" would have us believe that the socio-class and other antagonisms are no longer found or are fading away in the developed capitalist countries, first of all in the USA. This, of course, is not true. The class struggle is raging, racial problems are as acute as ever, and the overall crisis of the capitalist social system is deepening.
There are no valid reasons for likening the character of capitalist society to the character of socialist society. Both world systems possess modern technology. But this is no indication of kinship.The technological basis alone does not determine the class or national relations, nor policies and ideology, nor moral values or art. The economi. basis, e. g. the system of production relations existing in the society concerned, is the material foundation for social relations, policies, and intellectual values. It determines the social function of technology: in whose interests the obtaining technological basis is used, and in what way it influences the labour and living conditions 278 of the workers. Radio and television are used in the interests of imperialist monopolies not because their technological level allows it, but because the monopolies own them.
The number of those who advocate the technological idea of social progress tends to decline. The false optimism is the less appealing, the more apparent the deeply negative consequences of the scientific and technological revolution become under capitalist conditions.
Disappointment in the results of scientific and technological progress and the frustrated hope of an affluent society (postindustrial, technetronic, superindustrial, etc.) appearing in the world has resulted in the revival of socio-historical pessimism, as represented by neo-conservatism. This is a new version of conservatism, the rejection of social progress and advocacy of the preservation of the traditional and obsolete. The switch-over from technological optimism to neo-conservatism occurred in a number of European countries and in the USA in the 1970s. The reactionary essence of this ideological trend is revealed in its total denial of the positive role of social science and of scientific and technological progress in presentday society. According to the neo-conservatives social science is a variety of Utopia, i. e. a fantasy of impracticable phenomena and ways of social development. Scientific and technological progress, in the neo-conservative view, is a manifes- 279 tation of arbitrariness (a meaningless process of change in knowledge and technology). Social science is said to show the way to merely the appearanc. of improvements at the price of deep and irreversibly destructive consequences for society. Civilisation is losing its effectiveness. How should this be averted? By doing away with social science and Utopia, say the neo-conservatives, as the most ruinous results of progress. The actual reactionary illusion of our da}-, they say, the idea of progress, should be rejected, and the voice of reason should be overcome. Intellectualism ( reason) and rationality (reliance on science) have resulted in the overall exploitation of nature and begot the ecological crisis. Likewise, it is the cause of sweeping urbanisation and of its negative consequences.
Playing up the threat of an ecological crisis is one of the favourite devices of advocates of sociohistorical pessimism, including neo-conservatives. The ultimate conclusion of neo-conservatism is that modern progress threatens the very survival of Western civilisation, and thus of civilisation in general.
Neo-conservatives aim their criticism of science, rationalism, and progress against Marxism and communism, which they see as the epitome of the idea of progress. That is why their only necessary policy is anti-Marxism and anti-communism.
280However hard they may try to find fault with, and impede, social progress, its adversaries cannot halt the forward movement of history. Reactionaries are threatening mankind with nuclear catastrophe. Honest people all over the world are sure that reason will overcome the adventurism of the madmen. The principle of reason is consonant with the objective laws of history. It is manifested in the advance of socialism and in the peoples' striving for freedom and peace.
[281] __ALPHA_LVL1__ GlossaryActivit. (of man, class, or society), purposeful changing of the world.
Aesthetic consciousness, views of art prevailing in a given society.
Aesthetic., the study of art, methods of creation, genres and forms of art.
Antagonis., a form of contradiction characterised by a sharp and irreconcilable conflict of the opposing forces or tendencies.
Ar., reproduction of reality in artistic terms.
Awareness, historical, is displayed by controlled and regulated functioning of human collectives, classes, parties, communities.
Basi., a totality of specific historical production relations, the economic system of a given society.
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282Bourgeoisi., the ruling class in capitalist society, owner of the means of production exploiting hired labour.
Capitalist monopolies, economic associations exercising control over the markets through the concentration of material and financial resources and with the aim of gaining a monopolistic profit.
Chance, historical, the processes and phenomena occurring in society as a result of conditions that are temporary as concerns the respective society's existence and development, i.e. brought forth by external reasons.
Civilisatio., the level of or stage in the development of society, of its material and intellectual culture.
Clan, tribe, clan: a community of people based on blood kinship descending from a common ancestor and called by a common surname; tribe: a community of kindred clans.
Classe., "large groups of people differing from each other by the place they occupy in the historically determined system of social production, by their relations (in most cases fixed and formulated in law) to the means of production, by their role in the social organisation of labour, and consequently, by the dimensions of the share of social wealth of which they dispose and 283 __RUNNING_HEADER_RIGHT__ GLOSSARY the mode of acquiring it" (V. I. Lenin).
Class struggle is waged between classes whose interests are incompatible or contradictory; it is the basic content of and the driving force behind the development of all antagonistic class societies.
Cultur., totality of material and intellectual values created by mankind in its socio-historical practice.
Demograph., a study of the socially conditioned laws governing population.
Dialectic., a theory and method of investigating phenomena in their development and self-motion; a science of the more general laws governing the development of nature, society, and thought.
Driving forces of historical development, the social forces (popular masses, classes, parties) capable of carrying out tasks posed by history including the reasons impelling these forces to act such as, first and foremost, social requirements, interests, goals, and ideas.
Ecolog., a science dealing with interrelations between livingorganisms,plants andanimals, and between groups of living organisms, on the one hand, and their environment, on the other.
Epoc., a time-period in the development of 284 nature, society, science, etc., marked Indistinct characteristics.
Ethics, a philosophical discipline dealing with morality.
Exploitatio., appropriation by some of the products manufactured by others the immediate producers; is inherent in all antagonistic class societies.
Freedom, social, human activity based upon knowledge and operation of objective laws of social development.
The fundamental question of philosophy, the relation of thinking to being, consciousness to matter, the ideal to the material.
Futurolo.)', the totality of views on mankind's development in the future; in the Marxist-Leninist doctrine, the idea of the future is part of the theory of socialism and communism; in bourgeois sociology, a specific science a "philosophy of the future" or a "study of the future" emerging from the idealist world outlook and Utopian ideas.
Idealis., the general name for philosophical doctrines maintaining that spirit, consciousness, mental activity are primary, while matter-, nature, physical activity are secondarv and derivative.
285Ideolog., a system of ideas and views of a certain class or social group.
Individual consciousness, intellectual characteristics of personality.
Intellectual life of society, a totality of all forms of intellectual activity including the activity of ideological institutions.
Interest., a form of expression and awareness of people's needs as manifested in their behaviour and activity to satisfy these needs.
Internationalis., international solidarity of workers and Communists of all countries in their struggle for common goals, and their solidarity with peoples fighting for their national liberation and social progress, based on a strict observance of the principle of equality and independence of each of the peoples.
Labou., a process in which man purposefully acts on nature using instruments of labour to create objects meeting his requirements.
La., totality of rules (standards) of behaviour obligatory for all which are established or sanctioned by state authority.
Legal consciousness, people's ideas, views and sentiments of lawful and unlawful.
Ma., the being produced by the highest stage 286 of animal evolution; the subject of socio-historical process and culture. Materialis., a philosophical trend maintaining that the world is material and objective, and exists externally and independently of human consciousness, that matter is primary, not created, and is eternal, that consciousness and thinking are a property of matter and that the world and its laws are cognizable.
Materialism, economic, one-sided primitive understanding of the materialist idea of history; it holds that the economy is the sole dynamic factor and all other phenomena and processes occurring in society are the result of the activity of the productive forces and corresponding production relations; does not recognise the active role of the subjective factor and the reverse influence exerted by intellectual phenomena on social being.
The mode of production of material benefits, a historically conditioned manner of producing material benefits, represents specific unity of the productive forces and production relations.
Moral consciousness, awareness of the standards, .principles, and rules of behaviour determining men's obligations and attitudes towards each other and towards society.
287Moralit., a specific form of social consciousness; the type of social relations regulating man's conduct in society.
Natio., a historical community of people coming into being with the formation of common territory, economic life, literary language, cultural distinctions, and certain traits of national character; is distinguished from nationality by stable economic ties taking root in the epoch of capitalism.
Nationalit., a historically formed community of people based on common language, territory, economy and culture; follows the tribal community and precedes nation.
Natur., in a broader sense, the sum total of things, the world in the diversity of its manifestations; in a narrower sense, the sum total of biological conditions of the existence of human society.
Necessity, historical, processes and phenomena conditioned by essential features and laws of society, i.e. by internal reasons.
Objective historical conditions, those conditions of the life of society and historical development that are independent of the will of individuals, classes, or parties. Material, economic conditions- the level and character of the productive forces and corresponding production relations-are primary and 288 fundamental objective historical conditions.
Opportunism in the workers' movement, the theory and practice of reconciliation with the bourgeoisie, of making the workers' movement serve the interests of the bourgeoisie and contribute to the preservation and strengthening of its positions.
Outstanding figures, the most experienced and able members of the progressive classes; they lead the struggle waged in the interest of these classes and tangibly contribute to the carrying out of historical tasks of these classes.
Personalit., a social being, a subject of cognition and purposeful change of the world.
Philosoph., a form of social consciousness aimed at elaborating a system of ideas, a world outlook and a view of man's place in it.
Political consciousness, a system of ideas and views, sentiments, aims, and tasks manifested in the activity of classes and social groups.
Political system, a system of governmental and non-governmental institutions exercising definite political functions; embraces the state, parties, trade unions, the church, and other bodies pursuing political aims.
Politic., activity pertaining to the sphere of relations between classes, nations, and other 289 social groups which comprises seizure, retention, or use of state power, participation in government of the state, and the working out of the forms, tasks, and content of state power.
Popular masses, the workers and other social groups capable of accomplishing progressive change in various spheres of the life of society by virtue of their objective status in society.
Production relations, the totality of material, economic relations that are formed between people in the process of social production and the delivery of social product from producer to consumer.
Productive forces, the totality of subjective (man) and material (means of production) elements manifesting the active relation of man to nature.
Progress, social, a law-governed, onward movement of society from lower to higher stages and forms of the life of society, from" an obsolete to a new economic system.
Proletaria., the working class under capitalism which is deprived of the means of production.
Religio., a specific form of social consciousness consisting in distorted, fantastic reflection of 290 natural and social phenomena, namely in the belief that these phenomena are brought about by supernatural forces.
Requirement, social, the relation of man as a member of society to the surrounding world which reflects his need in certain conditions of activity.
Responsibility, historical, individuals', classes', and parties' awareness of the negative consequences entailed in non-use of objectively conditioned possibilities of historical development.
Revolutionary process, world, the unfolding process of transition from capitalism to socialism worldwide; emerges from numerous revolutionary movements; first and foremost, it is the building of socialism in the countries of triumphant proletarian revolutions, the communist and workers' movement in the capitalist countries, and the national liberation revolutions.
Scientific and technological revolution, radical qualitative change in the productive forces as science becomes a direct productive force.
Social being, material interrelations between people and between people and nature that emerge with the emergence of human society.
291Social consciousness, the intellectual plane of historical process;it is a reflection of social being manifested in different historically rooted forms.
Social laws, objective, recurring, and essential links between phenomena of the life of society characterising the ongoing movement of society.
Social psychology, views and notions directly reflecting in the minds of the people the conditions of their life and work.
Social revolution, an objective law of transition from an obsolete to the new and progressive socio-economic system; a radical change in the system of social relations; it resolves urgent socio-political and socio-economic contradictions.
Socialism, existing, the social system replacing capitalism, the lower phase of communism; has been accomplished in a number of countries in Europe, Asia, and Latin America as a result of people's democratic or proletarian revolutions; is based upon social ownership of the means of production and a systematic comprehensive development of the economy; provides for a restructuring of all social relationships accomplished on a collectivist basis, a constant 292 increase in soeial wealth, and personal freedom.
Socialism, theoretical, Marxist-Leninist theory of .socialism as the first stage of the communist formation.
Socialist revolution, the highest type of social revolution, a law-governed transition of society to socialism; its inherent objective feature is class antagonism between the working class and other strata of the workers on the one hand, and the bourgeoisie, on the other.
Societ., historically developing form of the existence of human beings as separated from nature.
Socio-economic formation, a definite stage in the historical development of society; a specific historical type of society.
Sociolog., a science dealing with society as an integral system and individual social institutions, processes, and social groups.
Spontaneity, historical, processes and phenomena that are not controlled by man.
Stat., the principal institution of the political system in class society exercising administration of society and safeguarding the economic and social system; in antagonistic 293 class society is run by the class which possesses economic power and employs it for suppressing its social antagonists.
Subjective factor of history, totality of phenomena and human activity entirely derived from man's will and consciousness: scientific know-' ledge of social phenomena and various forms of conscious organisation and management of social process.
Subjectivis., approach in cognition or practice ignoring the objective laws of" the surrounding world; its core is absolutisation of the role of the subject and subjective activity in the life of society; subjectivism in policies is manifested in arbitrariness (the will of the subject as set off against the objective conditions).
Superstructur., a system of ideological relations and views (political, legal, etc.) and corresponding institutions (the state, political [parties, etc.).
Tasks, historical, socio-historical actions to be carried out in the future by society, classes, and parties.
Theor., a system of generalised ideas underlying a department of knowledge.
Type of social progress, a totality of fundamental features pertaining to the progress of a socio-economic system.
294Wa., organised armed struggle between states (groups of states), classes, or nations ( peoples), a continuation of class policy by violent means.
__ALPHA_LVL0__ The End. [END] [295]REQUEST TO READERS
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